John Schettler - Devil's Garden

“You are telling me the three of you were all in that boat together and then you saw your comrade disappear?”

“That’s about the size of it.” Sutherland felt like a fool now, but in for a penny, in for a pound.

“You’re certain he did not go overboard? We have had men searching for him for hours, but there’s been no sign.”

“Well…I should like to believe that, sir. Yes, that would make all the sense in the world to me, save for the evidence of my own eyes. I…I was looking right at the man and he simply…well he simply faded away!”

Sergeant Terry raised his eyebrows now, thinking the Lieutenant had finally broken under the stress of all they had been through. Yet Sutherland had been with the Black Watch at Dunkirk. He had been through many missions far more arduous than this one. Was the man daft?

“Did you see this happen as well?” Fedorov asked the Sergeant now, giving him an earnest look.

The translator finished and Sergeant Terry, shook his head. “I was in the cabin keeping an eye on this Orlov fellow, and saw nothing.”

“I see…” Fedorov had a very serious look on his face now. Was this British Lieutenant pulling his leg now, or was he serious? The man seemed quite upset, though he was trying bravely to recover his composure. It was clear to him that he had experienced something that rattled him badly. Could he be telling the truth about the third man? Then he suddenly remembered something that broke the log jam of his thinking. Haselden! He named the man Haselden!

When they first returned to Vladivostok Fedorov spent some time trying to find out what may have changed in the history of WWII as a result of their actions. He had run across that name, but struggled now to remember-yes! He was looking at operations that were supposed to have transpired, and comparing them to his books-the books that had remained aboard Kirov when they shifted. Strangely, they bore the history of the world they had come from, even though copies of those same volumes found elsewhere had changed. Then he remembered it! Operation Agreement! Yes, the operation that had been written up in that article he found in Russia Today. He even remembered the title: ‘British Remember Losses In Agreement Gone Bad.’

Markov had that magazine with him in the operations room of the Primorskiy reactor test center! It went back with him and must have been discovered there where he appeared in 1942, and it clearly recounted an operation the British would conduct the following month. It was this that led him to believe the history was still at risk, subtly changing, and that is what led him to look for any evidence of Orlov in the past. He had found something, and took it to Karpov first. The memory of that meeting in the flag bridge of Kirov returned to him now…

“I’ve been trying to find out what happened to him for a good long while, and I think I may have found a trace of the man in my research last night.”

“You mean in the history books?”

“Of course. Nobody goes through this world without leaving some mark on it. Again, thank God we’re living in the information age and I can call up archival records on the computer. Well I found something. You’ll be amazed. I found that man’s footprints in the history, and by God I think I can figure out where he went after he jumped from that helo.”

“Where? What did you find about him?”

“It seems the British got hold of him and had him at Gibraltar. Then he slipped away. The next fragment I picked up was an entry in this very book.” He held up the new volume of the Chronology Of The Naval War At Sea .

“His name came up in a brief engagement between a Soviet Minesweeping trawler and a German U-boat in the Black Sea. So I followed the breadcrumbs. He was listed as a prisoner and suspected murderer of three NKVD guards in Poti. Then comes the kicker-the British went after him. They mounted a commando raid to try and recapture him. Take a look at this…” He opened to a new bookmark and showed Karpov the Passage: 25 Sept. 1942 — Operation Escapade sends a small commando unit into the Caspian region to look for a suspected Russian agent.

“But it doesn’t say anything about Orlov,” Karpov protested.

“No, the book is very vague, but I found two other sources that give more details. They were after Orlov. It was kept very secret, but I dug things up….”

These were those very same men! These were the men sent on Operation Escapade to find Orlov! Now he remembered who Haselden was, the Captain in charge of the whole mission, and it was his fate that first set him searching through this part of the history. Haselden was supposed to have been on another mission- Operation Agreement , the planned British raid on Tobruk. In fact, he was supposed to have been killed on that mission, but it was cancelled.

My God, thought Fedorov. Haselden was a zombie, the walking dead. He was a perfect example of a man who lived that should have died, and he was reassigned to Operation Escapade to look for Orlov! That change in the history had led him to find evidence of Orlov here in those letters from the dead, the journal entry that enabled him to locate Orlov at Kizlyar. He was astounded at how all these facts twisted round one another, and how all these men were all caught up in the net of mystery now.

He looked at Sutherland, understanding why the man was so ill at ease, and believing that he had, indeed, seen the third man simply vanish-but why? Was it because Haselden had been fated to die all along? Was he deemed expendable in the strange, convoluted accounting logs Mother Time was keeping of these events? Then another thought came to him.

“The third member of your party-the man you called Haselden a moment ago-may I ask how old he was?”

Sergeant Terry gave Fedorov a strange look. “Can’t say as I would even know.”

“Well then…” Fedorov took another tack. “You men seem young, and very fit, not much over twenty if I had to venture a guess.” His eye was very good. Sutherland had been born in 1920, and was only 22 years old in 1942. Sergeant Terry survived the war and was to die at the age of 85 in the year 2006, and so he was just a year younger than Sutherland.

“This may seem an odd question, but was this Haselden your same age?”

“What does that matter,” said Sergeant Terry, thinking this Russian officer was fishing. Sutherland should have kept his mouth zipped tight. What was wrong with the Lieutenant? He gave his companion a stern glance, thinking to buck up his morale.

Fedorov discerned a good deal with that response. Haselden must have been the commanding officer. He had asked Orlov about him earlier, getting a description of the man, and the Chief seemed to think this Haselden was in charge. If he was above the Lieutenant then he would have been a major, or even a Captain by rank. Yes, and he would have been older and more experienced than these two here. If they were in their early twenties, then they were born around 1920. But if Haselden was much older he might have been born… before 1908! What would happen to a man if he tried to shift to a period in time where he already existed as a younger man or child? If Haselden had been born before 1908, which would put him in his later thirties in 1942, he might be an infant or child in the year we find ourselves in now-1908.

Yes! It would be impossible for the man to manifest here in a time where he already existed. He had often wondered about that. What if they shifted to a near past, a time just before they had been born? What would happen to them at that moment of their own birth? Could two versions of the same person co-exist in the same moment? It was a maddening paradox, but he thought he may have discovered the answer-a flat NO! Time would not permit this to happen. Haselden could not shift here with the others if he had already been born before 1908. Sutherland was telling the truth. The man simply vanished during the transition, vanished into the oblivion of paradox.