Men of War (2013)

by John Schettler

  U-118 laid all sixty-six SMA type mines off Cape Espartel in the western approaches, and then sailed southwest to look for errant traffic and a possible use for the twelve torpedoes they also brought along. A few days later they got some very good news.

  On a dark night in early September, convoy MKS-7B out of Algiers and bound for Liverpool, transited the Straits of Gibraltar. It was a nice fat convoy too, with just over sixty merchantmen steaming in twelve columns abreast, and it ran right over U-118’s web of freshly laid mines. Czygan would claim three kills that night, the small 2000 tonner Baltonia, the much bigger Empire Mordred at just over 7000 tons, and another respectable kill with the sinking of the Mary Slessor at a little over 5000 tons. He was elated—three kills in one night, and without a single torpedo fired! He had quickly racked up 14,064 tons, and was well on the way to earning his Iron Cross of the 1st Class with his new tactics. He was finally fighting his boat the way it was meant to be fought.

  The minefield U-118 had laid was to be a nuisance and threat to shipping for some time thereafter. Three more steamers would happen across those mines and die, adding another 12,870 tons to Czygan’s tally. It was ship number four, however, that was to really put a feather in Czygan’s cap, a lowly steamer out of Cadiz, christened as theMonassir. The ship was renamed Switzerland for a time, before being loaned to the Spanish Republicans during the civil war when it was flagged Italian and called the Urbi to keep a low profile while carrying contraband and other unsavory cargos along the Spanish coast. After the civil war concluded, the ship was returned to its owner, who favored it with the name Duero, after the flat, rocky wine region of north central Spain centered on the town Aranda de Duero.

  It was always considered bad luck to rename a ship, though the practice was common. But to rename a ship four times was uncommonly bad. And so it happened that the ship with four names was also the fourth to happen upon a mine in U-118’s stealthy web on the night of the 10th of September, 1942, exactly 5 months sooner than it should have suffered that same fate.

  It seemed like a small thing, a lowly tramp steamer hitting a mine laid by a hungry, frustrated U-boat captain, but it was the night that changed the entire course of history—not only of the war, but for every day that followed. For a very special passenger was aboard the ship that night, a drifter, indigent laborer, and a virtual nobody that had been taken on as cheap labor in the fire room a few weeks earlier.

  His name was Gennadi Orlov.

  Chapter 2

  At only 2000 tons, Duero had no armor to speak of, and damage from the mine explosion that shook them all awake that night was enough to hole the hull and ship a good deal of seawater. It was only the steamer’s good fortune that a British destroyer was close by, and able to respond quickly to take the ship under tow and drag Duero back to Gibraltar. With many compartments flooded and sealed off, the ship’s captain accepted an offer to send a good number of his crew over to the British destroyer on a lifeboat, and Orlov and Rybakov were among them.

  “Now don’t say anything, Orlov,” Rybakov had warned him. “Remember, we’re neutral non-combatants. I’ve been aboard several British ships in my day, and never had much to worry about, but you need to keep a good head on your shoulders, and keep your mouth shut too.”

  Orlov was only too happy to get off the rusty old steamer, thinking he could just as easily disappear and jump onto any other ship in the harbor once they made landfall, and continue on his merry way. But they had not counted on fate and time having their say in the matter, for the British ship that had come to their aid that night was the destroyer HMS Intrepid, out on routine channel patrol and captained by one Lieutenant Commander Colin Douglas Maud.

  That same boat had made a wild run at a strange phantom ship in the Med some months ago, as Maud desperately charged in to fire his torpedoes. He would not score a hit that night against Kirov, but now he unknowingly had a piece of the ship right in the palm of his hand. It wasn’t long before Orlov came under his watchful eye, for there was something about the man that belied his being a simple and common laborer on an old Spanish steamer.

  Maud was an old salt, as seasoned as they ever came in the navy, and he knew sea faring men when he saw them. Orlov caught his eye immediately, just as the life boat was tied off and the men came aboard. It was the way he moved on the boat, handled the ropes, reached for all the right places as he climbed, his footing sure and steady while the other men clamored, and slipped, and fairly well looked like a bunch of land-lubbing monkeys—but not Orlov. There was a man who knew the tang of salt in the air, and a man who knew the sea. Maud was sure of it from the moment he set eyes on him. And there was something more… the easy assurance of the man, the sense of presumed authority about him, and the revolver in a side holster that he spied easily enough, though the man was making more than a reasonable effort at concealing the weapon.

  Wee Mac, as he was called in the Royal Navy was on to this stranger in a heartbeat, and some inner sense was telling him to be wary. His easy handle was a bit of a misnomer, for Maud was as stout a man as they came, barrel-chested, with a full black beard and the aspect of a pirate on the Barbary coast. He took one look at Orlov, noticed the revolver, and then tapped the Hawthorne cane he always held on the rim of the gunwale to get a warrant officer’s attention.

  “See that man there,” he pointed with the cane. “He’s armed. I won’t have armed men on my ship not sworn to the service of his majesty’s Royal Navy. Get round to the Master of Arms and have him see to the matter at once.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Orlov was indeed armed, and with a Glock pistol that would not be conceived, designed or built for many decades. It was “Comrade Glock,” the very same pistol he had brandished on the bridge of Kirov as insurance that he and Karpov might pull off their quiet little mutiny without any trouble. The weapon would be seized, in spite of Orlov’s boisterous complaint, putting his hand protectively on the holster and prompting two Royal Marine Guards to quickly chamber rounds and take aim at his chest. Rybakov quickly intervened, whispered to him that they would have it returned once they reached port, and diffused what might have become a very ugly situation. But the revolver was taken to the bridge to satisfy one Lieutenant Commander Colin Douglas Maud, and being a curious man, he had a good long look at it. And so it began.

  * * *

  At first glance Captain Maud thought the pistol was a Russian TT-33, particularly when he learned the man it was taken from was apparently Russian himself. Yet when he flipped open the holster and slid the weapon out he could see that it wasn’t a Tokarev after all. Very curious. Maud knew something of handguns, and it wasn’t a Polish Vis, or a Browning Colt M1911 either, weapons Tokarev was thought to have relied upon when he designed the TT-33. He had a very long look at the pistol indeed.

  It was, in fact, a high performance Glock-31, firing the formidable .357 SIG cartridge from a 15 round clip. The weapon was designed in the mid-1990s, and noted for its considerable stopping power and accuracy over long ranges. It’s name was engraved along the flat barrel siding, though not apparent to the uneducated eye. The first letter of Glock was enlarged and almost looked like a circle, broken at one end where the letters LOCK had been inserted to the interior and rested on the lateral horizontal line that would designate the letter “G.” To the right of this he had his first clue as to the origin of the weapon, for the word ‘AUSTRIA’ was engraved next, and then the weapon caliber of ‘.357’ The same odd Glock logo also appeared on the gun’s handle.

  Maud had never seen this make and model, whatever it was, and for good reason. There wasn’t another like it in the entire world—at least the world of 1942, for this particular handgun had been manufactured in 1998, all of fifty-six years in the future. And there was something most unusual mounted along the underside of the barrel…something that looked for all the world like a viewing scope, though it would be impossible to sight through it given its present position, mounted by a pair of clips or bracke
ts forward of the trigger guard. Perhaps it was meant to simply be carried in that position, then removed and re-mounted on top of the barrel when needed, or so he thought.

  It was not a view scope of any kind, however. It was a Russian made laser range finder that Orlov had adapted to his weapon some years ago, and it never entered his head that it might seem just a tad perplexing to anyone of this era who might inspect the gun, because he never expected that anyone ever would inspect the gun.

  The long list of unanswered questions about this man and his weapon now began to mount up in Captain Maud’s mind, and he quietly told his Executive Officer to have the Russians brought up to the Ward Room, along with a couple of Marine guards. He wanted to start asking his questions, and see what he might learn about these men.

  When he finally got a look at the two men he could clearly see the vast difference between them. One man, calling himself Ivan Petrovich Rybakov, clearly had the look of an itinerant sea slug, his hands and face blackened with coal stains, and a raw, unkempt look about him that spoke of a scoundrel. This man managed some broken English, which made things a bit easier for Maud that night, because the man he was interested in could speak only Russian.

  His name, he soon learned, was Gennadi Orlov, for the Chief had no qualms about using his real name here. He knew that no one aboard Kirov would ever know of his whereabouts or have any way to possibly find him. Rybakov did most of the talking at first, telling the Captain that they had signed on some time ago as common labor. He said he had come west from Hungary when it seemed likely that the war was going to come east. He wanted to get away from it, slipping beneath the advancing front to make his way through Southern France to Spain.

  The other man’s story wasn’t as believable. When questioned, Orlov told Rybakov to say he had been on a Russian merchant ship in the Black Sea, and also tired of the war he had jumped ship in Turkey before catching another tramp steamer west through the Med. That was what he told Maud, but the burly Captain seemed suspicious.

  “Well, you’re a long way from home,” said Maud, looking the man over with a careful eye now. It would have been a very hard life to be on a steamer in the Black Sea. The Germans had U-boats there now, or so he had heard. They had disassembled the damn things, rafted them down the Danube and put them back together again in the Black Sea! In fact, they were under the able command of one Helmut Rosenbaum, former Kapitan of U-73 in the Med, the very same submarine Kirov had dueled with off the coast of Menorca. He was only there because Fedorov had given him a life, even though the man had done his best to try and put a torpedo into the Russian battlecruiser.

  Yes, thought Maud, it would have been a hard life in the Black Sea, and an even more arduous journey west through the Med to reach Spain, yet this man did not have the gaunt, hungry look of his companion. He was well built, well fed, and had a cocky, self-assured look about him that said many things to Captain Maud as he watched the man. This Orlov was someone accustomed to giving orders, not taking them. He seemed quietly irritated with this interrogation, answering with curt and hard-edged statements in Russian that did not seem to paint a very credible picture. He had forgotten the name of the ship he came west on. He claimed he worked in the fire room the whole long way to Spain, but Maud had seen stokers and knew their look at once. Orlov’s brief few days at the job did not see him get that charred look, hands smudged, fingernails blackened and sometimes impossible to wash. No, he had nothing of the look of a real stoker, or shovel man. In short, he was lying.

  The longer Maud sat with these men the more he was certain of that. They were liars, both of them, and most likely up to no good. Rybakov he could dismiss. He seemed to be what he claimed, but not this Orlov. No, this man had a military air about him. His story had more holes in it than a sieve, and he had a most unusual pistol in his possession. His jacket, too, had a military cut to it, and an odd way of catching the light. He did not fail to note the buttons at each shoulder that were clearly there to mount missing rank insignia, though he said nothing of this. The jacket’s collar also had places to mount pips. Yes, this man was an officer, and he was sure of it as he tapped his Hawthorne walking stick on the deck, concluding his interview.

  He had come to suspect that Orlov was probably in some intelligence arm or another. Spain had a way of drawing these sorts like maggots on meat as the war now entered its fifth year. The British SIS had men there, as did the Abwehr, the French underground, the Vichy French, the Italians, and there was still an odd mix of shadowy groups in Spain itself, a remnant of their recent civil war. It would not surprise him to learn that this Orlov was a Russian spy, and with that thought in mind he decided to hold these men in a locked room below decks, and have them sent over to British intelligence in Gibraltar. As soon as they made port, he would make a call once they tied off in the harbor, and have a squad sent over to pick the men up. He would let them know that Orlov was clearly not what he professed to be. Let the boys at MI6 have a look at them, he thought. I’ve enough on my plate as it stands.

  * * *

  Gibraltar was more than a vital harbor and airfield for the British it was their gateway to the Med itself, and one of the most vital bases in all the empire. Often thought impregnable, the ‘Rock’ was a source of constant anxiety to the British, who feared that any concerted attack might capture it in spite of all defensive measures. There were three major Spanish artillery batteries in range, one in North Africa at Mount Hacho, two others within five miles of the port near Algiceras. Over 30,000 Spanish troops were nearby on the mainland of Spain, and the British feared these could be reinforced by German troops to present an unstoppable siege force against the 15,000 men that could be garrisoned on the Rock.

  A bastion of British Sea power for centuries, Gibraltar was the home of Force H under Admiral Somerville, and a nest for the British Special Intelligence Service, there to defend the vital base from saboteurs of every stripe. The Italians had been trying to bomb the place for years, and the night sky was often pierced by the long cold white fingers of search lights during the air raids. By day the RAF kept a watch on the Rock and discouraged such visitations, but the enemy tired to subvert operations there by other means as well.

  Italian frogmen from the DecimaFlottiglia MAS mounted many operations against the harbor, secretly working out of a private estate at Villa Carmela about three kilometers up the Spanish coast, and then from the Italian tanker SS Olterra. They managed to get at a few merchant ships, but did little other harm, though their presence was also suspected as a means of infiltrating agents and saboteurs into Gibraltar.

  To improve the defenses, a warren of tunnels and caves, were drilled into the limestone. Deep beneath the Rock itself was an entire city in a series of tunnels and caves bored out by British and Canadian engineers with diamond tipped drills. It had its own power station, hospitals, troop barracks, and water and food supplies capable of supporting up to 30,000 troops. In fact, the Rock had more miles of tunnels underground than it had roads above.

  It was into one of these long, labyrinthine tunnels that Orlov and Rybakov were taken, to a hidden bunker operated by the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. They, too, had a very long look at the pistol Orlov had been carrying, and a lot of questions for him after they managed to locate a man from the Russian liaison in the MIL(R) section and get him in as a translator. It was not long before they called in men from other branches of their intelligence services, Defense, the Technical Group at MI10, Military Security, Eastern European Experts from MI3.

  Orlov’s story was not adding up. His weapon was most unusual, and the peculiar scope it mounted soon astounded them when it emitted a thin, narrow beam of greenish light the like of which they had never seen. MI6 had more than a drawer full of its own gadgets: watches, rings, key chains, tie clips, special shoes, but this one trumped them all. Orlov’s explanation that it was simply a flash light did not wash. It only deepened their suspicions about this man and his pistol.

  Intelligence servi
ces had been more than interested in anything Russian in the waters around Gibraltar ever since the remarkable “incident” involving a strange warship that had set the whole Royal Navy charging to the scene the previous August. There had been a battle off the southern coast of Spain involving the battleships Rodney and Nelson in the covering force for Operation Pedestal, and it was now classified information, and very hush, hush. The scuttlebutt had been that a disaffected sea captain had sailed the battlecruiser Strausbourg from Toulon to try and put some steel in the backbone of Vichy French forces prior to the Torch landings in North Africa. But there were few men of any experience who could believe that single ship could have put damage on both British battleships as it obviously did, and even fewer men in MI6 who bought the story—until they were told in no uncertain terms that that is exactly the line they were to hold to on the matter.

  Rumors were that the ship was not French after all, but Russian, and an Able Seaman who claimed he had been present for a meeting between the Admiral of the rogue ship and Admiral John Tovey was suddenly reported missing one day. No more was said about the incident.

  The ship, whatever it was, had been “escorted” to St. Helena for the duration of the war. That was another official line, though strange rumors had begun to circulate about it as well. When the veteran diver Lt. Commander Lionel Crabb had been summarily called to special duty and sent out to St. Helena, the rumors gathered even more steam.

  Crabb, called simply “Buster” by the Americans on the Rock, was an amiable and experienced diver who had been instrumental in countering the efforts of Italian frogmen against ships in the harbor. He made regular dives to check for the placement of limpet mines on ships, winning him a George Medal and a promotion for his work. Now the Admiralty wanted him to take a good long look at the seabed around St. Helena, where it was rumored the mysterious ship had vanished in a bank of fog in late August, just as it arrived under escort by a pair of fast cruisers. He found nothing at all, not the slightest trace of any wreckage of disturbance of the sea bed, though that report was buried and Crabb was told never to speak a word of it.