Men of War (2013) Read Free Page B

place we can go. No one will find us there.”
    Rybakov
lead the way down a dark alley and out along the wharf to where an old rusting
steamer was tied off on a long wooden pier. The two men slipped aboard, two
shadows, laughing as they went, and the Guardia Civil would not find them that
night. They worked their way into the guts of the ship, a tramp steamer out of
Cadiz that was pressed into some very risky service at times. Now it was on a
voyage from Barcelona, stopping in Valencia and Cartagena to pick up cargo, and
bound for Ceuta on the Algerian coast near Gibraltar, before heading for Cadiz
on the Atlantic coast.
    “We
are leaving in the morning, but don’t you worry. Come with us! The captain will
sign you on. They can use a good strong man like you shoveling coal, and I will
show you around Ceuta tomorrow. You want a whore that will fuck your eyes out?
I know just the place, my friend.”
    Ships
like this would hire on vagrant crewmen for such missions, with little asked
and little said. So Orlov signed on as raw bulk muscle, and they put his big
arms and shoulders to good use in the fire room, shoveling coal to feed the old
steam engine. There were five men there, two other Eastern Europeans like
himself, and his new found comrade in crime, Ivan Petrovich Rybakov. They were
all disaffected souls caught up in the dredging nets of the Second World War.
It was no easy life, but it was one way Orlov could finally get out of the city
without having to make an equally hazardous journey overland.
    He
had thought about heading east to Russia, but the prospect of traveling through
occupied France and then most of Europe now under German control was not
encouraging. Perhaps he could loiter in Algeria for a while, jumping ship in
this port Rybakov was talking about and truly sampling the wares in the local
brothels there. Thankfully his ship, Duero would make the day’s journey
without incident.
    Ironically,
Orlov was soon cruising south along the Spanish coast through the very same
waters that Kirov had navigated just a few months earlier. Yet his old
ship, and the life he once had there, were now long gone, lost in the mist of
time. While he wasted away the days in Cartagena, Kirov had fought its
battle in the Med, negotiated safe passage to St. Helena, and then vanished
into the fire of the Pacific. The ship was already forsaken the world of 1942,
and the war that Orlov now found himself struggling to avoid.
    One
day, he knew he would have to get serious about his situation and start using
the incredible knowledge of days to come to better his lot in life. Yet Orlov
was content, for the moment, to drink, and fuck his way along the Spanish
coast, and forget the old life he once knew completely. One day soon I will
start remembering, he thought, and asking questions. Yes, he would start to
remember what the days ahead would hold, and soon, very soon, he would be a
wealthy and powerful man.
    He
was not an educated man—not like Fedorov, who could call up statistics and
names from memory as he lectured everyone else on the ship…. Kirov , the
most powerful ship in the world. It had come to the war by accident, or so
Orlov believed, and they had raised hell wherever they went. He wondered what
had happened to the ship, or if pug faced Nikolin had ever heard the message he
tapped out in Morse one night after breaking into a telegraph station while
drunk in Cartagena. Nikolin, Nikolin, Nikolin…you lose.
    It
was his last, plaintive good-bye to the life he once knew. Yes, they were all a
bunch of losers in his mind now. Let them all go to hell. They could have their
ship and its private war, he had something else, and it was going to make him
the most powerful man in the world. Yes, Orlov was not educated, but he wasn’t
stupid either. He knew that he could never learn the things Fedorov had in his
head, the dates, times, and dimensions of the world ahead. But Kirov’s library had a lot of very useful information in it, and