list,” said Kapustin.
“Yes,” Volkov put in. “I had to haggle with that doctor to even get the list!”
“Let me ask you something, Inspector General. I don’t suppose you bothered to check on anything in the ship’s library while you were aboard Kirov.”
“Library? You mean the books? I was there to count men and missiles, not books, Pavel.”
“Of course. But I am willing to bet there were books in that library when that ship left Severomorsk that are not there now tonight as it leaves Vladivostok. Did you not find it even passing strange that all the ship’s logs and records were mysteriously damaged by this accident, but not the ship’s fire control systems and communications? They all just had a flutter and now they work fine again? Did you bother to confiscate any hard drives from the ship’s computer to see if they had been tampered with?”
“That thought occurred to me, but there was very little time with this business brewing up in the Pacific. The damage control teams were working all over the ship to get it ready for operations again. I couldn’t start ripping computers apart. The IT personnel said they had restored those drives and had vital ship information re-written to them.”
“How convenient. And then your time ran out.” Kamenski finished his friend’s next thought.
“I assure you that I pressed on this matter very firmly.”
“It was the ship’s Captain,” said Volkov. “He was an obstruction from the first moment we set foot aboard Kirov. In fact, he flatly refused to answer our questions about these missing men, not to mention the missing nuclear warhead! He said it was none of our business! Can you imagine that? The effrontery of the man.”
Kapustin held up a hand as if to calm his angry assistant. “Karpov made it seem as though the ship was on some very classified mission.”
“It very well may have been on such a mission.”
“He implied that, Pavel. You do not know everything-this is what Karpov said to me. I believe they were trying to cover up something related to those thirty-six missing men. Could Kirov have been on a black mission, perhaps to insert clandestine agents somewhere before this world goes to hell again? This is what I came to believe, and so I closed the book on my investigation for the moment. Yet I kept a watchful eye just the same.”
“You were wise to do so, Gerasim. Yet given the present situation with Kirov out to sea again there will not be much more you can do. So I have some advice for you now. Let the matter go.”
“Let the matter go? How am I supposed to explain these discrepancies-the missing men, the missing warhead, this silly old letter from a dingy storage bin?”
“You can’t explain them at the moment, so you must delay your final report. You’re a clever man, Gerasim. You can bury your report under a mile of paperwork if you so choose. Simply mark the investigation as being held in abeyance due to the fleet’s emergency deployment. The answers to your questions may still be aboard that ship, but it has sailed to off to war. So let the matter rest, just as you decided earlier.”
Kapustin shrugged, then his features softened and he nodded at his long time friend in agreement. Volkov was clearly not happy, however, still straining at the leash emotionally, his face a clear story to be read by the other two men.
Kamenski took another sip of tea and turned to Volkov, noting his energy, and the restrained urgency of the man. Then he decided something inwardly, and spoke again.
“Mister Volkov, I think it would be good if you arrange to have some men at the airport right away. Find out where that container is headed. Perhaps your missing warhead is there, yes? Put a couple of good men on it, very discretely. This Fedorov will have to get to Kizlyar by one means or another. He may be at the airport as well, but then again… I think you should take a long train ride. Stop at every terminal between here and Kizlyar. Ask questions. For all we know this Starpom may be on the Trans-Siberian rail at this very moment. He will be clever as well, but you must follow him like a good shadow. Yes?”
“Rely on me, sir.”
“Excellent… In fact I think you should leave at once. There may be no time to lose in this matter.”
“Very well, sir,” said Volkov. “I will take care of everything. If this Fedorov is on a plane or train heading west, we’ll find him, you can rest assured.”
“Find him and follow him, Captain, but be very clever-very discrete. Then report back to me. Understood? Report to no one else in this matter. If anyone questions you simply tell them Kamenski sent you. That will settle it.”
“Of course, sir.”
Volkov stood up with renewed energy, excused himself, and went quickly down the stairs, a little too loudly for Kamenski’s liking, but soon they heard the front door close and the two men were alone. Kamenski got up, walking to the library wall to take out a book, and then he closed the library door before returning to his desk.
“That was just to get rid of Volkov,” he said quietly. “That man is wired to tightly, Gerasim. You should be very careful with him. I think you should send him off on another assignment soon. Send him to Omsk or Novosibirsk to work on the Ballistic Missile inventories or something. For the moment I think he will be well occupied. A good long ride on the Tran-Siberian rail might keep him busy for a while. He’s dangerous, understand?”
“Very well, Pavel. He does get on my nerves at times. Perhaps you are correct. But what about this situation with Kirov? Do you really think I should drop the matter? Something is going on here. What could it be? These dates in 1942 on that letter. This must be code, yes?”
“Perhaps…perhaps not.”
“What do you mean, perhaps not? If Fedorov is on that train Volkov will get to him in short order, and we’ll soon find out.”
“Oh, he’s probably on the train alright,” said Kamenski, “but I don’t think Volkov will find him.” He leaned back, sipping his tea. “I’m going to confide in you now, my friend. This is another reason why I wanted to get Volkov on his way. Very few men alive today will know what I am about to tell you.” He gestured to the many volumes in the book cases of the library. “As you can see, I do a lot of reading and research. Quite a lot for these old eyes. Well now… what I am about to tell you may surprise you, even shock you. You may be tempted to pass it off as the senility of an aging man, but you would be wrong to think this. Yes, I forget where I lay my reading glasses on occasion, but my mind is still very sharp.” He tapped his forehead with a finger.
“I have a particular interest in naval history, and I am quite fond of this book, for example.” He pointed to a thick hard bound volume of the Chronology of the Naval War at Sea. “How to put this…” Kamenski thought for a moment. “Well, my friend, suppose you had a favorite book, or perhaps even a favorite movie or song. You may have read it many times, seen it many times, or hummed that old tune in your head a thousand times. Then one day you decide to reach for your book to look over a favorite chapter, and you find it strangely different. The scene you had thought to read about was not there, and more than that, other things happen in the story that you cannot recall at all! There you sit waiting for your favorite part of the movie, and it never comes. There you sit humming that tune in your head and when you finally put the song on the stereo player, it is…different, changed. In fact in parts it is now completely unfamiliar.”
“I understand, Pavel, but what are you getting at?”
“Well you might be somewhat upset, to say the least, if you ever did find that your favorite books or movies and songs had changed. It would bother you to no end, yes? And then your friends would probably convince you that you just had that old tune wrong in your head all those years, or that you simply forgot that part of the story in your favorite book. What is the harm, eh?” He reached for his tea, taking a very long sip before he continued.
“Now then, I’m afraid my research leaves me very little time for stories and movies, but I do spend a good deal of time in books like that one.” He pointed at the Naval Chronology. “Imagine my chagrin one day when I pick up this volume and look up a reference I was very certain about to check on some detail-and find that the passage no longer exists! There it was in my head, clear as a bell. I had read it just that same afternoon. Then I go back to check on a minor detail and it is nowhere to be found. So I check other reference books, and to my great surprise, none of them mentions this incident. Well now you might begin to think yourself a crazy man indeed,” he sighed.
“Gerasim…It is one thing to find notes in a song out of order, or even to be surprised that a character in a book you were so sure of was simply not in that favorite story of yours. But when your history books start to misbehave in this manner, then you take real notice. Yes? Then you sit up late at night with that dusty old volume
