by James Philip
Seamus McCormick felt much safer on his own. Yesterday had been a nightmare; there had been no alternative to assembling the Redeyes in the back of the lorry parked between the abandoned farm buildings within sight of the main road just outside Redditch. Military convoys had trundled in and out of the town, twice aircraft had flown over very low. Miraculously, nobody had stopped to investigate the Bedford truck parked up in open view.
After dusk he had walked and talked the two IRA men through the basics.
Once primed the M171 shoulder launcher required to be pointed at the target and for the trigger to be pulled. However, nothing was ever quite that simple.
‘The missile acquires the target’s infrared, or heat, signature only after launch.’
He had had to explain in painful detail.
‘Even if the missile is pointing directly up the tail pipe of a jet engine it takes several seconds for it to acquire the target. This means you have to aim the launcher at where you judge the hottest heat signature will be in say, three or four seconds time after you fire the missile.’
Frank Reynolds had eventually cottoned on.
‘So what happens if it doesn’t acquire a target?’
‘It will carry on in more or less the direction it was launched until it finds a heat source or it runs out of fuel and crashes several miles away.’
Sean O’Flynn had decided he was the one who was going to shoot the Redeye they were taking to Brize Norton.
‘What if we just fired it at the control tower?’
‘You’d get a face full of superheated spent rocket fuel if you aimed it at a ground target without launching it at an angle to the horizontal of at least forty-five degrees. Aiming this kind of missile at a ground target is virtually impossible.’
‘Forty-five degrees?’
‘The launcher ejects the missile from the tube and the rocket motor kicks in the moment the guidance system detects it has reached a viable launch velocity. That means the rocket motor will initiate after it has travelled about fifteen to twenty feet.’
The two IRA men had unloaded their Redeye and stashed it in the nearby outhouses and gone off on foot to steal a vehicle. The arrangement had been that if they were not back inside an hour he would leave. In the event he had given his ‘comrades’ seventy minutes before he departed. He had toyed with the idea of retrieving the third Redeye, or failing that, booby-trapping it. In the end he decided to stick to the original plan.
If Frank Reynolds and Sean O’Flynn managed to create some kind of diversion at Brize Norton, good for them!
Salisbury Plain and parts of the Cotswolds were home turf for most British Army infantrymen, tankers and engineers. Cheltenham had had a small World War II aerodrome before the October War but it had been far too small for modern jet aircraft; hence the brutal destruction of Cheltenham Race Course, slashing nearly three miles of tarmac between the foothills to the north east and deep into the suburbs of the town to the south west.
It was amazing what the British could achieve when they had to!
The villages of Bishop’s Cleeve and Southam were almost directly under the flight path of the new air base. When the prevailing wind blew in from the Atlantic every aircraft flew low over the two villages; because no matter the ruthlessness with which the builders had carved the new runway out of the Gloucestershire countryside and demolished houses on the boundaries of the field, approaching planes – V-Bombers and big jets alike - knew they had to touch down virtually on the threshold of the main runway to be able to come to a safe halt short of Cheltenham town. Approaching low, sinking fast towards the gently rising Cotswold hills beneath them, landing required fine judgement; take off was simpler with the raw power of a modern jet bomber or jetliner’s engines beneath a pilot’s throttle hand. But landing, well, landing was a challenge even when the prevailing wind blew.
Sean McCormick had done the basic trigonometry, checked the arithmetic and worked out just how low aircraft would have to fly over Bishop’s Cleeve and Southam to land safely at Cheltenham. The numbers he got back were; below a thousand feet over Bishop’s Cleeve, and a lot less than four hundred feet over Southam.
If the Redeye performed anywhere near to specification for a straightforward ‘tail pipe shoot’ those sort of ranges were point blank. Jesus, he might have had an even chance of winging a big aircraft with an old fashioned Bazooka at five hundred feet!
The problem was he had to find a launch location where he could set up and wait for an aircraft to overfly him. Somewhere within a thirty degree arc either side of the likely flight path would do nicely but the hills overlooking the air base were alive with troops and police. Everywhere within the five mile defence exclusion zone around RAF Cheltenham was prime shoot first and ask questions later territory. He had only got this far because the dozy squaddies manning two roadblocks had taken his word for it – they had not looked overlong or hard at his movement orders – that he was delivering ‘sensitive and very delicate replacement parts’ for RAF Cheltenham’s ILS – Instrument Landing System – and replacement ‘guidance gizmos’ for No 25 Squadron’s two Bloodhound long-rang SAM batteries. These latter units were located within the boundaries of the air base itself; and allegedly, ‘slaved’ to the local RAF air traffic control radars. If his six-month old intelligence regarding the disposition of No 25 Squadron had been out of date he would have been dead by now. A couple of half-intelligent questions would have revealed that he knew precisely nothing about the particulars of the air base’s Instrument Landing System and he would have been reaching for the Browning forty-five under the dashboard.
With nowhere to hide a great big lump of a lorry like the Bedford he had brazenly parked the vehicle on the village green at Bishop’s Cleeve, gone in search of the local Police House, told the local bobby his ILS and Bloodhound story and explained – well, complained actually - that the air base never accepted deliveries after dark so he was ‘going to have to sit out the night here’. The policeman’s wife, a skinny, wrinkled woman who despite appearances was most likely still in her forties had offered him a cup of tea.
‘Sorry, I can’t leave the lorry unattended for more than a few minutes at a time,’ he had explained and disappeared back into the night again. He planned to move on around dawn, attempt to drive off road into the woods where he could shoot the Redeyes from just inside a protective tree line. He had no idea how practical this would prove to be but that was the problem when a man was making everything up as he went along.
The first time he got unlucky it would be the last.
Chapter 67
02:45 Hours
Monday 6th April 1964
Verdala Palace, Malta
Admiral Sir David Luce had been roused from an uneasy sleep by Captain Lionel Faulkes. His old friend Julian Christopher had asked for Faulkes as his Senior Staff Captain shortly after arriving in Malta in December last year, and the First Sea Lord had been happy to oblige.
“Who did you say this bloody woman is?” He asked again now that he was more fully cognisant of his surrounding as he pulled on his jacket. The First Sea Lord always felt undressed without his tie and jacket; looking the part was half the battle in high command.
“Air Vice-Marshal French was a little vague about that, sir,” the other man apologised. “However, he was most insistent that we should hear what she has to say.”
David Luce had not known very much about Dan French until recently. However, Julian Christopher had spoken of him as a ‘very safe pair of hands’ and a man in whom ‘confided without fear or favour’; and the airman’s conduct of himself and his command in the intolerable and painful circumstances of the last few days had done nothing to diminish the First Sea Lord’s growing regard for him. He had already determined to recommend Dan French be confirmed as C-in-C Malta to the Prime Minister on his return to Oxford. The airman and the man responsible for carrying out Operation Grantham, Rear-Admiral Nigel Grenville – advanced to the rank of Vice-Admiral in command of the Mediterranean Fleet �
�� would make a good team.
Rachel Piotrowska was surprised to be greeted in a small reception room on the seaward side of the palace not just by Dan French, the Acting C-in-C but by several other men whom she recognised but did not know. The airman did the introductions; “Admiral Sir David Luce, Head of the Chiefs of Staff, Mr Iain Macleod, Secretary of State for Information, Mr Airey Neave, Secretary of State for Supply, and Captain Faulkes of my staff whom you have already met.”
Everybody sat down in comfortable padded wicker chairs more normally to be found on sunny Mediterranean verandas, patios and balconies.
“I sincerely hope this turns out to be worth being turned out of one’s bed in the middle of the night, Commander-in-Chief,” Iain Macleod complained, affecting a jocular tone he obviously did not feel.
Dan French had taken the chair next to Rachel. He glanced to the First Sea Lord whose barely perceptible nod indicated he should chair the meeting.
“Miss Piotrowska has been in the employ of the intelligence services for several years, gentlemen,” he explained. “Suffice to say that her credentials have been personally vouchsafed to me by the Director General of the Secret Intelligence Service.” He waved for the woman to speak.
She hesitated, taking measure of the group.
She was in a room with several intelligent, powerful men who, regardless of their vexed, tired expressions were undoubtedly listening to her every word with keen and very critical attention.
“My name is Rachel Piotrowska. Shortly before the October War Dick White sent me to assassinate the KGB Head of Station in Istanbul and Thessalonika, a man – no, a monster – hiding behind the name of Nikolai Vasilyevich Fyodorov. Insofar as the monster had a real name his masters in Dzerzhinsky Square actually knew him by his alias Arkady Pavlovich Rykov. He was personally responsible, that is with his own hands, for the murder of at least twelve British agents...”
“Come, come!” Iain Macleod objected. “MI6 doesn’t have licence to kill. That’s all Hollywood tosh!”
Rachel looked at him.
Coolly, levelly, she just looked at him for several seconds.
“You people,” she observed, mildly, “do not deserve to be protected by people like us if you really believe that, Mr Macleod.”
Airey Neave stirred. Having never really broken his connections with the Second World War secret world of MI6 and the Special Operations Executive, he had few if any illusions as to the harsh realities of the way the ‘great game’ was actually played.
“Why exactly are we interested in this Fyodorov fellow, Miss Piotrowska?”
“By the time I caught up with him he was lying badly injured in a hospital bed at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey babbling about Krasnaya Zarya and about ‘sleeper agents’ his masters had placed in the West during the 1940s and 1950s. I thought about cutting his throat anyway but that would have been churlish. Duty before pleasure,” she said quirking a misleadingly coy smile, “isn’t that what you gentlemen say?”
She had splashed water on her face and run a brush through her hair before setting out on the tortuous journey across Malta. She was aware her looks were fading, that she needed to spend time on her face and hair to still play the courtesan; but understood that all that was wasted on these men.
“So I became the monster’s mistress and very slowly I learned some of his secrets. What we know of Krasnaya Zarya, Red Dawn, what it is and what it is not true you learned from me. But Rykov only knew a part of the story. I don’t honestly think he knew that Malta would be attacked until a few hours before it happened, for example. But I’m not here tonight to tell you about Arkady Pavlovich Rykov. If you want to know about him you must talk to Dick White.”
“What the Devil are we here to talk about?” Iain Macleod demanded testily.
Rachel viewed the balding politician placidly.
“A few hours ago I was asked to go onboard the USS Charles F. Adams to assist in the processing of the survivors of the Turkish battlecruiser Yavuz. Among my accomplishments I speak several languages. Specifically, I was asked to speak to a one-legged man in his forties and the Greco-Turkish woman whom the people on the destroyer thought was probably his wife.”
Nobody told her that she was wasting anybody’s time so she continued.
“It seemed the man – who more than superficially physically resembles Arkady Rykov – had been impersonating a certain Nikolai Vasilyevich Fyodorov in order to prevent the Soviet Commissars onboard the Yavuz sending him ashore where his actual identity would be uncovered. Had his true identity been discovered by his hosts at any time since the destruction of Bucharest,” she grimaced ruefully, “shortly thereafter he would have found himself in a KGB punishment cell, presumably having sensitive parts of his anatomy methodically excised to confirm the details of his confession.”
“Very droll,” Iain Macleod grunted. “Who is this man and why do we care, Miss Piotrowska?”
“Firstly, we should care because until Bucharest was razed to the ground by a Soviet, not a Krasnaya Zarya nuclear strike, this man was First Deputy Secretary of the Communist Party of the Rumanian People’s Republic. And, secondly, we should care because he claims that he fled Bucharest specifically to make contact with the British, or the Americans, he is a little bit vague about which, to warn us that the Soviet Union is about to mount a massive ground offensive against the West.”
Sir David Luce coughed.
“Forgive me, Miss Piotrowska, I’m a little unclear as to how this man came to be on the Yavuz in the recent battle?”
Rachel frowned.
“Does it actually matter, Sir David?”
“The man sounds deranged. Being in the sea for a couple of days does that to a man.”
Airey Neave re-entered the fray.
“You sound convinced by this fellow, Miss Piotrowska?”
“That’s because I know him and you don’t, Mr Neave.”
The man who had escaped from Colditz grimaced and recollected his training as a lawyer.
“Who is he? And how do you know he is who he says he is?”
“I know him because I met him several times in Bucharest in the year before the war when I was searching for Arkady Rykov. He had the Securitate, the Rumanian Secret police in his pocket and that was very useful to Arkady Rykov.”
Around the circle of chairs the mood was sombre.
“His name is Nicolae Ceaușescu.”
Chapter 68
04:22 Hours
Monday 6th April 1964
Forward HQ of 2nd Siberian Mechanized Army, Ardabil, Iran
Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov had taken a malicious pleasure in demanding to talk to his comrades in the collective leadership in the middle of the night. The men of Army Group South were not getting any sleep tonight so neither should the men who had ordered them to undertake their ‘little route march to the Persian Gulf’. And besides things were going so much better than he – or he suspected Hamazasp Khachaturi Babadzhanian, a man who tended to dwell on all the things that could go wrong at the best of times – had hoped that he wanted to celebrate.
Babadzhanian had snatched ninety minutes sleep and gone straight into a conference with the commander of 2nd Siberian Mechanized Army. Striking while the iron was hot – red hot – the old movement plans were being scrapped and everything advanced by, in some cases, as many as seven days. Chuikov and Babadzhanian had discussed the possibility that this would lead to confusion and cause inevitable snarl ups in the logistical train; but decided that it was more important to exploit the success of the initial assault than to worry about unquantifiable ‘cans of beans’. The mountains over and through which 3rd Caucasus Tank Army on the right and 2nd Siberian Mechanized Army on the left were advancing, was hardly rich foraging ground and there were strong arguments for not antagonising the local populations; but if it came to it Babadzhanian’s men would seize whatever they needed as they moved forward. War was Hell and Army Group South was already deep within hostil
e territory.
It had taken the technicians in Chelyabinsk, the new capital of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics nearly an hour to set up the scrambler links and for aides to awaken Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin and Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, Vasily Chuikov’s comrades in the so-called Troika, the collective leadership which had coalesced out of the ashes of the Cuban Missiles War. The old soldier had no real illusion about his role and status within the Troika; he was there to guarantee the support of the Red Army, Kosygin and Brezhnev were the ones who really called the shots. If he had been a more ‘political’ soldier he might have put Alexei Nikolayevich and Leonid Ilyich straight on one or two things. However, he was in no way unhappy in his current boots. Having had to be talked into backing Operation Nakazyvat he now accepted that his comrades in the collective leadership – Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin and Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev were two astonishingly shrewd and devious old commissars – who sometimes actually knew what they were doing.
“This had better be good news, Comrade Vasily Ivanovich,” Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev grouched like a moody, half-asleep bear. If Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin was the real brains of the Troika, Brezhnev was its tempered steel backbone and the man who, at the end of the day, held the casting vote on every important decision. It was Brezhnev who had ordered the destruction of Bucharest, authorised the diversion of forces from the preparations for Babadzhanian’s ‘drive to the south’ to mercilessly crush Krasnaya Zarya’s unauthorised insurgency in the Balkans and Greece, and who had come down on the side of Admiral Sergey Georgiyevich Gorshkov’s breathtakingly ambitious plan to ‘demonstrate’ against the British and the Americans in the central Mediterranean to mask the launching of Operation Nakazyvat. Gorshkov had thrown away what was left of his Navy – the surface fleet, leastways – in the failed attempt to briefly seize and hold Malta. Thousands of men had been sacrificed and yet; here in Iran Army Group South was on the rampage, its progress undisturbed by British and American bombers, Tehran had been destroyed and still, the West had not yet stirred...