John Schettler - Tigers East

One thing or another led Byrne to that railway inn, and it was he who led Volkov back to 1908. The dining room they found themselves in when they made that final descent was obviously the same room he had been in before. Byrne could tell by the shattered windows from that terrible blast, and the amber glow that was still illuminating the room. Yet his assailant seemed very confused and surprised. The bodies of the three men Volkov had murdered so violently were nowhere to be found.

Byrne could feel his captor’s hand tighten painfully on his shoulder. They moved to the front desk, and the stranger looked over everything very carefully. No one was there, but he saw the guest register open on the desk, a pen there as if it had been dropped at a moment’s notice, and squinted at the scrawled handwriting. Byrne knew his story would be vindicated, for he could see where he had signed his own name there, right along with the names of the German race team when they had arrived.

“Koeppen,” said the stranger. “The thirtieth of June, oh eight? The year is obviously wrong. 2008?”

“One of the contestants,” said Byrne, glomming on to the information as if to buttress his story with this strange and dangerous looking man with a gun.

“Contestants?”

“In the Great Auto Race, sir. The race I am here to report on.”

“What are you talking about, you fool?”

The stranger gave him an odd look, then scanned the front desk area, seeming more confused with each passing moment.

“Where is everyone?” he said, his eyes dark and dangerous.

“Probably out near the tracks, sir, where I should be. The Protos is leaving this morning. That’s the German team’s car. I was just running upstairs to fetch my notebook when I found the door locked on the upper landing and began knocking to see if I could gain access. Then you appeared with that other older man, and… well, I’m very confused, sir. Are you with Mironov?”

“What? Mironov? I am with the Russian Naval Intelligence, and I have had more than enough of this nonsense. Is this Mironov the associate you spoke of earlier?”

Byrne followed what the man said as best he could, in spite of the fact that his Russian was limited. Yet he heard enough to realize this man was an intelligence officer, and Mironov’s warning about the Tsar’s secret police, the Okhrana, rose as a caution in his mind now. “He was just another boarder,” he said, not knowing what else to tell this dangerous man. “I had breakfast with him. I thought perhaps that you were with his party.”

Now the man peered outside. “Through that door,” he said gruffly, nudging Byrne out. They emerged to find the northeastern sky still aglow with a strange light, for there had been some tremendous explosion there and the whole taiga forest was set aflame. There was still a distant rumble of thunder in the air, as though from a cannonade, or more explosions.

“My God,” the man said as he stared at the sky. “They’ve finally done it,” he breathed. “It’s begun.”

Byrne had no idea what the man was talking about. He seemed to be reading some meaning in that terrible glow on the horizon, but the Things he said next made no sense.

“Alright,” said Volkov. “Your story pans out. Get on with your business. But see that?” The man pointed. “The war has started, and if you have any sense in your head you will get away from here as fast as you can. There’s a big naval weapons arsenal south of here, and an airfield at Kansk to the west. They’ll certainly be targeted, so you had better head east. I must find my men. What could have happened to them?” The man seemed to say that more to himself than to Byrne, who nodded, grateful that he was set free, and thinking only of getting away from this man.

He turned heading towards the railway yard to see if the train had arrived. At that moment it was still at Kansk to the west, and would not continue on to Ilanskiy until the next day. So Byrne wasn’t going to get anywhere that day, war or no war. What did this strange man mean by that remark about the war—Naval Weapons Arsenal? Airfield? Orville and Wilbur Wright had only just made the first flight in a rickety flying machine a little over five years ago. Such craft existed, but they were mostly experimental, and the airships developed by Count Zeppelin never came here, so there was nothing that might pass for an airfield at Kansk that he knew of. He had stopped there briefly when the train last brought him here before getting off at Ilanskiy. He sighed, thinking he might as well try to find Mironov again, and warn him of what had happened to him. That strange man had to be Okhrana, which means the other fellow named Fedorov might be the same. First, he decided to go back to his room to look for his belongings, only this time he took the main stairway up, as he noticed that a very nervous looking innkeeper had closed the lower door to the back stairway off the dining room and latched it with a padlock.

“Sir,” he asked, “will the train be in this morning?”

“After that?” said the innkeeper, motioning to the red glow outside while sweeping up the broken glass by the windows. “Not likely,” he said gruffly.

“There was trouble here,” Byrne ventured. “A bit of murder and mayhem; strange characters everywhere. You found the bodies?” He could see no blood on the floor or carpet.

“Bodies? What are you talking about?”

“Never mind,” said Byrne, still very confused. The man acted as though his only concern was the broken window. “I’ll be in my room,” he said. “It looks as though the German team will be staying here another night as well. Good day sir, if it could possibly be redeemed after a morning like this.”

Byrne went up to room 214, as much to gather his wits as his belongings. There would be quite a bit of commotion about the inn that day, with several visitors getting off Train 92 and taking carriages on the muddy roads all the way to Ilanskiy seeking lodging. They had come to see the race, though they were late, and when they heard the German team was still at Ilanskiy, they came to make good their effort.

The following day there would be more than stray guests off that train. Something would loom low on the horizon from the northeast, where the dull glow of burning fire still lit on that distant edge of the wilderness. Byrne would see it, just after dawn, rising up in the deep crimson light, a great silver-grey whale in the sky, soon backlit by the sun. A Zeppelin, he thought, amazed that such a craft would be here. Then came the wrenching sound of another explosion, and there was fire in the sky again where the airship had been, and the sound of something crashing down to the earth. Frightened guests came running from their rooms, thinking this was yet another terrible red dawn, as the day before, and hearing the sound of booming explosions yet again.

Byrne was one of them, rushing down the main stairway and reaching the doorway there just in time to bump right into a man he immediately recognized. There were two other hard looking men with him in soldier’s uniforms, one brandishing a dangerous looking weapon.

It was Fedorov, with the implacable Sergeant Troyak, and Orlov in his wake. There was a look of despair on Fedorov’s face, his eyes wet and glassy, and with a desperate, almost vacant look in them. Symenko, with all his crew on the Irkutsk, had just met the wired fate set off by Fedorov’s order transmitted to Zykov—Downfall. The sound of those thermobaric rounds exploding, and the demolitions Zykov’s men would carry out in the wreckage, would be reported again by the locals as that same strange artillery fire they had heard the previous days.

For Fedorov, each sharp report was scoring a mark on his soul, and the worst of it was still before him. Then, with a sudden awareness of recollection, he knew who he had just bumped into—the reporter! Now he had to find Mironov.