Kirov Saga: Darkest Hour: Altered States - Volume II (Kirov Series) (39 page)

“To
make it simple, gentlemen,” until I get down and find a recognizable river,
we’re lost. At the moment we can descend, but we’re losing light fast and the
moon will also set with the sun, so it’s going to be a very dark night for the
next six hours, and navigation will be almost impossible, even if we do find
the river. Without that compass, we’ll simply have to hover until daylight.”

Orlov
folded his arms, frowning.

“Welcome
to Siberia,” Troyak said gruffly.

It was
only necessary to become ever so slightly lighter than air to climb, and
heavier than air to descend, but the process often took time. It would take
three hours of careful maneuvering and ballast recovery via the air condenser
equipment and rain collectors, but they eventually secured enough new ballast to
begin a steady descent.

At
about 6000 feet the landforms were clearly visible again, and they maneuvered
towards the gleaming course of a distant river, thinking they could now get
back on track. Though the storm had abated, the magnetic disturbance was still
giving their compass equipment fits, but the river would take them where they
needed to go—or so they believed.

The
light faded with the setting sun at 21:30, and it would not rise again until
almost five AM. With shadows lengthening on the  landforms below, Selikov
drifted lower, safely above the forest but at an altitude where he could try
and keep the river beneath them. Speed was reduced to the bare minimum as
darkness folded over them like a heavy quilt.

It was
a very long wait for the sun, even if the night was fleeting by normal
standards. They drifted over the endless dark wilderness, hovering with the
passing clouds, lost in the realm of osprey and eagle. The crew slept fitfully
that night, with Orlov huddled in his cabin trying to keep warm with a good
wool blanket.

Hours
later a weary Selikov was back on the bridge with Orlov and Troyak, shaking his
head as he studied his charts, then scanned the surrounding terrain beneath
them. They had found the river, but Captain Selikov remained troubled, shouting
back and forth with the navigation room, and finally going there himself for a
lengthy conference. When he returned he had a crestfallen expression on his
face.

“Good
news, and bad news,” he said to Orlov and Troyak. The good news is that we have
finally determined where we are. That fork in the river two hours back at
sunrise was the village of Bajhit. I hoped it might be Motiygino on the Angara,
which is why I steered to follow the course of the lower tributary. That was
supposed to take us very near the objective.”

“And
the bad news?” Orlov wanted to know the score.

“We
have drifted off course during the storm. That river we were following was not
the Angara and we are well to the northwest of where we wanted to go.”

“Can’t
we follow this river south?”

“No,
I’m afraid we would not wish to follow this river, Mister Orlov. It has haunted
the nightmares of children in Siberia for generations now. Perhaps you know it,
Sergeant Troyak? This is the Stony Tunguska.”

“Tunguska?”
Orlov had heard the name. “Isn’t that the place where the asteroid fell?
Scientists have been trying to figure out what it was for years.”

“Yes,
something happened there, but I am not a scientist,” said Selikov. “Science has
always been too strong a drink for me. There was a German physicist who put it
very well. I think his name was Heisenberg. He said: ‘T
he first gulp
from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the
bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”

“Or the devil,” said Orlov.

Selikov smiled, rolling up his
navigation chart. “Well, gentlemen, I prefer to find God in a cathedral. And I
think we should get as far from this place as we possibly can, and that soon.”

Chapter
35

Admiral
Tovey was not at his
office when the call came in, but the secretary took down the note and placed
it in a pile of ten others just like it on his note needle. Tovey came in and
sat down that evening, frustrated and bothered by the grilling he had been
through in the Admiralty offices. The First Sea Lord, Admiral Dudley Pound, had
been particularly trying with his questions and innuendo, intimating that the
entire operation had been blighted with incompetence, that the fleet flagship
had gone running about like a chicken with its head cut off—those were the
man’s exact words—a chicken with its head cut off!

Whitworth
had been somewhat more lenient, sizing up the situation in light of the odds we
were facing and putting a better hat on it. “Damn lucky we made port with
anything at all,” he said. Four German battleships, with two heavy cruisers,
three new destroyers and an aircraft carrier—all coordinating in one sweep
south—it was something the Germans had never attempted, and a harbinger of hard
time ahead for the Royal Navy if they ever tried it again.

“To
think that we turned that German fleet for home is certainly the best we could
have hoped for,” said Whitworth, god bless the man. But Pound was steaming over
a thick report from Rosyth on the damage sustained by
Hood
, materials
needed for repair, time to be laid up. He was so single minded about it that
they never did get round to the matter of the aerial rocketry they had
observed, and the role it may have played in the outcome of the battle. That
was another battle he would likely fight with Pound at tomorrow’s meeting. It
was all very, very frustrating.

Tovey
looked at the stack of messages, reaching for them out of habit, or a pathetic
attempt to chase his discomfiture over the meeting by seeing what else was on
his plate, unattended while they had him on the chair. He would normally start
from the bottom of the pile, the oldest messages that might need his attention
first, but instead he just took up the first one there and saw a name he was
not familiar with, yet it was noting a call from a place that immediately got
his attention.

The
note read simply:
Turing, Alan. Regarding Kirov incident.

That
had to refer to the Russian cruiser, and it was coming from Hut Four, Bletchley
Park. Why did he feel this odd sense of familiarity in that brief message. Was
it the name? Alan Turing… Yes, he had heard of the man, one of the boys at BP
sorting out the German Naval code.

Tovey
raised an eyebrow, curious. He should have put the matter aside and called for
a cup of Earl Grey to settle himself, but there was something about that name,
about that note, that made him very curious. There was no other way to describe
the feeling, a kind of breathless anticipation, a feeling of stony presentiment
settling over him. So he reached for the telephone and had them ring this man
back on a secure line. The voice at the other end sounded thin and high, and
beset with a nervous edge. He introduced himself politely enough, saying he had
been asked to help sort out the matter of the Russian ship that had been encountered
just before the recent engagement.

“This
may be an odd question, Admiral,”
said Turing on the line, his voice sounding distended, as though stretched by
time and distance, a crackle of frosty interference clouding the end.
“May I
ask if the word Geronimo means anything to you in regards to this ship?”

The
word… The word Geronimo…
Geronimo!
Tovey put his hand on his forehead,
and he almost dropped the receiver. What was it? Yes, he had heard that word.
It struck a deep nerve, jarring him, yet where? What was it? He immediately
arranged to go and find out.

That
afternoon a car pulled up beneath the stately green bell dome and high arched
entry to the estate of Bletchley Park. Tovey had wriggled out of his meeting
with Admiral Pound, informing him that BP had special intelligence regarding
the subject of that day’s discussion. He requested a 24 hour delay, and went
straight to the horse’s mouth.

Tovey
entered the simple office, noting the plain map on the wall behind Turing’s
desk, the standard black telephone, the odd goggles resting on a pile of papers
in his inbox tray—and Turing. He was hunched over a photograph, making a close
inspection with a magnifying glass and completely oblivious to the Admiral’s
presence.

“Mister
Turing?”

The
man looked up, surprised. “Oh… Excuse me Admiral.” He stood up immediately. “I
was so focused on my work that I did not even hear you come in. People shuffle
in and out of here all day and I hardly give them any notice. Please be
seated.”

Turing
extended a handshake and Tovey sat down, feeling like he had sat there many
times before, still strangely familiar with this man in spite of the fact that
he knew this was their first meeting.

“I
assume those are the photographs we sent over from our encounter with this
Russian cruiser?”

“Some
of them…” Turing gave Tovey a look that seemed to harbor a warning. “I turned
up the others in an old box that was stashed below the bottom shelf in our
photo archives.” The man seemed to hesitate, as if he were uncertain of himself,
like a man edging out onto frozen ice and hoping it would not give way beneath
his feet and send him plummeting into frigid water.

“Then
you’ve turned up good information on this ship? That’s precisely what I am here
to see. Admiral Pound is already beside himself over recent events, this
business with the French now becoming a major blow up as it has.”

“That
was most regrettable,” said Turing.

“What
was this reference to Geronimo about, Turing? When you mentioned it on the
telly I thought I had it right at the edge of my mind, on the tip of my tongue,
as it were, but then it completely eluded me.”

“Strange
you should say that, Admiral. I felt the same way. It’s just that this box I
pulled out was given that label, and taped up as if it were not to be opened
again anytime soon.”

“I
see. And the contents?”

Turing
gave Tovey a lingering look, then averted his eyes, deciding something. He
simply handed the Admiral the photograph he had been scrutinizing, and let it
speak for itself.

Tovey
raised an eyebrow. A ship, making a wide turn, and it was clearly the
battlecruiser that had come abeam of HMS
Invincible
for that unusual
meeting at sea with the Russian Admiral.

“Where
did this come from? Was it one of the air reconnaissance photos taken by the
boys off
Ark Royal?
I haven’t seen it before.” Yet even as he said that
he knew he had seen it. Yes, he
had
seen it, though he could not
remember when. The feeling was very frustrating.

“No,
Admiral. That photograph was taken by an American PBY, if you’d care to have a
look at the label on the back.”

“American?”
Tovey flipped the photo over, quite surprised to read the notation. “It’s
misdated,” he said flatly. “August 4, 1941? They’ve got today’s date correct,
but a full year on.”

“That
is what I first thought,” said Turing, still somewhat hesitant. “But do note
the other information provided. You’ll see the notation PBY-6B, Squadron 74,
Vosseler. That’s the plane and pilot.”

“Out
of Reykjavik?”

“That
is what the photo label indicates, sir.”

“I
wasn’t aware there were any American planes operating out of Iceland. We’ve
barely got our own trousers on there. I requested Fleet Air Arm units, but
they’ve only just arrived at Reykjavik.”

“Indeed,
sir.” Turing said nothing, simply handing Tovey yet another photo.

This
time the image was a typical gun camera still. “My God,” he said. “When did
this happen, during the recent engagement in the Denmark Strait?”

“Not
according to the photo label, sir.”

Tovey
flipped the image over again, his eyes darkening as he read the information:
Bristol
Beaufighter VI-C – 248 Squadron, Takali, Malta. Melville-Jackson - August 11,
1942 – Tyrrhenian Sea.”

“Misdated
by two years this time… And what’s this rubbish about the Tyrrhenian Sea?”

“I
have five more photos with identical labels.”

“248
Squadron?”

“I
went to the trouble of looking them up,” said Turing. “They were operating with
Fighter Command as of 22 April, 1940, flying fighter patrols over the North Sea
from R.A.F. Dyce, Aberdeen, and R.A.F. Montrose. They have since been returned to
Coastal Command control as of 20 June. Latest information has the squadron at R.A.F.
Sumburgh in the Shetland Islands as of 31 July 1940, flying reconnaissance and
anti-shipping missions off the coast of Norway.” Turing let the facts speak for
themselves.

“I
don’t understand. Then why would this photo be labeled this way and show this
unit at Takali airfield on Malta?”

“My
question precisely, sir.”

Tovey
gave him a frustrated look. “See here, Mister Turing, we generally come to you
people for answers, not more questions. This is obviously nonsense.”

“Quite
so, sir. The entire box.” He now pointed to the box beside his desk where Tovey
could see many more fat plain manila envelopes in a row.”