Men of War

Chapter 22

“What do you mean he got clean away? They had him deep inside the Rock!” Admiral Tovey was not happy.

“He was to have been on the Hudson out of Gibraltar last night, sir. The normal dispatches came in alright, but there were no other passengers.” Sergeant Williams seemed a bit flustered, as any bringer of bad news would before the Admiral at a moment like this.

“Well what does MI6 have to say about it?”

“They’ve looked into the matter, sir, and come round to think he must have been helped from the inside. A corporal on the watch saw a small boat on the northeast shore about that time. He took it to be a fishing boat, as the men on the aft deck were trying to sort out their nets. But it looks rather suspicious given his absence now.”

Tovey took that in, saying nothing. Yes, hindsight was always perfect. It should have looked suspicious while the man was getting away, but the Admiral decided he would certainly not be discussing this with a Marine Sergeant. One thought quickly led to another in his mind. The east shore… If he got out that way, then that boat probably met up with a steamer. There was a lot of traffic in the Med near Gibraltar. Which one?

“Thank you, Sergeant. That will be all.”

“Sir!” The Sergeant saluted smartly, spun about and beat a hasty retreat. Tovey sat at his desk, his mind a whirlwind of possibilities. The thought that this man had help from the inside was most unsettling. He made a note to check on anyone who might have had even passing contact with the prisoner during the time he was interrogated. His immediate problem was much more pressing. Where was this man going? Reports indicated he had originally been picked up heading west into the Atlantic. The steamer Duero was bound for Cadiz, yet the story was that this man had originally boarded the ship in Cartagena.

That thought triggered a memory, and he opened his bottom desk drawer with the key, slowly removing a thin file marked ‘Most Secret.’ There he read again the account of coast watchers near Cartagena who had reported a strange incident in the skies there on the evening of 13 August. They claimed to see contrails in the sky, five thin columns of smoke scoring their way through the clouds and exploding. Wreckage of an aircraft was spotted falling into the sea, and a parachute. The account gave him the shivers, for it was all too reminiscent of those infernal rockets that had been used by the enemy ship. But what were they shooting at? It could have been a plane that had strayed too near Geronimo’s course as it headed south that evening toward that fateful rendezvous with Syfret’s Force Z, but there was no report of any losses that day. Perhaps it was a Spanish plane. The incident was right astride this mysterious ship’s route of approach to Gibraltar. It was very strange.

Here was a Russian, a man named Orlov wearing what looked to be a naval officer’s jacket, carrying a strange custom made pistol with an odd light attached to it, and harboring these ear plugs that seemed to be some sort of advanced wireless device. Supposing he came from Geronimo, the man boards a ship heading west… But why? What would he be about? Could there be some mission he was undertaking in Spain? Then a dark thought occurred to him. Perhaps this man had been trying to communicate with other Russian agents and operatives in Spain waiting for him at Cadiz. He made a mental note to have Fleming’s boys have a look at that city to see what they might turn up.

Then again, if this fishing boat did indeed rendezvous with a merchant ship, it might have been heading east. Fishing boats were not permitted in the main shipping channels of the strait. He decided to have a list of all commercial traffic anywhere near Gibraltar yesterday—names, registry, destinations. That would allow him to possibly get men into each and every port of call along those routes, and he hoped there hadn’t been a convoy through the straits that day so his job would be a little easier. If this man was heading east, where would he go? Any Russian heading east, would have to be heading for Istanbul if he had any hope of getting back to Russia. Yes, that made sense. From Istanbul he could easily cross the Black Sea and link up with Soviet authorities anywhere along the Georgian coast.

Then his mind turned to the strange accounts that had surrounded this interrogation. Fortunately the transcript of the entire interview had arrived with the regular dispatches. He read it through, curious as to what the strange scope might have been on the pistol, the odd flashlight as the prisoner called it. This business about the wireless earplugs was also quite interesting. And who was this Svetlana?

The more he thought about the matter, more he came to conclude that this man might indeed have been off the ship the Royal Navy had been chasing for the last year. He might have been a pearl dropped here by Geronimo, trying to make contact with the Soviets of this day and age… buy why? Couldn’t they simply use the radio? Not without us hearing about it, I suppose. Was Svetlana his contact? That thought set his mind racing even further ahead, because if this assumption were proved true, the man could be a deliberate agent, and the information he might provide the Soviets could profoundly affect the outcome of the war, and so very much more.

Intruders, he thought. The Watch had found what looked to be the first possible case of a man at large who clearly did not seem to be what he claimed, and with marks and effects on him that led Tovey’s mind back to that fateful hour on Las Palomas Island where he had faced the commander of the ship they had come to call Geronimo, eye to eye, astounded to find he was Russian! It was now a standing order that any Russian operative found in England and the kingdom’s domains was to be closely watched by British Intelligence services. Tovey did not know it yet, except perhaps on some deep inner level of his mind, but the Cold War was already beginning in these suspicions and the orders that followed them. The reluctant allies, strange bedfellows as he thought of England and Russia, were now set at odds by this incident.

The next day he had his report on shipping traffic in hand, and checked off one after another, until he had narrowed down the possible rendezvous targets to three. He considered what to do, then picked up the phone.

“Secure line,” he said waiting for confirmation. “Get me Room 39 please. Desk 17F.” He wanted to speak with Fleming over at 3 °Commando. Yes, he thought. This was coming down to some real cloak and dagger work, and he now realized he needed reliable men who were trained in these unpleasantries. The voice on the line was curt and to the point.

“Seventeen F. What is it?”

“Admiral Jack Tovey here, Seventeen. I want to know if we might be able to get some men east to Istanbul and have a look at a certain ship—a merchant ship bound for that port as we speak.”

There was a brief pause before the voice on the line continued. “Might I know the details, sir?”

Tovey explained what he was after, and Fleming suggested the obvious—why not get a fast destroyer out after this ship?

“The thought did cross my mind, Seventeen, but I think I’d like to handle this with a little more subtlety.” If he sent a destroyer to intercept a neutral Turkish ship there would be questions, reports, documents, and perhaps even a formal protest from the Turks, not to mention the added risk that the ship would then be suspect in the enemy’s eyes as well.

“Well sir,” came the voice. “We’ve some good men in Alexandria with nothing on their duty roster now that they were unable to come to any agreement in that last meeting” Tovey noted how Fleming adroitly referenced the cancelation of Operation Agreement and the planned raid on Tobruk.

“Splendid. You pick the men, Seventeen. And here’s what I’d like you to do.”

When the call came in to Captain John Haselden at General Staff Headquarters days later he didn’t really know what to make of it. He and his men had been sitting on their thumbs in the heat of the desert, wondering what had come over the planners back in England. First they tee up a big operation for Tobruk, and then, just as suddenly, it is summarily canceled.

Haselden was a lean, competent man, just shy of forty, and with long years of experience in the desert. In fact, he had been born right there in Alexandria, the son of Henry Ernest Haselden and his Italian wife Maria Cazzani. Before the war he had worked in the cotton trade industry, supervising commerce and becoming fluent in Arabic, French, Italian and English. Like every man his age he entered the service when war came, signing on as a British liaison officer with the Libyan air force and then working directly for the General Staff of the Middle east where his language facility was put to good use.

His specialty soon became commando operations, and he was posted to the 8th Army HQ to serve as liaison with the Long Range Desert Group. In this capacity he participated in a number of operations, including Operation Flipper, the raid on Rommel’s headquarters in an ill fated attempt to capture the man hundreds of miles behind the front. Rommel wasn’t there, and when he learned of the operation he was irritated to think the British would believe he commanded from the rear.

When the new raid was announced for Tobruk, he was eager to get in the thick of things again, and just as disappointed to learn it had been called off. If he had known that he was one of the many men who were slated to die in that raid, perhaps he would not have complained so loudly. He had no idea that he was now living his second life, a new lease signed by the hand of Mother Time that would see him drawn into the ever thickening web of intrigue spinning from the spidery back of fate itself.

What in bloody hell is this about, he thought? First the whole bloody raid is knocked off, now this! Someone has a real imagination back in Whitehall, does he? First we were to get up a crew and fly cross the whole of Turkey in the dark on a pinch operation—all the way to Istanbul. Don’t we already have people in Istanbul? Of course we have. They were supposed to find this man, keep their finger in his backside, and get him to a safe house before we flew in. Two days later word comes down that the ship this man is on was met by a Russian trawler and he slipped clean away, out into the Black Sea like a whisper of fog.

“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?

So the powerful magnetic draw of the old farm pulled at him for more than one reason. He remembered being taken there often by his father as a young boy, and the smell of the tall green grass, crops growing in the fields, the cows and chickens all spoke to him of home. Yet on another level he wanted to make sure that his grandmother was still there, still alive, before she eventually went north as he had been told, to a very hard life and more than one moment of pain and sorrow.

When he was much older, his grandfather once told the story of how his dear wife to be had been mishandled badly on that long road north. When he finally did find his grandmother’s farm, he was too late. The young woman was gone, already heading north, and he knew that those awful moments she had to endure were not far off. Unless…

The thought then came to him that he could walk that road as well, moving like a shadow in her footsteps, heading north with all the other rank-and-file, the rabble of lost souls swept away by the tide of war. He knew the names of the men who had hurt his grandmother, and the place where it had happened, for he could still see the soft ache in his grandfather’s eyes when he told him the story.

So after lingering for a few lonesome hours at the edge of the farm, and picking apples from the tree he remembered finding there as a boy, Orlov pulled his black Ushanka tight on his head, fingered the cold revolver he had taken from the NKVD guards, and took to the road with a fierce determination. Along the way he got very drunk one night in a town called Quba, and found another old telegraph station, breaking into the place after dark and tapping out a plaintive call to the old life he once knew. “Nikolin, Nikolin, Nikolin, I’m going to find grandma at Kizlyar! Don’t forget me—Orlov…” It was a stupid thing to do, and he realized it the following morning, but vodka had a way with his head after five glasses, and he gave it no further worry. No one on the ship would ever hear it or know anything about it. His mind was now set on other matters.

Those bastards were not going to touch his grandmother this time! And if they did before he reached the place, they were going to pay for it, and very dearly. He swore this like an oath, and then moved north himself, like the shadow of death and retribution.

Far to the south, at listening stations set up in mostly forgotten outposts if the vast Central Asian wilderness, other men were tracking that shadow. They had been told to listen and look for any hint or clue to the whereabouts of a man named Orlov, and here, right in the clear, was that very name, and more, tapped out in Russian Morse Code! It was also associated with a place. On the 24th of September the men waiting restlessly at Alexandria and pining for lost operations would soon be satisfied. Seventeen-F finally had his mission.

“Here’s the plan, gentlemen,” he said through thick exhaled smoke. “Forget Istanbul, we were too late to get to the target there, and the NKVD got to him first. But there could only be one or two places that trawler could be headed, and we picked up signals traffic indicating it tangled with a German U-boat off Poti, three days ago.”

“A U-boat?” Haselden had a bemused look on his face. “How in the world did they get one there?”

“Not just one,” Seventeen said matter of factly, “they’ve a whole flotilla building up there, but never mind that for the moment. What this boils down to is that we now believe this man went ashore at Poti. From there it’s anybody’s guess where he might go, but we have people on this that are very good at making these sorts of guesses, and we’ve narrowed things down. This Kizlyar you were asking about Lieutenant Sutherland, is in Ossetia, northeast of Baku, up past the port at Makhachkala. It’s very near the Caspian coast, which will work to our advantage.”

“Good lord,” Haselden exclaimed. “That has to be over a thousand miles from here.”

“About 1300 miles to be more precise,” said Fleming. “But you’ll be going most of that distance by air. May I see your map, Lieutenant?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Good then… The place would be about here,” he pointed a brown finger at the map as the other two men leaned in close to have a look. “We’ll get you on a Wellington to Tehran near dusk, and from there you’ll take a smaller plane and fly up here.” He pointed to a small peninsula jutting into the Caspian Sea from the east coast of Kazakhstan.

“The place is called Fort Shevchenko. There’s not much there, just the ruin of the old fortress dating back to the mid eighteen hundreds, and a small town and port. Officially you’re all going there to examine the place as an embarkation site for new Lend-Lease traffic. It’s a perfect cover, and you won’t be bothered. From there you’ll have to cross the Caspian Sea—that’s where your expertise will come in handy, Mister Sutherland. Now, we’ve got much better maps to give you, but on this one you’ll cross about here…at this point, getting round the Chechen Island and this spit of land here and coming ashore somewhere in this area. From there you can pick up the old dirt road, if it’s still there, and it should lead you right into Kizlyar. It’s a distance of about sixty-five kilometers, as the crow flies, and I’m afraid that unless you can round up a stray camel or find yourselves a working truck, it will have to be taken on foot. That I’ll leave to you gentlemen to sort out, but a week from today I want you on the target. September 30th. No later.”

“With packs, weapons and supplies we’ll make no more than four kilometers per hour on foot,” said Haselden. “That’s either one long day, or two days with more rest.”

“Plenty of time, gentlemen. We’ll have you in Tehran tomorrow, the 25th. We now think there’s a strong possibility that he’s given these men the slip. We picked up a report from a man in Poti. Three NKVD men were found dead there. That’s where this bit about Kizlyar comes in. The man may be trying to reach his family there, or so we now are led to believe, his grandmother. His best bet would be to travel by train to Baku and then up the Caspian coast. Trying to find him on that route would be a long shot, so we decided to settle on Kizlyar as the target. I’m afraid that’s all we can tell you. Any questions?”

“Supposing we find this man, sir—”

“There will be no supposition in the matter, Lieutenant Haselden. I picked you because I want the man found. Period.”

“Very well, sir.” Haselden stood a bit taller. “What’s our route home with the prisoner?”

“The same way you came in. Get him east to the coast any way you can. If you have to commandeer a vehicle, all the better. We’ll have some help waiting there for you, and then you cross the Caspian again to Fort Shevchenko. Easy as pie. Here is your target, gentlemen: a man named Gennadi Orlov. Have a good look at those photos taken of the man when we had him under the Rock, and note the description. He’s a big fellow, not hard to pick out in a crowd I’d imagine. He may be traveling with an older woman, so keep that in mind. This man is most likely NKVD, but those three dead men in Poti lead us to suspect he may be a rogue agent. That said, the NKVD will certainly be looking for him as well, and there may be a cadre there you’ll have to deal with. The Russians are our allies, but your Lend-Lease cover will take you only so far in this matter. Don’t rely on it. Remember you are British serving officers and the Queen’s strong right arm if things get difficult, and act accordingly. But we want this man Orlov, and very badly.”

“Very good, sir,” said Sutherland. “We’ll handle the NKVD.”

“We’ll call the whole operation Escapade. Appropriate enough, eh? Ah… One other small detail,” said Fleming, lighting another cigarette. “The Germans have been going at it like bats out of hell. You may just get there and find you have some unexpected company. Not much, just the whole bloody 16th Motorized Division.”

He exhaled, looking the men over and smiling.

Chapter 24

Kizlyar was a small hamlet on the borders of the newly declared Chechen state in 1942. The old town there was once called Samandar, an ancient site first established by the Huns, and known for its good wines and spirits that were still produced there, and for the making of knives, daggers and the curved sabers the Cossacks made famous in their rampage across the steppe lands. The vineyards outside the town would at least give them some means of cover and concealment.

That was all Haselden and his men could learn about the place from the Escapade briefing file as they made the long flight north. At Tehran they boarded an old British Mk IV Avro Anson, a stubby twin engine plane that was now mostly used as a trainer for bomber squadrons. A few of the old planes had found their way into Iran when the Allies invaded there a year earlier, and now they served for short run operations like this, their two Wright Whirlwind engines giving the plane just enough range to make the flight up to Fort Shevchenko.

Two planes would fly that day, one with the men and basic supplies they would need, the other with their rubber inflatable swift boat, communications equipment, tents, extra aviation fuel and other necessities. They would land at an old airfield there that the British had stocked up with additional fuel for the long flight back to Tehran.

When Haselden first saw Fort Shevchenko from the air it looked like the maw of a great seabird, with a great reddish lake for the bird’s eye and a long isthmus of land jutting out into the Caspian parallel to the main coastline that looked like the top of the beak.

“What have we gotten ourselves into this time,” he muttered to Lieutenant Sutherland. The lean SAS man was also peering out the window, noting the shoals and murky greenish water, especially north of the harbor where the Caspian was very shallow.

“My Lord, there’s nothing here,” said Sutherland, “not a tree to be seen in any direction for miles.”

Eighty years on there would be much more to see. Tall oil platforms and off shore rigs would stand in tall brooding clusters over the water, their umbilical pipelines slithering down into the silted earth beneath the sea to seek out the precious commodity of oil. In Fedorov’s day a big Chevron operation would be right beneath their feet, with officers and installations right there in Ft. Shevchenko and further up the coast at Buzachi. The Kashagan superfield would be just north in the dull blue waters of the Caspian, but now the place was empty and forlorn, a vast vacant wasteland under a mackerel sky.

“That’s no bother,” said Haselden. He had been accustomed to places like this, wide open tractless stretches of desert that went on and on for hundreds of miles and took a man nowhere if he ever found himself lost there.

“Well it doesn’t offer much cover,” Sutherland complained.

“We won’t need it here,” said Haselden. “Remember, we’re just Lend-Lease survey officers on this side. We don’t have to become commandos until we get over the Caspian.”

“What did you make of that bit at the end about the Germans?”

“What of it? Did you think this was going to be a joyride, Davey boy? We’ll move all night, two days in, a couple days to find this man, and then back to the coast.”

“Sounds wonderful, unless there’s a armored car or two at our backside. Then what? We’re not packing any heavy weapons, eh?”

“I’ve one of those new popguns Seventeen talked about if we need it. A prototype. They give our sort all the new things for testing. Sergeant Terry will do the honors.” He was referring to the new British AT weapon introduced that year, the PIAT, which stood for Projector Infantry Anti-Tank, a hand held mini-mortar of sorts that could propel a 2.5 pound bomblet a little over a hundred yards. It would not see widespread use until the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, but Seventeen-F had a way of getting his hands on all the latest tools of the deadly trade he and his men practiced.

“Today we play our little ruse on this end,” said Haselden. “We walk about with clip boards and field glasses and survey equipment while the flight crews set up our base camp and get the wireless sorted out. Then a few hours sleep, a good meal and it’s off in your swift boat we go.”

“Best to cross by night,” Sutherland agreed.

“Right, then we set up on the far side with Corporal Severn seeing to the boats and all, and the three of us, you, me and Sergeant Terry, make the trek west tomorrow night.”

“Splendid,” said Sutherland. “We’ll see what we can learn on the radio tomorrow before we leave. And let’s hope the Russians don’t give us any trouble and remember who’s side they’re on.”

“Count on trouble, Davey. Count on it. That way when it comes you’ll be more than ready for it. The NKVD obviously want this man as badly as we do. They yanked him right out from under our noses and shipped him thousands of miles to get him here. Now we’ve got to bring him back, and they won’t like it. Mark my words. They won’t like it one bit.”

They played their roles admirably, speaking with the local authorities and hearing their requests for supplies, trucks, cranes and other equipment, and strutting about the port area with clipboards and surveying equipment. That night their supply team had set them up on the coast on the small peninsula that Haselden took for a bird’s beak from the air. They had their two inflatable rafts deployed just after dark and the four men slipped silently into the Caspian, paddling west to get well away from the shore before they would risk starting their small motors to make the crossing. Their supply team covered for their absence with a clever story about survey work up the coast. The Caspian was 140 miles wide at this point, much too far to cross without a motor assist, and soon they were cruising on the dark waters of the sea, lit by a waning gibbous moon.

Sea conditions were calm, with only a light breeze and mild temperatures. The warm summer days were cooling into autumn, but still comfortable. At times they would see the distant shadowy forms of other boats on the sea, small steamships towing what looked to be long lines of grayish metal oil tanks, gleaming in the pale moonlight. These were actually oil cisterns that had been filled and floated for just this purpose, linked together by long rusty chains and then slowly towed north towards Astrakhan.

These encounters would often force them to turn their motor off and stop for a time, laying low in the black rubber inflatables until the distant traffic passed. Sutherland coordinated their movement stealthily, sending hand signals to Sergeant Terry and Corporal Severn following behind them. He navigated with a compass and the moon, guiding them unerringly west. Haselden kept a sharp eye with his field glasses, spotting out the next traffic well before it could pose any problem. At one point they got a little too close to a steamship, and a small trawler flicked out a searchlight, missing them by a close margin and then moving on again.

They made the crossing in a little over five hours and soon made out the dark flat shoreline of Chechen Island in the distance. It was located off a headland on the western coast, the province of wild flights of seabirds which hovered and swooped over the brackish shore, gathering in thick clusters and whitening the rock there with guano. They navigated well north of the island, switching off their motors as they approached and taking to the paddles again.

Going was slow at this point, as they had to quietly navigate shoals and shallows near the coast, but they were soon ashore, dragging their boats up a thin beach to an area of low scrub. Severn would do his best to conceal the boats and keep a watch while the other three men began shouldering their packs and supplies for the long trek west.

The moon was finally down at a few minutes past four in the morning and Haselden wanted to use those brief hours before sunrise to get his team inland. They made their way along the wandering course of a small stream which eventually led them to a road about two miles inland.

“This is it,” Haselden hissed in the dark. “It should take us all the way in to Kizlyar, so let’s get a move on. We’ve got an hour or two left before sunrise, then we’ll lay low as the sun gets up, and get some rest. This road will only take us so far, because if this place is being probed by the Germans there will certainly be Russian troops there. This is going to be a bit dicey.”

That was an understatement, Sutherland thought. How in the world were they supposed to find this man? He could be any one of a thousand men in this town, and they certainly couldn’t wander about shaking hands and asking for a Mister Orlov. All they had to go on were a couple of photos of the man and his description. He may be in NKVD uniform, tall, well muscled. He might be with an older woman. It was all very thin, and he realized it would come down to patience, stealth, good field glasses, and a desperate search for a tall husky man and a woman together that might be a giveaway. They had no idea that Orlov’s grandmother was a young beauty of eighteen years.

If the team were spotted it was likely they would be taken for slackers or deserters at first sight, or worse, German scouts. He shook his head, thinking this whole mission had not even the slightest chance of succeeding. Then he chastised himself and thought: this is 3 °Commando, Her Majesty’s very best, and by God we’ll get the job done one way or another.

When Orlov reached the coastal town of Makhachkala it seemed a desolate and empty world compared to his grandmother’s farm in the lush lowland hills south of the Caucasus. He had been many hard days on the road, hitching rides on passing trucks when he could. He quickly learned that he had to remove his Ushanka cap with insignia when he wanted a ride, or the driver would hasten on by, unwilling to pick up a security man who might bring a lot of trouble in his pockets.

Along the way Orlov went through Baku, where he saw firsthand the hectic and hasty dismantling of the oil rigs and drilling equipment. At one point a Commissar noticed him, with a dark surmise that promised trouble, but Orlov was quick on his feet, and simply began shouting orders to a group of nearby men who were lugging equipment towards a truck.

“Come on, you limp dicks! Put your backs into it! You there—get it up on your shoulder!” His natural authority and assertive spirit helped him play the part well, and the Commissar simply smiled, thinking Orlov was just another man from another detachment flailing the rank and file along to get the heavy work done.

Orlov thought Baku might be a place to look for Anya Kanina, his grandmother, so he lingered there for a long day, snooping around to see what he could learn, going to hotels and brothels and hostels and asking about the woman. People stared at him with dull grey eyes, weary and wary of this big man with an NKVD cap and jacket, and he learned very little.

He was hoping she had not left too long ago, and had not already endured the violation his grandfather spoke of at the hands of a man named Molla. Even now his grandfather’s voice was whispering to him in his mind, like Svetlana would talk to him through the earbuds. “And Molla, he was a dark swarthy man that one…The old Commissar Molla put his hands on your grandmother in a way no man should, and did unspeakable things. Molla and Burzan.”

Unable to find her, he decided the next best thing would be to try and track this Molla down. If he was a Commissar, he would be better known, and so he took to asking local work crews and labor detachments if they knew of the man, eventually giving up and jumping a truck north to Makhachkala. It was there that he had his first run in with trouble.

“You there—what are you doing?”

Orlov had just stepped off the truck and was wandering along the street, his eyes watchful as he scanned the dull sided buildings and muddied streets. There were many soldiers about, some marching in long lines along the roadway, others gathered in small groups in the dingy streets looking tired and dispirited. Orlov knew instinctively that the challenge had been directed at him, though he tried to ignore it, walking slowly toward the nearest building.

“I say you!”

Orlov felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned, frowning to see a short stocky man in a police officer’s uniform staring up at him. His insignia was of a Lieutenant, which immediately worked to Orlov’s favor, as he had taken the rank of an NKVD Captain, and the man saw this at once.

“Oh… I’m sorry, Captain. I thought—”

“You thought I was another drifter off the line, Lieutenant? Well if you must know I’m looking for a place to take a good long piss. I’ve been on that damn truck for hours.”

The officer smiled. “The hotel, sir. Right there.” He pointed at the building Orlov was sizing up himself. Then the Chief thought this man might be able to help him.

“What’s been going on here, Lieutenant?”

“The war, sir. What else? I am Anatoly Ivanovich Anokhin, military police. The division is setting up positions outside the city to defend the port. You are with the Makhachkala Division, yes?” Orlov nodded, saying nothing as the man went on. “Well they sent a battalion out yesterday to the front. The Germans are swinging north toward Kizlyar. A lot of civilians are still on that road. It could be very bad if the Germans get through.”

“I see,” said Orlov. “Well we’ll stop the bastards then, won’t we.”

“Of course, sir.” The officer forced a smile.

“Listen Anokhin, I’m going there myself, eh? I want to find a man named Molla, and another man—Burzan. You’ve heard these names?”

“Commissar Molla? Yes, sir. He went that way—to Kizlyar. You are assigned to his unit? Good luck to you then. He’s a hard man, that Molla. One of Beria’s men—he always finds his henchmen down here. If I were you I would stay clear of him. Molla came through here yesterday with three truckloads of women from the villages. He says they’re going up to Astrakhan, but who knows what he really means to do with them.”

Orlov’s eyes narrowed. His bet that any local Commissar of note would be well known and easily found had paid off. Three truckloads of women… He didn’t like the sound of that.

“Good then,” he said. “Now I’ll take that piss.”

The Lieutenant saluted and went about his duties, and Orlov shuffled into the hotel, giving the desk clerk a sallow look and asking him for directions. Safe in the men’s room, he took a moment to activate his Jacket Computer and ask about the Makhachkala Division. He learned it was a special NKVD Rifle division formed from the local border defense, railway security teams, and supply train guards. It was attached here to the 58th Reserve Army and would remain in the region for another two months until that November. Now his Captain’s getup was likely to see him trundled off to some defensive post in short order, he thought.

He considered what to do, and decided his best bet would be to say he had orders for Commissar Molla. His brawn and natural assertive nature would back most other men down if he was questioned, and his Captain’s rank came in handy as well. All he had to do was steer clear of a nosey Colonel if he ran across one, as his present rank would trump most other officers he might meet on the road. His need to deliver these secure orders for Molla would surely get him on a truck heading north, and he had to get there soon, because he knew where those truckloads of women were going, and it wouldn’t be any place they would ever care to remember.

A lot of equipment was still moving north from Baku. The trains had been creaking with the weight of old rusting pipe, weathered drills and derricks, tools, shovels and anything else they could safely remove from the oil works. They intended to use them to find new oil elsewhere, and vast work camps were being set up, now collecting thousands to serve as raw labor in the new oil fields. Commissar Molla would find his grandmother here, he knew, and then he would take her and all the others in those trucks to God knows where. He had little time to waste now, and so after a meal and some brief rest at the hotel, he went out to look for another ride north to Kizlyar.

The city was now a gathering point for fragments of broken army divisions that had been shattered in the fighting and were slowly regrouping here, receiving supplies from barges offloaded at the port. He saw shoulder patches of the 317th, the old Baku Division that had been destroyed at Izyum and reformed here, and also the 319th, a new Rifle Division forming here along with the NKVD units.

He sighed, realizing that no matter how hard he tried to escape from it, anywhere he went in Russia now the war would soon find him, as it had found him here in the muddied streets of Makhachkala. No matter. He had come a long way now, from an aimless drunkard whoring his way along the Spanish coast, across seas and around the high mountains to this desolate place—but he had a mission now—he was no longer a lost and wandering soul, and that made all the difference.