by Colin Gee
“I look forward to your next report, Comrade General.”
1253 hrs, Saturday, 21st September 1946, the Kremlin, Moscow, USSR.
The door opened to admit a calmer Beria.
Stalin decided on a reconciliatory approach.
“Don’t blame the woman, Lavrentiy. She means well and has the Motherland as her priority. Look to those who misinformed you, eh?”
Beria sat heavily, his morning exertions having unusually tired him.
“Yes, Comrade General Secretary. I’ve already addressed that matter, and the new Commission is already assembled. There will be no repeat of that shambles. I’ll not let that bitch make a fool of me like that again.”
Stalin chuckled.
“Of course, you mean that you’ll not let a commission falsely report to myself and the GKO again.”
Beria looked at his master and was unable to mask the genuine anger still burning inside.
Stalin placed the pen on the desk and steepled his fingers.
“Sometimes I really do wish that you and she could be rolled into one… then I would have the best of both your worlds.”
Far from helping the situation, the General Secretary’s words fanned the flames even further, which he realised without Beria uttering a word.
“Right then. Before I eat, the matter of the money. Where are you with that?”
Beria took the opportunity to gain some of his self-esteem back by falling back on a project in which he was totally confident.
“The counterfeit currency is too bulky to dispatch via normal channels, and if we did do so, it would arrived in small quantities. My advisors say that, for maximum effect, it all needs to be put into the system as quickly as possible, not fed in over a period of time.”
Beria produced a simple document.
“Five hundred million pounds of currency occupies a huge space, and getting it to where it would cause the most damage is an extremely difficult exercise in logistics. This is the NKVD proposal, draft only at the moment. I’m sure the mechanics of it can be sorted out, so the main issue of note would be the Irish.”
Stalin dropped the document onto the table.
“Quickly… I’m hungry… explain this master plan to this poor peasant.”
“Simple, Comrade General Secretary. The biggest problem is transport. That can be overcome with your backing. We can order the Navy to detach submarines for our purpose. They’ll take the currency to our contacts in the IRA. In turn, the Irish will move the counterfeit notes into England and flood the system. The chaos will be immense and the damage to their financial structure catastrophic.”
“How does that work, Lavrentiy?”
“In a number of ways, so my financial advisors tell me. Confidence in the currency will waver and plummet. Inflation will rise critically for their economy. Money, good or counterfeit, will take on less value. Simply put, it will throw them completely off track and, if you bear in mind how they bankrupted themselves for the German War and the recent fighting, their house will come falling down around their ears in short order.”
“So, for the risk of a submarine or two, we can take that drunken shit Churchill and his pack out of the equation for the foreseeable future?”
“Yes, Comrade General Secretary, although it hinges on the Irish being able to perform some simple tasks.”
“How long before you find out if they can do what we need?”
“I already have my staff in Dublin working on the matter.”
“Excellent. Once that’s resolved, you may present this plan to the GKO.”
Stalin’s lunch was simple, but he enjoyed it with a relish he hadn’t felt for some months.
Of all those in the army close to the commander none is more intimate than the secret agent; of all rewards none more liberal than those given to secret agents; of all matters none is more confidential than those relating to secret operations.
Sun Tzu
CHAPTER 176 - THE USPENKA?
1537 hrs, Monday, 23rd September 1946, US Fleet Activities Sasebo, Nagasaki, Japan.
The task of sifting through the documentation was not easy, for more than one reason.
Admittedly, Yoshiro Takeo had it easier than many, for he needed no interpreter, either for spoken or written Japanese.
After all, he was Japanese, or at least that was how he was viewed by those around him.
Yoshiro Takeo had been born in Waikoloa, Hawaii on 1st January 1922, and considered himself an American through and through.
His elder brother fought with the Nisei warriors in Europe, but Yoshiro had been denied combat, and was instead sent to Naval Intelligence, where his keen mind and language skills were put to great use.
With the surrender of the Empire of Japan, he found himself back in the land of his ancestors, his skills employed in sifting through mountains of official paperwork and intelligence reports in order to record and log all aspects of the Imperial Navy’s war.
Which brought him to the records in front of him.
He sipped gently at his tea, savouring the flavour as he focussed his mind on the figures in front of him.
He didn’t bother asking for a second opinion; confidence in his own ability was never lacking.
In simple terms, many tons of steel had been delivered to Sasebo and some of the records that recorded their disposal had survived the Allied bombing campaign.
Enough to indicate considerable allocation to two special projects that commenced in April and October 1943, neither of which, at first sight, attracted any other mention in any of the remaining dockyard records.
He had caught that first sniff of something, the ‘Mongoto’ as he called them, a week previously but it was not until this morning that other information had come to light.
Whilst the Japanese Naval records had generally suffered from the attentions of the Allied air forces, the dockyard armaments distribution and allocation administration had somehow avoided any losses, meaning full records were available.
It was a portion of these that sat in front of him now and, try as he might, he could not tally a number of weapons with the stated receiving vessels and remaining stock, less those marked as destroyed in air raids.
Six Type 96 triple AA mounts were simply unaccounted for, as well as two 140mm 11th Year gun mounts.
The 140mm 50-caliber was a standard naval weapon, issued to surface vessels.
It had taken Takeo a moment to realise that the notations seemed to indicate a 40-caliber weapon.
What had piqued Takeo’s interest further was the casual remark of his submariner friend, Baumer.
He did a little research to confirm Baumer’s observation and quickly established that the 40-calibre 11th Year guns were indeed almost exclusively mounted on the IJN’s big submarines.
He had found Baumer back at his desk that lunchtime and questioned him on the larger IJN submarines, specifically the huge AM class that were Baumer’s special area of reference.
Initially, the former submariner rained on Takeo’s parade.
Type 96 mounts for submarines had a different make-up, with large amounts of stainless steel to help resist corrosion.
Plus the AMs had two triple mounts and a single mount of Type 96s.
There were traces of two single mounts that could possibly be involved, having been tasked for an abandoned submarine project but not installed. Pencil notations recorded both as ‘特型潜水艦’, which he translated into ‘Special Type, Submarine.’
They were both of the modified stainless steel variety, which supported their probable use in submarines.
“So that means the numbers don’t add up basically, Marvin.”
Baumer could only agree and he seized the moment.
“Yep. Anyway, now that you’ve barked up the wrong tree, gimme a hand with this lot, will ya?”
The matter of the guns was side-lined in favour of translating dockyard records on Sasebo’s abandoned AM submarine projects.
At that moment, the
guns in question were mounted on submarines thousands of miles away in a secret base on the Black Sea.
The very existence of the two Sen-Tokus still remained a secret.
1203 hrs, Wednesday, 2nd October 1946, Dankerode, Germany.
Guderian allowed the binoculars to fall slowly away from his face, which also allowed the smile that creased his weathered features to become apparent to those present.
The exercises had gone superbly well, each force growing in confidence in their own skills, and in those of the men around them.
With the exception of one mistake on road selection by a tank company commander, the week had gone far better than any of the generals or staff could have anticipated.
So much so that Guderian had decided that this would be the last one he would watch, and he promised himself a few days of peace and quiet in Schwangau, his new home.
Something drew his eye and the binoculars flew to his face.
“Mein Gott! Herrlich! Herrlich!”
He looked at the man standing away to the left and exchanged a nodded professional courtesy.
Guderian could not contain himself.
“Tell me. How did that happen?”
He looked at the scene of ‘Red’ team tanks appearing from nowhere, exactly where they shouldn’t be for the ‘Green’ team.
He could imagine the umpires trying to sort out the mayhem of who was dead, and also the indignation of the massacred ‘Green’ soldiers who were no slouches at the art of war themselves.
He continued to watch as the German green force was ‘butchered’ in front of him.
“Incredible, General… I didn’t see a thing before they were all over the grenadiers.”
“Those men learnt the art of camouflage from the very best, Herr Feldmarschal.”
Guderian conceded the point and offered his hand to the Polish general.
“Well done, General… very well done. Please make sure that your commander meets the German force commander and briefs him personally on how his force was dismantled.”
Zygmunt Berling saluted and, grinning from ear to ear, rushed off to radio Wojciech Bewziuk, commander of the 1st Division, in order celebrate the success of their efforts and pass on Guderian’s request. He also, wisely, advised caution in Bewziuk’s dealings with their new German allies, who would undoubtedly be sore about being handed their collective arse by their traditional enemy.
As it happened, the commander of the newly formed panzer-grenadiere division was a professional who understood he had been bested and was keen to learn the lessons so it would not happen again.
Across a range of such sites in Northern Germany, the two armies trained and exercised together, and developed an understanding and comradeship that cut across much of their nation’s history of enmity.
Much… but not all.
1601 hrs, Thursday, 3rd October 1946, the Lighthouse Tavern, Barnatra, County Mayo, Éire.
“God bless all here.”
The two men shook their jackets, sending rainwater in all directions, but there were no complaints or shouts of annoyance.
Everyone in the pub knew who they were.
It didn’t pay to get yourself noticed unnecessarily.
At the far end of the long bar, adjacent to the roaring fire, two other men rose from their table, preparing to welcome the visitors, who moved towards them briskly, as much as to close on the source of warmth as to commence business.
Two other men slipped into the bar, but stayed distant… watching… alert.
Outside, four others endured the rain, maintaining a perimeter within which the two senior IRA leaders could operate.
Brian O’Scanlon and Stephen Wood took the empty chairs as they exchanged handshakes with the two waiting men.
“I’m guessing that you’re O’Farrell?”
“That I am, Mister Wood.”
“So that makes you Lieutenant Ulianov?”
“Indeed so, Comrade Wood.”
Shandruk extended his hand.
The secret base at Glenlara had proved like a gas light to a moth for both the IRA and the Soviet Navy, and both had returned to the facility, albeit the former not necessarily as they thought, and the latter only once.
The Soviets had deposited a team of four men once they had successfully made contact with the local IRA, in the shape of the G2 agent, O’Farrell, who had stepped into the void left by the death of Reynolds.
Eager to get over the loss of so many men in the accidental explosion at Glenlara, which was how the IRA leadership understood the deaths of most of the Mayo brigade’s personnel had occurred, they found a man who was known to them already organising affairs, and had no hesitation in keeping him in place.
Thomas Ryan O’Farrell was the commander of the new Mayo Brigade. He was also Irish G-2’s most valuable asset in the fight against the very organisation he was a part of.
The Soviet naval group had long since been replaced by men from the OSS Ukrainian unit, and everything ran on a day-to-day basis solely for the benefit of Allied intelligence, and against the Soviets and IRA.
“So, down to business, O’Farrell. No problems with your set up on the coast there?”
“Not now, Mister Wood. The accident made one hell of a mess and we basically started from scratch. Still turn up a bit of a body now and again. Poor bastards. Don’t hardly see the Gardaí much at all. We’ve a man on the inside anyhow, so they’ll be no surprises from those cocks. The fucking Brits have been very accommodating in providing materials when we’ve strayed across the border. Most problems we get is from the occasional flight over by their fucking flying boat things. Mind you, some of the locals turn up now and again, looking for a son or a brother. Nothing we can do save tell ‘em a little and assure ‘em that their boy died for the cause. Apart from that, we’re top.”
“Good, good. We’ve something brewing that’ll need you to be extra sharp for a time… not yet mind. For the future, but Brian and I are here to smooth the path and see if there’s anything you need.”
“Such as like what, Mister Wood?”
“Our Russian friends have a plan that’ll put the shit up the English. The Council’s on board with it. Your part’ll be simple as chips, son. Receive two deliveries and store ‘em safely. We’ll arrange for pick-up as soon as possible after, and that’s that.”
“Guns? Explosives? Men?”
“Well, our friends intend to sweeten the deal a little with some weapons and explosives, and they’ll be a share of the guns for you and your boys of course, but the important load will be sealed wooden crates. The contents don’t need to concern you. Council business.”
“No problem with me, so long as I can have some of the explosives for a jaunt across the border.”
It was a statement, not a request, and both the senior IRA men understood it to be such. What more impressed them was that the man simply accepted the situation with the crates.
Independently, the two senior men wondered if O’Farrell was a serious contender for promotion to become a bigger player in the future of the cause.
O’Scanlon slid a piece of paper across the table to Ulianov.
“Your bosses gave us those dates. Make sure you monitor the channels. Our Russian friends are aware of the perils of using radio, so it’ll be kept to the minimum. When you get the message, reply…”, he pointed to the Cyrillic text, “Padanets… three times only, one minute apart.”
Shandruk/Ulianov took the proffered paper and slipped it into his jacket pocket in one easy movement.
“We‘ve one specific request. Our friends want to know about the fuel cells, whatever the fuck that means. They want to know they’re intact. Yes? Can I tell ‘em yes?”
Shandruk/Ulianov thought on his feet and at lightning speed.
“My men are checking them as we sit here, Comrade Wood. After the storm yesterday… routine check couldn’t be done… plus we had flying boat flyovers. I’ll ensure the answer is radioed to…”
“No!”
/>
His snappy voice drew gazes from those who had been trying hard to avert their eyes.
“Sorry, Lieutenant. No, avoid the radio as per your last orders.
“You, O’Farrell… you let us know by the normal route when the state of the fuel is known and, for that matter, when you’ve taken delivery. Expect two visits in total. The first rendezvous will bring further information. Clear?”
“No, but it’ll do. One thing. What sort of delivery, boss? Fishing boat?”
“Fuck me but I’d forget my bloody head, so I would. Submarine.”
“OK.”
Again, both men were impressed as to how the new man took things so easily in his stride.
“Now, the weapons and explosive. Get it hidden… probably in more than one place, but that’s your business. Get it listed and a copy of that list to us sharpish. No fucking gung-ho operations, laddie. We’ll allocate the resources… but you’ll get enough to have some fun with the bastards over there.”
All four men reached for their whiskey glasses simultaneously, and they clinked together.
Wood spoke a toast.
“Ní síocháin go Saoirse!”
Irish whiskey lubricated dry throats.
The four rose and shook hands.
“You’re doing well, young Thomas. The council has its eye on you, so it does. Keep it up.”
The two turned on their heels and walked from the bar, followed by the two IRA soldiers who had watched over them.
O’Farrell and Shandruk sat back down, as leaving straight after the others would have been poor tradecraft.
Not that the watchers would have been waiting for them, of course.
G2’s men and women had other fish to fry, namely developing a list of people visited by O’Scanlon, Deputy Commander of the Northern Forces and, more importantly in so many ways, Stephen Wood, the IRA’s Chief of Staff.
O’Farrell and Shandruk used the time to try and work out where the fuel might be stored and how the hell they had missed it in the first place.
