“Delivery?”
“Too long of a story to tell, just like yours. Needless to say, I was nearly a dead man then and there, until Karpov changed his spots and offered me a position in his airship fleet—in exchange for information, of course. What was I to do, die like a hero? For Volkov? To hell with that. So now you know how I come to be sitting here, but it’s you that I can’t figure yet. You say you come off a ship—battlecruiser Kirov. I’ve heard it fights for Karpov now, which means you fight for Karpov, eh Captain? Then wonder of wonders, you hijack my ship. As I said earlier, if you start your own private war with Karpov out here, good luck. He’s already none too happy with whatever you were planning—otherwise why would I get this order to apprehend you and your comrades? So what is it? You a turncoat as well? You jumping ship, Captain Fedorov?”
There was a sting of truth to what Symenko was saying, but Fedorov didn’t quite see things that way. “Karpov and I came to an agreement. I can’t say why he’s decided to renege on that, but there isn’t time to argue the matter. I need to get to Ilanskiy, and that is that.”
“I see….” Symenko folded his arms. “Then you’re a dead man too, just like me. You know that, don’t you? Karpov will be right there waiting for you… Then again, maybe he won’t. I got orders to take you to Irkutsk. Yes… his lordship was at Novosibirsk pounding Volkov’s line on the Ob with Riga and Narva. Come to think of it, he’ll probably be on his way to meet me at Irkutsk if he was so damn worked up about getting his hands on you again. You say you had an agreement with the man? Doesn’t sound that way to me. But let me think out loud for a moment, if you please. This agreement of yours has to do with this mysterious business at Ilanskiy. Karpov gets very sensitive about that place. Like I said, Volkov has been after it for the last year, so he’s beefed up the defenses there three times over. He’s always got an airship on patrol there, and after what happened to the Angara, he doubled that watch as well. I was posted there with this ship and the Abakan. But something tells me you’ve hit a nerve with this little caper, and knowing his lordship as I do so well now, he’ll double that watch yet again. I’d guess he’s already ordered Riga and Narva to Ilanskiy while he swings down to Irkutsk to fetch you. That’s a pair of nice fat battleships added to the watch, and Karpov won’t bat an eyelash in ordering them to blast this ship to hell if I don’t cooperate. Right now he thinks I have you all tied up in a sack, and bound for Irkutsk. Surprise, surprise when he finds out I’m not there! Then he’ll turn the whole fleet out after us. So you see, you can’t get through to Ilanskiy, not on this airship, and not on the ground if I drop you all off and wave goodbye.”
“We can try,” said Fedorov, his voice betraying just a little doubt. “We did it once before—my Sergeant Troyak got through. He’s a very able man.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it. He strong armed my security detachment easily enough, and didn’t even have to use those fancy rifles there.” Symenko pointed to Troyak’s assault rifle, as he had never seen its like. “But that one and four others with your Marines won’t get you through the defensive perimeter at Ilanskiy. If you think that’s likely, you’re just deluding yourself. And supposing by some miracle you do get through. The guard in the city is now composed of the Black Watch—Tyrenkov’s men. He’s Karpov’s Chief of Security, and his men are very efficient. No. You won’t get through. You may cause a ruckus and kill quite a few men with those fancy rifles, but you’ll never live to conduct this business you’re so keen on, and that’s that.”
Now Fedorov looked at Symenko with a harrowed expression on his face. The man was probably correct. Everything had happened so quickly, and he had acted on impulse, driven by the urgency of his quest. Karpov radioed to call off the mission, and he had been too bull headed to listen, too driven, so completely convinced that the fate of the world was in a sand glass of time that was quickly running out. Now, after the seamless way they took this airship, he had come to think he would stroll into Ilanskiy just as easily. Yet Symenko’s words galled him with the hard spike of reality. What he said was true. Getting to Ilanskiy they could probably do, and he had simply put his faith in Troyak working his tactical magic to get him inside the city. Now that Symenko put the challenge before him in this cold light, he was finally realizing that his mission was most likely doomed.
But I must get through, he thought. Time is running out. I’ve got to get to that railway inn by September 30th. Doesn’t Karpov understand that? I thought I had convinced him how imperative this was, but he always had reservations. Doesn’t he realize what’s at stake?
Behind that desperate thought, came the shadow of doubt. If he was honest with himself, Fedorov didn’t really know what would happen if he failed to get through, and now Symenko was making it fairly obvious that getting to the railway inn would not be as easy as he thought. Troyak and his men slipped through in the middle of one of Volkov’s raids, while most of the garrison there was distracted. It was just good luck that it happened that way, but this time that would not be the case.
There would be airships on patrol overhead, just like Symenko was telling it. They would have to go to ground well before they came into contact range of those patrols, and then hump it to Ilanskiy on foot. That would take time, and all the while Karpov would very likely be tightening the cordon of steel he undoubtedly has around Ilanskiy. Now that he actually had time to think it through, the folly of his decision to try and proceed was becoming apparent. He had acted impulsively, with the edge of desperation and the urgency of his own dark fears over the consequences of failure. Yet he had been stupid to think he could succeed in all of this—in any of it, even if he did get through to the railway inn.
Suppose I did get there, he thought. I just assume I’ll get right back to Mironov if I go down those stairs, and then, instead of having breakfast with him, I’ll have to kill him—timely cruelty. That was how I put it to Karpov when I argued all this. He wondered then whether I had that in me, the capacity for that cruelty, and believe me, I wonder now if I could ever go through with this and actually gun down Sergei Kirov. It isn’t the thunder and chaos that would likely follow that gunshot that feeds that doubt, it’s just that moment itself, me, alone, standing there with that pistol in my hands and with Mironov in front of me. There he would be, young Mironov, innocent, like a seedling just taking root in the history, and there I would be, reaching down in the garden to pluck him out before he could root and grow and bloom to become the man I have already met here—the man I so admire.
He lowered his head, deeply troubled. Symenko had just made all his own inner doubts and fears real and palpable again. He had fled from them in the urgency of the moment, with the pulse of adrenaline still hot in his blood after that missile nearly took down the KA-40. Karpov had fired that missile in desperation as well, and with an urgency that Fedorov did not yet understand. Something had caused him to change his mind, and now he was dead set on seeing that decision through. Symenko wasn’t simply taunting him, he was correct. Karpov was going to do everything in his power to stop him now. He was on alert, most likely already tightening everything down at Ilanskiy; most likely sending those other two airships there to bolster the defense—the Riga and Narva.