dusk and fight in the morning. If at all possible he wanted to fight at sunrise, with his enemy well silhouetted instead of his own ships. That may not matter to the enemy, he thought, but it would certainly help his own gunners. This message gave him just what he needed now—time—and he agreed to it at once, smiling at his flag officer of the watch.
“Get a message off immediately,” he said. “Send it in the clear.” He folded his arms.
“What shall we send, sir?”
“Las Palomas. Just that. Nothing more.”
Chapter 32
The island of Las Palomas is the southernmost point in all of Spain, poised at the edge of the Straits of Gibraltar and marking the boundary between the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. It dangles like a pendant from the Spanish mainland, a small heart-shaped spit of land no more than 1800 feet wide, with an equal length. Layers of history can be found there, from yawning caves where Paleolithic petroglyph drawings of horses grace the stony walls, to ruins of ancient Roman sites, and on through the centuries. Its strategic position at the entrance to the Straits of Gibraltar had seen it fortified by many empires. The nearby Spanish town of Tarifa just north of the island on the mainland was named after the Moorish general Tarif Ben Malik, who spearheaded the invasion in the year 711. Some said that the word “tariff” was derived from his name when the island became one of the first ports in the region to levy fees on ships seeking an anchorage. Remnants of castle walls and towers can still be found there, some built by the famous Abdul Ar Raman, a prominent Caliph of the Moors who invaded southern Europe until he was eventually stopped by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours.
Given the island’s location, it had seen many desperate battles over the years. The Spanish fought to reclaim their land from the Moors for centuries, and the island had also been noted for a few famous last stands, one in the year 1292 when the Spanish Lord Guzman El Bueno was holed up in a fortress there and besieged by 5000 Moorish warriors. A treacherous rival, the Lord Don Juan had kidnapped Guzman’s son and thought to force his surrender with the threat of the boy’s execution. Yet stalwart to the end, Guzman refused, standing on the high walls and even throwing down his own knife so his antagonists might use it to kill his son.
In 1812 it was the British who joined the Spanish there to make a gallant defense against the invading Armies of Napoleon. Jean Francois Leval sent 15,000 French soldiers against Tarifa and was stopped by the tenacious defense of the 3000 man garrison. In the end the miserable and incessant rains had as much to do with the outcome of the battle as anything else. The French army slogged away, wet and beset with illness, leaving many of their siege guns stuck in the thickening mud. Now it would see warriors meet again, for a delicate negotiation on the razor’s edge of war.
Just after 17:00 hours on August 14, 1942 the ominous shadow of
A small motor craft had been launched from the ship, and it made its way under a flag of truce slowly through the straits toward the rocky eastern shore of Las Palomas. Admiral Volsky sat proudly in the center of the boat, flanked by five other men. They could have made a much more dramatic appearance by landing on the island with the KA-40, but Volsky had decided not to create a spectacle that would simply lead to more uncomfortable questions. The less these men knew about them, the better.
He knew, however, that what he was attempting now was dangerous, perhaps more dangerous than anything the ship itself had faced in these last few harrowing days. Soon the Admiral’s party made landfall and worked their way ashore. Now they stood beneath one of the old coastal ramparts, a beautiful castle ruin built in Neo-Renaissance fashion, smooth walls of amber sandstone with crenulated tops and styled parapets where the swarthy Moorish archers once stood their vigilant watch. Beneath it sat the squat rounded shapes of heavy stone encasements where old naval guns cast off from Spanish WWI Dreadnaughts had been installed as shore batteries in 1941. Their stark steel barrels jutted from the recessed gun ports, cold and threatening, and shadowed Volsky with the thought that war seemed to have no end, persisting through every generation throughout the whole of human history. The ruins and fortifications of one epoch after another were all folded together here on this tiny sentinel outpost, yet here he was, an outcast from another era, fighting in a war where he was never meant to be.
In the distance he could see the whitewashed stone lighthouse that marked the entrance to the straits. Built in the 1800s, it sat on a high cliff and towered over the rocky coastline below, where squadrons of sea birds soared in from the restless ocean, gliding over the stony shore. The wind was up, whipping the wave tops out in the straits, and he could look across and see the hazy silhouette of Jebel Musa rising on the coast of Spanish Morocco in the distance.
Volsky’s boat had come in on the Mediterranean side of the island with his small detachment that included Fedorov, Nikolin as translator, and the redoubtable Kandemir Troyak with two of his best Marines. Admiral Tovey’s launch had landed on the Atlantic coast on far side of the islands, and they would meet here, men of two different eras standing in the shadow of all this history, the legacy of mariners, sailors and soldiers that had occupied this tiny demarcation point in the long stream of time.
They saw Admiral Tovey’s detachment approaching from the northwest, making their way slowly along the rocky shore. The Admiral stood tall in his dark navy blue uniform, his deportment clearly marking him as much as his uniform and cap as a man of authority. Admiral Volsky waited for him at a point he deemed to be the thin borderline between the ocean and the inland sea, a fitting place, he thought, for the meeting of two minds. There were six men in the British party as well, one clearly come from the Admiral’s staff, his uniform crisp and proper, then another seaman in common dungarees and sweats, with three more men at arms to match his own. As they approached Volsky heard one of his Marines shift his automatic weapon to a ready position, and he turned, gesturing with his palm for the man to stand down. Troyak glared at the Marine, who quickly assumed a position at ease, lowering his weapon.
The British party came up, stopping about thirty paces off, a mixture of curiosity and caution in their eyes. Tovey indicated that his armed escorts should stand where they were, and he tapped the shoulder of his Chief of Staff Denny and the Able Seaman who would serve as their translator, leading them forward with a steady, measured pace. For his part, Volsky turned to Fedorov and Nikolin with a wink, and then stepped forward to greet the British, a noticeable limp still evident as he favored his bandaged right leg. He stopped, taking in the man before him now, noting Tovey’s thin nose and narrow eyes beneath his well grayed hair.
Fedorov stood just a pace behind him, his eyes filled with awe and admiration as he stared at Tovey, a man with whom he had spent many long hours in his mind, within the history books he so loved. It was as if a living legend was before him now, yet flesh and blood, not the small black and white photos he would stare at to try and see into the man’s mind. Here he was, Admiral of the Home Fleet!
Volsky extended his hand, his eyes warming as he greeted this fellow officer and denizen of the high seas. Tovey took the man’s big hand, listening as Volsky spoke first, with Nikolin quickly translating what he said.
“My admiral says that, as it is impossible to get any sleep with all these guns and rockets and torpedoes flying off, he thought it might be best to have a little talk and see if we could calm things down before dinner.”
The remark brought a smile to Tovey’s face, softening the hard lines of his taught cheeks and easing the tension inherent in the situation. So here was his modern day Captain Nemo, human after all, he thought to himself, a hundred questions in his mind. But which to ask first? Politeness was always best, and he introduced himself with a tip of his cap. “I heartily agree, sir. I am Admiral John Tovey, Commander of the British Home Fleet, Royal Navy.” The Able Seaman translated slowly, and Volsky nodded. Nikolin was to speak up if he heard anything mistranslated, but all was well.
“You will forgive me, Admiral, if I do not introduce myself beyond saying that I, too, am a commander of a proud fleet, and so we stand as equals here, at the edge of these two seas, and hopefully to find a better way to resolve our differences without further bloodshed. As you can see, I have a bit of a limp today, from a fragment of shrapnel that found me while I was climbing a ladder and decided to bite my leg. So I know only too well what can
