The Captain knew that there could be no halfway measures now. They had engaged both the British and American fleets. They would not encounter another friendly ship at sea—not now not, not ever. He knew he was fully responsible for the choices he made in the heat of action, but he could not see that he could have done anything else. The British flung their ships and planes at him, fully intending to find and sink Kirov if they could. The Captain, insofar as he saw things, did what any competent officer would have done under the circumstances, he defended himself, with all the skill and weaponry at his command. As he was trying mightily to salvage that image of himself now, he used all his considerable intelligence to defend his actions, no matter how skewed his logic had become, or how much vranyo had subtly crept into his line of thinking.
With Orlov at his side he might dispel that sense of harried isolation that had dogged him up until now. In spite of his ambition, and his devious insistence in getting his own way aboard the ship, Karpov had taken entirely too much on his round narrow shoulders when he cut that last wire. He was beginning to feel the weight of what he had done, and now he was looking for an ally, and a strong right arm to back him up.
“I thought I could count on you, Orlov. Let us face the matter squarely and decide.” He repeated all his old arguments, all the reasons he had ferreted out in the dark safety of his mouse hole. “We are never going home again, and there will be no one at Severomorsk to chasten us for anything we do here. We answer to no one but ourselves now, understand? This is war and we are a ship of war, with power to take history itself by the throat and choke it to death if we so decide. But that will take a man, not a vacillating old Admiral with too many stripes on his jacket cuff. Volsky’s day has come and gone. You and I? We have many long years ahead of us, and the power to see that those years are very agreeable. I need to know where you stand, Orlov. Are you a man, or are you going to stand there like a school boy when Volsky returns to the bridge?”
“Without a cat around the mice feel free.” Orlov stated the obvious, but all of this was more than the simple license a man might take when he could, as any man might. “Do you realize what you are saying?”
“Of course I do. Volsky will reverse us at every turn, and all the while the decisive moment slips away, or worse, our enemies will gather sufficient strength to find and kill us all.”
“But the junior officers—the crew. They worship that fat old man like a father. If it comes down to a choice between the Admiral and you, Captain, I have little doubt where most of the crew will stand.”
Karpov’s face registered irritation with that, but he kept his emotions well controlled. The Chief was repeating all the same doubts and fears he had sat with in his hole, all the same tired reasons why he should stay there in the stench, and remain a mouse.
“Look, Orlov, neither of us will win a popularity contest here. Don’t think the crew jumps when you growl because they love you either. They jump because they recognize authority when they see it; strength; will power. They jump because if they don’t it will be your boot in their ass, and the devil to pay. You know why you are the Chief, Orlov, and it is not because you are so very smart, yes? It is because you know how to clench a fist when the time comes for it, and you know how to smash a man’s face if he bothers you.”
Orlov smiled, nodding. “Volsky will be a problem,” he said, his voice even more hushed now. “Perhaps Zolkin as well.” He hesitated, his eyes revealing his uncertainty. He had seen power plays of this nature in the Russian underground, that hard world of cut-throat men, loose confederations of gangs and bosses, and he had seen more than one man toppled from his post, and more than one man killed trying just what Karpov was proposing. But this was not the Russian underground, it was a navy ship. This was mutiny…Yes, there was a special word for this sort of thing, and there had not been a mutiny on a Russian ship for decades, not since Sabin tried to take the frigate Storozhevoy to Leningrad in 1975. He hung for that, and his second got all of eight hard years in prison for his complicity. Orlov weighed the situation in his mind, and realized it took more than one man to do what Karpov was proposing.
“What will you do with them,” he asked flatly. “You can’t kill them. Kill Volsky and you’ll have to watch your back for the rest of your life on this ship. The crew love that man for a reason, Karpov. He’s not just any boss. They won’t like it, believe me, and some will have the guts to do something about it when they realize what you have done.”
“That’s where you come in. Who’s going to back you down, Orlov? Don’t worry, they won’t be harmed, of course not. Nobody is talking about killing anyone here—except the British and Americans. They are the enemy, Orlov. Keep your mind in the right place and just leave Volsky and Zolkin to me,” he finished, deciding to say nothing more about what he had already done. When the Captain perceived that Orlov still had reservations, he played out his last card. “I have spoken with Troyak,” he whispered. “He and his men are ready should we need to call on them.”
“You got Troyak to actually speak?” Orlov forced a half hearted smile. “He will support you? You are sure of this?”
“Troyak is not a child. He knows an order when he hears one. He will do his duty. And I also spoke with Martinov in the weapons bay. He is with us as well. The Captain stretched the truth on both accounts, just a little vranyo, and he did so with great skill and no qualms whatsoever. In his mind Martinov was with him because he ordered it—Troyak as well. They would do what he told them to do, if he could just keep Volsky out of the picture for the next few crucial hours or days. After that, they might relent, and reach an arrangement, but by then his business would be concluded.
“Martinov? That bumbling idiot? All he does is root about counting his missiles and warheads. What good will he do us?”
“Don’t be stupid. He knows where the special warheads are stored, and I had a talk with him this afternoon. Our forward missile bays will have a little more sting in the number ten launch tubes.”
“You ordered him to mount—”
Karpov held up a finger, silencing the Chief, and the two men gave the door a sidelong glance. The Chief suddenly realized that this was no longer a simple discussion, Karpov had already acted! The Captain had stepped over a clear red line, violating a direct order from the Admiral.
“But Volsky gave us a direct order,” he rasped.
“If you want to eat fish, you have to get in the water, Chief. Volsky is indisposed. I am in command now, and I rescinded that order on my own authority as Captain of this ship. I just need to know if you are ready to stand with me when things come to a head—because they will come to a head, Orlov, and very soon. Otherwise you and I will have to stand here twiddling our thumbs, and saying ‘yes sir,’ and ‘excuse me sir’ while Volsky runs the ship. How long will that go on? What is he going to do if he takes the ship east? The crucial moment is here and now. The next three days will be the heart of it. We either act now, or the moment slips from our grasp. We have Martinov. We have Troyak and his marines, and there are others, Orlov. Don’t think I am the only one fed up with Volsky’s vacillation. There are men on this ship, are you one of them?”
He was lying now. This was not the gentle boast of vranyo. It was not mere stretching and bending of the truth. No, this was lozh, pure and simple; a straight-faced lie, and Karpov told it with all the skill and duplicity he had cultivated so well over the years. “We can smash the enemy, here and now, once and for all, and then no one will be able to bother us again. Come on, Orlov. You can’t sit on two chairs. What’s it going to be here? We can smash them! Are you ready?”
The Chief thought for a moment, looking Karpov directly in the eye, and neither man blinked. Then he opened his jacket and angled his body to show the Captain a sleek, grey automatic pistol tucked into his belt line. “Yes, I am ready, boss, and so is Comrade Glock,” he said darkly. Then Orlov gave the Captain a hard look. “But tell me, Karpov. What are you going to do? What is your plan? Are you
going to pay a visit to this secret little meeting with Churchill and Roosevelt?”
Karpov took a long breath. Something shifted inside him now, easing the burden he had dragged through the ship from one station to another. He was no longer alone. It was not just his fate on the line. Orlov was Orlov after all. He had seen trouble looming and already prepared for it. Why did he ever doubt it?
A deadly calm settled over him now, stilling the last plaintive inner voice of warning. Yes, he was going to smash things, but at least now he had a hammer in the strong right arm of his Operations Chief.
“We are going to do a little more than that, I’m afraid,” said Karpov. “Yes, Volsky was talking about this secret meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill. Perhaps he thinks he can go there and negotiate, but that is like trying to divide the pelt of a bear before you have killed him. We are going to kill the bear first, Orlov—you, me, and Comrade Glock.”
Chapter 30
August 7, 1941
Secrecy was soon found to be in short supply. Too many men had seen the attack on Wasp, or heard about it, or suffered from it, and one of them was a civilian reporter aboard Mississippi sent out to cover the occupation of Iceland. Somehow, word on the attack leaked out, passing from pilot, to able seaman, and over cables and airwaves to eventually reach the U.S. The headline in the New York Times that day, August 7th, was bold and pointed.
GERMANS ATTACK! CV WASP SUNK! HEAVY LOSS OF LIFE Fearsome New German Raider Still At Large
Roosevelt To Convene Emergency Session Of Congress.
The article referenced some of the events that had transpired, though it was noticeably fuzzy as to where the attack had happened, what German raider had attacked, and even more vague on just when the president would convene this emergency session of congress and in fact where the president even was.
Reporters quickly stormed the White House briefing room, but were held at bay and given no further information. The president was consulting with his Joint Chiefs of Staff, it was said, but nothing more was revealed, particularly the fact the Roosevelt was not even in the country, and was quietly slipping into Ship Harbor in Argentia Bay aboard Augusta by the evening of that same day.
Aboard King George V, Admiral Tovey was listening to a shortwave radio broadcast out of New York when Brind came in from the radio room, a decoded signal in hand and a puzzled expression on his face.
“I’m afraid I’ve given you some bad advice, Admiral,” he began. “Admiralty says they’ve spotted the Graf Zeppelin near Stettin.” The implications were obvious, and he said nothing more.
Tovey rubbed his brow, troubled. “The cat is out of the bag,” he said. “The story had leaked out to the press and the Americans are outraged. It’s to be expected, I suppose, but we still have no idea what this ship is, and that I find difficult to swallow.”
“Well, an American PBY out of Reykjavík spotted the German ship a few days ago, sir, and they got some photos.”
“Photos? It’s bloody well about time. What do they show?”
“I’m afraid the song is the same, sir. Bletchley Park says it’s a large cruiser, very large, probably a battlecruiser in size. They were able to spot a crewman on a foredeck and worked out the scale. The damn thing is all of 900 feet long, and nearly a hundred feet abeam.”
“My god, what a monster. That’s a bigger ship than King George V. In fact, it’s bigger than anything in the fleet. It’s even longer than the Bismarck!”
“Yet no sign of anything but a few small secondary guns, and a curiously empty foredeck covered with a series of what looks to be cargo hatches. Given what we’ve learned about this ship’s capabilities, they’ve come round to the conclusion that these rockets must be stored there; possibly brought up on deck for launching, or even fired from below decks through these ports.”
“Amazing,” said Tovey. “I knew the Germans were developing a weapon of this nature, but all our intelligence indicated it was to be an air dropped bomb.”
“Yes,” Brind nodded. “The Fritz-X, or so the boys at BP call it. That was also mentioned in the Admiralty report.” He glanced at his signal and read: “Consider Naval deployment of guided Fritz type ordinance or possibly more advanced Henschel Hs 293 guided rocket.”
The Henschel 293 was a development led by the brilliant mathematician and aircraft designer Herbert Wagner, Germany’s answer to the Bletchley Park genius of Alan Turing. Wagner, along with notable physicists Schrödinger, Heisenberg, and designer Wernher von Braun had been involved in the development and testing of new German wonder weapons for some time. The Fritz-X radio controlled glide bomb had been in development since 1938, and the Henschel 293 was a new approach that was intended for use against British convoys. The Germans were already building training and refit bases for the rocket at Cognac and Bordeaux on the south Atlantic coast of France, in addition to numerous facilities around Hamburg and Kiel, and bases at Bergamo and Foggia in Italy. It began as a glide bomb, like the Fritz, then migrated into a liquid fueled rocket. As far as Bletchley Park knew, however, it was still in the testing phase, unless this was to be its coming out party, a deadly ship mounted version that could strike with alarming accuracy and power.
That was the one thing that still bewildered the British intelligence arms. How could the Germans have achieved this level of accuracy and range on the weapon? Everything they had been able to learn about the program indicated that it still relied on a human operator, a man able to see the target and aim or guide the missile in flight. And much of its expected range was delivered by the aircraft that carried it, large German bombers. It’s actual range after firing was very limited, yet this was contradicted by every report gathered thus far from the ships that had been targeted. There had been no sign of any German aircraft near the targets. The reports from ships at sea indicated that the enemy was seeing and targeting them from well beyond the range of optical or even long range radar detection!
Eventually they came round again to the initial sighting of airborne contacts near the German ship in the first days of the encounter. It was then suggested that the Germans might be launching sea planes of the type often carried by cruisers and battleships, and then using these as platforms to spot and vector the weapons in. Bletchley Park suggested they had only to fire the rockets in the general heading of the target, and perhaps the Germans had then rigged some kind of homing device, even a small radar set in the nose of the missile, that would enable it to hit with such precision. It was a remarkably accurate assessment, but equally shocking to think the Germans had made these advances while similar Allied programs remained at rudimentary levels of development.
“We thought that from the very first,” said Brind. “But I’ll be damned. None of our pilots have managed to get a look at these German planes…except for that odd report we got from the weather station on Jan Mayen.”
“You mean that helicopter report?” Even the word sounded odd to Tovey, let alone the concept of a plane without wings. Yet ideas about helicopters had been around since the time of Leonardo da Vinci, and he admitted to the possibility that the Germans had again stolen a march on them and put such an aircraft into service.
Tovey sighed. “First we get news that Tirpitz is on the loose, then Bletchley Park tells us it’s Admiral Scheer, then we think this ship is Graf Zeppelin, and now this… We’ve run out of German ships, Brind. What do we call this one? We don’t miss something on the order of a new ship design. I can excuse the rest. These rockets could have been developed in underground facilities, and kept very hush, hush. But a ship? To have anything like this at sea now the Germans would have had to lay her keel years ago, and you and I both know they only have so many dock yards capable of building a cruiser class ship.”
Brind was clearly perplexed. “There were two ships originally planned in that German carrier program, sir. Ship “B” was contracted, but her hull was never completed. The Germans halted construction on that one and scrapped her just after the war began in September of 1
939. We’ve had some inkling they might be trying to convert a cruiser or even a civilian ocean liner to a carrier, but these photos put an end to that speculation. The odd thing is that there hasn’t been a whisper out of Berlin about this business either, sir. You would think they would crow about their engagement with us, or perhaps make some statement regarding this attack on the US task force. I may be climbing out on a limb here, and I apologize for leading you up the bridle path about Graf Zeppelin….”
“Don’t worry about that, Brind. Speak your mind, man.”
“Well sir, this might not be a German ship at all…”
~ ~ ~
Events were running on, as the ships, American, British and from parts unknown plied through the sea on courses that all seemed to be converging on Newfoundland. The British were worried that the raider would simply turn east and head out into the Atlantic, but a small fishing trawler out of Newfoundland spotted a lone ship on a course due south of the location where Wasp had sunk. Apparently this German captain seemed convinced of his invulnerability, and came boldly on, albeit at a more cautious rate. The trawler estimated the contact speed at twenty knots.
At the time Tovey was some 225 miles to the south, and the American Task Force 16 was 150 miles northwest of his position. Somerville was an equal distance south, and the three forces, steaming for Newfoundland, formed a slowly compressing wall of steel as their courses converged. Then a further report came in from the PBY: amazingly, the enemy ship changed course in a direction no one expected, not east or southeast into the Atlantic, but southwest on a heading that would put it off the coast of Newfoundland in another twenty four hours.
“The gall of that ship,” Tovey exclaimed. “Do they think the Royal Navy has just turned tail and run home?”
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