by James Philip
There were rumours – gossip really - that she was Maxim Machenaud’s ‘squeeze’; Rashidov was sceptical; the little shit got his kicks hurting and killing people and besides, the woman was no kind of ‘looker’.
Presently, the woman was looking at him with dull, dead eyes which betrayed not one scintilla of emotion, or…empathy.
Rashidov did not react to Maxim Machenaud’s shriek of angst. Nor did he flinch as he felt flecks of the Frenchman’s spittle on his cheek.
“MY SHIPS!”
“Comrade First Secretary…”
“MY SHIPS!”
Rashidov recognised that this ‘interview’ was not going to be a meeting of minds. Machenaud’s retinue was bunching up behind him like a lynch mob and his troopers were fingering the triggers of their assault rifles.
Only Comrade Agnès was untouched by the madness.
She stood unmoving, inscrutable in her detachment.
“Where are the crews of the two bombers which landed?”
“They are in custody.”
“I must debrief them.”
“You can have their bodies after my people have finished with them!”
Rashidov knew he was losing his temper.
He eyed the crowd packing ever closer, threatening, vengeful.
“If you are not willing to allow me to speak to the crews of those two aircraft,” he said slowly, carefully projecting every vowel in Moskva Russian which he knew only Machenaud and a handful of his disciples would understand, not waiting for the Frenchman’s translator to catch up. “I will return to the Mission’s quarters in the city and communicate your non-cooperation to Sverdlovsk. I expect any Red Air Force personnel in your hands to be surrendered to me,” he glanced at his watch, “not later than four o’clock this day.”
He turned on his heel.
“Where are you going?”
Rashidov turned back.
Enough was enough!
“There have been communications difficulties recently with the Motherland.” He thought about complaining about the British ‘jamming’ of signals, another of the FI’s lies to cover up its clumsy attempts to eavesdrop on the Soviet Mission. “Because of this I was not pre-warned about the Red Air Force’s operation. I am confident that Sverdlovsk will communicate with me in due course, until then I can be of no assistance to you until my people have debriefed the Red Air Force men from those two bombers.”
Rashidov shrugged, and fixed his gaze on the smoke in the distance.
He went on: “In this respect it seems to me that if Soviet aircraft are to be shot down – without warning - over the Massif Central, that I ought to warn my principals back in the Motherland to indefinitely suspend normal supply flights.”
Maxim Machenaud stared at him.
His eyes burned, angry hot spots in his ashen, cold-pinched features.
Sharof Rashidov might not have received the signal about the raid on Villefranche, or the attached request to negotiate landing facilities at Clermont-Ferrand for any aircraft with technical issues, or in the (unlikely) circumstance of suffering battle damage; but he had received pre-warning from Troika member Vladimir Yefimovich Semichastny, that in future ‘war and humanitarian’ supplies for the ‘FI Front’ would no longer receive the ‘priority previously assigned’ to them.
This had been the first indication that his brutally candid assessment of the permanence and the resilience of the Machenaud regime, might conceivably, have been taken on board back home. He had pointed to the regime’s over-reliance on a relatively small cadre of ‘highly capable and motivated Revolutionary Guards’, the majority of whom were stationed in and around Clermont-Ferrand, the obvious disconnect between ‘legacy out of control Krasnaya Zarya’ detachments in the countryside, prosecuting the war beyond the boundaries of the Massif Central. He had also identified the ‘political and ideological separation’ of the Central Committee of the FI in the Auvergne to the Workers Committees controlling much of the rest of the south, who – contrary to Maxim Machenaud’s delusional assertions - regarded what was left of the former French Mediterranean Fleet holed-up in Villefranche-sur-Mer, as ‘their’ fleet.”
That summary, despatched to Sverdlovsk before the news of the FI’s attempt to seize ‘the fleet’ became known was, of course, already out of date.
Maxim Machenaud’s attempt to steal away his southern allies’ fleet might already have fatally undermined his last hope of uniting the south of France under the red banner.
Thus far, Rashidov’s people had been unable to discover how badly the storms in the north were hitting the FI’s forces below the Loire Valley, or even if the British were still probing threateningly along the north bank of the Gironde Estuary towards Krasnaya Zarya’s last major bastion on the Atlantic coast, Bordeaux. Problematically, not only were the FI in general, and Maxim Machenaud in particular, almost wholly uncommunicative about ‘their’ military capabilities and ongoing operations outside the Auvergne; but what little intelligence Rashidov had seen since arriving in France, seemed to him, inherently suspect. Assurances that the Free French were on the defensive, trapped in their trenches along the Loire Valley in the west and in their ‘enclaves’ in Picardy, the Somme and the Ardennes, flew in the face of what little intelligence he had inherited. If the British were parked on the landward approaches of the Gironde Estuary, nothing about the FI-Krasnaya Zarya positions in the Loire Valley could possibly be remotely ‘secure’. And as for the laughable claim that the Free French were on the defensive east of Paris; how on Earth did that square with hard and fast intelligence that the enemy had succeeded in halting infiltration into France across the Rhine?
That said, before the Siberian storm had swept across the continent, he had largely discounted any likelihood of a major Free French offensive before the spring at the very earliest. Moreover, the latest forecasts warned that even though the worst of the weather would linger over northern France and the southern British Isles, there was likely to be a freezing sting in the tail of the huge depression as it rolled south west toward the Atlantic. Heavy snow and Arctic conditions were likely even in the Auvergne in the next week…
Maxim Machenaud had stopped ranting.
So, Sharof Rashidov started to listen to what he was saying.
“Your people,” the Frenchman said, accusatively, “say they sank several ships but that they were engaged by missile-equipped British fighters, and encountered heavy, very well-directed anti-aircraft fire as they commenced their bomb runs. They say Villefranche was obscured by clouds and that their bomb-aiming was probably degraded by an unexpectedly hostile ‘electronic environment’ as they made their attack.”
One of Rashidov’s aides coughed diplomatically.
“Modern warships routinely monitor and in combat will seek to disrupt a foe’s electronic warfare suite,” the man, attired in KGB green with a badge on his uniform left breast indicating he was a communications specialist, remarked respectfully.
“I understood that the Villefranche Squadron was virtually mothballed?” Rashidov queried brusquely.
“Just so, Comrade Commissar,” the much younger KGB man agreed hurriedly. “It might indicate, therefore, that there were vessels from a foreign navy present in the anchorage at the time of the raid.”
“The fucking English?” Maxim Machenaud spat.
“A British Squadron departed from Gibraltar several days ago, Comrade First Secretary,” he was informed, cursorily in comparison with the caution the officer had addressed his own superior. “A carrier strike group commanded by HMS Victorious, which carries about twenty-five or thirty aircraft. Including,” he added, “jet interceptors.”
Machenaud scowled, looked to Rashidov.
“I am informed your people caught a glimpse of one of the fighters. It had an ‘odd looking’ tail plane…”
The KGB Intelligence man spoke up again.
“The Victorious carries Sea Vixen interceptors; they have a very distinctive twin boom tail plane…”
>
“How could they have approached so close to Villefranche without anybody knowing?” The Frenchman demanded angrily, his eyes blazing anew.
“Very easily,” the KGB man observed. “It was assumed Victorious and her escorts were bound for Malta.”
“What happened to those Red Navy submarines that were supposed to be guarding MY southern coasts?” Maxim Machenaud asked sourly, bitterly.
“That was last year, Comrade First Secretary,” the KGB man explained guardedly. There had never been any Red Navy submarines within a thousand miles of the Bay of Lions or the Riviera. “They were redeployed when the British made no attempt to reinstate their blockade…”
“Order them to come back!”
Sharof Rashidov shook his head.
He knew that there were Red Navy conventional, diesel electric submarines, operating in the Black Sea, the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean. He also knew that there were never more than a couple, more usually only one, and sometimes, no vessels available for operations on a given day, and the Mediterranean was a big, big sea, even when local tactical conditions occasionally permitted free passage in and out of the Black Sea.
In any event, any Red Navy man who torpedoed a British or an American warship would be lucky if he was only shot when he got back home!
Notwithstanding that no Soviet diplomat or commissar ever went abroad with wholly unambiguous instructions; Sharof Rashidov knew full well that the last thing the Troika – leastways its chairman, Alexander Shelepin – wanted, was anybody starting an actual shooting war with the West.
It went without saying that Maxim Machenaud’s perspective on such matters was radically, insanely divergent from that held within the Sverdlovsk Kremlin!
The leader of the Front International turned and pointed, right arm outstretched, at the two Tu-95s in the distance.
“I want those aircraft to attack the fucking English!”
Chapter 22
Thursday 2nd February 1967
Battleship Jean Bart, Villefranche-sur-Mer
The crews of the Campbeltown, Perth and Dundee had done everything humanly possible to pull as many of the survivors of the four sunken French ships from the oil and wreckage-strewn waters of the anchorage. But the water had been cold, and many otherwise unhurt survivors had died from ingesting salt water and fuel. Less than an hour after the end of the attack there were only dead bodies to be pulled from the sea.
It was too early for a proper reckoning; but already Captain Dermot O’Reilly knew the body count was going to be in the hundreds. It was a mercy that nobody had been killed on his three ships, although all three destroyers had walking wounded and several more men more seriously injured by splinters or the blast of near misses. Campbeltown herself had been bracketed by big bombs from the stick which had damaged the Jean Bart as the action came to a sudden, shuddering end almost as quickly as it had begun.
A thousand-kilogram bomb had glanced off the side armour of the battleship’s Number Two 380-millimetre quadruple main battery turret, lanced through the main deck and exploded between five and ten metres from the side of the leviathan as it hit the water causing only relatively minor blast damage.
Another thousand-kilo munition had hit the ship far forward, demolishing the Jean Bart’s empty paint store and severing her starboard anchor chain before cleaving through an empty fuel bunker and screaming, without exploding into the depths of the bay. Presently the Flagship of what was left of the Villefranche Squadron was down two degrees by the head, having taken on several hundred tons of water between frames two and five.
The battleship had sustained four dead and another seventeen wounded, mercifully most of the latter having suffered only minor injuries.
Bizarrely, the one ship in the bay which had completely escaped damage or casualties was the Clemenceau. Throughout the attack the aircraft carrier had sat like a huge, seemingly unmissable target amidst the mayhem, a surreally serene witness to the tide of death and destruction threatening to overwhelm the rest of the fleet.
“We think there were at least twenty of the beggars,” Rear Admiral Henry Leach told O’Reilly over the secure TBS connection in his sea cabin on board the Campbeltown, which was again back alongside the Jean Bart, offloading survivors from the sunken ships.
Apparently, the Fleet Air Arm contingent aboard the flagship were a little down in the mouth about their failure to shoot down all the Russian bombers.
Dermot O’Reilly had moved on past this; there was only so much two Sea Vixens could do against such a large formation of bombers.
“Our best guess is that twelve or thirteen of the bombers managed to unload somewhere in the vicinity of Villefranche. We think at least a couple of bomb loads probably fell long, maybe even into the eastern suburbs of Nice, sir,” he offered, feeling unutterably weary.
“We think we shot down six of the Tu-95s,” Henry Leach went on. “Unfortunately, they were on us almost before we knew it. Understandably, the CAP was loitering to your west where we all anticipated any threat might materialise from. But anyway, we between the CAP and your Fletchers we bagged at least six, and possibly another one. The enemy formation split into two sections after the raid, with three, possibly four aircraft heading off to the north west and the rest beetling off to the east. It may be that the bombers heading towards the Auvergne were ‘winged’ by your five-inchers. The consensus at this end is that the Red Air Force must have scraped-up every available Tu-95 to mount a show like this. Ergo, now they have shot their bolt we should not expect a repeat exercise in the near future. It also inclines me to the view that, after their botched attempt to seize the fleet the other day, our friends in the FI might not be in any position to further muck about with us at Villefranche either.”
Dermot O’Reilly hoped he was right.
However, hope was a thing he had learned not to bank on in combat.
“I still think we need to get the French ships out of here as soon as possible, sir.”
“I agree absolutely. While those ships remain at Villefranche we will be operating with our hands tied behind our backs!” There was a brief pause, presumably because one of the Task Force Commander’s staffers needed to speak to him urgently. “Sorry about that, Dermot. Right, I want all those ships out of there tonight. Scuttle any vessel that cannot steam under its own power. Once you’re at sea detach Dundee and Perth to escort the French to Malta. Any questions?”
Dermot O’Reilly chuckled to himself.
“No, sir. Get the French to sea and send them off to Malta.”
“That’s the ticket.”
It was getting dark by the time O’Reilly went on board the Jean Bart to speak to Brynmawr Williams. Over a third of the Campbeltown’s crew – among them many of his most experienced men - was still aboard the battleship and he needed as many of them back as possible before he re-joined Task Force V1.
His Executive Officer had anticipated as much and it was amicably, and speedily agreed which sixty-six of Campbeltown’s people would remain.
“I need you back on Campbeltown, too, Bryn,” O’Reilly informed his burly second-in-command. “Admiral Leguay and Commander Benois are perfectly capable chaps. I’ll send over Keith Moss; they’ll need a Navigator. He speaks tolerable French, I gather. Anyway, it will be useful experience for him.”
The two officers had been conversing on the compass platform, their new French ‘allies’ careful to give them space, privacy and not to in any way intrude.
There was a polite cough.
Contra Amiral Rene Leguay, leaning for support on the diminutive form of Aurélie Faure, had stepped, unsteadily onto the bridge.
“So,” the Frenchman asked, “what is the verdict? Are my ships to be sunk at their moorings?”
“No, sir,” O’Reilly grimaced, shaking his head. “Any ship that can steam out of Villefranche under its own power before dawn tomorrow, will be escorted to Malta.”
It was likely that the frigate La Savoyard, so badly damaged in the
air raid that everybody was a little surprised she was still afloat; would be the only one of the surviving major units which would have to be abandoned at Villefranche.
Dermot O’Reilly went on: “At Malta, it is my understanding that any person prepared to swear allegiance to the Free French cause will be granted political asylum, and offered employment in the crusade to free your country from the curse of the regime in Clermont-Ferrand. As to your ships, well,” the Canadian Captain (D) of the 21st Destroyer Squadron shrugged, “that will be a matter for naval surveyors and the Allied High Command. I repeat what I said to you the first time I came aboard the Jean Bart. You are not prisoners; you are free men and women. Today, we fought side by side. That, I think, is a good start.” He glanced to Brynmawr Williams. “Bryn will be transferring back to Campbeltown,” he smiled wanly, “I need him more than you do. I shall be sending my navigator, Lieutenant Moss across to you as senior Royal Navy officer. His status on board will be as a detached watch officer responsible for Campbeltown’s personnel on board the Jean Bart. He will be under your command, sir. Once the squadron is out to sea, Campbeltown will probably re-join Task Force V1, leaving the Dundee and the Perth to escort you to the Grand Harbour.”
Leguay was speechless.
Aurélie Faure smiled: “Mon Amiral did not believe you when promised not to take his fleet from him, Captain O’Reilly.”
“We live in a world that is full of surprises, do we not?” The Canadian Royal Navy man observed wryly, drawing himself up to his full height and turning to Rene Leguay. “Sir,” he said, formally, ““you have the deck.”
After Dermot O’Reilly returned to the Campbeltown, he walked the ship. Today, was the first time most of his greenhorns had been in a real battle; and nothing prepared a man for that. The random brutality of it was what struck most men. Prepare as you might, death walked where it pleased across any seaborne, aerial or land battle, random quirks of fate determined who lived and who died. As for the reasons why, well, that was always a mystery.