The Burning Time (Timeline 10/27/62 Book 5)

by James Philip

  Ceaușescu did not know how a Political Officer, a Commissar no less, like Dmitry Kolokoltsev had failed to work out that not only was he not Nikolai Vasilyevich Fyodorov, the former Head of the KGB in Greece but that he could not possibly be him. The only credible explanation that he could think of was that the man must have been dropped on his head when he was a baby. Had the idiot not talked to Eleni, or her cousin or his son? The moment Kolokoltsev heard about the helicopter, or the dead Securitate bodyguards Ceaușescu would be at his mercy.

  ‘The ship is approaching the Maltese Archipelago, Comrade Director,’ the dolt reported. Kolokoltsev had kept as far away from the one-legged alleged KGB man as he could in the last few weeks; he ought to have been getting as close as possible. Because that was what you did when you knew that one day your superiors would ask for proof that the man who had claimed to be Nikolai Vasilyevich Fyodorov really was the missing KGB Head of Station in Thessalonika.

  Ceaușescu had asked to remain in the battlecruiser’s sick bay after the Yavuz’s surgeon had said he was sufficiently recovered to be moved into a cabin – presumably, vacated by one of the ship’s officers – where he and Madam Eleni might enjoy more privacy. The last thing Ceaușescu wanted was to be seen by other members of the crew; or any other Soviet stooges like Kolokoltsev idly roaming around the vessel. There would be a whole slew of Soviet minders on the battlecruiser, getting in the way, lording over the Turks. Any one of the bored, inquisitive Soviet personnel onboard the ship – few of whom would have any meaningful duties other than to spy on their hosts – might recognise him. He did not want to risk that. The sick bay was the safest place. What he had not anticipated – and could not have planned for anyway – was what might happen if the ship actually got into a battle.

  Now he knew.

  It seemed like his luck had finally run out.

  ‘What do you mean? Approaching the Maltese Archipelago?’

  Second-Captain Kolokoltsev had looked at him as if he was mad.

  ‘I’m sorry. I thought you knew, Comrade Director?’

  They’d changed the plan for Operation Chastise!

  ‘When the fuck did attacking Malta get to be included in Phase Two?’ Ceaușescu had demanded, hoping he had recovered his previous error. ‘Fuck! I only knew what was going on up until the Thessalonika bomb!’

  ‘The High Command must have changed the plan after that,’ agreed the Russian.

  It was only after the Political Officer had departed that Ceaușescu’s attention was drawn to the curved wall of the compartment into which he, Eleni and the other occupants of the sick bay had been transferred. The hairs on the back of his neck began to stand up on end.

  The curve in the wall was the armoured barbette of one of the battlecruiser’s amidships 11-inch main battery turrets. That meant that the turret’s magazine must be almost directly beneath his feet!

  There were mattresses on the deck.

  Eleni patted one and he carefully eased himself down beside her.

  On the second day he had been aboard the Yavuz the ship’s surgeon had operated on his stump; cleaning out bad tissue and tidying up the mess the bungling Securitates had made of amputating his gangrenous lower right leg. The last time he had dared to look the stump was pink, healing. The pain had mostly ceased although it was hard to tell because every few hours he swallowed more morphine. However, he had started feeling better in the last few days and his appetite had returned despite the slop they fed him. He could hardly believe that any navy in the world could still feed its men salted meat, hardtack and some kind of spicy gruel that made him want to gag if he forgot to ignore the stench.

  Eleni touched his arm, and opened her mouth to speak.

  She had learned a few words of Russian, each of which she pronounced like she had a mouth full of marbles. She hesitated, her face contorted as she struggled to think of the word...

  The battlecruiser lurched to a momentary halt.

  The whole ship rang like a dulled bell.

  Ceaușescu’s heart missed a beat and he almost bit his tongue.

  Another salvo. He knew it was only a four gun salvo because when the Yavuz fired a full eight gun broadside it was like the whole World was about to cave in around him.

  “We safe?” Eleni asked calmly in the horrible quietness after the salvo.

  Nicolae Ceaușescu’s ears were ringing, the Greek woman’s voice sounded as if she was shouting into a cushion. His ears cleared suddenly.

  “We safe?” She asked again.

  The peculiar thing was that what he really wanted to say was ‘yes’. The woman had been his constant companion and nurse for over a month. But for her ministrations he surely would have died back on Samothrace. Later he would surely have drowned had she not clung to him on the upturned hull of the fishing boat. Since they had been onboard the Yavuz she could have betrayed him at any time. Yet she had not; and here she was asking him for comfort.

  “We are inside a big metal box,” he tried to explain, speaking very slowly and illustrated his words with hand gestures. “Very thick metal,” he went on. “Nothing can get through it. All of ship get blown up but we still all right...”

  He could tell she did not understand what he was saying.

  Nonetheless, Eleni nodded.

  She clasped his hand and leaned against him, genuflecting repeatedly with her free hand until the crash of the next outgoing salvo thundered so deafeningly everybody in the compartment thought for a moment that the ship had just blown up.

  Chapter 41

  12:12 Hours

  Friday 3rd April 1964

  The Citadel, Mdina, Malta

  Admiral Sir Julian Christopher the Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations saw the dust and smoke shrouding RAF Luqa and knew, that whatever happened in the next few minutes and hours his career was destined to end in ignominy.

  “Sir,” he was being told, “you need to get under cover. The Citadel is an obvious target...”

  Julian Christopher was not listening.

  Now that he had realised what was going on the full extent of his negligence and his failures of judgement was write plain for all to see. However, that did not change the fact that he remained the only man with the authority to do something about the unfolding disaster.

  He scanned distant Valletta, now partially lost in the mid-day haze and the drifting cloud of smoke and dust from what had been, only minutes before, the most strategically important Royal Air Force base in the World. He imagined he saw the falling waterspouts of shells bursting in the waters of the Grand Harbour and explosions splashing across the packed streets of the Maltese capital. New smoke and dust was rising from beyond Valletta, perhaps from Birgu and Senglea. He saw the flash of the impacts as he swung his glasses into the south; and another salvo of huge shells plunging into the heart of RAF Luqa.

  The first radar station had dropped off the grid at about two that morning; some kind of electrical fire. A few minutes later the secure lines to the air defence station on Gozo had been cut, and other stations were automatically tasked to provide coverage of the northern sector of the Air Defence Zone.

  At around the same time the conventional, diesel-electric submarine, HMS Artful, operating west of Syracuse in the Ionian Sea as the northernmost picket of the 2nd Submarine Squadron’s tripwire picket line guarding the eastern approaches to Malta, had encountered two small tramp steamers and at three that morning, the leading vessels of a force of slow moving ships moving in convoy towards the Maltese Archipelago. Presumably, this ‘convoy’ had slipped around the western tip of Crete under the cover of the recent storms and cloudy conditions which had hamstrung the Canberra reconnaissance missions flown daily from Luqa. The possible ‘invasion force’ had come as a nasty surprise but he had immediately requested that the recently arrived nuclear hunter killer submarine USS Permit, acting as a goalkeeper behind the line of ‘A’ class boats, should be despatched to investigate and i
f necessary, engage the possible ‘invaders’.

  So far, so good; two radar stations down but the radar dead zones in the three hundred-and-sixty degree coverage of the ocean surrounding Malta had been swiftly ‘patched’. The preparations for the pre-planned conventional strikes by the three serviceable V-bombers at Luqa on enemy positions on Cyprus had continued, while the RAF, US Air Force and the much depleted Royal Fleet Air Arm strike force held back at Luqa was re-tasked to intercept the ‘invasion’ convoy if it was confirmed as such at first light. In the event that confirmation had not come until after nine that morning by which time aircraft which had been sitting at dispersals crewed and bombed up for several hours had had to be stood down, fuel tanks topped off, and revised operational orders and objectives promulgated. Julian Christopher’s deputy on the Maltese Archipelago, Air Vice-Marshall Daniel French ran a tight ship and the last of the twenty-three available strike aircraft, and the three pre-tasked Vulcan V-bombers had all been airborne by 11:27 hours.

  At that stage the situation had been under control; there had been no apparent cause for undue alarm.

  For a further fourteen minutes there had been no significant developments and the local ‘threat board’ had remained empty.

  Everything had started going wrong at 11:41 hours.

  At 11:41 a formation of aircraft had been detected by the Type-12 frigate HMS Yarmouth, but not by either of the radar stations on Gozo or by the long-range air search installations at Dingli on the west coast, or at Fort Rinella east of Kalkara overlooking the approaches to the Grand Harbour.

  Once the Air Defence Controller at Luqa had got over his understandable shock to be suddenly confronted by possible ‘hostiles’ travelling at over four hundred knots less than a hundred miles north-east of the archipelago, two quick reaction alert – QRA – Hawker Hunters had been despatched to intercept the strangers, while other fighters were hastily rolled out. At 11:47 the ‘bogey’s had turned away, dropping huge clouds of chaff and jamming all standard channels.

  At 11:49 HMS Yarmouth had transited the South Comino Channel between Malta and Gozo, the two largest islands of the Maltese Archipelago. Within seconds, her gunnery control radar had detected several unidentified surface contacts impossibly close to the islands.

  At 11:53 HMS Yarmouth had come under fire.

  The Commander-in-Chief had watched the situation developing on the plots in the basement of his Mdina Headquarters. He had not actually believed it was possible for the entire air defence system to fail. Such a failure was inconceivable unless the archipelago’s defences had been sabotaged in detail. But that was impossible. The system was too complex, too multi-layered. True, a lot of good men had sailed with the two Operation Grantham Task Forces, most of his best staff officers had pleaded to be allowed to sail with the Fleet. A significant part of the US Air Force and the whole US Navy contingent on Malta – which was not and never had been under his direct command - had decamped to join the expedition and at the time he had welcomed the whole-hearted commitment of his allies to Operation Grantham. The home base had seemed secure and every available aircraft, ship and man was desperately needed, if the expedition to liberate Cyprus and to open a new front on Red Dawn’s flank was to succeed. Malta was protected by batteries of anti-aircraft guns, advanced British and American long-range surface-to-air missiles and a squadron of RAF Hawker Hunters fighters.

  He had deliberately committed everything he had to ensure the success of Operation Grantham. Only a week ago he had agonised over holding back a mechanised battalion of the Welsh Guards after generator trouble had denied him the services of one of his Tank Landing Ships. A mechanised unit was useless without all its equipment, so the Guardsmen had parked their armour at the Cambridge Barracks on Tigne Point and hit the bars of Sliema and Gzira to drown their collective sorrows.

  The fact that a single angry, dispirited and somewhat hung over battalion of Welsh Guards was the only mobile armoured force at his disposal with which to defend the main island now served to magnify the scale of his catastrophic failure.

  His first duty had been to protect the home base.

  Self-evidently, he had failed.

  HMS Yarmouth had ducked back into the South Comino Channel where the surrounding high ground had initially blinded her search radars but offered her sanctuary from the enemy’s fire.

  The first salvo of heavy calibre shells had crashed into and around RAF Luqa at 12:06. A lucky – or unlucky – hit had cratered the main runway at 12:09. At 12:10 Julian Christopher’s Headquarters had lost contact with the Command-Information-Centre at Luqa.

  Thus, the career of Admiral Sir Julian Christopher Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations ended.

  He turned and faced his unnerved Headquarters Staff.

  A bystander who did not know what was going on and was unaware of the scale of the rapidly unfolding military catastrophe, might have described the Commander-in-Chief’s demeanour as being ‘as cool as a cucumber’ as he calmly started to dictate orders.

  “If the Welsh Guards aren’t already on the move order them to disperse around Tigne Point and into the back streets of Sliema. Whatever they do they are to hold their armour back until I call for it!”

  Julian Christopher steeled himself; this was going to be very bloody.

  There was at least one ship standing off shore shooting with very big guns, he decided. And another with a large number of smaller guns that were larger than anything he possessed capable of shooting back at either ship. The big guns were only firing every two to three minutes, four round salvoes. The ship with the smaller guns was shooting broadsides every thirty seconds.

  He wondered if this was some kind of demented bad dream and was sorely tempted to pinch himself.

  The sky seemed as if it was being torn in half.

  Four huge geysers of dirt, vegetation and masonry erupted across the far side of Ta’Qali airfield, which lay in the valley beneath the ramparts of the ancient Citadel of Mdina.

  Julian Christopher clenched his fists so hard on his binoculars that a spasm of red hot pricking agony stabbed in his right forearm. The cramp briefly paralysed his hand and he almost dropped the glasses.

  There was only one ship in the Mediterranean that could throw shells that big. No matter how ridiculous or militarily implausible it seemed to that rational part of his mind that was not numbed with shock; Malta was under bombardment by one of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s dreadnoughts. Old Kaiser Bill had built a whole fleet of battleships and battlecruisers before the Great War in an attempt to break the grip of the Royal Navy and to humble the British Empire; it seemed, over twenty years after his death and fifty years after Seiner Majestät Schiff - His Majesty's Ship – Goeben was chased into Turkish service by the Mediterranean Fleet, the old tyrant’s dearest wish was about to come true.

  That a dinosaur from a previous age should have been able to steam so close to the archipelago undetected boggled belief and spoke to a monstrous treason and betrayal.

  Maskirovska.

  Smoke and mirrors; dym i zerkala.

  None of this added up: the convoy the USS Permit, HMS Artful and every available strike aircraft had gone to attack represented fifty to sixty percent of all the enemy – well, former Soviet - naval assets detected in the theatre and therefore, probably in the whole World. Those assets were being fed into a meat grinder and once they were gone, they were gone forever and the Allied forces massed in the Eastern Mediterranean would be free to dominate those seas. What sane commander sacrificed the bulk of his navy just to sneak two obsolete big gun ships into a position where they could bombard Malta? It only made sense if the naval assets the Allies had identified were either, only a small part of the enemy’s strength, or, the enemy did not care about losing those ships because that was the critical element of his deception...

  Oh God...

  What if? No, that wasn’t impossible! That was insane!

  What if Cyp
rus was no more than the low fruit hanging invitingly in the distance that the enemy had known the Allies could not resist plucking? What if the target all along had been Malta? No, without real naval power nobody could hold Malta overlong but perhaps, that wasn’t the objective either...

  But seize Malta – even for a few days or hours - and the whole Allied war effort must inevitably shift a thousand miles west from Cyprus. Seize Malta and the Allies would have no choice but to abandon the Eastern Mediterranean, indefinitely at first, but perhaps for years thereafter.

  He still did not understand what was wrong about that line of thinking.

  And then he had a nightmare insight into the mind of his enemy: he had been so carried away with the enemy’s application of the principles of Maskirovska that he had accepted the overarching strategic assumption of the recent months; that Red Dawn was everything, and all that remained of the Soviet State. What if Red Dawn itself that was nothing more than smoke and mirrors? What if what he was actually dealing with was the nascent Soviet State, or at least that segment of its military-industrial complex which had survived the cataclysm?

  If that was the case what possible strategic imperative did attacking, let alone seizing Malta – which he was now convinced was the logical corollary to the naval bombardment – serve the greater good of whatever remained of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?

  None! None whatsoever!

  His mind turned back to his original analysis.