by Gee, Colin
His final act was to slip one end of the ‘cigarette’ under the knotted section of the ties and light the other end.
The boat was already moving southwards, the men working up a sweat in the cold night, moving against the flow of the river.
Haines plunged into the icy water and his testicles immediately protested at the new indignation, albeit only for a moment, as the chilled water provided an anaesthetic effect for his aches and pains, and the cold in general provided the greater distraction for the exhausted officer.
The burning head of the super cigarette came close enough to the petrol soaked tie that the heat it brought to the process was sufficient to start combustion.
The tie burned, slowly for a moment but then, almost as if fanned into life, flared and made the journey to the end of the edge of the cupola in two seconds.
It did not need to go further.
The interior of the tank was rich with fuel vapours, actually too rich to burn, but the hatch area provided the perfect area for the vapours to ignite.
Orange flames danced eagerly, burning up the fuel greedily, dropping lower into the turret until the perfect point of air-fuel mix was present.
Half a kilometre away, Lieutenant Colonel Kozlov was on the radio, receiving the accolades offered freely by his army commander, Zhumachenko.
His immediate promotion to command of the 75th Rifle Division was announced, part of his mind controlled his mouth and delivered the expected thanks, the other part directed his thoughts to consider how much of the division was left to command.
He watched absent-mindedly, as the orange glow transformed the distant area in quite an entertaining fashion, flames shooting skywards as if confined by a cylinder fifty feet high.
Then it exploded.
Haines, dripping and shivering, watched as ‘Biffo’s Bus’ came apart, unsure of which of the possible mechanisms had claimed her.
The flames died down almost as quickly as they started and the night was returned to relative darkness, a safe darkness that swallowed the boat and its seventeen souls headed south in search of safety.
1048 hrs, Saturday, 30th November 1945, Natzwiller-Struthof prison camp and hospital facility, the Vosges, Alsace.
Makarenko had made an excellent recovery, especially as he was in the hands of Stefka Kolybareva, her own hideous injuries healing well and permitting her to do light duties to help ease her mental anguish.
Two beds down from Makarenko lay Rispan, the valiant Major’s injuries more severe than first thought.
Today was the General’s first time out of bed, and he was revelling in the freedom that the stiff backed chair offered.
A number of men from the Zilant attack force had survived to be nurtured in the hospital facilities of the former concentration camp, now prison camp, to be passed into the detention area when medical science had put them back together.
Next to Makarenko was Egon Nakhimov, still recovering from his ordeal and one of the last of the survivors to surrender to the recorded announcements from Makarenko, pleading with his men to turn themselves in, and guaranteeing them fair treatment.
Only one man from Makarenko’s last command remained out in the forests.
Thus far, Nikitin had not surrendered.
Intelligence officers had swept down upon the Soviet General, keen to extract as much information from him as possible, seeking him out at all hours and without the niceties of medical permission, most being unceremoniously ejected by the hospital staff, who feared for their patient’s life.
Over time, they relented, permitting short sessions, which were sufficient for a picture of the Zilant operation to be completed, adding new detail to their own existing knowledge.
Makarenko’s own views and attitudes initially made the margins of debriefing reports but, as they seemed to become stronger and more personal, interviewers started to record a tantalising possibility, one that was eventually discussed by men with higher responsibility.
De Walle, one of those who took control of the exploratory operation, selected his man very carefully.
The hospital ward, in fact, most of the camp, was bugged, and listeners had reported back that Makarenko had been fully apprised of the massacre of his wounded men, good treatment of the prisoners, and subsequent events.
Colonel Albrecht Haefali, temporarily transferred from his infantry command at De Walle’s request, was greeted like a hero by both Rispan and Kolybareva, who introduced the Legion officer to Makarenko.
Although he could not understand a word of what the two said, Haefali knew he should be embarrassed.
Makarenko extended his hand.
“Thank you for the lives of my officers... and friends, Colonel. Thank you.”
Releasing his grip and wearily dropping back into the chair, Makarenko accepted the drinking cup from Kolybareva’s hand.
“So, how may I help you, Colonel Haefali? As a soldier, I have said all that I can say already.”
Looking at the other wounded Russians and at the Doctor, Haefali gestured at the audience.
“You may say whatever you have to say in front of these soldiers. I trust them with my life, Colonel.”
With a smile, the Legion officer nodded in understanding.
Haefali remembered what he had been told to say, briefed at length by Allied intelligence officers. Immediately, he rejected it all and went his own way.
“Sir, I believe that I am here because your officers would introduce me to you in a positive fashion and, with that, you might look upon what I have to say without some of the normal reservations.”
Those wearing headsets in the nearby monitoring shed started voicing their anger, fearing the legionnaire had blown the mission at the first moment. De Walle cut them short immediately, despite his own similar concerns.
“Shut up and listen!”
The three men settled back down, two writing in shorthand, recording the conversation, one each in English and French.
“Very open of you, Colonel. Why do you tell me this?”
“General Makarenko, I’m doing this openly so that you can understand that I’m doing what I believe to be right, not at the bidding of some... shadow with no name.”
He waited whilst Kolybareva offered up another cup of water.
“I have been given information to present to you and I will do so... but I will do so because I think you should know, not because of it being part of some grand intelligence trick.”
“Colonel, please go on.”
Three hundred metres away, in a warm monitoring hut, De Walle smiled.
‘Nicely done, Albrecht. Very nicely done.’
Haefali was undoubtedly a man of honour, but he was an Allied officer first and foremost, so more than happy to use his situation for the cause.
De Walle’s joy increased as the Legion Officer delivered the information received from the Soviet contact, covering the way that the Soviet leadership had misrepresented so much to sway the Military through to the damming suggestion that an informer’s report on a less than complimentary exchange regarding the Soviet leader, between Makarenko and Erasov, had directly contributed to the massacre of Makarenko’s men. Personal revenge against the paratrooper General, as well as hubris, played a part in the fool’s errands that were the Zilant missions.
The suggestion that the accident to his friend might have been more by design than happenstance and that the liquidation of Colonel Erasov’s entire family had taken place as Makarenko was in the air, returning from the funeral, brought noises of horror from all those present.
In the monitoring shed, a hand picked up a phone and a voice commanded an immediate connection.
“Sir...De Walle here... Yes, it went well, very well. We mustn’t rush it, but I think we can consider the next phases likely and plan accordingly, Sir.”
The grin was permanently stuck to the Deux officer’s face.
“Thank you, Sir. Haefali was superb, of course,” unashamedly pointing out that the man he had c
hosen had done the job, “And if this goes as we hope... well, we know what could happen.”
Replacing the silent receiver, De Walle took his leave and went to meet up with Haefali in the old SS camp commander’s house nearby.
Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play! No sense have they of ills to come, nor care beyond today.
Thomas Gray
Chapter 110 - THE WARNINGS
0902 hrs, Sunday, 1st December 1945, Glenlara, Éire.
Twenty minutes beforehand, Submarine B-29 had dropped beneath the agitated surface of the Atlantic, ready to spend the daylight hours on the bottom, resting in silence.
She had arrived the previous night, her patrol cut short by a close encounter with the growing anti-submarine forces that the Allies were deploying.
Twenty-two hours after her rendezvous with the ‘Golden Quest’, a patrolling B24 Liberator spotted the schnorkel, and that began an intense hunt, with the B-29 as the prey.
Whilst relatively undamaged, the bashing that the vessel had taken whilst evading the depth charges and hedgehogs of the hounding anti-submarine group, over a period of nearly thirty-six hours, had reduced her crew to virtual wrecks, and nine men to actual ones.
Those nine were now being cared for in the small but reasonably well equipped facility in the Glenlara base, their broken bones set and wounds stitched. Those men that could be spared from the crew were recuperating in a barracks set aside for the sub crews, finding the sound of the growing wind unsettling but, once sleep came, nothing else mattered and they could enjoy the safety of their dreams.
Seamus Brown had overseen the extra security sweeps that were always mounted when a sub was due, or at the base, and was now involved in a much more pleasurable duty.
Normally, such a duty would be beneath him but, in this instance, he was making an exception.
The Soviet marine stepped back and rattled the keys in the lock, opened the door, and checked that it was safe for Brown to enter.
“Top of the morning to you, Comrade Nazarbayev. I hope the accommodation’s up to standard for you.”
For the next few minutes, the Marine sentry heard sounds from within, sounds that he easily imagined were fists on flesh. As his former commander was firmly bound, he understood that the beating was a one-way affair.
Whilst Brown was taking further revenge on Nazarbayev, Dudko was doing the rounds of the sickbay, ensuring that the new arrivals were comfortable as well as checking on their Soviet resolve, or at least the resolve of those who were conscious.
One of the latter was suffering from concussion, the inevitable result of a high-speed impact between a watertight door and the human head.
Snoring loudly, the sleeping man drew Dudko’s attention.
Casting his eyes over the bruised face, one eye obscured by the bandage that held dressings in place on two nasty wounds, he was suddenly drawn to a modest tattoo on the man’s upper right arm.
Alarm bells started ringing in his head, bells that made him fumble with his holster and produce his Nagant pistol.
He pointed it at the casualty’s head.
A quiet descended on the hospital, as the recognition of danger spread from man to man like a forest fire.
Dudko shook the man’s shoulder gently.
“Hey, Yank. How ya feeling now, pal?”
He shook the shoulder again, harder this time and repeated his question.
The figure started to wake up.
“Hey, Yank. How ya feeling pal?”
“Don’t shout for fuck’s sake. I hear you.”
Sveinsvold opened his eyes and looked straight into the muzzle of a large pistol, held approximately two foot from his face.
Evidently, the Swede’s look encouraged an explanation from Dudko and he tapped the tattoo.
“S.Q.P.A.C. 1837.”
Sveinsvold said nothing, but the Political Officer explained aloud for the benefit of the onlookers.
“Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice. It’s a Latin inscription. It means ‘if you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you’... and it’s the motto of the American state of Michigan.”
He leant closer to Sveinsvold, giving him the full benefit of the end of the announcement, “And has no place on the arm of a Soviet submariner.”
Dudko summoned a guard and, in spite of the protestations of the Irish and Soviet doctors, the barely conscious Sveinsvold joined Nazarbayev in the simple jail.
0100 hrs, Monday, 2nd December 1945, Headquarters of SHAEF, Trianon Place Hotel, Versailles, France.
Bedell-Smith and Bradley were poring over some of the finer details with Von Vietinghoff, a tableau of normality set against a backdrop of excitement and worry, as the Allied Armies prepared to take their first steps on the long road back to Poland.
Eisenhower crushed the pack as he extracted and lit the last cigarette, all of his nervousness directed at the packet, and he used all his strength to extinguish its existence, squeezing as if it were the very neck of his opposite number.
He had just finished a phone call with General De Lattre de Tassigny and was buoyed by the confidence that the dapper Frenchman exuded.
George Patton strode in, similarly confident, although his part in the grand scheme did not commence for many hours yet.
0103 hrs, Monday, 2nd December 1945, GRU Commander’s office, Western Europe Headquarters, the Mühlberg, Germany.
Whilst, unknown to the newly crowned head of GRU Europe, her son languished in an IRA jail, Nazarbayeva was woken from her slumber by an extremely agitated Poboshkin.
“Comrade General!”
“What... what?”
She snapped into what represented consciousness at the second attempt.
“Comrade General, apologies, but you must see this report immediately.”
He continued to knock until the bleary-eyed woman opened the door. Her crumpled officer’s shirt and skirt betraying the fact that she had simply taken off her uniform jacket and dropped onto the office cot bed to sleep.
“Come in.”
“Apologies, Comrade General, but this won’t wait.”
Tatiana poured a glass of water and cast an eye at the piece of paper in question.
“Where does this come from, Comrade?”
“From Amethyst.”
“Refresh my mind please, Comrade Poboshkin.”
In truth, Tatiana was certain she knew who Amethyst was, but needed a little extra time to gather her wits.
“We tried to get Amethyst planted in the German forces. It would appear that we’ve succeeded, Comrade General.”
He held out the message, a simple but worrying warning that had travelled through a number of agents before being transmitted by a Colonel Lowe at Baden-Baden, an error that the Deuxieme Bureau, who were supposed to be watching his activities closely, would repent at leisure.
Bad news has a habit of focussing the mind and Nazarbayeva was suddenly very much alert.
“0300hrs? This morning? And we’ve just got this now? Mudaks!”
Nazarbayeva re-read the message to make sure that she fully understood its contents.
‘Blyad!’
The decisions started to flow.
“Get me Marshal Konev on the phone right now, and then wake up the staff. Move.”
Poboshkin moved.
She slammed the door and struggled into more presentable attire, emerging to take the receiver held out by Poboshkin.
The words tumbled out, her speed of delivery driven solely by the lack of time left for the Red Army to respond.
“Comrade Marshal, my apologies for waking you but there’s a serious matter that has just been discovered and it can’t wait.”
She picked up the message and quoted it word for word.
Poboshkin could hear Konev’s reply as if he were stood in the room with him.
“What? You tell me this now, Comrade General? Now? This is a fucking shitty joke. We’ve no reports of activity... no indications that the swine are
even in that area, and yet you want me to alert the whole fucking 3rd just on a single report?”
Konev had been present in Stalin’s office when the Dictator and Beria discussed the questions of Nazarbayeva’s loyalty and he had been short in his dealings with the upstart woman ever since.
Nazarbayeva took a deep breath.
“Comrade Marshal Konev. This news has come to us late. But we must believe it and act upon it or...”
“Don’t you dare... don't you dare fucking tell me what the Army must do! There are no indicators for this. None at all! Comrade Beria assured me that any assault would come further north, where we’ve identified many of their prime formations.”
Nazarbayeva pushed harder.
“Comrade Marshal, this attack is centred around a prime formation, one that’s already hurt 3rd Red Banner deeply. The Allies may well be intent on an attack further north but, for now, they’re coming further south and Marshal Yeremenko needs to be warned.”
Konev was caught between this new, but unsubstantiated information, and Beria’s glib assurances that the enemy would strike to relieve the pressure on the Ruhr later in the month.
There was also the matter of his view of the woman giving him this latest intelligence.
Beria’s assurances won the day.
“I'll speak with Marshall Rokossovsky as soon as is practicable.”
Nazarbayeva found herself holding a phone that gently buzzed, as the commander of the Red Banner Forces of Soviet Europe abruptly ended the conversation.
Whilst she had been talking, a number of her staff had filtered in, ready for whatever she needed of them, some even dressed for it.
“Get me Marshall Rokossovsky.”
Marshal Rokossovsky was indisposed, but she spoke with the competent Lieutenant General Petrovich, the deputy commander of the 3rd Red Banner.
Kuzma Petrovich had none of Konev’s reservations about Nazarbayeva’s credentials and started sending the necessary warnings and moving key units, such as artillery, whose positions were likely to have been noted and the first to receive any Allied bombardment.
