John Schettler - Devil's Garden

The sun came, a wan light diffused through the fog, and all that he surmised quickly came to pass. Residents of the city woke up that morning and looked out their windows to see a strange shape darkening the misty the bay. The peered at it as if it had been formed of the vapor and sea itself, a massive ship, bigger than any they had ever seen in the harbor. It dwarfed the armored cruisers that were the last remnants of the once proud Russian Pacific Fleet. Where did it come from? Why was it there?

Karpov waited in the silence, watching from the citadel bridge, rocking back and forth on his heels with obvious amusement. Then, as the light slowly bloomed and restless crowds gathered on the edges of the harbor, he gave the order that all running lights should be put on and the ship’s horn would blast out a greeting. The crowd reaction made him smile, some turning and running away, back into the city, and all their voices rising as they spoke to one another, wondering what this ship could be.

He knew that the mystery of his sudden appearance would serve him well, and he was counting on it to set the tone of his arrival and endow him with an aura of power and mystery. Now it was time for the show. He picked up the bridge phone and called down to the Chief Boson with the order to begin the debarkation ceremony. The ship’s horn sounded once again, then came the shrill high note of the Boson’s whistle. Twenty-five members of the ship’s band marched out onto the long sweeping forward deck and assembled on a special platform they had set up directly above the Moskit-II missile silos. They would be his opening salvo now.

The sight of human beings on the ship, and not monsters from the sea, seemed to calm the crowds for a time. Then Karpov watched as the band struck up the old Russian anthem, its opening chorus being immediately greeted by applause and welcoming shouts from the shoreline. He turned to Rodenko, his eyes bright with the fire of his inner excitement.

“I believe that is my curtain call,” he said. “You have the ship, Mister Rodenko. I will be in constant contact with the bridge via the remote receiver in my coat collar. I expect no difficulties, but remember your briefing.”

Karpov had told him that should any demonstration of the ship’s capabilities be required, he had ordered a Klinok SAM to be manually targeted at the high hills above the city. Should they run into any difficulties ashore, the second Marine squad would come in on the KH-40, sure to shock and amaze the locals to no end.

“I anticipate no trouble, but be prepared should I call. The code will be Lightning , so remember that. This is a ship of war, and we are men of war. Remember that as well.”

“Aye, sir. I relieve you, sir.”

“I stand relieved,” Karpov repeated the familiar ship’s litany for watch standing rotations, then added one thing more with a raised finger. “For the moment…”

He turned and gave one last order. “Let the ship’s log read that Captain Vladimir Karpov disembarked to meet with the Russian delegation at zero eight hundred hours on the 13th day of July, in the year 1908.”

“Aye, aye, sir. Recording log entry as ordered.”

Minutes later Rodenko looked down from the weather deck off the citadel and watched Karpov appear on deck in his dress uniform and officer’s cap, surrounded by the Marine squad honor guard. Their black berets rose proudly as they marched, stiff backed, their pace timed precisely to the beat of a drum, black jack boots polished to a mirror like finish. Each man carried a bayoneted rifle, and the squad leader held a long silver sword, gleaming balefully in the cold morning light. Behind him came the flag bearer, with the Russian Naval Jack snapping proudly in the wind. They had no Imperial flag, so this seemed the best solution. After the humiliating defeat of the Russian Navy at the hands of the Japanese, the Captain thought the Naval ensign would be just the thing to bolster the crowd. The symbolism would be apparent to all those who watched them come, their eyes glazed with awe, jaws slack with fear, surprise and awe. They would be the sword of Mother Russia. They would seem a phalanx of doom as they marched, with the Captain strutting boldly in their midst as commanding officer.

White gloved salutes snapped in the still morning air as the Captain was piped off the ship, the detachment smartly climbing down the ladder to board the boat tied off the port side of the ship. Horns and whistles played a flourish on cue, just as Karpov had ordered. The band had rehearsed well, and now the entire crew turned out in dress uniform, standing to attention on every deck of the ship. As the anthem ended they gave a great hurrah to the Captain as he stepped off the ship.

The band struck up the Imperial anthem a second time as the boat pushed off, the Marines manning oars now instead of using the on-board motors. Karpov did not know the words to the old anthem, if there ever were any, but the new lyrics were fresh in his mind.

Russia — our sacred homeland,

Russia — our beloved country.

A mighty will, great glory —

These are your heritage for all time!

* * *

“Howis we have heard nothing of this?” The Mayor was clearly quite flustered, as much as he was amazed as he stared out the window that morning. The mist was slowly rising to reveal a massive ship, its battlements rising up like the crenellated walls of a fortress, its long foredeck and bow now crowded with officers and sailors, and a full military band. “Not a word; not a whisper of this from St. Petersburg!”

“Yet it must have been sent from St. Petersburg, sir. Where else? It was certainly never a part of the Pacific Fleet.” Tomkin was the Mayor’s chief aide for city administration, a tall thin man with a stiff hat that made him appear taller yet, and always seemed to teeter to one side on his narrow head. His prevailing trait was calm in the face of unrest, a quality that had served him well during these tumultuous times. In the last three years the city had been shelled by the Japanese, up in arms with the incipient revolution in 1905-06 where upstart rebels had actually occupied the Oblast Governor’s residence and presumed to take control of the city’s affairs, and now this…This ship…This enormous thing in the harbor appearing out of the mist like a behemoth that had arisen from the depths of the sea.

Mayor Proshukin was his polar opposite, short rotund, impetuous, easily upset, and prone to worry. He fingered his pocket watch nervously. “Eight ‘o clock. Time we were at the quay to receive this new Viceroy, Tomkin. But I want a telegraph sent to St. Petersburg about this. If I’m to be upstaged by another administrative buffoon from the west, I damn well want to know about it! You would think the Tsar has enough on his hands to worry about without meddling in our affairs here.”

“Well, sir,” said Tomkin quietly. “Perhaps the unsettled nature of our affairs is precisely the reason for this man’s appearance. After all, things have been less than ideal here since the disaster of 1905.”

“Yes, and the ship may have been sent to redress that in some ways. Enormous, isn’t it? The thing is certainly a warship, but where are the big guns, Tomkin? I don’t see any big guns.”

“Perhaps it is merely a large armed ocean liner, sir. There are a few smaller batteries fore and aft.”

“Well those are Russian navy sailors there, are they not?” He snapped his telescope down, setting it on the desk. “Odd uniforms, but they certainly know how to move with military flair. Let’s get down there and meet this gentleman.”

It was so unlike the first meeting of men from two eras on that isolated spike of rock off the southern coast of Spain in 1942. There Admiral Volsky had come with a small party, as inconspicuously as possible, to stand face to face with Admiral John Tovey of the Royal Navy and negotiate a brief peace. In that meeting the Admiral had made every effort to conceal his true identity, and the origins of his ship. Karpov remembered how he fretted aboard Kirov while the Admiral was gone, wishing he could have been part of the meeting.