Orlov folded his arms, frowning.
“Welcome to Siberia,” Troyak said gruffly.
It was only necessary to become ever so slightly lighter than air to climb, and heavier than air to descend, but the process often took time. It would take three hours of careful maneuvering and ballast recovery via the air condenser equipment and rain collectors, but they eventually secured enough new ballast to begin a steady descent.
At about 6000 feet the landforms were clearly visible again, and they maneuvered towards the gleaming course of a distant river, thinking they could now get back on track. Though the storm had abated, the magnetic disturbance was still giving their compass equipment fits, but the river would take them where they needed to go-or so they believed.
The light faded with the setting sun at 21:30, and it would not rise again until almost five AM. With shadows lengthening on the landforms below, Selikov drifted lower, safely above the forest but at an altitude where he could try and keep the river beneath them. Speed was reduced to the bare minimum as darkness folded over them like a heavy quilt.
It was a very long wait for the sun, even if the night was fleeting by normal standards. They drifted over the endless dark wilderness, hovering with the passing clouds, lost in the realm of osprey and eagle. The crew slept fitfully that night, with Orlov huddled in his cabin trying to keep warm with a good wool blanket.
Hours later a weary Selikov was back on the bridge with Orlov and Troyak, shaking his head as he studied his charts, then scanned the surrounding terrain beneath them. They had found the river, but Captain Selikov remained troubled, shouting back and forth with the navigation room, and finally going there himself for a lengthy conference. When he returned he had a crestfallen expression on his face.
“Good news, and bad news,” he said to Orlov and Troyak. The good news is that we have finally determined where we are. That fork in the river two hours back at sunrise was the village of Bajhit. I hoped it might be Motiygino on the Angara, which is why I steered to follow the course of the lower tributary. That was supposed to take us very near the objective.”
“And the bad news?” Orlov wanted to know the score.
“We have drifted off course during the storm. That river we were following was not the Angara and we are well to the northwest of where we wanted to go.”
“Can’t we follow this river south?”
“No, I’m afraid we would not wish to follow this river, Mister Orlov. It has haunted the nightmares of children in Siberia for generations now. Perhaps you know it, Sergeant Troyak? This is the Stony Tunguska.”
“Tunguska?” Orlov had heard the name. “Isn’t that the place where the asteroid fell? Scientists have been trying to figure out what it was for years.”
“Yes, something happened there, but I am not a scientist,” said Selikov. “Science has always been too strong a drink for me. There was a German physicist who put it very well. I think his name was Heisenberg. He said: ‘The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
“Or the devil,” said Orlov.
Selikov smiled, rolling up his navigation chart. “Well, gentlemen, I prefer to find God in a cathedral. And I think we should get as far from this place as we possibly can, and that soon.”
Chapter 35
Admiral Tovey was not at his office when the call came in, but the secretary took down the note and placed it in a pile of ten others just like it on his note needle. Tovey came in and sat down that evening, frustrated and bothered by the grilling he had been through in the Admiralty offices. The First Sea Lord, Admiral Dudley Pound, had been particularly trying with his questions and innuendo, intimating that the entire operation had been blighted with incompetence, that the fleet flagship had gone running about like a chicken with its head cut off-those were the man’s exact words-a chicken with its head cut off!
Whitworth had been somewhat more lenient, sizing up the situation in light of the odds we were facing and putting a better hat on it. “Damn lucky we made port with anything at all,” he said. Four German battleships, with two heavy cruisers, three new destroyers and an aircraft carrier-all coordinating in one sweep south-it was something the Germans had never attempted, and a harbinger of hard time ahead for the Royal Navy if they ever tried it again.
“To think that we turned that German fleet for home is certainly the best we could have hoped for,” said Whitworth, god bless the man. But Pound was steaming over a thick report from Rosyth on the damage sustained by Hood, materials needed for repair, time to be laid up. He was so single minded about it that they never did get round to the matter of the aerial rocketry they had observed, and the role it may have played in the outcome of the battle. That was another battle he would likely fight with Pound at tomorrow’s meeting. It was all very, very frustrating.
Tovey looked at the stack of messages, reaching for them out of habit, or a pathetic attempt to chase his discomfiture over the meeting by seeing what else was on his plate, unattended while they had him on the chair. He would normally start from the bottom of the pile, the oldest messages that might need his attention first, but instead he just took up the first one there and saw a name he was not familiar with, yet it was noting a call from a place that immediately got his attention.
The note read simply: Turing, Alan. Regarding Kirov incident.
That had to refer to the Russian cruiser, and it was coming from Hut Four, Bletchley Park. Why did he feel this odd sense of familiarity in that brief message. Was it the name? Alan Turing… Yes, he had heard of the man, one of the boys at BP sorting out the German Naval code.
Tovey raised an eyebrow, curious. He should have put the matter aside and called for a cup of Earl Grey to settle himself, but there was something about that name, about that note, that made him very curious. There was no other way to describe the feeling, a kind of breathless anticipation, a feeling of stony presentiment settling over him. So he reached for the telephone and had them ring this man back on a secure line. The voice at the other end sounded thin and high, and beset with a nervous edge. He introduced himself politely enough, saying he had been asked to help sort out the matter of the Russian ship that had been encountered just before the recent engagement.
“This may be an odd question, Admiral,” said Turing on the line, his voice sounding distended, as though stretched by time and distance, a crackle of frosty interference clouding the end. “May I ask if the word Geronimo means anything to you in regards to this ship?”
The word… The word Geronimo… Geronimo! Tovey put his hand on his forehead, and he almost dropped the receiver. What was it? Yes, he had heard that word. It struck a deep nerve, jarring him, yet where? What was it? He immediately arranged to go and find out.
That afternoon a car pulled up beneath the stately green bell dome and high arched entry to the estate of Bletchley Park. Tovey had wriggled out of his meeting with Admiral Pound, informing him that BP had special intelligence regarding the subject of that day’s discussion. He requested a 24 hour delay, and went straight to the horse’s mouth.
Tovey entered the simple office, noting the plain map on the wall behind Turing’s desk, the standard black telephone, the odd goggles resting on a pile of papers in his inbox tray-and Turing. He was hunched over a photograph, making a close inspection with a magnifying glass and completely oblivious to the Admiral’s presence.
“Mister Turing?”
The man looked up, surprised. “Oh… Excuse me Admiral.” He stood up immediately. “I was so focused on my work that I did not even hear you come in. People shuffle in and out of here all day and I hardly give them any notice. Please be seated.”