Men of War (2013) (31 page)

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.