Kirov III: Pacific Storm

there were no Australian or British ships in the region, and a few long conversations with associates on the telephone soon convinced him that there were no American ships about in these waters as well.

As it happened, Longmore, later to be Captain Longmore, was good friends with the Australian Prime Minister John Curtin, who was an old journalist and newspaper man himself. So he was able to get the photos quickly into the right hands to attempt to answer the very same questions running through his own mind. Curtin had also just been sworn in as Australian Minister of Defense, and when Longmore called, the photos got some very high level attention, very fast.

So it came to pass that knowledge of a strange, unaccountable warship in the Timor Sea soon traveled from the eyes and ears of two Aboriginal scouts, to journalist Cyril Longmore, and thence to Prime Minister John Curtin himself, and right into the hands of Allied intelligence units. Copies went out quickly to Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, and then on to the British Naval Station at Trincomalee on Ceylon by plane for a flight to Alexandria. After that it was just a few quick hops to Gibraltar where other curious eyes were soon to see them and note the uncanny similarity to a ship they had confronted just days earlier. The next plane to England would begin to unravel the long mystery that had baffled British intelligence for a very long year, and the word “Geronimo” was soon again being whispered in exclusive circles, and carried once more to the arcane halls of Bletchley Park by a most able and determined man.

Part I THE INTERVAL

“So long the path; so hard the journey,
When I will return, I cannot say for sure,
Until then the nights will be longer.
Sleep will be full of dark dreams and sorrow,
But do not weep for me…”

~ Russian Naval Hymn

Chapter 1

A car drove quickly up the lane towards a stately estate, its buildings clustered one against another in an odd mingling of architectural styles. Bletchley Park, or ‘Station X’ as it was called, was one of ten special operations facilities set up by MI6, where ‘Captain Ridley’s Shooting Party’ was supposed to be enjoying afternoons on the adjoining sixty acre estate, with shotguns and hounds to hunt down quail. Yet its real purpose was derived from the feverish activity of the Government Code and Cypher School, England’s code breakers, a collection of brilliant and dedicated men and women who would generate the vital intelligence information needed to prosecute the war.

Here there were walls of colored code wheels, strange devices like the Enigma machines and odd looking equipment fed by long coiled paper tape, dimpled with a series of small black dots of varying sizes. The minds of Bletchley Park were already in the first stages of digitizing the analog world into forms their nascent computing machines could digest and ruminate upon. A year later the estate would see the installation of the first “Colossus” machine, a rudimentary computer housing all of 1500 vacuum tubes to power its mechanical brain.

The car stopped, its door opening quickly as Admiral Tovey stepped out, a thick parcel under his right arm. He did not approach the styled mansions up the main walkway, but veered left towards a green sided extension— Hut 4, the heart of naval intelligence. A year ago the men who worked there had been reveling in their first breakthrough, the deciphering of the German Enigma code. Then came the unaccountable appearance of a strange ship in the Norwegian Sea, and it set the whole community back on its heels.

Tovey walked past the row of white trimmed windows and entered through a plain unsigned door. He was immediately greeted by a Marine guard, who saluted crisply and led him down the narrow hall to the office of Alan Turing, who had been reading a volume of Byron’s poetry as he waited for the Admiral.

“Good day, Doctor,” said Tovey as he walked briskly in, his hand extended. Turing set his poetry down and rose to greet him, his dark eyes alight with a smile.

“Call me ‘Professor,’ Admiral. Everyone else does here, though I haven’t been given a formal chair as yet. The word doctor always seemed a tad sterile for me.”

“Very good, Professor. I’ve brought you a little something more for your file boxes,” said Tovey.

“Ah,” said Turing, “The photography!”

“Indeed. Two reels of film here with photos, and a full report. I’ve collected the logs of all ships involved, so you’ll have a good time sorting it all through before it gets filed away with everything else on this Geronimo business.”

“Very good, sir,” said Turing, his curiosity immediately aroused. “I wonder, Admiral. Might I persuade you to allow me to fly out to St. Helena one of these days and have a look for myself?”

Tovey raised an eyebrow, his face suddenly serious, and seated himself, his eye falling on the open volume of Byron’s poetry. He scanned the lines, reading inwardly:

“On the sea the boldest steer but where their ports invite;
But there are wanderers o’er Eternity
Whose bark drives on and on,
and anchor’d ne’er shall be.”

With a heavy sigh he looked at Turing, and all the unanswered questions in his mind took a seat there with him, waiting to have their say. “I’m afraid I have some rather interesting news for you, Professor,” he said quietly. “And I think it’s high time that you and I have a very frank chat.”

“News, sir?” Turing received most information that might be considered news well before anyone else, so it was unusual, and even interesting to hear something he might not know.

“This ship—Geronimo—well it’s vanished again.”

“Vanished?” The word got Turing’s attention immediately, and he leaned forward, waiting to hear more.

“Indeed, and just as the escort reached St. Helena.”

“Are you saying it sunk, sir?”

“No, Professor, I am saying it simply vanished—sailed into a bank of fog and disappeared. Oh, we put divers down and scoured the sea floor. There was not a trace. We had two cruisers and three search planes look in every direction, and there was no sign of this ship whatsoever. There was no visible or audible explosion, so we have ruled out accident or deliberate scuttling as well. By God, some magician pulled this rabbit out of his hat, and then just waved his hand and made it disappear again! It sounds impossible, but what else are we to conclude? The ship is gone, or at least that is what we thought….Until this came in today.”

Tovey handed him another plain Manila envelope, much smaller than the first, a raised eyebrow betraying his obvious excitement. “Sorry to tell you that any photographic evidence related to this Geronimo business has been re-routed to Admiralty first. Admiral Pound was none too happy with the decision I made to parley with the Admiral of this rogue ship, and even less amused when it pulled