“Well, to answer your question, Admiral, these images came from material collected by our intelligence networks-at least it gives every appearance of that. They were all carefully labeled and organized in a file box-all arranged according to our normal formats and protocols. If you happened to review the labels on the back of those photos you will see one thing that gave me reason to believe this was all an elaborate hoax. You see, they are all date stamped in the years 1941 and 1942. This being an impossibility, I came to suggest that these photos were fabrications. Are you telling me now that you believe them to be genuine?”
“That is exactly the case. They clearly depict events that remain fresh in my memory, and that fact alone is convincing evidence that they could not be forgeries. Who could anticipate or dream up events as shown in these photos with such accuracy?”
That set Tovey back a moment. “Were they taken earlier this year? I was not aware you were in the Mediterranean.”
“Not this year,” said Volsky with just the hint of some unspoken truth in his tone.
Tovey did not quite know what he meant by that. His thought was that these were photos of the ship taken by some other intelligence service or military arm earlier this year, and then tampered with through some darkroom witchery as he had proposed it to Turing. The four King George V class battleships and the deliberate misdating were damning evidence to that effect. Then the Russian Admiral spoke again, and his next words burst open the dike Tovey had his finger of disbelief firmly planted in since he had first seen the images himself.
“Now I will reveal something that you may find to be quite disturbing, Admiral Tovey. A moment ago you told me that you had the feeling that we had met before. That is so. You may now think me a crazy old fool, but the meeting we had in the Denmark Strait some weeks ago was not the first time you and I have spoken with each other, strange as that may sound to you now. We have, indeed, met before. This photo was taken some hours after that very meeting, which occurred on a small island near your base at Gibraltar.”
The minute that Volsky said that, Tovey was struck with a powerful sensation of deja vu, a shadow of a deeply hidden memory upwelling in his mind, yet one he could simply not grasp. The barest fragment emerged in his consciousness, a place, a name.
“Las Palomas,” he said quietly. “That was the place, wasn’t it?”
Volsky smiled.
Chapter 2
Tovey’s pulse began to quicken as Nikolin translated, the yawning realization opening in his mind now that was pushing this whole matter to the edge of oblivion-sheer lunacy! For one other thing that Alan Turing had included in that Manila envelope had been a copy of the report Tovey had written summing up the very same meeting and discussion that Admiral Volsky had just mentioned! He thought it all part of the carefully contrived deception, but here was an independent source, having no connection to British intelligence whatsoever, calmly referencing the meeting his report labored to describe! A meeting that he would swear had never happened, yet one he felt on some inner level to be a reality.
Tovey was dazed, beside himself with the implications that gathered like ravenous wolves about the fading campfire of his mind. Yet even though he thought he was doing nothing more than courting folly, he ventured another question. “If such a meeting took place, Admiral, might you tell me what was agreed between us there?”
“Of course. The same thing we have just set our minds to here-a truce. We found ourselves at odds, and rather than continue a struggle that could do neither of us any good, I agreed to proceed to the Island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic in exchange for free passage of the Straits of Gibraltar and a pledge of non-belligerency in the war that is before us both now.”
There it was, chapter and verse as Tovey’s own report had described the meeting, and the agreement that was negotiated-a meeting he knew he had never taken with this man, particularly on the dates listed! Yet Tovey persisted, if only to test the fullness of the mayhem that was now before him.
“I must tell you that I am a very busy man, and one sometimes given to forgetfulness, but I could never put from my mind a meeting of such importance. I have no recollection of ever seeing you, or ever speaking with you before we first met aboard HMS Invincible, though I have harbored, as I confessed, a lingering feeling that we had met. Now you sit there and describe the very substance and purpose of that meeting, and it corresponds precisely with this report on the matter-a report supposedly written by my own hand by all appearances, but one I would swear before any court that I have never contemplated, let alone produced. It would seem logical for me to assume you are somehow connected to this document, and perhaps to all the others found in the box I have mentioned. One more question, before I certify myself as hopelessly insane, or conclude that you are a part of a grand deception. The date… Do you recall just when this meeting was supposed to have occurred between us? Even if my own memory has failed me, my whereabouts are fairly well documented.”
Fedorov leaned over and whispered something to Admiral Volsky now, and he nodded. “My Captain here informs me now, as my recollection is a bit like Swiss cheese at times as well. But there will be no record you can produce documenting your whereabouts in this regard-except perhaps that report you have referred to. The date… Forgive me if what I now say gives you every reason to think that I, too, am insane, or playing some macabre game with you here. I assure you that I am not guilty on both counts. The date of this meeting was August 14, and a little after 17:00, in the year 1942.”
The log on the fire popped loudly, as if in protest to the facts that Admiral Volsky asserted. It was the very same information documented in the report Turing had forwarded. They all jumped at the sound, then sat there, looking at one another like marked men, and certainly bound for the only place where any of this would make even the slightest bit if sense-bedlam.
Tovey gave the Russians a narrow eyed look. Could these men, this ship, all be part and parcel with the same plot that produced that box of material Turing fished out of the archives? Why would anyone contrive a story like this? He could think of no reason, but reason was not the order of the day, or the moment here. This was all entirely unreasonable, completely irrational, some perverse joke the world was playing on them, or a devious plot that Turing may have inadvertently stumbled upon.
He shored up his will, resolved to get to the bottom of this here and now. “The date you have given me is exactly what I see noted here on this report-yet preposterous. I have read the popular novel by our own Mister H. G. Wells on the matter of time travel, gentlemen. In fact I read it many years ago, as a young boy of ten when it was first published. But I am not given to such flights of fancy, so it should be clear to us all here that this notion that we have met at some future time is poppycock… And yet… I have had a long look at the material in this archive, and I find it all rather disconcerting in a way that is difficult to explain. It documents that our first meeting was in combat, with me aboard a battleship that we have only just commissioned into the fleet. So this entire box is either a wonderful work of fiction, like our Mister Wells’ story, or I’m a bullfrog. Then I sit here and look at those photographs, note your own astonished reactions to the same, and am I to assume you are all in league with the perpetrator of this fiction?”
Admiral Volsky sighed. He could either agree now that this was all a hoax and spare this man the trip down the rabbit hole he had been forced to take, or he could reveal the impossible truth that he had lived with and would continue to live with here-a truth that could simply not be hidden any longer as he saw things. Then he thought of Ivan Volkov, Vladimir Karpov, and even Sergei Kirov, all men who had also taken that same impossible journey through time, all key players now in the shattered reality of this world. The truth, as impossible as it seemed, was his only recourse.