he had other business to attend to. He had to find a way to get off the Rock discreetly, though by normal channels, and then work his way to a secure phone to call the wine dealer in La Concepcion, just north across the demarcation line separating Gibraltar from Spain. He would ask them to deliver a good bottle of Zinfandel to a certain address, which was his code to indicate he, in turn, had a good bottle of information to deliver to his local area handler.
“Svetlana my ass,” he breathed. “He had known Orlov was not what he seemed from the very first moment he spoke to him. He was navy, that much was certain, but there was something very odd about the man. He was an officer, that was also apparent. But where? When? On what ship? The ship had been called Kirov, and that was very amusing as well. That cruiser, he knew, had been trapped in the Gulf Of Riga up north at the outbreak of the war with Germany. It had managed to reach Tallinn and then moved to Leningrad where it had been bottled up ever since behind German minefields, harassed by the Luftwaffe as it tried to use its main guns as artillery supporting the defenders of that beleaguered city.
This Orlov was navy, he thought, but he certainly wasn’t the Captain of the cruiser Kirov. But intelligence had learned of a strange ship at large in the Med between August 11 and 14 last month, and Loban had been curious enough to slip off the Rock and head east, driving along the Spanish coast through Malaga and all the way to Adra and Matagorda on the cape when he heard this ship was heading that way. He had been there in time to see the fireworks of an amazing naval battle off the coast on the night of August 14th, and he had ordered several bottles of Zinfandel the very next day.
For Lieutenant Thomas Loban was a double agent, just another of many who had come out of the hallowed halls of the Cambridge Apostles, and he had been effectively working as a translator for MI6 while also collecting and passing information to the USSR for the last year. This month he had been keen on the trail of a word that had been picked up in the radio stream… Geronimo. Bit by bit, the real Russian Main Intelligence Directorate, the GRU, came to associate the word with a ship, and the ship was soon connected to some real naval chaos that had been underway in the Mediterranean Sea that month. They wanted to know why the British were suddenly so interested in Russian naval activities in the Black Sea, or the presence of any Russian naval personnel in the Med.
Loban told them all about Orlov, and now he thought he might be able to give them a real prize in this catch, and deny the same to the British in one fell swoop. He lit a cigarette as he made his way through the deep tunnel network, pleased with himself. This would likely shake things up a bit in Moscow, he thought, though he did not know just how much. His act of betrayal would lead to a wild hunt that would span thousands of miles, cross continents and long decades yet to come, and the fate of the world would rest on its outcome.
Part III
“It doesn't matter how much, how often, or how closely you keep an eye on things because you can't control them. Sometimes things and people just go. Just like that. Sometimes, people can go missing right before our very eyes.”
Chapter 7
8000 miles and nearly 80 years away another cruiser named Kirov was finally heading home. They had a long voyage, with plenty of time to make the ship as presentable as possible, and Damage Control Chief Byko was kept very busy. As they approached the port Admiral Volsky thought it best to make their presence known, recalling that there had been increasing tension in the Norwegian Sea even before the ship set out for those fateful live fire exercises long weeks ago.
They were followed much of the way home by the American submarine, and Tasarov kept a pair of good ears on the boat the whole while. Volsky had decided to swing north of Hokkaido, and it had been a strange feeling when Nikolin picked up Japanese radio traffic and put it on the speakers. It brought back memories of that harrowing cruise through the Coral Sea, but this was the Japan of 2021. The likes of Isokoru Yamamoto, and men like Hara, Iwabuchi, Hayashi, Sakamoto, and all the others they had faced and fought were now long gone. No D3A1 Dive bombers or B3N2 torpedo planes would be darkening the skies as they approached, and it was a welcome relief.
Their submarine shadow left them as Kirov neared the Japanese mainland, but they noted the Americans now had an old reliable P-3 recon plane up from Misawa Air base to take over the duty. The ship waited until it sailed through the Soya Strait and entered the Sea of Japan before they radioed home on Sept 15th, already relieved that the headlines on the newspapers Fedorov had hidden away had not come to pass. The fuse had not been lit on the war to end all wars, but the powder keg of rising tensions was still a matter of some concern.
Once Admiral Volsky made their presence known, the Russians had their own air recon operation up within the hour, overflying the ship with an old TU-142 Tupolev maritime recon plane, the Bear F/J turboprop. It was escorted by a pair of Mig-31 fighters, which flew low and slow over Kirov’s bow, the crew waving and cheering as they came, the fighters tipping their wings in reply. The pride of the Russian Navy was coming home. Wounded and limping, Kirov was still the most formidable fighting surface ship in the fleet.
“We never thought about the impact the loss of the ship would have on the country,” said Karpov as they watched the planes roar past from the weather deck off the citadel.
“It would be as if the Americans lost one of their big carriers,” said Fedorov. “There’s a lot of national pride wrapped up in this ship.”
“Yes,” said Karpov dryly, “they’re going to love us for about a week. There will be marching bands, a lot of saluting and flag waving, then the questions come.” He realized that they were back in the same old calcified structure of the Navy again. Admiral Boris Abramov commanded here at the Pacific Fleet HQ, but Volsky was to have transferred in to relieve him after the live fire exercises. Kirov was also leaving the cold northern waters of the arctic for warmer climes here, as the Russians were getting ready to commission the second ship of her resurrected class, the Leonid Brezhnev, finally built out from the older Pytor Veliky to take over the mantle of the flagship of the Northern Fleet.
“The Admiral will be happy to hear that there is finally a ship bearing his name,” said Fedorov. “At least his first name.”
“I think he’ll soon have more on his mind that that. Yes, the questions will come soon. Do we have our answers ready, Fedorov?”
“We’ve done our best, Captain. Byko has re-metaled all the 20 millimeter round holes in the superstructure and painted them over good as new. The hull damage we can explain away easily enough as a kick from Orel when she exploded. I’m not as comfortable about the damage to the aft battle bridge, or even the file damage with our missing logs.”
They had decided to try and kill a couple of birds in one throw by saying a KA-40 had been aloft, hovering just above the ship when Orel blew up. The story was that the helo had plunged down onto the aft citadel, her weapons load igniting to cause the extensive damage there. To make it seem convincing, Byko had placed some of the old damaged KA-40 parts there, though they would largely claim that they had taken the long cruise to clean away the remainder of the wreckage. He kept these few mangled parts collected from the real accident on the aft deck as trophies, and hoped they would help explain away the total loss of the ship’s secondary command citadel.
