Kirov II: Cauldron Of Fire (Kirov Series)

by Schettler, John

  “Get a message off immediately,” he said. “Send it in the clear.” He folded his arms.

  “What shall we send, sir?”

  “Las Palomas. Just that. Nothing more.”

  Chapter 32

  The island of Las Palomas is the southernmost point in all of Spain, poised at the edge of the Straits of Gibraltar and marking the boundary between the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. It dangles like a pendant from the Spanish mainland, a small heart-shaped spit of land no more than 1800 feet wide, with an equal length. Layers of history can be found there, from yawning caves where Paleolithic petroglyph drawings of horses grace the stony walls, to ruins of ancient Roman sites, and on through the centuries. Its strategic position at the entrance to the Straits of Gibraltar had seen it fortified by many empires. The nearby Spanish town of Tarifa just north of the island on the mainland was named after the Moorish general Tarif Ben Malik, who spearheaded the invasion in the year 711. Some said that the word “tariff” was derived from his name when the island became one of the first ports in the region to levy fees on ships seeking an anchorage. Remnants of castle walls and towers can still be found there, some built by the famous Abdul Ar Raman, a prominent Caliph of the Moors who invaded southern Europe until he was eventually stopped by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours.

  Given the island’s location, it had seen many desperate battles over the years. The Spanish fought to reclaim their land from the Moors for centuries, and the island had also been noted for a few famous last stands, one in the year 1292 when the Spanish Lord Guzman El Bueno was holed up in a fortress there and besieged by 5000 Moorish warriors. A treacherous rival, the Lord Don Juan had kidnapped Guzman’s son and thought to force his surrender with the threat of the boy’s execution. Yet stalwart to the end, Guzman refused, standing on the high walls and even throwing down his own knife so his antagonists might use it to kill his son.

  In 1812 it was the British who joined the Spanish there to make a gallant defense against the invading Armies of Napoleon. Jean Francois Leval sent 15,000 French soldiers against Tarifa and was stopped by the tenacious defense of the 3000 man garrison. In the end the miserable and incessant rains had as much to do with the outcome of the battle as anything else. The French army slogged away, wet and beset with illness, leaving many of their siege guns stuck in the thickening mud. Now it would see warriors meet again, for a delicate negotiation on the razor’s edge of war.

  Just after 17:00 hours on August 14, 1942 the ominous shadow of Kirov stretched in the wake of that imposing ship where it waited in the eastern approaches to the narrow Straits of Gibraltar. Her active sonar was pinging audibly, to make certain no undersea threat could come anywhere near them. Her radars rotated to scan the airspace all around them equally alert. To the northwest they could see the stark angles of the Rock itself, one of Great Britain’s most important and strategic bases in all the world.

  A small motor craft had been launched from the ship, and it made its way under a flag of truce slowly through the straits toward the rocky eastern shore of Las Palomas. Admiral Volsky sat proudly in the center of the boat, flanked by five other men. They could have made a much more dramatic appearance by landing on the island with the KA-40, but Volsky had decided not to create a spectacle that would simply lead to more uncomfortable questions. The less these men knew about them, the better.

  He knew, however, that what he was attempting now was dangerous, perhaps more dangerous than anything the ship itself had faced in these last few harrowing days. Soon the Admiral’s party made landfall and worked their way ashore. Now they stood beneath one of the old coastal ramparts, a beautiful castle ruin built in Neo-Renaissance fashion, smooth walls of amber sandstone with crenulated tops and styled parapets where the swarthy Moorish archers once stood their vigilant watch. Beneath it sat the squat rounded shapes of heavy stone encasements where old naval guns cast off from Spanish WWI Dreadnaughts had been installed as shore batteries in 1941. Their stark steel barrels jutted from the recessed gun ports, cold and threatening, and shadowed Volsky with the thought that war seemed to have no end, persisting through every generation throughout the whole of human history. The ruins and fortifications of one epoch after another were all folded together here on this tiny sentinel outpost, yet here he was, an outcast from another era, fighting in a war where he was never meant to be.

  In the distance he could see the whitewashed stone lighthouse that marked the entrance to the straits. Built in the 1800s, it sat on a high cliff and towered over the rocky coastline below, where squadrons of sea birds soared in from the restless ocean, gliding over the stony shore. The wind was up, whipping the wave tops out in the straits, and he could look across and see the hazy silhouette of Jebel Musa rising on the coast of Spanish Morocco in the distance.

  Volsky’s boat had come in on the Mediterranean side of the island with his small detachment that included Fedorov, Nikolin as translator, and the redoubtable Kandemir Troyak with two of his best Marines. Admiral Tovey’s launch had landed on the Atlantic coast on far side of the islands, and they would meet here, men of two different eras standing in the shadow of all this history, the legacy of mariners, sailors and soldiers that had occupied this tiny demarcation point in the long stream of time.

  They saw Admiral Tovey’s detachment approaching from the northwest, making their way slowly along the rocky shore. The Admiral stood tall in his dark navy blue uniform, his deportment clearly marking him as much as his uniform and cap as a man of authority. Admiral Volsky waited for him at a point he deemed to be the thin borderline between the ocean and the inland sea, a fitting place, he thought, for the meeting of two minds. There were six men in the British party as well, one clearly come from the Admiral’s staff, his uniform crisp and proper, then another seaman in common dungarees and sweats, with three more men at arms to match his own. As they approached Volsky heard one of his Marines shift his automatic weapon to a ready position, and he turned, gesturing with his palm for the man to stand down. Troyak glared at the Marine, who quickly assumed a position at ease, lowering his weapon.

  The British party came up, stopping about thirty paces off, a mixture of curiosity and caution in their eyes. Tovey indicated that his armed escorts should stand where they were, and he tapped the shoulder of his Chief of Staff Denny and the Able Seaman who would serve as their translator, leading them forward with a steady, measured pace. For his part, Volsky turned to Fedorov and Nikolin with a wink, and then stepped forward to greet the British, a noticeable limp still evident as he favored his bandaged right leg. He stopped, taking in the man before him now, noting Tovey’s thin nose and narrow eyes beneath his well grayed hair.

  Fedorov stood just a pace behind him, his eyes filled with awe and admiration as he stared at Tovey, a man with whom he had spent many long hours in his mind, within the history books he so loved. It was as if a living legend was before him now, yet flesh and blood, not the small black and white photos he would stare at to try and see into the man’s mind. Here he was, Admiral of the Home Fleet!

  Volsky extended his hand, his eyes warming as he greeted this fellow officer and denizen of the high seas. Tovey took the man’s big hand, listening as Volsky spoke first, with Nikolin quickly translating what he said.

  “My admiral says that, as it is impossible to get any sleep with all these guns and rockets and torpedoes flying off, he thought it might be best to have a little talk and see if we could calm things down before dinner.”

  The remark brought a smile to Tovey’s face, softening the hard lines of his taught cheeks and easing the tension inherent in the situation. So here was his modern day Captain Nemo, human after all, he thought to himself, a hundred questions in his mind. But which to ask first? Politeness was always best, and he introduced himself with a tip of his cap. “I heartily agree, sir. I am Admiral John Tovey, Commander of the British Home Fleet, Royal Navy.” The Able Seaman translated slowly, and Volsky nodded. Nikolin was to speak up if he heard anything mi
stranslated, but all was well.

  “You will forgive me, Admiral, if I do not introduce myself beyond saying that I, too, am a commander of a proud fleet, and so we stand as equals here, at the edge of these two seas, and hopefully to find a better way to resolve our differences without further bloodshed. As you can see, I have a bit of a limp today, from a fragment of shrapnel that found me while I was climbing a ladder and decided to bite my leg. So I know only too well what can happen when men speak first with the weapons they command, and not their wits instead.” Nikolin’s voice echoed Volsky’s, the Able Seaman listening, and satisfied that all was translated correctly.

  “My apologies, Admiral,” said Tovey. “It’s just that your ship has made its way into a war zone, and has been taken as hostile from the moment it was first encountered. The attacks made on numerous Royal Navy ships did little to dissuade us from that conclusion.”

  “That is understandable,” said Volsky. “But wrong. I must tell you that it was never my intention to involve my ship or my crew in battle with your navy. Yet one thing leads to another, does it not? Particularly at sea, when faced with uncertainty and driven by the need to defend your ship, and your country, from all harm.”

  “Then I’m to understand that you now wish to claim that everything that has transpired these last days had been an exercise of self defense?”

  “That is so,” said Volsky, his eyes trying to convey his sincerity.

  “In defense of what country, may I ask?”

  “You may not. The answer would not mean anything, and it would not help us resolve the issue before us now.”

  That confused more than it helped, but Tovey pressed on, edging out on a limb he had been climbing for so very many long months, ever since those first rockets branded his ship, and he saw that awful mushroom cloud of sea water towering over the cold North Atlantic.

  “May I ask the Admiral if it is true that our ships and planes have met once before in this war, a year ago to be more precise, in the waters southwest of Iceland?”

  Volsky shrugged. “Yes, you may ask it, and you may know it as well without the question. But I think it best we confine our chat to what lies ahead now, Admiral, and not what we have left behind us. Nothing that has happened can be undone—or at least that is something I once believed. I am not so sure any longer. But I will tell you that what we decide here today may have a grave impact on days that lie ahead, and more than either you or I can fathom at this moment.”

  Was the man being deliberately evasive, Tovey wondered? Yet he seems sincere. I can see it in his eyes, and hear it in his tone of voice. Yet who is he? Where has he come from? What is this dreadful Nautilus of a ship he commands with weapons the like of which this world has never seen?

  “Then it was your ship that engaged the Royal Navy a year ago? Well now it is I who must ask your forbearance sir, but this is incomprehensible to us. How is it possible that we now find you here, in these waters, and yet have not had the ghost of a whisper of you, your ship, or these terrible weapons you possess, not in all the world for a whole long year? Your ship is not a submarine like the German U-Boats which use the swift currents in these straits to drift silently into the inland sea, unseen. You could not have passed Gibraltar without our knowing about it, and for that matter unchallenged. Nor could you have entered via the Suez Canal. Your presence here is therefore a matter of grave concern, and utterly confounding.”

  “Believe me when I say this, Admiral, but I am as much bewildered by these questions as you are. Yet I must be frank with you, sir. I do not wish to speak of who and what we are, or where we have come from, or how we came to be here. Yes, I know these questions beg answers, but the less that is said about them, the better. You may come to your own conclusions, I suppose. First off, you have found a young Able Seaman here who speaks our mother tongue.” He let his eye rest on Tovey’s, noting the man’s reaction as he continued. “And from this you may surmise that we are a Russian ship and crew, but I must tell you that Joseph Stalin back in Moscow will have no inkling of us either—no knowledge whatsoever of our presence here, and he would have these very same questions for us if this were Murmansk and we were standing at the edge of the Kara Sea. We do not now sail in his name or serve the interests of the Soviet state he commands.”

  He paused, letting Nikolin catch up in his translation, but could see Tovey’s frustration, and the confusion that must surely be plaguing him. Yet he noted how the man composed himself, inclining his head and asking another question.

  “Was your ship built by the Soviet Union? And are you telling me you are at sea without orders, and against the wishes of the Soviet government? You are a renegade ship out of the Black Sea?”

  “Admiral…You know very well that Soviet Russia could not build a ship that can do what you have witnessed my vessel do in battle, at least not today. We have just fought a long night engagement with two of your battleships. What were they called Fedorov?”

  “Nelson and Rodney, sir.”

  Volsky nodded, repeating the names as best he could. “Nelson and Rodney. More a admirals. It was an unfortunate engagement, and one I hope we do not have to repeat. It was our intention to outrun these ships and avoid combat. At least that is what my young Captain here, who commanded that action, tells me. But your ships fought well. I will express my regret to you now for any loss of life, but to secure the safety of my own ship, this engagement became an unfortunate necessity. Suppose I were to tell you that my ship was built in Russia. Could you believe that? I do not think so. What ship in Stalin’s navy could stand with your Nelson and Rodney and come away from that battle unscathed? No. The Soviet government does not know that we even exist.”

  “I see…” Tovey was silent for a moment, thinking. “These weapons you deploy…They are certainly beyond our own means for the moment, unlike anything we have ever seen. Oh, I must tell you that rocketry is as old as gunpowder, but yet you seem to have perfected the art in a manner that is… rather frightening, at least to the men who have faced your weapons, and died…”

  “For that I am truly sorry. I will tell you that I, too, have put men into the sea that I would rather see standing at their posts this evening. What more can be said of that? I will weep for them in my own time.”

  “Then do you serve a nation, Admiral? You are not German as we first thought; not Italian, not French as you wished us to believe. You clearly are Russian, but claim you bear no allegiance to the Soviet Union, our ally in this war at the moment, as I hope you must know.”

  “At the moment,” said Volsky, thinking he had said just a little too much with that. “Admiral Tovey,” he settled his voice, intent on forcing some new line in the discussion. “None of this matters, and there is no point in discussing these details. We are here, you are there. This thin boundary separates us, this line between the ocean and the sea at our feet, and yet it is a gulf that may seem impossible for either of us to ever cross. Still we must try to do so as best we can.”

  Tovey considered that, his eyes narrowed under his thin brows, lips taut. “I must tell you, Admiral, that I have brought my fleet here to make an end of your ship, and to put it at the bottom of the sea if I can do so. The oceans wide may appear to be the province of God, and God alone, but at this moment, as I stand here now before you, they are in point of fact the domain of the Royal Navy, and the British Empire that built it.”

  “And there is a difference between us now,” said Volsky. “For I will not lay claim to God’s great seas, nor did I bring my ship here to quarrel with you or your nation. I will admit that there are officers aboard my vessel who wished you no good once our battle was joined. Yet I do not sail here to throw down a gauntlet before your British Empire, or to contest these waters for any hope of gain. Your ships gave challenge. We defended ourselves. Men have died on both sides, and I am seeking a way to end this nightmare and go home. Yes, if you must know the truth, Admiral, I am simply trying to find my way home again.”

  “And yet y
ou cannot even say where that is? Where in blazes did you come from?”

  Nikolin had a little difficulty translating that last line, but knew enough to indicate that Admiral Tovey was expressing some anger. “He wants to know where we have come from, and I believe he getting a little angry about it, sir.”

  “You might say: where the hell you’ve come from?” The Able Seaman at Tovey’s side put in.

  Volsky nodded his understanding. “For the third time, I cannot answer that,” he said. “For both our sakes. You will not know what I mean just yet, but perhaps you will in time.” Then he spied the high promontory of the fortress wall on the hillside above them, and noted the gun casements that had been built for shore batteries at the foot of the walls. “Look there,” he pointed. “My young officer Fedorov here tells me those walls were built by the Moors in the twelfth century. And below them there are casements and gun positions to be manned by men guarding these waters today. Years ago the Caliph of Morocco was master of these straits. Today it is your ships and guns who guard the way. And what if you were to sail here in your flagship one day, Admiral, and find those gun casements missing, seeing only the walls of that castle in their place? What if you were to meet the Moorish swordsmen and archers there, and they boldly told you that all you could see, on every quarter, was the domain of Abdul Ar Rahman?” Volsky glanced at Fedorov, a quiet smile on his lips, then continued.

  “Things change, Admiral Tovey. Things change. I cannot answer your questions any more than you could explain your existence to the men who built that fortress. I can only say this: If you wish to try and put my ship at the bottom of the sea, then I must prevent you from doing so. Yes, your Royal Navy is here, and no doubt with all your finest ships, but they will not be enough, Admiral. They will not be enough. I must tell you that I did not wish to see the destruction that occurred when last we met at sea. There was great disagreement among my senior officers as to what should be done, and how much force should be used. Unfortunately, I was indisposed when it came to battle, and my ship was under the command of another officer, with another mind as to how the matter should have been dealt with. And yet, while I am reluctant to act in that same manner, I must tell you that I have the power to do so—that my ship has the power to sail on though these narrow straits, and find the open sea by force of arms if necessary, and you have not seen even a small measure of what we are truly capable of doing in battle.”