Kirov Saga Men of War - By John Schettler Page 0,95

heading north, and he knew that those awful moments she had to endure were not far off. Unless…

The thought then came to him that he could walk that road as well, moving like a shadow in her footsteps, heading north with all the other rank-and-file, the rabble of lost souls swept away by the tide of war. He knew the names of the men who had hurt his grandmother, and the place where it had happened, for he could still see the soft ache in his grandfather's eyes when he told him the story.

So after lingering for a few lonesome hours at the edge of the farm, and picking apples from the tree he remembered finding there as a boy, Orlov pulled his black Ushanka tight on his head, fingered the cold revolver he had taken from the NKVD guards, and took to the road with a fierce determination. Along the way he got very drunk one night in a town called Quba, and found another old telegraph station, breaking into the place after dark and tapping out a plaintive call to the old life he once knew. “Nikolin, Nikolin, Nikolin, I’m going to find grandma at Kizlyar! Don’t forget me—Orlov…” It was a stupid thing to do, and he realized it the following morning, but vodka had a way with his head after five glasses, and he gave it no further worry. No one on the ship would ever hear it or know anything about it. His mind was now set on other matters.

Those bastards were not going to touch his grandmother this time! And if they did before he reached the place, they were going to pay for it, and very dearly. He swore this like an oath, and then moved north himself, like the shadow of death and retribution.

* * *

Far to the south, at listening stations set up in mostly forgotten outposts if the vast Central Asian wilderness, other men were tracking that shadow. They had been told to listen and look for any hint or clue to the whereabouts of a man named Orlov, and here, right in the clear, was that very name, and more, tapped out in Russian Morse Code! It was also associated with a place. On the 24th of September the men waiting restlessly at Alexandria and pining for lost operations would soon be satisfied. Seventeen-F finally had his mission.

“Here’s the plan, gentlemen,” he said through thick exhaled smoke. “Forget Istanbul, we were too late to get to the target there, and the NKVD got to him first. But there could only be one or two places that trawler could be headed, and we picked up signals traffic indicating it tangled with a German U-boat off Poti, three days ago.”

“A U-boat?” Haselden had a bemused look on his face. “How in the world did they get one there?”

“Not just one,” Seventeen said matter of factly, “they’ve a whole flotilla building up there, but never mind that for the moment. What this boils down to is that we now believe this man went ashore at Poti. From there it’s anybody’s guess where he might go, but we have people on this that are very good at making these sorts of guesses, and we’ve narrowed things down. This Kizlyar you were asking about Lieutenant Sutherland, is in Ossetia, northeast of Baku, up past the port at Makhachkala. It’s very near the Caspian coast, which will work to our advantage.”

“Good lord,” Haselden exclaimed. “That has to be over a thousand miles from here.”

“About 1300 miles to be more precise,” said Fleming. “But you’ll be going most of that distance by air. May I see your map, Lieutenant?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Good then… The place would be about here,” he pointed a brown finger at the map as the other two men leaned in close to have a look. “We’ll get you on a Wellington to Tehran near dusk, and from there you’ll take a smaller plane and fly up here.” He pointed to a small peninsula jutting into the Caspian Sea from the east coast of Kazakhstan.

“The place is called Fort Shevchenko. There’s not much there, just the ruin of the old fortress dating back to the mid eighteen hundreds, and a small town and port. Officially you’re all going there to examine the place as an embarkation site for new Lend-Lease traffic. It’s a perfect cover, and you won’t be bothered. From there you’ll have to cross the Caspian Sea—that’s where your expertise will come in