“Admiral Tovey, I could spend hours trying to explain what I am now about to tell you, but I think there is a better way. You were kind enough to invite me aboard your ship. May I suggest now that you take a moment to visit me aboard Kirov? There you will have the answer to all your questions, and if the evidence of your own eyes is not something you can believe, then I will join you in happy retirement to your Bethlem Royal Hospital, and the two of us can sit out the remainder of this war as a pair of crazy old fools.”
‘Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky, Like a patient etherized upon a table…’ Tovey ran the words of T. S. Eliot through his mind now as they made their way through the small settlement towards the Admiral’s launch by the quay. ‘There will be time, there will be time… time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea…’
The ship loomed in the lee of the tall stony sail of Tinholmur rock, thrust up from the hidden depths below in some upwelling of chaos in the earth itself, its sharp, jagged edge still unweathered by wind and rain over the centuries. As he looked at the ship he felt that its sharp metallic lines were also the product of chaos, something wholly unaccountable, out of place, a misfit in time. It was as if this strange ship had haunted his nightmares all his life.
He thought once that his recollection of that harrowing moment aboard King Alfred in the Pacific had been the source of this long steeped anxiety. One moment he was charging ahead into battle, leading in the British China Squadron, his forward cannon blasting away at the ominous shadow on the sea. The next moment the distant ship seemed to be enveloped in haze, a green mist, luminescent, like the artful and eerie dance of Saint Elmo’s Fire in the high mast at the edge of a storm.
The ship just seemed to vanish, presumed sunk, but with no wreckage ever found in the shallow waters near Iki Island in the Tsushima Strait. So the official report would state that it was obliterated, though Tovey could recall no explosion big enough to destroy a ship of that size. It was a deep mystery, and the report was since lost to the weathering of time and events. Yet he always thought about it, the ship that took the Captain’s life and thrust him into his first daring moment of command.
Now as he drew near to the broad hull of the battlecruiser Kirov, he felt a strange magnetism, a connection, linking his life and fate to the cold metal hull and decks and battlements of this vessel. The closer he came, the more he felt that compelling sense of discovery, as if he was finally to have the answer to a stubborn question that had lingered in his mind all his life. It was here… It was this ship… It was Geronimo.
He could stop now, just here beneath the lowering curve of the ship’s hull, the edge of uncertainty. ‘Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.’
The growl of the small boat’s engine stilled and they came along side. Seamen at the bow of the boat tossed up the rope to tie it off. Tovey felt his arms and legs moving almost mechanically as he climbed up from the Admiral’s launch, onto the metal stairwell that had been lowered from above. It was as if he was crossing some barrier now, between the real world he had known and lived in all his life, and a world of twilight and mystery where everything he had ever learned was to be called into question.
He could feel the old and familiar slipping from his grasp with every step he took, as if he was forfeiting the safety and comfort of his old life, and the innocence of unknowing that had been his before this moment, the propriety and civility of an English gentleman’s life, the calm, rational framework that was the core of his personality. ‘For I have known them all already, known them alclass="underline" Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons…’
Who was he, really? What was he? How did he come to be here? These were questions that one asked of the night and stars above, in quiet moments alone, in the solitude of inner thought. Now it would all be called into question and profound doubt. Step beyond that gunwale and onto the deck of chaos and uncertainty, he thought, but he pressed on nonetheless.
He heard the familiar high strain of the boatswain’s pipe. Not one, but two Admirals would now walk the decks of the mighty Kirov. An honor guard in dress whites awaited him, and the Marines snapped to attention, bayonets gleaming at the end of their rifles.
Admiral Volsky had gone first, so as to welcome him again with another hearty handshake when he came up. “Please walk with me, Admiral Tovey,” he said. “I will now give you a tour of the most marvelous ship in the world-in this world or any other. You will see much here that is familiar to your eye, the men below decks in their dungarees and striped naval shirts, the sweat and toil of the matros, that we call our able seamen, the mishman, or midshipman, the starshini, or petty officers all falling to their evolutions to keep this ship running smoothly. The bulkheads and hatches and ladders up and down will all feel like any ship to you, but the places they lead you to will be quite different, quite astonishing.”
They walked the ship, touring the outer decks first as Volsky pointed out the broad domes covering radars and communications equipment, and the ceaseless rotation of the Fregat system high above them.
“With that we can see out to a range of 300 kilometers. You may not believe this but it is quite true.”
“But that would be well over the horizon, Admiral. How is this possible?”
“I wish I could tell you that. All I know is what I hear when my radar man, who is now the Starpom of this ship, tells me when he reports a new contact.”
“Starpom?”
“Ah, that would be the name we give to our Executive Officer, “Mister Rodenko. You will meet him when we visit the bridge. But first, let us have a little stroll on the forward deck.”
Fedorov could hear the pride in the Admiral’s voice as he led Tovey on, and he felt it as well. This was, indeed, the finest ship in the world. While he had passed moments of real trepidation when Volsky proposed he would reveal their true nature and origin to the British Admiral, now he had come to realize that this was inevitable from the first moment they decided to remain here and intervene instead of taking their chances again with the control rods.
Admiral Volsky had the men attending their party summon a missile deck engineer, and open one of the many hatches there. The sharp, dangerous nose of a Moskit-II was seen waiting silently in its vertical silo, like a sleeping monster waiting to be called to life.
“That is one of the missiles you witnessed-actually not this particular model. This one is much bigger than the rockets we used against the Germans. And now you will hear what I say next with disbelief, but I will tell you the truth. This rocket can hit a fly on a wall, and at a range of 222 kilometers, that is 120 of your English miles. The warhead is 450 kilograms, nearly a thousand English pounds.”
Tovey was more than impressed. The interior of the silo was immaculate, the missile threatening in every line and aspect. There was clearly technology and knowhow on this ship far in excess of anything he could imagine possible. Was the admiral merely boasting to make an impression? Could this missile hit its target over a hundred miles away? How would it see it? He asked this, and got an answer.
“Those radars tell it the general location of the target, and then when it is in flight it uses its own radar, right there in the nose, to have a look for itself. It is extremely accurate.”