Ironfall

Chapter 31

General Vlasov clearly perceived the peril he was in, and the realization was grim. His 2nd Shock Army was strung out on too wide a frontage, with half south of the Donets, and the rest on the north bank. He received word to consolidate everything he could near Balakleya, and that is what he did, pressed hard the entire time by Hausser’s 2nd SS. Only when he had managed to compress his army to a 12-kilometer front did he begin to think he might hold, but he was still underestimating the power of the iron that was about to fall upon him now. (See map for the battle of Volkov Yar.)

Das Reich had formed a screening line, pressing the northeast end of Vlasov’s line, which was now anchored on the Donets. Behind this front, Eicke had crossed the river and he now had the entire 3rd SS tight as a coiled spring and ready to attack at dawn on the 18th. Das Reich engaged the line and then Totenkopf swung around the right flank of that division like a halfback looking for a hole to exploit. That maneuver would force Vlasov to refuse his left slightly, but his confidence grew with the arrival of Popov’s 7th and 10th Tank Corps to his rear.

As Popov neared the front line, he could hear the sound of the fighting off to the northeast. That was Grossdeutschland Division, already engaging Malinovsky’s 2nd Motor Rifle Division. The battle lines would now stretch out in that direction, all the way to the road and rail line into Chuguyev. The hissing launch of 82mm rockets told him that his 7th Tank Corps was announcing its presence, and giving challenge. Then he heard the Super Heavy Howitzers of Malinovsky’s Group, and took heart.

The two sides would meet like armored knights, each thundering towards the other bearing long, lethal lances. It would be the largest clash of armored forces thus far in the war, four German Panzer Divisions, with two more Panzergrenadier Divisions as the 29th arrived. The Russians fielded two Tank Corps, a Mech Corps and two Motor Rifle Divisions in this initial clash, but General Kuznetsov’s 1st Guards Army was already hastening to the battle with another Mech and Tank Corps.

For the first time, Manstein and Steiner hit the enemy line with all three division in one coordinated hammer blow. A company of heavy Lions had been parceled out to each of the three other divisions in 57th Panzer Korps, but that still left over 60 Lions on the line for this assault, each with 88mm guns. The SS Divisions also had companies of Tigers organic to their Panzer regiments. The tanks lined up, fearsome shadows of steel in the early dawn, their long, dangerous gun barrels looking like evil lances. Then a harsh command was given, and one by one the Lions fired, the shots streaking like hot bolts of lava across the deadly field between the two sides.

T-34’s were blasted at long range, some having their turrets blown into the bloody dawn. Halftracks of the mechanized infantry were seared and scalded with fire, and dark, pallid smoke loomed over the scene. Then came the awful din of massed artillery, regiment after regiment pouring on the fire, thick and heavy.

It was Ironfall, burning lead from the sky, a rain of molten steel, and it fell heaviest on the dismounted motorized infantry, which had no time to prepare positions or dig in. Then the German tanks gunned their heavy engines, growling Lions at Dawn, and the big cats charged. The only thing missing were the trumpets, for this was the equivalent of the finest heavy cavalry in the world raging forward over the sodden ground to tear into the lines of their enemy.

Popov’s 7th Tank Corps had been hit only on the left side, but that was enough to savage a motor rifle battalion and send the tank destroyers defending with it into retreat. The 10th Tank Corps was on the right, seeing German armored cars and halftracks from Das Reich emerge through the heavy smoke, and the order was given to attack. The entire weight of that Corps would fall on the breach, where a battalion of Panzergrenadiers was advancing with a company of armored cars in the van. It was going to be more than enough to stop that little breakthrough, but the real problem was to the north.

It was Malinovsky’s 2nd Motor Rifle Division that took the brunt of the attack by 3rd SS and Grossdeutschland Division, with five of its nine battalions shattered and falling back towards Volkov Yar. The entire line buckled and withered away, but the Russians were desperately trying to reorganize their broken battalions further back. NKVD Colonels stood defiantly, legs wide and firing pistols into the air to stem the ebb of the infantry. Some ignored them completely, for that pistol seemed a small and harmless thing compared to the rolling thunder of the German attack.

General Ermakov of the 2nd Motor Rifle Division knew his line had been shattered and pushed back. He had reformed a thin front, the troops man-handling their 57mm AT guns into position, only to find those shells unable to penetrate the frontal armor of the heavy German tanks. On came the tide of steel and iron, falling on Ermakov’s division for a second attack.

The Germans were relentless, panzers firing as they advanced, the infantry crouching in halftracks behind that wall of Lions and Tigers. They pushed another two kilometers into the mid-afternoon, until they were driving the Russians back to the southern edge of Volkov Yar. In places the line had been pushed all the way back to the Russian artillery positions, and the crews were desperately limbering up the guns to get them north out of harm’s way. Some, unable to get the guns hitched up, simply lowered the barrels and began to fire.

Clearly beaten, Ermakov was about to order a general retreat, when up came a runner through the hovelled streets of Volkov Yar. Reinforcements had arrived from Chuguyev. It was General Kuznetsov’s 1st Guard Tank Corps, forming its brigades a kilometer north of the town. Zhukov was risking everything here in a desperate attempt to stop the German counteroffensive.

This was the heavy Armored division in Kuznetsov’s Army, and it had four tank brigades instead of three, with two of them heavy tanks, including two dozen SK-I, the “Sergei Kirov” model tank that looked very much like the one that had been named for Josef Stalin. With a 100mm BS-3 main gun main gun, it was a match for anything the Germans had, and now all four brigades surged forward in a mad tank rush. The action would include another 66 T-34’s, some with the 85mm gun, 35 heavy KV-2’s, and 36 lighter T-60 and T-70 tanks.

The word was shouted forward: “Kuznetsov! Kuznetsov is here!” and the Russian infantry began to reform their lines. They had been pushed back a full five kilometers, but there was fire and steel behind them now, and they would turn and fight. They watched at the T-34’s raced past their positions, then were up off the ground in a crouching run behind the fast moving tanks. Some leapt atop a passing KV-2 moving slow enough for them to do so, and shouting in Russian so the tank crews would know they had been mounted by friendly infantry.

It was Grossdeutschland Division that took on the brunt of this new attack, its tanks and infantry grinding forward against the oncoming T-34s. The Lions halted briefly, their big turrets training and firing, the hot shells lancing out and slamming against the frontal armor of those big KV-2’s. One hit sent three soldiers who had picked the wrong tank to ride to a quick death.

Tanks were being hit, slewing off the muddy slopes, burning, the hot molten steel running down the sides of penetrated turrets like metal blood. The Germans stormed into Volkov Yar with the 2nd Grenadier Battalion of Grossdeutschland Division only to be counterattacked on three sides by motor rifle troops heavily supported by those big KV-2’s. They would be pushed out at a little after midnight on the 18th, the rubble of the town fought over with the ferocity of any street fight in Volgograd.

Then the second of Kuznetsov’s two mobile Corps arrived to join the battle against the lines of 3rd SS. 2nd Guard Mech was bringing nine battalions of tough troops in halftracks, with two more tank brigades amounting to 55 heavy tanks, KV-2, KV-85 and SK-I models, the best the Russians had. Yet they were shocked to find that their T-34-76 could no longer penetrate the frontal armor of those Lions at any decent range, and it became necessary to maneuver for side or rear shots to have a chance of knocking one out.

That prospect was made more difficult by the fact that the Germans were now restructuring the TO & E of all their independent armor brigades and tracked PzJager units. They were adding in a full company of Schwere Assault troops in halftracks, with three scout Leopards, three SdKfz 251/21’s for AA support, mobile mortars and even a section of SdKfz 250/8 halftracks mounting a 7.5cm gun. That infantry protected the sides and rear, watching for enemy tanks maneuvering to gain advantage, and the Lion’s quick turning turret would then engage.

The 85mm gun had a better chance at a direct kill, but it had to get to the German tanks first, and the long range of those 88’s made that a risky proposition. The KV-2 stood out on the field like a lumbering war elephant, easy to spot and hit. Its frontal armor was no more than 75mm on the hull, sides and turret, and the main gun was a 152mm howitzer, so this was basically an infantry support tank, a water buffalo, and no real match for a tank killer like the Lion.

The Russians had mass, but did not yet have the equipment they needed to offset and prevail over the great leap in tank technology the Lion represented. Only the SK-I model tank was found to have an equal chance when coming face to face with a Lion or Tiger. The first in the series were mounting the 100mm BS-3 main gun, but a newer version was already in the works that would upgrade to a 122mm gun. The smaller gun was actually better at armor penetration in testing, but quantities of that weapon were very limited.

The Russians thought they had a real tank killer now, particularly against the German Panther, where they found that they could penetrate the enemy armor at 1000 meters, while the Panther’s 75mm gun had to get with 600 meters to have a chance against the new Soviet tank. The Lion, however, was better armored than the Panther, and it was even odds when encountering an SK-I-100. The real problem now was that the Germans were fielding large numbers of Lions, all being up gunned from 75mm to the 88 in these elite divisions, but the SK-I was only available in very limited numbers.

The arrival of all these reinforcements brought the German advance to a halt, as both sides continued to slug it out, with the line rippling with small advances and retreats all along the front. But something was happening near Kharkov that would now present Georgie Zhukov with a most uncomfortable decision.

It was Knobelsdorff and his 48th Panzer Korps. The withdrawal of Kuznetzov’s heavy armor and mech corps had forced the Russians to suspend the advance of 3rd Shock Army and readjust their line near Kharkov to cover ground formerly held by the mech units. This gave the Germans the time they needed to regroup their own panzer divisions behind the front.

Sepp Dietrich was able to pull out of the head knocking battle he had been fighting with 3rd Guards Army, and assemble his division near Rogan, on the main road to Kharkov. Then Knobelsdorff had two excellent divisions in 6th and 11th Panzer. He concentrated them as one mailed fist, and attacked towards Chuguyev. Balck achieved a clear breakthrough just north of the Udy River at Temovoye, with Hunersdorff’s 6th Panzer attacking a little north. Together the two divisions pinched off a three-kilometer segment of the enemy front, which was now completely encircled….

“There,” said Zeitzler. “The situation in the north has changed, and Knobelsdorff is now restoring order near Kharkov; driving the enemy back from the city.” He turned to Hitler, gesturing with the latest position updates from the front.

“The enemy mobile groups are withdrawing from this deep salient. Heinrici and Model are now advancing their respective flanks to suture up this wound, and 22nd Panzer will do the stitching. I expect that sector will stabilize by midnight tonight, and then we can plan the relief of Belgorod.”

“Excellent,” said Hitler. “But just remember—ground lost is not always easy to regain. You have given up much more than Belgorod. Our lines were on the Oskol River and the Psel when all this began. Can you tell me they will be there when it ends?”

There was clearly an admonishing tone in Hitler’s voice, for he resented any backward step, the loss of terrain being equated with defeat in his mind.

“Look at the 305th at Prokhorovka,” he said. “They are still holding like a rock. Once we retake Belgorod, we must see if we can get to them. I will personally decorate every man in that division. That is backbone, General Zeitzler. And that is what I want to see in my Generals. You must have the nerve to order the troops to stand and fight when necessary. Why should I have to lecture you on such rudimentary defensive tactics?”

Because they are rudimentary, thought Zeitzler, though he said nothing. We will get Belgorod back only if the enemy chooses to give it to us, for there are five strong mobile corps withdrawing from that salient, and as long as they remain in this sector, they represent a clear and present danger. The enemy can crush the 305th Division like a walnut any time they choose, so I do not think Hitler will be handing out those decorations any time soon. As for the line on the Oskol—I do not think we will see it again either, but I cannot tell that to the Führer. He updated the map, seeing that Heinrici’s 4th Army was now bent in the shape of a massive question mark, and it seemed to sum up the uncertainty of this entire situation in his mind.

Look how they fought. The Russians assembled fast moving Shock Groups, coordinated over ten armies on the field with good results, and they came damn close to taking Kharkov. We no longer have the luxury of resting our panzers in rear areas. They must be closer to the front line now, and ready to intervene and stop these breakthroughs when the enemy attacks. We had to pull in units from as far away as Groznyy and the Black Sea Coast to hold the line of the Donets. That is very sobering to contemplate, and my job is likely to get a good deal more difficult, particularly if the Führer insists that we launch Operation Downfall in May as scheduled.

“What about Manstein?” asked Hitler.

“He has reached Volkov Yar, with fighting all along that minor river line. We shall know more soon….”

With a hole in his lines 5 kilometers wide southeast of Kharkov, Zhukov now realized that his position on the Middle-Don was fatally compromised. He had to pull back from his tantalizingly close positions near Kharkov and cover Chuguyev. His risky ploy to try and stop and defeat Steiner in the south had failed. Now he had to worry about getting those troops on the Donets to the line he had proposed to Sergei Kirov, particularly the slower moving infantry of 2nd Shock Army.

Furthermore, while Kuznetsov and Steiner slugged it out on the line of the Volkov River, Kirchner’s 57th Panzer Korps had defeated Malinovsky’s 2nd Guard Mech Corps to the north and east, and that flank was also becoming very unstable. It was time to retreat, and he crossed his fingers with the hope that his commander could coordinate such a move under heavy enemy pressure.

So this battle in the south will be called Volkov Yar, he thought, and the Germans will claim it as a victory. That rankles me, to have that bastard’s name plastered on the history of these events. We must rename that town….

The afternoon of the 19th, the Germans paused, with some battalions down to 30% supplies. The Russians were now in full retreat towards Chuguyev, and Manstein was in possession of Volkov Yar. The first great clash of all these rebuilt armored formations was over, and with a clear and decisive outcome.

When it was over, Soviet tank losses would be 20% of their lighter T-60/70’s, 23% of all T-34’s, and 40% of their heavier tanks, including 60 of the 90 SK-I model, which had borne the brunt of the defense against those Lions. In that heavyweight division, both sides fielded about 525 tanks each, but the German losses were only 10%. The Lions were simply beating their armored enemies to death, and in that tank, Germany had a war winner if the Russians could not adapt quickly.

Chapter 32

That was not the only war winner Germany had in hand, and this was yet another grim realization that settled on the busy minds of Whitehall. Sir Alan Brooke got the full report on the incident in the tube that caused such loss of life, but it was what came after that really shook the command tree in England.

The Bomb.

“Concerning that incident at Victoria Park,” said Brooke. “I’m afraid it wasn’t a thermal bomb as we first thought.”

“Not a thermal bomb?” said Churchill. “I was told the trees and foliage were completely burned.”

“Yes, that was so, but we’ve now determined some most unusual after effects occurred. It took some time, but the casualty rate has been creeping steadily upwards.”

“How so? From injuries sustained by the blast?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Brooke did not mean to beat around the bush, so he came right out with it. “Radiation,” he said flatly. “The estimate is that anyone within the blast zone may have received as much as 500 Rems. I’m not entirely conversant with the meaning of that myself, but according to reports, it can be quite lethal, with a fatality rate between 50% and 90%.”

“Radiation…. My God, then we’re talking about an atomic weapon?”

Churchill knew about them, for he had given his own authorization for Britain to begin working on such a project in August of 1941, the T.A. series projects, where the T.A. stood for Tube Alloys. That was the covering code handle for Britain’s effort to develop the bomb, but now it seemed, and with the shock of cold water, that Germany had beaten them to the punch, quite literally.

“Casualties were relatively light,” said Brooke. “We were lucky this one landed where it did, in an open park. Frankly, we’ve also been lucky that they haven’t visited us again. I’m afraid we’ll have to put the emergency protocols into effect now. I know you’ve grown quite fond of your bunker office, but concrete and earth only give so much protection against this sort of thing. It’s the radiation…”

“Yes,” said Churchill. “The ghastly perfected means of human destruction; the monstrous child of our war technology has finally been born, and it seems we were the ones unfortunate enough to hear its first cry. Yes… Put the protocols in place.”

That had to do with the scattering and dispersal of key government offices, personnel and vital records. Nothing could be centralized to a point where it might fall victim to one blow. The bomb that fell on Victoria Park was quite small, just a tenth of the size that the Americans used on Hiroshima in one telling of these events, but the fear it produced was of an equal nature, once it was fully understood what had happened.

“We finally get air superiority, and then this damn thing gets through. I’m told it was delivered by a Zeppelin? Well, why in god’s name didn’t we get up after the damn thing. Surely we must have seen it plain and clear on the radar sets.”

“It was seen,” said Brooke, “and tracked. We did have fighters up, but they couldn’t reach it. The Spits top out approaching 12,000 meters. This thing was up over 15,000 meters—50,000 feet.”

“They dropped it from that high up?”

“Apparently. The Germans have been experimenting with glide bombs. They used one effectively at Novorossiysk.”

“Not all that effective if they had to send Admiral Raeder into the Black Sea. That said, the prospect of another great Zeppelin scare is already frightening. This time it will be an atomic Zeppelin bomber….” Churchill shook his head.

“Concerning the Black Sea,” said Brooke, “the developments in the Caucasus have certainly changed things.”

“Quite so,” said Churchill. “Sergei Kirov must be very relieved, yet he hasn’t buried the hatchet with Volkov yet. I suppose I can understand why after 20 years of hostility.”

“He seems happy to let Orenburg get a good taste of what the German Army can do when its guns and tanks are put against you,” said Brooke.

“Volkov has the devil to pay now.” Churchill shook a finger, forcing a smile. “Hitler is after his oil too, and he’s already got Maykop and Groznyy.”

“It doesn’t seem like they’ll go any farther. That big Soviet offensive got their attention. And our interdiction of the Baghdad rail line in Syria and Iraq has had a good deal of success. They got another infantry division through to Baghdad, but we took out a big supply train yesterday. Air power, Winston, that’s the ticket. It’s a long way yet to Basra and Abadan. Frankly, I think Jumbo Wilson will hold, particularly after he gets the reinforcements we’ve sent. But this General Guderian certainly delivered the goods, wouldn’t you say?”

“Unfortunately so,” said Churchill. “If General Wilson can hold him at bay, then we might be able to focus on finishing the job in Tunisia. What’s the holdup?”

“The Americans teed up an operation that was largely successful—Operation Hammer. It forced the Italians to give up Mareth and retreat north. Then the rains set in, thick and heavy. General Eisenhower is hopeful they can make another big push soon, and the objective is to try and get to Tunis in May.”

Churchill nodded. “Then it’s on to Sicily—possibly even Sardinia. Hopefully Jerry has no more Easter eggs to throw at us any time soon. They haven’t come again with that Zeppelin since the attack on Victoria Park. I wonder why? Nor have we had any word from them by way of a threat to repeat that attack.”

“Bletchley Park thinks it was a prototype, a kind of macabre test to see if they could deliver the goods, and gauge its effects.”

“Well they delivered alright,” said Churchill. “Ghastly… How is Whitehall taking this? I certainly hope there isn’t any talk of our surrender to this monstrous technology.”

“Quite the contrary,” said Brooke. “It’s been stiff upper lip, but they certainly want to get moving with our own TA projects. Time seems to be running out. If this was a prototype, then the Germans know it works. Now their effort will be to increase the size and lethality of the damn thing, which is what really worries. It may not just be Victoria Park and the surrounding neighborhood that gets the blast next time. It could wipe out most of central London if they get one big enough.”

“Then we need aircraft that can get high enough to stop their Zeppelins. It’s maddening that they can take technology from the turn of the century and mate it with this monstrosity of a bomb.”

“There’s been work on getting a high-altitude fighter worth the name, as you well know. We did get modified Spitfires up as high as 45,000 feet over Egypt when Jerry was running those JU-86 Photo recon missions. They had to strip them down, adjust the engine compression, ditch fuel capacity, and swap out the 20mm cannons for lighter machineguns. They even put on wood propellers to lighten the load. The same sort of effort is being mounted here, with the Special Service Flight at Northolt. They’ve been working with Mark IX Spitfires. The guns tend to freeze up and jam above 40,000 feet, and the pilot needs an electrically heated flight suit, but the work is promising. It also takes a pressurized cabin and a better engine, but we can get up there. That new American fighter, the P-51, seems to be a good candidate for similar modifications, and then we have our other little secret project, the Meteor.”

“The jet aircraft?”

“Yes, but it will be some time, and I’m not sure of its specifications as yet. We’ll continue to look at defensive tactics to intercept their high-altitude attacks.”

“Indeed,” said Churchill. “I might have a word with Miss Fairchild. They have weapons that might help us out in the short run. And while we’re at it, we must also consider a more proactive approach. We know where they have their eggs, at Peenemünde. RAF had better get after the place. We might even see if my Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare can do something about that facility.”

Churchill was referring to the secret Special Operations Executive set up early in the war to conduct sabotage operations against the German war machine wherever they could find it. It was often called “Churchill’s Secret Army,” or went by names such as “The Baker Street Irregulars.” The Prime Minister preferred his own more colorful handle.

“Getting at Peenemünde with saboteurs would be somewhat chancy,” said Brooke. “However, Bomber Command has a plan calling for a 600-plane raid. They were thinking to make a go of it in August this year, but that’s been moved up. The code is Operation Hydra. It’s all a part of the entire Operation Crossbow effort to disrupt their special weapons programs. Can you imagine what would happen if they got these atomic warheads atop a missile?”

Churchill did not have to imagine it. He had been given a very detailed description of such an event by one Admiral John Tovey, who’s memory of all his many encounters with the ship they had once called Geronimo was now clarifying to an alarming degree. Tovey thought he was going right off his rocker at first, getting all these snippets of memories that seemed so real he could swear he lived them. But he knew at the same time that they had never happened… at least not in the life he had been living up until they emerged in his mind. That enterprising young Russian Captain Fedorov had a good long chat with Tovey, and now he finally understood what was happening to him.

The Prime Minister also did not know that the Germans already had such a warhead mounted on a missile. The bounty of Kaiser Wilhelm’s little jaunt to the South Atlantic had delivered this nightmare to the Reich. They had used one of the two missiles mounted warheads they received, but as yet, they had not replicated the design with weapons grade materials of their own. So the danger was not as imminent as it seemed, but the British acted sensibly as if it was.

Brooke was still rambling on. “We’ve got conventional weapons in the works that we might use by way of retaliation, but they’re nowhere near the scale of the thing that hit Victoria Park. We estimate that blast was about 1500 tons TNT equivalent. One of our new Grand Slam bombs packs only 6.5 tons of explosive power, and we were going to roll out 50 in the first batch. Even if we dropped them all on one target, that’s no more than 325 tons of TNT.”

“These dreadful atomic weapons will be the end of us, Brooke. If we can build one, will we dare use it, even against a madman like Hitler?”

“Assuming we’re still here, we can revisit that question when we’ve got the damn thing.” Brook put a fine point on the matter.

“Well, we need to find out just how advanced their program is at this stage,” said Churchill. “I had no idea they would be able to produce a real prototype this year.”

“Nor did anyone else. But things are changing rapidly now. We’ll have to be on our guard. I’ll issue that order to put the special protocols in place, but I assume there will be no rousing speeches in Parliament or public statements concerning this incident.”

“Right,” said Churchill. “Like a good boxer, you never want to let the other fellow know that he’s hurt you. But good lord, Brooke. I saw the last real cavalry charge mounted by the British Army at Omdurman in 1898…. Now this. Unfortunately, by the time you become aware that some ferocious new technology is in the works, it is already a clear and present danger. The nights are going to be a good deal more sleepless now. When Singapore finally fell after Montgomery packed up for Java, the Germans crowed that I was to be the undertaker of the British Empire. Well, with this development, the job title seems all the more probable.”

“Now don’t get all gloomy,” said Brooke. “However, you’ll be traveling a good deal now, every few days according to the protocols.”

“Every few days? How can I possibly get any work done hopping from one bunker to another like that?”

“Oh, it won’t always be bunkers. We’ve singled out safe houses in out of the way places where Jerry would never think to waste a bomb. They’ll be a small bunker in the cellar, but otherwise a nice country cottage will serve well enough, and we’re rigging them all out with good communications equipment. It’s time you got a little country air anyway, isn’t it?”

Brooke smiled, always one to lay on a cross of tasty frosting, even if the bun was burned….

Churchill summoned the Fairchild group to a secret meeting to discuss what had happened and consider defensive measures. The weapons possessed by Miss Elena Fairchild & Company were the Aster 30 missile system, with an operational ceiling of 20,000 meters, and a speed of Mach 4.5. With the Argos Fire sitting in the mouth of the Thames, it could see anything attempting to cross the Channel on its Sampson radar, and engage targets out to 120 kilometers, as far off as Dunkirk. From there it could also cover the whole of London, as far west as Oxford, or anything approaching the city from points north of Cambridge.

In effect, they would easily see the approach of any Zeppelin hoping to get close enough to deliver another bomb, but the worry was that the Germans might attempt to use regular bombers for the job. That would complicate the defense, because even though the attacker would be exposed to the RAF fighters, there would be no way to know which bomber might be carrying the bomb. To protect the city, they would have to get them all, and that was an unlikely prospect.

Yet defense against the high-altitude attack was at least something, until England could modify enough fighters to reach the 45,000 to 50,000-foot ceiling of the big German Zeppelins.

“I am much in your debt,” said Churchill to Elena. “You and your intrepid destroyer have been of immense help. Your sonar work on the Atlantic convoy runs helped us at a time when we most needed it. The job you did at St. Nazaire helped chase those German naval raiders from our doorstep, and now you receive my thanks, and those unspoken from tens of thousands of Londoners, for this watch you stand over the city. Your radar alone is of immense help—much more accurate than our own systems, which must seem primitive.”

“Primitive, perhaps,” said Elena, “but absolutely necessary. They are the foundation for all our own systems. Remember, my ship was built right here in the U.K.”

“And what of this business at Gibraltar you mentioned? I understand you were doing some cave explorations beneath the Rock.”

“Correct—at St. Michael’s Cave, and we found something most disturbing there, a fissure, deep beneath the cave.”

“A fissure? Well, what is remarkable about that? The entire site if a network of underground caverns and tunnels, and we’ve added to them year by year with our own artisans.”

“This fissure was something more,” said Elena. “It was both a physical and temporal rift, a disturbance of both matter and time….”

That got Churchill’s attention. “Time? Please go on, Miss Fairchild. Explain.”

“As I’ve related to you earlier, my ship is here because of a very special key that actuated a device we recovered from Delphi. We believe that both the key, and the device it engaged, were engineered in the future. In effect, they were engineered to displace matter in time, and the effect was limited to matter within a given radius of the device when engaged. Apparently, that radius was large enough to encompass Argos Fire.”

“And why do you suppose your ship appeared here, in the 1940s?”

“I think that was the work of the key we used. The device has apertures, all in the exact shape of the key—seven, to be precise.”

“I see…. Then this explains why you are so keen to recover the key that was aboard our HMS Rodney —a fine old ship, and a pity we lost her.”

“Yes, because I have it on good authority that the key aboard Rodney was associated with St. Michael’s Cave, and lo and behold, we find this temporal rift there.”

“Temporal rift… I understand that in theory, but what does it mean?” Churchill took a sip of the brandy he was nursing.

“Like any physical rift in stone, it can permit movement in time, like a gorge or passage through mountains that would be otherwise impassable.”

“You know this to be a fact?”

“I do.”

“This is not speculation?”

“No sir, I put men through this passage, and we thought we lost them for a time. Indeed, we did lose them, for they simply vanished. We even had one linked to our base team by a sturdy rope, but it was completely severed, as if something burned right through. I was considering how to proceed, when the two men finally returned, a full day later, and with quite a story to relate.”

Churchill gave her a long look, waiting. “Well, come on, my dear woman. Get on with it. You certainly have a captive audience here, and there’s a good deal more brandy in that flask.”

“To make a long story short, this fissure does, indeed, become a rift in time. They told us they climbed back out, only we were gone, our entire base force, and all the equipment we had brought in to excavate the place if necessary. So they made their way upwards, and out of St. Michaels Cave, only to find they were somewhere else. Not in space, mind you, but in time.”

“Where?” said Churchill. Then he corrected himself. “When?”

He took a long sip of brandy, his eyes gleaming in the wan light of the room.

Chapter 33

“The men were not entirely certain,” said Elena, “But we’ve done a bit of research to see if we could determine the date. One clue they brought back was quite unexpected.”

“What was it?”

“A rather nasty bug, and by that I mean disease. The men made their way up and out of the tunnels, finding Gibraltar to be a very different place. In some locations, the conditions were quite decrepit, particularly along Town Range. From all appearances, they thought they were back in the time of Victorian England. Well… There was trouble. A local officer got suspicious of my men, and they thought it best to make a hasty retreat. They were pursued, but their pursuers did not know the tunnels as well, and took a wrong turn. My men laid low, then made their way back, eventually finding the bit of severed rope, which we threw back in the hopes that they might find it. They did, spying it with a torch, and that was a strong clue as to which passage to take. By following it, they were brought back to their point of origin, here in 1943.”

“Astounding,” said Churchill. “And this nasty clue?”

“Yellow fever. It took us a few days to identify it, but our medical people confirmed it, and that gave us a clue.”

“The epidemic of 1804,” said Churchill. “There were small outbreaks along the Spanish coast in the late 1700’s and the turn of the century, particularly at Cadiz and Seville. The worst to hit Gibraltar was in 1804. If your man contracted the disease in that brief visit, I would assume it was rather widespread, as it was in that year. Over one third of the territory’s population succumbed to yellow fever.”

“Well that’s as good a guess as mine,” said Fairchild.

“I’ll caution that by saying the fever was quite common on the Rock all through that period. They came to call it ‘Gibraltar Fever.’ Well, I certainly hope your man recovered.”

“He did, but there was one other clue we had some difficulty understanding. My men were on Town Range, near the officer’s quarters when they were spotted by a sentry. They overheard some between the officers—of an imminent invasion. They seemed quite alarmed.”

“An invasion? Of the Rock? That doesn’t ring a bell for 1804.”

“Not the Rock,” said Elena. “It was England that seemed to be the threatened place.”

“I see…. Well this is all adding up,” said Churchill. “There was quite a stir over Bonaparte’s plan to cross the Channel. He had built an enormous fleet at Boulogne for that very purpose. In late 1804, he was there to rally the army that had been training for the attack. So that does seem to narrow down the date to 1804. There were further outbreaks of yellow fever on the Rock in the years after that, particularly in 1813, but there was no epidemic of fear concerning Bonaparte invading England in these years.”

“So our men reached the year 1804,” said Elena. “Which means anyone with the knowledge of that passage could do the same, and that brings us round to the matter of the key we lost on Rodney. We think we know where it was, that very year, in 1804.”

“Indeed… Now you can be the history professor, Miss Fairchild. Enlighten me.”

“It was in the salvage operation at the wreck of the Mentor, a ship owned by one Lord Elgin, a man you must certainly be familiar with.”

“Ah, yes, the Elgin Marbles. You say this key was found in the base of the Selene Horse, and that artifact was recovered with the rest of the Parthenon Marbles, by the Earl of Elgin.”

“Correct. The Mentor was caught in a storm, sought refuge off the Greek Island of Kythera, and went down when her anchor could not hold. That was in September of 1802, and a salvage operation was immediately planned to recover the crated marbles. By September of 1803, they had recovered eleven of sixteen boxes. Five more were still on the seabed, and of those, two had not even been located. In April of 1804 they renewed the diving operations, and by June of that year they had finally located and recovered all sixteen boxes, and also recovered the Throne of Prytanis.”

“You’ve done your research,” said Churchill. “But weren’t they subsequently moved to England?”

“Not until February 16th, of 1805. They were loaded aboard the British vessel Lady Shaw Stewart, Royal Transport Number 99. So between that date, and the date of the final recovery, all the crates were simply kept right there on the beach at Kythera, covered with sand and brush, and kept under daily guard. So the Selene Horse is there—right there, in late 1804. If that passage in St. Michael’s cave holds true and delivers a traveler to that time, then we can go and find that key before it ever reached England.”

At that, Churchill raised an eyebrow. “How would that be possible, because it clearly did reach England. How else would it have been loaded onto the Rodney with the rest of the marbles?”

“An interesting point,” said Elena. “However, since 1804 predates the arrival of the Marbles in England, there is no reason why I would not find it there.”

“Yes, but if you do so, then you never had reason to come here looking for it aboard the Rodney. Yes?”

“Possibly,” said Elena. “It sounds like a little paradox, but we think we have the answer. The rift crosses the line to another meridian of time.”

“I’m not sure I follow you.”

“Well let me put it this way… In all the history I know, the Germans never occupied the Rock, nor did they ever reach Moscow. This is an altered meridian, and that rift is reaching one where no change has contaminated it. I could go there, retrieve that key, and why would Time object? I had no idea the key I was given, or the device I discovered at Delphi, would move my ship here. I had no knowledge of this other key, nor any thought of the Earl of Elgin in my mind at all when our displacement first occurred. So there is no paradox of intent being foiled by the fact I already possessed the key.”

“I suppose that’s sound enough reasoning,” said Churchill. “But suppose you do send those gentlemen of yours through.”

“You mean my Argonauts?”

“Yes. Very handy fellows. Suppose you send them and they bring back this key. What then? What would you do with it?”

“Another good question. All I know is that there are seven apertures on the device in my cabin aboard Argos Fire, and one is most likely reserved for that key. If we’re ever to solve this mystery, I’ll need to go and fetch it. Would you have any problem with that?”

“If you’re asking for my consent, it is given. But Miss Fairchild, I was told that all these alterations you spoke of first originated in the year 1908. Now here we are talking about a little jaunt to 1804, over a hundred years earlier. Might I advise caution while you are there. I know your Argonauts are quite effective, but a bullet in the wrong place might have some alarming repercussions. You might shoot someone’s grandfather, if you fathom what I’m getting at.”

“Understood,” said Elena. “We’ll be as cautious as we can, but the mission must succeed. The order will be that no one of that era is to be harmed, but we may have to make a show of force if stealth and guile won’t serve.”

“Show it if you must,” said Churchill, “but be a little reticent to use it.”

It was more than someone’s grandfather on the chopping block of time. Fairchild had taken hold of a rope that was leading her to a most dangerous place. It didn’t start off that way. In the beginning, it was just a little competition between two men with more time, money and accompanying ego, than common sense. It was the sort of thing that sent them to hire experts to go and fetch ashes for sport, and those of Mister Churchill himself had been collected at St. Martin’s Church in Bladon. The substance of his very being had been gathered up, compressed, and made into a trophy diamond to garner little more than bragging rights in a selfish contest between two very powerful and vain men. What the Prime Minister might think or say about that would be something to hear.

The man behind that little caper was one we have met long ago, and perhaps forgotten, but he has been about his business all this time, a keyholder, and one that has remained hidden from the Watch, Elena Fairchild, and even avoided the scrutiny of a man like Director Kamenski.

That man was, of course, one Sir Roger Ames, the Duke of Elvington, and his secret trip to Lindisfarne was undertaken, in part, to do exactly what Miss Fairchild was now about. The Duke knew more than he ever told, and was aware that other keys existed in this world that could open some very well hidden doors. His was but one of them, and it turned out to be a most useful key indeed, for it delivered him to a most fateful time and place, the eve of one of the great battles of modern times—Waterloo.

Duke Elvington had something to do there, someone to kill, as he put it to his so-called footman, and it was all a part of the same game he had been playing with his rival, one Jean Michel Fortier a wealthy French industrialist like Ames. Fortier had no love for England, dubbing it the bully of the 18th and 19th centuries.

“The world would have been so much better off,” he claimed, “if the British Empire had died at Waterloo instead of French Imperialism.” The man claimed he was directly related to the French Capetian King Philip IV, The Fair, also called the “Iron King,” for it was he who had completely annihilated the order of the Knights Templar in his time. Ames never knew whether that lineage held true, but it hardly mattered. The deprecating remarks Fortier would constantly make about England quickly set the two men in opposition, and history was to be the shuttlecock they would slam back and forth at one another.

They had competed in everything since that moment, wheeling and dealing as they attempted to gain advantage over one another in their business ventures. They competed for the same real estate, sought investment control over the same companies, and when their economic sparring had run its course, they jousted for the favors of the same elegant and well placed women. The competition led to some very odd games. Fortier once also boasted that he would one day wear Churchill on his little finger. Ames had countered by saying he would secure the remains of Bonaparte himself, fashion them into a pendant that he would dangle around the neck of the woman Fortier was obsessed with at the time, and take her away. Then he had commissioned a resourceful man to secure Churchill’s ashes before Fortier could get to them, and he fashioned the diamond himself.

And so went the game.

Now, however, it was getting quite serious, for the key that the Duke had acquired gave him what he first believed to be an unassailable advantage—Lindisfarne. It opened the doorway to a hidden passage within that ancient coastal keep and monastery, and it led to a most remarkable place. He had explained it to his hired man, Mister Thomas, when the real truth of what had happened as they traversed that hidden tunnel became evident.

“Few men or women will know what I will now tell you.” He began. “To put it simply, the world we have just come from is in real jeopardy, not just with that war brewing up like a storm on our near horizon, but because it seems time itself has simply run itself down there. Things are starting to come apart and it’s about to get very strange, which is why it was necessary that we go somewhere else.”

“I don’t understand, sir. How could we move in time?”

“Of course you don’t. Let me see if I can explain it. You are given to thinking of time as something you always have, and always spend, like these shillings in my leather pouch here.” He cupped the pouch under his waistcoat and went on. “You think of your life as beginning at birth, when you are handed a nice big bag of coinage in time, and you spend two pence a day until you run out. You move through time every day. Yes? But you always move in the same direction, forward. The thought that you might ever take a step back, to unsay an ill made remark, or correct some other misjudgment often crosses every man’s mind, but it’s not something he can ever do—or so he believes. You’ve heard the poetry by Omar Khayyam: ‘The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.’ So it has seemed to be true for most of our lives. Yet I have found it to be in error, Mister Thomas. Other men have too—though they are very few in number.”

“Others have done this—they have traveled back here?”

“Not here. This is my keyhold, and I paid handsomely for it, believe me. But there are other places like Lindisfarne in the world, and they open hidden doors like the one you and I just went through. I only know of a very few, but they are there.”

“You’re telling me these doorways and passages exist elsewhere?”

“They do. There’s one in the Great Pyramid, and others in Greece and China. There may be more that I do not know of, and each one leads to a different place—or I should say, a different time. This one led us here to the eve of a great moment in history, and it was much coveted. I had to pay a great deal for the key, and there it is.” He touched the chain that held the key where it hung about his neck.

It was not long until his arch rival Fortier became aware of that key’s existence, and of the fact that others existed as well. Not to be upstaged by Ames, Fortier committed all his efforts to finding and securing his own key, one that had been hidden in the history for ages, until it was inadvertently discovered by French troops in Egypt in the year 1799. It was his eventual acquisition of that key that finally evened the odds, for the game had begun to focus on a bet he had made with the Duke.

“I’ll see England under Bonaparte’s foot, come hell or high water,” said Fortier. “And there will be nothing you can do about it.”

Ames took that for wanton braggery, until a certain book was delivered to him one day, dating to the mid-1700’s. Fortier had vanished, undoubtedly off on some nefarious safari to get one up on the Duke. On that day, however, Sir Roger was shocked to open the book to a place that had been carefully marked, and there to see his great rival’s face staring at him with a wry smile, a man standing behind one Count Maurice de Saxe in a portrait. There, inscribed below, was the last will and testament of the Count, which read in part:

‘I likewise bequeath my great diamond named Prague, now in France, in the hands of Mr. Fortier, Notary, to my nephew, Count Frife. And I beg his most Christian majesty to grant him my regiment of light horse, and my habitation at Chambord…”

That widened the eyes of Sir Roger Ames, for it was Fortier who had often boasted about his possession of the Prague Diamond, given to Count Maurice de Saxe, a Marshal of France, after his first great achievement in the capture of Prague. It was bestowed upon him by the people of the city itself as a gift for preventing his soldiers from looting, but it had come into the possession of Jean Michel Fortier, and now Ames finally realized how he had acquired the jewel. But how? How did Fortier get back to that place and time to worm his way into the graces of the Count, and become his “Notary?”

Before he could learn that, both men became aware of the existence of yet another key, and each was now trying to find it. So the journey Ames was undertaking with his footman was more than an escape, and more than a mere safari for sport. It had a most sinister purpose. That was a move in the game made by Fortier that the Duke was now seeking to counter, and it would soon lead both men to settle their differences on the same fields of glory that settled the enmity between Britain and France…. In the early 1800’s.

The fate of one of history’s most significant and colorful despots, Napoleon Bonaparte, was riding in the balance. For the game these two men were playing was a kind of tug of war on the history itself. It could only end with that history taking one of two pathways. The first led to the royal halls of London, where Bonaparte would sit in triumph over his most stubborn and tenacious enemy, the British Empire. The other path led to Elba, Waterloo, and eventually the far forsaken Island of St. Helena, the place where Britain buried its monsters, and the resting place of French Imperialism once and for all time.

History knows well the path that was actually trodden. France fell to the combined might of her enemies, and not even Bonaparte could prevail with all his skill and prowess on the field of battle. But things change, and in ways many would never give a moment’s thought.

Things change…. As Elena Fairchild knew all too well.