“But sir, in all practicality—”
Ike cut him off. “In all practicality, Joe, we’re going to find a way to make Curveball work. Or we’re all going to be unemployed.”
“Surely that would never happen, General…not after the Herculean job you’ve done winning their war for them.”
There was a hint of panic in Eisenhower’s voice as he asked, “Have you ever heard the one about attaboys and aw, shits?”
Hesitantly, the chief of staff replied, “I’m not sure what you’re getting at, sir.”
“Well, let me clarify it for you, Joe. It doesn’t matter how many attaboys you’ve got, because one aw, shit wipes them all out.”
“Oh, I see, sir.” Then he added, “What message would you like to send General Patton?”
“Tell him to get his ass up here first thing tomorrow. He and I will be having another of our friendly little chats. In person.”
Sylvie hadn’t been sleeping much, but last night she couldn’t sleep at all. Knowing that Colonel Yanov’s kidnapping was to take place tomorrow night had kept her wide awake. She’d reviewed the plan in her head a hundred times:
As long as Yanov sticks to his routine—the one he’s clung to like a machine ever since I first arrived here—it will go like clockwork. All I need to do is get him into that laundry hamper and then get the hamper down the service elevator to the loading dock.
Getting him into the laundry hamper by herself had initially posed a problem, but she’d figured a way. She’d have just enough space to tip the hamper on its side once inside the colonel’s room. It wouldn’t matter where the drugged man had passed out; whether on the floor, a chair, or on the bed, she’d be able to drag or roll him to the hamper and then set it back upright using a broom handle for leverage against its sturdy metal frame. All she’d have to do then was cover the unconscious man with dirty linen and make the escape.
Once at the loading dock, there would be some vehicle waiting to spirit Yanov and her away. This same vehicle would pick up Gestler and his mother at their nearby home. Then it would make its way to the American sector and Tempelhof Airport, where a transport plane would be waiting to fly them all to Frankfurt.
The Russian officers had vacated their rooms for the day at the usual hour, just before dawn. Since she’d been awake all night, she’d gotten an early start on her chambermaid duties. It was a good hour earlier than usual when she delivered her hamper of soiled linens to the loading dock for pickup. The laundry van was there, making one of its usual stops.
She’d never seen the van before, a pre-war vehicular relic that somehow still ran. The name KRUGER WÄSCHEDIENST was painted on its sides, the letters badly faded. That name had been emblazoned in her mind for some time; not only was it stenciled on all the hampers…
But the place it represented might’ve been the recipient of Mirka’s mysterious phone call.
The van’s driver, an older man with a slight limp, an easy smile, and a newsboy-style flat cap was a stranger to her.
To her surprise, he greeted her by name. Then, as he took the rolling hamper, he whispered, “You are not alone, liebchen. You’ve never been alone.”
Pushing the hamper into the van, he tipped his hat and said “Until tomorrow, Sylvie. Good luck to us all.” Then he closed its door and drove off, leaving her dumbfounded on the loading dock while the voice in her head shrieked, The laundry! Mirka called the laundry. And they’re working with us.
But the word us quickly came to trouble her because, despite the driver’s pronouncement, there was no us. She was still on her own at the hotel, and she still didn’t know what had happened to Mirka…
Or why.
He was so tired of running.
But to stay still was to die, because she was here now. He was sure of it. He’d seen her twice but managed to give her the slip both times.
It had been inconceivable to him that he’d ever be found. Hiding in Berlin’s Soviet zone had seemed the perfect cover. He could blend in there; he was fluent in German as well as Russian.
And the little bit of work as a spy and informant the NKVD threw his way kept him fed. But the work was sparse because they were still learning to trust him. He was a turncoat, and it took a long time for a turncoat to be fully accepted by the naturally suspicious Russians. Until that time, he would just be tolerated for whatever convenience he could provide.
It’s only been a few months since I defected. It’ll take much longer to gain full acceptance, I’m sure.
It had all gone so wrong on that mission in Austria. That refinery we were supposed to blow up, denying it to the Soviets. It could have been so easy, but like all Allied efforts, it ran afoul of the very international cooperation that was supposed to guarantee its success. Those bloody naïve Americans insisting on rigid compliance to a schedule that was some wanker’s impossible dream in the first place. They really thought they could be more clever—and more devious—than the Russians.
And that bloody woman…
She was going to get us all killed…and all for nothing.
A bloke’s got to look out for himself, doesn’t he?
When the game goes tits up, you only have two choices: switch sides…
Or die.
I made my choice. A life in the shadows is better than no life at all.
But they found me.
She found me.
He wouldn’t have been on this back street in this unfamiliar part of the city at all if he hadn’t needed cigarettes. He was sure someone in this war-battered neighborhood was running a black market concession. It simply had to be: regardless of what zone you were in, the black market was everywhere, even in a place as hopeless as this. The GIs had made it all possible, selling their boundless supplies for a handsome price. Then the black marketeers would resell it, extracting their tidy profit.
Maybe I’ll find it just around this corner…
What awaited him, though, was not a vendor huddled in some crumbling doorway, peddling the nicotine he craved.
Instead was the cold steel of a long knife, thrust deep into his gut by an onrushing assailant who seemed to come out of nowhere.
The assailant lingered just long enough to say, “Hello, Kimball. We’ve all missed you—me, Marcel, Johnny, Helene, Ursula. But now you’ve seen me…and in a few moments, you’ll meet the others again, too.
For bloody eternity.
With a foot on his chest, the assailant stirred the embedded blade to do maximum damage to his abdominal organs.
His blood-spattered wallet and identification papers were removed from his jacket pocket.
And then, like a ghost, she was gone.
As she hurried to the anonymity of a busy street, Mirka told herself, There, it’s done. But the need to do it cleanly took much too long.
They probably think I’m dead by now…
Or that I’ve defected, too.
Chapter Twenty
Within an hour of their landing in Bremen, the pilots of 301st Fighter Squadron were receiving their first briefing on the plan to protect the Kiel Canal from Soviet sabotage. The man doing the briefing was an RAF wing commander named Oldham. Tommy and his pilots knew him from their Baltic assignment with the RAF last month.
“I’ll get straight to the point, gentlemen,” Oldham began. “It only takes one ship to cock up one of the canal’s locks. A good ramming from such a vessel will severely damage a gate on impact, rendering the lock unserviceable for months, maybe longer. A ship scuttled within a lock would have the same devastating effect.”
He pointed out the locks on the big wall map.
“Note that there are four locks at each end of the canal,” Oldham continued. “Two can accommodate large warships and two are for smaller vessels, such as destroyers. Therefore, four vessels at either end of the canal could render it completely inoperative. Alternatively, several large ships scuttled in the narrow channel from the sea to the locks could block access, as well.”
He paused to
point out those channels on the map.
“Obviously, any type ship would do the job. It doesn’t have to be a warship. Even though His Majesty’s Navy maintains a complete roster of all merchant and military vessels scheduled to transit the Kiel, there’s always the possibility of authorized merchant ships being hijacked by the Soviets at any point in their voyage and then used to block the canal. Therefore, effective immediately, the Royal Navy will board all vessels approaching the canal while they’re still at least fifteen nautical miles from the locks.”
Tommy had a question. Oldham recognized his raised hand and said, “Ah, Captain Moon…good to have you and your lads with us again. What do you wish to ask?”
“I suppose there’s no point in trying to board Soviet warships, sir?”
“You suppose correctly, Captain,” Oldham replied. “In light of that, we’ve issued a directive to their military that no Soviet warship of any kind is to approach closer than thirty nautical miles to a canal entrance.”
Tommy asked, “I’m guessing they rejected that out of hand, sir?”
“Ah, you’ve been at this game a while, haven’t you, Captain Moon? Yes, you’re correct. The Soviets rejected the directive within minutes of receiving it.”
“So any Soviet warship in the thirty-mile zone is fair game, sir?”
Oldham smiled. “You Yanks are making my job very easy,” he replied. “I believe you’re beginning to draw a fairly accurate picture of what your mission is going to be.”
A murmur of agreement floated through the briefing room.
“Excellent,” Oldham said. “Just let me add a few points. A merchant ship that attempts to elude the blockade is likewise fair game.”
He stepped back to the map and added, “To make it more readily identifiable to those of us in the air, that thirty-mile distance is delineated by land’s end at each of the estuaries to the canal entrances. There’ll be little confusion as to where the no trespass zones begin. Are there any questions at this point?”
Tommy asked, “What about submarines, sir?”
“Ours or theirs, Captain?”
“How about both, sir?”
“Fine. Let’s begin with ours. The Royal Navy’s submarines are tasked with shadowing the Russian Baltic ports, monitoring all traffic and passing that information along as promptly as possible, meaning they’ll have to be on the surface to send radio transmissions. That said, it’s unlikely you’ll see any of ours near the canal, unless they’re in transit. As to the Soviet subs, all their positions are known at present, so maritime patrol aircraft are keeping track of them day and night. You might find yourselves performing this duty at times during daylight hours. At night, of course, that job will be the bailiwick of the searchlight and radar-equipped patrol bombers. Does that answer your question, Captain Moon?”
“Yes, sir. Completely.”
“Outstanding,” Oldham replied. “Getting back to those points I wish to make, let’s discuss air cover for a moment. All fighter squadrons delegated to canal protection, be they Yank or RAF, will be assigned to airborne interception duties on a rotating basis. As to areas of operation, your Colonel Pruitt has requested that 301st Squadron work the eastern canal approach—the Kiel-Holtenau Locks—since you’re well familiar with that section of the Baltic. That request has been approved by TAC headquarters.”
After laying out the patrol grid as well as the command and control frequencies, Oldham got down to the question of weather. “For the next few days, the weather is forecast to be very favorable for our operations. Due to the critical nature of this mission, we’ve lowered the ceiling and visibility limits for operations should the weather deteriorate.”
The pilots held their collective breath, waiting to hear just how thick would be the soup in which they’d be expected to fly.
Oldham announced, “The limits will be a five-hundred-foot ceiling with two-mile visibility, gentlemen.”
Their held breath became a collective groan. They all knew that at those minimums, their chances of tracking anything across open water were almost nil. A vessel sighted for a fleeting moment in low visibility might never be found again. Even worse, the odds of smacking into each other in flight were fairly high, and the odds of actually finding the airfield at the end of the mission were fairly low. And if that wasn’t discouraging enough, the ceiling and visibility measurements would be taken at a land station. Over the water, the conditions were likely to be worse. There’d be nothing to do then but climb above the low-lying clouds and grope your way home.
But one thing’s for sure, Tommy thought, it certainly pumps up the urgency on this mission we’re being handed.
Colonel Pruitt had one more question for Wing Commander Oldham. “What’re the chances of the Scandinavian countries helping out with this blockade duty?”
“Just about zero, sir,” Oldham replied. “The Finns have a treaty with the Soviets, and the Swedish are neutral, period. The Norwegians are only interested in defending their own coastline, and the Danish scuttled whatever the Germans didn’t seize.”
Then he added, “And your Navy, of course, is still on the wrong side of the world, for the most part.”
“I see,” Pruitt replied. “So it’s up to the American tactical air, the RAF, and His Majesty’s Navy to handle this job.”
“Exactly right, sir,” Oldham replied.
The briefing done and a quick lunch downed, the three pilots of Butternut Flight climbed into their jugs and took off for a patrol that would last all afternoon. Today’s mission was basically ground attack, just over water instead of land. Laden with a five-hundred-pound bomb under each wing and a centerline drop tank, Tommy’s jugs wouldn’t have been the nimblest of dogfighters, anyway. They’d have to jettison all those external stores before they could take on other aircraft.
It took about a half hour to fly to their patrol grid; it would take another half hour to get back to Bremen once their mission time was up. That left two and a half hours on station. Approaching their grid—an area from the Kiel-Holtenau Lock to fifty miles out in the Baltic—Tommy brought the jugs down to 5,000 feet. In the clear skies, that height allowed them to view a thousand square miles of water. Nothing that moved on the surface would escape their gaze.
Per the ops plan Wing Commander Oldham had described, half a dozen destroyers and corvettes of the Royal Navy formed a roving picket line just beyond the mouth of the estuary that led to the canal’s eastern lock. Radio communication with the lead destroyer and ground control station in the city of Kiel was excellent. As an added precaution from friendly fire, blinker light signalmen on the British vessels identified themselves to the jugs as they passed overhead, just a quick, two-letter blip of Morse that a fast-moving pilot could keep in his field of vision. Today’s code was the letters P-R, spoken as Peter-Robert.
It was often said that flying was hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. They were in the boredom part, in what seemed an endless, sedate cruise around their patrol box, engines throttled back and fuel mixture leaned to the safe limit to conserve fuel. They’d burned off the fuel in their drop tanks a while ago. There was no reason to punch the empties off yet.
They had forty minutes of on-station fuel remaining when they first saw the E-boats, four fast-moving vessels hugging the German coast, headed in the direction of the canal. They were still at least ten miles from the Royal Navy picket line.
E-boats: fast patrol boats of the Kriegsmarine—the vanquished German Navy—analogous to the American PT boats but much larger.
Tony Jansen, flying number two, asked, “Are those what I think they are?”
“If you think they’re E-boats, you’re correct,” Tommy replied. “I haven’t seen one of them since we were chasing them out of the Channel right before Overlord.”
“But they’re German boats,” Jansen said. “You think Russians are driving them, boss?”
“Who the hell else would it be?” Tommy replied. “Let’s go downstairs and have ours
elves a look.”
As Tommy’s jug—Eclipse of the Hun IV—lined up for a low-level pass from bow to stern directly over the trailing vessel, a gunner on board fired a stream of tracers which arced high into the air abeam of the E-boat. The rounds weren’t aimed at Tommy’s ship and came nowhere near her, but the message was clear:
That’s a shot across the bow if I ever saw one.
On the radio to the Royal Navy lead destroyer, he said, “They must be pretty shallow draft. If they hug the shoreline, they might be able to run right past you.”
A jovial voice with a British accent replied, “Ah, but they’ll never outrun you, will they, Butternut Leader? E-boats come in several types, though. Can you tell what type these are?”
“The lead boat is bigger than the other three, but not by very much. I put them all around a hundred feet long, give or take.”
“Are they armed with torpedoes?”
“I see tubes at the bow, yeah. But I can’t tell if there’s anything in them.”
“Roger. Stand by, Butternut Leader.”
Tommy had a pretty good idea why he was being put on hold: They’re having some high-level conference to try to decide if—and when—we hit them. It sure as hell isn’t the Kriegsmarine driving those boats…and they’re already inside the thirty-mile zone for warships. Let’s see how serious we’re going to be about enforcing it.
It only took a minute to get an answer of sorts: “Butternut Leader, track the E-boats until further advised.”
Swell, Tommy fumed. They can’t decide whether to shit or get off the pot. I’m going to take advantage of the extra time and climb the boys up to eight thousand. Dive-bombing moving warships isn’t fun or easy, but it’s the best chance we’ve got to actually stop one. We could strafe them until we’re blue in the face, but unless we blow up something on board, they’d never go down.
I’ve wasted tons of bullets on E-boats before. I doubt I had more than a couple of hits. Never came close to sinking one, as far as I know.
This Fog of Peace (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 4) Page 20