Tide Of Fortune (Kirov Series Book 20) Read online

  Kirov Saga:

  Tide Of Fortune

  By

  John Schettler

  A publication of: The Writing Shop Press

  Tide Of Fortune Copyright©2015, John A. Schettler

  KIROV SERIES:

  The Kirov Saga: Season One

  Kirov - Kirov Series - Volume 1

  Cauldron Of Fire - Kirov Series - Volume 2

  Pacific Storm - Kirov Series - Volume 3

  Men Of War - Kirov Series - Volume 4

  Nine Days Falling - Kirov Series - Volume 5

  Fallen Angels - Kirov Series - Volume 6

  Devil’s Garden - Kirov Series - Volume 7

  Armageddon – Kirov Series – Volume 8

  The Kirov Saga: Season Two

  Altered States– Kirov Series – Volume 9

  Darkest Hour– Kirov Series – Volume 10

  Hinge Of Fate– Kirov Series – Volume 11

  Three Kings – Kirov Series – Volume 12

  Grand Alliance – Kirov Series – Volume 13

  Hammer Of God – Kirov Series – Volume 14

  Crescendo Of Doom – Kirov Series – Volume 15

  Paradox Hour – Kirov Series – Volume 16

  The Kirov Saga: Season Three

  Doppelganger – Kirov Series – Volume 17

  Nemesis – Kirov Series – Volume 18

  Winter Storm – Kirov Series – Volume 19

  Tide Of Fortune – Kirov Series – Volume 20

  Knight’s Move – Kirov Series – Volume 21

  More to come…

  Kirov Saga:

  Tide Of Fortune

  By

  John Schettler

  Kirov Saga:

  Tide Of Fortune

  By

  John Schettler

  Part I – Moscow Is Burning

  Part II – Day of Infamy

  Part III – Ultimatum

  Part IV – The Lost Convoy

  Part V – Rooks’ Gambit

  Part VI – Wolf in the Fold

  Part VII – Aftermath

  Part VIII – Rain of Fire

  Part IX – Audacity

  Part X – Operation Condor

  Part XI –The Dragon

  Part XII – Invincible

  Author’s Note:

  Dear Readers,

  Don’t peek now or you’ll spoil the read, but at the end of this volume, I will stick in a slice of a poem by T. S. Eliot, the man I erroneously credited as the author of Ulysses some volumes ago when referring to the name of a British ship! How silly of me. That book was, of course, written by James Joyce, and as an old English Major, I can’t imagine how I confused the two at that moment. Here then, in quoting Eliot, I also ask the reader’s pardon for the fact that I tacked on commas at the end of his lines, and let me explain why.

  I have what I consider the world’s finest text to speech voice, that of a nice English gentleman, and I use it to read the entire book aloud to me so I can catch the many errors I make while typing. Yes, years and years ago, I took Mechanical Drawing instead of Typing for my last elective in High School, and unable to teach this old dog new tricks, I am now forced to use what I call “The Columbus System” when I type. I discover keys and land on them. So if I leave those punctuation marks out of Eliot’s verse, my speech reader, or one used by anyone else out there, will simply rush on through, line to line, and muddle the whole thing into one continuous run-on sentence. The verse then loses all of its impact and drama.

  To correct things like that, I often punctuate my own writing with a liberal use of the comma, so that my text reader pauses where it should, which creates a more natural flow when the text is read aloud by one of those little digital wonders. In earlier volumes I’ve tried dictating text to get around my typing thing, but to no avail. The program then makes clever little errors that are even more difficult to catch than an obvious typo. I hope I’m getting better with the effort to produce a clean manuscript. “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?”

  I was, however, taken to the woodshed recently by one crew member for using too many exclamation points! Like Orlov, he declared that he was sadly jumping ship for nudging him too often with that little stroke and dot. Sorry to offend. I would first like to thank him for reading as far as he did in the series. My only response is perhaps perfectly captured in this wonderful scene from the movie Amadeus, and I will let it speak my mind on this reader’s complaint in a brief video clip:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCud8H7z7vU

  That said, I sometimes need these “notes,” certain punctuation marks, to coax my text reader into trying to emphasize something a little more, and so you see, there is always a method to my madness, and only as many notes as I require. I am writing and punctuating the text in a way that is intended to produce a natural sounding read by one of these digital programs.

  In recent volumes, I’ve had a good long battle with my text to speech program in order to get it to pronounce Japanese names correctly, and with mixed results. There will soon be a good number of those coming your way, but before I take you back to the heat of Pearl Harbor, let us first return to Moscow to learn the fate of a very important man. For this entire stack of books was called the Kirov Series, and for a very good reason. Oh yes…. Let me make one more promise here. By the end of this volume it will finally be 1942.

  Thanks to all of you who write with questions. I try to answer them all, and often then put things you ask about into the story for further explanation.

  Enjoy the read!

  - John Schettler

  Part I

  Moscow is Burning

  “Among famous traitors of history,

  one might mention the weather”

  ― Ilka Chase

  Chapter 1

  The situation in Moscow had descended into the chaos of panic. That single company of German troops, the men of the 61st Motorcycle Recon Company, was helping themselves to a good meal when the People’s Militia, Moscow Division, arrived to make a last ditch defense just beyond the main fortified positions near Solntsevo. The 61st Company was driven out of the homes they had occupied under pressure from two regiments from this division, but they were soon joined by other small units from the 11th Panzer Division that had filtered through the increasingly porous defensive lines in the southwest quadrant of the city.

  The 231st Recon Battalion arrived at a most crucial moment, with twelve armored cars, a few 4.7cm Pak 35Rs, another company of motorcycle troops, and two more companies of grenadiers mounted in SdKfz 251s. They were followed closely by the 86th Pioneer Battalion, hardened assault squads that had three SdKfz 6/2 self propelled AA guns in support. That firepower, and the skill of those veteran German grenadiers and pioneers, would prove more than the untrained militias could handle.

  Seven kilometers to the rear, the rest of the German 11th Panzer Division was about to push through and around the last stubborn defenders in their way, the men of the 77th Machinegun Battalion. That unit had held the small hamlet of Yuknovo for six hours, then, their ammunition exhausted, their hot barrels went silent, and the German grenadiers advanced on their positions to hurl potato mashers into the farm houses and blast them to hell.

  At that moment, the fate of the city was hanging by the barest thread, and it was strange that after months of grueling and bitter fighting over a thousand kilometers of Russian territory, with a million dead on either side, that the battle was to be decided by this scattering of small units, there on the outskirts of the capital.

  Yet it was the well timed fire of another kind that finally broke the defense. Beria had been behind it, his cohorts moving sur
reptitiously in a few trucks with barrels of gasoline, and placing them at designated building sites along a carefully chosen path. Sergei Kirov may have refused to give the order for Operation Black Snow, but Beria took it upon himself to set it all in motion even before he paid his visit to the General Secretary. The fires ignited, soon becoming a raging conflagration, and the hot cinders of panic blew into the city on that darksome wind. It began to burn a path to the northeast, which drove the flames deeper into the dense metropolis, and right towards the lines of the Moscow Militia Division.

  Intelligence Chief Berzin had just arrived at the Kremlin, coming in through the lower back stairway, a quiet, hidden passage up to the Archives that was only used by he and Kirov. On the way in he had seen truckloads of Beria’s NKVD pulling in to Red Square, the troops leaping from the trucks in their dark green uniforms, the black boots hard on the wet cobblestone tiles. Something in their purposeful movements alerted him to danger, his instincts well honed after many years in the GRU.

  He pulled a Lieutenant in the Kremlin Guard aside, and quietly whispered something to him, sending the man running off down a long corridor. There were three battalions of the Guard there, but even as Berzin hastened up that back stairway, he could hear the shrill warning call of a whistle blown by some unseen Commandant, and the sound froze his blood. That was NKVD. He knew it in his bones, and the whistle was answered by three more, like predatory birds calling to one another in the night.

  He reached the top of the stairs, was in through the antechamber, hearing the muffled voice of Sergei Kirov, and Beria’s in answer. What was that man doing here? Beria’s unexpected presence, and the arrival of those NKVD troops, all screamed a warning in Berzin’s mind. His heart racing, he reached into his jacket pocket and drew out a pistol, his grip hard as he reached for the last doorknob between him and the outer chamber of the archives.

  The two guards outside those high lacquered doors jumped at the sharp crack of a pistol, then two more. Eyes wide, weapons quickly at the ready, they shouldered through the doorway, their faces hard and tense. There, stooping over the body of the General Secretary, was Intelligence Chief Berzin, the smoke still rising from the pistol in his hand. And on the floor, his dark blood spreading in a dull crimson stain on the plush carpet, lay the man who had come just minutes before, NKVD Chief Beria.

  One of the soldiers instinctively leveled his weapon at Berzin, but the hard shout of the Chief’s voice froze him like a statue. “Wait! He shouted. “By God! Call the Physician! Tell him to go to the underground bunker!”

  Even as he pushed through, Beria had fired, and seeing what was happening in a wild split second, Berzin fired next. The first shot struck the General Secretary, high on the chest, near his shoulder, for Berzin’s sudden entry had distracted the deadly NKVD man just enough to foil his aim for Kirov’s heart.

  Berzin’s aim was better, the last two sharp rounds heard by the guards, and with Beria slumping to the floor, he rushed to Sergei Kirov’s side, just as the Guards burst in.

  Now the sound of submachine gun fire echoed with its raucous noise in the Kremlin complex. It was answered by more gunfire, then a loud explosion. Beria may have fallen, but his plan, a perverted and corrupted version of the Black Snow operation, was still in motion. His three battalions were now dueling with the Kremlin Guard, with demolition charges being set off at key points, collapsing roofs and stair wells in the labyrinthine government complex.

  The four brutes Beria had come with had been down the long hallway outside the Archives standing in a small room, and watched by one of the Kremlin Guardsmen. With the sound of that first pistol round, they lunged at the man, overpowering him and seizing his submachine gun. Now they were out through the door, thick necks twisting to look for more guards. One sentry saw them and fired, dropping one of Beria’s men heavily to the polished floor before he was himself cut down by the captured submachine gun.

  Berzin could hear what was happening and knew he had to get Kirov out of that room as fast as he could. One hand on Kirov’s wounded shoulder to staunch the bleeding, he labored to drag the General Secretary to the far door, the last door, the entrance to the inner chambers of the Red Archives. Inside, behind a false movable bookshelf, there was a hidden service elevator that would descend down a long passage, deep underground to a special bomb proof bunker.

  He got Kirov inside the inner chamber, lifting him up onto a nearby sofa, then rushed to slam the tall heavy wood doors shut, locking them. Then he moved quickly to the bookshelves, the cold light from a chandelier gleaming off the sweat of his brow. There was a book, its thick red spine very evident, a book that was never touched or read, except in an emergency such as this one. He reached for it, hearing hard footfalls in the outer chamber. Pulling the book from its top released a securing pin, and the bookshelf moved, sliding open with squeaky wheels to reveal the gold painted metal grill of the elevator door.

  He heard a deep voice shouting, gunfire, another machinegun, and then an explosion. Beria’s men were the very best he could find, and though they had been disarmed, one had a false heel in his boot, where a tiny grenade had been concealed. He had stooped to twist off that boot heel, pulled out the explosive, yanked off the pin and slid the thin device right under the door where it had just exploded. It was not a heavy charge, but enough to clip the shin of one of those two Kremlin Guardsmen holding near the door while his comrade struggled with the phone to call the physicians. The guard fell just as Beria’s men kicked open the door, blasting away with that captured gun. The second guard was cut down, the receiver now swaying at the end of its short cord as it dangled from the phone on the desk. Berzin knew he had only seconds now, with the fate of all Russia on his broad shoulders as he hefted the body of Sergei Kirov up and got him into that elevator.

  Breathing hard, he heard the thump of a thick shoulder on the heavy inner doors. His eyes wide with the heat of that moment, he realized these men could not be allowed to enter that room and find what lay there, unseen by the eyes of any other man for decades—the cache of secret books and documents—‘the material.’ In a split second he knew it all had to be destroyed, and there was only one way. He ran to the long map table, where the sharp arrows of the German advance had been drawn through the thick penciled lines Kirov had made for the outer defensive rings of the city. Just days ago he had carried that very map here, marking the positions of every unit that now struggled so gallantly to hold those lines.

  Two kerosene lamps guttered on the table, a third on a nearby desk, more reliable than the electricity that now quavered and went dark in the crystal chandeliers above. He had one lamp in hand in a second, smashing it down on the map table and drenching the whole scene with oil and fire. He threw the second on the low bookshelf that had the few sacred volumes Kirov had discovered, but not before grasping one and tucking it under his arm.

  The door shuddered under another heavy blow, and now he stiffly pointed his arm at it, firing the pistol right through the thick lacquered wood. That was immediately answered by submachine gun fire just as he threw the final kerosene lamp down and saw the fires blaze up when the oil ignited. Yes, Moscow was burning now, within and without, and only one man stood on the line fate had drawn on its own mysterious battle map that hour.

  Jan Karlovich Berzin, code name Starik, the “Old Man” as he was called by the Kremlin Guard, now dragged the hope of Soviet Russia deeper into that elevator, the metal doors closing just as the enemy machinegun fire riddled the bolt of the outer door and it burst open. He saw the windows shatter from the heat of the flames, a cold wind sweeping into the chamber, and the fire rising higher there. Berzin had stood by Sergei Kirov, his strong right arm, for decades, and now he was earning his Order of Lenin medal, the Red Banner, and Order of the Red Star all in one hot minute.

  The elevator started to move, even while Berzin fired the last three rounds of his pistol at the dark shadows hunched at the edge of those flames. He caught a last glimpse of the city beyond the win
dow, the spires of tall buildings outside engulfed in that terrible inferno, the skies stained and streaked with char black smoke on the harsh early winter wind. Then the descent accelerated, the squeak of the metal pulleys like the wail of a mother who had just lost her only child. His breath heaving, he finally knelt over Kirov, his thick, well muscled body shielding the General Secretary just in case one of those men above fired down at the elevator as it descended.

  Kirov’s eyes opened, watery and unfocused, but settled on the hard, handsome lines of his long time comrade’s face. “Grishin…” His voice was weak as he whispered his old friend’s nickname.

  “Don’t worry sir,” said Berzin. “We will be in the bunker in another second, and I will have a doctor there a minute after. Don’t worry…”

  That same night, the small gathering of German units built up outside the main belt of the city like that fire. In fact, the raging flames were so intense, that they literally cut a pathway right through the Moscow Militia Division, forcing the men and women on that last thin barrier of defense to flee for their lives. The Donskoi Monastery burned, the Alexdrina Palace and City Hospital, with Customs House and Konaya Place devastated, just off Little Serpukhov Street. The Germans pushed on, following those flames as the bulk of the 11th Panzer Division broke into the ruined, charred city, and the tanks began to grind their way through the black rubble and smoke.

  The terrible fires raged on, driven northeast on the rising winter storm. They burned through the Yakimanskaya District and the place that would one day be the Fallen Monument Park. They immolated the elegantly styled hotels and restaurants, and the tall warrens of apartments that had long ago been abandoned by the citizenry. They leapt over the angled concrete canal embankment constructed in 1908 to control flooding.