Kirov II: Cauldron Of Fire (Kirov Series) (19 page)

In the end
they simply came to call the raider “
Geronimo
,” after the renegade
Indian chief that had been harried and pursued by the Americans, hunted down by
a select group of Federal cavalry. The Royal Navy had its own select scout
ships out in the hunt when this raider first appeared, followed by carriers
under Wake-Walker and then Admiral Tovey’s battleships from Home Fleet, but it
did them no good. In the end they had acquiesced to the American line that the
enemy ship had been sunk by the their own
Desron 7
, though none of the eight
destroyers that formed that group survived the encounter to provide any real
confirmation of that claim. Not a single survivor had been found, nor was there
any sign whatsoever of wreckage on the sea, not even a drop of oil to mark the
place where they must surely have fought the enemy to the death.

It left an
uncomfortable feeling in the stomachs of men accustomed to much more certainty
when it came to the intentions and capabilities of the enemy they were still
facing. The intelligence failure had been profound. That was the way Churchill
put it, and when the doughty Prime Minister stuck his umbrella in your gut it
was sure to get your attention. Yet that was how they left it—a stinging black
eye where the Abwehr had jabbed them blind. But Turing still had deep misgivings
about the ship, and the weaponry it displayed. He kept it largely to himself,
but inwardly never believed any of the official lines about the incident. He
thought it useless to raise his suspicions with all the intensity of the brou-ha-ha
then underway in the intelligence community. Yet he never gave them up or was
able to put them to rest.

Pound looked
at him, somewhat perturbed. “Would you say this is a cruiser? It looks to be
something quite more.”

“That is
what struck me immediately,” said Turing. “I can tell you definitively that
this is not an Italian cruiser, sir. We have all those ships accounted for. Their
battleships are very low on fuel, and they’ve taken to leaving them in port and
using their oil to refuel smaller ships and submarines. Our operatives can
verify that Taranto has not sent anything of this size out of in the last three
days, and the same for La Spezia. Now we
do
know that Admiral Da Zara
has sortied with his 3rd Cruiser Division out of Calabria—two light cruisers
and three destroyers. And he is also moving the 7th Cruiser Division out of Messina
and Naples with a couple of heavy cruisers and a handful of destroyers, but
those ships were not anywhere near these coordinates when this photo was taken.”
He indicated the message decrypt record, also a part of the file, which listed
the exact coordinates of the sighting.

“I can
verify that,” said Whitworth. “I had a look at the latest intercepts this
morning. We’ve got all those ships under observation. But there’s more to this
sighting than these photographs. First off this ship was sighted alone, with no
other escorts.”

Pound
shifted uncomfortably as Whitworth continued.

“We sent 248
Beaufighter Squadron from Gibraltar to Malta on the 10th of August. They were
the planes responsible for this sighting, and I have Park’s latest communiqué
indicating this same group flew a strike mission on the afternoon of the 11th.
They found the ship again, and, well…they were cut to pieces for their trouble.
Four of six Beaus went down, and only two crews came out alive. And here’s the
rub—they were shot down by some sort of naval rocketry.” He folded his arms
gravely, looking at Wake-Walker and Tovey.

“Rocketry?”
said Wake-Walker, the memory of his own squadrons off
Furious
and
Victorious
still an unhealed wound. “You mean to say the Italians have these weapons now?”

“Apparently
so,” said Pound quickly. “It’s my belief that the Germans have brewed up a new
lot of these fire sticks and they’ve shipped them to Regia Marina in an effort
to tip the balance of the war in the Mediterranean theater. For that matter we
might expect to find
Tirpitz
or their other heavy ships equipped with
them in the near future as well. And should they be carrying anything more…”
His implication was obvious to them all.

Turing had a
strange look on his face, set and determined. He had not heard about this
second strike mission or the use of rockets until just this moment. Now his
very worst suspicions were confirmed, at least in his own mind, but how could
he broach the subject with the cream of Admiralty? These men were no-nonsense
naval royalty. They had centuries of combined experience between them and were
accustomed to having things nailed down with brass tacks and well in order at
all times. Yet he could not remain silent. He had to say something.

“Well sir,”
he said to Admiral Pound. “I must say that from my close examination of the
photography in hand, I do not believe this ship is anything in the Italian naval
inventory.”

Pound gave
him a hard look. It was enough that he had ventured to contradict the First Sea
Lord, but even more that he would suggest…What
was
he suggesting? “See here,”
he began, somewhat perturbed. “Then you are telling me that this is
not
an Italian ship? It bloody well isn’t a German ship. That leaves us with
something out of Toulon, and it would be quite a stretch of the imagination to
believe the French would be at sea, and even more so with weapons described in
that last communiqué from Malta.”

A remnant of
the French Navy was still holed up in Toulon, and it included some rather formidable
ships, including the battleships
Dunkerque
,
Strasbourg
, and
Provence
,
and numerous cruisers and destroyers, some 57 surface ships and numerous subs,
torpedo boats, sloops and auxiliaries.

Wake-Walker
came in with another angle. “Could the Germans have gotten their hands on one
of these French ships, and rigged her out with these new weapons? I dare say we
haven’t kept a very close watch on the French Navy since Aboukir Bay.”

“Hut Four cannot
confirm that,” said Turing, “and I can say definitively that we have not seen
anything in the Enigma coding that would in any way lead us to that conclusion
over at Hut Eight.”

Pound
frowned at him. “I wish I could feel more reassured in hearing that, Professor
Turing. After all, Bletchley Park had that same line concerning this
Geronimo
incident in the first place.”

Turing
ignored the obvious barb in the remark, feeling that the discussion was sliding
away towards conclusions that would lead the Royal Navy to make a grave error.
He had come to a far different conclusion about this ship when he first saw the
gun camera footage and, as he tried to muster the courage to express his
feelings, he realized that it was very likely that he would be scapegoated for
any further intelligence failure here. Kill the messenger. It was all too
common, even with all the apparent chin chin civility of these men. He girded
himself, then finally began to speak his mind.

“Admiral
Pound,” he said flatly. “I have examined this photography very closely. The
ship depicted is over eight hundred and twenty feet in length, and I estimate
it to displace at least 30,000 tons or more. That is a hundred feet more than
either
Dunkerque
or
Strasburg
from the French Navy, 60 feet longer
than the Italian battleship
Littorio
, and the equal of our late departed
HMS
Hood
. It has no visible armament above a few small deck guns, and
yet it managed to bloody the nose of the entire Home Fleet: two carriers, three
battleships, five cruisers and nine destroyers. Furthermore, it has
demonstrated a speed in excess of thirty knots—faster than our most modern
battleships of the line, and even some of our cruisers—yet it has
no visible
stacks
, and has never been seen to be making steam of any kind, even in
this latest photo…” He let that last bit dangle, his high voice somewhat
strident as he realized he had let his passion for the point get the better of
him.

Pound made
no effort to suppress his anger now. “Preposterous!” he slapped his hand on the
table, more than annoyed now with the truculence of this upstart professor. He
had heard a few barbed rumors about the man—that he was eccentric, given to
strange flights of fancy, and that he had other peculiar habits that Pound did
not wish to entertain further in his mind. Now to have him make such statements
in this room, before the highest ranking officers of the Royal Navy.
Preposterous was not half a word for what he felt at the moment, and his face
clearly exhibited his displeasure.

“Are you
suggesting this latest photo is
identical
to the images we obtained a
year ago—that the two ships are one and the same? Preposterous!”

Part V

The First Gate

“
Through me you pass into the
city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain…
All
hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

The Inferno, Canto
III

- Dante Alegeri

Chapter 13

When
Karpov
entered the
officer’s dining hall, the conversations seemed to hush, particularly at the
far table where he saw the broad shoulders and telltale woolen cap of Orlov.
The former Chief of Operations, now a mere Lieutenant in the Marine detachment,
was seated with a clutch of young
Starshini
, one stripe Junior
Lieutenants that been laughing together as the big man joked about something.
Their sudden silence prompted Orlov to look over his shoulder, and as Karpov
sat down, alone as always, he heard Orlov curse under his breath,
“Mudak…”
One of the other men at the table nudged him with a cautionary elbow, which
prompted Orlov to say yet more—“Mne pohui!” he exclaimed, telling the man he
didn’t give a fuck.

Karpov
ignored them, eating in the heavy silence that filled the room, and trying to
keep his mind on Fedorov’s last briefing, and what might lie ahead for them.
But the awkward situation dragged him back to those last moments on the bridge
as he struggled to complete the missile firing, and how Orlov had stood there
in silence, doing and saying nothing when the bridge was compromised.

It felt so
impossibly wrong now when he replayed the images in his mind. Orlov had agreed
to back his decision, yet when it came to the moment, he let him drop into the
stew without a second thought. On one level he felt betrayed, yet even more
ashamed that he had ever thought to enlist the allegiance of an oaf like Orlov.
Yet as he tried to muster a kernel of anger over what had happened, another
voice within him whispered that he had been the one who opened the hatch when
the Marines arrived, stupidly thinking they had come in response to his own
orders, and not thinking that Volsky might have already regained control of the
ship.

You were an
idiot, he thought. You knew it would only be a matter of time before someone
tried the door at sick bay and the Admiral was freed. And you knew he would
reassert his authority over the ship at once. That’s why you locked yourself
away in the bridge, and thought Orlov’s presence there at your side would be
enough to keep the other officers in line. You wanted to fire your damn
missile, and that you did, blowing the Americans to hell where they belonged.
But one day you will join them there. Yes, one day you will sit at the table
with every man you have put under the sea in all this insanity. Forget Orlov,
he concluded. Blame yourself, and yes you are every bit the bastard he calls
you under his breath, that and more.

In time
Orlov let out an audible burp and stood to leave, a cup of coffee in hand as he
moved toward the exit behind Karpov. The Captain realized something was wrong
immediately, as officers always left their dishes at the table and they would
be collected and cleaned by the rankers in the galley, and no one ever took
anything out of the dining room. The silence thickened when Orlov deliberately
drifted near Karpov’s table and then pretended to stumble.

“Watch your
step!” Karpov said sharply, but it was obvious to everyone that Orlov had
deliberately spilled his coffee on Karpov’s right shoulder, and even more
obvious that he was going to get away with it.

“Sorry, Captain,”
he said sarcastically. “I didn’t see you there. It’s these bandages,” he said,
holding up his hands. “Can’t seem to hold on to anything, eh?” Orlov forced a
strained smile that was more of a sneer, and Karpov waved him away, his eyes
darkly on the far table where he could hear the muted, well restrained laughter
of the junior Lieutenants. He could feel the heat on the back of his neck, and knew
that Orlov had deliberately tried to humiliate and provoke him in front of the
other men. He doused the stain on his jacket with a table linen, as Orlov left,
sullen and angry. Had it been any other man, he thought bitterly…

The junior
officers finished, one by one, and a few were even bold enough now to drift
Karpov’s way as they left, some holding cups of coffee as well, though not one
dared to do anything more. If they had, Karpov would have shouted them deaf,
but as it was the scene had clearly demonstrated to them that Karpov was not
man enough to stand up to Orlov, and not even his rank and authority as acting
Starpom
was enough to protect him now.