“I grasp what you are saying, but how could I ever really understand?” said Tyrenkov.
“Of course. Well, Tyrenkov, you are the man I recruited to my side during those early years in Siberia, my trusted Chief of Intelligence—until you became a wayward moon. Yet I suppose any man can turn, falling prey to some lure or another, and power is often the most compelling gravity that can seize a man. Do you remember when we labored to turn Kymchek, Volkov’s security man?”
“Of course, though I never truly believed he had come over to our side. Volkov would have had too many ways he could make Kymchek suffer. So while he paid us lip service, and bowed and scraped as he had to once we had him, Kymchek was always in Volkov’s service, secretly, as he believed, but it was quite transparent to me.”
Karpov nodded.
“And you, Tyrenkov… the man who was always seemingly in my service…. Who were you really serving?”
Tyrenkov smiled. “My own self,” he said frankly. “Yes, I served my own ambitions and desires, like every man. Have you ever really been foolish enough to think things were otherwise? That is not the way of the world, Karpov. Men serve others, and sometimes they even dupe themselves into thinking they serve some greater cause, but in the end, I think they really serve their own ambitions.”
“Perhaps true,” said Karpov, “if somewhat jaded. Well, speaking of service, be it to some greater cause or to the petty desires we are all prey to, I have a proposition for you. I am certain you are aware of the death of the Siberian.”
“Most regrettable. My condolences.”
“Yes… How do you lay your own self to rest, Tyrenkov? How do you bury your own future? That is what I have been struggling to do these last few days. I once thought of the Siberian as my younger brother, but when we arrived here, and I finally met him again, he was an old grey man. He had lived out decades that remain waiting for me in the years ahead, all in service to the Free Siberian State, and certainly to his own ambitions as well, as we both know. Now he is gone, and that leaves a great void at the top of the leadership pyramid over there. How would you feel about taking that throne?”
Tyrenkov inclined his head. “As Premier and General Secretary of the Free Siberian State?”
“Exactly. It has a nice ring to it, does it not? My brother left instructions with his most trusted lieutenants, but first and foremost, he specified that I should stand in his place if anything should happen to him, or have the final say as to who would advance to that post in the line of succession. In truth, I knew nothing of the men in his orbit, until recently. There are some very good men there, and chief among them is General Erkin Kutukov. He commanded the 1st Siberian Guards, and is presently serving as acting head of state, but now I offer this position to you. Interested?”
“How could I fail to be?” Tyrenkov replied.
“Of course,” said Karpov. “Here on the ship, your duties are simply too limited to satisfy. Frankly, you are made for bigger things, Tyrenkov. Analyzing message traffic, studying orders of battle, sifting through intelligence channels was the work you did in your early years, but now you are a man. The days and years ahead are going to be hard and difficult for Siberia. The Chinese may have agreed to this cease fire, because they get all of Heilongjiang province back from my brother—ground we overran in the last three weeks in this fight for Vladivostok. Yet you and I know that the conflict will remain at the boil for some time now—perhaps for years. It will need a good cook to stir that pot, and I cannot think of anyone better suited to the task. So I offer it to you.”
“Then you forsake the post yourself?”
“That should be evident in this offer.”
“This is not a temporary assignment?”
“No, I can tell you now that I have no intention of returning to Siberia to take up the reins of its affairs. My brother Self has already lived that. I want to take a different course, and remain here, aboard Kirov. Of course I will insist that I retain complete authority over this ship, and over any others that might ever join the ranks of the Siberian Navy. There isn’t much of that around these days, but it’s one thing we might fix in the years ahead. I will also expect your full support, logistics, air support, whenever requested.”
Tyrenkov nodded. “The lure of war has you in its gravity here. Yes?”
Karpov smiled with a nod, knowing that was true. “Tyrenkov, I am a fighter. I do my scheming and planning simply to make sure I get to the fight, and with everything I need to prevail. As for the day to day machinations of state, I built a government beneath me to manage that, and yes, I found you as well. This is what you wanted, correct? Stay here, and you will always be in my shadow. In Siberia, you will have come as close to your general ambition of ruling over all of Russia as is presently possible.”
“And who serves who in this arrangement. Are you expecting me to keep my vow of service, or should I expect you and your navy to pledge allegiance to Siberia?”
“I think we understand one another,” said Karpov. “Once it was in your mind to try and get rid of me, as you discarded Orlov when you thought to set up a little triumvirate with Volkov. Once Fedorov and I had your name penciled at the very top of our list of problems, yet, as we have seen, we are able to reason things out and reach accommodations. In taking you on here, we gained much, did we not? You brought weapons, that interesting key you found at Ilanskiy, and you would be under my thumb. I never pressed it too firmly upon you, and for good reason. I know your caliber, Tyrenkov. I have taken your measure, as you have certainly taken mine. So let us leave it with this—we will cooperate with one another, and all in the general aim of what we both know we must do for Siberia—for Russia.”
“Yet a moment ago I said men only dupe themselves into thinking they act for reasons beyond their own ambitions,” said Tyrenkov.
“Until they take one step more on their path. Think of Sergei Kirov. He formed and led his Soviet Union through its most tumultuous and darkest hours, and being there, meeting and speaking with him on numerous occasions, I could clearly see his greatness. Look at the Soviet Union now. Instead of 50 years of useless and wasteful ‘Cold War’ with the West, he found a way to reach an accommodation, and he did so while still preserving the government we brought to life in the revolution. To do this, he only let go of one thing, the need to export communism to the rest of the world. So in this history, we had no Castro in his Cuba, and if China embraced communism, they did so in their own way, and in their own time. Today the Europeans see our politburo as nothing more than a variant of their own governing systems, and frankly, if you study what Sergei Kirov built in Russia here, you will see we never really shunned democracy. Perhaps we can do the same.”
“Perhaps,” said Tyrenkov. “Yet this war will end, Karpov. What will a fighting Admiral do when that happens one day? When Kirov has no more battles to fight, then where will you go, and what will you do with this ship and the crew that serves you so faithfully in all these adventures?”
Karpov gave him a long look. “That is tomorrow,” he said. “In one sense, I have already seen it. Yes, we are the men who move from yesterday to tomorrow in the blink of an eye. I never fooled myself in that, knowing it was power beyond the measure of that ever held by the world’s mightiest leaders. You drank from that same cup, Tyrenkov, and it’s a dizzy, heady brew. But its exacts a price, it has consequences, terrible consequences, as we have seen in more than one world where we found ourselves. So let us face tomorrow when it comes. Today, we have other business. I offer you this position in Siberia. Do you want it?”