Breakthrough (The Red Gambit Series) (79 page)

By the time he had finished with the artillery, the battlefield looked completely different. Everywhere
Soviet
tanks lay smashed or abandoned, burning or just silent.

About twenty or so tanks had made it back into the relative safety of the built-up area, but still men died
,
as the Sturmgeschutz and Panzers sent their shells into tender rear and side armour.

Shortly afterwards, Knocke ordered his panzers forward, following in the wake of the retreating tank
units
.

Moving up with his reconnaissance force in the lead
,
and an infantry
group
from the RDM’s 1st Battalion
,
plus
the Brigade’s Assault Engineer force, the Legion Brigade found that
the enemy force had melted away. It had left
behind some wrecked vehicles,
a few wounded men
,
and
a few hastily laid
booby traps
.

Uhlmann organised the refuelling and reammunitioning of his tank companies, sought out the living and the dead, and began the process of putting his wounded regiment back together.

Elsewhere, other commanders, or in too many cases their deputies, began similar processes.

Knocke, his command Panther parked under the only stand of trees left in the park
adjacent to
Allgä
uer Straβe, consulted
a map in harness with Von Arnesen
, combining their talents to extricate the
Stuttgart
garrison
.

Uhlmann was still busy with his unit
,
and Lange was on his way to the rear with a
twisted
ankle and a nasty
head wound
, earned when leadin
g an assault on Rostov-8.

Knocke’s mind posed a question.

‘Maybe I was wrong to have doubts
about him
?’

A radio transmission broke through his thoughts, bringing him quickly back to the problem in hand, and how to pass the 3rd Algerians through his positions.

The senior radio operator turned to report
,
but Knocke stopped him with a soft gesture.

“Thank you Lutz,
I heard. Acknowledge and inform Commandant Uhlmann to direct them across the tank battlefield to pass south of ‘
Leningrad
’
,
where they will be met by elements of Julius and Otto with further instructions.

“Zu befehl
,
Standartenfuhrer,” and he returned to his radio before he caught his commander’s admonishing look.

Mov
ing to the other radio operator, Knocke dictated a
simple
report to be passed
to an expectant Lavalle.

Stuttgart
had been successfully relieved.

With that simple message, ground-attack aircraft that
had
been husbanded for the
secondary
purpose
,
swept out over the surroundings kilometres, seeking out the
Soviet
artillery
,
which could yet inflict heavy casualties on the escaping Algerians.

Most
Soviet
artillery units
deliberately
misconstrued their orders and kept silent. Those that didn’t experienced a long enforced silence
,
as fighter-bombers visited themselves upon the ground forces with great effect.

Kowalski
purchased his normal pastries and tendered up his cash.

The
standard
procedure was for him to say ‘Keep the change’, which indicated that the notes that se
emed stuck together actually were sealed and had a message inserted between them.

If there was a message in return then the offer would be refused and smaller denomination notes would be returned, similarly sealed.

This was the emergen
cy
communications
route, and a back-up if there
was a failure elsewhere. Although rarely used
,
it was a routine he undertook every day he was present in
Baden-Baden
. Otherwise, the baker passed the messages to a certain hotel emplo
yee when he attended the bakery
in the early mornings.

Today there was no message back, but his message regarding the deployment of ‘Camerone’ was there, circumventing the hotel orderly because of its importance.

“Keep the change
,
Mein Herr.”

“Danke
, Herr
Maior, danke.”

A number of sweet pastries changed hands and he left, holding the door open for an old woman
,
who had also completed her purchases.

“Gnadige Frau.”

“
Dankeschön,
Herr Maior.”

‘You Russian asshole.’

Despite having only one arm, Rüssel was an accomplished cyclist
,
and
he
undertook a number of deliveries for his special customers
,
once he had shut up shop for the day.

His wife would take any leftover product and sell it in the street
,
whilst he peddled
through
Baden-Baden
,
delivering special orders to those with sufficient means to pay for it, and he didn’t mean money in most cases.

He most often exchanged goods for his wares, jams and preserves
,
with which he created his special cakes.

All except one custo
mer
,
that was, a journey
Rüssel
hate
d
because i
t involved cycling up to the four hundred
m
etre
line, following the winding Alter Schloβweg
,
to the main door of Schloss Hohenbaden.

As far as the entire house staff was concerned, the Oberst
,
as he was known,
liked to meet with the tradesmen, as he enjoyed the haggling process.
In reality
,
the trading
covered the
exchanges between him and the b
aker
and other agents
, information from a number of contacts one way
,
or orders and enquiries from GRU control going the other.

Oberst Christian Adolf Löwe summoned his manservant to have the baker seen off the premises
,
and returned to
his drawing room, which was truly a room with a view, enjoying the all the sights of
Baden-Baden
in the valley below.

The gardener and his new apprentice didn’t even seem to notice the cyclist’s departure, so engrossed were they in their topiary.

The Oberst settled back into his
favourite
chair, enjoying both the view from his window and the obvious charms of the new
member of the house staff
, her
splendid
bosom so proudly on display in the uniform he had
personally
chosen for her.

He smiled disarmingly at the maid as she poured his traditional five o’clock coffee, one of the first things she had been told
about
on her first day of service.

“Thank you very much, my dear,” he shoehorned the maximum amount of charm into the six words.

‘I s
hall have those
fat
teats
,
my beauty, and more besides.
’

Finishing up, the maid placed the cup and saucer in the right position and returned the coffee pot to its stand, smiling back at her employer.

“Will that be all
,
Herr Oberst?”

‘I’ll shoot your balls off if you so much as twitch.’

“For now, Anna-Maria, for now.”

De
Valois left the room and headed for a quick
exchange
with the new gardener’s apprentice
, also a member of ‘Deux’
.

Eisenhower had finished up a briefing on the debacle that had been Operation Casino.

It was now wholly obvious that it had been an elaborate trap, from Station X’s monitoring of
the increased
Russian radio traffic in the area, through dummy vehicles to draw the attention of aerial reconnaissance
,
and culminating in the
agents talking of big numbers of
Soviet
tanks and soldiers
, probably under the influence of
Soviet
Intelligence
.

Tedder had grudgingly admitted that the subterfuge had been excellently worked out and carried through, displaying a flair hitherto unsuspected.

Clearly
,
the enhanced radio traffic was a carefully worked web of deceit
,
using radios and little else.

Elements of
eight
Anti-Aircraft divisions had
now
been identified by spies on the ground, although recent events meant that intelligence officers would turn jaundiced eyes to such intel until it was proven by other means.

Once bitten, twice shy on that one.

RAF Bomber Command had taken a
n awful
beating
,
and would be dysfunctional for some time to come.
It was a
n organisation used to taking casualties on unprecedented levels
, but, with Operation Casino, it
had exceeded its capacity to absorb the deaths of friends and comrades
. I
n order to preserve the Bomber Force, Harris had withdrawn it from combat for at least seven days.

‘Poor L
imeys.’

Bedell-Smith approached with a dead-pan face, partly annoyed because he had got it wrong, partly exuberant because of the end result.

He placed the report in front of his boss.

“What do we have here then
,
Walter?”

“Report on
Stuttgart
,
Sir.”

Eisenhower swapped his cigarette for the paperwork and tossed the first page.

“Wow!”

Coffee and
fresh
pastries arrived to sustain the two Generals until dinner.

“And this is all confirmed?”

“From De Lattre himself
,
Sir. It seems those boys gave the commies a damn good horse-whipping
,
and then some.”

“Uh-huh.”

Eisenhower shifted his gaze to the third page.

“Yeah
,
but they paid for it.”

“Yes Sir, they did, but…
”

The statement stopped ahead of schedule, drawing Ike’s attention as
Bedell-Smith
had intended.

“Go on
,
Walt, spit it out.”

“Sir, you know I was less than comfortable with this ‘Legion’ thing.”

Eisenhower almost giggled.

“I seem to remember you mentioning it.”

Bedell-Smith
shrugged in acceptance of the point.

“Sir, these Legion troops may well have paid a high price for their success, and bear in mind that figure is probably not yet complete.”

Ike nodded but let his man continue.

“The thing is, how many troops would it have cost us? More than
three hundred dead? Certainly
more than the final figure
for the Legion troopers
,
whatever it may be.”