“Ilanskiy?” said Berzin. “What are we to do there with a hundred men and a pistol?”
Kirov looked at him, a cold light in his eyes. “I am going to kill Ivan Volkov.”
“What? Kill Volkov? At Ilanskiy? What are you talking about?”
“Don’t be a fool,” said Kirov. “You know what I have told you about that place, and you also know what I have told you about Volkov. He doesn’t belong here. He came from another time, and his presence here is a blight on all these events. How many divisions do we have facing Volkov’s troops? Do you know what I could do with those men if I had them now? I could defend Volgograd, stop the German offensive, save Rostov! All the oil Volkov is sitting on would be mine, and I would not have to scrimp and dig for it in Siberia under Karpov’s guard, and then transport it a thousand miles before I can use it. What if the Siberian Rail goes down? Our armies would be frozen like ice this winter!”
“But sir…. Think about this. To begin with, Karpov is sitting on Ilanskiy with three divisions. After Volkov’s raids, he won’t let anyone come within a hundred miles of the place. He’s got airships on constant patrol, particularly after the German airship incursion. We would never get through.”
“Oh, yes we would. I’ll simply send him a message requesting an emergency meeting there, a wartime summit to plan the defense of the motherland. I can waltz right in. He’ll even provide me an honor guard, and all proper diplomatic niceties. We’ll get through. All I need to do is get to that railway inn with a handful of our best men. From there it’s just a short walk to victory.”
“Victory? What in God’s name do you plan to do?”
“I’ve said that—kill Volkov.”
“But where? How?”
“At Ilanskiy. With my pistol—the same one I used to kill Stalin. I’ll put an end to this madness once and for all. Let’s see what the front looks like after I eliminate Volkov in 1908.”
“In 1908? You think you can get back there again—by using that stairway?”
“I got here from there once, didn’t I? Where do you think the material all came from? I went up that stairway and brought it back. This time I’ll start at the top.”
“You think you can get to the past—to 1908—simply by walking down that back stairway?”
“Why not? Volkov did it. That’s how he got here in the first place. So I can do it as well.”
“Madness…” Berzin did not know what else to say. “Madness! Suppose you did do this. Then what? You expect to find Ivan Volkov sitting there having tea and waiting for you to put a bullet in him? Think, Sergei. Think! You say Volkov came here that way, but how do you know it will work for you?”
“I’ll test that proposition with my feet.”
“Alright. Suppose it does work. You have told me you were there yourself, as a young man—back when you called yourself Mironov. How can you go there now? Can there be two of you—two versions of the same man, one young, one old? This is madness!”
That caught Kirov off guard. He had never considered that possibility. Could he go there and really find his younger self? He would be right there, having breakfast on the day it all first happened, the day the sky shuddered with the fire of a second dawn—Tunguska.
“Finally you make a good point,” he said slowly, but a solution to the problem immediately dawned on him. “Ah…” He turned with new light in his eyes. “Suppose I write a letter—about all of this—Volkov, the war, the goddamned Orenburg Federation. Yes! That is all I would really have to do. Grishin, you are correct. Perhaps I can’t go there myself if I already exist there as a young man. Nor can I take this pistol, because it will already exist there as well.”
“At last,” said Berzin. “You finally begin to see reason in all of this nonsense.”
“Oh, do not be so hasty,” said Kirov. “You are correct in what you suggest, but I don’t have to go there personally to do what I am planning. I’m already there! All I have to do is get a message back to myself—to the young Mironov. I will tell him what to do, what he must do after he finishes off Stalin. I will tell him he must put one more bullet in his pistol, and go find a man named Volkov.” He looked at Berzin now, smiling.
Outside the thunder of a storm rolling in off the Baltic Sea rattled the windows. Lightning flashed in the sky, and Kirov’s eye was drawn to it. He found himself looking out on the city, the last stronghold of the Soviet Union he had struggled all his life to build. The darkness in the clouds over the brown stone buildings seemed ominous. The Germans had leveled one great city after another, Kiev, Minsk, Kharkov, Moscow, and now they were about to devour all that remained. He had to stop them—stop Volkov from skewing the history of this war so badly that the material he had found as a young man now seemed like nothing more than a fairy tale.
He could do this thing. He knew he could get there safely, get close, get inside that railway inn. Then all it would take is a message in a bottle. He could stand at the top of that stairway, and simply roll it down.
Mironov will know what to do. I will know what to do, he told himself. He will read it and believe, because I know exactly what to say to him—things that only I will know.
Yet Berzin could still hardly believe that he was hearing all of this. He had to find some way of convincing Kirov that this plan was absolute lunacy.
“You want to send a letter? Down those stairs? Who will deliver it? Can’t you see how crazy this sounds now?”
“I can send a nice young man down, someone who was not yet born to that time. He could get back.”
“You assume he will arrive at the precise moment you were there having breakfast as you told me? Why? Why make such an assumption?
“Fedorov got there that way, and yes, at precisely that moment.”
“But not Volkov,” said Berzin quickly. “You see? Not Volkov. He was nowhere to be found while you had your chat with Fedorov. Correct? So what makes you think this man you send will arrive that same morning. Suppose he arrives months earlier, or later—even years. Then what? Does this man scour the countryside looking for Mironov? How would he find you—even recognize you?”
“I have a photograph of myself at that age. I can give it to him, and if he is good, one of our very best, then he will find me.”
“But not easily. Yes? Weren’t you hounded and pursued by the Okhrana all that time? I know you, Sergei Kirov. You are a very clever man, very cagey. You would spot this man in an instant, and try to evade him. You would think he was an agent of the Okhrana and avoid him like the plague. Even if your man did find you in the past, do you honestly think you would believe what he tells you—believe anything you might write in that letter you hope to send yourself?”
“Yes! Of that I am certain. You don’t understand, Grishin. Couldn’t you write such a letter to yourself right now? Don’t you know things that you alone are privy to—things that no one else could ever possibly know about you? That is how I will convince my younger self. Understand? He will believe that letter, because he will know the truth hidden in that back stairway as well. Remember, I went up those stairs many times as a young man.”
“That is another thing that has always bothered me,” said Berzin. “How could you have done that, come to this time, when you were already alive here?”
“Because I wasn’t alive here. I was assassinated in 1934. It was Fedorov who first put me on to that—warned me. Then, when I first went up those stairs, I found material that explained it all to me. That was just one more reason for me to kill Stalin, because it was Stalin who arranged that little scenario. He found someone—Leonid Nikolaev. That’s the man who did his dirty work for him.”