by Jack Hayes
Nieder turned and placed his hands on his hips.
“Still nothing?”
“Well,” Beck shrugged. “If we were opening a jewellers, we’d be rich men. I wouldn’t throw these away just yet, we may as well keep them for ourselves for after the war. They’ll raise a fair price then.”
“Yes,” Nieder replied, the already strained patience in his voice now close to snapping, “but for our purposes now?”
“Like I said,” Beck replied, lifting another stone for examination. “Worthless.”
Nieder stormed away from the mine, down the gentle scree slope, towards the haphazard collection of camouflaged tents. Lieutenant Beck saw his commanding officer stride away and bit his lip. He could guess what was coming. It wasn’t the Finn’s fault – but better the major took his frustrations out on someone else. Beck had seen what the man was capable of too many times in the last eighteen months.
Nieder disappeared from view as he entered one of the tents.
The sound of rattling inside the canvas.
Nieder hauled the chained Finn out into the open by his hair.
Beck glanced nervously around the forest. It was okay treating the captured Soviet labourers like that – but a Finn? Technically, they were allies of the Nazis. At least, so long as both sides fought the Russians… Beck was no idiot: he knew it was a marriage of convenience.
Still, if Nieder were caught by one of the Finnish guerrilla groups treating one of their own this way, things would turn ugly. And the country was so damned small, it seemed everyone here knew everyone else.
With a flick of his arm, Nieder threw the Finn to the ground. The young Finn, no more than nineteen, skidded across the loose rocks, scraping the skin of his face as he fell. Not that it would be possible to tell, in amongst the counterpane of bruises and knife scars Nieder had already left all over the boy’s body.
“I’ve told you,” the Finn stuttered. “This is the place. This is the place.”
Arms handcuffed behind his back, ankles chained together, the battered kid scrabbled uneasily to his knees. There were blood stains across his shirt and trousers. It would be freezing out here without a coat.
“And I’ve told you,” Nieder replied, “I won’t be satisfied until we find more of what you were arrested with.”
“It was here,” the Finn said. “I swear it was here. I didn’t know they were special. I just found the outcrop at the bottom of the shaft, exactly where I showed you. If there was one deposit, there must be others.”
Nieder pulled his Luger from his holster and held it to the boy’s head.
“What are you not telling us?” he shouted. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know! I’ve told you everything.”
“Then you’re of no further use to us,” Nieder spat.
The bullet scattered the Finn’s brains across the stony slope. The echo was loud enough to shake some of the snow from the branches of the nearest trees. Nieder kicked the body down into the slag pile away from the mine, then wiped his boot clean on the snow.
“For Christ’s sake, Nieder,” Beck sighed again. “Stop with all the noise. If you bring the Red Army down on us, we’ll be in trouble.”
Nieder glanced around, as though merely saying their name would conjure them like Beelzebub from the ether.
“Let them come,” he said. “It would be more worthwhile than sitting here shitting with our frozen arses between these bare rocks.”
CHAPTER 3
Captain Maddox tapped the window partition between himself and the driver of the limousine.
“Slow down,” he said. “You’re driving too fast for a blackout.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the driver replied. “I have my orders.”
“We won’t get there any faster if we get stopped by a warden because you’re behaving like a maniac,” Maddox said. “Or if we have to spend a couple of hours waiting for you to be arraigned because you’ve knocked some hapless bastard over.”
“Again, sir, I’m sorry – but I have orders.”
All Maddox could see of the driver was the back of his head.
The captain’s jaw locked.
“Look at my face,” he said coldly.
A set of hazel eyes peeped at him in driver’s mirror.
For a second their gazes locked.
“It’s the last time I’m going to ask you nicely,” Maddox said. “Slow. Down.”
He saw the Adam’s apple in the driver’s throat shift with a nervous gulp.
“Yes sir,” came the reply.
The driver eased off the accelerator.
Maddox shifted back into his seat.
It had been a while since he’d seen London under blackout restrictions. German raids were becoming so infrequent, there was even talk that soon the draconian rules would be eased – a new system of ‘dim-out’ would be introduced.
Maddox tilted his head and saw the sparkling glitter of the stars. Before the war, you couldn’t look up and see the sky at night in London, unless you were miles out in the countryside, like Ealing or Wimbledon.
It would be a shame to see it disappear again.
But at least the number of road deaths might return to more normal levels.
How many civilians had died, not from German bombs, but preventable accidents caused by poor planning during the wartime?
Maddox toyed with his wedding ring, spinning it on his finger.
It didn’t turn as easily as it used to. Either he was getting fatter or the gold was shrinking. He smiled. Olivia, god bless her, would likely insist it was the latter – never letting on that he had gained a few pounds.
“You’re not eating as healthily as you should,” he mumbled one of her long used phrases, “and we’re all getting older.”
The car pulled to a halt outside a nondescript doorway between two shops on Oxford Street.
“Thank you,” Maddox said and stepped out onto the pavement.
Two other cars were pulling away from the curb.
Interesting.
Whatever had happened must be big if so many were being recalled urgently.
He moved across to the entrance and stepped inside.
***
Captain Komelkov raised his arm.
Behind him the boisterous grumble of tank engines eased as his column crawled to a standstill. He wearily ran a hand across his chin. A week of stubble bristled under his glove.
“Damn it,” he muttered.
Standing commandingly with the top of his torso poking out of a Soviet tank, he had an excellent vantage point. Normally, he wouldn’t take the risk of being so exposed – Soviet tank commanders made for easy targets to well-trained Finnish snipers.
But it had been claustrophobic inside the belly of his T34. They’d been rumbling across half disused tracks in the tundra for days. He’d decided to chance a 15 minute breath of fresh air.
Thank the Lord that he had.
In the distance, he could see a felled conifer across the road.
“If you can call this sack of shit through the trees a road,” he groused.
He knocked three times on the metal.
“Wake up, Timur,” he shouted down to the driver. “What do you think?”
“Captain?”
“Another Finnish ambush?” Komelkov asked.
The Captain’s eyes scanned sceptically along the snowdrifts that were banked behind two rows of pines. The Finns were out there, somewhere. Just watching. Waiting.
He knew it.
“Yes, sir,” Timur replied, his voice metallic as it bounced around the inside of the tank. “It’s almost certainly a trap.”
“Bloody herring-eating inbreds.”
Komelkov spat over the side into the snow.
At least it wasn’t winter.
His saliva would have frozen solid before it hit the ground.
With a population of barely 3.7 million, Finland’s tiny bands of guerrillas on skis had somehow kept the might of the Soviet beast at
bay.
Not even the Germans had managed that.
They did it by ambushing and killing Russians in traps like the one that lay ahead. First to go would be the tank at the back of the column, preventing them from reversing out. Next would be his tank at the front.
“Should I turn the convoy and drive us off the road?” Timur asked.
Idiot.
“Only if you want us all to drown,” Komelkov closed his eyes with irritation.
The surrounding land was known to Russians as ‘torfyanoye boloto’ – literally: ‘peat swamp’. Every northern nation had a word for such wet, marshy soil – and usually it was regarded in some way as derogatory. For Americans, it was Muskeg – found mostly across Canada and Alaska.
Personally, Komelkov preferred the English term: ‘bog’.
It had the suitable second connotation of ‘toilet’.
That additional meaning for the word certainly adequately described Komelkov’s feelings for this annoyance in Russia’s Westward advance.
He stared again at the giant tree ahead, lazily slapped across the road that just happened to have fallen so as to block it perfectly.
He shook his head.
Yes, the Finns had planned their choke hold well.
Komelkov turned and looked at the other tanks in his convoy. He’d been ordered to secure this part of Petsamo against the local scum – and what had they given him?
Two BT-5s and two T-26s.
He could reasonably safely charge on in his own vehicle. The Finns were lightly armed – as was necessitated by their hit and run tactics. At best, they might muster a grenade or two, perhaps even a heavy duty gun like a Lahti L-39, if the weight could be tolerated.
This late in the war, the Finns had run out of just about everything else.
And a Lahti stood little chance of penetrating his T34’s thick armour. It was, in Komelkov’s opinion, the best tank of any available on either the Eastern or Western fronts.
But those other buckets of bolts in his squad?
Light and easy to manoeuvre on the fields of the Ukraine – they were a liability up here in the frozen wastelands of the north. Their plate sides were little better than cardboard to even the weaponry used by the Finns. Meanwhile, their speed was made useless by the tactic of blockading ice roads and hemming in the convoy.
Narrow lanes like this one played to all their weaknesses and none of their strengths.
“What do you want to do?” Temur asked.
The tank at the back of the convoy exploded in a fireball so large, Komelkov felt the flames sear his arms even though it was at least 100 metres away.
“Attack!” he shouted.
There was no time to run – and nowhere to run too.
He leapt out of the turret and bounced down onto the ground.
Jarring pain shot up through his aging and frozen knees.
He grimaced and pushed on.
“Time to die, you wretched, tick-infested scrotal sacks.”
He’d drilled his men well for just such an eventuality. Some crews, not expecting to be trapped, fell apart under fire and were annihilated. Not his. The turrets of the tanks began their grinding turn. In seconds, their fully primed cannons began blasting at the nearby snow banks.
As Komlekov darted forward, a sniper’s bullet intended for his skull ricocheted off the gun hatch above.
Far too slow.
“Hit the tank at the back,” he grinned. “Then take out the one at the front.”
Short on PanzerFausts, the Finns had opted to use their only explosive charges on the tank at the rear of the convoy – exactly as he’d expected. That left them with only one option on the front vehicle – try and kill Komelkov himself with a marksman’s round.
“Unfortunately for you,” the Russian hissed as he zigzagged to avoid being caught by the raking machine gun fire, “I am not your usual wet-behind-the-ears yokel from Yakutsk.”
He leapt through a gap between two pines at the side of the lane. Wood chippings spattered around him as the Finnish partisans tried to take him down. His arms cushioned his landing. He rolled. Up on one knee, he brought his submachine gun to bear.
A Finnish guerrilla, dressed in his arctic white uniform, saw him coming and stood.
Too late.
With a squeeze of his trigger, Komelkov caught the Finn in his left knee. The power of the weapon did exactly what he expected – it severed the leg straight through, like a butcher’s cleaver through a finger.
The Finn toppled with a gut wrenching scream.
Komelkov closed the gap, shooting two more partisans in the backs as they tried to fire on the tanks, which had opened up with a volley of shells on the remaining Finnish positions.
Komelkov heard the shouts go up for ‘retreat’.
“Not so fast,” he muttered. “I’ve a taste for your peasant blood now.”
He saw one Finnish commando rise on the far side of the road, frantically grabbing his ski poles and pushing off to leave. Komelkov extended the stock on his PPS-43 and hunched the machine gun into his shoulder.
He aimed carefully along the sights as the Finn raced hurriedly away.
A rapid burst of bullets.
The fleeing soldier’s back erupted in red. His arms flew out to the side like some mock crucifixion as he was hurled forward by the force of the slugs.
As was usual with these ambushes, in seconds it was over.
The Finns came out of nowhere, then vanished into the snow.
Except this time, they’d got more than they bargained for.
Komelkov had counted eight different attackers. He’d personally killed three and wounded a fourth. That left this particular commando group at fifty percent of their original strength.
Behind the pines, back on the road, he could hear the crackle of flames from the first tank to be hit by the attack. He peered across at the blackening hulk, smoking billowing between the pines into the sky.
“Good,” he grinned.
That was the vehicle he’d placed the mission’s Commissar in. All Russian squads these days had to carry with them a loyalty officer to ensure their devotion to the Communist cause. With that annoyance dead, Komelkov could actually run the platoon the way he wanted without constantly worrying about all the political bullshit.
“Sir!” Temur poked through the trees and ran up his Captain. “I thought we’d lost you in the attack.”
The young man’s breathing was heavy – as only an unfit tank driver’s could be.
“Lost me?” Komelkov bellowed. “I just saved your worthless hides! By diving out here, I drew their fire. They couldn’t be sure whether to keep hitting the tanks or take out me.”
“But it was a heavy loss sir,” Temur replied. “We lost Commissar Roshenko…”
“Oh do shut up,” Komelkov waved him quiet. “Now, where did that one I only wounded go?”
“One is still alive?” Temur asked, in voice rising with the high pitch of fear.
Komelkov put his gun back over his shoulder.
“Imbecile,” he grunted.
“Sir?”
Komelkov reached down to his belt and withdrew his survival knife.
“You always leave one alive.”
CHAPTER 4
The central hub of the Special Operations Executive was permanently manned. SOE headquarters and its many mission control rooms, briefing arenas and dormitories were in constant use. Even so, Maddox had never seen the main communications area so busy this late into the evening.
He looked at the clocks that ran the length of the east wall. They marked out time in a score of major theatres from the Sydney to Delhi, Paris to Cairo. The building ran, supposedly, on a three shift system comprising 8 hours for each of Asia, Europe and the Americas.
Technically, they should be half way through the shift associated with the Americas and East Pacific. Typically, that was the quietest of the three, unless there was a big European night operation on.
In practice, the
re was a lot of overlap between the different shifts and most people in the building worked ten to twelve hours straight.
But even so…
There was a high-pitched scraping noise as an information coordinator he knew called Janine pushed her chair back quickly and ran from her desk to one of the side rooms – General Peters’ office. She clutched a handful of loosely scrabbled documents.
She knocked and went straight in.
Janine was normally assigned to the Asia shift. She shouldn’t be at her station for at least another five hours.
Maddox stalked through the room.
High pitched blips and dahs of telegraphy could be heard, leaking out from the headphones of signallers. Fingers tapped furiously. Metal on metal.
Maddox closed his eyes and listened.
The air was abuzz.
“Maddox!” a voice called out.
Caught up in trying to listen to the codes, Maddox couldn’t place where his name was called from at first.
“Captain Maddox! Stop ear wigging and come over here.”
Maddox pushed his way past two secretaries, politely excusing himself, and saw, standing on tip toes, a security officer trying to peer above the heads of everyone present.
“McCallum,” he said, reaching out for a bracing handshake. “What the hell is going on?”
“There’s been a serious development,” McCallum replied, his lips drawing thin. “Come with me.”
Maddox had met McCallum shortly after being drafted. The dour Scotsman worked for Section 5 of Military Intelligence. He was part of the teams that handled counterespionage and domestic security for the United Kingdom.
In short: McCallum was a spy catcher.
He led Maddox out to the back staircase and down a sharp flight of stairs. They were going all the way to the ‘dungeon’, an overly dramatic name for the set of interrogation and debriefing rooms three stories beneath the ground.
“This evening,” McCallum said, “about four hours ago, a V2 rocket very nearly killed Churchill and several high ranking members of both the government and armed forces.”
Maddox swore in disbelief.
“Quite,” McCallum replied. “It was only by chance that the plan was disturbed. A boy moved the targeting device – codenamed ‘Helix’ by the Germans. By handling the box, the kid shifted it out of alignment with the Cabinet War Rooms. The V2 landed around 50 yards away, in the middle of the road. Some windows were broken, a car was destroyed and there’s a nasty hole we’re blaming on a gas leak – but, fortunately, no-one was killed.”