Kirov Saga: Armageddon (Kirov Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

let this
decision stand and confirm his rank as Captain. Send him along with Engineering
Chief Dobrynin.”
    “There’s one other thing, sir.” Fedorov looked from the Admiral to
Kamenski now, the light of something very important in his eyes. “On the way
west to find Orlov I discovered something quite alarming.”
    “Go on, Mister Fedorov, you have told us nothing of that journey,
but I assume it was somewhat dangerous. What happened?”
    “We stopped at a small railway in east of Kansk at a place called
Ilanskiy.”
    “Yes, there is a naval arsenal just south of that location,” said
Volsky.
    “Well there is something else there too, Admiral, something very
important.” He went on to describe the inn, the stairway, and the strange
incident that had occurred, along with the meeting with Mironov.”
    “My God,” said Kamenski. “The stairs took you to the year 1908? You
are certain it was Kostrikov?”
    “I was just as shocked as you seem, Director, but it was him. I
looked up photos of his early life, and I never forget a face. I met Sergei
Kirov there in the dining hall, but the really significant thing I discovered
was on that back stairway. Kirov got curious about me, I suppose. He may have
been suspicious of my uniform, and he came up that back stairway. It brought
him from his world of 1908, to the one we were in at that moment, 1942.”
    “Astounding! Then there is some kind of rift or tear in the fabric
of time there,” Kamenski’s face belied that he knew more than he was saying
now, and Fedorov could perceive it.
    “This is how I came to understand it, Director, and I think it all
has something to do with the Tunguska event.”
    “Yes,” said Volsky. “Mister Kamenski and I came to a similar
conclusion. These control rods have materials in them that we now believe
originate from that event. Whatever it was that exploded over the Stony
Tunguska River Valley that day, it has created some very unusual effects.”
    “It may be that this rift in time was not the only one to result from
that event,” said Kamenski quietly.
    “You know of others?”
    The silence after that question was very telling, holding the
answer in the affirmative within its emptiness. “Yes, gentlemen, we know of
others. This one, however, is something new. This we did not know. To
think that it may have existed there on that back stairway is most troubling.
Who may have traversed those stairs in the past, coming and going from one era
to another?”
    “The young woman I met there—I think she was the proprietor’s
daughter—in any case, she told me those stairs were haunted, and she seemed to
fear them.”
    “Perhaps because people may have unknowingly taken that stairway
before, and suddenly appeared in her hotel!” Kamenski had a wry smile on his
face. “But Sergei Kirov! I have lamented his assassination all my life. Who
knows how Russia might have developed had he been elevated to General Secretary
of the party instead of Stalin.”
    Fedorov gave him a furtive glance. “I think I should tell you that
I said something to him that I may now have to regret.”
    “Oh? What was that, young man?”
    “I…well I warned him not to go to St. Petersburg in 1934. I told
him to beware the 30th of December! I know it was foolish, but I just couldn’t
help myself. He was always a hero to me. That is one reason I applied for an
assignment aboard Kirov .”
    Kamenski smiled. “It was called Leningrad when he was killed
there, of course you know that, but it may interest you to know that he was
assassinated on December 1st, and not on the 30th. That was the way it happened
the first time. Then things changed.”
    “What do you mean?” said Volsky. “Are you saying there are two
versions of the event?”
    “Just as there are two dates for the American entry into WWII. Yes,
in another meridian of time Sergie Kirov was assassinated on December 1st. Yet
Mister Fedorov is also correct. The history he knows will have that