“Close the door and what do you want?” He muttered without even turning around. “Marshal Zhukov will see you now comrade. I will lead you to him.”
Konstantin slowly turned and without hesitation or argument and literally dropped what he was working on, thus causing a metallic crashing noise which filled the compartment and immediately started to move towards the front of the train. The aide did not look to see what was dropped but was once again struck by the empty eye sockets and the emaciated face of this master of deception. The man was obviously totally blind yet was able to function at an incredibly high level of proficiency as long as he was in the train or confined area. One tour around any area feeling with his feet and hands and it was ingrained in his memory. Unless something was moved by someone else, he could move with alarming speed that belied his blindness.
Found abandoned on the steps of a hospital in Moscow he was born without eyes and his anophthalmia was very acute. He barely even had eye sockets. Zhukov’s aid had the duty of researching the past of anyone who came in contact with the Marshal. In his research he had found that Konstantin was amazing from birth in his ability to use his other senses to overcome what would be a crippling deformity to others. Possibly his lack of sight made it easier for him to fool others who had relied so heavily on sight. Whatever the cause he was indeed a master of maskirovka and responsible for many of the decisions Zhukov had made in this realm of smoke and mirrors.
As usual Konstantin led the way barely feeling his path. Everyone knew when he was coming and made way by clearing a course through their space for his transverse. You never wanted to be the cause of accidentally inflicting harm on this man.
They reached Marshal Zhukov in less time than it took the aide to originally traverse the length of the train. Konstantin did not stop and all knew that he was not to be stopped. They marched right up to the marshal and then waited to be addressed. The marshal was busy with another matter but immediately stopped the conversation and greeted Konstantin warmly. This always surprised the aide and made him a little jealous. But then again he had never saved Zhukov’s life or the lives of hundreds of thousands of soviet soldiers either. As Zhukov hugged Konstantin
the aide could tell that he was adverse to this particular kind of greeting and he thought, maybe that is why Zhukov does this to him.
As usual Zhukov started out speaking in his rumbling bass voice to draw Konstantin in but Konstantin did not fall for the bait as usual. They had been through many a challenge together and knew each other’s ways only too well. Finally the Marshal came to the point after articulating it in his mind.
“Konstantin old friend, what has been done to mask the true nature of the Stalin’s Fire missile guidance system?”
“Comrade Zhukov, we have done any number of things per Sergo’s orders and a few of our suggestions have been used as well. We have “provided” the NATO intelligence service with a number of opportunities to avail themselves of dummy units. So far they have only retrieved 2 out of twelve presented to them. The rest have gone unnoticed where they have remained so as to not increase suspicion.
Of the two actually reaching the NATO scientific staff both would have appeared to be guided by the German Fritz X system or the FuG 230 system. We are sure the NATO scientists have received and tested these units. We know they are still baffled and are unsure as to why their jamming techniques have not worked so far when they obviously have worked in the past. The only possible flaw in this plan is that it does defy physics so they will eventually discern that it must be a ruse. It has bought us valuable time to strengthen other weapons and strategies.
Zhukov moves to the center of the rail car and crosses his arms.
“The time is coming where we will need Stalin’s Fire to rain down on NATOs boats. It is coming soon. It will mean the difference between winning the war and defeat. NATO is free to roam the oceans and strike at us where they will. We now have the means to stop this. We now have the weapon we need to sweep the oceans clean of capitalist war machines and fill the void with our own. Mark my words Konstantin the time is coming and coming quickly. We will need Sergo’s acquiescence on this matter in order to convince Comrade Stalin and the STAVKA. Stalin’s Fire must be used and soon and that is where your special talents come in Konstantin. You must come up with the ultimate maskirovka just in case the a warhead falls into NATO’s lap like the enigma machine or the so called Battle of the Beams. We have to make them believe that when the real solution does present itself to them that they reject it out of hand.”
“It is pretty unbelievable in reality so that maybe not as hard as you think. At this point we do not want to even get them thinking down the same path as the real solution. Possibly something like the enigma machine or some rudimentary computation device to throw them once again off the obvious path that they have ignored could be used. We will give them so many clues that they will not know which ones are pertinent.
Sergo is so concerned that they will discover the truth yet he will not tell anyone how to defeat the system he is using. He claims it is very simple but no one else seems to know what he
is thinking and how to effectively counter it. We do have to plan on there being someone in what remains of the capitalist world who can think like Sergo. It would be foolish for us to think otherwise.
So far it has been a common fault of the Amerikosi who seem to think that they have invented everything and no one else can match their accomplishments. It is to our advantage to keep them thinking this way.”
“Da, you are correct Konstantin. We must keep using the power of maskirovka for a few more months until we are totally caught up to the Amerikosi and Limeys. Their sense of superiority is a great advantage to us because it blinds them to the real possibilities of a communist system. It is to our advantage to keep them thinking we are the blunt, dumb instrument of Stalin who only know the hammer and sickle and couldn’t possibly equal them in the sciences. The longer they believe that trope, the longer the time we have to defeat them.
“When we finally are “allowed” to use the system for its original purpose, we will not have to worry about the NATO boats anymore. There is no reason that the system cannot be placed on the German V2 rocket as well. At a distance of 320 km it will far out range those guns that have kept us from the coasts. They will no longer be able to supply islands like Britain or bring their tanks from across the seas. What good will their factories be if they cannot land machines or provide the fuel to run them. If we stop their navies we will stop them from invading the motherland and our new jets will meet them in the skies. We just needed the time to breath after our destruction of the Nazi pigs. We are now ready to once again defend ourselves.
First we have to push the Amerikosi farther away from our oil fields, further away from our homes, further away from our families. Maybe then they will leave us alone. We need to conquer the Turk and then drive them out of the Mediterranean. We need to close both ends of that sea. We need to destroy the Suez Canal and take Gibraltar from the British but first we need to take the airfields from the Turks and expand the perimeter. Then our planes must keep us safe while we rebuild once again.“
Zukov’s armored train 1946
Teach a Man to Fish
The Fisherman was out on the lake as always catching the species of trout that only lived in this body of water. The waves were only a couple of inches without any white caps and the sun was shining bright and clear, which was unusual for this time of year. It was about 20 degrees Celsius and just a beautiful fall day to be out fishing. The Fisherman appreciated the weather but he would have been out all day anyway. He was floating on a pristine lake in Armenia, Lake Sevan to be exact, and today he was being disturbed.
Frequently now the capitalist bombers passed over a couple of times a week but they were so high and there was nothing to bomb here, that it was only the noise they made that was out of the ordinary. He had gotten used to them as had the fish he was certain.
He was floa
ting just a mile off the coast from the old monastery when he heard the first of what was to be hundreds of trucks. The monastery had been closed for many decades but the buildings were still upright and strong. The ghosts of the warrior monks who defended the land for centuries keep most away.
These trucks were of a newer model and different make than the few he has seen in his life and they were full of soldiers; soldiers of the Red Army who looked to be on their way to a major battle and not just an excursion into the hinterlands of the USSR. This would be an unusual invasion route into the Turkish lands he mused. I guess if you want to catch an enemy unaware you do the unusual. Yet here they were and he was sure that they would try and catch his fish.
Lake Sevan was 78 km long and 58 wide and he had rowed every inch of it. He had heard that it was 95 meters deep as well placing it as one of the largest lakes in the world and it was located 1900 meters high surrounded by mountains. All in all it was one of the most beautiful places on earth but the Fisherman knew no other so to him it was just home. He fished to live and lived to fish, selling his catch to another who came to him in a powerboat and bought what he could not eat. Most of the time he was paid in kind and that is what he preferred. Salt, thread, cloth, line, hooks, all things he needed to survive and to keep his boat afloat and his small sail patched. He was being taken advantage of by the men in the power boat but he did not care of even knew this was the case.
He probably did not even own the land his shack was on but no one knew who did so by default he did. If you found an empty piece of land, you lived there and it was then it was yours until you died and someone else came along. Men like him did not have families. He did come from a family he recalled but was on his own since the age of 10. A fire or pillaging band of bandits had taken his family as far as he could remember which was not much about that time. A modern clinical diagnosis would be “repressed memory” and be concerned. He just never thought about it and lived to fish instead.
What was happening on shore became annoying as well as alarming. The trucks were disgorging hundreds of soldiers near the Monastery. I suppose it was a natural draw for someone not from the area. That was the annoying part. The alarming part was that other trucks were headed for his hut. Most of what he owned was in the boat with him including all he needed to survive but he remembered he left his good knife, extra fishing line, his winter store of fish and the painting in there. It would set him back a full moons worth of extra fish to replace them by trading with the men in the powerboat and who knew when he would be able to catch enough to replace his winter stores.
The book was where he found it wrapped in cloth and wedged very safely between two boulders. No one would find it and if they did it was not very appealing. That’s partially why he just kept it hidden. He could not read and the few illustrations were of the “Ascending Jesus” and were not very well done in his mind. He had seen a photograph once and was much impressed with that but not with this admittedly old book full of scribbles and squiggly lines and bad hand drawn pictures that didn’t even look as real as the photograph he had seen when the men in the powerboat had shown it to him.
He hated to fish on the ice. He has seen too many fall in when you were too hungry in the spring to take precautions on the thin ice. He had seen too many mistakes made by relatively smart men.
He could only assume that the soldiers were on their way to fight the Turks. There was certainly nothing else to fight here. He did not know who he pitied more, the soldiers who were about to die in a foreign land or himself who would go hungry this winter. Luckily he knew of another hut that he could claim. Its occupant had died the last moon. He had already staked a claim on it using the tried and true methods of the area but it was on the other side and farther away from his favorite fishing spot. He would have to spend twice the amount of energy getting there and back and during the winter the lake did not always freeze all the way over so he might have to go to his other less fertile fishing spots.
He began to curse the soldiers. Maybe if he killed a couple over the next few nights they would leave. No… they would try and hunt him down. They would not succeed but that would make him use up much needed supplies and who knows they just might get in a lucky shot and wound him. He was not afraid of dying but he was afraid of being shot and waiting to die while in pain.
No he would have to bide his time and wait to see what they did or were going to do here. His hope was that they were just passing through on their way to fight the Turk.
The Monastery at Lake Sevan with a bombing raid passing overhead
The Book
The monastery was empty and had been for a long time. It gave him an odd feeling being there and left as soon as he was sure nothing of value or of potential threat was present. Yet he feel the possibility of a threat but is was only a feeling. It was probably only tied to these ancient walls and as soon as he left it would not bother him again. As he was checking out one of the towers he glimpsed a pile of wood that could be a crude hut about three kilometers away.
Normally he would have Yevgeni take a squad and explore the area but he decided he was going himself. He really didn’t want to stay near these buildings any longer than was necessary. He got back in the command car and headed towards where he spotted the pile of wood. He could not see it until he almost ran it over. It was very well hidden in a small crevasse. He sent in a private while he walked the area. When the private came out and stated that there was nothing of value in the hut he entered and lit his cigarette lighter to guide the way.
In the flickering light he saw possibly the most wretched hovel, he had ever seen. He was from Kursk and had seen many bombed out buildings that looked better than this space. Pieces of fish bones, fish skin drying by a fire pit, fish heads being mangled into some kind of tool and then there was the indoor toilet that was swarming with maggots and those were the things worth remembering.
As he turned to go the light from the lighter caught a glimmer of cloth or fabric. Normally he would not have looked closer given the circumstances and condition of the surroundings. But that is exactly why he did become curious. What was a relatively clean piece of cloth doing in here? On his way to ascertain what was there in that hiding place he kicked over a container of rotting fish bones and almost fell on top of the pooling slime.
Once he righted himself he carefully retrieved the wrapped bundle and quickly exited the hut. When he got outside he did not take the time to closely examine the package less the private see what he had and just put it in the inside pocket of his great coat and motioned the Private to get in and drive.[xci]
SAC and the 15th
Oct. 22nd, 1946
It was a beautiful day outside. The sun was shining yet wasn’t too hot. The birds were coming down from Europe and settling in by the thousands on the Nile Delta. There was not a cloud in the sky and most people were enjoying the cool temperatures mitigated by the warm sunlight. A young couple strolled by and things were very pleasant outside of SAC HQ.
Inside it was a completely different atmosphere, palpably different. General Nathan A. Twining was standing toe to toe with General Curtis LeMay and neither was backing down. Twining was named the 15th Air Force commander once again and was overseeing a buildup of bombers that would equal the force he commanded in World War Two.
The 15th always got short shrift to the 8th and always had a chip on its shoulder and now SAC was trying to knock that chip off. Here we have two Generals about to embark on a massive bombing campaign only rivaled by the last months of the last war and they were acting like a couple of feuding chimpanzees. If anyone is unsure of evolution all you had to do to convince them was to have them watch these two generals and their childish pissing match to see the similarity to animals in the wild. From the baring of teeth the exaggerated poses to the guttural sounds sometimes emanating from their guts neither was giving an inch as both believed down to their last breath that they were the only thing standing between the American public and Stalin hims
elf.
For LeMay it was the last gasp of a dying cause. SAC was losing. It was losing 9-10% of its bomber force every raid. The feeling of doom among the bomber crews was palpable. The inevitability of death permeated the squadrons. The combination of ground to air missiles, air to air missiles, proximity fused 90mm flak rounds and 20mm cannon shells from fighter planes was proving too much for even the best. The math was inescapable and the logic of the situation too stark.
The damage on the ground mirrored closely the raids on many of the large fuel productions facilities of the Germans and the losses to the bomber forces mirrored the Schweinfurt raids.
The losses in bombers of the Schweinfurt raids had caused a three month pause in the bombing campaign against the Third Reich and now those same statistics were about to defeat SAC and LeMay. Even if you could replace the Super Fortresses that were shot down the odds were clear to the bomber crews. Most could not survive 25 missions. The odds were that you would be shot down within the first 10 missions. The math was once again inescapable.
At the height of its war time production America was producing less than 60 of the most complicated machine ever conceived. 60 B-29 Superfortresses a month represented the apex of American manufacturing when at full capacity. Eventually that could be achieved again. But not in time to save SAC who was losing over 30 a raid at this point despite gaining access to every Superfortress in the US arsenal. SAC was down to 402 effective bombers.
LeMay needed the bombers of the 15th Air Force. He needed the venerable B17s and B-24s that gutted the soft underbelly of Hitler’s war machine. He needed General Twinning and his bomber crews. The Joint Chiefs had predicted this outcome. They had a plan B for just this contingency and plan B needed to sacrifice SAC in order to succeed. Stalin had to be goaded into overreaching. He needed to be drawn further and further away from his source of supply. He needed to be taunted into doing something stupid and that meant sacrificing SAC and some of the 15th Air Force as well.
World War Three 1946 Series Boxed Set: Stalin Strikes First Page 84
