Three Kings

The Captain stood by his sonar man, thinking the answer to their dilemma might be hidden in that darkness and silence out there, and waiting for Chernov’s keen ears to ferret it out. So now the question was before him.

“What could I do?” Gromyko had asked of Admiral Volsky, even as he asked it of himself again now. What could I do? He knew the answer. Chief Dobrynin had told him this Rod-25 was very stubborn, aging now, but still set in its ways. It insisted on stopping off at the 1940s every time it was used. How would his own engineers know what to do in the reactor room?

“Do not worry,” Dobrynin had told him. “I have every shift recorded on tape, the exact changes I made to the system, the timing, temperature, all the vibrations.”

“But that was on Kirov,” Gromyko had protested. “What makes you think it will work aboard Kazan?”

“Because it already has worked.” Dobrynin had given him a wry smile. “We’ve already visited the 1940s twice!”

Yes we have, thought Gromyko. Now the only question was whether or not they would be making a third visit there, and it was now his to decide. The choice was before him at that very moment, waiting in the silence, in the darkness out there, and he knew what he was going to do.

“Keep listening, Chernov. You have the bridge. Mister Belanov, walk with me please.”

The Captain was heading aft, to the reactor room where his engineers had been working with two men sent over from Kirov, Chief Dobrynin’s minions with recorded digital files and procedures to be used with Rod-25.

“What do you make of this, Belanov?” The Captain wanted to sound out his Starpom before he decided their course.

“That radiation count says everything, sir. It’s certainly not all coming from that volcano.”

“Shall we head for Vladivostok?”

“That would be the logical play.”

“And if we find it blown to hell?”

Belanov had to think about that. It was something he had not considered, a reality that now loomed as a certain threat in his mind. What would they do if that were the case? They were a warship of the Russian Navy, pledged to the defense of their homeland.

“Then we could see about getting some payback, Captain,” he said at last.

Gromyko gave him a grim smile. “What good would that do? A little like poking the embers after the house has burned down.”

“Then what else?” Belanov had not gone beyond this point in his mind. They were to try to get home, and that was what he had his thoughts set on. Now they were here, however, home was nowhere to be found.

“You saw the radiation readings,” said Gromyko. “We can’t even get within 50 meters of the surface in that.”

“What do you figure happened, sir?”

“God only knows. Maybe the Chinese wouldn’t back off. Maybe they lobbed one of those ballistic missiles of theirs into the old Fukushima plant. That would be all it would take to finish off Japan. As for the Americans, I think it was coming to blows with them in any case. If Vladivostok is gone, then that was their doing.

And it was gone.

They spent the next hours making a stealthy approach to the place, creeping up on Naval headquarters at Fokino first and risking a close approach to the narrow bay there. No sign of life could be seen, and no signal came in answer to their coded calls. So they headed east, working their way around the islands at the base of the long peninsula. Gromyko would not risk navigating the narrower waters of the Golden Horn, so they maneuvered to approach the city from the west in Amur Bay.

But the city was not there. Where it once sat glittering on the shore, there was only that darkness and silence now, and the eerie stillness that spoke of death. It was as if the sun had set on the life and world they knew, and would never rise again. Gromyko knew they could spend their days navigating the seas in search of any sign of life.

“Yet we’re just as likely to run into another American boat doing the same thing,” he said to Belanov.

“So what do we do, sir?”

Gromyko gave him a long look, finally telling him what Admiral Volsky had said. “Who knows if they made it back,” he reasoned. “They told me that new control rod was untested. It may not have worked. They could still be right there in 1945 and wondering where the hell we are. Their Chief Engineer was certain that we could at least return there if we ran that procedure again with the reactors.”

“Return? To the 1940s?”

“That seems to be the ticket we’re holding, Belanov.”

“But sir… the men… our wives and families…”

“You think they’re here, alive out there in that radiation?”

Belanov said nothing.

“At least if we do go back, we’ll have clean air and water, and half a chance at life.” Gromyko reasoned it out again, but he knew it was more than that, more than their own fate and the lives of the men aboard Kazan. So he said it, the last part of what Admiral Volsky had whispered to him. “And we would have one more chance to prevent what we just saw,” he said with finality. “One more chance to change things.”

“But sir… We’d end up right in the middle of the Japanese Empire here.”