John Schettler - Kirov II - Cauldron of Fire

In the distance he could see the whitewashed stone lighthouse that marked the entrance to the straits. Built in the 1800s, it sat on a high cliff and towered over the rocky coastline below, where squadrons of sea birds soared in from the restless ocean, gliding over the stony shore. The wind was up, whipping the wave tops out in the straits, and he could look across and see the hazy silhouette of Jebel Musa rising on the coast of Spanish Morocco in the distance.

Volsky’s boat had come in on the Mediterranean side of the island with his small detachment that included Fedorov, Nikolin as translator, and the redoubtable Kandemir Troyak with two of his best Marines. Admiral Tovey’s launch had landed on the Atlantic coast on far side of the islands, and they would meet here, men of two different eras standing in the shadow of all this history, the legacy of mariners, sailors and soldiers that had occupied this tiny demarcation point in the long stream of time.

They saw Admiral Tovey’s detachment approaching from the northwest, making their way slowly along the rocky shore. The Admiral stood tall in his dark navy blue uniform, his deportment clearly marking him as much as his uniform and cap as a man of authority. Admiral Volsky waited for him at a point he deemed to be the thin borderline between the ocean and the inland sea, a fitting place, he thought, for the meeting of two minds. There were six men in the British party as well, one clearly come from the Admiral’s staff, his uniform crisp and proper, then another seaman in common dungarees and sweats, with three more men at arms to match his own. As they approached Volsky heard one of his Marines shift his automatic weapon to a ready position, and he turned, gesturing with his palm for the man to stand down. Troyak glared at the Marine, who quickly assumed a position at ease, lowering his weapon.

The British party came up, stopping about thirty paces off, a mixture of curiosity and caution in their eyes. Tovey indicated that his armed escorts should stand where they were, and he tapped the shoulder of his Chief of Staff Denny and the Able Seaman who would serve as their translator, leading them forward with a steady, measured pace. For his part, Volsky turned to Fedorov and Nikolin with a wink, and then stepped forward to greet the British, a noticeable limp still evident as he favored his bandaged right leg. He stopped, taking in the man before him now, noting Tovey’s thin nose and narrow eyes beneath his well grayed hair.

Fedorov stood just a pace behind him, his eyes filled with awe and admiration as he stared at Tovey, a man with whom he had spent many long hours in his mind, within the history books he so loved. It was as if a living legend was before him now, yet flesh and blood, not the small black and white photos he would stare at to try and see into the man’s mind. Here he was, Admiral of the Home Fleet!

Volsky extended his hand, his eyes warming as he greeted this fellow officer and denizen of the high seas. Tovey took the man’s big hand, listening as Volsky spoke first, with Nikolin quickly translating what he said.

“My admiral says that, as it is impossible to get any sleep with all these guns and rockets and torpedoes flying off, he thought it might be best to have a little talk and see if we could calm things down before dinner.”

The remark brought a smile to Tovey’s face, softening the hard lines of his taught cheeks and easing the tension inherent in the situation. So here was his modern day Captain Nemo, human after all, he thought to himself, a hundred questions in his mind. But which to ask first? Politeness was always best, and he introduced himself with a tip of his cap. “I heartily agree, sir. I am Admiral John Tovey, Commander of the British Home Fleet, Royal Navy.” The Able Seaman translated slowly, and Volsky nodded. Nikolin was to speak up if he heard anything mistranslated, but all was well.

“You will forgive me, Admiral, if I do not introduce myself beyond saying that I, too, am a commander of a proud fleet, and so we stand as equals here, at the edge of these two seas, and hopefully to find a better way to resolve our differences without further bloodshed. As you can see, I have a bit of a limp today, from a fragment of shrapnel that found me while I was climbing a ladder and decided to bite my leg. So I know only too well what can happen when men speak first with the weapons they command, and not their wits instead.” Nikolin’s voice echoed Volsky’s, the Able Seaman listening, and satisfied that all was translated correctly.

“My apologies, Admiral,” said Tovey. “It’s just that your ship has made its way into a war zone, and has been taken as hostile from the moment it was first encountered. The attacks made on numerous Royal Navy ships did little to dissuade us from that conclusion.”

“That is understandable,” said Volsky. “But wrong. I must tell you that it was never my intention to involve my ship or my crew in battle with your navy. Yet one thing leads to another, does it not? Particularly at sea, when faced with uncertainty and driven by the need to defend your ship, and your country, from all harm.”

“Then I’m to understand that you now wish to claim that everything that has transpired these last days had been an exercise of self defense?”

“That is so,” said Volsky, his eyes trying to convey his sincerity.

“In defense of what country, may I ask?”

“You may not. The answer would not mean anything, and it would not help us resolve the issue before us now.”

That confused more than it helped, but Tovey pressed on, edging out on a limb he had been climbing for so very many long months, ever since those first rockets branded his ship, and he saw that awful mushroom cloud of sea water towering over the cold North Atlantic.

“May I ask the Admiral if it is true that our ships and planes have met once before in this war, a year ago to be more precise, in the waters southwest of Iceland?”

Volsky shrugged. “Yes, you may ask it, and you may know it as well without the question. But I think it best we confine our chat to what lies ahead now, Admiral, and not what we have left behind us. Nothing that has happened can be undone—or at least that is something I once believed. I am not so sure any longer. But I will tell you that what we decide here today may have a grave impact on days that lie ahead, and more than either you or I can fathom at this moment.”

Was the man being deliberately evasive, Tovey wondered? Yet he seems sincere. I can see it in his eyes, and hear it in his tone of voice. Yet who is he? Where has he come from? What is this dreadful Nautilus of a ship he commands with weapons the like of which this world has never seen?

“Then it was your ship that engaged the Royal Navy a year ago? Well now it is I who must ask your forbearance sir, but this is incomprehensible to us. How is it possible that we now find you here, in these waters, and yet have not had the ghost of a whisper of you, your ship, or these terrible weapons you possess, not in all the world for a whole long year? Your ship is not a submarine like the German U-Boats which use the swift currents in these straits to drift silently into the inland sea, unseen. You could not have passed Gibraltar without our knowing about it, and for that matter unchallenged. Nor could you have entered via the Suez Canal. Your presence here is therefore a matter of grave concern, and utterly confounding.”

“Believe me when I say this, Admiral, but I am as much bewildered by these questions as you are. Yet I must be frank with you, sir. I do not wish to speak of who and what we are, or where we have come from, or how we came to be here. Yes, I know these questions beg answers, but the less that is said about them, the better. You may come to your own conclusions, I suppose. First off, you have found a young Able Seaman here who speaks our mother tongue.” He let his eye rest on Tovey’s, noting the man’s reaction as he continued. “And from this you may surmise that we are a Russian ship and crew, but I must tell you that Joseph Stalin back in Moscow will have no inkling of us either—no knowledge whatsoever of our presence here, and he would have these very same questions for us if this were Murmansk and we were standing at the edge of the Kara Sea. We do not now sail in his name or serve the interests of the Soviet state he commands.”