Kirov Saga Men of War

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.

“Svetlana my ass,” he breathed. “He had known Orlov was not what he seemed from the very first moment he spoke to him. He was navy, that much was certain, but there was something very odd about the man. He was an officer, that was also apparent. But where? When? On what ship? The ship had been called Kirov, and that was very amusing as well. That cruiser, he knew, had been trapped in the Gulf Of Riga up north at the outbreak of the war with Germany. It had managed to reach Tallinn and then moved to Leningrad where it had been bottled up ever since behind German minefields, harassed by the Luftwaffe as it tried to use its main guns as artillery supporting the defenders of that beleaguered city.

This Orlov was navy, he thought, but he certainly wasn’t the Captain of the cruiser Kirov. But intelligence had learned of a strange ship at large in the Med between August 11 and 14 last month, and Loban had been curious enough to slip off the Rock and head east, driving along the Spanish coast through Malaga and all the way to Adra and Matagorda on the cape when he heard this ship was heading that way. He had been there in time to see the fireworks of an amazing naval battle off the coast on the night of August 14th, and he had ordered several bottles of Zinfandel the very next day.

For Lieutenant Thomas Loban was a double agent, just another of many who had come out of the hallowed halls of the Cambridge Apostles, and he had been effectively working as a translator for MI6 while also collecting and passing information to the USSR for the last year. This month he had been keen on the trail of a word that had been picked up in the radio stream…Geronimo. Bit by bit, the real Russian Main Intelligence Directorate, the GRU, came to associate the word with a ship, and the ship was soon connected to some real naval chaos that had been underway in the Mediterranean Sea that month. They wanted to know why the British were suddenly so interested in Russian naval activities in the Black Sea, or the presence of any Russian naval personnel in the Med.

Loban told them all about Orlov, and now he thought he might be able to give them a real prize in this catch, and deny the same to the British in one fell swoop. He lit a cigarette as he made his way through the deep tunnel network, pleased with himself. This would likely shake things up a bit in Moscow, he thought, though he did not know just how much. His act of betrayal would lead to a wild hunt that would span thousands of miles, cross continents and long decades yet to come, and the fate of the world would rest on its outcome.





Part III



Rod-25



“It doesn't matter how much, how often, or how closely you keep an eye on things because you can't control them. Sometimes things and people just go. Just like that. Sometimes, people can go missing right before our very eyes.”



—Cecelia Ahern