John Schettler - Crescendo of Doom

“I understand,” she said softly. “Well I must tell you that I have spent a good part of my life studying these events as well, Captain Fedorov. Some of the things you have just revealed are most startling, things I never knew, and I knew a great deal. I knew about Tunguska, for one thing. Yes. The events related to us by your Director Kamenski were well known to me—the nuclear testing, the exotic effects of those detonations, and the odd connection all of this had to that event above the Stony Tunguska River.”

“You knew of this?” said Fedorov. “How?”

“Because the good Admiral Tovey here got hold of this business long ago, in 1942, and he and his associate, a Mister Alan Turing, came to some very interesting conclusions about your ship in time. Yes, in time, that is one of those little puns of destiny I suppose.”

Now it was Elena’s turn to confess her crimes, telling them of the foundation of the Watch, the discoveries they made, and how they eventually came to trace the threads of the mystery back to Tunguska.

“Well,” said Tovey. “Here I sit feeling as though another man has made off with my entire life! You all speak of things I have done, things I will do, as though they have already happened. And yet, even as you do so, I find myself strangely possessed by the clawing inner realization that it is all true. I remember it now, Mister Fedorov. Yes, and it was in 1908 that I first set eyes on that ship of yours. In fact, I believe I fought my first battle against it all those many years ago, a battle I thought we had won, though we never did come to any satisfactory conclusion about what had happened to that ship.”

He told them of Tushima, and the battle he had fought. “I was a very young man then, and young men go from one moment to the next, with scarcely any worry over what they leave behind. I left that battle behind me, I suppose. At least I tried. I moved on in the ranks, busy with one thing after another, and let it drift away, but I have been strangely haunted by it ever since, and particularly so when your ship returned here last June. I knew I had seen it before, but my mind was telling me it could not possibly have been the ship I fought back then, in 1908, the year this thing came from the sky. What does it all mean?”

“As you can see, Admiral,” said Elena, “We are as perplexed about it as you might be.”

“Yes? Well it seems we all have a piece of this puzzle in our pockets. I sit here knowing that I never laid eyes on you, Captain Fedorov, or Admiral Volsky. And yet, deep down, I feel I met you both before, in a year I have not yet even lived! It’s maddening, and I would certify it all as such if not for that unaccountable evidence presented to me by our Mister Turing. You sit there and lay out chapter and verse about my collusion with Turing, Miss Fairchild, and the foundation of this group you call the Watch. Yet I only just met the man some months ago, and damn if that wasn’t the subject of that very meeting—this Russian ship, Geronimo , and those file boxes Turing had discovered in the archive room at Bletchley Park. It is utterly confounding!”

“As is this whole story about that stairway at Ilanskiy,” said Elena. “Well, as you say, Admiral, I have something in my pocket as well. It’s time I pulled my piece of the puzzle out and put it on the table here. Perhaps we can all find how it connects to everything else we’ve been discussing.”

“I would be very eager to hear your story, Miss Fairchild,” said Fedorov. “May I ask you to begin by first telling me how your ship came to be here?”

“Yes. You were not at that meeting in Alexandria when I met your Director Kamenski—a most interesting man. Well, it seems we have a little magic box ourselves, one full of unexpected tricks, just like that control rod of yours.” She told Fedorov of the box, or the device she had aboard Argos Fire , which he found quite surprising.

“And you believe it was responsible for displacing your ship in time? How?”

“I know it was responsible. I was given specific orders to go and fetch the damn thing, from a very special site, right here in the Mediterranean, albeit in our time, the year 2021.”

“Orders? From who?”

Now Elena had to smile. “Forgive me if this does nothing but confuse the issue, but in point of fact, from this gentleman right here, Admiral John Tovey.”

“Yes,” said Tovey. “I’ve been presented evidence of my complicity in that crime, but I must confess I recall nothing whatsoever about it, and plead innocence.”

Now Elena told Fedorov of the note that had been found in the box from Delphi, and related it to the long history of her position as a Watchstander in the organization Tovey founded. Fedorov thought he had been the only one to make these revelations, and see the shocked expressions on the faces of those taken into his confidence, yet now he was learning something here that put him in that very same position.

“But how did it move your ship in time?”

“I can tell you what I think, though I have not taken a sledge hammer to the thing to find out. Alright, we both know that something very odd happened there at Tunguska in 1908. Whatever it was, left behind remnants, fragments, residue in the terrain of that area. Your Director Kamenski told us of this at Alexandria, and confirmed what we took long years of intelligence work to find out. This residue, whatever it is, was most likely in that control rod of yours. So it is my suspicion that it may also be within that device.”

Yes, thought Fedorov. It was just what he had suspected. A Tunguska fragment. Something about that exotic material had the ability to open time. This was what he suspected about the Devil’s Teardrop, and now it may also be in this device. But Orlov’s find was mere coincidence, something he just stumbled upon that ended up having an effect on time, and this history, in an alarming and significant way. It brought Brigadier Kinlan’s brigade through to this year, and that was changing everything, at least insofar as the history of the campaign in North Africa was concerned. But the box—the device—this was something more. It was not a random fragment, but something deliberately engineered…

That thought brought back the words of Chief Dobrynin. He had asserted the very same thing concerning the Devil’s Teardrop! He said he believed it was too perfect to be a random element. It was engineered .” His eyes widened, and he spoke quickly to Nikolin, eager to get the words out.

“We have a man aboard our ship who might be able to answer your questions concerning that box,” said Fedorov. “He is our Chief Engineer, and very familiar with the material we are now discussing. But one more question please. You believe this box was deliberately placed there, at Delphi, by this group you speak of—the Watch—the group that has been awaiting the return of our ship?”

“The note I found inside argues to that,” said Elena.

“Then they made this box?” Fedorov blurted that out in English, as best he could, eager to get on with things.

“That is one possible interpretation,” said Elena. “But there’s more.” Yes, there was always more, and now she told him her real suspicion. “Someone may have given the Watch that device, or simply placed it there themselves.”

“Someone else? Who could do this?”

Elena shrugged, deciding that she could safely set her reservations aside with this man. His sincerity was palpable here. He wants nothing more than to mend the damage he believes he has done, she thought. So then I suppose he needs to know. There I was getting miffed about that submarine. I owe him the truth, as least as far as I can see it. So she told him the other incredible tale, of what the Watch had learned in monitoring that strange signal traffic their ships were receiving at sea.