Winter Warriors

by Stuart Slade

  “That sounds good. Do it.”

  Henry settled back in the seat. Beside him Igrat was frowning. “Henry, I don’t like this. Why are we being followed? It smells like somebody was expecting us to arrive. Have we got a leak?”

  “We don’t.” Henry was quite certain about that. “And for the same reason we can be sure that Loki and his Orchestra don’t. But you’re right, this doesn’t smell quite right. We’ll have to play along and see what develops.”

  The car stopped outside a large, square building that was as undistinguished as the rest of Geneva’s architecture. McCarty got out and opened the door for the two women, then reached inside to get a case. There were two reasons for that. Nobody went into a hotel with one woman, let alone two, without her case. Anyway, the case held his guns.

  “Good afternoon ladies, gentlemen.” The hotel clerk betrayed just a slight hint of surprise and a little admiration at the plural. “May I help you?”

  “We would like a room please. One on an upper floor for preference. We will be leaving in a few hours, we have a four-thirty appointment with Herr Klagenfeld. But we will be back after dinner.”

  “Third floor be suitable? I thought so. Sign here please, Sir.” The clerk looked down at the register. “Ah, Mister John Smith. So many of our guests come from the family Smith. Room 335.” The clerk was not concerned with the women’s signatures, they were likely to change with every visit this American made. Anyway, the slender one looked like a demimondaine if ever the clerk had seen one.

  The three took the escalator up to the third floor and walked down the long corridor. Room 335 was at the end, right next to a metal fire escape ladder. The ladder itself was shared with the building next door, accessed by a common metal platform. Henry led the way across it, then in through the door to the next building. This one had only two floors due to the slope on the hillside, so the party went down the steps into the restaurant kitchen. The staff very pointedly did not notice them as they passed the preparation tables until Igrat stopped and sniffed a pot-au-feux that was simmering gently.

  “Guys, we have got to eat here tonight.” The she turned her attention to the chef who was already beginning to preen himself. “Let me guess. That was left to you by your grandmother and you have willed it to your grandchildren.”

  The chef’s smile turned into a beam. “Madame, you understand perfectly. May I have your autograph?”

  Igrat sniffed again, enjoying the heady aroma. “If it’s as good as it smells, you can have a lot more than my autograph.” She made for the exit, swaying her hips suggestively.

  There was an appreciative laugh around the kitchens. The sous-chef discretely shook the chef’s hand and promised that his wife would never find out. McCarty shook his way out and went into the main room of the restaurant. The maitre d’hotel indicated a car that had just pulled up outside. “Herr Klagenfeld has sent a car for you. I trust we will see you again at La Favola?”

  “Oh yes. You can be sure of that.” Igrat tossed the remark over her shoulder as she left. The three of them piled into the back of the new car. One that appeared identical with the old one.

  “Any danger of them tracing us through to Loki?” McCarty never took things for granted.

  The drover turned around. It was Branwen and she smiled at them. “The hotel and restaurant think they are working for the Abwehr and, probably that you were ducking either the NKVD or the Gestapo. Loki had me wait here just in case. He does for all your visits but it’s never been needed before. Anyway, welcome back to Geneva. Did you remember to bring stockings for the girls?”

  McCarty laughed. A mass of American nylon stockings completed the inventory of contents in the suitcase he was holding.

  Not only was it a kindness to the Swiss girls who worked in the bank, it also fitted his cover as a black-marketeering industrialist.

  HMS Manxman, Free Royal Navy, Between the Faroe Islands and Iceland.

  Captain Becker looked around, trying to spot the men who were watching him. No sign of them, but he was being watched. He was sure of it. He had felt their eyes burning into his back for hours now but he couldn’t see who they were.

  There were enough men to choose from. What had once been the mine deck on the British fast minelayer had been converted to cargo space for the runs to the Faroe Islands. Now it was serving as a floating prisoner of war camp. The British had decided to rush the removal of the surviving German seamen from the Islands and the deck was packed almost solid. Still, it was only for a few hours. Then the men would be disembarked in Iceland and transferred to prisoner of war camps in Canada. What would happen to them then was unknown. There were few enough German prisoners of war in Canada. Prisoners taken in Russia stayed there, in Russian-run camps. There were only a tiny handful of German Navy prisoners. U-boats rarely sank in ways that gave their crews a chance of survival and “Taney Justice” reduced that chance to near-zero.

  Quietly Becker cursed the unknown German U-boat captain who had machine-gunned the survivors of the Coast Guard Cutter Roger B Taney in the water after he had torpedoed their ship. Despite an investigation that had run deep, nobody had ever identified who he was or why he had committed the atrocity. Most of the German Navy had been as appalled as the Americans. There had been talk of a court martial and firing squad for the guilty officer. It had made matters worse that the Americans had looked on their Coast Guard sailors as life-savers and protectors, not warship crews. The bullet-riddled bodies that washed ashore had brought American demands for vengeance to an irresistible pitch.

  The next time a U-boat had been sunk and there were German survivors in the water, the American destroyer had machine-gunned them. And so it had started, a descending spiral of brutality and atrocity that did nobody any credit. Becker had heard that the Americans had sent destroyers to pick up the survivors of the German fleet, that they had declared “Taney Justice” applied only to submariners. If so, it was a sign of hope, albeit a small one. Perhaps the world hadn’t gone completely mad. Not yet anyway.

  Becker sighed and turned away from the mine deck to the small group of ‘cabins’ set aside for German officers. They were partitioned off from the mine deck by hastily-thrown up wooden bulkheads but offered little that the enlisted men didn’t have. A little privacy, that was all. Becker pulled the curtain that served as a door aside and went though, closing it behind him. Then he stopped. The curtain that normally shielded his ‘cabin’ had gone. He half-turned to see what was going on when something struck him.

  The half turn saved his skull from being crushed. Becker knew that, but he was still stunned from the impact, barely conscious, when the curtain was thrown over him. He felt boots thudding into his ribs. The wooden thing that had been used to bring him down hit him again, this time across the back. He had tried to rise, but the extra blow felled him and he couldn’t.

  “Get the traitor up on deck.” The words were hoarse. Becker felt their meaning wrap around him, even as he was smothered by the curtain over his head. He was picked up, half-dragged, half-carried, half-pushed, upwards through a hatch out of the mine deck towards the main deck of the minelayer. He could feel the chill on the air as they emerged into the night and the exposed deck. Becker could hear the throb of the engines, the sound of the water, the gentle breath of the wind in the superstructure. He was painfully aware of the fact those could be the last sound he would hear. At least they beat the snarling radials of Corsairs and the crash of their bombs.

  “You have been found guilty by court martial of fleeing from the enemy, of abandoning your command, of disobedience of orders and of handing your ship over to the enemy. You have also been found guilty of dereliction of duty by not demolishing your ship to prevent her capture.” That struck Becker as a little odd. Not the way a Navy man would phrase it. “You are sentenced to death. Throw him over the side.”

  The unseen men rushed Becker to the rail, ready to tip him into the freezing water beneath. Then something happened. A series of sounds, violen
t motion, and the ripping noise of a sub-machine gun. The curtain was pulled from Becker’s head. He saw two of his attackers on the deck, the dark pool of blood around them had already begun to freeze. Four more knelt on the deck, their hands on their heads.

  “You all right Captain, Sir?” A Royal Marine carrying a Capsten sub-machine gun was grinning at him. “You’re in good hands, Sir. Colonel Stewart of the Argylls asked us to keep an eye on you. When we saw these six beauties hustling you up here, we kind of thought this might be what he had in mind. Do you recognize any of them?”

  Becker looked at the two dead men on the deck and then at the four kneeling prisoners. “This one, he was my first officer.” He switched to German. “Why, why this?”

  “You betrayed us. Our orders were to head north but you ran when the Amis came after us. You left the rest of the fleet to die and ran to save your own skin.”

  “That made no sense at all.” One of the Royal Marines, a sergeant, spoke quietly. “Oh yes, I speak fluent German, Captain. You did the right thing, trying to save your men when the rest of the fleet was being slaughtered. I am sorry you could not also save these.”

  He turned to the four prisoners. “Get those two bodies over the side.”

  “They are entitled to military burial.” The Lutzow’s first officer was blustering.

  “They are murderers. By intent at least. Get them over the side.” The sergeant’s voice was uncompromising. The four men rose, picked up the bodies and dumped them over the side of the ship. As they dropped, the Sergeant’s Capsten hammered out another burst and the four prisoners followed them down. Six splashes in the water were hardly noticeable.

  “Captain, you’re going to the sickbay for the rest of the trip. Under guard, of course. You’ll be safe there. We’ll spread the word that those little rays of sunshine succeeded in dropping you over the side before we killed them. After that, we’ll get you to a safe PoW camp.”

  Becker looked aft to where the bodies in the sea had already vanished. Perhaps the world didn’t have any sanity left after all. The thought left him profoundly depressed.

  Mechanized Column, 71st Infantry Division, Kola Peninsula “

  Welcome back, Lang. How is the ear?”

  “Sorry Asbach?” Lang made a great play of being deaf, leaning forward with his ruined ear cupped in one hand.

  “Good man!” Asbach smacked the junior officer on the back. “You are privileged. Not many survive the attentions of a Russian sniper. To survive two shots, not one, is a very rare distinction. We got the sniper by the way. A woman, of course. Most of the best Russian snipers are. We dumped her body in a ditch with the rest of their dead. Counting her, we got eight of the Siberians and six more Russians. They probably fell from the trains as they went through. And two American sailors; they probably fell off too. No matter. We threw them all in the ditch and the wolves can have them when we leave.”

  “What now Asbach? Go home?”

  “I think not. We have another chance. That air strike hurt us badly. We’re down to the equivalent of an infantry company in half tracks, we’ve got three out of five Pumas left and two out of five tank-hunter-armored cars. Plus two flak guns and four of your self-propelled 150s. We’ve still got a force, Lang; still got a chance. Look, the railway line goes around here, more or less following the curves of the ridge. But if we cut across the neck of the curve, we can come out here, in front of them. This time, no nonsense about capturing the guns. We’ll tear up three hundred meters of the track, more if they give us time, that way they’ll have to stop. Then we kill them all. If the guns are still intact when we’ve finished, fine. But if not, well, fortunes of war.”

  Lang nodded and tapped the map. “We can set up here, behind this ridge. They’ll come around here, straight into us. We can have them under fire before they are aware we are there.”

  Asbach sighed quietly. Lang was coming along but he still had a lot to learn. “Lang, the Amis and the Ivans can read maps just as well as we can. They’ll work this out too. Not sure what they’ll do about it but they’ll see just what you have seen and think the same things. So don’t expect miracles about surprising them. Just stopping them will be entirely good enough.”

  Lang nodded, absorbing the lesson. Back at staff, it was a running joke that the Ivans were idiots who only stayed in the war because of the way they threw away human lives and the Amis would be lost without their massive piles of equipment. Out here, he was learning differently. Out here they were all Winter Warriors and what one could see, another could also.

  His reverie was interrupted by a blast. It was distant, but still loud enough to be startling and to shake the earth under his feet. On the horizon, he could see the bright ball of a great blast rolling skywards. For some reason the sight filled him with nameless dread. Asbach was already looking at his map. “15 kilometers away at least; probably nearer twenty. And that puts it on the railway line. I’d say the Amis have just lost another one of their trains.”

  Headquarters, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, Kola Peninsula, Russia

  “How are you doing with my division, John?” General George Rodgers was wrapped in bandages to the point where he would have done honor to a Hollywood horror film. The blast of grenade fragments that had brought him down had left him covered with wounds, none of which were mortal. Why that was, nobody would quite explain.

  General John M Rockingham had the combat reports of the 3rd Infantry under his arm. His first problem was to break the news to his old friend. “The Third’s mine now, George. You’re being evacuated out, to Murmansk, I’m keeping Third; you’ll get Sixth when it’s ashore and formed up. I guess your first job will be to send the Huns tumbling back to their start line.

  Rodgers nodded sadly. He doubted he would be getting Sixth, not after the way Third had been cut up. “The Huns have lost then?

  “They made about thirty to forty five miles but we stopped them. The jaws of the encirclement never closed, so we’re fine. We held the Finns almost on their start line. Oh they split the division up into hedgehogs and surrounded us but that was it. The hedgehogs held, all of them, until relief forces shot their way through. Now, with the supplies the convoy brought, we can roll the Huns out of here.

  “John, how did the Finns do it? How did they get through the lines to cut us up like that?”

  “The lakes, George. The ones we used to shorten our lines and conserve forces? In the storm, they froze and the driving snow stopped us seeing them use them. I guess they had this plan for months, waiting for the right conditions. We never saw it, but it doesn’t matter. The division’s linked up again now and we’re starting to drive forward. We’ve got new orders as well. Push into Finland proper. No more of this phony war on the frontier. The Finns want a real war, they’re going to get it.” Rockingham dropped his voice “I’ve even heard the B-29s may hit Helsinki. That’s really hush-hush. Anyway George, you’ll be getting a better briefing than this later. Until then, wrap yourself around this.”

  Rockingham produced a bottle of Canadian Club whisky. Rodgers looked at it with delight. “John, how did you get that?”

  “Oh, a tank officer smuggled it over in his tank. Hid it in the barrel, I guess. That’s where they usually hide them. Anyway, he gave it to the officer commanding a hedgehog he relieved and Colonel Haversham sent it up to you with his best wishes. A great sacrifice on his part I’d say, George.”

  “Aye, that it is. John, be a good fellow. Help me drink it before the nurses confiscate it.”

  B-29A Carolina Sings, 11th Bombardment Group, Second Air Division, Just Outside Murmansk.

  Dusk was falling and the B-29s would soon be on their way. The 127 B-29s of the 5th, 9th and the 11th Bombardment groups had arrived, flying a roundabout route over the Arctic to get from their bases behind the Volga. Nobody was under any illusions about the Germans not being aware of their arrival, but it was still worth going through the motions. It was an odd reversal of normal thought processes; try and evade d
etection even though it was pointless because the attempt was normal. Acknowledge that it was pointless and that made the flight abnormal and worth noticing.

  The whole mission would have been impossible a few days earlier. Then, aviation fuel on the Kola Peninsula had been in short supply and was reserved for the fighters and tactical support aircraft. Even the medium bombers had been on short rations and their use restricted. Feeding the fuel-hungry B-29s was entirely impossible. Now, things were different. PQ-17 had arrived safely and it contained a disproportionate number of tankers. That fuel was being pumped ashore and it made the operation of heavy bombers from Murmansk possible. A timely thing because this raid was a very important one. Briefly at least, it was a one-off. A demonstration and a punishment for the Finnish decision to break the unofficial ceasefire along their border and go on the offensive. The bombing tonight would drive home the stupidity of that decision. Germany’s cities might be out of reach but Finland’s weren’t. It had other purposes as well, but Colonel Thomas Power wasn’t aware of those.

  “Four are down Sir. We can go with 123 aircraft.” The sergeant spoke apologetically and apprehensively. Power was known for a ferocious temper and strict ideas on discipline. It was whispered that the two going together was not a good thing. Faults tended to be unreported rather than risk his wrath.

  “Four down? Why?”

  “Engines, sir. The 3350s again. They’re just not as reliable as the Wasp Majors.”

  Power shook his head. For some reason, the R-3350 had remained under-developed while most effort had been placed on the R-4360. That showed in the reliability ratings. Once notorious for catching fire in mid-air, the R-4360 was maturing into a fine engine. The problem was limited production. All the R-4360s were needed for F2Gs and F-72s so the fighters could take on the German jets. That left the B-29 with the R-3350. An engine that ate cylinders with dismal enthusiasm. “Very good, Sergeant.”