Lions at Dawn (Kirov Series Book 28)

by John Schettler

  The Lehr Regiment had the Abwehr Stamm Battalion, a special unit charged with interfacing with the local tribes in this region, recruiting and gathering intelligence. Then there were two Legionärs Battalions, their ranks filled with former members of the Vichy French Foreign Legion that had remained loyal to Germany after the debacle the British inflicted on their cause in Syria with Operation Scimitar. All these men had specialized skills, some Kommandos, others language specialists, mountaineers, and some with para jump training.

  When fully assembled, the division had more than twice the strength of two German Motorized Divisions, including one battalion of Panzerjaegers that had mobile 88s, six Nashorns, and twelve of the latest model Panther tanks that came off the production lines. Hitler had lavished the pick of all the best equipment on these elite troops, and they would be his spearhead leading the attack east towards Iraq, and the distant allure of all those oil fields.

  The man in charge of the Division was General Beckerman, a Zombie if professor Dorland would have ever tried to look him up. Something in the long chain of causality between 1908 and 1943 had twisted to give birth to the man, though he had never been born in the real history. Zombie or not, Beckermann was well suited to the task. He had come up through the ranks of the Brandenburg Kommandos, conducting raids all over Persia in 1941, and he had also spent the last year of the war in Russia, in some of the most intense combat on the front. He was a fighter, but also a master of the art of maneuver, and he would get on very well with Army Commander Heinz Guderian.

  I am told the General is riding with 3rd Panzer Division, he thought. They were pretty worn down with all the fighting Model put them through, but lo and behold, we find all new equipment waiting for us at Odessa, not to mention those four big Zeppelins hovering over the city. It is hard to believe that they will be part of our mission here, as they seem such a throwback to the last war. Yet they may be useful in a reconnaissance role, and for delivery of needed supplies and ammunition to forward units.

  I intend to be one of those units, the tip of the spear. There is a lot of ground out here, plenty of room to maneuver, though very few good roads. So I may have to do a little cross country running. We’re going to take the division east to Raqqah, and then follow the line of the Euphrates River south. That’s a distance of nearly 300 miles to the Iraqi border, and then another 200 miles to Baghdad if we take that route. Who knows, General Beckermann may take us further east. I am told the Führer wants Mosul, and Kirkuk as well. Yes, the Führer wants all that oil, but what will he do if he ever gets his hands on it?

  The British have crisscrossed this desert with pipelines, but they end at Tripoli and Haifa. I don’t think our ships will be making regular calls on those ports, so these pipelines will be of limited use. I studied the map well last night. The northern line runs from Haditha on the Euphrates through the central town of Palmyra. I think we must have that. If we can use those pipelines to pump the oil that far, then moving it north to Aleppo shouldn’t be all that difficult, and from there it goes by rail through Ankara and Istanbul and right into Bulgaria for distribution to the Reich. That’s what this is really all about—the oil.

  First things first…. I need to get south and scout out this road and rail line to Hamah. 10th Motorized and 3rd Panzer will be to the west on the main road. Once we take that, then Homs is the next objective in the south, and Palmyra is about 90 miles due east of that. I want to be there in a week.

  Gruber leaned forward and rapped his gloved hand on the armor of his 321-8, signaling the driver to move on. We caught them completely by surprise, he thought, but now they damn well know we are here. It remains to be seen what they can try to do to stop us here, but if Rommel’s experience is any guide, the British will be tenacious fighters.

  His column moved out, and not five kilometers further down the road there came the pop of small mortar fire. Most likely a delaying force, he thought. And reached for his radio handset to report the blocking force and bring up his armored cars.

  Chapter 14

  The British had indeed been taken by surprise. Bletchley Park picked up the movements of the Brandenburg Division as far as Odessa, and took particular interest in the reports that came in on the Zeppelin attack on Novorossiysk. When the Germans stormed the Crimea, the Soviets fought like hellcats against Volkov’s troops to take that city and its port. They needed a haven for their Black Sea Fleet, and that was the only good port that still remained under Soviet control.

  “Damn irregular,” said Alan Turing to Peter Twinn as they were looking over the intelligence intercepts. “The Russians tell us they were attacked by some kind of rocket propelled bombs, and they said they were very accurate.”

  “I don’t see why they should be at all surprised,” said Twinn. “After all, they invented the damn things.”

  “Indeed,” said Turing. “But now the Germans seem to have them. I think we’d better have a look at the material we gathered on this facility at Peenemünde. That may have something to do with the German R&D on these weapons.”

  “Say, where’s that Russian ship that was all chummy with Admiral Tovey?” asked Twinn.

  “In the Pacific,” said Turing.

  “Drat. We might ask them about that facility. It seems they’ve been a fairly reliable source of good intelligence in the past.”

  Twinn was “in the know” concerning the Russian ship and crew, and he was suggesting that they could save them a good deal of time by simply spilling the beans about Peenemünde. Fedorov had been reluctant to say too much, knowing he had to let the men of this era find their way forward, groping like blind men in the dark. He was the man with the flashlight, but there were others, equally bright and capable, and men like Turing and Twinn were perfect examples.

  A key figure at Bletchley Park, Alan Turing had been aware of the real nature of Kirov for a good long time. This man was not quite the same one who had first gone to the Admiralty, and found a sympathetic ear with Admiral Tovey. That man had been instrumental in solving the riddle of how Kirov must have moved in time, for it had vanished off St. Helena one day, and was then seen off the coast of Australia 24 hours later, a distance impossible to traverse through space alone, unless the ship could fly. Kirov could not fly, but it suddenly seemed to Turing that it could do something even more amazing—it could move in time.

  He had been one of the founding fathers of the group that came to be called the Watch, marking the amazing disappearance and reappearance of this mysterious ship that they came to call ‘Geronimo.’ Yet well before he ever remembered doing any of that, he remembered having a conversation with Peter Twinn, very much like this one.

  It was June of 1940, a long year before those dogged memories of the time he first became aware of Kirov in 1941. That is why they simply couldn’t be real, or so he believed. Because in June of 1940, Twinn had come to him with a mystery wrapped in a plain manila envelope, and he remembered it very clearly. Unlike those other memories of Geronimo, this one still fit nicely into the chronology of his present life. Now he played it all out again in his mind. Twinn had come in, that envelope in hand….

  “What is it?” Turing seemed uninterested.

  “It’s the prodigal son, that’s what it is.” Twinn pressed the photographs into his lap.

  Turing took the first photo, eying it suspiciously. It was a typical aerial reconnaissance photo of what appeared to be a large warship at sea. “Well it certainly is exactly what it looks like,” he said. “A ship.”

  “Yes, but not a German ship this time, Alan. Take a good guess as to who owns this one. Then have a look at these close-ups under my arm. I think you’ll be quite amazed.”

  Turing set down his coffee mug, reached for his magnifying glass, and took a closer look. “Russian naval ensign,” he said definitively. “That’s clear enough. Where was it taken—the Baltic?”

  “Southwest of Iceland, right in the middle of this big operation underway out there now.”

  Turing look
ed again, this time his gaze lingering on the photo, eye roving from place to place behind the big round lens of the magnifying glass, and a strange feeling coming over him that he could not quite decipher. It was an odd ripple, shiver like, that ran up his spine and tingled at the back of his neck, yet he could not see why he would react this way to a simple photograph.

  Saying nothing, Turing extended an arm, gesturing for the manila envelope Twinn was holding, his eyes still riveted to the original photo, a furrow of growing concern creasing his brow. He had seen this ship before… That was the feeling at the back of his neck now, and it was bloody dangerous, a rising discomfort and warning alarm in his mind. He had seen this ship before, yet he could not recall the where and when of that, strangely bothered, as his mind was a trap that little escaped from once embraced by the cold steel of his logic.

  At that time, none of the odd memories of Kirov had any place in his mind. Instead, they were ghostly feelings, worrisome notions, foreboding thoughts he had difficulty explaining. They all conspired to create one thing—fear, an apprehension that he could just not explain away. Then he found that box in the archives, and his whole world seemed to be turned on its head, or worse. It was folded back on itself, all twisted and out of shape. That box contained hard evidence of the very same Russian ship Twinn brought to him that day, photographs, reports, things initialed by his own hand, and that of Admiral Tovey, yet he was shocked to find they had all been dated a year in the future. It was August of 1940 when he found that box, and everything in it chronicled events that transpired between August of 1941 and August of 1942!

  He presented them all to the Admiral, and that was the first time he had ever met the man—he was sure of that. Yet everything in that box argued that was not the case. It was evidence that both he and Tovey had been thick as thieves, in the know about this Russian ship all along, a nice little conspiracy…. But in the future!

  That’s when the fears and odd apprehensions began emerging with more clarity in his mind, as if they were old lost memories. Yet they could not be recollections, he reasoned, for they were all about months and days dated to a future time. He worried that when the calendar of his present life finally reached the first of them, in August of 1941, that they would all begin to happen in real life, but he was wrong. Kirov never went to battle in the Atlantic with the Royal Navy as those files and reports showed. It was all rubbish, and he simply could not understand how he could have ever accumulated all that material. The files claimed the ship had first been spotted in August of 1941, when he knew damn well they encountered it a full year earlier.

  Then, strangely, the Russian ship vanished in the heat of that battle with the Germans west of Gibraltar in the Atlantic, and it wasn’t seen again for two full months, in August of 1941….

  A second coming, he thought. It was arriving just as he had it in all those old memories; just as he had written it up in those reports in the file box! He was possessed with a moment of sudden fear that the ship would turn for the Denmark Strait and become the deadly foe it had been as written in those reports. Then, to his great surprise, he learned it went north instead, to Murmansk.

  After that, all his memories of those earlier events in 1941 began to seem very hazy, like an underpainting being slowly covered over as the painter started to creating something new on that same old canvass. He still had them in his head, but when he thought about them, he could no longer mate them up with any sense that he had actually lived them out. When Kirov came that second time, it turned north to Murmansk instead of south to the Denmark Strait, and that single decision had begun to rewrite all the history that Turing had lived through and written about.

  Deep in his mind, he still had recollections of huddling with Tovey as the two men worked to solve the puzzle of this mysterious ship… but after the second coming, that had never happened! The memories seemed so real that he would swear he lived them out, but he could not fit them into the chronology of his life. They were so real that he had spent long hours writing up an account of them, which he filed away in a simple box he kept in the archives at Bletchley Park.

  In time, all those memories would recede to the background of his mind, like that old file box hidden away under a stack of three others in the archives. The memories would fade, then become unaccountable feelings, hunches, strange fragments of things he could no longer grasp and see clearly. While some men had to slowly awaken to those old memories of an earlier life, others had to forget….

  He shook himself, returning to the moment at hand. There was Peter Twinn, and the two of them had yet another mystery to solve, this time involving the German troop movements.

  “Anything else of note?” asked Turing, eyeing his empty coffee mug.

  “Just the usual—troop movements and such. Jerry gave the Russians Voronezh back. They’ve pulled Model out of that pocket, so a lot of divisions are moving about in the snow over there.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “Steiner has pulled back to Kharkov… Let’s see… Ah, the Brandenburgers went there too, but this latest report had them on the trains heading south to Odessa. What in the world would they be doing there? Probably getting a refit.”

  “Odessa?” Turing sat up. “What about those Zeppelins?”

  “What about them?”

  “They staged out of Odessa, and they’re still there now.”

  Twinn had retrieved the coffee pot and now he leaned in over Turing’s right shoulder and filled his mug. “My good man,” he said. “What are you suggesting?”

  “That’s an elite unit. It was at Volgograd, and in this big row over Kursk. The Germans just staged a rather dramatic attack out of Odessa, and now it shows up there.”

  “We did have that information that a lot of new equipment was moving there. Wasn’t that unit a Panzer Division? Perhaps they mean to flesh it out again.”

  “Perhaps…. But didn’t they pull part of Model’s force out and send it south? Didn’t 3rd and 4th Panzer Divisions move right on through Kharkov and continue on south?”

  “The last report we have on them puts the two of them at Dnipropetrovsk. That’s been their big refit and replenish base for units they rotate in and out of Army Group South.”

  “Yes…” said Turing, thinking.

  “This business about Halder being replaced is something new,” said Twinn. “We’ve finally identified the new appointee—it’s Zeitzler. Here’s the file on him.” He handed Turing a plain manila folder with the usual profile, photograph, bio, and noted capabilities based on his past assignments.

  “Ah,” said Turing. “He’s a chess player, and he likes to develop early.” He read from the brief: “‘Noted ability to manage and move large mobile formations at the Korps or Army level. Former Chief of Staff for the 1st Panzer Army under von Kleist. Managed the move of German forces through Ardennes region for Case Yellow.’ That was Fall Gelb, the invasion of France. Well, he certainly buggered us good with that one, didn’t he? Then he led 1st Panzer Armee as part of Army Group South, right through the Ukraine to the Black Sea coast. He took Kiev… crossed the Dnieper… ‘Demonstrated exceptional ability to maintain pace of operations and move supply to forward units.’ So the man is a logistical wizard. Yet this new appointment is a bit surprising. Hitler had to pass over Jodl, Kleist and Keitel to hand him the baton at OKW. I don’t like it. Wasn’t Hitler at Kiev last week?”

  “We thought as much, but it was never confirmed. They move those armored trains he uses about like they were playing a shell game.”

  “I’ll bet he was there,” said Turing. “Because Manstein was there. We know that from that radio intercept we picked apart two weeks ago. I’m willing to bet the two of them had a nice long chat, and now look at all these developments. Peter, the pot is stirring. We’d better grab our bowls and spoons and get a taste before they serve it all up! So that Brandenburg Division went to Odessa…. You might be right. They may be rebuilding it as a Panzer Division again. After all, once you’ve wo
rn a Tux you never feel quite the same in that old tweed coat again.”

  “No,” said Twinn, looking over the next page. “Here’s the latest… Lightfoot just tattled that it was being put on the trains again.” That was a code name for a special agent in place. And Twinn’s latest pronouncement raised Turing’s hackles.

  “So soon? Then it was no beach party on the Black Sea coast for them after all. I don’t like it. If they moved that unit to Odessa for any other reason, then it’s making a major redeployment, not simply a refit. Now where could they be going….” He reached for a map. “Everything else they move through Odessa either ends up in Greece or Italy. Could they be trying to reinforce their position at Tunis?”

  “That’s a far leap, isn’t it?” Twinn suggested.

  “Perhaps, but if they take the line through Bucharest to Sofia, then they can get over to the Albanian coast easily, and from there it’s just a short hop to Bari and then just 40 miles overland to all that Italian shipping at Taranto. That gives them a ticket to either Tripoli or Tunis, and a whole lot of trouble for either front when they arrive. You know… This movement of the 15th Infantry Division into the port of Toulon might figure into this. Word is that the Germans have pulled Falschirmjaegers off the line there. That gets me very nervous.”