Kirov II: Cauldron Of Fire (Kirov Series) (3 page)

“I don’t
mince words here,” said Volsky, “nor do I come here to shame you any more than
you have already shamed yourself. But mutiny is the word for it, and you must
stand accountable—as any man must—for what you have done. No… I will not choke
you, Captain, nor will I shoot you. Yet a good long visit to the brig is in
order, yes? It is clear that I cannot simply set you loose on the ship again
after this. What would the men think? I could confine you to quarters, but
first, the brig. Yes, the brig. You will sit there and contemplate, no doubt
for some time before you catch a glimpse of the fact that you
are
a man,
Karpov, and then perhaps you can begin to regain some sense of self-respect
again, and remorse over what you have done.”

“For what?”
said Karpov dully. “So that I can look forward to swabbing the deck, and then
join the ranks as a common seaman with the hope of someday making rank again?
Don’t you see how stupidly pointless that all is to me now? I had my hand on
the throat of time itself and I let it slip from my grasp.” He made a fist as
he spoke now, his eyes hard and cold. “Don’t you understand what we could have
done with this ship?”

“I am still
trying to understand what we
did
do,” Volsky said quickly. “You were
locked up in the brig when we made port at Halifax, and I had little mind to
deal with you then. The men needed me on the bridge—and thank God for Fedorov.
I had at least one other head I could count on in the midst of all this
insanity. Fedorov and Zolkin—yes, thank God for them both.”

“You forget
Troyak,” said Karpov, an edge of sarcasm in his voice. “Without him I might
still be sitting in your chair up there, Admiral.” He tersely thumbed to the
unseen citadel of the bridge, somewhere above them on the upper decks.

“That is
what it came to,” said Volsky. “You with your key and a finger on the trigger,
me with mine, and Troyak in the middle of it all. At least he knows what the
word duty means, yes? At least he had the good sense to discern a madman when
he saw one—for that’s what you were, Karpov—a madman. Do you have any idea how
many men you killed in these engagements you were so keen to fight? That is the
least of it…” The Admiral breathed heavily, and turned when he heard a quiet
knock on the door.

“Come.” He
waited while the guard stepped into the room again, a bottle of Vodka and two
small shot glasses in hand. Volsky gestured to the table and the man placed
them there and then stood quietly by.

“That will
be all. You may wait outside.”

“Sir!” The
man saluted, and stepped crisply out through the hatch, closing it with a thud.

Volsky eyed
the bottle and glasses, his gaze shifting to Karpov. Then he slowly reached for
the vodka, twisting off the cap and pouring them both a shot glass of the clear
liquor. He pushed the small glass across the table to Karpov, who gave it a
sidelong look as he did so.

“Go ahead,”
he said. “It will do us both some good.”

He raised
the shot glass to his lips and drank, exhaling with the sting of the liquor on
his throat, and with a certain satisfaction that only a Russian could really understand.
Karpov watched him drink, then sighed deeply and reached for the shot glass
himself. He downed it quickly, saying nothing. Volsky was silent as well, and
poured them both a second shot.

Something in
that simple act of sharing a drink together changed the whole atmosphere of the
room. The two men sat in that small interval of silence, each lost in their own
inner muse for the moment, lost in their own
toska
, as the Russians
might say it, that sad inward-looking reflection tinged with melancholia and
the quiet ache of yearning.

At length
Volsky spoke again, his voice softer, flatter, with no edge of recrimination.
“I understand what you did, Karpov. Though I cannot condone it, or even explain
it away, I at least understand. But that changes little here today. We have
sailed across the whole of the Atlantic because I thought to get the ship away
from those unfriendly waters as soon as possible, and perhaps away from the
shadow of guilt we all must shoulder equally after what we saw at Halifax. What
was it we did, I wonder? Fedorov thinks they thought we were Germans, and that the
war started too early for the Americans. He believes our use of atomic weapons
put such hot fear into the Allies that they moved heaven and earth to get the
bomb for themselves. Perhaps they succeeded and the war ended differently. We
do not know. Yet one thing we do know: this ship fired no weapon at Halifax
Harbor.”

He paused,
filling his shot glass and that of the Captain one more time. “We stopped at
the Azores on the way over… Madalena Harbor was destroyed as well, and I think
by a very low yield weapon. I put men ashore on Pico Island for fresh water,
but we found little else. Some of the buildings were still sitting there
untouched by any sign of war. But there were no people—just bones where they
should have been. Just bones…”

He drank.

“So I
thought we would have a look at the Med. Yes, I know there are too many targets
there to think anything survived if they were willing to spend a missile on a
distant island outpost like Madalena Harbor, but one gets curious, yes? You
were below decks, and did not see much of this, but as we approached the Straits
of Gibraltar I thought, or perhaps I hoped we might see the lights of Tangier
glittering on the coastline, yet it was black as coal. Once we got closer we
encountered a heavy fog, thick as good borscht, and it was deathly quiet through
the strait. Gibraltar was burned and smashed—almost beyond recognition. We
sailed on all night, but the fog was still on the sea when dawn came, dull and
gray. We skirted the North African coast for a while. Oran and Algiers were
devastated—who knows why?” He held up a hand, inexplicably.

“I turned north
and sailed up into the Balearic Sea. I don’t know what I thought to see there
after what we had already encountered. Perhaps it was only to confirm my worst
misgivings….Then again, I have always been fond of the south coast of France. I
thought, one day, that I might buy a cottage there and grow grapes for wine.
But no more. Nothing is growing there now…” His voice trailed off, and he
tightened his lips on the edge of the shot glass. The Captain drank with him,
slower now, to savor the lingering taste of the vodka and chase the bile from
his throat.

“Did we do
all this?” Volsky waved his arm at unseen shores as he spoke. “No. We did not.
We only made it possible for
them
to do it—all the other generals and
admirals and prime ministers and presidents. We showed them what power was, and
they wanted it for themselves as badly as you wanted it, Karpov. So now we see
the result. In truth, I cannot blame you any more than I blame myself, and all
we have before us now is simply a matter of survival.”

Karpov
nodded, and the two men sat in the quiet for a time. Then he looked up at the
Admiral, and blinked. Something in his face spoke more than he was capable of
at that moment, and Volsky was wise enough to see it—the sorrow, the anguish,
and the shame.

“I want to
have a look at Rome before we turn and head back out into the Atlantic,” said
Volsky. “I thought we might transit the Aegean and head for Sevastopol, but I
see no point in that now. If there is still anything living on this earth it
will likely be in the southern latitudes. We’ll skirt the Italian coast, then
head west again through the Tyrrhenian Sea. After that, who knows.”

“That
island, Admiral?” Karpov managed a wan smile.

“That island.”

Volsky stood
and went to the door, looking over his shoulder as he went with one last word.
“I’ll have the guard escort you back to the brig now. It’s best that the men
see the consequences of what you have done, and it’s also best if you bear it
like a man. In due course I’ll have you transferred to your quarters, and from
there I suppose the rest is up to you.”

Before he
left he poured his Captain one last shot of Vodka. Then he tipped his hat
lightly and reached for the door.

“Admiral….”

Volsky
looked over his shoulder again.

“I was wrong…
I… I made a stupid mistake.”

Volsky
nodded gravely. It was probably as close as Karpov could come at the moment to
a genuine realization of his wrongdoing, and an apology, but the Admiral said
nothing more.

Chapter 2

Now the
Admiral
was on the aft
quarter, walking with memories of his discussion with Karpov and the still
heavy sense of guilt he harbored for not seeing things more clearly.

 I should
have seen it coming, he thought. Karpov was too wound up, too argumentative and
combative—and too hungry for advancement. At the time I was preoccupied with trying
to get my mind around the insanity of our situation, but I should have seen
what he was planning, what he would do if given the chance. Too late now, he
concluded. The man may recover himself and prove to be of some use in the days
ahead. But for now he’s better off in the brig where he can come to that
conclusion himself.

He walked
with little enthusiasm this night. They had scouted down the north Italian
coast and come at last to the fabled city on seven hills—Rome. There he gazed
on Esquiline, the largest of the seven, where the Emperor Nero had built his
'golden house,' at one end, with the other end blighted by the charnel pits
where criminals would be buried or their carcasses left for the birds. It was a
fitting metaphor for the human endeavor, he thought grimly, that the same hill
should be put to these disparate uses. Once the Gardens of Maecenas bloomed there
to hide the remains of the dead, but no longer. He had resisted the urge to put
men ashore, unwilling to hear the reports or view the evidence they would bring
back to him. It was all gone, he knew, the city, the architecture, the
amphitheaters, the cathedrals, paintings, statues, the Vatican and the long
history behind it all, not the mention the lives of so many who lived there.

With a heavy
heart he had given the order to move on, down past Naples, which was equally
devastated, and then he gave up and simply turned the ship west.
Kirov
was now cruising roughly two hundred miles southwest of Naples in the
Tyrrhenian Sea as Volsky walked, and that vague sense of disquiet became
something more in the back of his mind. He stopped by the edge of the deck,
holding on to a gunwale, strangely alert, his ears straining to hear something
in the distance. Then he felt it, an odd vibration in the ship beneath his feet
and, without really thinking, he was moving toward a nearby bulkhead to look
for a call phone up to the bridge.

Volsky
opened the latched door and picked up the handset, thumbing the comm-link
button for the citadel above. “Admiral Volsky to bridge.”

The voice of
Anton Fedorov, his acting Executive Officer was quick to return.
“Aye, sir.
Fedorov here.”

“Any developments
I should be aware of?”

“Strange
that you should call, sir. We just got a message from Dobrynin in Engineering.
It seems the reactors are acting up again.”

“Acting up?”

“That same
odd vibration, sir.”

“Yes, I felt
it myself here on the aft deck.”

“
I’m
holding at twenty knots unless you advise otherwise, sir.”

 “Hold speed
for the moment, unless Dobrynin requests slower rotations on the turbines. You
might call him and ask if that might help the situation. Anything more,
Captain?” He had promoted his young Lieutenant to Captain Lieutenant and
Starpom
after the Karpov incident, not two weeks past, and the young man was working into
the position with real energy now, gaining experience and competence, and more confident
in his abilities with each day.

“Well,
sir…”
Fedorov hesitated
slightly, then went on.
“Signals are showing some interference as well. Both
Rodenko and Tasarov have picked up on low level background noise. They…well
they look worried about it, sir. Perhaps you should come to the bridge,
Admiral.”

“Very well,”
said Volsky. “Keep monitoring the situation, Captain, I’m on my way.”

Volsky hung
up the receiver, latched the call box door shut and turned forward, heading for
the nearest stairway up. He walked past the life boats, glad they had no
occasion to use them in spite of the ordeal they had been through these last
weeks. Reaching the center of the ship he now had several levels to climb, and
thought again how nice it would be to have elevators put in to relieve his thick
but tired old legs of the burden of carrying his considerable weight. He was up
his second flight on the upper aft deck near the outer hatch when he perceived
what looked like an odd discoloration on the sea around them. He stopped,
sensing something very wrong, and feeling again the same thrumming vibration
that seemed to emanate from the bowels of the ship.

His mind
raced over the last reports he had taken in before he left the bridge. Weather
outlook was good, with no fronts or impending squalls, and calm seas. Yet the
night seemed to thin out around him and he perceived a light glow all around the
ship that seemed oddly out of place. It should be pitch black at this hour.