Men of War (2013) (30 page)

“Not
easy to get men out there, is it,” he said aloud now to Lieutenant David
Sutherland. “What do they bloody well expect us to do about it now?”

“Easy
does it, Jock.” That was Haselden’s handle with the men. “They must know what
they’re about. Word is that Fleming is behind this one.”

“Fleming?
I thought he was working in Madrid with the Golden Eyes now that
Rushbrooke
replaced Godfrey as head of the Naval
Intelligence Division.”

“He’s
still in Room 39,” Sutherland took a long draw on his pipe now, still staring
at a map he had been studying for some time. “Still answers as Seventeen F,
though anyone caught saying that outside of a secure room like this would have
his balls boiled.”

“Yes,
well what has Seventeen got on the stove for us, Sutherland? We were all set
for this raid on Tobruk.”

“You
weren’t the only one put off,” Sutherland pointed a long thin finger at Haselden
now. “My Operation Angelo has also been canceled. We were going to hop out to
Rhodes and visit Jerry airfields there, but that’s gone down the tubes as
well.”

“Something
tells me there’s an ill wind blowing, Sutherland. What’s up with all these big
operations being canceled? They were going to cross the Channel Coast last
month from what I’ve heard, and that was called off at the last minute too.”

“Ours
is not to reason why, Jock. Ours is but to do and die. They pulled me right out
of final planning for this Rhodes operation and sent me over here.”

“Looks
to me like Seventeen is pulling together a fairly interesting team for this
one, whatever it turns out to be. There’s me with my desert chops, and then you
with all your experience with the Special Boat Service. They’re also sending me
Sergeant Terry and Corporal Severn—both good men on a long reconnaissance
operation like this. But where are we headed? Where’s Kizlyar?”

“That’s
what I’ve been trying to figure out,” Sutherland squinted at his map again.
“Seventeen must have really cooked up something very bizarre this time.”

“I
have indeed,” came a voice, and the two men spun around to see a stocky man in
khaki shorts and desert-
camo
top standing in the
doorframe. A floppy canvas hat hid his brown curly hair, and his eyes seemed to
search the two men now, sounding them out as he walked slowly into the room. It
was Seventeen F, Fleming himself. It would be years before he would use his
wartime experience to write his James Bond novels, but for now he was writing
the script for a new operation.

“I’m
the man you’ve been talking about,” he said quietly. “And yes, we’ve got
something really interesting for you, gentlemen, and no one is going to cancel
the party this time if I can help it.”

“Well,
Commander, you move like a cat,” said Haselden. “I can see why they look for
your sort in the darker corners of Whitehall.”

“Yes,”
said Fleming getting a whiff of Sutherland’s pipe. It smelled good, and he
reached into his own shirt pocket for a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Sutherland
was quick to offer his Ronson lighter.

“The
business at hand, gentlemen, does indeed come from one of those very dark
corners. So dark, in fact that even my sort stub their toes and bump their
noses trying to get around the place. Now then…Only a very few men will ever
know what I am about to tell you next. You may have heard the rumors, caught
the occasional reference whispered by the men with gold hatbands and thick cuff
stripes, and felt the distinct tinge of heat that soon found any man who was
too loose on the matter. I’m talking about
Geronimo.”

The
silence invaded the space, with an uneasiness that was clearly evident, for
both Haselden and Sutherland had heard the word whispered about, though they
did not know what it referred to—only that it was very hush, hush, and the sort
of thing that would land a man in hot water if he ever spoke openly about it.
To hear the word spoken so brazenly by this man from the cubby holes of Naval
Intelligence in Whitehall was somewhat of a shock.

Fleming
saw the look of bemused surprise on the faces of the other men, and pressed his
advantage. You don’t walk in on men like this without an edge, he knew, and he
had the one thing they lusted after more than anything
else—information—knowledge of the missions they were set to perform. Yes, they
were good soldiers, both of them, which is why Fleming had selected these men,
but they often fought in the darkness of unknowing as well as the thickness of
the night when they landed from submarines on a moonless sea and slipped ashore
on black rubber rafts. More often than not the real aim of the mission they
were tasked to perform was on a ‘need to know only basis.’ Today Fleming
decided they needed to know.

“Gentlemen,
you’ve heard that word, and now I’m to tell you what it’s about.
Geronimo
is a ship—a very dangerous ship. And on that ship there are men—very dangerous
men. One of these men slipped ashore near Cartagena last month, and was trying
to work his way west out into the Atlantic on a steamer bound for Cadiz. A
German mine and a sharp eyed Royal Navy destroyer captain conspired to bring
this man in, and we had him under the Rock of Gibraltar for a time… then he
gave
us
the slip. We don’t know how he did it, or who helped him make
good his getaway, but we will soon enough. Leave that bit to me. Now we know
this man may have headed east through Istanbul on a Turkish freighter, and then
slipped into the Black Sea on a Soviet trawler. To be brief about it, we want
him back, and you two gentlemen are going to go after him and bring him back…”
He paused, taking a long puff of his cigarette, and sizing the two men up
again. “That failing,” he said with finality, “you will die trying.”

Chapter 23

In
September
of 1942 the German Army was reaching its high water mark in the
war. The Allied forces had been pushed back, slowly strengthening their
resistance like a bow string pulled taut, and soon the arrows of their long
counteroffensive would begin in earnest. But that month the outcome of the war
was by no means certain, and the world still sat in breathless fear that the
mighty Wehrmacht could not be stopped. Rommel had pushed the British all the
way to the Egyptian border and was haggling for supplies to continue his
offensive. The German Sixth Army under Paulus was pushing into the streets of
Stalingrad, while further south Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army and the 17th Army
surged out from Rostov into the Caucasus. “If I do not get the oil of the
Caucasus,” said the fuehrer, “then the war is lost.”

The
drive South into the Caucasus was primarily intended to secure vital resources,
particularly the oil the German Army would need to feed its growing war
machine. As the Russian Army fell back in disarray, the Germans quickly overran
and captured oil fields at
Maikop
, and pushed on
towards even bigger fields at Grozny. Yet the real prize lay further south and
east along the Caspian coast in the major oil centers around Baku.

In
that critical month, the German generals met with Hitler and presented him with
a great decorated cake in the shape of the Caucasus. Smiling ear to ear, the
Fuehrer was quick to cut what he believed to be the very best piece of the cake
for himself, where the cook had clearly written in large bold chocolate
letters: B A K U.

The
question now in Hitler's mind was what to do with Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army? It
had originally been assigned to the drive on Stalingrad, but then swung south,
crossing the Don River and positioning itself in a perfect place to move into
the Caucasus at the extreme left of Kleist's main drive south. If Hitler turned
it north again, along the southern bank of the Don towards Stalingrad, there
was a chance he could quickly overwhelmed the Soviet defense there and secure
the city he had coveted for so long. But if Hoth were unleashed and turned
south, Hitler might have his cake and eat it too in the vital drive to secure
the oil fields of Baku.

The
history Fedorov knew so well saw the bulk of Hoth’s forces move north to
Stalingrad where they became embroiled in the bitter street fighting there,
which eventually ended in disaster. This time, however, the long lines of
Lend-Lease trucks pouring through the Persian Corridor convinced Hitler that he
had to seal this supply route off and secure the oil once and for all. Hoth
went south, and he led his advance with two fast and capable divisions, the
29th Motorized with a good nucleus of armor in its Panzer Regiment, and the
fast 16th Motorized Division, known as the Greyhounds. Now their sleek gray
armored cars surged in the vanguard, swinging around Stavropol, south to
Mineralne
Vody
, enveloping
Pyatigorsk
and
Georgiyevsk
and
pushing north of
Mozdok
.

There,
along the banks of the fast flowing river Terek, the Russians had prepared
their final defensive line in a desperate attempt to halt the German advance.
Meanwhile, further South in Baku, a quietly controlled panic had seen sixty
percent of the oil activity halted, the wells capped, stores of oil poured into
cisterns and floating oil tanks, equipment crated, and all of it being moved by
any means possible across the Caspian Sea into Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan
where it was hoped it could be used to find oil somewhere else.

If
Hitler took the place, he would have the oil there, but the equipment used to
find and drill for it would be long gone. At this point, however, the Germans
knew nothing of this massive movement, just one of many major logistical feats
pulled off by the Russians during the war. That September Hitler cut his cake,
gleefully smiling at the chocolate letters on his white frosting as they
spelled out Baku. The tide of war continued south and east toward the Caspian
Sea, sweeping up tens of thousands as it advanced, and it would soon ensnare
the life and fate of yet another man, a very important man named Gennadi Orlov.

After
its duel with
U-24
, the Russian minesweeping trawler
T-492
put
into the port at Poti and Orlov disembarked under the escort of the three
remaining NKVD guards. That night they stayed in a small hotel near the port
while the guards waited for telephone call with instructions on what to do with
the man. But none of the three would live out the night. Orlov no longer had
his favorite Glock pistol, but the three men were all armed, giving him ample
means of getting control of the situation and making a clean escape.

He
had come at last to the belly of the Old Soviet Union, and thought it best to
become someone more imposing than a tramp deck hand. So he donned a warmer
leather jacket from one of the NKVD guards over his own lighter computer
jacket, and also took a good sheep’s wool Ushanka with hammer and sickle badge
indicating he was now a captain in the NKVD. It kept people away from him, and
meant he would not be asked too many questions.

He
was quick to the train station, his pockets filled with rubles taken from the
guards, and soon on his way, east through the dark night of Georgia and on into
Azerbaijan. He rode the train all the way through
Tblisi
,
breathing deeply and smelling the scent of home there. His grandmother had a
farm in Azerbaijan, and some inner compass yearning for home was leading him
there like a salmon swimming upstream to find its spawning ground.

 The
route took him south to
Yevlakh
, past the tall ice
and snow covered peaks of the Caucasus Mountains. There he saw high Mount Elbrus,
where the German mountain troops had climbed to the summit to surprise Hitler
by planting the Nazi flag atop Europe's highest peak just a few weeks earlier.
The Fuehrer was not amused. In fact he exploded with rage when he learned of
the incident, for his mind had been set on securing the vital ports along the
Black Sea coast so that his navy there could gain control and move supplies
from the Crimea.

Hitler
ranted for some time, exclaiming that: “Those crazy mountain climbers belong
before a court-martial!” He viewed their feat as mere grandstanding, and of no
military value whatsoever, and he was correct. Yet the loss of twenty-three men
detached of mountain troops for a photo opportunity that had backfired on them
did little to slow the German advance north of the jagged snow covered peaks.
Hoth was making very good progress with his fast motorized divisions, and soon
news that he had enveloped Grozny and unhinged the Russian defense along the
Terek River line brought a smile to the Fuehrer’s weary face.

There,
well south of the Caucasus mountains where the German Operation Edelweiss was
reaching its high water mark, Orlov left the train behind to head up into the
foothills for his grandmother’s old farm. He slipped away into the countryside,
traveling mostly by night, sleeping mostly by day and haunting small hamlets
for food, water and shelter. Occasionally he would make his way into a town for
better fare, or a woman if one caught his eye. And yes, there was always a need
for a good drink and some idle chat with a bar fellow when he could find one.
Money was never a problem. When he expended his cash from the guards, he simply
took more from any unsuspecting drifter he encountered on the road.

In
time he found himself up in the southern foothills of the mountains in
Azerbaijan and slowly made his way northwest of Baku. He thought he would visit
his grandmother first, quietly, hoping to find and watch her from the shadows,
for she would just be a young woman of eighteen years. In fact, she would not
meet his grandfather for some years yet, and Orlov spent more than one long
night staring up at the stars and wondering whether they might both survive the
war. What would happen to him if his grandfather got swept away into the chaos
at Stalingrad and a stray bullet took his life? Orlov's own father had not been
born to the couple until 1957. If either his grandmother or grandfather died
this time around would he simply vanish, just as the ship had vanished, and
drift away like a vapor on the mist of time?