Kirov Saga Men of War

Chapter 32



The nuclear attack submarine Kazan slipped quietly from its underground pen at Pavlovsk Bay, restored to full operation for the specific purpose of housing and supplying the deadly new submarines of its class. There were only three, with Severodvinsk in the Northern Fleet and Yasen in the Mediterranean, but they were the best and quietest attack submarines Russia had ever designed. Four more had been ordered, but the money never came and neither did the subs.

Kazan left the base submerged, the thick overhead fog and low clouds also masking her departure on infrared. The boat would be the tip of Karpov’s spear, a fast, deadly forward scout heading east for the passage above Hokkaido Island. Within the hour the ships of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet would follow in the cruising order Karpov established: frigate Admiral Golovko, destroyer leader Orlan, and cruiser Varyag would lead the way, Kirov would then follow with the four Udaloy class destroyers in her wake. These eight ships would rendezvous with the carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and her three Krivak class frigates—the twelve apostles of Russia’s Red Banner Pacific Fleet were going to sea.

They slipped out of the Golden Horn Harbor like a whisper in the night, passing Russky Island and then turning east to skirt the coast and approach Fokino where Admiral Volsky waited in his office, his eyes heavy with sadness as he stared out into the foggy night. Then there came the distant call of a ship’s horn, three long notes in the quiet night. Volsky recognized it at once, and knew the fleet was now passing Askold Island just off the bay at Fokino. Kirov was signaling farewell.

The telephone rang and he picked up the receiver with a slow, deliberate movement, as if he was afraid to hear the news it might bring. It was the man he had sent over to Naval Supply, Cellar 5, beneath the old Fleet Logistics Building on Svetlanskaya Street. He had told him to call his office at midnight, and the man was very punctual. “Lieutenant Kaslan reporting, sir.”

“Thank you for your timely call, Lieutenant. Please go to storage bin number 317. Use the key you were given to gain access. There you should find a steamer trunk with a naval officer’s coat. Please search the pockets, and should you find any envelopes or papers of any kind, secure the trunk and bin and then bring the documents to this office at once. In fact, bring anything you may find in those pockets. You may leave the jacket undisturbed. Understood?”

“Yes sir. Would you like me to call and verify the discovery of any items before I leave the facility, sir?”

“I will hold on this line, Lieutenant. Please make your inspection while I wait.”

“Right away, sir”

Volsky heard the man’s footsteps echo in the hallway as he went, a hollow sound that grew fainter with each footfall, as if the man were now stepping back over years and decades with each footfall. There came the sound of a dry metal squeak, an old door opening with great reluctance, complaining like a sleeper roused in the long dark of night. There was a shuffling sound, something heavy being moved on the metal floor of the storage bin. He waited breathlessly, imagining the scene with the light of his mind’s eye standing in for the small flashlight that must surely be in the Lieutenant’s hand. What was there?

He heard a quiet bump, then the plaintive creak of the metal door on the bin as it closed, and a brief rattle as the padlock was secured. Then came the footsteps again, faint and growing louder, returning from the past. Volsky took a deep breath, waiting, his heart beating faster. Suddenly there was a sharp sound, muted but discernable, a single hard plunk followed by a heavy dull thump, and something falling heavily to the floor. Then silence…no! Not silence… A second set of footfalls, the sound of dry leather on cold concrete, and a hard heel—clop, clop, clop…Someone else was there! Volsky heard the dull sound of something being moved, his eyes widening as he tried to imagine the scene. He knew immediately what was happening. It was a body being dragged on the concrete floor! There was another rattle of metal, a crisp zipping sound and someone grunting with physical effort. Then he heard a door of a metal bin close, and the clopping footfalls receded, echoing as they faded away.

Silence…Dark, awful silence.

Volsky waited, but he knew what had happened. He slowly put the receiver back in its cradle, and reached for another phone, thumbing a secure line, his pulse quickening.

“Security,” came the voice.

“Admiral Leonid Volsky here. Please send a detachment of five Marines to my office at once.”

“Yes, sir… Is there a problem, Admiral?”

“Five Marines, please, on the double.”

“At once, sir.”



* * *



They stood there in the silence of a very dark room, chilled by a sudden cold. The sound they had been listening to had reached its shrill crescendo, and then the shadows around them slowly resolved to form and shape. The Sirens had called them to another shore and, to Fedorov’s amazement, one appeared to have died in the singing of that fatal lure.

He stared at a heavy set elderly woman, slumped on the threadbare couch, her tousled gray hair disheveled and a look of utter shock frozen on her face. Clearly she had been sitting there, a cup of tea still steaming on the tea stand to the right of the couch, when four men suddenly appeared in the midst of her living room, he thought. She must have been literally shocked to death by these apparitions manifesting in the midst of her living room. Their intervention had produced its first casualty, he realized with some misgiving. The woman was too old to bear children, but who knows whether or not she had something yet to give to the world before she died. No one would ever know.

Four men? He looked this way and that. Where was Bukin? Troyak and Zykov were there, but there was no sign of the other team member. The Sergeant touched his collar button, listening to the earbud and called for the missing man in a low voice.

While he did this Zykov, a tall, broad shouldered, white haired man, with muscular arms and a chiseled face, was already sweeping the room with a small hand held infrared detector, and searching the premises for any sign of another inhabitant. Troyak looked at Fedorov. “No response from Bukin,” he said flatly, his steely eyes searching the shadowed corners of the room.

“It seems that our 12 rod test bed reactor has limited power,” said Fedorov. “The three of us obviously displaced intact, but Bukin could not be moved. Too much mass.”

Troyak nodded, inwardly recalculating mission parameters and assignments in his mind. No plan survives first contact in a mission, he knew well enough.“Very well, Colonel.” The Sergeant smiled. We’ll make do.”

Fedorov spent the previous day ferreting out old WWII era uniforms from army surplus dealers in Vladivostok. He was able to find insignia and rank pins for an NKVD Colonel, and his research even indicated that there was such a man named Fedorov in the NKVD during the war. His historical counterpart was Deputy Head of the Main Transportation Directorate, People's Commissariat of Defense, a rather high ranking official, and he rose to the rank of Major General. Fedorov even bore medals for the Order of the Red Star on his right chest, correctly placed after the Order of the Patriotic War 1st class. The red enamel five-pointed silver star, with straight rays in the background, and crossed saber and rifle gleamed in the light of a solitary lamp by the tea stand. Troyak and Zykov were both decked out in NKVD uniforms as well, with black Ushankas bearing insignia. They would pose as Fedorov’s personal security detail.

“We must get across the bay to the Naval Logistics and Storage Administration.” He reached into his pocket, relieved to find he still had his key. He had given a copy to Admiral Volsky for him to check the storage bin there and look for the letter that he already had waiting in an envelope in his breast pocket. They had two choices, to go by car or boat, whichever they could secure with the least effort.

Zykov had already surveyed the house and outside surroundings. Fedorov searched the home quickly, finding a newspaper on the tea stand. The date was September 22, 1942, a perfect landing! He tore off a segment of the paper with the date as evidence, and slipped it into the envelope. That done, he sealed the envelope as they made ready to leave.

They had entered the test bed facility seventy-nine years in the future on September 21st. He thanked their good luck. They were well ahead of the date on Orlov’s letter, the day he arrived at the Kizlyar on the 30th of that same month. Yet they would have little time to lose. It was a long ride ahead on the Trans-Siberian rail, and anything might delay them.

No one else was home and the night was cold and silent. They moved quietly, stepping out into the misty darkness of the sleeping city, and made their way down the hill towards the harbor below. They had left under a rising full moon in 2021, and arrived with no moon to be found at all. Only the fog remained a common denominator. Zykov was point man, with Fedorov following and Troyak watching from the rear. Reaching the quay they found a small dinghy and commandeered it. It would be three or four kilometers to go around the tip of the Golden Horn Bay and reach the other side, and there were few vehicles to be found. The boat would get them across easily enough, and cut their journey in half.

They crossed in a few minutes to the Dalzavod Shipyard on the northern bank of the bay, paddling up to a short pier there and slipping quietly ashore. The silent hulks of several cargo vessels and an old destroyer sulked in the foggy night, riding gently at their moorings. The moan of a fog horn sounded in the distance as they melted into the stacks of crates and old rusting oil cans stacked on the quay. Soon they had worked their way into the city, and up to Svetlanskaya Street, a much narrower road than it was in 2021. From there they turned left, heading west toward the naval Logistics Administration building, which still held that function in WWII. It was only a short walk, a little over one kilometer before they reached the building and then they just walked boldly in through the front domed entrance.

As they approached the inner door, Fedorov had an odd feeling and reached to touch the letter in his breast pocket. He felt as if a cold shadow had slipped out of the building the moment he opened the door, and he shivered. A night watchman roused from slumber when they entered, then stood groggily to attention when he saw three NKVD men walk in, two looking very threatening, and very well armed.

“As you were,” said Fedorov. “Go back to sleep. We’re just checking on a delivery, and we’ll leave by the rear entrance.”

“Very good, sir.” The man was more than happy to see them stride away, and then he settled back into the warmth of his chair, wrapping himself in a thin wool blanket.

It was not long before they found themselves in the cellar, and located Fedorov’s storage bin. He took out the letter, fishing out a pencil in his pocket so he could let the Admiral know the their fourth team member was not present. Fedorov hoped Bukin was still safe in the test bed center in the future. That would be one less life on my shoulders, he thought, and one less soul on the ledgers of time.

He opened the steamer trunk and slipped his freshly sealed white envelope into the breast pocket of his grandfather’s naval blazer. Again he had the strange thought that nearly eighty years on, a Marine was standing patiently in the cold empty cellar hallway, waiting for a telephone call from Admiral Volsky. Dobrynin must have just informed him, and he was about to make his call.

What he could not have imagined would be that another man was also waiting there, crouching low in the shadows beneath the stairway to the upper floors, his eyes peering wolf-like in the dark as he waited with a small pistol that would fire a drug-laden dart. A real revolver would be much too messy. How to explain the blood? No. He was waiting there with his dart gun, and the man he had shadowed to this strange place would soon be quite incapacitated. He watched him carefully, seeing him take something from the locker and then start back down the hall toward his position. Then he stood and fired, the crisp snap of the gun echoing in the empty corridor. He was unaware that another man had heard it on the open phone line, miles away in Fokino, his rising pulse chasing a hundred questions down that darkened hall.

But Fedorov knew nothing of this.



* * *



The shadow Fedorov thought he felt may have been nothing more than a strange intuition, but the man who had cast it was passing through that same door at that very moment, some eighty years on, as he left the Fleet Logistics Building on Svetlanskaya Street. A black limousine was parked just outside the main entrance to the building. The moon had risen hours earlier and was well up riding above a thin veil of misty fog and casting a wan diffused light over the scene. The man in a dark gray overcoat walked briskly from the yawning arched entry where a domed roof dating back to 1903 brooded over the walkway. He stepped quickly to the waiting limousine. The rear door opened as he arrived and he slipped into the shadowy interior.

Another man was seated in the back, and he tapped the soundproof glass partition screening off the driver’s compartment. The car pulled away from the curb and rolled quietly up the street, passing the Circus amusement building and then turning left off the main boulevard, along a winding road leading into a small residential district.

“Well?” the voice in the shadows spoke, the man’s face dark and unseen beneath the rim of his hat. The other man handed him a sealed plain white envelope.

“That was all?”

“I searched very carefully, sir.”

The other man studied the envelope in the dim light. “Very unusual,” he muttered, turning it over and seeing nothing of any note, just a blank envelope. Then he looked at his messenger, as if suddenly remembering something. “What did you do with the body?”

“As we planned. I put it in Bin 400. I will have men remove it within the hour. Don’t worry, he’ll wake up in the park tomorrow morning with a bad headache, and he won’t remember a thing. The drug is very effective.”

“Very well. Draw the shades, please.” They pulled down the black privacy shades on the side windows and driver compartment screen, then the man with the envelope reached slowly to the back of the seat in front of him, groping for a light switch.

“Well done, Captain Volkov,” he said calmly. It was Inspector General Kapustin, slowly removing his black fedora and setting it on the seat beside him as he eyed the envelope with obvious interest. He opened it slowly with his thumb, noting how the glue seemed so old that it barely held, the paper yellowed with age, though in fact it had been sealed just a brief moment ago…a moment that had been stretched into long, long decades.

“Now then…let’s see what we have here.”