Men of War (2013) (9 page)

“Hut
four, Turing here…. Yes… Yes… I see… he said what? You’re certain of this? At
Gibraltar? Yes, of course! Send him at once, on the very next plane if you can
do so safely. Otherwise we’ll handle the matter from Hut 4. Very good. Thank
you, gentlemen.” He hung up the phone, his eyes alight with some surprise.

Admiral
Tovey could see the hint of a smile on his face now. “Some news, Professor?”

“My
God… that was MI6 out of Gibraltar. They picked up a man who may have something
to do with
Geronimo
. We may not be able to get a man aboard that ship
any time soon, Admiral, but we may just have a man
from
that
ship—sitting in an interrogation room under the Rock at this very moment!”

Chapter 6

The
car
drove quickly along the narrow winding roadways carved in to the Rock,
down from Sentinel Hill to Queens Road and then along Ward Way to turn north up
the eastern coast towards the North Front Airfield. The field itself was a
narrow rectangular strip that cut across the isthmus north of the Rock and
extended out onto the bay, supported by limestone quarried out of the Rock
itself over the last three years. The small airfield around it could support up
to 100 fighters and several squadrons of twin engine Hudson Bombers, enough air
power to provide a strong defense, yet also a highly vulnerable target from any
hostile force to the north.

If
Spain had ever thrown in with Hitler, their artillery could have made short
work of the field, rendering it all but useless in a matter of hours. The
15,000 man garrison might hold out a while in the tunnels, but the lessons of
Singapore and Corregidor proved that no fortress was invulnerable. Thirty-two
miles of tunnels under the Rock were some comfort, but of limited real
defensive value against a determined enemy. The Rock had no source of natural
water beyond a series of catchment pools at the top of the 430 meter outcrop,
designed solely to capture rainwater.

For
these reasons, the British always feared their small bastion here was as
vulnerable as it was important, and rumors of enemy plans to attack Gibraltar
had given them fits since the outbreak of the war. There had been a plan,
Operation Felix, that had been set aside when the Germans invaded Russia. Yet
if the Germans could capture Gibraltar they would gain a commanding position
from which to influence both naval theaters, the Atlantic and the Med, along
with a deep water port that could hold and service Germany’s biggest ships. The
capture of Gibraltar would drive a wedge of steel into the heart of the Royal
Navy, or so Admiral Raeder believed and argued.

The
detailed plans for this operation had been drawn up by the Wehrmacht in the
Autumn of 1940 and personally signed by Hitler, reemphasized in Fuehrer
Directive #18. It was only the failure of diplomacy that prevented the
operation going forward earlier that year. Franco’s list of demands had run on
and on. He worried over British reprisals should he join the Axis, a blockade
or possibly even an invasion on his Atlantic coast. He insisted any German
troops involved would have to wear Spanish Army uniforms as a point of honor.
He asked for thousands of tons of wheat and other resources to feed his
shattered state. He fretted over the possibility that the United States would
shut down their extensive Telecom system in Spain. In the end Hitler became so
frustrated with the man that he exclaimed he would rather have a tooth pulled
than speak with him again.

Yet
others in all three branches of service, had managed to persuade the Fuehrer to
resurrect the old plan, codenamed and give it new life with a new name as well.
Now called
Operation
Valkyrie
,
General Ludwig
Kübler's
49th Corps would lead the assault, and Franco’s
consent and the cooperation of the Spanish government would no longer matter.
Spain would capitulate or be conquered, the Germans had no doubts on this.

It
was a dangerous plan, but nothing more than that for the moment. Yet the
existence of such plans still haunted the dreams of the SIS and other
intelligence services. Their Allies’ own plans for Operation Torch were slowly
running on to the deadline set for early November, and it was an operation that
had only been set in motion after considerable haggling with the Americans.
General Marshall and Admiral King had delivered a one two punch to the British
by pushing for an immediate cross channel invasion in a plan they code named
“Sledgehammer.” The British did everything possible to forestall it, thinking
the Americans were in no way prepared to seriously confront the Germans on the
continent. They prevailed by diverting the testosterone to a more graspable
objective, the seizure of the French colonies in North Africa so the Allies
could drive east behind Rommel’s back.

Now
all these plans, arguments and counter plans were held in a breathless state of
suspension because of a solitary nondescript staff car rolling up to a Hudson
Mk I twin engine bomber on North Front Airfield, Gibraltar. The squat plane’s
engines were already warmed up, and a flight of three Spitfires was waiting on
the plain dirt and gravel tarmac to take off right behind it and escort the
Hudson as far as their limited combat radius would allow, a little over 410
miles. With drop tanks they could take the bomber all the way up to the
northern coast of Spain and see it safely off into the Bay of Biscay.

They
Hudsons
and Beaufighters had
carried diplomatic pouches every week, key intelligence documents and photos,
but this time they were slated to carry a very special cargo—Gennadi Orlov and
his talking ear plugs. But a man named Loban had other plans that day, and Orlov
was not in the car that pulled up to the tarmac to deliver that day’s document
caches. The plane would fly with transcripts of this man’s interrogation, and a
warning—Orlov had escaped.

Orlov
knew the earbuds might be his undoing, just as he had feared. When he had first
heard the tinny voice of the AI greeting and prompt for a question back in the
interrogation room in the dark, stony warren of the Rock, it had all come
crashing down. He knew there was no way he was going to explain it away now. At
first he gambled that the British would not easily make any connection between
the earbuds and his jacket. And why should they? In the span of their own
limited comprehension, the only reference point they might make for the buds
would be that they were ear pieces for a wireless communications device, albeit
a highly advanced one.

Loban’s
next question, ‘Who is she?’ was almost comical, however, and the Chief first
thought he was not completely unmasked as yet. Yes, now the British were going
to have fingers up his ass and he knew he was in for a much more grueling
interrogation, but the stupidity of Loban’s question told him they had not the
slightest inkling that the earbuds were designed to work in tandem with his
jacket and the computer so cleverly hidden within its heavy lining.

Orlov
was taking no chances, however. He had to think fast at that moment, and he
sighed heavily, scratching his head and asking if he could have a cigarette
from his jacket pocket. He was hoping he could get to his collar button and
give it a squeeze to turn the computer off, which would also mute the ear buds,
and he kicked himself mentally for ever leaving the damn thing on in the first
place.

Loban
had been sitting within arm’s reach of wall hanger, and nodded, but he simply
stood up to fish out the cigarettes and then tossed the mostly empty pack
Orlov’s way. The jacket had, of course, already been searched, but the
insulation and padding around the computer was so effective, the flexible
circuitry so thin, that nothing but the cigarettes and earbuds had been found.
Orlov reached for the cigarettes, his heart rate still up, and Loban fetched a
silver lighter from his pocket. He lit the cigarette and quietly waited through
the first few puffs before his expression clearly indicated he wanted an
explanation, and soon.

“Who
is she?” he said again, much louder this time as he rolled the earbud between
his thumb and forefinger, and the result made an end of anything Orlov could
think of doing to somehow squirm out of the situation.

“Let
me check that…”
the voice in the earbuds continued.
“This might answer
your question. ‘She’ is a third person pronoun referring to a female person or
animal, or anything considered as by personification to be feminine, for
example, a ship.”

Loban
looked down at the earbuds in his hand, a startled expression on his face.
“What the hell?” he said in Russian, half annoyed, half amazed. Then he raised
the earbud closer to his mouth and spoke sharply.

“You
think this is some kind of a joke, eh? Well laugh now, because we’ve got a line
on your signal and we’ll have men on you in a matter of minutes, you stupid
bitch!”

Loban
was lying, of course, simply trying the time honored trick of flushing the
hidden accomplice out with a threat. This time he had not squeezed the earbuds
to enable their listen mode, so there was only silence, much to Orlov’s relief.

“Very
funny,” Loban said again to Orlov.

“Don’t
bother looking for her,” said Orlov. “She’s long gone by now. Yes, Svetlana can
be very annoying at times,” Orlov told him, desperate to find a way to get the
train back on the tracks again. By naming a woman, he hoped he would divert
Loban’s attention away from the earbud gaffe. “Very well... She is my
controller, Svetlana, and yes, she can be a bitch at times. That was all too
typical.” He gestured dismissively to the earbuds in Loban’s hand. “But I
suppose there’s no point playing games any longer.”

“Glad
to hear it,” said Loban. “So what is it? Are you NKVD? GRU? Naval
Intelligence?”

“NKVD,”
said Orlov matter of factly in a long breath of smoke. He was taking the air of
a man talking to his peer now, and this was his last chance, hoping that the
status of alliance between Britain and the USSR at this point would get him out
of the hot water he was in. But Loban was still playing with the earbuds, still
rolling them between his thumb and finger, and he had again activated the
listen mode, his next question picked up by the microphone.

“So
where did you come from?” Loban gave him an expectant look, thinking he might
hear that Orlov was attached to the Madrid NKVD Cell that had been in place
there since 1938 in the midst of Franco’s private little civil war. Then
‘Svetlana’ spilled the beans, and all over the table this time, and Orlov knew
his fate was as good as sealed.

“This
file was downloaded from the ship’s open library, BCG Kirov, at zero-ten-forty
hours, 13 August, 2021. Logged user: Captain Gennadi Orlov, Chief of
Operations.”

Loban
didn’t quite get what the AI had said. The word “download” was
techspeak
and only first used in the year 1977 as a noun
and then gaining broader use as a verb by 1980. But the word was descriptive
enough as it stood, and two other words leapt out at him.

“The
ship?” he said, again startled by what he had heard, now looking from the earbuds
to Orlov and back again. “
Captain
Gennadi Orlov? Thirteen August
2021?
What’s going on here?”

That
same evening a car was heading for a plane on the graveled tarmac of North
Field at Gibraltar, but Orlov was not there. Loban had managed to move his
charge out by other means, through the long warren of tunnels beneath the Rock
to a secret exit on the northeast side of the peninsula. There, he led Orlov,
at gunpoint, down a long rocky slope to the ragged shore where a small fishing
boat had been tied off. Three men were waiting by the boat, and Loban glanced
at his watch before he reached in his pocket and handed the Chief a fresh pack
of cigarettes.

“For
the journey,” he said quickly. “I’m afraid you’ll be going east instead of
west, Mister Orlov, back to your friends on the Black Sea Coast where you can
tell them all about the
Ukrania
and her
Captain
Pavlovko
and all the rest. I didn’t believe
it, and a doubt that they will either. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether
the NKVD will be welcoming you home with open arms or not. You might get better
lodging there than you would holed up in Bletchley Park with the MI6. Do write
and tell me how things work out. This is as far as I can take you this evening,
but you’ll have the company of these three for a good long while, and one man
speaks Russian, Sergei Kamkov, the tall one.”

“
Spasiba
,” said Orlov, thanking the man in spite of his
misgivings about this development. He would rather be in a boat on the sea than
in a plane any day, but he had no idea where he was really being taken now, or
why, until Loban leaned in and spoke in a low voice.

“You
didn’t think I was going to turn you over to the British, my friend, eh? No, we
take care of our own, and you’ll be in good hands with these three. Now I must
go.”

That
statement surprised Orlov, as Loban stepped down the slope and handed the tall
man in the trio a small diplomatic pouch, saying something in a very urgent
tone of voice. Then he started back up the hill to the shadowed entrance above,
and vanished into the maze of tunnels again. His charge was delivered as
ordered, and he had other business to attend to. He had to find a way to get
off the Rock discreetly, though by normal channels, and then work his way to a
secure phone to call the wine dealer in La Concepcion, just north across the
demarcation line separating Gibraltar from Spain. He would ask them to deliver
a good bottle of Zinfandel to a certain address, which was his code to indicate
he, in turn, had a good bottle of information to deliver to his local area
handler.