Opening Moves (The Red Gambit Series)

by Gee, Colin

  ‘Later,’ he thought, mentally downgrading the priority on German soldiers families for the moment but making a firm commitment to ensure the two projects were aware of each other and exchanged information.

  He quickly wrote out an order to that effect and set it aside for proper typing up later.

  Relaxing back into his chair, he read the contents of the latter report with great care, finding much to celebrate there, and reminding himself to ensure that Kobulov didn’t take all the credit.

  The GRU officer arrived to the second and, to Beria’s surprise, it was Pekunin himself. A small plaster was the sole external sign of any wound and further enquiries revealed no long lasting effects on the GRU Chief, making Beria wonder if the previous briefing really had been deliberately ducked by the GRU general.

  ‘Hmmm an interesting thought, I shall test it later.’

  Giving no sign of his inner conversation, Beria gestured Pekunin towards a large chair.

  Taking seats either side of the desk, the two exchanged the normal Russian pleasantries of enquiries about wife and children before getting down to the business of Intelligence.

  The meeting was scheduled to run for an hour, but surprisingly for both men the business of the day had run its course shortly after 1040am.

  Tea seemed the only reasonable course to take and Beria ordered some immediately.

  Settling himself back in his chair, he eyed Pekunin directly, preparing his words.

  “Your Colonel gave a full briefing yesterday Comrade General, very full indeed.”

  Pekunin was too old a horse not to know that Beria wasn’t praising Tatiana. He could imagine how she might have ruffled a feather or two with the NKVD boss, so he fenced a little.

  “She is extremely talented Comrade and I don’t doubt that both you and the General Secretary will have had honest and forthright answers from her. She doesn’t do frills and she is not a political animal such as we are Comrade Marshall. I promoted her to Colonel because she was the best man for the job.”

  The tea arrived and, leaning around the orderly placing out the accoutrements, Pekunin smiled disarmingly, “You know what I mean.”

  Beria ceded the point to Pekunin, as well as the post of pourer.

  The conversation halted whilst tea was prepared.

  Sipping his tea gently, Pekunin continued.

  “She is a holder of the highest bravery awards as you will know, and has a husband and four sons in service to the Motherland.”

  Beria replaced his cup in his saucer.

  “Three.”

  “Three?” Pekunin knew what Beria meant.

  “Three.” Beria knew he had been understood but it made him feel good to say it.

  ‘Bitch.’

  He pulled open the top drawer and extracted a copy of a Red Cross document obtained by and relayed back through his vast ring of agents.

  “This is a document relating to casualties sustained by Soviet airborne forces on a special operation in Alsace last Monday. I speak of Zilant-4 Comrade General.”

  The report made its way over the desk and Pekunin was able to see that the Red Cross officially reported interring the remains of ‘Vladimir Yurevich Nazarbayev – Senior Lieutenant – 100th Guards Airborne Division’ along with three hundred and seventeen other members of the Division.

  Whilst horrified for Nazarbayeva, the clinically professional side of him continued through the document, listing healthy and wounded prisoners and noted the absence of one name from the list.

  “He’s not here?”

  “Quite so Comrade Marshall. It seems that Comrade General Makarenko has the devil’s own luck, unless he ranks amongst those unidentified bodies. There seem to be at least twenty of our men unaccounted for.”

  Bringing himself back to Nazarbayeva’s loss, the GRU General spoke aloud, for himself as much as for Beria.

  “She doesn’t know,” said Pekunin.

  “It seemed the wrong thing to do last night Comrade General. Perhaps you should have the pleasure?”

  In any other man, Pekunin might have put the words down as a slip of the tongue, an incorrect word, or an attempt at black humour. In Beria, he recognised it as decidedly meant, and in that sense, a very real and worrying indication of ill will.

  He must find out what had happened during that meeting but he had not yet had a chance to see her report or speak with her.

  Feeling concerned for his protégé, Pekunin changed the subject to something lighter to enable his mind to work in parallel.

  “Talking of Zilant-4, one of our agents picked up a face in Baden-Baden on the 9th. Have your agents supplied you with the names of the Allied and German dead?”

  Beria then thought for a moment before retrieving another page of the Red Cross report from his desk. It did not pay to show all one’s cards, especially those that don’t reflect success.

  “I have some information on which of the green toads escaped, although I am informed they are out of the fight for some time to come.”

  The GRU General examined the list and realised it was inaccurate.

  He savoured his small moment.

  “I fear you are misinformed then Comrade Marshall, for Knocke was seen in the French Baden-Baden Headquarters, intact and unharmed the following Wednesday.”

  “News indeed Comrade, but of low importance to us I think. We got all the big fish at their Frankfurt base. This Knocke was just a Colonel.”

  Pekunin started to object.

  “Yes I know, a competent one for sure, but Colonels are twenty to the rouble and Colonels don’t win wars Comrade.”

  Was that a general statement or yet another warning sign for Tatiana. Pekunin could not decide.

  Time brought an end to the proceedings as the phone rang to let both men know that their cars were ready, one to spirit the GRU head away to a meeting with the General Secretary, the other to take a satisfied NKVD Marshall to his Dacha. Beria intended to have a ‘quiet’ day with whatever woman would later be procured for him by his trusted NKVD bodyguards Colonels Sarkisov and Nadaraia.

  Beria was a serial rapist, coercing women with talk of freeing loved ones from Gulags or using just plain basic force to have his way.

  The thrill of it excited him beyond measure as his Packard Limousine took him out of Moscow.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he wondered, and then finally realising why Nazarbayeva had got so deep under his skin.

  ‘Ah yes Tatiana,’ and he leant back in the deep seats and smiled the smile of a man imagining a future that would definitely come to pass.

  ‘Fuck you.’

  Arriving back in his headquarters just before midnight, General Pekunin took his deputy aside and informed him of the heart-rending task he was about to perform. A bottle of vodka was located and with it in hand, Pekunin sought out Nazarbayeva’s office and found her hard at work as usual.

  He entered and dismissed her staff.

  The next few hours he spent with Nazarbayeva the woman and mother, in his guise as Pekunin, friend and comforter.

  He shared her grief and held her close and they drank vodka together until morning came.

  The small matter of Beria’s wrath he left for another time.

  The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out and meet it.

  Thucydides

  CHAPTER 51 – THE HORRORS

  0341 hrs 11th August 1945, Units of the 1st Guards Tank Army at Stammen, South of Trendelburg, Germany.

  Fig#21 - Trendleburg

  It was an awful night, bringing rain, thunder, and lightning in equal measure, for which the Soviet Commanding officer was extremely grateful.

  Pounding rain and thunder masked the sounds of his armoured vehicles as they moved forward behind the screen of skirmishing Siberian infantry, advancing closer to their objective.

  Colonel Fedor Iosifovich Serov stood on the flank of a two hundred metre hill from where he could overlook his
forces in Stammen and those of the enemy in Trendelburg to the north. His binoculars could see no sign of either, but he knew both were there.

  Units of the 1st Guards Tank Army had been advancing in relative silence since 2230hrs the previous evening, leaving their positions west of Hannoversch-Münden. Stealthily leading the way were the men of the nondescript 415th Rifle Division, temporarily attached to 1st Guards for their expertise, a deadly expertise learned from birth in the harshest of environments and finely honed since the Division was sent to the Front from its home base in Vladivostok, Siberia.

  Normally more at home in winter, their ability to move swiftly and silently was equally comfortable in the dark of night, and on the roads north to Hofgeismar and Reinhardshagen lay the many bodies of those who were their unwitting victims.

  Following hard on the heels of the men of the 1323rd Regiment’s 2nd Battalion came a company of valuable bridging engineers, tasked with a record time repair of a downed bridge over the River Diemel just south of Sielen, itself four kilometres south-west of the assault’s objective, Trendelburg.

  Units of 3rd Army were performing a similar thrust, aimed at driving south and occupying Helmarshausen and Wülmersen.

  A simple look at a map would reveal the consequences of Soviet success. One possibility trapped all American forces from the Gottingen area east of the Weser, in which case they would be easily mopped up. The other confined them to an area west of the Weser but bottled up by the Diemel River, meaning the sole focal point for their escape would be the bridge at Deisel.

  This was chosen because the river funnelled the approach into a sock roughly two hundred metres wide, a sock into which desperate enemy forces would flood to reach the safety of the west bank, and into which the artillery of two Soviet armies would pour death and destruction on a huge scale.

  Into this sock would come the tankers of the 8th US Armored Division, infantry from 83rd US Infantry Division and a swarm of specialists from numerous other units of engineers, artillery et al, trapped east of the Diemel.

  Serov and his special detachment of units from 1st Guards Tank Army were to close the bottom route by occupying Trendelburg and preventing its use. His army commander openly stated the STAVKA order regarding blowing bridges, for the benefit of any NKVD informers on the staff.

  As he saw Serov off, he made it absolutely clear that the bridge could go if it was a choice between it and the Americans escaping. None the less, the Colonel understood that the longevity of the bridge and his neck were intimately related.

  Knowing the engineers of the 6th Brigade had done a superb job in record time, he had ordered the planned assault for 0400, safe in the knowledge that he was already both sides of the river.

  0351 hrs 11th August 1945, Soviet attack, Stammen & Friedrichsfeld-Sud, south of Trendelburg, Germany.

  Soviet Forces - 11th Guards [Independent] Heavy Tank Regiment and 14th Guards [Independent] Engineer Sapper Battalion and II/2nd Btn, 7th Pontoon-Engineer Brigade and 12th Guards Motorcycle Battalion and 399th Guards Self-Propelled Gun Regiment and 22nd Penal Company, all of 1st Guards Tank Army, and 1323rd Rifle Regiment of 415th Rifle Division of 89th Rifle Corps [temp attached], and Penal Company Zin, of 61st Army, all of 1st Red Banner Central European Front.

  Allied Forces – A & C Coys, 1st Btn 330th US Infantry Regiment, C Battery, 453rd AAA Battalion, C Coy, 308th Engineer Battalion all of 83rd US Infantry Division, A & B Troops, 125th Cavalry Squadron, 113th Cavalry Group, 2nd Platoon, A Battery, 226th Searchlight Battalion, C Battery, 554th AAA Battalion, 2nd Platoon, B Company, 247th Engineer Combat Battalion, C Company, 736th Tank Battalion, all of US XIX Corps, US Ninth Army, US 12th Army Group.

  The thunder and lightning were building in intensity, adding to the pre-attack nerves of the Russians moving around south of Trendelburg.

  Fig#22 - Trendelburg - Stealthy Attack

  Normally, a Battalion Commander should not be at the front of his troops but this was not normal; far from it.

  1st Company, 14th Guards Engineer-Sapper was going in harm’s way and Chekov fully intended to be with his men when the difficult business of the day started in earnest.

  The former engineer battalion commander had died two days previously, probably of untreated appendicitis and its attendant complications, leaving the popular young Lieutenant Colonel Chekov in command.

  In their own rubber boats, or those taken from the rest of the battalion, with small craft ‘liberated’ from along the river, plus anything that could be sat on that floated or, in some cases, hanging onto the sides of one of the above, the reinforced company of sappers rode the steady current towards their objective.

  Trendelburg had one solid bridge standing and they were to take and hold it, preventing its destruction at all costs.

  Chekov checked his watch and silently signalled around him for some extra pace in their advance, paddles and rifle butts digging into the water, adding more energy to the boats northward advance.

  Unseen shapes moved in the darkness all over the area that night, in many cases bringing silent death with them before moving on to new victims. A young American sentry taking shelter under his cape, hiding from the fury of the downpour, had his life taken by a soaked apparition. He went without a chance to scream or even recognise that he was dying on a wicked blade.

  Blade and man moved inexorably on into the night seeking further victims.

  The advance group of the 1st Rifle Battalion was tasked to steal quietly into Stammer, 3rd Rifle Battalion was given Exen. On the other side of the Diemel River, 1st Company, 12th Guards Motorcycle Regiment, without their bikes, bore silently down upon Seilerfeld with murderous intent, accompanied by the assault platoon of Zin’s penal Company on their right.

  All did bloody work in the driving rain, but none more than 1st Battalion, who butchered the entire 3rd Battery of 453rd AAA Battalion as they slept, moving on to do exactly the same to the headquarters group of A Company, 330th Infantry Regiment.

  Two shots split the night, fired by the Headquarters Warrant Officer as he walked in on the deadly business and was spitted on a long bayonet. However, it seemed that the sound of the Colt was lost in the ferocity of the thunderstorm and their deadly work continued.

  1st Battalion’s Siberians had killed sixty-four men in silence.

  0352 hrs Saturday 11th August 1945, US Front Lines, Stammen, south of Trendelburg, Germany.

  Mortar Platoon, A Company 330th Infantry had long since acquired a reputation for their ability to scrounge anything anywhere, and to cope with the extremes that life, nature and the war could throw at them.

  That was why Major Buck G. Brennan Jr had chosen to venture out into the night, rather than stay in his own miserable, partially dry headquarters.

  Accompanied by 1st Lieutenant H.H.Brown and Warrant Officer Frazzoli, he had arrived at the mortar platoons position and experienced a moment of disbelief, followed by wonder, substituted by suspicion, replaced by panic, and finally coming to rest in admiration.

  ‘Sonofabitch’.

  Brown laughed quietly and confided to no one in particular.

  “You have to hand it to old Caesar but he sure as shit knows how to get his outfit comfy.”

  Brennan could not disagree and turned back to examine the view, helpfully illuminated by some sustained lightning.

  His mortar platoon had four 81mm mortars and four 60mm mortars, and each firing position was covered over with a watertight roof, some of which looked suspiciously like rubber dinghies, although the camouflage tended to disguise the shapes that the lightning tried hard to reveal.

  Grinning mortar crews were observing his approach, one or two waving their commander into cover.

  Criminals and thieves they may be, thought Brennan, but they are goddamn efficient.

  He had the sudden vision of Captain Catesby of the 308th Engineers going mad looking for his equipment and somehow the thought made him grin widely, for he didn’t like the man personally.

  He then
became further distracted by a large irregular shape sat behind the positions.

  If it were not for the green colour, he would have sworn it was the USO entertainment tent used by Jack Benny and Ingrid Bergmann some days back.

  He took advantage of more of nature’s illumination and looked again.

  It was.

  ‘Sonofabitch.’

  Frazzoli chuckled, saluting Brennan.

  “Guess I shouldn’t really see this, so I will take off back to the office Major.”

  Brennan grinned and slapped his non-coms shoulder as he passed.

  A mortar man in a long cape was pointing his Garand at them, determined to follow company standing orders, even if it meant keeping his CO out in the rain a few more seconds.

  The niceties were observed and both officers ducked into the shelter, which from the inside could not have been anything else but the show tent.

  “Sonofabitch!”

  He hadn’t meant to say it aloud but it was too late now, he had been heard, as the grins of those warm and dry soldiers lying on warm dry beds attested to.

  A cursory look around told him that everything soldierly had been attended to, from foot inspections through to weapons cleaning. The smell of cooking still hung in the air too, something that had been a disaster for his HQ group that evening.

  The mortar unit CO’s half-track had been backed up to the rear entrance, from where a US army radio played Glenn Miller and similar, providing background for a poker school that was reaching its conclusion.

  The Major’s eyes were drawn to the superbly painted laurel leaves and roman soldier on the rear of the vehicle.

  Unable to help himself, he mouthed the familiar words intertwined there.

  ‘We came. We saw. We blew it away.’

  Whenever Brennan saw the units unofficial insignia he could never quite work out if he should ban it or not, but mortar platoon was a top-notch outfit so he cut them plenty of slack.