Thor's Anvil

Chapter 10

Karpov had every reason to be restless with the situation that had developed on Sakhalin Island. His 32nd Siberian Division had been successfully landed, seizing the small port of Okha in the north, and the nascent oil fields in that region. They then pushed south along the western coast, while his air mobile units lifted by airship landed small groups ahead of the main advance to cut the rail line the Japanese had built and impede any enemy effort to move troops north. The Magadan Marine Regiment was able to slip into the Tatar Strait and seize the vital ferry site of Lazarev, which was now his logistical link to the mainland. Other irregular forces were operating there, fast moving cavalry units, small militias, and native tribal groups loosely allied with his cause.

North of that area, the 40th Siberian Division had been landed on the coast at Toron and Chumikan, and it was to have pushed up the sandy and winding course of the Uda River to the Zeya River, but with no roads to speak of, only one regiment had made the long and arduous journey, establishing a series of frontier outposts behind it, and then returning to the coast. It was now evident to Karpov that getting inland from that wild and undeveloped coast would be a logistical nightmare. His airships were largely carrying the burden of moving supplies, but threats posed by the appearance of new German airships was cause for some alarm, and he was now being forced to keep at least three airships at Ilanskiy.

While Fedorov was off on his AWOL mission to that place, Karpov’s anxiety was very high. He fretted, paced, was constantly on the radio to his brother self, asking for news and berating Tyrenkov to bring the fugitive to justice one way or another. They had searched high and low for any sign of Irkutsk, with no results. Tyrenkov’s intelligence network kept an ear on the ground for any news of where it may have gone. It was suspected that the airship, and Fedorov with it, may have fled to Soviet Russia, but all his operatives there could produce no evidence that had happened. Not one among them had any idea that Fedorov was, at that moment, literally right beneath their feet in the very heart and center of Karpov’s web of security—Ilanskiy—only he was hidden by the shadowy cloak of 34 years of time, there but not there, like an unseen wraith or spirit haunting that railway inn.

When Mironov came down those stairs he had only one thing on his mind—escape. A fledgling revolutionary, he had already been arrested and imprisoned by the Okhrana for allegedly distributing propaganda materials. This very journey was an attempt to get as far from Tsarist authority as he possibly could, a journey east on the Trans-Siberian Rail. He had decided to visit relatives in Irkutsk, but after that, he had it in his mind to head west and south, to the Caucasus, a place he had heard much about as a boy, Vladikavkaz. It was a small town in the foothills of the mountains west of Grozny and south of the Terek River. There he would help organize the Bolshevik cells of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and work as a journalist.

In truth, his revolutionary spirit had been born much earlier, when he left the small boarding school of his youth and moved on to the Industrial Institute at nearby Kazan, in 1901. Then a lad of just 16 years, he experienced that flowering of his young self that comes to many at that age, becoming more independent and often questioning authority, while at the same time, sewing a few wild oats, as young men sometimes do. There he lived in a student hostel, rent-free, as a gift from one of the Society Board Members who approved his studies at the institute. That man’s wife ran the hostel, though young Sergei repaid that kindness by having an affair with her, the boy of 16 then summarily leaving the hostel to board in the town with two friends at the end of that year when he learned the woman was pregnant. She closed the hostel shortly thereafter, and later gave birth to Sergei’s illegitimate baby girl.

More than one young man has found himself in that sort of embarrassing situation, and more than one young man ended up doing what Sergei did after that—leaving the place and abandoning both the mother and child, never seeing them again.

Once he was reprimanded by a teacher for refusing to write an essay on scripture he did not believe in. Once, while touring a local factory, he had the temerity to directly question the owner’s right to a life of wealth, comfort, and security obtained on the backs of the workers who labored so hard beneath him. And so, from rebellious student questioning the established faith, to a young man questioning the existing social and economic structure of the world he was growing up in, Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov would soon find more than one place his feelings about these things could be expressed.

Two years later, in 1903, the students at the institute began to organize protests when one of their ranks was arrested by authorities and mysteriously died while in custody. Sergei fell in with the protestors, and was much influenced by the general anti-Tsarist sentiment simmering in the country. He graduated from the institute in Kazan in 1904, then went to Tomsk in Siberia to seek entry into the Tomsk Technological Institute for higher education. He was there when the Tsar’s police fired on citizens in St. Petersburg on January 22, 1905.

That incident became known as the Bloody Sunday Massacre, and did much to raise the temperature of the slowly simmering revolution. Sergei joined a sub-committee at the school to help organize a street protest to the event, which was widely reviled throughout Russia. The following month was just two days old when Kirov was arrested for the first time, taken into custody with a group of other students who were planning a further protest.

Young Sergei Kirov refused to cooperate with interrogators, or to implicate any other student he knew. He was eventually released in April, and went right on with his revolutionary activities, distributing fliers, meeting with worker groups, fomenting a strike among railway workers near Tomsk. By May of that year, Japan’s Admiral Togo inflicted a disastrous defeat on the Russian Navy in the Strait of Tsushima, which caused national uproar. Workers on the Trans-Siberian rail line staged strikes and walkouts all along the line, and the lad who would become Sergei Kirov was right in the middle of it all. So he was no stranger to that fabled rail line, and knew all the ins and outs of traveling there.

In 1906, with martial law declared when Kirov was 20 years old, he was arrested again in a Tsarist crackdown on all these revolutionary activities. They claimed he was running an illegal printing press, though it was never found. Instead they cited him for spreading hostilities between classes, and he was sentenced to 16 months in prison in Tomsk. He had only been released in June, 1908, when he started his journey east on that same rail line. For the next 18 months, almost nothing is known of his whereabouts, except that he eventually turned up in Irkutsk. No one knew of that fateful meeting he had at Ilanskiy with a man named Fedorov, or of the stairway at Ilanskiy where his curiosity saw him climb those stairs at a most opportune time.

And no one knew this time that he was about to have yet another meeting with Fedorov, only now the strange figure from the future was not there to deliver a warning that might one day save his life. This time Fedorov had come to end his story, then and there, as a desperate act to try and reset the world he had come from in 1942, and perhaps expunge the sins that now darkened his own soul, atoning for all he had done to give birth to that world.

While traveling east, Mironov stopped at Kansk, resolving to continue on the next train. He, too, wanted to see a bit of the Great Auto Race that was nearing that location. Then, on the day of the strange explosion and fire in the sky to the northeast, he had what he now believed was a very close brush with the authorities again. That strange man in the dining room, claiming to be a soldier, had aroused his suspicions. At first he had thought to share his table with the man, to make it seem that he was nothing more than an innocent traveler. But when the soldier made such a hasty retreat to the second floor of the inn, Mironov’s curiosity had been aroused. He wondered if the man was an agent of the Tsar’s dreaded secret police, sent to follow him now that he had finally been released from prison.

That’s what they would do, he thought. They release the little fox, but keep the dogs close at hand. My colleague, Popov, fled this way as well. I must get in touch with him one day, but not now. They will want to follow me, see where I might go, and to whom I might speak. Did they honestly think I would be so stupid as to try and contact fellow revolutionaries or other members in the party so soon after my release from that prison? No. The smart thing for me was to do exactly what I was planning—find relatives, find family. That would be the perfect cover for any travel I undertake, and then, when things settle down; when I’ve had time in Irkutsk to have a good look around and make sure no one is watching me, then I can contemplate another move.

The train is due in at Kansk today, probably bringing more tourists hoping to see a bit of the Great Race. The American team has already moved on, but the German team is still here. That will attract a lot of attention, along with all this other commotion. There are already security men here, and so the thing to do is head east, not west to the train at Kansk. If I slip off to the east, I can always board the train at another village down the line. But what if those men are on the train? So be it. I’ve done nothing wrong here—except that reporter. Yes, that could be it. I was talking with that English reporter, a foreigner, and a member of their press. That could land me in a bit of a stew. Is that why that man came over—Fedorov? And what did he mean with that whispered warning about St. Petersburg?

“…never come up this stairway again. Understand? Get as far away from here as you can.” He remembered the urgency in Fedorov’s voice, the look in the man’s eyes, as if all the world was at stake. Then that strange look of anguish, that moment’s hesitation, and the torment in his eyes as he leaned close, taking hold of his arm.

“Do not go to St. Petersburg in 1934! Beware Stalin! Beware the month of December! Go with God. Go and live, Mironov. Live!”

And the night…. The moon. How could I have left this red sky morning one moment, and found it so dark and quiet the next, and with that ghostly moon? Perhaps that was only the rising sun I saw, obscured by smoke from that fire in the east. What was that man saying about 1934, a year so far away in the future? Who was this Stalin he spoke of? Why should I be wary in December? What did he mean that I should not go to St. Petersburg? He was speaking as though… as though he saw some distant future in the world that had not yet come to pass, some far off doom, for his tone of voice clearly carried the edge of warning.

That only increased the rising sense of fear in his own gut. Yes, slip away east, he thought. That was what he must do now. The train will come east tomorrow after all this ruckus settles down. The German race team will leave, the tourists will have had their eyeful, and even that reporter will probably try to follow them as they head west to Khabarovsk and beyond. But I will continue east, wait for the train, and get on at the next town.

The nearest village was Staynyy, only ten kilometers east along the line. He could get there in as little as two hours, and he did. The little depot there wasn’t much, but that was where he stayed, sleeping on a bench. Tired and hungry the next morning, he was now looking forward to the arrival of the train, where there would be warmth, food and more comfort, but something else unusual happened that morning—something very strange.

The sky was still aglow to the northeast when he saw a gleaming shape emerge from a cloud. It hovered in the sky, drawing ever nearer, fixating his attention. Mironov had never seen such a thing, and to him it would have been like the arrival of a UFO in the skies, so he was quite curious. It was the second time that curiosity would get the better of him. He saw that the craft was lowering very near the ground, and only a few kilometers north of Staynyy, so he could not help himself. As he approached the craft, he saw something lower from the great shape, which he now surmised was a massive airship. Such craft would not begin to fly commercially for another two years, but Mironov had heard of them, and reasoned that this was what he was now staring at.

The small metal basket lowered, and a group of men got out, all carrying weapons, which prompted Mironov to crouch low behind a tree. Three men started off west, back towards Ilanskiy. The remainder began to fan out, eventually disappearing into the trees around the small clearing. Soldiers… What would they be doing here? Might they be secret agents of the Okhrana? Is this how they were able to suddenly appear in these isolated places, seemingly everywhere. Did they travel in those massive airships? How is it he had never seen anything of the kind before?

He would soon be even more confused, for some time after the three men departed east, he had decided to head back to the little depot at Staynyy. Just as he rose to head back, there came a whooshing sound, then two, then three explosions. He turned, amazed to see the airship burst into flames, terrified to see the massive ship come crashing down into the clearing, burning fiercely. He watched, spellbound, frozen in place by the spectacle of that disaster. It was a point of divergence, for this had never happened to him before, and the history of these moments was now being rewritten. Would seeing this event change him in some unfathomable way? What happened next surely would.

Just as Mironov turned to retreat to the rail depot, he was confronted by a dour looking man in a black beret and soldier’s uniform, and he was holding a dangerous looking rifle, aiming it right at Mironov’s chest.

“Stand where you are,” the man said coldly. Then he touched something at his collar and spoke again, seemingly to someone else. “Komilov to Zykov. We have a witness.”

After questioning the reporter, Thomas Byrne, Fedorov and Troyak had searched the entire inn, and all through the railway yard area. People were arriving from Kansk, where the train took advantage of the delay to re-coal. The visitors had come to see the German race team, hearing they had stayed at the inn at Ilanskiy, and hoping to see the grand sendoff that morning, before they started heading east. That complicated their search, but it also gave Fedorov a chance to question several people, asking them if they had seen a man by Mironov’s description heading west on the road towards Kansk.

Preoccupied with the persistent red glow in the sky, no one could help him, and he was beginning to think his mission would now become an impossible search for Mironov, who could be anywhere by now. No, not anywhere. He had to be close at hand.

Think, he told himself. He can’t fly. The train is still at Kansk, and that is his only way out of here. I doubt he would have secured a horse or carriage, so he must be somewhere close by, and we must keep an eye on that train.

Then he got word from Zykov and his heart leapt. The Marines had been cleaning up the wreckage site, and Zykov called on his service jacket radio to report they had a man in custody that looked very much like the one in the photograph Fedorov had shown them.

They had Mironov!

Chapter 11

There he was, the same man, Fedorov. He was just sitting there at the same table where he had thought to share his breakfast with the man the day before. Yet somehow he seemed different, older, quiet, a sullen mood on him, as if some darkness had fallen on him, a shadow of gloom. The soldier that had herded Mironov in saluted.

“Thank you, Corporal,” said Fedorov. “See that every entrance is secured.”

Mironov looked around the room, seeing the broken windows boarded up, and noting the lower door to the back stairway was closed. His heart beat faster as he eyed that door, remembering how he had crept up after this very same man the previous day. That was a mistake, he realized now, for this man was obviously Okhrana. Perhaps he had been following him all along.

“You again,” he said, a note of accusation in his tone.

“Me again,” said Fedorov, realizing the utter strangeness of this moment. For him it had been long years, decades in the future, living in the world he had created the last time he saw this young man. There had been plans and battles, and so many losses. He had lived through that impossible time in the desert when Kinlan arrived. He had consorted with Wavell, Alexander, Churchill. He had campaigned in Lebanon and Syria, fought battles on the sea, faced the wrenching strangeness of Paradox, and the second coming of Kirov, when he found himself there, inexplicably there, the one man who could remember it all. Yet for Mironov, it was only a matter of a day or so since he followed me up those stairs.

“Won’t you sit down?”

“Why should I?” said Mironov. “So that you can interrogate me? That’s what this is now, correct? You had plenty of time when you got hold of me yesterday. Why are you so curious today? Ah, yes, you wanted to see if I would go to anyone else here. You wanted to try and ferret out any possible contact I might have. I know your kind well enough.”

There was that same defiance, the hardness of rebellion already alive in the man, thought Fedorov. “I know this is what you might believe,” he said, “but no, I am not a member of the Okhrana, or of any other authority connected to the Tsar.”

“Then why the uniform?”

“Please… Sit down with me, and we can talk. I will answer all your questions. I promise.”

Mironov folded his arms, frowning. Then he walked briskly over to the table, drew back the chair, and sat down. “Very well,” he said. “If you are not the secret police, then who are you? Why that uniform? Why all these men with guns?”

“We are soldiers… Sailors actually. Those men are Marines off my ship, and we have come here on an important mission.”

“What has it to do with me?”

“Everything.”

“What? I have done nothing wrong. I was falsely tried and convicted on a technicality, a trumped up charge because they had no evidence of any other wrongdoing. They tried to say I was operating an illegal printing press, but they could find no such thing. So they just made something up—said I was causing tension between the classes. I served over a year for that, and now I’m a free man. They even let me go early, but now I’m beginning to see why. They just wanted to see who I ran to.”

“I know… It all seems that way, but it’s not. I assure you. It’s something else entirely.” Fedorov had his eyes averted, unable to look Mironov in the face. He had one hand on the table, the other resting in his lap, where he held a drawn pistol, concealed by the shadows. His heart beat faster as he realized what he now had to do—the timely cruelty he had spoken of with Karpov.

“If you only knew everything that has happened,” he said sullenly. “If you only knew how long it has been since you last laid eyes on me, and what has become of the world…. But it was my fault, not yours.”

The man seemed to be speaking as much to himself, and Mironov did not understand. “Yesterday you told me to get as far from this place as possible,” he said. Then you ran on with something about St. Petersburg in the future—in 1934. Yesterday you told me to go, to live. Well, that was exactly what I was doing, heading east to wait for the train and get clear of all these tourists coming to see the German race team off. Now why are you and your men so keen on sitting me down again for this nice little interview? What is it you really want to know? Go on—out with it!”

Fedorov raised the hand he had on the table, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I shouldn’t say another word,” he whispered, again, more to himself than Mironov. “What I have already said was damaging enough. But then again, if I finish what I came here to do, then what does it matter? What does it matter?”

“There you go, talking in riddles again. Look here, I’ve done nothing, and you have no right to detain me here. Either charge me with another false crime and be done with it, or let me go as you did yesterday.”

“Mironov….” It was the first time Fedorov had used the other man’s name, and he regretted it the moment he said it. It would only make him real, a person, a human being, and that would make it so much more difficult. But he could not help himself. It was as if he was compelled to say something, anything, to justify what he was now planning to do, to explain it to Mironov, and by so doing, be absolved.

“What if you met a man and then later found out that he did something that caused a great deal of trouble, something ruinous, something catastrophic, even if he, himself, had no inkling that he had done anything wrong at all… Even if he was completely innocent at that moment.”

Mironov’s eyes narrowed. “You are suggesting I have done something—the crime you are planning to charge me with? What is it this time? You might as well spit it out, for you’ve already decided I am guilty. You’ve tried and convicted me long ago.”

The truth in Mironov’s words stung Fedorov, for Mironov was absolutely correct. He was here to convict him, the summary judgment being the cold steel bullet in the gun beneath the edge of that table. He could feel his palm wet with sweat, a slight tremble in his hand there.

“Well, what is it this time?” Mironov insisted.

The anguish on Fedorov’s face was plain to see. “You would not understand,” he said. “Yes, it was not your doing, at least not at first. I’m the man who should be tried and convicted here.”

At that moment, something occurred to Fedorov. What if he were to repudiate everything he said in that impulsive moment years ago—a day ago to Mironov. He could just tell him to forget what he said, that it was nothing, something he was saying to himself, nothing to be bothered about.

The futility of that was immediately apparent to him, but the one side of his mind that was still the man he was before all this happened kept up its plea. That was the man who flinched at the first plane Admiral Volsky ordered shot down. That was the man who stood, glassy eyed and remorseful, as he watched Yamato burn on that dark night in the Pacific. That was the man who stood in stunned silence when the news of Volsky’s death came in the middle of his heated conversation with Karpov on the bridge, and the man who wept in his cabin later that day, knowing it was all his fault.

How had he become this man, driven to come here again, by any means, and with this pistol in his hand. How had he become the man who fired five missiles at Orlov, the one who gave that order to take down Irkutsk, killing everyone aboard, even though his inner self inveighed against him for that callous act. How had he come to the cold calculus of death, finding reasons, justifications, imperatives that would muzzle and imprison the man of conscience he had always been—the man he still was.

Yes, he knew that, deep inside, he was still a man of integrity and conscience—he was still as innocent as Mironov was at this moment, but the words Karpov had spoken to him as Yamato burned now scored his soul. “It gets easier,” he had told him—easier to kill, easier to do the heartless thing he was planning now, easier to find reasons, arguments, justifications; easier to rationalize everything and explain it all away.

But that wasn’t true, at least not for Fedorov. At his core and root, he was not that kind of man, and now, as he sat in this moment of destiny, gun in hand, the dark agent of absolute change, time’s assassin, he knew he was not the man who could murder Mironov. He could not do what Leonid Nikolaev did that day, emerging from the rest room on the third floor of the Smolny Building, the heart and center of Bolshevik power in Leningrad. He had a pistol with him that day as well, hidden in his pocket, and there was Sergei Kirov, walking towards him down the long hall, his footsteps ringing out fate’s toll with every step. He could not look the man in the eye, turning away towards the wall and fishing in his pocket for a cigarette, fumbling for a match.

Kirov passed him by, continuing on towards his office, and Nikolaev followed. Just as Sergei turned onto the side hallway, the assassin pulled out his pistol, and without a second thought, aimed and fired. The bullet struck Kirov right on the back of his head, and he was dead before his body hit the polished tiled floor. There, in that moment, the world that Fedorov had been living in, struggling with the lines of history so wrenched and bent by the simple fact that Kirov had lived, all came oozing out like the dark red blood from his ravaged brain.

Yet Fedorov had spoken, just one impulsive moment born of the admiration he always had for Kirov, born of the compassion that lived in his heart at that moment, born of hope. Fedorov had given his warning, only thinking to spare Kirov’s life. It had never occurred to him, in that brief moment, that Kirov would discover the reason behind that warning; that he would find it at the top of that single flight of stairs, right here at Ilanskiy. Kirov would learn the name of the man who would pull that trigger, the day and hour of his own demise, and the name of the man who may have given the order—Josef Stalin. That alone may have been reason enough for what Mironov did in that cold prison cell in Baku. Instead of Nikolaev, it had been Mironov with the fate of the world in his hand in the shape and form of a pistol.

Now it was Fedorov.

If I do this thing, he thought, then I gift the world again with the darkness and depravity of Josef Stalin. I sit here in the hope that someone with a heart so blackened will be the one man strong enough to stop Volkov, to stop Hitler, and to build the Soviet Union that would one day build the ship that brought me here.

That was the cold chain of logic and reason he had forged with Karpov, link by treacherous link. Yet now, as he sat there, with that gun in his trembling hand, a great and yawning doubt seemed to encompass his soul. How could he know any of that would ever happen? Wasn’t it all speculation, all well-reasoned conjecture that was really nothing more than a wild guess, driven by that one coiled link of hope he had put in that chain?

How could he know that Stalin would live, rise to power as he did, find and defeat Volkov, ruthlessly enforce his will on the world? And how would it all become that world again at the top of those stairs—Stalin’s world, the purges, the gulags, the death ships in the icy Tatar Strait? Was it true that Russia would fall beneath the iron tread of Nazi Germany? Was it inevitable that this man before him, young Sergei Kirov, would falter and fail? Couldn’t they win the war? Couldn’t they prevail?

He could hear the man he once was, weeping within, as he cried out all these reasons, pleading for mercy. For at this moment, everything Kirov said was completely true; he was innocent. Yet now came that voice of cold Karpov logic—the death of one innocent man could save the lives of millions. Yet even Karpov had faltered with that.

What did he mean with that last urgent call, cancelling the mission and ordering me back to the ship? What twisted thread of dark possibility had he pulled from the loom of their sinister conspiracy? Fedorov thought he knew what it was. Karpov could not bear the uncertainty of rolling those dice one more time. He could not bear the thought the he might lose the cards he held so stubbornly in his hand, laying down his strait, and seeing Josef Stalin’s evil grin as he laid down his full house.

No, Karpov had decided that he would stand on the ground they had built together, and fight his war to whatever end that might come. Karpov had decided he could win that war, or die trying. His cruel and self-centered logic had simply decided it was better to rule in the hell they had created than to serve anywhere else. That was why he wanted to recall me, thought Fedorov. He simply could not bear the thought of losing everything he had striven so hard to grasp in his greedy hands—Kirov, the ship, the power he could wield with it, the Free Siberian State, and all his dreams of the world that would come after this war.

Kirov….

He stared now at the man his ship had been named for, the young eyes flaming with indignation, feeling his spirit, seeing in him the temperament that would take him to the crest of the wave of revolution that was only now gathering strength—Sergei Kirov. Yes, one day the world would build a ship in this man’s name, a ship born of fire, and steel, and the strangeness of some otherworldly thing that had fallen from the darkness of outer space, only yesterday….

Do it now, an inner voice urged him on. Do it before you think another thought. Become nothing more than reflex, mindless synapse, the twitch of a finger on the trigger of fate and time. Become Samsonov. Become the hiss and snap of a missile leaping up from beneath that long sea washed deck. Become judge and jury. Become the assassin. Become death itself.

His hand trembling, his face wrenched with pain, he raised up his unsteady arm, and Mironov saw the gun.

Chapter 12

Mironov saw the gun.

His eyes widened with sudden shock, and he instinctively leaned back, his body tense as coiled steel. So that was it, he thought. No interrogation, no trumped up charges, no trial and term in prison. He was to be executed, here and now. That was why all these men with guns had come here. But why? What had he done? And why would this man want to kill him now, when only yesterday he pleaded with him to live?

Something was wrong. Mironov could see it in the shaking of Fedorov’s arm, in the torment of his eyes. Then he saw the other man slowly raise up that pistol, but he was pointing it at his own head! His hand quavered, and there were tears welling at the corners of his eyes.

Then Mironov moved. It was impulse, synapse, Samsonov.

“No! Don’t!” Mironov lurched forward, taking hold of Fedorov’s arm just as that pistol went off with a loud report that stunned them both with its closeness. The chair gave way and the two men tumbled to the ground. The door burst open and in came Troyak, his assault rifle leveled, and seeing what was happening he simply fired a burst at the boarded windows, the bullets ripping through the wood, sending a rain of splinters onto the floor.

The pistol had slipped from Fedorov’s hand, the hand that Mironov had been struggling to stay. Troyak strode across the room, three quick steps, and collared Mironov, pulling him up off the floor and away from Fedorov with one arm, the hard steel of his rifle pressed into the young man’s back.

“Are you alright sir?” he said, seeing things were clearly otherwise with Fedorov. The bullet had just grazed his chin when that gun had fired, and he reached his hand to feel the place, seeing the thin trickle of his blood.

“Zykov! On me!” Troyak shouted over his shoulder, and the lanky Corporal came running in. “See to the Captain.”

As Zykov rushed to Fedorov’s side, he could see the stain of blood on his service jacket, but quickly surmised that he was not seriously injured. He reached into a pocket of his jacket, pulling out a ready wound patch and pulling off the outer packaging to apply it to the nick on Fedorov’s chin.

Slowly, as the ringing in his ears subsided, and his senses gathered, Fedorov sat up, then started to stand. Zykov helped him to his feet, with an ‘easy does it.’

“What in God’s name happened here?” he said to Fedorov, stooping to fetch the fallen pistol.

He tried to save my life!

That was all Fedorov could reason in that moment. His eyes were fixed fast on Mironov, the young man’s eyes still smoldering as he squirmed in the steely grip of Sergeant Troyak.

I was not man enough to do what I came here to do, and just coward enough to try and kill myself and end this misery. But he stopped me. Sergei Kirov could have done anything in that moment, anything, but his only instinct was to stop me from killing myself—me, the man he suspected as an agent of the Okhrana, come here to harry and harass and judge him. He tried to save my life….

Taking a deep breath, Fedorov composed himself, the eyes of both Troyak and Zykov heavy on him now, their concern obvious. He could see the question in their eyes, and how they were waiting for him to tell them what was to be done.

“Easy, Sergeant,” he said to Troyak. “This is not what it seems. It was just an accident. Corporal, take that pistol outside and return to your watch. Gather the other men in the front room. We’re moving out. Sergeant, you can release that young man.”

“But sir—”

“That is an order, Sergeant. He means me no harm. None of this was his doing. It was just an accident. See to your men. Make certain that all the equipment we brought is accounted for, and find Orlov. I want the entire squad assembled in the outer room in ten minutes. And for now, I want those ten minutes here with Mironov.”

Troyak was not comfortable with the situation as he saw things, but he knew an order when he heard one, and also knew another ‘but sir’ wasn’t going to get him anywhere. Something had clearly happened here, but he would not sort it all out now.

“Shall I send in a guard?” he asked, his eyes still looking Fedorov over searchingly, as if to make sure there were no other wounds.

“No Sergeant. I’ll be quite alright. Just see to the men, and make sure there is not so much as a ball of lint from our trousers left behind. We move in ten.”

“Aye sir.” Troyak moved now, synapse, reflex. He saluted and then gave Zykov a nod of his head, saying nothing more.

There were no other wounds, at least not in the flesh, thought Fedorov. He stooped slowly, picking up the chair, Mironov’s eyes on his every move, dark and serious.

“Sit with me,” said Fedorov in a low voice, but he could see Mironov hesitate. “No interrogation,” he said again. “I… I must thank you for what you just did. I….”

Fedorov sat down, his head lowered with shame. Mironov stood there, watching him for a moment, and then he walked over, sitting down at the table, and the two men sat there a moment, just looking at one another in silence. This time, the pistol was gone.

If that inner voice from the man Fedorov once was could not stay his hand, this man could. He could not bring himself to kill Sergei Kirov, and like that awful moment that had come to Karpov on the weather deck of the ship as he fired his pistol at Tovey’s distant cruiser, Fedorov had fired off every last argument and reason in his mind, and the last he kept for himself. He would take his own life in payment for the terrible change he had brought to the world. Mironov was innocent.

“I know you will not understand what I am about to tell you,” said Fedorov quietly. “I came here to kill you…. Yes… that was why that pistol was in my hand. But when it came right down to the moment, I simply could not do this thing. You are correct, Mironov. You have done nothing wrong, and I could not sit here as your judge and executioner. I’d sooner take my own life than do that.”

Mironov nodded, his face betraying his confusion. “Kill me? But why? You were ordered to do so by the Okhrana?”

Fedorov managed a wan smile. “You might say that,” he said. “Let me just say that it was not anything you did that put that pistol in my hand. It was simply fear of something you might do—one day.”

Mironov was beginning to understand. “They couldn’t find the printing press,” he said, “but they know it is out there somewhere. They are probably still looking for it.”

“Yes,” said Fedorov, “and one day they will find it, and arrest you again. You will see the inside of a prison more than once in the days ahead, but you will survive.”

“They want to kill me? For that?”

“No… No, not for that. It is very complicated. How can I explain?” Fedorov looked over his shoulder, finding the silent door shut tight at the bottom of those stairs.

“Do you see that door?”

“Of course.”

“You remember what I told you yesterday? I said that you should never go up those stairs again. Get as far from here as you possibly can, but you and I both know that won’t happen. In a moment I’m leading my men up to the second floor, and you are free to go. No harm will come to you, but I know exactly what you will do. You will not be able to resist the urge to follow me, for curiosity is a very powerful thing. You have already seen far more than you should have, but what is done, is done.”

“I don’t understand,” said Mironov. “They ordered you to kill me, but you refused. Well, my friend, I can help you now. Come with me, you and all your men. There are places we can go where they won’t find us. You’ll see.”

Mironov knew it was risky to say what he did, but something in the desperation he saw in Fedorov’s eyes told him that this man was not a dark servant of his enemies. He did not know about the other men, but this one could be a new ally for the cause, for the revolution. The man was clearly conflicted, and unwilling to carry out his orders, so much so that he thought to take his own life instead. He was ripe fruit for the revolution.

“No, I cannot go with you. I have duties elsewhere. Now Mironov, listen carefully. Remember what I warned you about yesterday—do not forget it. In a moment I will take that stairway up, and you must not follow me this time. It is very dangerous there. If ever you find yourself near this place again, you must be very careful, very cautious. You will find what seems like madness at the top of those stairs, and one day you will understand. You will reach a place there where I can no longer go. You will see a world there that I was once born to, but now I am an outcast, and I can never return there again. No, I live in another world now, and I must return there to carry on the fight. I thought I could change things—change everything, reset the clock and the whole world with it, but it seems I cannot. So I will leave with my men in a moment, and we will return, to do the only thing left for us now—to fight and win. You fight too, here and now. You win through, Sergei. I have every faith in you. I know you will surmise what to do, and have the strength to do what I could not.”

Mironov looked at him, a puzzled expression on his face, not understanding, but sensing some deep truth in the man’s words and tone, sensing some ordained fate that was his, and his alone to find and grasp. It was a feeling more than a thought. It was a reflex, just like the impulse that prompted him to stop this man from raising that pistol to his own head to end his life. Something about him, this man named Fedorov, was right and good, and he could see now that he meant him no further harm. He was telling him the truth with every word he spoke, though he could not sort them through to find their meaning.

“So I will say it to you one more time,” said Fedorov, “just as I said it to you before. Do not go to St. Petersburg in 1934! Beware Stalin! Beware the month of December! And if you ever walk that stairway again, be as careful and cautious as you possibly can. No matter how dark and forsaken you may ever come to feel in the days ahead, no matter how hopeless the situation may ever seem, know that you can win. You can win, and you must never give up. Go with God now, Sergei Kirov. Go and live, Mironov. Live!”

Fedorov had sat at fate’s game table, hearing her ash grey whisper, seeing the bony hand push another stack of chips out onto the center of the table. Fate had called Fedorov’s bet, and now he would do the same, doubling down. He had said what he had said. It was over and done, and now he would return to the world he had created, and he would return to the war. Every thought of fixing the world and redeeming his own darkened soul was now banished from him. He had only one cause in his heart now, one mission. They were going back up those stairs, come what may, and they were going to fight that goddamned war, and win.

“Sergeant Troyak!” he called, giving Mironov one last smile as he stood up. The Sergeant was quick to respond, his eyes still laden with concern.

“Sir?”

“Are the men ready?”

“Yes sir, all assembled, just outside the front entrance. All equipment accounted for. I’ve double checked everything.”

“Good. And Orlov?”

“He’s there. I found him flirting with one of the maids.”

“Then it is time we get out of here, and leave this place to the innkeeper. We’ve caused enough ruckus as it stands. He’s locked that door there. We need it opened, and I don’t have time to find the man. See to it.”

Fedorov called the other men in, and looked them over. “Alright,” he said. “We’re going up these stairs. It may seem stupid, but bear with me. This is very important, and you must all do exactly as I say. I want the squad in single file, and every man is to take a firm hold on the shoulder of the man in front of him. Sergeant Troyak will lead, and secure the upper landing when he gets there. The rest of you file on up, and remember, nuts to butts, just as Symenko had it. Keep physical contact with the man ahead of you at all times. Come on then.”

“What about him?” Zykov pointed to Mironov.

“What about him? Our business with him is concluded. Let’s move.”

The Marines had bemused expressions on their faces, but orders were orders, and Troyak waved at them to form up. Fedorov had some reason for all of this nonsense, and this likely had something to do with that story he told us, he thought.

Mironov watched as the other soldiers filed in, Marines, as Fedorov had told him. They were tall, and fierce looking men, well-muscled, well-armed, and their every movement and step betrayed the deadly craft they specialized in. They were men of war.

The burly Sergeant went first, all business now. The Corporal was next in line, then the others filed into the dark well of that lower alcove, and he could hear their footsteps begin to ascend. Fedorov herded Orlov along next.

“After you,” said Orlov, fumbling with something in his pocket.

“Not on your life,” said Fedorov. “There, take hold of Private Gomel’s right shoulder. Good.” He reached up and placed his hand on Orlov’s broad shoulder in turn, and the line began to pull him into that shadowed alcove. At the last moment, he looked over for Mironov, and he smiled.

It was dark in that stairwell, and the walls and steps were dusty. That was something that would matter, though no one could foresee what would happen next. Fedorov’s heart rate was up, for he himself did not know if this would even work. Every man that comes down those stairs seemed to be linked to the time and place where he originated. That was all he could cling to, but there was only one problem. None of them came here by that stairway. He had navigated the airship right over the hypocenter where that thing had fallen from the deeps of space, and it had pulled them here to 1908 like a ship pulled down into a maelstrom of time.

So now he had no idea of what he should expect as they filed up those stairs, or where any of these men would end up. But he had one thing he held fast to, like he kept his hand firmly on Orlov’s shoulder.

“Sookin Sym!” said Orlov. “Can’t see a thing in here. Why didn’t someone turn on a flashlight. And there are cobwebs everywhere!”

“Quiet!” Fedorov hushed him, and even as he did, he felt Orlov’s big frame shudder with a sneeze…. And then he felt nothing at all, not the shoulder he had been clutching, not the steps beneath his feet—nothing!