again diving to investigate the propeller assembly of another Soviet ship, the cruiser Ordzhonikidze that transported Nikita Khrushchev on a diplomatic mission to the UK.
So matters ‘Russian’ were suddenly given a special sensitivity in MI6, particularly at a vital base like Gibraltar. Orlov’s strange appearance immediately got the attention of a good many branches of the intelligence service, and he was soon locked away in a cave, deep below the Rock.
Rybakov was vetted easily enough, a fish that was quickly cast back into the sea of drifters and vagrants on the Spanish coast. For Orlov, however, it was the beginning of a long and difficult series of interrogations, and it was not long before word of this strange Russian prisoner, a supposed ally that the Soviet authorities seemed to have no record of, got round to Bletchley Park.
Chapter 3
Lieutenant Thomas Loban leaned back in his chair, regarding the man before him with concentrated attention. ‘Orlov,’ he thought. It meant ‘Son of Oryol,’ the eagle. So where has this one flown in from, I wonder?
Loban was a five year veteran of MI6, the son of a wealthy businessman who had married into equal wealth in the UK after the First World War. His mother was Elena Chase, landed old money from Cambridge, and she made sure her son had a good education, seeing him graduate with honors at the university there and then enter the Special Air Service soon after to ripen up and see a bit of the empire, and the world it spanned. He was eager to serve, quick minded, and with a sharp eye for details that soon saw him at a post in the intelligence arm where his bilingual skills had proved most useful.
Touring Eastern Europe with his father as a youth, he had a good sense of the culture, finding it much more to his liking than the stuffy class ridden British society, and he often spent long summers abroad in Belarus, Ukraine and eventually Moscow, where his father still had offices trying to manage his mining business. Loban made quite a few contacts there, and more than a few in some very dark corners of that city. When the second war came, he was home visiting his mother, and quickly posted to the Foreign Service Desk where he soon finagled a position at Gibraltar. He had seen the place on tour with his family as a younger man, and always yearned to return. Now the dusky underground tunnel complex beneath the Rock was not quite what he had in mind all along, but he spent most of his time above ground at the signals desk, reading and translating reports coming in from the Eastern Front to help the service paint a good picture of what was going on there.
MI6 did not assign military ranks to its agents, but he kept his SAS rank when he signed on for the duty, and his mates were fond of calling him “the Lieutenant.”
This assignment was something new, a break in his usual routine, and he found it somewhat interesting. A man had been picked up on a Spanish steamer that struck a mine in the western approaches. There was nothing all that peculiar about that, but the more he looked at this man, the more he came to feel that fate and chance had delivered a very interesting catch to the dragnets of MI6 this time around, a very interesting catch indeed.
“Let me sum this up, if you will, Mister Orlov,” he said in perfect Russian. “You were on a steamer out of Istanbul from the Black Sea, and all the way through the Med to Cadiz, and yet you cannot name the ship?”
“I was there for work,” said Orlov. “Who cares what they call the ship? I wanted passage west and it seemed the only way I was going to get here.”
“You don’t like your homeland?”
“Mother Russia?” Orlov gave him a wry smile. “Every son of the east loves the Rodina, eh? I just had no love for their stinking war, that’s all.”
“You were in the service there?”
“Everyone was in the service, and I was no exception.”
“Then you are a deserter.”
“If you wish. But I was a very clever one. Most end up dead, or roped into the work crews, or fodder for the NKVD. I got smart before things got too bad, and I got out. What of it?”
“What of it? Well they shoot deserters these days, at least that’s what I hear, Mister Orlov, and I hear a great deal.”
Orlov simply folded his arms, cocking his head to one side, unimpressed. “So shoot me,” he said coolly. “You working for Josef Stalin these days too?”
Loban smiled at that, then changed the subject. “So you were in the military. Where? What unit?”
Orlov had to think fast now, and it had to be convincing, yet he knew what he was going to say. It was only a matter of fetching the details, because something told him this man would not be satisfied with the broad strokes. He was going to want details, and Orlov labored to recall those long hours on the knee of his grandfather, listening to the old man telling him stories of the war, of the siege of Sevastopol, and how he made it out on a steamer before the Germans closed their ring of steel around the city, slipping down to Novorossiysk. The poor man ended up in Stalingrad.
“Russian Navy,” Orlov said with conviction this time. “Merchant Marine. Ukraina was the ship, though I wasn’t on it too long. The Germans got to it in Novorossiysk and I was beached. The rumors came down that they were going to roll us all into the army, and I wanted none of that. So I took a leave of absence.” Again the smile covering the obvious admission of the crime of desertion.
Loban made a note to check on the ship, but he would soon find the story would pan out. Ukraina was indeed a passenger and cargo ship operated by the Black Sea State Shipping Company. The Germans got it with Stukas in the harbor as they closed in on the port at Novorossiysk. Orlov had never been on it, but his grandfather had, and he told his grandson all about it, many, many times.
“Your Captain? What was his name?”
“Polovko,” Orlov replied easily. His grandfather had talked about the man endlessly. Polovko said this… Polovko did that… Polovko had a great big sea chest where he kept his vodka and tobacco, and his grandfather had found in him a ready source of comfort. ‘Always find your Polovokos in this life, Gennadi,’ the old man had told him many times. ‘Blat and babki get you only so far. The Povlovkos do the rest.’ Orlov listened well.
“So the Germans sunk this ship of yours, and you deserted to avoid conscription into the army. Is that right?”
“Correct. I’m navy. I’m a sailing man. I wasn’t going to stick around and end up in Stalingrad like all the rest.”
“Stalingrad? Well it looks like the Germans are making a big push for that place now. Your countrymen are having a rough time there.”
“Sorry to hear it,” said Orlov. “The Germans will lose, of course, and it won’t be the first time we kick their behinds. We’ll get Rostov back soon. Kharkov too.” Orlov had listened to the earbuds tell their tale while he was on the Duero, lazing away an hour on break and thinking he might fill in his knowledge of what was happening in the world that month. All he had to do was squeeze the button on his jacket collar or right earbud and then ask his question. The Portable Wiki would respond like a good short order cook, serving up any segment of the history he desired. He had learned that this was, indeed, the month the Germans launched their offensive aimed at Stalingrad, but they would lose that great battle, and all those other cities as well when the Russian winter counterattack reached its high water mark before the spring thaw began to set in. Then there would be the careful consolidation of the line until the great summer battle of Kursk.
“Wait until things thaw out this summer,” Orlov bragged. “We’ll kick their asses all the way to Berlin.” He folded his arms, realizing he was straying just a bit, but thinking he could pass that off as sheer bravado.
“Well I surely hope you are correct, Mister Orlov, though it seems they will do so without any help from you.” Loban left that out there for a moment, goading Orlov a bit to see if he would get a reaction. The big Chief was stolid and unmoved.
“They won’t miss an Able Seaman from the fire room.”
“I see… You don’t much look the part, if I may say. Our Captain Maud says he’s seen a thousand stokers and shovel men, but never one as clean as you.”
Orlov knew he had to tidy up these little details, and he was doing what he had learned long ago in the Russian underground. When somebody questions you, then tidy up that loose shirttail, and tuck it in with a nice
