“I have a plan when it comes time to bring Wavell over the line,” said Volsky. “You have done well, Fedorov. It must have been a very difficult situation for you. I can only imagine your surprise, though we have had more than our fair share of that on this journey. A full British mechanized brigade?” Volsky shook his head. “Amazing. How did this happen?”
“I don’t know, sir. But it may have had something to do with this.” He reached in his pocket and produced the Devil’s Teardrop, setting it quietly on the briefing table in the plot room where they were seated. “Orlov found this on that mission to Siberia. They were off course for a time, and came to the Stony Tunguska River. He says they were investigating a sighting on the ground, and encountered a very strange artifact there that seemed to unnerve the whole away team. It was just laying on the tundra.”
Kamenski looked at the object over the top of his glasses, his cinder brows raising as he did so. “Very symmetrical… And you say Orlov said it reacted to the event that sent this British force here? Very interesting. The Stony Tunguska… This is obviously no coincidence. We already know that materials from that region found their way into that control rod that moved this entire ship.”
“What could it be?”
“Possibly a fragment of the object that fell. There is still much debate over what that actually was. One researcher, Menotti Galli, had a theory that tiny particles of the object might be stuck in the resin of the trees on the perimeter of the fall site. They did find stony particles in the trees, but not that size, and this… why, it looks metallic. It’s completely smooth, and note how it reflects the light, almost as if it were polished. Did Orlov do this?
“Not that I’m aware of. He says he just had it in his pocket. He was going to ask what Dobrynin thought about it, and I had that same idea. So I went by engineering right after we landed, and another odd thing happened. There was a problem with the reactors.”
This got Volsky’s attention. “What kind of problem, he asked?”
“It happened just as I arrived-some kind of flux event, and Dobrynin was not happy, so I left him to his work.”
“Very curious,” said Volsky. He reached for the intercom panel on the briefing table and punched up engineering.
“Chief Dobrynin, please come to the briefing room. This is the Admiral.” He looked at Fedorov. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“You suspect something?” said Kamenski.
“We have had these flux events with the reactors before,” Volsky explained. “They always seemed to be associated with the time displacements. In fact, that was one of the clues that led us to realize our own reactors were involved in the process. Well… The Chief has a lot of ladders to climb. Let us turn to other matters for a moment. You say that O’Connor has been briefed, and this new British General has accepted his situation. Good enough. When we got the news of Rommel’s retreat, the Admirals were overjoyed. Now we know why! This is the force on land we needed, Fedorov. It is a most significant turn of events.”
“And a very dangerous one,” said Fedorov. “It was an agonizing decision, but I could see no other way. Kinlan had to know everything, and O’Connor as well. The British leadership here cannot be left in the dark.”
“Agreed,” said Volsky. ‘This is why we decided Admiral Tovey had to be let in on our little secret. Well, it may comfort you to know that we have also briefed Admiral Cunningham. So I will enlist their support concerning the matter of Wavell.”
Now he told Fedorov of the strange appearance of the Argos Fire, and Kamenski listened quietly, a light kindling in his eye as Volsky related the details of the meeting with Fairchild and MacRae, and the battles they fought with the Axis fleets. “They did not like our missiles,” he finished, but I will say this as well-I do not like their air power. Eventually we will run out of SAMs, and after that the situation looks very different for us. They can continue to build their planes, but we cannot build more missiles.”
“Kinlan will soon face this same situation,” said Fedorov. “Our power is waning, but we are still strong enough to make a difference. We stopped Rommel’s advance into Egypt, and you have seriously hurt the enemy fleets.”
