Kirov II: Cauldron of Fire

“Perhaps that is the one thing a man really needs to act intelligently—a little trust, a little faith, and a good heart. I know that you are driven to find answers to the questions in your mind about all of this, but I must caution that you stand to lose very much more than you gain should you do so.”

Tovey breathed deeply, struck by that last remark. There was something more in the what the Admiral said just now. Something very much more. The conference in Moscow was held as a state secret and a matter of high security. Only very few knew it was taking place, even within the highest circles of the British government. For this man to know of it, and speak of it so casually…He regarded this Admiral with a knowing eye.

“Very well, Admiral. I will consider what you have said and asked here, but I think it best that I return to my ship for the moment, and you to yours. I will contact you at Midnight with an answer to this dilemma.”

Volsky reached and again shook the man’s hand. “Consider well, John Tovey. I will await your message.”

~ ~ ~

Tovey spent those last hours considering the careful logic of his war plan, and wondering about all the subtle clues he had taken from this extraordinary encounter. Russian, he thought. They were clearly Russians, but yet they denied any affiliation with Stalin or the Soviet state. But how could they know of Churchill’s meeting with Stalin in Moscow? Were they lying? The man’s candor was clearly apparent, but more than that it was the logic of his argument that weighed more heavily on the issue. When I mentioned that Russia was our ally, the man’s remark was rather telling … ‘At the moment…’

He said it as though he knew something to the contrary. Could this ship be a new Russian model, one they managed to build in the Black Sea, perhaps? Is that how it came to be in the Med— sneaking out through the Bosporus? Was it trying to get out into the Atlantic to strike at our convoys? Was Russia about to switch sides in this war? Then what about that business a year ago. The man clearly led me to believe that this ship was the same we encountered earlier. Was it? Could it have come out of Murmansk a year ago, and was it sunk by the Americans? This could be a sister ship, perhaps launched from Odessa or Sevastopol…But could the Russians build something like this, and without our knowing about it?

One question after another ranged through his mind, and he ticked them off, discarding each as utterly impossible. The Russians could not have built this ship any more than the Germans could have built it. Even if they did, how would it have escaped our notice? How could it have passed our coast watchers along the Dardanelles unseen, sailed through the Aegean like a phantom and then right past Vian’s cruisers in the Eastern Med, let alone the Italians at Taranto? Impossible! No nation on this earth could have built it, unless there was some mysterious island out there where a consortium of renegade mad scientists had built this ship. The mystery was profound.

And what did this man mean when he pointed to those old fortifications like that, saying I would have a good deal of trouble explaining the presence of my fleet here to the Moors. There was clearly something there that kept tugging at the edge of his thinking, all wrapped up with his muse about Jules Verne and his strange story of Captain Nemo, and again, with the odd look in Professor Turing’s eye in that hallway back at the Admiralty.

Why was this man being so blasted evasive? He refused to account for his presence, either here or in the North Atlantic a year ago, and it was as if the disclosure would cause some irreparable harm. He chided himself for not being more insistent, more forceful. By God, he had all the muscle and sinew of Home Fleet with him here. Syfret and Fraser had a couple of old, slow inter war battleships, their keels laid down in the early 1920s. He had four of Britain’s newest dreadnoughts, fast, well protected, well gunned. He could force the issue and have an answer to these nagging questions once and for all, but the Admiral’s remark still haunted him: “I know that you are driven to find answers to the questions in your mind about all of this, but I must caution that you stand to lose very much more than you gain should you do so.” Was that simply another veiled threat should it come to battle here, or was there some darker implication in the Admiral’s warning?

The damage reports from Fraser on Rodney finally reached him. There were over 200 casualties, yet the fires had finally been put out. Neither ship could make more than twelve knots, and Nelson’s C turret was out of commission. But beyond that they were both still sea worthy, and their remaining guns were in good order. It would take them some time to come up behind this enemy ship again, but eventually they could throw in with his own fleet and he could squeeze this Geronimo between his fingertips like a bug.

Or could he… Memories of that awful mushroom of seawater and the capsized hull of the American battleship Mississippi glistening in the angry sea like a dead whale still haunted him, and told him that this bug might not be so easily squashed, and might as yet have some considerable bite.

Damn it then, Jack, he anguished. What’s it to be? Did you sail here with the whole of Home Fleet to bandy about like this? The man wanted an island, he said. He just wanted to be left in peace and find his way home. And where was that?

He thought of Nemo coming at last to that Mysterious Island to die an old man, his vengeful sorties against navies of the world now ended. He would not accept internment at a neutral port…Then he thought of Napoleon again and had his answer. Yes! St. Helena! Suppose he offered this man safe passage and escort to St. Helena, a place far enough away from the curious eyes of anyone, to be sure. Yet his ships were already low on fuel and St. Helena was another thousand sea miles to the south. Yet he could transfer fuel to Norfolk and Sheffield, topping them off. That accomplished those two ships would have both the range to serve as escorts, and the speed to serve as a shadow if this ship attempted to slip away.

That thought was a foil opposing his hope in this alternative. If he needed every battleship the Royal Navy could spare here just to have an even chance with this demon, then Norfolk and Sheffield would be no match. They could not prevent this ship from sailing off if it wished. Then he realized it all came down to that one thing this Admiral had argued—trust. He had looked in this man’s eyes and the mysterious and impenetrable riddle had become a human being, just another ordinary man and not a wizard from heaven or a monster from hell. His ship and its weapons might be monstrous, but so were the guns on King George V. Men build these monsters, and it is men who decide whether or not they will be used.

He folded his arms, staring at his battle plots in the chart room, seeing the action unfold in his mind’s eye, wondering which ships would be stricken by those deadly sea rockets, or if the ocean would again be seared and boiled away by another of those terrible atomic weapons. He could probably sink this ship, but a very great many men would die tomorrow if he tried.

He decided.

EPILOGUE

“Ship ahead!” A watch stander called from the weather bridge, pointing off his starboard bow. Captain Clark stood on the flag bridge of the cruiser Sheffield, field glasses at his eyes as he peered at the distant ship.

The word was flashed quickly by lantern and signal flag to their companion, the heavy cruiser Norfolk, steaming a few hundred meters in their wake. From there it was passed again to the distant gray silhouettes of the big battleships farther out to sea. It was here… It was coming through the straits even now. Clark could see it—the white bow wave kicked up by the long, sharp prow, the dark mass behind it, her superstructure climbing up and up, bristling with strange antennae and pale metal domes. The sight of it gave him a chill, for every line and cut of her jib spoke of power, massive and threatening power. He had heard all the rumors about this ship; that it bloodied the noses of both Nelson and Rodney combined!

“Hal-o Mate,” he said aloud to the distant ship. “What are we to do with these six inch popguns if Nelson’s sixteen incher’s weren’t enough?”

He passed the word on to the Signals Lieutenant where he would let Captain Wilson on Norfolk worry about it with his eight inch guns. He was just told to get out in front of the fleet with Shiny Sheff and keep a sharp eye out for this ship at all times, and that is what he would do.