They could see the line of ten trucks hurrying down the road to the north leaving a wake of dust behind them. Then, to their great surprise, the column stopped briefly, and a moment later the lead truck turned right onto a secondary road heading east off the main track. One by one the ten trucks followed, the last of them stopping and disgorging a fist full of dark coated NKVD men in black Ushankas who fanned out and went to ground. They were soon firing at something to their north and Haselden snapped up his field glasses to get a better look.
“Germans!” he rasped. “Three bloody armored cars and infantry. The road north is cut mates! Sutherland- your map! Where does that east track lead?”
Sutherland was quick to his breast pocket and had the wrinkled map open in a heartbeat. “Christ! That’s our road. Remember we worked our way well south off the road as we approached the city. But that’s it, Captain. Look, it works its way up round this wine country and then picks up the main road east to the coast.”
“Then they’re trapped?”
“No, look here, sir. They can take this track and get round the marshland here to head south. It will take them right on down to Makhachkala again, and from there south to Baku if they have a mind.”
“Well, the Queen’s luck is with us today, lads. We need to get this man before he ends up dead. He won’t be much good to us then.”
“Dead men tell no tales.”
“Right you are, Sutherland.”
Haselden squinted at the map then pointed with a dirty finger. “Here,” he said definitively. “We can work our way through these vineyards and then follow the north bank of this river heading east. That’s bound to be bad ground out near those marshes, and slow going even for those trucks. So if we move quickly we just might be able to get to this bridge before they do.”
“That’s got to be forty kilometers!” Sutherland had a weary look on his face.
“No, a bit more like fifty, so we’ll need a vehicle. If we find anything with wheels that runs we can take this road and cut them off… at Kazgan. It’s our only play.”
“Let’s get to it, sir.” Sergeant Terry was already up and shouldering the PIAT. They had a long road east ahead of them through some very tough country, but the mission was still on.
Chapter 27
Karpov stared at the page Fedorov handed him, still reading, a look of shock and amazement on his face.
“Fedorov, are you reading this? Are you listening? I know you must have spent many long nights in your search. Well here I am! Yes, Gennadi Orlov, the Chief, the one who bruised your cheek that day in the officer’s mess. Here I am at Kizlyar, out here in the middle of nowhere, and back on a truck for Baku. I came to find my grandmother, and to see her in all her innocence and youth before she went north and Commissar Molla put his hands on her, but I was too late. I will find him soon enough, and kill him before he ever gets the chance to set his eyes on her again, but we ran into some trouble. The Germans! Sookin syn!
I’m with Beria’s men, and I don’t think they like my story, or the NKVD badge on my hat. They couldn’t find me in their book of names. So they gave me an interesting choice-either to die as a deserter or return to the work crews at Baku. I chose the latter, and the Germans sent us on our way. Svoloch! Something tells me I’m headed for a good long stay in Bayil. I always did have a Bolshevik heart. It’s not that I am not afraid to die. I worked my ass off in the service because I love my people, my country, my Motherland. I want to tell my comrades in arms that I have never known cowardice or panic. I left you all to find a life here on my own, and one I never could have before. I do not know what may have happened to you and the ship and crew I once served. My dying wish is that you destroy our enemies once and for all. Be heroes, be valiant men of war so that history will remember you as defenders of the Rodina. Should you ever find this, and learn my fate, I hope that you, courageous Russian sailors, will avenge my death.”
— Gennadi Orlov, 30 September, 1942
Karpov folded the paper solemnly, slowly handing it back to Fedorov. “So Orlov finally found his backbone.”
“I found references to that action at Kizlyar, but it wasn’t in our history. Books we might find here today record that the German Sixteenth Motorized Division pushed elements of its reconnaissance battalion toward Kizlyar in late September, 1942. They were after the oil in Baku, of course, but they got stopped-not only there, but elsewhere along the line of the Terek. The action seemed to be thought of as particularly important. It prevented a wide general envelopment of the Terek river line defenses.”
“So they send him off to Baku. Where did you find this letter?”
“The letter? It took a lot of digging, but it turned up on an obscure web site. A fellow named Smerdlov was publishing the last letters from Soviet men and women who died in the war, both on the front and in the prisons and camps. He called it ‘Letters from the Dead.’
“Then this is Orlov’s last letter? It’s over? You mean to say he is already dead?”
“It’s 2021, of course he’s dead. But he was alive at the time he wrote that, in 1942. It could be that Orlov wrote this later in a diary at the work camp, or even in Bayil-that’s the infamous prison on the south bay of the city there, sometimes called Bailkovka. Tens of thousands were shipped off to Siberia during that damn war, but the prison was full in Bayil just the same. It was a miserable place. Did you know that Stalin even served time there in 1908? Poor Orlov…Maybe he died there, maybe not. There’s a lot we still don’t know.”
“Well if he’s dead then Orlov can’t change anything.”
“Think again, Captain. He’s already changed things. The result is what we see outside-the headlines being written for the newscast tonight. This war is coming, as sure as night follows day. The Admiral has been haggling with Moscow, but they’re taking a hard line there, or so I have heard. Here we sit, getting the ship ready for battle again, and if we thought we had trouble before, this fight is going to be the real hell. Did Orlov cause all this? Did we? Or was it meant to happen in any case. We can’t know any of that for sure, but Orlov changed something, just as we did, just as Markov did. There are cracks in the mirror, and before long we won’t be able to see ourselves there any longer. We’ve got to do something about this.”
“Something tells me you have a plan.”
“Look at the date on that letter, Captain. The one thing we do know for sure now is Orlov’s location at a given point in time. He’s at Kizlyar on the 30 September, 1942. He says he was on a truck to Baku, so we have a good fix on his whereabouts.”
“But it isn’t 1942, Fedorov. We’re here in the year 2021!”
“At the moment…” He let that hang there, the implications of what he was saying obvious to them both. But Karpov pushed on that half open door just the same, and heard it squeak with an ominous sound.
“What are you suggesting?”
“You asked what can we do about it.” Fedorov closed his book with a hard thump. “Yes, we can still change things, Captain. We can go and get the man, that’s what we can do. We can find Orlov and bring him back where he belongs-him and that damn computer jacket he took with him. That’s the real threat now and we have the power to change things with Rod-25. And we need to get to him before he ends up in Bayil.”
“My God, Fedorov, your suggesting we pull that hat trick again? With the ship?”
“I have an idea…”
Karpov shook his head, somewhat exasperated. Here he was trying to pull the ship and crew together for imminent war, and now his first officer comes to him with this! Yet even as he thought this he heard the voice of Admiral Volsky in his head: “And one more thing…Fedorov…Listen to him, Captain. Listen to him. He is Starpom this time around and you have the ship, but don’t forget those moments on the bridge when that situation was reversed. Become the same mind and heart together that saw us safely home. Do what you must, but we both know that there is something much greater than the fate of the ship at stake now, something much bigger than our own lives. We are the only ones who know what is coming, Karpov, and fate will never forgive us if we fail her this time.” He could at least listen to what Fedorov was saying. He owed him that much.
“Alright, Fedorov, out with it. What crazy idea do you have this time?”
