and Prince Eugen were all still quietly sleeping in their berths. Days later, however, a US coast Guard cutter, Alexander Hamilton, again raised the alarm with a report of a Hipper class cruiser near Newfoundland.
Thinking the Germans might be trying to sneak back to home ports, the US quickly dispatched a new Task Group from Reykjavik built around the battleship New Mexico to block the Denmark Strait. Yet nothing was found, and the watch slowly faded away.
After the war it was learned that the only two German ships that might have been in the area, the commerce raiders Komet and Orion, had already replenished and were nowhere near the sighting locations when the three reports of the suspected “ Hipper class cruiser” ignited this flurry of naval activity. The allied forces did not know it at the time, but the day of the German raider was long over. No German capital ship would ever again break out into the Atlantic to threaten Britain’s vital convoy lifeline. The odd ship was never seen again, and no credible report has ever been put forward to explain the three separate sightings to this day.
Thankfully, nothing more was seen of the new German wonder weapons that year either. Bletchley Park concluded that Germany had been unable to enrich sufficient amounts of fuel to further develop these weapons. Yet the fear that Hitler would again unleash the terrible rockets and bombs kept Allied scientists busy in an all out effort to duplicate the weapon and deploy an atomic bomb, particularly when the V-1 and V-2 rocket bombs began to fall on London again. Each terrible missile saw the higher ups hold their breath, thinking this would be the one to ignite a holocaust in London-but it never came. The American Manhattan Project finished a full year early, in the autumn of the year 1944, and then the bombs fell on Germany instead.
Remembering the fate of the Mississippi, the Wasp, and all those other ships and men who had died with her, President Roosevelt ordered the deployment of the weapon in reprisal that very same year. The city of Hamburg was chosen, it being an important naval facility for the Kriegsmarine, a fitting return, or so the Americans thought, for the bomb the German navy had flung at them years ago.
Allied forces braced themselves for a German counterattack using an atomic weapon, but none came, convincing them that Germany possessed no further weapons of this nature. For her own part, the United States had only one more bomb in inventory, which they dubbed “Fat Man.” Roosevelt then directly warned Hitler that the Allied armies would not hesitate to use further weapons and destroy Berlin unless Germany surrendered. Hitler fled to a secret underground bunker, and saw the destruction of the city before he would countenance surrender. Yet his Generals, seeing the madness that had come upon the world, and their nation, finally prevailed and put an end to the matter. Hitler was assassinated in November of 1944, and Germany formally sued for peace shortly thereafter.
The Allies were on the Rhine, and there would be no “Battle of the Bulge” that December. The Soviets had entered Estonia, Latvia, East Prussia and Hungary, and were reorganizing on the borders of Poland. Roosevelt sent a personal message to Stalin asking him to stop the war. He refused, but settled for Poland before he halted hostilities on the eastern front. The cry “on to Berlin” abated when the Russians realized Berlin was no longer there. The war in Europe ended in late January of 1945.
Yet that early ending changed little else in the long, simmering standoff between the West and the Soviet Union that followed. Soon the Russians had the bomb as well, and both sides stood a long guarded watch on the years ahead, as relations continued to slowly erode between them. This time, however, they did not make it through the minefield of near run military standoffs and nuclear brinksmanship. This time something different happened.
Admiral Volsky, peered at Rodenko’s radar scope, his eyes pursed with concern. All of the contacts they had been tracking were gone on both radar and sonar.
“It could be a system failure, just as before,” Rodenko persisted. “It took us some time to recover full sensor integrity after that first incident.”
“I suggest we get a helicopter up,” said Fedorov, his new position loosening his tongue a bit and prompting him to voice his opinions without reserve. “They can get down to the last plotted positions on these contacts easily enough.”
The Admiral gave the order, and minutes later the KA-226 was heading south. As it did so the communications and telemetry contact weakened with distance, just as before, but they were able to maintain a hold on the craft. The Admiral soon heard what he expected, that there was no sign of the British or American task forces they had been tracking.
“Perhaps they made a rapid withdrawal south,” said Fedorov. “We could come about and steam to Newfoundland. If they are still active in the region we will likely encounter them. In light of the sea effects we encountered again, we must at least determine if our position is stable…In time that is.”
“I want no more fireworks,” said Volsky. “My instincts tell me to turn east into the Atlantic and head for that tropical paradise, but I will indulge you, Mister Fedorov. Bring the ship around and head south again. If the KA-226 has no contacts, have it precede us in the vanguard and overfly this Argentia Bay where Roosevelt and Churchill are supposed to be meeting. Yet at the first sign of a potentially hostile contact, I want that helo to withdraw to the ship at full speed.”
“Aye, sir.”
Nikolin radioed the orders and the helo pushed on ahead. It was not long before they lost radio contact with it, a tense period where Volsky worried that those planes they had seen were still up and about. The minutes stretched on and on, interminable. Then, at just after 17:00 hours, Rodenko picked up the helicopter again on his radar. Soon after it reported in on the radio. Argentia Bay was vacant and empty. The pilot’s voice seemed strained and worried on the radio.
“We overflew St. John’s en route to Argentia,” he said. “There’s signs of severe blast damage, and the whole town had been obliterated-not a single building still standing. We saw nothing moving on the isthmus, and Argentia Bay is completely empty. There are no ships anchored there of any type. We took HD video and can replay the file if you wish, Admiral.”
“ Just tell them to return to the ship. We’ll view the files later.” Volsky looked at Fedorov. “Number One?” The question in his voice was obvious.
Fedorov shook his head. “There is no way the Americans could have sailed off that quickly,” he said. “I believe we have experienced another anomaly, sir. We may have moved in time again.” The words still sounded preposterous as he spoke them, but their experience the last week had opened their minds to the possibility, and it was easier to think and speak of now, yet no less disturbing.
“But we still haven’t answered our last two questions,” said Volsky. “Have we gone further back in time, moved forward? How far? And why is this happening now? There have been many detonations of nuclear devices at sea, and never once have these effects been reported.”
He thought for a moment, remembering what Engineering Chief Dobrynin had told him again. Each time this had happened the ship’s reactors had experienced a strange neutron flux. Could the detonations be triggering this effect? Was it being enhanced or enabled by the ship’s own reactor systems?
A moment of alarm came when Rodenko reported the sudden appearance of surface and air contacts on his screen-yet they vanished seconds later, leading them to believe it was nothing more than a glitch in the equipment.
“Well, sir,” said Fedorov with a shrug. “I suggest we cruise to the American coast, or perhaps Halifax in Nova Scotia. It’s just a day’s cruise away and it is a substantial city. I don’t like what the pilot said about the destruction of St. John. Let us get to a more populous region and do a reconnaissance. And Mister Nikolin should be monitoring all normal radio bands.”
“I have been, sir,” said Nikolin. “I can’t pull in anything-not even on shortwave. I should be able to hear most European stations, and anything broadcasting in the Americas, but I get nothing at all.”
“The signals improved after some time before,” said Fedorov. “Keep listening.”
They sailed south round the cape of Newfoundland, alert for any sign of activity in the sea and sky around them, but saw and heard nothing-no sign of human activity of any kind. The men were tired and hungry, and Volsky began rotating relief shifts at every station, and went so far as to order the ship’s galley to send up food and several pots of good hot coffee. They passed the Gulf of St. Lawrence and headed for the coast of Nova Scotia, making for Halifax. The closer they came, the more edgy the crew seemed to be, though the hot food and coffee helped a great deal.
