Men of War (2013)

by John Schettler

  He obeyed that order for years until he let slip in a bar one night in 1956 that there had been nothing on the seabed off St. Helena even remotely resembling the wreckage of a ship. Days later Crabb would disappear while again diving to investigate the propeller assembly of another Soviet ship, the cruiser Ordzhonikidze that transported Nikita Khrushchev on a diplomatic mission to the UK.

  So matters ‘Russian’ were suddenly given a special sensitivity in MI6, particularly at a vital base like Gibraltar. Orlov’s strange appearance immediately got the attention of a good many branches of the intelligence service, and he was soon locked away in a cave, deep below the Rock.

  Rybakov was vetted easily enough, a fish that was quickly cast back into the sea of drifters and vagrants on the Spanish coast. For Orlov, however, it was the beginning of a long and difficult series of interrogations, and it was not long before word of this strange Russian prisoner, a supposed ally that the Soviet authorities seemed to have no record of, got round to Bletchley Park.

  Chapter 3

  Lieutenant Thomas Loban leaned back in his chair, regarding the man before him with concentrated attention. ‘Orlov,’ he thought. It meant ‘Son of Oryol,’ the eagle. So where has this one flown in from, I wonder?

  Loban was a five year veteran of MI6, the son of a wealthy businessman who had married into equal wealth in the UK after the First World War. His mother was Elena Chase, landed old money from Cambridge, and she made sure her son had a good education, seeing him graduate with honors at the university there and then enter the Special Air Service soon after to ripen up and see a bit of the empire, and the world it spanned. He was eager to serve, quick minded, and with a sharp eye for details that soon saw him at a post in the intelligence arm where his bilingual skills had proved most useful.

  Touring Eastern Europe with his father as a youth, he had a good sense of the culture, finding it much more to his liking than the stuffy class ridden British society, and he often spent long summers abroad in Belarus, Ukraine and eventually Moscow, where his father still had offices trying to manage his mining business. Loban made quite a few contacts there, and more than a few in some very dark corners of that city. When the second war came, he was home visiting his mother, and quickly posted to the Foreign Service Desk where he soon finagled a position at Gibraltar. He had seen the place on tour with his family as a younger man, and always yearned to return. Now the dusky underground tunnel complex beneath the Rock was not quite what he had in mind all along, but he spent most of his time above ground at the signals desk, reading and translating reports coming in from the Eastern Front to help the service paint a good picture of what was going on there.

  MI6 did not assign military ranks to its agents, but he kept his SAS rank when he signed on for the duty, and his mates were fond of calling him “the Lieutenant.”

  This assignment was something new, a break in his usual routine, and he found it somewhat interesting. A man had been picked up on a Spanish steamer that struck a mine in the western approaches. There was nothing all that peculiar about that, but the more he looked at this man, the more he came to feel that fate and chance had delivered a very interesting catch to the dragnets of MI6 this time around, a very interesting catch indeed.

  “Let me sum this up, if you will, Mister Orlov,” he said in perfect Russian. “You were on a steamer out of Istanbul from the Black Sea, and all the way through the Med to Cadiz, and yet you cannot name the ship?”

  “I was there for work,” said Orlov. “Who cares what they call the ship? I wanted passage west and it seemed the only way I was going to get here.”

  “You don’t like your homeland?”

  “Mother Russia?” Orlov gave him a wry smile. “Every son of the east loves the Rodina, eh? I just had no love for their stinking war, that’s all.”

  “You were in the service there?”

  “Everyone was in the service, and I was no exception.”

  “Then you are a deserter.”

  “If you wish. But I was a very clever one. Most end up dead, or roped into the work crews, or fodder for the NKVD. I got smart before things got too bad, and I got out. What of it?”

  “What of it? Well they shoot deserters these days, at least that’s what I hear, Mister Orlov, and I hear a great deal.”

  Orlov simply folded his arms, cocking his head to one side, unimpressed. “So shoot me,” he said coolly. “You working for Josef Stalin these days too?”

  Loban smiled at that, then changed the subject. “So you were in the military. Where? What unit?”

  Orlov had to think fast now, and it had to be convincing, yet he knew what he was going to say. It was only a matter of fetching the details, because something told him this man would not be satisfied with the broad strokes. He was going to want details, and Orlov labored to recall those long hours on the knee of his grandfather, listening to the old man telling him stories of the war, of the siege of Sevastopol, and how he made it out on a steamer before the Germans closed their ring of steel around the city, slipping down to Novorossiysk. The poor man ended up in Stalingrad.

  “Russian Navy,” Orlov said with conviction this time. “Merchant Marine. Ukraina was the ship, though I wasn’t on it too long. The Germans got to it in Novorossiysk and I was beached. The rumors came down that they were going to roll us all into the army, and I wanted none of that. So I took a leave of absence.” Again the smile covering the obvious admission of the crime of desertion.

  Loban made a note to check on the ship, but he would soon find the story would pan out. Ukraina was indeed a passenger and cargo ship operated by the Black Sea State Shipping Company. The Germans got it with Stukas in the harbor as they closed in on the port at Novorossiysk. Orlov had never been on it, but his grandfather had, and he told his grandson all about it, many, many times.

  “Your Captain? What was his name?”

  “Polovko,” Orlov replied easily. His grandfather had talked about the man endlessly. Polovko said this…Polovko did that… Polovko had a great big sea chest where he kept his vodka and tobacco, and his grandfather had found in him a ready source of comfort. ‘Always find your Polovokos in this life, Gennadi,’ the old man had told him many times. ‘Blat and babki get you only so far. The Povlovkos do the rest.’ Orlov listened well.

  “So the Germans sunk this ship of yours, and you deserted to avoid conscription into the army. Is that right?”

  “Correct. I’m navy. I’m a sailing man. I wasn’t going to stick around and end up in Stalingrad like all the rest.”

  “Stalingrad? Well it looks like the Germans are making a big push for that place now. Your countrymen are having a rough time there.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” said Orlov. “The Germans will lose, of course, and it won’t be the first time we kick their behinds. We’ll get Rostov back soon. Kharkov too.” Orlov had listened to the earbuds tell their tale while he was on the Duero, lazing away an hour on break and thinking he might fill in his knowledge of what was happening in the world that month. All he had to do was squeeze the button on his jacket collar or right earbud and then ask his question. The Portable Wiki would respond like a good short order cook, serving up any segment of the history he desired. He had learned that this was, indeed, the month the Germans launched their offensive aimed at Stalingrad, but they would lose that great battle, and all those other cities as well when the Russian winter counterattack reached its high water mark before the spring thaw began to set in. Then there would be the careful consolidation of the line until the great summer battle of Kursk.

  “Wait until things thaw out this summer,” Orlov bragged. “We’ll kick their asses all the way to Berlin.” He folded his arms, realizing he was straying just a bit, but thinking he could pass that off as sheer bravado.

  “Well I surely hope you are correct, Mister Orlov, though it seems they will do so without any help from you.” Loban left that out there for a moment, goading Orlov a bit to see if he would get a reaction. The big Chief was stolid an
d unmoved.

  “They won’t miss an Able Seaman from the fire room.”

  “I see… You don’t much look the part, if I may say. Our Captain Maud says he’s seen a thousand stokers and shovel men, but never one as clean as you.”

  Orlov knew he had to tidy up these little details, and he was doing what he had learned long ago in the Russian underground. When somebody questions you, then tidy up that loose shirttail, and tuck it in with a nice little lie, a little lozh to cover your weak point—but always remember it. It was clear to him that he had been singled out because he did not look the part of a vagrant ship hand. There was little he could do about that for the moment, so he tried to simply pass it off.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Orlov said with a grin. “Does your Captain Maud want to dance with me as well?”

  Loban smiled. “Oh I wouldn’t want to run afoul of Wee Mac. You’ve seen the man, built like this rock we’re under. Get cheeky with Mac and he rap you with that walking stick of his, and make it sting.”

  “I can handle myself,” said Orlov, his eyes narrowed, arms folded over his broad chest.

  “I don’t doubt it,” said Loban. “But in point of fact, I would say you were not an Able Seaman at all, Mister Orlov. Your jacket there has shoulder buttons. Our officer’s coats have the same.” He looked at Orlov, his point obvious. “So I would think only an officer would have such a fine jacket, yes? Or are you going to say you stole this one from someone else? I think not. Your name is plain to see on the breast pocket.”

  Orlov knew he was in a bit of a corner now, and a lie would just not do, so he told the truth. “Officers get demoted,” he said sullenly. He was quick to find some sure footing in that response, for it wasn’t a lie, and he didn’t have to make anything up on the fly that he might forget about and get caught in a contradiction later.

  “Demoted? Then you were an officer?”

  “They called me the Chief,” said Orlov matter of factly. “I got things done on the ship—kept the men in line—that sort of thing.”

  “Why were you demoted?”

  “I have a bad temper,” said Orlov quickly. “Somebody bothered me and I busted his face open. The Captain didn’t like it so he made me an Able Seaman and said I could learn what it was like to work my way up the ranks again and learn to treat the men properly. Bullshit to that! The Germans did me a favor when they sank that damn ship. So I gave myself a promotion and slipped away. Good riddance.” He had the bit between his teeth now, and was enjoying his tale, half true, half fabricated, and easy to remember.

  “Very good…” Loban made another note, then turned to a different matter. “This pistol you were carrying, was it government issued?” He held up the weapon, eying it in the wan overhead lighting then setting it down on the plain wooden table in front of him. It wouldn’t be normal procedure to interrogate a detainee with a weapon in the room, but the clip had been removed, and there were men on the other side of the mirror watching the whole scene very closely, and transcribing the conversation.

  “Of course not,” said Orlov, smart enough to realize that it was the damn pistol that had landed him in this mess in the first place. ‘Comrade Glock’ had raised the eyebrows of every man who laid eyes on it, and he knew he had to come up with a convincing story about it. “It was custom made for me in Moscow by a dealer.”

  “Custom made? By who?”

  “A man named Glock, his name is right there on the gun, can you see it?” It was a safe play, as Gaston Glock, the Austrian engineer who designed the weapon would be a boy of 12 years now, and would not found his company until the 1980s.

  “This bit here? I see…And this Mister Glock makes guns for a living in Moscow?” Another note. “What about this peculiar scope that was attached? Mister Glock made that for you as well?”

  “Of course. I told him, I needed a light so I could target things in the dark. He said he knew just what to do.”

  “So you’re saying this is nothing more than a flashlight?”

  Orlov nodded.

  “It’s a very odd light. Doesn’t give off any illumination at all.”

  “It’s only for targeting,” said Orlov. “You see the light, and then you know what you are likely to hit, eh? What’s so mysterious about a stupid flash light?”

  “Well it’s like no other torch I’ve ever seen. Such a narrow beam. And green? Does it shine through some kind of tinted glass?” The first working laser would not be developed for another eighteen years, in 1960, an intense and very narrow beam of concentrated light on a single wavelength.

  Orlov simply shrugged. He knew there was nothing his grandfather had ever told him about it, and it was one of the dangling shoe laces that was likely to trip him up and tear his whole story apart if he got into it. The laser range finder, the earbuds, and the jacket, how would he explain those away if these men got too curious? They were going to be real problems if he couldn’t talk his way out of this mess soon. Thus far they had fished out the earbuds in his jacket pocket, but he told them they were merely for sleep, simple earplugs, and said nothing more. It would never occur to any of them that they were actually wirelessly in communication with the Polyflex-fabric computer in his jacket lining, powered by solar sensitive fibers that constantly charged a wafer thin battery. They had never heard of computers, so how could they look for something they knew nothing about?

  He was wrong. This man had the earbuds out again, and the jacket was hung on a wall peg across the empty room, too close this time, and well in range of the computer. The man was toying with the earbuds, which made Orlov somewhat edgy and nervous, though he tried to appear unconcerned.

  “These ear plugs of yours…Somewhat solid, eh? Not very comfortable for sleeping I would imagine.”

  Again, Orlov simply shrugged. The man was rolling the earbuds between his fingers, then peering at the thin metal screen attached to one side, and Orlov knew his story might come cascading down in a heartbeat.

  “Also custom made? By this Mister Glock, I suppose?” The lieutenant fixed him with a sure eye now, knowing that they had to be ear pieces for a communications device of some sort. But it was most unusual. A wireless unit this small? He wondered how it could possibly function. The chaps in the technical group wanted to pry the damn things open to have a look, but he persuaded them to wait until they went over the matter with the detainee. He could now see that the ear plugs were a sensitive spot for this man. He noted how Orlov shifted uneasily, looked away when he brought the matter up, a sure sign that he was uncomfortable about the plugs.

  Orlov’s silence was as damning as anything he might have said at that moment. It told Loban that these were, in fact, very special devices. They had a peculiar raised area on one side that seemed to give slightly when he squeezed the ear plug….

  And then it happened, one of those moments of pure happenstance that would change the whole tenor of the interrogation. The quaint, tinny voice of a woman sounded from the ear plug in his hand, speaking in Russian! Loban’s eyes widened, and he looked at the plug. It had come from there, from the little metallic screen on one side.

  “My, my…” he said, raising one plug to his ear and pressing on the raised area again. The voice was much louder now, clear and sweet in his ear. “Please speak clearly, and ask your question.”

  He took the plug from his ear, his mind racing now. This man was obviously wired to receive communications from another accomplice, but for the signal to reach way down here beneath the Rock meant that the other party would have to be very close. It suddenly occurred to him that Orlov may have had every intention of infiltrating this place, in just the manner he had been brought in!

  Loban cradled the ear plugs in the palm of his hand now as he looked the red-faced Orlov squarely in the eye with another question.

  “Who is she?” he said slowly. “Is she your control or just a local contact? Suppose you tell me who you are really working for, Mister Orlov.”

  Part II

&n
bsp; The Watch

  “May He who holds in his hands the destinies of nations make you worthy of the favors He has bestowed, enabling you with pure hearts and hands and sleepless vigilance, to guard and defend to the end of time, the great charge

  He has committed to your keeping.”

  —J. Reuben Clark

  Chapter 4

  The Golf, Cheese and Chess Society had been working overtime again that summer. The men of that elite group of analysts and code breakers were again having their feet held to the fire over the Geronimo incident, though there wasn’t time for golf or chess any longer, and very little cheese to go around. The ‘Society” had been given that humorous handle instead of calling it the official name, which was the Government Code & Cipher Station at Bletchley Park, some 40 miles from London up a country lane outside Milton Keynes.

  Also called “Station X” or simply “BP” for Bletchley Park, the unit had been embarrassed in recent months by its inability to run down the true origin of the strange naval raider that had been putting holes in Royal Navy ships again, much to Whitehall’s dissatisfaction. The ship had first appeared in the Norwegian Sea, ran the Denmark Strait with a quiver of deadly new weapons, which they nearly put right on top of Churchill and Roosevelt when the two leaders met at Argentia Bay for the Atlantic Charter conference a year earlier. That part of the “incident” was now a closely watched secret, never revealed to the public or even most arms of the military itself. Only a very few men knew the whole story of what had happened that cold, stormy week of August, 1941, and Alan Turing was one of them.