Volsky entered with two other men, one the young Lieutenant who would serve as his translator, and the other an older man in civilian dress, bespectacled, wizen with age, yet obviously carrying the wisdom those years had brought to him. He seemed like an amiable old grandfather, but Tovey could see there was something more to the man, a layer beneath that outer shell that spoke of something much deeper. The men all exchanged hearty handshakes, and Nikolin was pleased that Tovey remembered his name as well, taking his seat next to Admiral Volsky. There were still two more place settings at the table, and Nikolin wondered who was missing. He found out soon after when, to his surprise, a woman entered the stateroom, accompanied by a man in a dress white naval uniform, clearly a Captain by rank and bearing.
Cunningham looked up, also raising an eyebrow when he saw Elena Fairchild enter the room. Then he assumed this must be part of the diplomatic mission from Greece, though it seemed somewhat unusual. His reflex for propriety and decorum soon asserted itself, and he stood, as did the other men, politely greeting the woman as she was introduced.
“Miss Elena Fairchild,” said Tovey. “Allow me to welcome you aboard HMS Invincible. Please meet Admiral Andrew Cunningham, Commander of our Mediterranean Fleet and Admiral Leonid Volsky, a special representative of the Russian Navy.”
Fairchild gave Volsky a searching look, then quickly introduced Captain Gordon MacRae as they all took their seats. She had seen the long, dangerous lines of the battlecruiser Kirov, cruising on the far side of the British battleship, and it raised her hackles. There it was, Geronimo, the phantom ship that had bedeviled the British Empire, and led to the foundation of the Watch. When she first received the emergency message from the Russians, she had been shocked to learn the ship was here. From all she knew in her induction as a member of the Watch, Kirov had first appeared in the Norwegian Sea, in late July of 1941. Yet they had determined it to be January of 1941, six months before Kirov supposedly appeared!
The request for parley had been odd enough, but given that the two ships were both on a razor’s edge, it was a welcome reprieve, and much better than a scenario where their missiles would speak to one another in a battle at sea. The news that Admiral Tovey was on the line had been the next shock: “All is well, Argos Fire. All friends here. We request a rendezvous in the Gulf of Chania. Over.” So here she was, and that meeting was now about to convene.
As she seated herself, she gave both Tovey and Volsky a lingering look. There he was, the legend in the flesh, Admiral John Tovey, founding father of the Watch. And there he was, the terror of all their nightmares, the Captain Nemo that had been the object of all their early operations. This man and his ship had been tearing through the history like a sharp knife, and yet, as she looked at Volsky, he did not seem a man who could carry any of the sinister thoughts she had associated with him in her mind. This was obviously a part of the story she knew nothing about. The calm presence of these two men here together, the obvious demeanor of friendship and warmth between them… well it seemed most irregular to her, most unexpected, and she was now wondering how all this had come about.
“Well then,” Tovey began, thinking this to be a most challenging meeting. He had sat through sessions in the Admiralty and War Cabinet, and knew how turbulent the waters could be, but this was something else. Here was a woman, who seemed to know him, or at least know of him, and he had the feeling that she was looking on him with a certain awe and reverence, which he did not quite fathom. And here was Admiral Volsky, who had never met this woman before, though he seemed to know of her ship. They were two birds of a feather in one respect, both impossibly here from that far distant future, but yet, his observant eye perceived some tension between them, and uncertainty. And finally there was Admiral Cunningham, completely in the dark about all of this, and blind to everything before him. He looked as bemused as a boy freshly assigned to his first mission at sea. How would all these loose ends be tied into the same knot here?
