Kirov Saga Men of War

Chapter 33



The car pulled up to #21 Tunguskaya Street, a small wood sided home shaded by walnut trees. Two men exited the vehicle, one speaking quietly on a cell phone, dressed in a long gray overcoat and grey felt Ushanka, the other in a dark coat and black fedora. They walked quickly up to the front entrance, and considering the late hour Kapustin did not ring the bell, tapping lightly on the window pane in the door.

They heard footsteps, and the dead bolt being thrown back. The door opened to reveal a grey haired man with soft eyes in a heavy robe. It was Kamenski.

“Forgive the hour, my old friend,” said Kapustin. “But I think you will be interested to see what I have found.”

“Please come in,” said Kamenski. “My daughter and grandson are sleeping in their rooms on this floor, but we can go upstairs and use the library, just up there on the right.” He pointed to the stairs. “Let me get some tea for you.”

“It can wait. When you see this you will understand.”

“Perhaps, but if it’s that earth shaking, then I had better have tea. It always clears my mind. I’ll be right in.” He padded off, and the two men climbed the squeaky stairs and seated themselves in the library by Kamenski’s desk.

It was not long before he returned with a Samovar and hot tea on a tray, which he set on the desk. “There’s a little honey left if anyone takes it that way.” He poured carefully while Kapustin fretted, tapping the envelope on the palm of his hand as he watched.”

“And what do you have there, Mister Kapustin. I hope not a bill for the furnace.”

Kapustin smiled, then simply leaned forward and laid the envelope on Kamenski’s desk. The old man’s curiosity was now stirred like the honey into the tea of his mind, and he seated himself at the desk, eying the envelope as he slowly fitted his reading glasses.

Volkov rubbed his chin with some impatience, but Kapustin simply waited, watching his old friend first take a sip of his tea before he reached to pick up the envelope. “Now then,” he said softly. “Where did you get it?”

“Never mind that for the moment. Have a look, please.”

Kamenski opened the envelope and quietly read: “Admiral Volsky… If you are reading this then know that we have arrived safely at our destination, and will now proceed with our mission to rescue Orlov at Kizlyar. Should circumstances permit it, look for us along the Caspian coast on or after October 15, 1942. May God be with you all. – Captain Anton Fedorov.” Another brief notation was added at the end: “Bukin failed to arrive. We hope he is safe with you.”

Kamenski then looked at a small printed clipping that had obviously been torn from a newspaper, peering over the top of his reading glasses to closely spy out the date: 22 SEP 1942. He set the envelop and its contents down, then reached for his teacup.

“Where did you find it? “ he asked again.

“In the old Naval Logistic Building cellar—one of the bins. Volsky sent a man there to retrieve it at midnight.”

“The envelope was sealed?”

“The glue was weak, but yes. So what is going on here, Pavel? Is this some kind of a joke Volsky is playing? We went to considerable trouble to get this tonight. It is most disturbing.”

“Indeed,” Kamenski said quietly. “So now you are the one handing me an old document from the 1940s.” The paper appears quite old, Gerasim, as well as the ink. This could be forged, of course, but a closer inspection would verify whether or not that note was written in our time, or in 1942 as it appears. The news print clipping is obviously authentic, but it could have been slipped into the envelope yesterday for all we know. Who would be writing to an Admiral Volsky in 1942? There was no such man that I know of.”

“Of course it wasn’t written in 1942,” said Kapustin. “So it must be code of some type—perhaps something in that newspaper clipping? But why, my friend? What is Volsky trying to pull with this stunt? He must have suspected we were watching him, and all the other senior officers. Is this his way of thumbing his nose at us? Saying he’s on to us?”

“Admiral Volsky is a very serious man, Gerasim. And given the situation in the Pacific I can hardly believe he would have time for such games.”

“Well there is more. We saw several armed men accompanying this Anton Fedorov to the Primorskiy Engineering Center across the bay early this evening. Fedorov is the Starpom aboard Kirov. We left a man there to keep an eye on the place, and he reported that the Chief Engineer from the ship and a party of five technicians moved a long container into a truck and took it to the airport.”

“A weapon of some kind? Was it a missile?”

“We thought as much at first, but who knows? Well I should know. Yes? I am the Inspector General of the Russian Navy! I should know, but they had Marines crawling all over the place.”

“And this Fedorov returned to the ship as well?”

“We could not confirm that. He must have slipped out somehow, because we had men search the entire Engineering Center, and it was empty. The ship left two hours later, a little before midnight. The whole damn fleet has deployed!”

“It was inevitable, Gerasim. So you won’t have any ships to inspect for a while and you can take that vacation you’ve been missing.” He smiled, and Kapustin folded his arms, frowning. Kamenski took a more serious tone.

“This Orlov referred to in the note. Who is he?”

Volkov spoke up now, sounding like the perfect tattletale. “He was the Chief Operations Officer aboard Kirov, and was listed as a casualty.”

“Yes,” said Kapustin. “The only man Moscow confirmed from the Naval Records Bureau. When you called to ask about that old photo of the Japanese with that missile part I wondered what you were up to, Kamenski. So now you can wonder what we are up to. This Orlov was reported missing in action. Now we have a Marine sent from the Naval Headquarters at Fokino to the Logistics Building and he retrieves this strange letter from a dusty old storage bin. Volsky obviously sent the man. What is this about?”

“The third man mentioned in the letter…Who is he?”

“Bukin? We found out that he is a Marine Corporal assigned to Kirov’s detachment. He was one of the men accompanying Fedorov to the Engineering Center tonight.”

“Well this is very curious. The note says the Starpom is headed to Kizlyar to look for this missing Operations Chief. That’s a very long trip.”

“The ship’s Captain Karpov and the others were very evasive when I began sniffing around that casualty list,” said Kapustin.

“Yes,” Volkov put in. “I had to haggle with that doctor to even get the list!”

“Let me ask you something, Inspector General. I don’t suppose you bothered to check on anything in the ship’s library while you were aboard Kirov.”

“Library? You mean the books? I was there to count men and missiles, not books, Pavel.”

“Of course. But I am willing to bet there were books in that library when that ship left Severomorsk that are not there now tonight as it leaves Vladivostok. Did you not find it even passing strange that all the ship’s logs and records were mysteriously damaged by this accident, but not the ship’s fire control systems and communications? They all just had a flutter and now they work fine again? Did you bother to confiscate any hard drives from the ship’s computer to see if they had been tampered with?”

“That thought occurred to me, but there was very little time with this business brewing up in the Pacific. The damage control teams were working all over the ship to get it ready for operations again. I couldn’t start ripping computers apart. The IT personnel said they had restored those drives and had vital ship information re-written to them.”

“How convenient. And then your time ran out.” Kamenski finished his friend’s next thought.

“I assure you that I pressed on this matter very firmly.”

“It was the ship’s Captain,” said Volkov. “He was an obstruction from the first moment we set foot aboard Kirov. In fact, he flatly refused to answer our questions about these missing men, not to mention the missing nuclear warhead! He said it was none of our business! Can you imagine that? The effrontery of the man.”

Kapustin held up a hand as if to calm his angry assistant. “Karpov made it seem as though the ship was on some very classified mission.”

“It very well may have been on such a mission.”

“He implied that, Pavel. You do not know everything—this is what Karpov said to me. I believe they were trying to cover up something related to those thirty-six missing men. Could Kirov have been on a black mission, perhaps to insert clandestine agents somewhere before this world goes to hell again? This is what I came to believe, and so I closed the book on my investigation for the moment. Yet I kept a watchful eye just the same.”

“You were wise to do so, Gerasim. Yet given the present situation with Kirov out to sea again there will not be much more you can do. So I have some advice for you now. Let the matter go.”

“Let the matter go? How am I supposed to explain these discrepancies—the missing men, the missing warhead, this silly old letter from a dingy storage bin?”

“You can’t explain them at the moment, so you must delay your final report. You’re a clever man, Gerasim. You can bury your report under a mile of paperwork if you so choose. Simply mark the investigation as being held in abeyance due to the fleet’s emergency deployment. The answers to your questions may still be aboard that ship, but it has sailed to off to war. So let the matter rest, just as you decided earlier.”

Kapustin shrugged, then his features softened and he nodded at his long time friend in agreement. Volkov was clearly not happy, however, still straining at the leash emotionally, his face a clear story to be read by the other two men.

Kamenski took another sip of tea and turned to Volkov, noting his energy, and the restrained urgency of the man. Then he decided something inwardly, and spoke again.

“Mister Volkov, I think it would be good if you arrange to have some men at the airport right away. Find out where that container is headed. Perhaps your missing warhead is there, yes? Put a couple of good men on it, very discretely. This Fedorov will have to get to Kizlyar by one means or another. He may be at the airport as well, but then again… I think you should take a long train ride. Stop at every terminal between here and Kizlyar. Ask questions. For all we know this Starpom may be on the Trans-Siberian rail at this very moment. He will be clever as well, but you must follow him like a good shadow. Yes?”

“Rely on me, sir.”

“Excellent… In fact I think you should leave at once. There may be no time to lose in this matter.”

“Very well, sir,” said Volkov. “I will take care of everything. If this Fedorov is on a plane or train heading west, we’ll find him, you can rest assured.”

“Find him and follow him, Captain, but be very clever—very discrete. Then report back to me. Understood? Report to no one else in this matter. If anyone questions you simply tell them Kamenski sent you. That will settle it.”

“Of course, sir.”

Volkov stood up with renewed energy, excused himself, and went quickly down the stairs, a little too loudly for Kamenski’s liking, but soon they heard the front door close and the two men were alone. Kamenski got up, walking to the library wall to take out a book, and then he closed the library door before returning to his desk.

“That was just to get rid of Volkov,” he said quietly. “That man is wired to tightly, Gerasim. You should be very careful with him. I think you should send him off on another assignment soon. Send him to Omsk or Novosibirsk to work on the Ballistic Missile inventories or something. For the moment I think he will be well occupied. A good long ride on the Tran-Siberian rail might keep him busy for a while. He’s dangerous, understand?”

“Very well, Pavel. He does get on my nerves at times. Perhaps you are correct. But what about this situation with Kirov? Do you really think I should drop the matter? Something is going on here. What could it be? These dates in 1942 on that letter. This must be code, yes?”

“Perhaps…perhaps not.”

“What do you mean, perhaps not? If Fedorov is on that train Volkov will get to him in short order, and we’ll soon find out.”

“Oh, he’s probably on the train alright,” said Kamenski, “but I don’t think Volkov will find him.” He leaned back, sipping his tea. “I’m going to confide in you now, my friend. This is another reason why I wanted to get Volkov on his way. Very few men alive today will know what I am about to tell you.” He gestured to the many volumes in the book cases of the library. “As you can see, I do a lot of reading and research. Quite a lot for these old eyes. Well now… what I am about to tell you may surprise you, even shock you. You may be tempted to pass it off as the senility of an aging man, but you would be wrong to think this. Yes, I forget where I lay my reading glasses on occasion, but my mind is still very sharp.” He tapped his forehead with a finger.

“I have a particular interest in naval history, and I am quite fond of this book, for example.” He pointed to a thick hard bound volume of the Chronology of the Naval War at Sea. “How to put this…” Kamenski thought for a moment. “Well, my friend, suppose you had a favorite book, or perhaps even a favorite movie or song. You may have read it many times, seen it many times, or hummed that old tune in your head a thousand times. Then one day you decide to reach for your book to look over a favorite chapter, and you find it strangely different. The scene you had thought to read about was not there, and more than that, other things happen in the story that you cannot recall at all! There you sit waiting for your favorite part of the movie, and it never comes. There you sit humming that tune in your head and when you finally put the song on the stereo player, it is…different, changed. In fact in parts it is now completely unfamiliar.”

“I understand, Pavel, but what are you getting at?”

“Well you might be somewhat upset, to say the least, if you ever did find that your favorite books or movies and songs had changed. It would bother you to no end, yes? And then your friends would probably convince you that you just had that old tune wrong in your head all those years, or that you simply forgot that part of the story in your favorite book. What is the harm, eh?” He reached for his tea, taking a very long sip before he continued.

“Now then, I’m afraid my research leaves me very little time for stories and movies, but I do spend a good deal of time in books like that one.” He pointed at the Naval Chronology. “Imagine my chagrin one day when I pick up this volume and look up a reference I was very certain about to check on some detail—and find that the passage no longer exists! There it was in my head, clear as a bell. I had read it just that same afternoon. Then I go back to check on a minor detail and it is nowhere to be found. So I check other reference books, and to my great surprise, none of them mentions this incident. Well now you might begin to think yourself a crazy man indeed,” he sighed.

“Gerasim…It is one thing to find notes in a song out of order, or even to be surprised that a character in a book you were so sure of was simply not in that favorite story of yours. But when your history books start to misbehave in this manner, then you take real notice. Yes? Then you sit up late at night with that dusty old volume on your nightstand and you read, and read, and go to sleep hoping it will all still be as you remembered it when you wake up the next morning. One day you find something has changed again, and your curiosity increases, your determination redoubles. You become a man on a mission to discover just what may have happened to cause this impossible thing that you swear has happened. You become a very determined man, in fact.”

Kapustin had been listening, though he began to sense a nonsensical edge to what his friend was telling him. He nonetheless continued nodding, without objection, adopting the time honored forms of vranyo, the polite listening of one man as another spins out a little lie, or a boastful exaggeration. Only when the story was complete would it be proper to make any objection. Kamenski finished, looking at his friend to see how he was reacting to all this.

“You are telling me you think the history recounted in this book has changed? What is in your tea tonight, Pavel?”

“Ah, yes,” said Kamenski. “That is the first thing you consider. People change their minds all the time, but a book cannot re-write itself. It is a fixed and certain thing—unless it gets deliberately edited and re-issued. We do that sort of thing often enough, but then we get two books, yes? Side by side. One has the old text, and one has the new. Yet this is not what I am speaking of. I am talking about opening to a passage or incident in the history you know as well as your own last name and finding it different, subtly changed—or worse than that—finding it missing…and then sitting there wondering why you are the only one who can remember it.”

“History is a story that men write, Pavel. You know that as well as I do. I’m sorry if you forget your books and think they have changed, but I am talking about something more than this now—a nuclear warhead missing. Men missing. Thirty six men listed as killed in action that this world never seems to have heard of.”

“Nor would you have ever heard about them if this Doctor had not prepared that list. Have you considered that, Gerasim?”

“Well… I suppose not.”

“The Doctor made a mistake, but I cannot really blame him. How would he know that there would be no record of any of these men? How could he check on something like this in a few hours time with Volkov gnawing at his ankle. So he gave you the list. But you, my friend, you are a careful man. You checked with Moscow, and these dead men are truly dead—so dead that they were never even born.”

“You mean there was a black operation, yes? This was all part of a cover up?”

“No, Gerasim. I mean they were never born. And as for the nuclear warhead, I know exactly what happened to it, and it had nothing to do with the Orel, nor is it on its way to the airport tonight. That was just another suggestion to throw Volkov off the scent.”

Pavel Kamenski was not simply a curious old man living in a quiet suburb of Vladivostok with his daughter, grandson, cat and walnut trees. He was an old navy man, moving from active service into the Naval Intelligence arm as well. But his long career did not end there. He was, in fact, the recently retired Deputy Director of the KGB, and he knew quite a bit more about Kirov than the his friend the Inspector General would ever know.

He looked at Kapustin, thinking that what he was now about to say might change his friend’s life forever. Yet there was nothing else to do at this point. Volkov he could manage easily enough. But Kapustin was his friend of many years, and he knew him well. He was going to keep digging in this back yard until he dug up another bone, so he had been prepping him for this revelation for some time, slowly sharing small pieces of the puzzle to gauge his reaction. It was time to bring some focus to the picture. The man was Inspector General of the Russian Navy, a lofty enough post to make allowance. Yet what will he do when I finally pull the wax out of his ears and he, too, hears the Siren song? Will he go mad, as other men have? We shall see. He reached for the samovar.

“Here, Gerasim, let me warm your tea.”





Part XII



Standoff





“Very few veterans can return to the battlefield

and summon the moral courage to confront

what they did as armed combatants…

they are often incapable of facing

the human suffering and death they inflicted…

they see only their own ghosts.”



— Chris Hedges