Steel Reign

Chapter 28

The Japanese situation on Fiji was much more serious than even Yamamoto knew. The 1st USMC Division had moved aggressively north against the Sakaguchi Detachment. That was bringing three full combat ready regiments against one, even though Sakaguchi could rightfully say he was commanding a relatively strong brigade. He had an engineer battalion attached to his three battalion regiment, and there were also two battalions of SNLF Naval Marines under his command.

The Japanese were not entirely aware of the full strength of their enemy, or that Vandegrift’s division now had four full regiments, the 1st, 5th, 7th and 11th Marines. Two more were in theater at Pago Pago from the 2nd Marine Division. This force was more than a match for Sakaguchi, and the sharp meeting engagement at the edge of the heavy jungle soon checked his advance, and then pushed him into a stubborn withdrawal.

It was lack of adequate supply that was hindering his operation more than anything. He had sent the three infantry battalions and one SNLF battalion off lightly supplied, intending to quickly storm into Suva from the north. Now he had been stopped cold and pushed back, and his men were tired and hungry, with many companies almost completely out of ammunition. The Japanese had no choice but to continue their retreat in that sector, and by the 8th of May, the US Marines had pushed to within 15 kilometers of the small port of Tavua and the airfield about five klicks inland.

Further south, the Abe Detachment, and Kimura’s Recon Regiment had better luck. They doggedly pursued the withdrawal of the New Zealand troops, pushing them off a temporary holding action along the Singatana River leading down to Nayawa on the coast. Weary after the long march from Nandi, the Kiwis needed rest, supplies and fresh ammo of their own. General Patch therefore sent first the 164th Regiment of his Pacifica Division, and then the 182nd, both marching along the Queens Road that followed the coast east.

By the time they stabilized the line, and relieved all the Kiwis, the Japanese had nearly overrun the makeshift airstrip at Korolevu. With both regiments finally formed up, and with the full division artillery behind them, Patch was confident he could hold the line.

The situation the Japanese soon found themselves in was now far from satisfactory. Abe and Kimura had been stopped, Sakaguchi pushed back, and the long awaited reinforcements in the Tanaka Regiment were still far to the east near Noumea where they had been held in place pending the outcome of the naval battle. Now that the Kido Butai was withdrawing, the only Navy presence would be the flock of planes and pilots that had come fluttering in to Nandi and Tavua fields, unable to land again on their carriers, which was somewhat ominous in itself.

General Tsuchihashi of the 48th Division had adequate supply near the two landing sites, but little or no transport. It was only after he received the report that Sakaguchi had failed to make the sweeping maneuver against Suva, that he now contemplated his situation in a darker light. Somehow, the enemy had achieved parity, he thought.

There may have been more enemy troops here than we believed, and now the navy is withdrawing. Those planes and pilots that landed here will most likely not remain long as well, for the Admirals will want their pilots of the Misty Lagoon back directly. Thus far, 4th Air Fleet has sent nothing but Bombers to Noumea, but no land based fighters. The range was so far from there that any practical use of those planes was prohibited until the runways could be expanded on Fiji to accommodate them. It appears that we are in for a bit of a siege here. Under the circumstances, I must suspend further offensive action until Tanaka arrives… if he arrives at all.

Thus far we have swept all before us, except for that brief delay on Singapore, most likely due to Nishimura’s foolishness. My division bested the Americans in the Philippines easily enough, and the Dutch were no match for us. Yet I really have no more than half my division here, and Sakaguchi’s troops were not as good as my men. So we wait for Tanaka, and hopefully it will not be necessary to request further reinforcements.

If wishes were horses… It was going to be necessary sooner than the general believed, for a new war had begun there on that island. In Fedorov’s history it began somewhere else, in the fetid, humid jungles of Guadalcanal. This time it was Viti Levu, though as the naval battle was being fought, engineers and elements of the 3rd SNLF had also landed at Lunga on the island of Guadalcanal. They were surveying the ground along the north coast for good airfield sites, and the place looked very promising. Whether the long, grueling struggle there would ever repeat itself remained to be seen. For the moment the center of the gyre was Fiji, where both sides were now arm wrestling to gain the advantage.

On the American side of the equation, both Patch and Vandegrift thought they could win this one. Their enemy would be stalwart and it would be a difficult battle, but they believed they had the sheer mass to do the job. If the two divisions they already had on Viti Levu were not enough, there were two more in Australia and New Zealand, much closer to Fiji than any reinforcements the enemy could call upon.

While Halsey had held off the powerful Japanese Navy, he was now under strict orders not to engage with the last two carriers the US possessed. He wouldn’t have to. Yamamoto was gone, and he had free reign in the Fijis now, and a good base at Pago Pago that had been receiving plenty of fuel via tankers. There was no way the enemy could pull a Pearl Harbor, for Allied units in the Fijis would surely spot any attempt to attack Samoa.

For now, the fighting Admiral would find he had 123 operational planes between Enterprise, Wasp and Shiloh. The Antietam would be repaired this week, and add another 20 more, so the raw naval aviation available to either side in the theater was a dead wash. The US was getting in more ground aviation support, a couple Seabee Battalions to work on putting more airfields into use, particularly on the adjacent island of Vanua Levu.

Unless strongly supported by carriers, Halsey believed that he could prevent any strong reinforcement of the Fiji position by the Japanese. But developments further up the chain of islands leading all the way back to Rabaul were somewhat foreboding. The Japanese now had a magnificent anchorage at Tulagi, and had landed on Guadalcanal. They had Espiritu Santo in the Santa Cruz Islands linking the Solomons to the New Hebrides, and were masters of the Solomon Sea. They had airfields building up at Lae, Port Moresby, Buka and a seaplane base in the Shortlands.

While none of these bases were really well established yet, they would be developed over time. Halsey proposed that he return to the fast raiding style that had seen him open this campaign in the Gilberts. He sent a message to Nimitz asking for permission to raid the New Hebrides, and all these other bases once he could rest assured there was no additional ground force being aimed at Fiji. Nimitz gave him that leeway, but stressed that he was not to engage in any situation where he might now find himself facing significant enemy naval air power.

Weakened by the heavy losses to their carriers in the Coral and Koro Seas, where Halsey had fought that last desperate battle, the US could not really consider any further offensive moves against other Japanese held territory until they received more carriers. Unfortunately, only one might be expected soon, the first in a series of twelve Essex class carriers that were now building. Halsey knew that his enemy had further resources in their Home Islands, and still had a much stronger carrier fleet. It had taken the loss of three fleet carriers to blunt the Japanese attack into Fiji, and unhinge Operation FS. Their lance pierced the US shield before it broke, and the enemy was well established in the Fiji Group. The only question now was whether they would return soon with reinforcements, or whether the small advantages the US now possessed based on position, logistics, and their “ground game” would win through for them.

Nimitz was very worried now, and afraid that one more big loss in the South Pacific could set back the US war effort there for a full year. “It would take us that long to build up our strength again,: he said to Admiral King. “Particularly in the carrier arm of the fleet. Oh, Halsey fought well down there, but we just can’t let him put either Enterprise or Wasp at risk now. I’m calling him home to Pearl.”

“What for? Just because he’s a fighter? We need men like that down there.”

“True, but Halsey is exhausted. He’s carried our entire war on his back, fought the Japs hard, but the man needs rest. That skin condition that’s been bothering him is now much worse. I’m ordering him hospitalized.”

“Who’s taking over? You aren’t going to hand those last to flattops back to Fletcher, are you?”

“Ray Spruance.”

“Well hell, he’s another Black Shoe Admiral. Wasn’t he on the Mississippi?”

“And he did a fine job there. He’s on the Northampton, and I’m flagging him for the duty today. Halsey is flying out to Canton Island and taking a destroyer to Pearl. Spruance can hold things together until he gets back.”

“Fletcher won’t like it.”

“He had his chance in the Coral Sea and we lost two good ships there. So Fletcher stays with that battleship squadron.”

And that was that. Nimitz knew Halsey was as good as they came, but not in this situation, not with him weary, hurting, stung by the loss of so many good ships and men, and down with medical problems. Like the ships he fought, he needed refit and replenishment too. The Fighting Admiral would return soon enough, when the Essex was ready, but for now Ray Spruance was in charge of the South Pacific Fleet.

“Now then,” said Nimitz. “What do you make of this Siberian adventure up north?”

“Damn interesting,” said King. “Their head honcho over there has been making overtures about opening up airfields for us on Kamchatka. I’m not sure it would do us any good to put B-17s up there—the weather is horrible. But we’ve opened talks with the Siberians along those lines. I think we should take advantage of this.”

“What would you suggest?”

“I think we should see about sending them a couple Seabee battalions to help improve those airfields. We could put DC-3s in there at Petropavlovsk on Kamchatka, and then hop them over to Northern Sakhalin, and on to Irkutsk—set up a nice little air bridge to the Siberians and offer them supplies and aviation support. That’s what they’ve been asking for. We also ought to get some kind of outpost in the Aleutians, a good link to Kamchatka. But what’s all this talk I’ve been hearing about this Siberian battleship?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. But something bushwhacked the Japs on their way home from Pearl.”

“HYPO has been picking up some real strange signals traffic whenever the Siberians operate. But this is one code they just can’t crack. That said, whenever they do get these signals, we later learn there’s been some trouble with the Japanese fleet. In fact, we now think the Siberians might have had something to do with the sinking of that carrier limping home from Pearl.”

Nimitz frowned. “I thought it was a submarine.”

“It would be nice if it was, but it wasn’t one of ours. HYPO says they got a lot of this odd signals traffic just before that ship went down.”

“Well radio waves don’t sink ships,” said Nimitz.

“Something did, and now we think the Siberians have a big battleship up north supporting these operations. HYPO’s picked up a new code word the Japs are using about it—Mizuchi. There was some kind of scrap during those landings on Kamchatka, and we think they Japs got the worst of it.”

“Must be one hell of a battleship, but where in hell did the Siberians get the damn thing? You know they can’t build anything like that.”

“No, it had to come from the Soviets. I think Sergie Kirov is trading off with the Siberians in exchange for troop support. God knows, he needs all the help he can get, and the Siberians need naval support. But we should look real hard at this situation. What we’ve got here is the fledgling makings of a second front against Japan in the North. If the Siberians mean business, and that can be developed, we ought to support them any way we can. I’m going to recommend that we sneak quietly into the Aleutians and at least set up good observation posts there. An airfield would be even better. Then those DC-3s could hop from Seattle to Dutch Harbor, or even Adak, and on to Petropavlovsk. This is an opportunity we shouldn’t over look.”

“It’s a thousand miles from Petropavlovsk to the nearest big Japanese city. That would be Sapporo on Hokkaido, and our B-17s couldn’t even get there and back with a typical load of 1000 pound bombs.”

“Which is why this situation shaping up on Sakhalin Island is interesting,” said King. “It’s only 700 miles to Sapporo if we get a base up there near where the Siberians have landed. Now imagine if they have what it takes to push on further south.” King pulled out a map, Pointing to the center of Sakhalin. “If we could get airfields here, then all of Hokkaido is easily within range of our B-17s, and when we get the new B-29, we could strike any city in Japan from there. How long would it take us to fight our way close enough to Japan from the South Pacific? Suppose we take Guam back, or Tinian. That’s still over 1400 miles from Tokyo. Only the B-29s could make that, but from central or southern Sakhalin, we could hit Tokyo with B-17s.”

“Air Force talk,” said Nimitz. “Leave that to them.”

“Yes, but the Navy has to get them the bases they’ll need for the job. That’s on our watch. Now, we can slug it out with the Japs from one island to the next down there, and it could take us a couple years to get close enough for that fight to matter. Yet at this very moment, we’ve got the Siberians over there putting troops on Sakhalin and showing every intention of pushing south to reclaim that entire island.”

“The Japanese will fight like hellcats to prevent that. If we can see this, they can see it too.” Nimitz leaned back, thinking. “Yet I agree that we ought to support them any way we can. When do you go to the president with this?”

“Next week. In the meantime, you keep an ear to the ground on what’s going on over there for me. Tell your boys in HYPO to listen real good for this signals traffic they say they’ve picked up. If we can get some subs up there to have a good look around, all the better. This could be bigger than we think. We need to sit up and pay attention.”

“Alright, Rey” said Nimitz. “I’ll see what I can do. If the Siberians can help take the pressure off us down south, all the better.”

Chapter 29

“Well now,” said Tovey. “The planning is sound, at least for the approach to the target. It’s high time we get on with it. The tides will be right on the 9th and 10th.”

So many events in this history had come early, even if by just a few months, but this one was running late. It was supposed to have happened on the 28th of March. Instead, many of the men earmarked for the operation had been deployed to the Canary Islands. Now that a kind of stalemate had been reached in that battle, it was time to look at the plans again, and the Royal Navy was eager to begin.

The raid itself would have happened at one time or another, for the facilities targeted were simply too valuable to the enemy to let them stand. After the delay imposed by the defense of the Canary Islands, it might have been a long year before this plan was teed up again, but the disruptive fate line of a man who was supposed to be dead had nudged the event back into place.

That man was Lieutenant Patrick Lainson Field, the commander of the British submarine Seawolf, a boat that had been oddly diverted from other duty to patrol off the Canary Islands. Lieutenant Field, wasn’t supposed to be there that day. He was to have died in a plane crash on the 16th of December, 1941, shot down over the Bay of Biscay while en-route to Gibraltar. Yet there were no British planes being routed to Gibraltar now, and the route that plane took this time to the Azores was well away from the peril that would have taken his life. So Lieutenant Field survived, one of many thousands of souls who should have died, but lived on in these Altered States.

There, on a misplaced submarine in the dark of the night, one lonesome and dangerous wolf was prowling the dark seas, commanded by the flesh and blood figure of a man who should be dead—a Zombie, as Professor Dorland might define him. In Dorland’s theory, such men are always wildcards in the deck of fate, for once spared the doom that should have ended their lives, they move and act with unbridled license on the Meridians of time. Their intervention can bring sudden and unexpected derailment to the careful train of events running on the long lines of causality, and that was one such night for Lieutenant Patrick Field.

It was his good fortune to stumble across the German task force intending to land the 98th Mountain Regiment for Operation Condor. There, he clearly saw the towering silhouette of a great warship, not even knowing that he was looking at the mighty Hindenburg. It had been framed with the light of Bismarck’s salvo in support of the German attack, and Field’s heart thumped faster as he beat his crew to quarters, loading all six of his forward tubes. He would get one hit, but it would be a good one, right beneath Anton turret near the magazines and lifting gear for those massive 16-inch shells. The resulting flooding put that turret out of action, much to the chagrin of its resident master and chief, one Axel Faust.

The presence of both Bismarck and Hindenburg in French waters was most alarming to the British. The mayhem they could cause had recently been seen in the battle off Fuerteventura, where the cream of the Royal Navy was thrown into the fight, and with heavy losses. While the Bismarck would be laid up for many more months at Toulon, the Hindenburg was very near operational readiness. The German ship had been wounded by Lieutenant Fields, but not sunk, and then it had taken three rocket hits from the Argos Fire, and a 14-inch round from King George V. now it seemed that Admiral Raeder was keen to accelerate repairs and get the dreadful battleship fully operational again.

Initially it had gone to Toulon, where superficial damage had been cleared up, and new secondary gun barrels shipped in by rail. After the damage to the superstructure was repaired, there was still work needed on the hull to fully repair that torpedo hit, and Toulon did not have a dry dock large enough to accommodate the German ship. But there was one at Saint Nazaire, the famous Normandie dry dock, built to accommodate the massive 80,000 ton liner Normandie before the newest French battleship stole away her name. It was 50 meters wide, and 350 meters long, with massive caisson steel gates at either end that weighed 1500 tons.

In a stealthy night move, Hindenburg moved from Toulon to Gibraltar, and Ian Fleming’s spy network in Spain learned that it would move to Saint Nazaire under heavy German air cover in five days. In one sense, the British sighed with relief. The ship was not yet ready, instead it was merely transferring to a larger facility for continued repairs. The question now was what to do about that. The Royal Navy could either risk another confrontation at sea with the German battleship, one that might send more of their own ships to the dry docks, or they could try to get at the enemy ship with the RAF. Neither plan seemed palatable.

“We simply cannot risk forcing yet another engagement at sea,” said Admiral Pound. “Churchill would want that, but I have Duke of York, and King George V down well south of the Azores. That’s the only thing keeping the Germans at bay in the Canaries. Invincible is up near the Denmark Strait with Hood working out after her refit, and keeping an eye on Tirpitz and the Norwegian Sea.”

“You’re right,” said Tovey. “Churchill would want all four of those ships to pile on—anything to get the Hindenburg. But this plan being floated by the Commandos has my interest. They’re calling it Operation Chariot.”

“What’s it all about?” Pound looked very weary, as he always did. A bad hip kept him awake at night, robbing him of much needed sleep, which he often recouped at staff meetings, nodding off in the middle of the proceedings.

“A raid… On the very same dry docks the Germans need for the repair of the Hindenburg. If they can’t use Saint Nazaire, then they’ll have to use divers and that will take a good long while to repair the torpedo hit Seawolf put into that monster.”

“Why not simply bomb them?”

“Too inaccurate,” said Tovey. “Besides, we’ve asked the RAF for a hundred bombers, we got thirty-four, and eight of those have already been lost trying to raid that port. It’s crawling with German Flak now, and there’s always a standing patrol of Messerschmitts up over the harbor. That will go double next week when Hindenburg pulls in.”

“Triple,” said Pound.

“A pity we can’t sneak in a submarine.”

“Not possible,” said Tovey. “The port is six miles deep in the estuary of the Loire River. The sand bars restrict the approach to only one good channel, and its heavily covered by shore batteries and screened by anti-sub nets.”

“Well what do these bloody Commandos think they’re about? Do they plan to paddle in on rubber rafts?”

“Not quite,” said Tovey. “They want a destroyer. In fact, we gave them one, an old American ship from the lend lease lot, Campbeltown.”

“A destroyer? Through that gauntlet of shore batteries in the channel?”

“Actually they’ve proposed going right over the sand bars to avoid that, and gain a little element of surprise. But they’ve had to lighten the draft of the ship considerably. Everything but one battery’s been thrown off.”

“Good God,” said Pound, realizing what this plan must be contemplating. “You mean to say they are going to try and ram the steel gate to the main dry dock?”

“No sir… well… not entirely. Yes, they’ll ram it alright, but the destroyer has been packed chock full of amatol explosives taken from 24 depth charges, about four and a quarter tons I’m told, all rigged up with an elaborate delayed fuse. They’ve placed these explosives about 40 feet from the bow, so the collision is only meant to get the ship near the target. Those heavy steel gates would easily withstand that collision anyway. However, when that fuse runs out, the real thunder rolls, and that should do the job. Other Commando teams will accompany the Campbeltown on either side, and conduct raids against the Pump House and Winding Rooms for those gates.”

“I see… And assuming any of this is successful, how do the men get out?”

“That’s just it sir. They may not get out at all. This is very likely a one way ticket.”

“Preposterous!”

“Churchill likes it, and its either this or we pull at least two battleships off assigned duty and rush them to a position close enough to intercept the Hindenburg on its run north from Gibraltar. To do that we must issue the orders tonight. If the Germans persist, then we get another battle. I’m perfectly willing to take that on, if the Navy wants to assume the risk.”

Pound shook his head. “Six months ago I would have waved you forward into battle without a moment’s hesitation. Now, after losing six battleships and a battlecruiser, I’m not so eager. It would seem to me that we might better let this German ship sneak into Saint Nazaire, and then see about using the remainder of those RAF bombers. Even a few hits might keep her bottled up for some time, and if not, then we’ll muster a watch from the Azores again.”

“Which merely punts the ball concerning that engagement at sea, because one day or another, that ship will make a run for the Atlantic. They can choose any day they want in the year ahead, but we’ll have to cover them all, and with at least two battleships. Now… We’ll have Howe available this month. She’s ready to start sea trials now. But posting her to that watch with a green crew would be risky. I’d rather see King George V and Duke Of York on the job, and even those two may not be enough. Frankly, I think it will need Invincible again, which is yet another argument for more 16-inch guns on our battleships.”

“We could recall Nelson from Alexandria.”

“Too slow,” Tovey dismissed that at once. “So, Admiral, suppose we let these Commandos have a go. Yes, we may lose one old destroyer and some good men, but shutting down that dry dock is a heady compensation, and I think I can facilitate this little mission to ensure better chances of success.”

That was something Tovey had in his pocket now, a little ‘facilitation’ teed up from a ship Pound knew nothing about. The Argos Fire had been operating secretly in the Atlantic for some time, but was never officially listed or mentioned in any report. Yes, men saw the ship, and rumors flied about it, all heavily frowned upon and quickly squelched by Tovey and any other senior officer that knew the real truth about that ship. Admiral Fraser was one such man, one of Tovey’s early recruits to the Watch. The two men conferred on the matter before they went to Pound to obtain final permission to set Operation Chariot in motion.

“Admiral,” Tovey had said, “I think we have a little Ace in the hole here in Argos Fire.” He had briefed Fraser concerning that ship, and the true nature of the Russian ship Kirov as well. Like Cunningham at Alexandria, Fraser was now ‘in the know’ and a strong addition to the Watch.

“Argos has been serving us well as a convoy escort. It’s that advances radar and sonar that make the ship so valuable. They can locate German wolfpacks, and the convoy can give them a wide berth before they come into contact. We haven’t lost a single ship in any convoy where Argos Fire was prowling about, mostly well out in the vanguard, where even the Convoy Masters don’t know they have such a powerful guardian angel watching out for them.”

“What do you propose?”

“They’ve a pair of helicopters that are rather amazing—very fast, well armed, and capable of lifting in a couple heavy squads of Commandos. In fact, the ship carries a contingent of 50 such men. They fought for us on the sly in Syria during Operation Scimitar. Handy chaps in those helicopters. I believe they can help this Operation Chariot along, which will mean that we may not have to take in so many Motor Launch boats to get Commandos in after the Pump House and Winding Rooms. They can also carry demolition charges, and drop them right on the roof of that Pump House, or anywhere else the Commandos need them.”

“What about the German flak batteries?”

“These little birds have quite a sting,” said Tovey. “I’m told they can lay down some fairly effective suppressive fire, and in fact, that will be a good part of their primary role—to take out German gun positions. Then, when all is said and done, they can lift the men out. It will mean the raid can go with far fewer men—fewer to lose or leave behind.”

“And the Campbeltown?”

“Still invited. Yes, we’ll need the whole of that four plus tons of amatol to blow those steel gates. Not even Argos Fire has anything in its larders that can bother them.”

“When would this happen?”

“If Fleming’s boys have it right, Hindenburg is planning to steal into the harbor on the night of the 16th of May. Moon conditions are right, new on the 15th, though the sun is setting very late, at 21:37. I’d say the night would be thick an hour later, no moon, and pitch black. That’s when they want to bring her in, and we’ll have similar conditions two days prior, so we go the 14th, on a night when high tides will nearly hit 6 meters. That’s to help Campbeltown along. It had to be nearly gutted to lighten her draft for passage over the sandbars. As for those helicopters, they’ll be ready on a moment’s notice, and I might add this ship has a few other tricks up its sleeve. It can take down German air cover, see everything on its radars, and deal with those nasty German shore batteries.”

“At night? How would they spot them?”

“No worries there, Admiral Fraser. They have powerful night optics.”

“How very interesting,” said Fraser. “Might I have a look at this ship one day?”

“Why Admiral, I thought you’d never ask. It will be off the Clyde tonight, and the two of us have a dinner appointment. In fact, they’ll send out one of those helicopters to give us both a lift over. I would like to introduce you to a most interesting Captain and crew, and the CEO of the ship is really quite charming herself.”

“Herself? And did I just hear you say CEO?”

Tovey smiled.

Chapter 30

“Virtually all of France’s modern capital ships were built in the Brittany ports,” said Tovey, “Brest in the north and Saint Nazaire in the south. Between them is Lorient, a major site for German U-boat pens. They have them at Saint Nazaire as well, but they won’t be the objective of this mission. We want to shut down the big Normandie Dry Dock—blast away those steel gates and render it useless, and before the Germans move the Hindenburg there.”

“I’d think you might want it there,” said Mack Morgan, the black bearded intelligence master aboard Argos Fire. “Isn’t that a good spot for the RAF to find that ship?”

“You might think as much,” said Tovey, But Bombers come at a premium these days. We asked for them, but only 28 remain allocated to the Channel Ports and Brittany. To hit Saint Nazaire, they either have to fly over all those nasty German fighter fields on the Brittany Peninsula, or go well out to sea to get past them. So Jerry gets plenty of warning, and a good portion of their Ack Ack guns are dedicated to stopping a raid coming in from the sea.”

They were all meeting in the private stateroom aboard Argos Fire, Admirals Tovey and Fraser, with Captain MacRae, Mack Morgan, and of course the cordial host, Elena Fairchild.

“I know this raid,” said MacRae. “It was the stuff of legend as these operations go, and the plan works, I can tell you that much. Unfortunately, it costs you more than half the raiding force, to say nothing of that old destroyer.”

“Yes,” said Tovey, “Campbeltown. Well, it’s to be considered expendable. What we are here today for is to see about that other liability, the loss of so many good men. I was thinking you might lend a hand.”

“Anything to get us off those long boring convoy runs,” said Morgan. “All I ever find time to do on them is grow this beard.”

“Well you’ve done us a great service there—not a single merchantman lost under your watch, and you’re to be commended. Once we get more escort carriers, your ship will become the primary command center for the Battle of the Atlantic, that is if you don’t mind taking on that job. With those radars and sonars of yours, you can vector in the escort carriers and they’ll do the job. For now, we’ve got something a little more exciting in mind.”

“How can we help?” asked Elena. “I’m afraid we’ve not much in the way of missile power to strike a hard target. How many are left, Captain?”

“Just the ten Harpoons. We threw every last Gealbaum we had at Hindenburg and Bismarck in that scrap off Fuerteventura. I like to think we hurt them, but I’m not sure we really did. It’s more likely those big battleship guns that did the real damage.”

“In this case,” said Tovey, “it was a torpedo fired by a lucky submarine, the Seawolf, and that ship still has residual torpedo damage that I put on it during our first real engagement. That’s why the Germans want to move Hindenburg to Saint Nazaire. They can repair that torpedo damage very quickly there, and trying to do the same job with divers would take a good deal longer. We want to take that option away from them.”

“Just to keep Hindenburg laid up a few more weeks, or perhaps a month at best?”

“Yes,” said Tovey. I know it seems callous, but there it is. Gentlemen, Miss Fairchild, I’ve got two battleships operating from Funchal, and two more watching the Iceland-Faeroes passage. We’ve one more coming off sea trials soon, and another right behind it, the Anson and Howe. I need time to get them into the game.”

Mack Morgan had a pad device, and he had tapped up the history on this raid. “Admiral, it says here that you sent 622 men into that raid. Only 228 made it back to England. That’s a high price for that time.”

“Well that’s where you come in. You see, a good many of those men were to come in on Motor Launch boats to engage and eliminate flak gun positions around the southern quays, with a few auxiliary targets assigned to them. If you could find a way to take those targets out, these men would not have to be sent.”

“Why send good men when a missile could do the job,” said MacRae. “Aye, we could certainly help out.”

“We also wondered about those helicopters that gave us a ride over this evening. They could be very handy in a pinch when it comes time to get the men out.”

“Aye, that’s a fact,” said MacRae. “Just how many targets are we looking at here, considering I’ve got only ten harpoons for this whale.”

“We’ve identified five shore battery sites—and a dozen other AA batteries and machinegun bunkers. We may not have to get them all, but some will definitely have to be engaged and destroyed if at all possible. I’m afraid naval bombardment by our own ships would be both risky and inaccurate.”

“But not naval bombardment by my ship,” said MacRae with a smile. “I assume the risk is from enemy aircraft, well we can stop those easily enough. Now I’ve been laughed off more than once by the blokes on the docks in the Azores when we replenish. They call us the ‘Toothless Wonder,’ and aye, that deck gun we have up front doesn’t look like awful much. But I can put good penetrating rounds on just about any target you name, and from well over the horizon. Our helicopters can spot for us. We wouldn’t even have to use the Harpoons.”

“Speaking of the X-3s,” Mack Morgan put in, “one of those supply ships in that replenishment convoy we happened upon was meant for underway replenishment at sea, and also to support British ground and air units ashore. It’s helped Brigadier Kinlan’s Brigade in the fight stay in North Africa, though I’m afraid those stores are wearing thin. But they did have a couple dozen Hellfires.” He looked at MacRae now. “I took the liberty of requisitioning them. Our X-3s can make good use of them. We have six each of the AGM-114s, M and N series, and a dozen Romeos.”

Tovey had no idea what those were, but the name Hellfire certainly sounded good to his ear. “I presume they are every bit as deadly as your other rockets,” he said.

“These are short range missiles, up to 8,000 meters range, but they were developed to take out armored targets, bunkers, hard positions. The bunker busters can put a hundred pounds of blast fragmentation incendiary punch on any target we hit, and believe me, we won’t miss. There’s also a thermobaric round for tough bunkers that will literally suck the oxygen right out of the air—a nasty little Hellfire, that one. The Romeos have multi-function warheads, depending on the job.”

“Aye,” said MacRae. “Between the Hellfires and our deck gun, we can certainly raise a little hell. So all the men you’ve assigned to engage those targets can stay home.”

“Excellent,” said Tovey. “Just what we were hoping. Can we count on your support?”

“You’ve got it,” said Elena.

“Thank you, Miss Fairchild, we are much in your debt. And considering that, I think I can make a little repayment, if you’d be so kind as to have a moment with me later. I’ve some news to convey.”

“You may not know all the details,” said Tovey later when he had that moment alone with Miss Fairchild. “But I owe my life and breath here now to Admiral Volsky. Jerry got lucky, and put a nice fat round smack on the conning tower, only we got lucky too, at least for a while. You see, that round penetrated, but didn’t explode immediately. This happens more often than you might think. Well, it put me down for the count. Had I been farther forward on the bridge, I wouldn’t be here now. Admiral Volsky dragged me to safety, into the ready room off that bridge, and closed the hatch there, putting another good wall of steel between me and what happened next. Then he took the wheel, and somehow managed to steer Invincible to safe water.”

“I see,” said Elena. “Yes, he certainly wasn’t the boogie man I first thought him to be.”

“Not at all. A good many men on my ship owe him their lives. Unfortunately, that round did go off, and there was no way he could have survived the resulting explosion. What remained, largely his sea jacket and blazer, were given to me… and something else.”

Now Tovey reached into his coat pocket, producing the key he had found in the hidden pocket within Volsky’s coat. Elena’s eyes widened.

“It was given to the Admiral by Mister Fedorov, or so I was told by Volsky himself. In fact, he delivered it to me. When I fell after that hit, the Admiral must have taken it again for safekeeping, unsure of what my fate might be.”

“It was sent by Fedorov? From the ship that arrived in July?”

“Presumably.”

“Well I don’t understand. How could that man have come by it? This doesn’t make sense.”

Yes, thought Tovey, that was quite the question. If Fedorov knew of the importance of this key, then he had to be the same young, enterprising man he had already met, the man who sailed with them in the Med, the man who met Churchill after rescuing O’Connor in the desert. Yet that man vanished when Kirov disappeared, did he not? How was it that he now appears on this new ship arriving July 28th? Volsky was clearly different, unknowing, a man made new…. But not Fedorov. How was this possible? He shared all this with Miss Fairchild.

“This business is all twisted about like a good pretzel,” said Elena. “Could there be two Fedorovs? We already know we have one Doppelganger in the two Karpovs.”

“Madame, I am the last man who could come up with an answer to that. Drill me on gun laying for a good 16-inch battery in sea state 4 and I’ll do a good deal better.”

“I understand.”

“Well… here it is. I’ve had a good look at it. This one doesn’t seem to have any of those numbers engraved on the shaft.”

That got Elena’s attention. “You’re certain?”

“Have a look yourself.” He handed her the key, and she leaned under the nearby lamp to squint at it.

“Nothing I can see. Well… How very interesting. Mine has a serial number, and it is associated with specific geographic coordinates. Professor Dorland claimed he had a good look at the key we lost on Rodney, and it had coordinates for Saint Michael’s Cave, Gibraltar. So we know there are time rifts at those locations… But this one…”

“Seems to lead nowhere,” said Tovey.

“May I keep this?”

“Be my guest. I have no idea what I would do with it, only that Mister Fedorov was very keen to have it delivered here. Now, after a good long delay and a great deal of mischief and misery, that has been done. Have you any idea what this is all about?”

“The rifts,” said Elena, “physical deformities in the spacetime continuum. You heard Dorland trying to explain it. Well, he was correct. Something did happen, many years ago, and it had a very severe impact on time. Think of it like a ball batted against a pane of glass, or a mirror. The damage causes a web of cracks, but the mirror itself doesn’t shatter. We believe these keys are all associated with the end points of one of those cracks, and now I know how many we have to worry about.”

“How many? You mean there are more of these keys beyond those we discussed?”

“Indeed. We now possess two, but there are at least seven. Another went down with the Rodney, and this Professor Dorland is keen to find it again. He has some scheme, but we’ve heard nothing from the man since that last meeting in the Azores when he scared me half to death.”

“You mean all that talk of a grand finality.”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“Well that makes three… then there are four more missing keys?”

“We know about one of those—the Watch knew. It was supposedly assigned to an agent for a special mission. Often times the right hand knows not what the left hand is doing in this secret little group. I knew it existed, but that’s all I can say about it. As for the other three… We received information as to the location of yet another key—don’t ask me how. Thinking we had it safely in hand, we were soon very disappointed. It was supposedly in the British museum as well.”

“The British Museum?”

“Quite so. Just as the key on Rodney was embedded in the Selene Horse, so this one was supposed to be hidden with another artifact there in the museum.”

“Pray tell…”

“I suppose you ought to know… It was the Rosetta Stone.”

“Interesting… And might it be associated with a location?”

“Possibly, but we’ve never laid eyes on it.”

“I don’t understand. You mean you’ve left it there in the stone?”

“Something a little more complicated. As you may know, that stone was recovered damaged. A good chunk of the top was missing. That still left enough of the engraved text for it to be deciphered, but we now believe the key may be hidden within the piece that is missing.”

Tovey tapped his fingers on the table, thinking. “My dear woman… I’m rather fond of that museum. In fact I last visited just before the war and saw the Rosetta Stone at that time. It was in very good condition, perfectly intact—oh a little chip here or there, but no major damage to speak of.”

Now it was Elena’s turn to be taken by unexpected news. “Undamaged? The top third was intact?”

Tovey nodded. Watching her eyes move back and forth as though following her wild inner thoughts. He could see that this was a complete revelation to her, something entirely unexpected.

“Of course!” she said, her breath coming quickly. “This is an altered reality—a different Meridian as Dorland would put it. The Rosetta Stone we had access to after learning about this was in our time.”

“I’m not quite sure I follow you.”

“Well then,” she said. “In the history I know, your favorite battleship, HMS Invincible, was never built. The Germans never took Gibraltar, there was no battle for the Canary Islands, Russia was never fragmented as it is here, Moscow never fell to the Germans, and there was no Orenburg Federation. Furthermore, Krakatoa never erupted in 1942, that occurred several decades earlier. Don’t you see? From my perspective, this world is an alternate time line.” The realization was a glow on her face now. “Why, it never occurred to me that the Rosetta Stone would be in any way different from the one I could look at in my time. But here you say it’s complete and whole? That means we might have yet another key, safe and sound, right there in the museum!”

“My,” said Tovey. “This is getting darker and more mysterious every time we discuss it, and more frightening every time I contemplate what doors these keys might open, and where they might lead. There’s a real darkness there, real uncertainty. Don’t you feel it?”

“Of course. Though I don’t fear them because the keys might open them. No. I think these keys were men to keep them sealed shut, locked and well hidden. Because once we do open one, there’s no guarantee that we can close it again.”

“Pandora’s box,” said Tovey. “Someone engineered these keys, knowing full well the locations of these cracks in the mirror, and where they might lead. They obviously knew enough to lead you here with that one around your neck, and to think I was somehow involved in that is rather unsettling. Then they hid these others in artifacts that all seemed to find their way to the British Museum—at least two of them. I wonder why?”

“Three. The other key I mentioned, the one given to another agent of the Watch, is also associated with a location, and it was in the British Museum library, hidden in the cover of the Lindisfarne Gospels.”

“How very interesting. Where does it lead us?”

“That I do not know. I wish they had told me everything.”

“Well, might we now assume that the remaining keys are also hidden in artifacts within that museum?” Tovey walked to the end of the hall in that drafty corridor of thought.

“We might assume that, but confiscating and inspecting everything in that museum would be difficult. Now that I know the Rosetta Stone is there intact, it’s imperative I get to that key somehow. It looks like that box brought my ship here for more than one good reason.”

“I understand,” said Tovey. “Here we have two keys in hand, and we know of two more—one in the hand of an unknown agent of the Watch, whoever that may be, and one possibly still in the British Museum, in the Rosetta Stone. That leaves three more completely unaccounted for. How, may I ask, are you certain there were only seven?”

Elena smiled. “Remember that box I told you and the professor about in our last meeting?”

“Ah yes, the box that contained a scroll with my name on it—a little message, just for you.”

“Yes, the box we found at Delphi. The box that brought this ship here to the 1940s, ostensibly to find keys that could only be located on this time line…. Well… I went over it with a fine toothed comb, and a good magnifying glass. Come to find out—it has a hidden drawer. She got up, and to Tovey’s amazement, revealed the hidden compartment behind the moveable bulkhead, where the Red Phone was safely installed. There, sitting beside the telephone, was the box, and touching it she shortly revealed a small hidden drawer.

“Have a look for yourself,” said Elena, a gleam in her eye.

“My,” said Tovey. “One for each key…” He was looking at a series of small imprints in the material making up the base of that drawer. There were seven, each depression in the shape of a key.

“My key fits very nicely here,” Elena pointed to the second recessed area. “I thought it might be in the number one position, but it only fits here, in the number two spot. I suspect all the others have a place here as well.”

“Why not see where our newest arrival fits in,” Tovey suggested.

Elena smiled. “Yes, why not?”