make him want to dig deeper.”
“Medical records…” Volsky thought about that. “What would he want with medical records of the men we lost?”
There was a silence at the table, and then Karpov put his napkin down and spoke. “We may have a problem here, Admiral. I received a communication from the Naval Personnel Records Bureau. It was addressed to me personally, and came in through Nikolin’s board, properly coded, so that makes it an order.”
“What did they want?” Volsky had been so busy facilitating Dobrynin’s project and conferring with Abramov that he had been out of the loop on ship’s matters.
“They wanted me to transfer any and all information from ship’s records on the men we lost. I told them that data was wiped out when the computers were damaged in the accident, but they mentioned hard files on three men. These were the men in the aft citadel when it got hit, and being Junior Grade Lieutenants or higher, they had to submit a file to Zolkin when they signed on. The Doctor overlooked these records when we purged our digital systems. Volkov found them.”
“So what is the problem?” Volsky did not understand.
“The problem is that the Personnel Division has no other information on these men. They say they have no record of them ever being assigned to Kirov. In fact, they say they have no record of them at all.”
“That’s ridiculous. That was Denikin, Krasnov and Rykov. I selected all three for their assignment here and got them set up in the battle bridge to complete their training for regular rotation onto the main bridge. Now I’ll be writing the letters to their family. What do they mean, no records?”
“It’s not just those three sir. They have nothing on any of the men we lost. Inspector Kapustin and his little wolf hound Volkov have been looking over the list of the entire ship’s compliment and verifying background checks on every man with Naval Intelligence.”
“Background checks?” Volsky seemed upset now.
“Yes, sir. I think they may suspect sabotage as a possible reason for some of the damage we sustained. Put that next to the fact that there is still a low simmer of talk in the ranks about what happened in the Atlantic, and this situation could get ugly very soon. You know they’re going to check the lock box on the special warheads, and verify all three are still in the magazine with Martinov.”
“I’ve considered that,” said Volsky heavily. “I suppose I can take it upon myself and say that I ordered the number ten MOS-III missile fired as part of our exercises, but that would be most irregular. A nuclear weapon is never used in such scenarios. Never. To say I ordered it would be to pit my present rank and authority against the entire Naval Board in Moscow, and they won’t like it. Suchkov is already hollering for my head on a platter. It would be just the thing he needs to turn a few more heads in his direction.”
“Forgive me again, Admiral. This is of course all my fault.”
“We both know it, Karpov. No need to go over that again.”
“Then also forgive what I will say next. I didn’t rise through the ranks to a Captaincy aboard the fleet’s flagship by being a choir boy. I fought hard to get this position, and I know just how men like this Kapustin and Volkov think. I was a conniving, back stabbing, son-of-a bitch back then. I’ve seen things differently now after what we’ve been through, but if it comes down to Volkov or me, I’ll know what to do about it, rest assured.”
“This sort of infighting in the ranks has always been distasteful, Karpov, but I understand what you are saying. Yes, I suppose we can back Volkov down, but Kapustin is going to write the final report. Admiral Abramov has been somewhat sympathetic, and he seems to think Volkov is my main worry at the moment. I did not correct him, but I will tell you both now that it’s Kapustin. Volkov is the front man. He will do the pushing and prodding and digging, but Kapustin writes the report. He makes the recommendations. They will discover that we’re missing one of our nuclear eggs, and we’ll have to answer for it.”
“I have a possible solution, sir. I can tell you what I would do, or rather what the man I once was would do. In truth, I will also have to admit I still am that man. That same old black shark still circles in my soul, and if I let it take charge it would have come up with the simplest possible solution-blame it on a matoc. Say a man selected the wrong warhead. Isn’t that what happened on Orel?”
“We don’t really know,” said Volsky. “I understand what you are saying, Karpov, but it’s rather low.”
“Of course it is. I was a man of few scruples.”
“But you and I know this won’t be so easy. No Able Seaman is going to have access to one of the special warheads. It would have to come from Martinov, and be mounted under his direct supervision. The number ten silo is also sealed and has multiple fail safe guards on it. How do you explain that away? Then we get to the matter of a command level key being required to arm and fire the missile, and we both know what happened there. No. This will not be easily foisted off as incompetence. No matoc could make that series of errors. It won’t do, nor would I blame any innocent man on this ship in the matter, living or dead.”
“Then I will tell you next what this new Karpov would do-he would simply stand up to Kapustin and Volkov and take full responsibility for the whole incident.”
“Very noble of you,” said Volsky. “Yes, you could tell them you ordered Martinov to mount the warheads, and then you could tell them that it was your mistake as Bridge Tactical Officer, eh? But what about the key around your neck, and this one here around mine? Are you just going to tell them you decided you wanted to test a nuclear warhead while I was sleeping? Why? It is never done. It is completely unheard of, and you will lose your command, your rank, and may even be dismissed from the service.”
“I’ve already lost my command and rank once over the matter,” said Karpov. “The second time should be easier.”
“But don’t you understand?” Volsky held out an open palm as he explained. “Your action in defense of the ship, in a real combat scenario, is one thing. But remember, they must never know this ship ever fired a single round in anger. What would we have been firing at, eh? Try to stack that cup on the top of the plates and the whole thing comes tumbling down. The notion that we simply wanted to test a warhead won’t fly either. What do I tell Kapustin then-that we were firing at the American navy in 1941?”
“Of course not, Admiral, but I think this is our only solution. I’ll take the blame. It’s mine and it is only right that I should pay for it. I gave the order to Martinov, told him to reset the Coded Switch Set Controller, and I fired the MOS-III. Tell them I was convinced a real test fire was necessary, that I had asked for permission to do so and it was denied, in fact expressly forbidden, and then I’ll tell them I took it upon myself to countermand those orders while you were indisposed. That’s what happened. It’s our only way out of this mess.”
Now Karpov’s mind was truly working from within his old rotten center, where scheming and subterfuge were the order of the day. He knew men like Kapustin and Volkov, and he knew they were going to dig, and dig until they found something, and he explained it that way to the Admiral now, in the cold logic of the world he had fought his way through successfully all these many years.
“We have to give them something, sir. Give a dog his bone. Otherwise they will dig until they find one. Right now they are very suspicious. They are looking for possible sabotage. They can smell that something is wrong here, and these are a pair of bloodhounds. They want blood, Admiral. If we make it seem that our cover-up has been designed to hide what I did, then it just may divert them. I can tell you right now that if Volkov gets wind of it, he’ll rub his palms together and hump my ass for all he’s worth. Don’t you see? If we give them something, improbable as it may seem, it could be the only thing that stops them from discovering the real impossible truth.”
Volsky stared down at his Chinese food and then rubbed his weary brow, thinking. He looked at Karpov. “I see the logic of what you are suggesting, but you know what it means for your career. It’s going to raise a stink, one way or another, but I suppose it may be our only way out of this.”
Fedorov had been listening, with some anguish, to the whole conversation, and now he spoke up. “I hate to say it, Admiral, but Captain Karpov’s head may not even be enough to satisfy these men if they discover what I think they may in the next eight hours.”
“Discover what, Fedorov?”
“The records of the thirty-six men on the list of casualties they got from Doctor Zolkin were not destroyed by the accident as we claim, nor were they misplaced by the Naval Personnel Division. I think they’re going to discover that those men never existed.”
Volsky gave him an incredulous look. “Never existed?”
“Don’t you understand? Those men boarded the ship in Severomorsk and came from the homeland we left all those weeks ago, but this is a different world now. We changed things. In this world those men might not have
