Devil's Garden

Chapter 14

From the future? What in the world was the woman talking about? Yet the more he thought about it the more it made some crazy kind of sense in his mind. If was ever possible to perfect the science of travel in time, it would be in the future. If it was true that the Russians had been meddling with it, conducting strange experiments on the fringes of their nuclear weapons tests all through the decades, then future generations would know that and certainly do the same. If these experiments carried on through the decades yet to come…

How was that possible? MacRae couldn’t quite get his mind around it. Wasn’t this the here and now-the only reality? They were creeping forward into the future, second by second, and dragging the reality of their lives forward as they went, but Elena made it sound as though the future already existed out there somewhere, as if the next year had already happened, the next decade, the next century.

From the future? Who was it that came? How did she know they were from the future? How could this group she was part of believe what they were told? What evidence did they provide? One question followed another, filling up his mind until it was crowded with doubt and confusion. Yet what if the rest of the story was true? What if the Russians did discover strange evidence of time displacement when they blasted the frozen north with the enormous Tsar Bomba? What did they really find out about it? And how could they learn to control it to such an extent that they could shift a goddamned battlecruiser into the middle of the Second World War?

Then he imagined what the men of that era might have thought and experienced when confronted with this reality. If it came down to evidence of Kirov’s displacement in time, she had told him it was ample. The Royal Navy had photographs of the ship sailing through the Straits of Gibraltar in 1942! He had seen one with his own eyes when she pulled it from a hidden vault and showed it to him. Then she spoke of changes, alterations in the flow of events, alternate history.

“We aren’t sure if the war played out as it might have after that ship arrived. After all, operations were cancelled, ships, men and planes lost in action against Kirov. The chance that the history was altered was very high, but no one knew for sure. They looked at the world as if things had always happened the way they were written in the library books, but that was not the case any longer.”

“This is fantastic…unbelievable!”

“Think of it this way. History became editable right about the same time photography and analog video footage went through the evolution to digital imagery.” That was the way she had tried to explain it to him.

“Remember the switch from analogue to digital? It was mandated right across the whole nation. All stations moved to the new digital signals, and from that moment anything broadcast was editable-not in the cutting room the old fashioned way, which could always be found out. No. Not like Richard Nixon blundering about to try and erase those Watergate tapes. Now they could edit pixel by pixel if they wanted to, and they often did, with no one ever knowing about it. We got the term WYSIWYG when computers revolutionized our society, but it seldom ever was. Nobody could ever trust what they saw or what they got in digital video again.”

And so they had put a watch on events, she told him, waiting for the ship to appear and planning to muster the necessary resources to deal with it when that happened. Kirov’s sudden appearance in the Pacific of 2021, and the ship’s return to Vladivostok, was a shock. It was a warning sign. It was something they had been told to expect and fear, and it had finally happened.

MacRae heard his own voice asking the impossible questions now: “Who? Who gave that warning? Are you saying men appeared from the future with information about this ship and its doings?”

“Men? No. Information…yes. That’s what appeared, Gordon. The Watch is a very select organization. There are only twelve active members at any given time. Should one die or be incapacitated, then another is briefed and appointed. We thought we were one of history’s greatest secrets. There have been many secret organizations through the centuries, but we thought we still had this one nicely under our hats-until we started receiving information.”

“From the future?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know that?

“Well… let me put it to you this way. We received a transmission containing video footage on a Friday morning. It was dated four days hence, supposedly coverage of an event the following Tuesday, and it was awful.”

“Awful in what way?”

“Well, Gordon, it was rather shocking to look at. Then we presumed it was just part of the editable world out there, and a damn good video editing prank…Until the following Tuesday when it actually happened.”

“What happened?”

“One of the most dramatic and memorable events of the early 21st century, the 9/11 attack in New York.”

“You’re telling me you received video footage of the event four days before it happened?”

“We did, and it was chapter and verse identical to footage shot for the first time that day by numerous news outlets covering the tragedy-pixel perfect.”

That statement hit MacRae like a rock. He felt staggered, as though he might have actually taken a physical blow. There were tons of conspiracy theories surrounding the World Trade Center attacks, but this one trumped them all. Video footage of the event four days before it happened?

“The transmissions continued,” she went on. “We saw things that were yet to happen, and soon the evidence was overwhelming. The only place it could be coming from was the future. No one could engineer data that would so exactly correspond to actual footage randomly shot at the events in question. It was truly chilling.”

“Lord above… How did you receive these transmissions?”

“The Watch was a creation of the Royal Navy, Gordon. Every one of the early members was a Royal Navy Admiral, save one or two, and I can’t disclose names. But it was an organization rooted in the Royal Navy over the years, very secret. The British government itself didn’t even know about it. Over time selected individuals were recruited as members-people from industry, the sciences, people that mattered and worked to make a difference in the world. What they ever saw in me is beyond my imagining, but I was recruited seven years ago, and I have had certain responsibilities to the Watch I was given ever since.”

MacRae thought back, remembered that time when she had suddenly seemed different, when that distant look appeared in her eyes, a low flame of fear.

“Why do you think it was so easy for me to procure a Daring class destroyer for the company flagship, the ship we’re sitting on right now? The Watch is a naval organization to this day. Its presiding members are always at sea, always minding a given watch, always on patrol. When these signals were received they always came the same way-at night, on a lonesome sea, and on a tightly controlled transmission beam to a ship of the Watch. We tried to trace it to a point in space but that led us nowhere. It was as if the signal just manifested right above the ship. I’ve never been privileged to receive one directly myself, but I’ve seen the footage of several striking events days before they actually happened. They sent us the closing price of every stock on the Dow three days before the big crash, and it was accurate to the decimal point. Someone in the future wanted to find a way to get our attention. Well they bloody well did.”

“Then this warning, Elena. This business about the 48 hours. It has something to do with these transmissions?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“And how does this Russian ship get under the umbrella?”

“We received footage of its re-appearance in the Pacific-actual surveillance video shot by one of our satellites. The thing was this-we got it weeks before it happened. Nobody knew what to make of it, though we knew it was Geronimo-it was Kirov. We went over that footage with a fine toothed comb. No one else in the Navy had it, or knew anything about it. So we took this to be a strong indication that this event was very significant, and we moved a few assets into the region. The Americans cooperated, though they didn’t know what we were really up to. They moved the submarine Key West into the sector we determined the footage came from. Now comes the interesting part…”

“I’m all ears!” He was more than that now. The Captain’s very soul was open and waiting, still trying to believe all that he was hearing.

“We got two transmissions. In the first one the submarine Key West was attacked and destroyed by the Russian battlecruiser, and that ended badly. In the other the Key West survived! The Russians even shipped them a couple boxes of Cuban cigars! We didn’t quite know what to make of that until it struck us that they were trying to tell us that the history was changing. That this was a point of divergence.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a single action that sets the course of events off on a new heading. Sometimes such an event can be dramatic, like 9/11, and other times it might be something truly insignificant, like the cow that kicked over the lantern that started the Chicago fire in 1871-Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, though that has been disputed. Yet it’s still a good example of how a small thing can have dramatic consequences. It doesn’t take anything really big to move things in another direction. Sometimes events have a momentum of their own and all it takes is the slightest nudge at the right place and time, and you get a whole new reality.”

“Astounding…Truly astounding.”

“You might think of it as if a big asteroid were hurtling towards the earth. Trying to stop it at the last minute is almost impossible, but if you can get to it years before it arrives, then all it would take is a gentle nudge to divert its course. Understand?”

“Well enough.”

“We thought the transmission was trying to tell us we were spared the holocaust of a great war that’s hanging over our heads this very minute. We thought that was the gentle nudge. The sinking of Key West was a trigger point in the first version of the files we received. The second version was our salvation, or so we believed at first, but it didn’t turn out that way.”

“You’re telling me this Russian ship was deliberately trying to prevent this war?”

“We think so. But they failed. They forestalled the attack on Key West, but it only bought us a brief respite. The events leading to the war have too much kinetic energy in them. The outcome is too close to us now, just like that big asteroid in my example. Kirov bought us a short interlude, a brief delay-nine days in fact. As things turned out the war starts nine days later than it might have. There’s a prelude of nine more days of conventional warfare before it all goes ballistic-literally-and this is day eight, Gordon. So now you know what I mean about the 48 hours. The clock is ticking, and time’s nearly run out.”

“Then the Russians know about all this?”

“We aren’t certain of that. They know something, but we don’t know whether they are being sent any information from the future. Our intelligence is good, but let’s face it, it’s much easier to hide something than it is to find it. We don’t really know what the Russians have learned.”

“Then what was that order about to go after the Spetsnaz operation in the Caspian?”

“Good that you should mention that. I’m sorry about the loss there. Yes, it was probably stupid to think we could pull off a surprise attack and not have it be opposed. Well, Navy intelligence has had a look at the objective site. There’s nothing there now.”

“Nothing there? Did Lieutenant Ryan get off a missile and take the target out?”

“That’s not what Mack Morgan tells me. No. We lost an X-3 trying, and Ryan got out, thank god for that. But the target is gone.”

“So the Russians sailed off. That was a ship we were after, eh?”

“No, it was a floating nuclear power plant. They moved it alright, but not in space.”

MacRae took that in, realizing what she must be saying now.

“You’re telling me they moved it in time?”

“This is what we believe.”

“The bloody Russians are operating in time? With Spetsnaz commandos?”

“We think it was Naval Marines, but yes, they were mounting some kind of an operation involving time displacement. They’ve learned how to move discrete objects-objects as big as a ship like Kirov, and everything aboard or within a limited radius of the ship. We couldn’t understand why at first, but from our lead Admiral’s perspective it made perfect sense. A warship like Kirov is an ideal vehicle for intervention in a given time period. You’ve got mobility, autonomy, survivability, and power all rolled into one. If you want to stay hidden, the ocean is a very big place to hide. You can get to virtually any place in the world on a ship, and a ship with helicopters is even better. This is another reason why the Watch is always at sea.”

“That objective site-Morgan told us the Russians had a big helicopter on the roof of that powerplant.”

“We had to wonder where they planned to go with it, and with what looked like a heavy company of Naval Marines. We have people working on that problem right now, though we may not solve it in time. The bottom line is this: we think the Russians are trying to change history, possibly to redress failures or shortcomings that affect their nation badly. Up until now the changes have not been truly significant. We’ve received transmissions of dual files, a kind of before and after, if you will, and they’ve showed us how some things have changed. When did the United States enter the Second World War?

“Easy enough,” said MacRae. “August of ’41, right after the Germans torpedoed the Mississippi. The Yanks were shouting ‘remember the Mississippi’ all through the war.”

“Well you might be surprised to know that we’ve receive a transmission of another starting point for the American entry. It was in December of that same year, over three months later after the Japanese Navy attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. That never happened in the history you and I know, yet we have video of the USS Arizona being blown sky high in the harbor.”

“From the future?”

“Precisely.”

“Then the Russians are trying to change things? They’ve got the ability to shift a thing like that battlecruiser through time, and they’re deliberately using it as a lever on events.”

“We’ve debated the why of all this for decades, ever since we first deduced that Geronimo was actually from the future.”

“How long have you known-the Watch-how long have they known this ship was from the future?”

She smiled at him. “Here’s another kick in your ribs,” she said. “Since 1942!”

“All that time?”

“Yes, but it took that long watch of eighty years to finally confirm it when Kirov vanished during that accident in the North Atlantic last July. The thing finally came full circle.”

“Well if you know the Russians are up to something, have you figured out what it is? You mean to say that when the Americans were closing in on the Russian fleet a few days ago, the Russians just pulled a fast one and slipped away in time? Where did their ruddy ships go this time?”

“We think we know that now. They re-appeared in 1945, at the very end of the war, and raised a ruckus with the US Pacific Fleet. But get this, Gordon. We have another version of how that war ends. The Americans hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs, and that is what prompted the Japanese surrender.”

“Then there was no battle over Hokkaido with the Russians?”

“Not in the files we received presenting an alternate history.”

“How do you know which one is correct?’

“We don’t. All we do know is that we now have direct evidence that the Russians are trying to change history, and in some ways they have been successful. The gap between the old line of events and what is happening now is getting wider and wider, and soon it will be a chasm that will make it impossible to ever set right again. They’re changing the history, Gordon, but instead of applying a scalpel to the delicate weave of time, they sent this damn battlecruiser to do the job, and someone aboard has been a real bear. We haven’t got all the pieces of the puzzle yet, but we’ve seen enough to realize their meddling is going to have severe consequences. Whatever they’re doing is going to unhinge everything, and it may be too late now to do anything to stop it.”