Chapter 23
In September of 1942 the German Army was reaching its high water mark in the war. The Allied forces had been pushed back, slowly strengthening their resistance like a bow string pulled taut, and soon the arrows of their long counteroffensive would begin in earnest. But that month the outcome of the war was by no means certain, and the world still sat in breathless fear that the mighty Wehrmacht could not be stopped. Rommel had pushed the British all the way to the Egyptian border and was haggling for supplies to continue his offensive. The German Sixth Army under Paulus was pushing into the streets of Stalingrad, while further south Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army and the 17th Army surged out from Rostov into the Caucasus. “If I do not get the oil of the Caucasus,” said the fuehrer, “then the war is lost.”
The drive South into the Caucasus was primarily intended to secure vital resources, particularly the oil the German Army would need to feed its growing war machine. As the Russian Army fell back in disarray, the Germans quickly overran and captured oil fields at Maikop, and pushed on towards even bigger fields at Grozny. Yet the real prize lay further south and east along the Caspian coast in the major oil centers around Baku.
In that critical month, the German generals met with Hitler and presented him with a great decorated cake in the shape of the Caucasus. Smiling ear to ear, the Fuehrer was quick to cut what he believed to be the very best piece of the cake for himself, where the cook had clearly written in large bold chocolate letters: B A K U.
The question now in Hitler’s mind was what to do with Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army? It had originally been assigned to the drive on Stalingrad, but then swung south, crossing the Don River and positioning itself in a perfect place to move into the Caucasus at the extreme left of Kleist’s main drive south. If Hitler turned it north again, along the southern bank of the Don towards Stalingrad, there was a chance he could quickly overwhelmed the Soviet defense there and secure the city he had coveted for so long. But if Hoth were unleashed and turned south, Hitler might have his cake and eat it too in the vital drive to secure the oil fields of Baku.
The history Fedorov knew so well saw the bulk of Hoth’s forces move north to Stalingrad where they became embroiled in the bitter street fighting there, which eventually ended in disaster. This time, however, the long lines of Lend-Lease trucks pouring through the Persian Corridor convinced Hitler that he had to seal this supply route off and secure the oil once and for all. Hoth went south, and he led his advance with two fast and capable divisions, the 29th Motorized with a good nucleus of armor in its Panzer Regiment, and the fast 16th Motorized Division, known as the Greyhounds. Now their sleek gray armored cars surged in the vanguard, swinging around Stavropol, south to Mineralne Vody, enveloping Pyatigorsk and Georgiyevsk and pushing north of Mozdok.
There, along the banks of the fast flowing river Terek, the Russians had prepared their final defensive line in a desperate attempt to halt the German advance. Meanwhile, further South in Baku, a quietly controlled panic had seen sixty percent of the oil activity halted, the wells capped, stores of oil poured into cisterns and floating oil tanks, equipment crated, and all of it being moved by any means possible across the Caspian Sea into Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan where it was hoped it could be used to find oil somewhere else.
If Hitler took the place, he would have the oil there, but the equipment used to find and drill for it would be long gone. At this point, however, the Germans knew nothing of this massive movement, just one of many major logistical feats pulled off by the Russians during the war. That September Hitler cut his cake, gleefully smiling at the chocolate letters on his white frosting as they spelled out Baku. The tide of war continued south and east toward the Caspian Sea, sweeping up tens of thousands as it advanced, and it would soon ensnare the life and fate of yet another man, a very important man named Gennadi Orlov.
After its duel with U-24, the Russian minesweeping trawler T-492 put into the port at Poti and Orlov disembarked under the escort of the three remaining NKVD guards. That night they stayed in a small hotel near the port while the guards waited for telephone call with instructions on what to do with the man. But none of the three would live out the night. Orlov no longer had his favorite Glock pistol, but the three men were all armed, giving him ample means of getting control of the situation and making a clean escape.
He had come at last to the belly of the Old Soviet Union, and thought it best to become someone more imposing than a tramp deck hand. So he donned a warmer leather jacket from one of the NKVD guards over his own lighter computer jacket, and also took a good sheep’s wool Ushanka with hammer and sickle badge indicating he was now a captain in the NKVD. It kept people away from him, and meant he would not be asked too many questions.
He was quick to the train station, his pockets filled with rubles taken from the guards, and soon on his way, east through the dark night of Georgia and on into Azerbaijan. He rode the train all the way through Tblisi, breathing deeply and smelling the scent of home there. His grandmother had a farm in Azerbaijan, and some inner compass yearning for home was leading him there like a salmon swimming upstream to find its spawning ground.
The route took him south to Yevlakh, past the tall ice and snow covered peaks of the Caucasus Mountains. There he saw high Mount Elbrus, where the German mountain troops had climbed to the summit to surprise Hitler by planting the Nazi flag atop Europe’s highest peak just a few weeks earlier. The Fuehrer was not amused. In fact he exploded with rage when he learned of the incident, for his mind had been set on securing the vital ports along the Black Sea coast so that his navy there could gain control and move supplies from the Crimea.
Hitler ranted for some time, exclaiming that: “Those crazy mountain climbers belong before a court-martial!” He viewed their feat as mere grandstanding, and of no military value whatsoever, and he was correct. Yet the loss of twenty-three men detached of mountain troops for a photo opportunity that had backfired on them did little to slow the German advance north of the jagged snow covered peaks. Hoth was making very good progress with his fast motorized divisions, and soon news that he had enveloped Grozny and unhinged the Russian defense along the Terek River line brought a smile to the Fuehrer’s weary face.
There, well south of the Caucasus mountains where the German Operation Edelweiss was reaching its high water mark, Orlov left the train behind to head up into the foothills for his grandmother’s old farm. He slipped away into the countryside, traveling mostly by night, sleeping mostly by day and haunting small hamlets for food, water and shelter. Occasionally he would make his way into a town for better fare, or a woman if one caught his eye. And yes, there was always a need for a good drink and some idle chat with a bar fellow when he could find one. Money was never a problem. When he expended his cash from the guards, he simply took more from any unsuspecting drifter he encountered on the road.
In time he found himself up in the southern foothills of the mountains in Azerbaijan and slowly made his way northwest of Baku. He thought he would visit his grandmother first, quietly, hoping to find and watch her from the shadows, for she would just be a young woman of eighteen years. In fact, she would not meet his grandfather for some years yet, and Orlov spent more than one long night staring up at the stars and wondering whether they might both survive the war. What would happen to him if his grandfather got swept away into the chaos at Stalingrad and a stray bullet took his life? Orlov’s own father had not been born to the couple until 1957. If either his grandmother or grandfather died this time around would he simply vanish, just as the ship had vanished, and drift away like a vapor on the mist of time?
So the powerful magnetic draw of the old farm pulled at him for more than one reason. He remembered being taken there often by his father as a young boy, and the smell of the tall green grass, crops growing in the fields, the cows and chickens all spoke to him of home. Yet on another level he wanted to make sure that his grandmother was still there, still alive, before she eventually went north as he had bee
n told, to a very hard life and more than one moment of pain and sorrow.
When he was much older, his grandfather once told the story of how his dear wife to be had been mishandled badly on that long road north. When he finally did find his grandmother’s farm, he was too late. The young woman was gone, already heading north, and he knew that those awful moments she had to endure were not far off. Unless…
The thought then came to him that he could walk that road as well, moving like a shadow in her footsteps, heading north with all the other rank-and-file, the rabble of lost souls swept away by the tide of war. He knew the names of the men who had hurt his grandmother, and the place where it had happened, for he could still see the soft ache in his grandfather’s eyes when he told him the story.
So after lingering for a few lonesome hours at the edge of the farm, and picking apples from the tree he remembered finding there as a boy, Orlov pulled his black Ushanka tight on his head, fingered the cold revolver he had taken from the NKVD guards, and took to the road with a fierce determination. Along the way he got very drunk one night in a town called Quba, and found another old telegraph station, breaking into the place after dark and tapping out a plaintive call to the old life he once knew. “Nikolin, Nikolin, Nikolin, I’m going to find grandma at Kizlyar! Don’t forget me—Orlov…” It was a stupid thing to do, and he realized it the following morning, but vodka had a way with his head after five glasses, and he gave it no further worry. No one on the ship would ever hear it or know anything about it. His mind was now set on other matters.
Those bastards were not going to touch his grandmother this time! And if they did before he reached the place, they were going to pay for it, and very dearly. He swore this like an oath, and then moved north himself, like the shadow of death and retribution.
~ ~ ~
Far to the south, at listening stations set up in mostly forgotten outposts if the vast Central Asian wilderness, other men were tracking that shadow. They had been told to listen and look for any hint or clue to the whereabouts of a man named Orlov, and here, right in the clear, was that very name, and more, tapped out in Russian Morse Code! It was also associated with a place. On the 24th of September the men waiting restlessly at Alexandria and pining for lost operations would soon be satisfied. Seventeen-F finally had his mission.
“Here’s the plan, gentlemen,” he said through thick exhaled smoke. “Forget Istanbul, we were too late to get to the target there, and the NKVD got to him first. But there could only be one or two places that trawler could be headed, and we picked up signals traffic indicating it tangled with a German U-boat off Poti, three days ago.”
“A U-boat?” Haselden had a bemused look on his face. “How in the world did they get one there?”
“Not just one,” Seventeen said matter of factly, “they’ve a whole flotilla building up there, but never mind that for the moment. What this boils down to is that we now believe this man went ashore at Poti. From there it’s anybody’s guess where he might go, but we have people on this that are very good at making these sorts of guesses, and we’ve narrowed things down. This Kizlyar you were asking about Lieutenant Sutherland, is in Ossetia, northeast of Baku, up past the port at Makhachkala. It’s very near the Caspian coast, which will work to our advantage.”
“Good lord,” Haselden exclaimed. “That has to be over a thousand miles from here.”
“About 1300 miles to be more precise,” said Fleming. “But you’ll be going most of that distance by air. May I see your map, Lieutenant?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Good then… The place would be about here,” he pointed a brown finger at the map as the other two men leaned in close to have a look. “We’ll get you on a Wellington to Tehran near dusk, and from there you’ll take a smaller plane and fly up here.” He pointed to a small peninsula jutting into the Caspian Sea from the east coast of Kazakhstan.
“The place is called Fort Shevchenko. There’s not much there, just the ruin of the old fortress dating back to the mid eighteen hundreds, and a small town and port. Officially you’re all going there to examine the place as an embarkation site for new Lend-Lease traffic. It’s a perfect cover, and you won’t be bothered. From there you’ll have to cross the Caspian Sea—that’s where your expertise will come in handy, Mister Sutherland. Now, we’ve got much better maps to give you, but on this one you’ll cross about here… at this point, getting round the Chechen Island and this spit of land here and coming ashore somewhere in this area. From there you can pick up the old dirt road, if it’s still there, and it should lead you right into Kizlyar. It’s a distance of about sixty-five kilometers, as the crow flies, and I’m afraid that unless you can round up a stray camel or find yourselves a working truck, it will have to be taken on foot. That I’ll leave to you gentlemen to sort out, but a week from today I want you on the target. September 30th. No later.”
“With packs, weapons and supplies we’ll make no more than four kilometers per hour on foot,” said Haselden. “That’s either one long day, or two days with more rest.”
“Plenty of time, gentlemen. We’ll have you in Tehran tomorrow, the 25th. We now think there’s a strong possibility that he’s given these men the slip. We picked up a report from a man in Poti. Three NKVD men were found dead there. That’s where this bit about Kizlyar comes in. The man may be trying to reach his family there, or so we now are led to believe, his grandmother. His best bet would be to travel by train to Baku and then up the Caspian coast. Trying to find him on that route would be a long shot, so we decided to settle on Kizlyar as the target. I’m afraid that’s all we can tell you. Any questions?”
“Supposing we find this man, sir—”
“There will be no supposition in the matter, Lieutenant Haselden. I picked you because I want the man found. Period.”
“Very well, sir.” Haselden stood a bit taller. “What’s our route home with the prisoner?”
“The same way you came in. Get him east to the coast any way you can. If you have to commandeer a vehicle, all the better. We’ll have some help waiting there for you, and then you cross the Caspian again to Fort Shevchenko. Easy as pie. Here is your target, gentlemen: a man named Gennadi Orlov. Have a good look at those photos taken of the man when we had him under the Rock, and note the description. He’s a big fellow, not hard to pick out in a crowd I’d imagine. He may be traveling with an older woman, so keep that in mind. This man is most likely NKVD, but those three dead men in Poti lead us to suspect he may be a rogue agent. That said, the NKVD will certainly be looking for him as well, and there may be a cadre there you’ll have to deal with. The Russians are our allies, but your Lend-Lease cover will take you only so far in this matter. Don’t rely on it. Remember you are British serving officers and the Queen’s strong right arm if things get difficult, and act accordingly. But we want this man Orlov, and very badly.”
“Very good, sir,” said Sutherland. “We’ll handle the NKVD.”
“We’ll call the whole operation Escapade. Appropriate enough, eh? Ah… One other small detail,” said Fleming, lighting another cigarette. “The Germans have been going at it like bats out of hell. You may just get there and find you have some unexpected company. Not much, just the whole bloody 16th Motorized Division.”
He exhaled, looking the men over and smiling.
Chapter 24
Kizlyar was a small hamlet on the borders of the newly declared Chechen state in 1942. The old town there was once called Samandar, an ancient site first established by the Huns, and known for its good wines and spirits that were still produced there, and for the making of knives, daggers and the curved sabers the Cossacks made famous in their rampage across the steppe lands. The vineyards outside the town would at least give them some means of cover and concealment.
That was all Haselden and his men could learn about the place from the Escapade briefing file as they made the long flight north. At Tehran they boarded an old British Mk IV Avro Anson, a stubby twin engine plane that
was now mostly used as a trainer for bomber squadrons. A few of the old planes had found their way into Iran when the Allies invaded there a year earlier, and now they served for short run operations like this, their two Wright Whirlwind engines giving the plane just enough range to make the flight up to Fort Shevchenko.
Two planes would fly that day, one with the men and basic supplies they would need, the other with their rubber inflatable swift boat, communications equipment, tents, extra aviation fuel and other necessities. They would land at an old airfield there that the British had stocked up with additional fuel for the long flight back to Tehran.
When Haselden first saw Fort Shevchenko from the air it looked like the maw of a great seabird, with a great reddish lake for the bird’s eye and a long isthmus of land jutting out into the Caspian parallel to the main coastline that looked like the top of the beak.
“What have we gotten ourselves into this time,” he muttered to Lieutenant Sutherland. The lean SAS man was also peering out the window, noting the shoals and murky greenish water, especially north of the harbor where the Caspian was very shallow.
“My Lord, there’s nothing here,” said Sutherland, “not a tree to be seen in any direction for miles.”
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