Devil's Garden

Chapter 35

Fedorov sat with the two men, a signalman named Chenko at his side to interpret, and the looming presence of Sergeant Troyak standing behind the men to keep a good eye on them.

“I am Captain Anton Fedorov,” he began. “Who are you?”

“David Sutherland, Lieutenant in the service of His Majesty’s special forces. This man is Sergeant Jack Terry.”

“What were you doing here?”

Sutherland knew the rule-name, rank and serial number. He had given the first two, but these were Russians, supposed allies, and not enemies, though they had been forced to treat them as foes because of the necessities of this mission. And he was still shaken by what he had seen, doubting his own sanity now and feeling like a fish out of water. So he decided to talk with these men and see what he could find out about them.

“We were sent to find a man-the man we had with us when your Marines made our acquaintance.”

That gave Fedorov a start. These men were sent to find Orlov? How could that be? It would mean that the British knew about the Chief. What could they have learned that would have prompted a mission like this?

“You were sent to find Orlov-that was the man you were with. Sent by who?”

“What does that matter? We were given orders to find him, and that we did, until you blokes came along.”

“Here? In the Caspian Sea? How did you think you might find him here?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that, sir.” Sutherland folded his arms, still feeling very distressed and with this unaccountable feeling that something very odd was going on here. He would once refer to himself as ‘a lucky Scorpio, and an unconventional, adventure-seeking Scot,’ but this was more than he bargained for.

“Very well…” Fedorov considered the situation. “Was there another man with you-a third man?”

At this Sutherland seemed very distressed. Protocol whispered that he should say nothing of Haselden. After all, the voice said, what if he simply slipped overboard while you weren’t looking? No! said another voice in his head, you know damn well what you saw, and he blurted it out.

“He… he just vanished!” Now he looked at Sergeant Terry, as if still trying to convince the man. “I tell you Haselden was right by my side on the gunwale and then the man simply faded away.” The minute he said that he realized the Russians would probably think he was sporting with them to avoid revealing any further information. So he was surprised when the young officer leaned forward, a very serious look in his eye, and questioned him further about it.

“Vanished? You saw this with your own eyes?”

“That I did,” Sutherland said stubbornly, though Sergeant Terry gave him a frown of disapproval.

“You are telling me the three of you were all in that boat together and then you saw your comrade disappear?”

“That’s about the size of it.” Sutherland felt like a fool now, but in for a penny, in for a pound.

“You’re certain he did not go overboard? We have had men searching for him for hours, but there’s been no sign.”

“Well…I should like to believe that, sir. Yes, that would make all the sense in the world to me, save for the evidence of my own eyes. I…I was looking right at the man and he simply…well he simply faded away!”

Sergeant Terry raised his eyebrows now, thinking the Lieutenant had finally broken under the stress of all they had been through. Yet Sutherland had been with the Black Watch at Dunkirk. He had been through many missions far more arduous than this one. Was the man daft?

“Did you see this happen as well?” Fedorov asked the Sergeant now, giving him an earnest look.

The translator finished and Sergeant Terry, shook his head. “I was in the cabin keeping an eye on this Orlov fellow, and saw nothing.”

“I see…” Fedorov had a very serious look on his face now. Was this British Lieutenant pulling his leg now, or was he serious? The man seemed quite upset, though he was trying bravely to recover his composure. It was clear to him that he had experienced something that rattled him badly. Could he be telling the truth about the third man? Then he suddenly remembered something that broke the log jam of his thinking. Haselden! He named the man Haselden!

When they first returned to Vladivostok Fedorov spent some time trying to find out what may have changed in the history of WWII as a result of their actions. He had run across that name, but struggled now to remember-yes! He was looking at operations that were supposed to have transpired, and comparing them to his books-the books that had remained aboard Kirov when they shifted. Strangely, they bore the history of the world they had come from, even though copies of those same volumes found elsewhere had changed. Then he remembered it! Operation Agreement! Yes, the operation that had been written up in that article he found in Russia Today. He even remembered the title: ‘British Remember Losses In Agreement Gone Bad.’

Markov had that magazine with him in the operations room of the Primorskiy reactor test center! It went back with him and must have been discovered there where he appeared in 1942, and it clearly recounted an operation the British would conduct the following month. It was this that led him to believe the history was still at risk, subtly changing, and that is what led him to look for any evidence of Orlov in the past. He had found something, and took it to Karpov first. The memory of that meeting in the flag bridge of Kirov returned to him now…

“I’ve been trying to find out what happened to him for a good long while, and I think I may have found a trace of the man in my research last night.”

“You mean in the history books?”

“Of course. Nobody goes through this world without leaving some mark on it. Again, thank God we’re living in the information age and I can call up archival records on the computer. Well I found something. You’ll be amazed. I found that man’s footprints in the history, and by God I think I can figure out where he went after he jumped from that helo.”

“Where? What did you find about him?”

“It seems the British got hold of him and had him at Gibraltar. Then he slipped away. The next fragment I picked up was an entry in this very book.” He held up the new volume of the Chronology Of The Naval War At Sea.

“His name came up in a brief engagement between a Soviet Minesweeping trawler and a German U-boat in the Black Sea. So I followed the breadcrumbs. He was listed as a prisoner and suspected murderer of three NKVD guards in Poti. Then comes the kicker-the British went after him. They mounted a commando raid to try and recapture him. Take a look at this…” He opened to a new bookmark and showed Karpov the Passage: 25 Sept. 1942 — Operation Escapade sends a small commando unit into the Caspian region to look for a suspected Russian agent.

“But it doesn’t say anything about Orlov,” Karpov protested.

“No, the book is very vague, but I found two other sources that give more details. They were after Orlov. It was kept very secret, but I dug things up….”

These were those very same men! These were the men sent on Operation Escapade to find Orlov! Now he remembered who Haselden was, the Captain in charge of the whole mission, and it was his fate that first set him searching through this part of the history. Haselden was supposed to have been on another mission-Operation Agreement, the planned British raid on Tobruk. In fact, he was supposed to have been killed on that mission, but it was cancelled.

My God, thought Fedorov. Haselden was a zombie, the walking dead. He was a perfect example of a man who lived that should have died, and he was reassigned to Operation Escapade to look for Orlov! That change in the history had led him to find evidence of Orlov here in those letters from the dead, the journal entry that enabled him to locate Orlov at Kizlyar. He was astounded at how all these facts twisted round one another, and how all these men were all caught up in the net of mystery now.

He looked at Sutherland, understanding why the man was so ill at ease, and believing that he had, indeed, seen the third man simply vanish-but why? Was it because Haselden had been fated to die all along? Was he deemed expendable in the strange, convoluted accounting logs Mother Time was keeping of these events? Then another thought came to him.

“The third member of your party-the man you called Haselden a moment ago-may I ask how old he was?”

Sergeant Terry gave Fedorov a strange look. “Can’t say as I would even know.”

“Well then…” Fedorov took another tack. “You men seem young, and very fit, not much over twenty if I had to venture a guess.” His eye was very good. Sutherland had been born in 1920, and was only 22 years old in 1942. Sergeant Terry survived the war and was to die at the age of 85 in the year 2006, and so he was just a year younger than Sutherland.

“This may seem an odd question, but was this Haselden your same age?”

“What does that matter,” said Sergeant Terry, thinking this Russian officer was fishing. Sutherland should have kept his mouth zipped tight. What was wrong with the Lieutenant? He gave his companion a stern glance, thinking to buck up his morale.

Fedorov discerned a good deal with that response. Haselden must have been the commanding officer. He had asked Orlov about him earlier, getting a description of the man, and the Chief seemed to think this Haselden was in charge. If he was above the Lieutenant then he would have been a major, or even a Captain by rank. Yes, and he would have been older and more experienced than these two here. If they were in their early twenties, then they were born around 1920. But if Haselden was much older he might have been born…before 1908! What would happen to a man if he tried to shift to a period in time where he already existed as a younger man or child? If Haselden had been born before 1908, which would put him in his later thirties in 1942, he might be an infant or child in the year we find ourselves in now-1908.

Yes! It would be impossible for the man to manifest here in a time where he already existed. He had often wondered about that. What if they shifted to a near past, a time just before they had been born? What would happen to them at that moment of their own birth? Could two versions of the same person co-exist in the same moment? It was a maddening paradox, but he thought he may have discovered the answer-a flat NO! Time would not permit this to happen. Haselden could not shift here with the others if he had already been born before 1908. Sutherland was telling the truth. The man simply vanished during the transition, vanished into the oblivion of paradox.

Time had balanced her books, yet now he had to decide what to do with these other two men. He could not tell them where they were, and if he left them here they would face the same paradox that may have claimed Haselden, for in just a few years they would reach the time of their birth. Yet how could he get them back to their own time in 1942? They were getting ready to run the procedure with Rod-25 again. If, by any chance, they ended up bouncing back to where they were in that year, then he might set them adrift well outside the radius of the Anatoly Alexandrov. If they shifted somewhere else…He realized that their fate was somehow bound up with his own now; with Orlov, and all the rest of them there.

“Well gentlemen,” he said quietly. “We’ll have to hold on to you for a while yet. In fact we may have to hold on to you for quite some time. I can’t explain everything now, but in time, once we sort this business out, I will try. In the meantime, our Sergeant Troyak here will see to your needs.”

He left the room, heading for the operations center where Dobrynin was preparing to run the procedure again. The Chief had listened to the recording they made of their shift here, and now he was given the daunting task of trying to reverse that outcome and get them home.

“Can you do it, Chief?”

“I have no idea, Mister Fedorov. Yet all I can do is try, and we are ready to begin.”

“Very well, we’ve lingered here long enough. I used the time trying to find that missing British soldier while we were waiting to hear from Karpov, but I think I know what happened to him now. The ship is battened down. Everything is securely fastened and radar says there is nothing within five kilometers of us at the moment, so hopefully we won’t take anything else with us. Let’s begin.”

Even as he gave that order a sudden thrum of anxiety rose in his chest. What if Karpov changes the history so radically that we are never even born or alive in the year 2021? If we try to return there, how would time account for our presence there in 2021? Will we vanish like Haselden? He realized they could be trying to shift themselves right into oblivion! Then another inner voice calmed him. It said that Karpov would never even be here unless they were all alive on Kirov and lost on this strange odyssey. Somehow he had to feel an essential part of it all, and have faith that paradox could not reach out to steal him away.

A darker thought came to him…What if Karpov does something that set the world on a course to catastrophe? What if Rod-25 politely takes us to the year 2021, but there is nothing left of the world-just those devastated cities we saw each time we shifted forward? This means the Great War was fought before 2021! That’s why we saw the destruction everywhere! Then we had Kirov at hand to go back into the past and try again. But what could I do with the resources here on the Anatoly Alexandrov? His mind went round and round, but there was no more time to consider these things.

Dobrynin nodded, looking over at a technician at the operations console and raising his finger like a conductor about to begin a composition.

“We’ve selected rod number eight for replacement, and so let us begin.”

The technicians began throwing switches and even Fedorov could hear a change in the sound of the reactor now as servo motors and other systems kicked in to begin the procedure of withdrawing a the control rod from an active reaction. Meanwhile, Rod-25 waited in place above the core, ready to descend again into the nuclear soup.

Chief Dobrynin closed his eyes and listened. He had to remember the sound of their fall to this place in time, and now reverse it. He listened, hearing the overture in the subtle vibrations and sound frequencies; hearing things that none of the others seemed to notice at all. He raised a hand, speaking softly as he listened. “Begin replacement rod insertion. Set timing at interval two.”

There it was, he thought, the song to the Angels. He could hear it, feel it, and with each vibration pattern he knew what should come next. He made several other adjustments, first subtly increasing the insertion rate, then slowing it down again, and all the while Rod-25 sang its song, a distinctive voice in the choir of the 48 other rods working to control the nuclear reaction, like the soloist leading on the others in a rising chorus of neutron flux.

It was not long until they began to notice the same strange effects again. There was a tang of ozone in the air, a sudden chill, and the odd luminescent, pulsing waves that emanated from the Anatoly Alexandrov. Then the air seemed to thicken around them, a deep mist enveloping them.

And they were gone.