“Something tells me there’s an ill wind blowing, Sutherland. What’s up with all these big operations being canceled? They were going to cross the Channel Coast last month from what I’ve heard, and that was called off at the last minute too.”
“Ours is not to reason why, Jock. Ours is but to do and die. They pulled me right out of final planning for this Rhodes operation and sent me over here.”
“Looks to me like Seventeen is pulling together a fairly interesting team for this one, whatever it turns out to be. There’s me with my desert chops, and then you with all your experience with the Special Boat Service. They’re also sending me Sergeant Terry and Corporal Severn-both good men on a long reconnaissance operation like this. But where are we headed? Where’s Kizlyar?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” Sutherland squinted at his map again. “Seventeen must have really cooked up something very bizarre this time.”
“I have indeed,” came a voice, and the two men spun around to see a stocky man in khaki shorts and desert-camo top standing in the doorframe. A floppy canvas hat hid his brown curly hair, and his eyes seemed to search the two men now, sounding them out as he walked slowly into the room. It was Seventeen F, Fleming himself. It would be years before he would use his wartime experience to write his James Bond novels, but for now he was writing the script for a new operation.
“I’m the man you’ve been talking about,” he said quietly. “And yes, we’ve got something really interesting for you, gentlemen, and no one is going to cancel the party this time if I can help it.”
“Well, Commander, you move like a cat,” said Haselden. “I can see why they look for your sort in the darker corners of Whitehall.”
“Yes,” said Fleming getting a whiff of Sutherland’s pipe. It smelled good, and he reached into his own shirt pocket for a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Sutherland was quick to offer his Ronson lighter.
“The business at hand, gentlemen, does indeed come from one of those very dark corners. So dark, in fact that even my sort stub their toes and bump their noses trying to get around the place. Now then…Only a very few men will ever know what I am about to tell you next. You may have heard the rumors, caught the occasional reference whispered by the men with gold hatbands and thick cuff stripes, and felt the distinct tinge of heat that soon found any man who was too loose on the matter. I’m talking about Geronimo.”
The silence invaded the space, with an uneasiness that was clearly evident, for both Haselden and Sutherland had heard the word whispered about, though they did not know what it referred to-only that it was very hush, hush, and the sort of thing that would land a man in hot water if he ever spoke openly about it. To hear the word spoken so brazenly by this man from the cubby holes of Naval Intelligence in Whitehall was somewhat of a shock.
Fleming saw the look of bemused surprise on the faces of the other men, and pressed his advantage. You don’t walk in on men like this without an edge, he knew, and he had the one thing they lusted after more than anything else-information-knowledge of the missions they were set to perform. Yes, they were good soldiers, both of them, which is why Fleming had selected these men, but they often fought in the darkness of unknowing as well as the thickness of the night when they landed from submarines on a moonless sea and slipped ashore on black rubber rafts. More often than not the real aim of the mission they were tasked to perform was on a ‘need to know only basis.’ Today Fleming decided they needed to know.
“Gentlemen, you’ve heard that word, and now I’m to tell you what it’s about. Geronimo is a ship-a very dangerous ship. And on that ship there are men-very dangerous men. One of these men slipped ashore near Cartagena last month, and was trying to work his way west out into the Atlantic on a steamer bound for Cadiz. A German mine and a sharp eyed Royal Navy destroyer captain conspired to bring this man in, and we had him under the Rock of Gibraltar for a time… then he gave us the slip. We don’t know how he did it, or who helped him make good his getaway, but we will soon enough. Leave that bit to me. Now we know this man may have headed east through Istanbul on a Turkish freighter, and then slipped into the Black Sea on a Soviet trawler. To be brief about it, we want him back, and you two gentlemen are going to go after him and bring him back…” He paused, taking a long puff of his cigarette, and sizing the two men up again. “That failing,” he said with finality, “you will die trying.”
Chapter 23
In September of 1942 the German Army was reaching its high water mark in the war. The Allied forces had been pushed back, slowly strengthening their resistance like a bow string pulled taut, and soon the arrows of their long counteroffensive would begin in earnest. But that month the outcome of the war was by no means certain, and the world still sat in breathless fear that the mighty Wehrmacht could not be stopped. Rommel had pushed the British all the way to the Egyptian border and was haggling for supplies to continue his offensive. The German Sixth Army under Paulus was pushing into the streets of Stalingrad, while further south Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army and the 17th Army surged out from Rostov into the Caucasus. “If I do not get the oil of the Caucasus,” said the fuehrer, “then the war is lost.”
The drive South into the Caucasus was primarily intended to secure vital resources, particularly the oil the German Army would need to feed its growing war machine. As the Russian Army fell back in disarray, the Germans quickly overran and captured oil fields at Maikop, and pushed on towards even bigger fields at Grozny. Yet the real prize lay further south and east along the Caspian coast in the major oil centers around Baku.
In that critical month, the German generals met with Hitler and presented him with a great decorated cake in the shape of the Caucasus. Smiling ear to ear, the Fuehrer was quick to cut what he believed to be the very best piece of the cake for himself, where the cook had clearly written in large bold chocolate letters: B A K U.
The question now in Hitler's mind was what to do with Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army? It had originally been assigned to the drive on Stalingrad, but then swung south, crossing the Don River and positioning itself in a perfect place to move into the Caucasus at the extreme left of Kleist's main drive south. If Hitler turned it north again, along the southern bank of the Don towards Stalingrad, there was a chance he could quickly overwhelmed the Soviet defense there and secure the city he had coveted for so long. But if Hoth were unleashed and turned south, Hitler might have his cake and eat it too in the vital drive to secure the oil fields of Baku.
The history Fedorov knew so well saw the bulk of Hoth’s forces move north to Stalingrad where they became embroiled in the bitter street fighting there, which eventually ended in disaster. This time, however, the long lines of Lend-Lease trucks pouring through the Persian Corridor convinced Hitler that he had to seal this supply route off and secure the oil once and for all. Hoth went south, and he led his advance with two fast and capable divisions, the 29th Motorized with a good nucleus of armor in its Panzer Regiment, and the fast 16th Motorized Division, known as the Greyhounds. Now their sleek gray armored cars surged in the vanguard, swinging around Stavropol, south to Mineralne Vody, enveloping Pyatigorsk and Georgiyevsk and pushing north of Mozdok.
There, along the banks of the fast flowing river Terek, the Russians had prepared their final defensive line in a desperate attempt to halt the German advance. Meanwhile, further South in Baku, a quietly controlled panic had seen sixty percent of the oil activity halted, the wells capped, stores of oil poured into cisterns and floating oil tanks, equipment crated, and all of it being moved by any means possible across the Caspian Sea into Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan where it was hoped it could be used to find oil somewhere else.
If Hitler took the place, he would have the oil there, but the equipment used to find and drill for it would be long gone. At this point, however, the Germans knew nothing of this massive movement, just one of many major logistical feats pulled off by the Russians during the war. That September Hitler cut his cake, gleefully smiling at the chocolate letters on his white frosting as they spelled out Baku. The tide of war continued south and east toward the Caspian Sea, sweeping up tens of thousands as it advanced, and it would soon ensnare the life and fate of yet another man, a very important man named Gennadi Orlov.
After its duel with U-24, the Russian minesweeping trawler T-492 put into the port at Poti and Orlov disembarked under the escort of the three remaining NKVD guards. That night they stayed in a small hotel near the port while the guards waited for telephone call with instructions on what to do with the man. But none of the three would live out the night. Orlov no longer had his favorite Glock pistol, but the three men were all armed, giving him ample means of getting control of the situation and making a clean escape.
