Karpov gave him a wan smile. “Thank you, Koslov. I will remember you.”
“God go with you.”
Karpov took the advice given him, along with a plain trench coat to conceal his uniform. He removed his service jacket, stuffing it inside a pillow case and using it for just that, something to lay his weary head on for the long train ride he contemplated. As he stepped ashore on the quay, the recollection of the last moment he had stood on this place was a sharp barb in his mind. The waterfront and piers were crowded with onlookers, the Mayor and his entourage were lined up with their tall hats, and out in the bay sat the mighty Kirov, its crew assembled on deck in dress whites, and the sound of the Russian national anthem resounding from the surrounding hills. There he stood, his Marine honor guard around him, a demigod to these men. That was only days ago… days… thirty years… a lifetime now it seemed. Then he was Vladimir Karpov, Captain of the most powerful force on earth and the new self-appointed Viceroy of the Far East-invincible.
He wondered what had been recorded of that moment, and what was written about the engagement he forced against Admiral Togo’s fleet and the Japanese Navy. It was all history, the first domino to fall that set off a long chain reaction to produce the world he found himself in now, a world made by his own hand. This is all my legacy, he thought. I was going to restore Russia to its rightful place as a Pacific power…
Now look at me, he thought. Now I skulk ashore, head down, scarred and broken, humiliated, powerless, a lost and forsaken soul adrift in a world I can never escape from now. It was said that hell was a prison where every iron bar on the windows and doors was forged in the fire of your own mistakes and misdeeds. This was the hell I made for myself, and not just for me, but for everyone I see here now. The Japanese are certainly happy, but look at the suffering I have brought upon my own people.
He remembered all the many conversations he had with Admiral Volsky. The man had put his trust in him, and he swore he would not let him down. He remembered their conversation in the briefing room off the main bridge while they cruised for the Torres Strait. Volsky had discovered the special warhead still mounted to the number ten P-900, and wanted to make certain I had no more ideas about using it. The Captain remembered clearly what he had said.
“It would be just like me to say I assumed that you discovered the warhead earlier, and had it removed, but that would be a bowl of lozh, just another lie from the man I was back then.”
Volsky had given him a long look. “You asked me to give you a chance and I did so. I will not say that I have been in any way disappointed with your performance, but I wonder, Karpov… Is there any remnant of that old man still alive in you?”
Karpov met his gaze, unflinching. “A man may never purge himself entirely of his bad habits and faults, Admiral, or fully atone for his sins. But if he is a man, he can control himself and do what is right. This you have taught me well enough.”
“No, Karpov, that you learned on your own.” He smiled, obvious absolution in his eyes. “I tell you this because it may happen, by one circumstance or another, that you find a missile key around your neck again one day. Then you will have to decide what you have learned or failed to learn, particularly if I am no longer here to weigh in on the matter with this substantial belly of mine.”
One day… And look what I did when I had that key around my neck. What did I really learn? Did I control myself, restrain those inner urges in me that wanted to do just what Dostoyevsky said was so gratifying? Whether it is good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things…
He could hear his own voice now, like a whining sycophant as he buttered the Admiral’s bread. “I would hope to find the courage to be half the man you are, sir, if I ever do find that key around my neck again.”
“Yes,” Volsky had finished. “If God dies, then we see how the angels fare…”
Oh look how they fared. I tried to intimidate and destroy the American Navy in 1945 and got Admiral Golovko and Orlan in the soup instead. God only knows what happened to Orlan. But I sunk another big ship just to show the Americans what real power was, and then Kirov slipped away like a thief. What happened after that? I never took the time to try and find out. There was no way I could find it out. Suddenly we found ourselves in 1908! There would be nothing in any of Fedorov’s books, but I can imagine that the Americans were not happy to see that Russians had atomic weapons too, and were more than willing to use them.
A strange thought came to him now. It’s 1938! It’s seven years before any of that happened. It’s three years before Kirov ever showed up in this war in 1941. What will happen come late July that year when the ship is supposed to appear in the Norwegian Sea? But how can that happen now? Look at the world I have made. The Soviet Union doesn’t even exist any longer, nor is it likely to exist in any form resembling the nation that built Kirov. Fedorov must be having fits with all of this. Serves him right for sticking his thumb in my pie.
What happened to the ship? Was Kirov still out there somewhere, its sharp bow cutting through the seas? Fedorov was aboard that submarine. Yes, the same one from my nightmare- Kazan. He had to use Rod-25 to get back and find me. He and the Admiral planned this whole thing! He would not leave Orlov when he jumped ship, and he moved heaven and earth to go and fetch him. It was no surprise that he came for me as well, only I underestimated him again. That damn intrepid son-of-a-bitch, Fedorov.
His thoughts unerringly led him back to that traumatic moment on the bridge. So that was Kazan that I saw when I went into the sea. Those bastards were so stealthy that they must have slipped right beneath the ship! That’s what they planned! Kazan would shift and take Kirov right along with it, only something slipped. Maybe the big fish got caught in the net and Kirov and Kazan vanished right in the thick of that last battle. I was cast off, a little fish thrown back into the sea, unwanted.
What was Tasarov doing, listening to his music again? I told him to find that submarine. He was probably in league with the rest of them, from Rodenko, to Samsonov, to Nikolin. I can understand why Rodenko and Zolkin did what they did, but Samsonov? That was the final straw. When he stood up and refused my order, I knew it was all over for me. I was a fool to think I could do whatever I choose simply because of the stripes on my jacket cuff. Did I let Volsky’s rank deter me when I tried to take the ship? No… Not one minute. Those goddamned traitors stood against me in the heat of battle. But who betrayed who? Did they betray me, or did I betray them? Either way you learn the hard lesson, Vladimir. You can lead, but it is only those that choose to follow you that place the power into your hands. Without them you are nothing. Never forget that again.
He did not forget. It was a very long train ride up through Khabarovsk, following the same route that Fedorov, Troyak, and Zykov had taken when they set off to find Orlov. On occasion a Japanese guard would eye him briefly, but he looked so decrepit, his face still bandaged, lean and hungry, eyes darkened with sorrow and regret, that no one seemed to want to bother him. So Karpov rode the train all the way to Irkutsk, doling out the last of the rubles Kaslov had given him for food along the way.
He found an old newspaper, dated two weeks earlier and read. The shock of what he learned there stayed with him for some time. Russia was divided, and still at war with itself. Sergie Kirov was alive, though he should have been killed four years ago in 1934. There was no mention of Stalin, none at all. Another nebulous and shadowy figure named ‘The Prophet,’ Ivan Volkov, ruled the central province now named the Orenburg Federation, a principle antagonist against Kirov’s Western Russian state centered on Moscow and Leningrad.