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“No sir, from all reports their fleet is still off Alexandria.”

  “Ah,” said Lütjens, with the tone of realization in his voice. “It’s Rommel again, yes? He’s finally got his tanks and fuel oil and now he wants to move east again. I was expecting this. Usually it is the Royal Navy bombarding the coast road along that desert, but now they have work for our 16 inch guns. Yes?”

  “I’m afraid not sir. We’ve been ordered back to Gibraltar.”

  “Gibraltar? Whatever for?”

  At this point Adler thought it best to simply step over and hand off the decrypt he was holding. He watched as Lütjens scanned it, the lines of his brow deepening as he did so.

  “Your entire force is ordered to Gibraltar at the best possible speed… What do you make of this, Adler?”

  “Something for us in the Atlantic?”

  “Most likely. These orders come directly from Admiral Raeder, and reading between the lines, I see more here than may appear at first glance. We are to make our best speed? That can only mean that he is trying to get us out into the Atlantic before Somerville can do anything about it. Very well, I will take it on faith that the Grand Admiral has some earnest business in mind. How soon before we can get up steam for operations?”

  “I had us on four hour steam, sir. But I think I can speed that along. Let me get down to the boiler room and see what Schultz can do about it. Shall I signal the other ships in the task force?”

  “Of course. I assume Bismarck is also on four hour steam?”

  “Repairs are well in hand there, sir. And the new crews arrived some weeks ago. The ship will be ready.”

  “Very well. Then get all the geese lined up and ready to fly, Kapitan. Bismarck, Kaiser, Goeben, we pull anchors and head east in four hours, midnight. What is the moon doing?”

  “An evening crescent will be an hour above the horizon at midnight, but the weather calls for low clouds. We should be able to slip away unnoticed.”

  “Just the same, the British may have eyes in this port, and our departure may be reported. In that case, I want you to leak an order that we will be moving east to support this business Rommel is stirring up again. The British will likely come to that same conclusion anyway. It could buy us just a little more time. We’ll make our course due south at the outset. Get a signal off to Malta. Tell them they are to clear a berthing in the Grand Harbor there. If the British think we are dusting off a chair there for Hindenburg, all the better.”

  “What do you make of these orders, sir?”

  “What else, Adler? The convoys! That is why this ship was built, was it not? Something tells me Admiral Raeder has had a revelation. The British have just reinforced their fleet at Alexandria with two more battleships. I hate to slip away without paying the tab here, but I think Raeder has seen a good opportunity for us to do some hunting.”

  He smiled. “And those rocket ships will be here, Adler. If we follow these orders to the letter and make for Gibraltar at our best speed, they will be three thousand kilometers behind us at Alexandria, and at least a month before they could get round the cape of Good Hope. In the meantime, we will rage in the Atlantic, and rule the sea. What could be better?”

  Yes, thought Adler, what could be better? We tried to run with the wolves, and took a nasty bite for our trouble. So now we go off looking for sheep. He gave Lütjens a half hearted salute and started for the bridge.

  Chapter 14

  Admiral Tovey was pleased to meet with Volsky again, the two men having an afternoon tea together, this time aboard the Russian battlecruiser, on station in the Med just north of the Nile Delta. The battle they had fought together was a near run thing, he thought. That combined Franco-German fleet was more than Cunningham could have handled here. If not for the godsend in this Russian ship, and now the strange arrival of the Argos Fire, things might be very different here.

  “I must tell you again how grateful I am for all you have done for us, Admiral Volsky.”

  Nikolin was enjoying his role as translator immensely. Every time the British Admirals needed to meet with Volsky, he was relieved of his duty at communications, and was able to sit in the staterooms, sipping teas, and getting treated to all the niceties the senior officers lived with. He translated what Tovey had said, and Volsky returned.

  “I only wish we could have done more. As it stands, we had some success in fending off that big enemy fleet, and we were able to interdict the Bosporus, if only temporarily. The enemy is already busily repairing the damage we put on the rail yards there. Frankly, our Mister Fedorov may do more for your war effort in Syria than anything this ship could do. He’s been running about tearing up rail lines from Aleppo, and this has reportedly slowed down the arrival of new German units on that front considerably.”

  “Ah yes,” said Tovey. “Those helicopters of yours have proved most useful from all reports I have read. Where are they now?”

  “My last update had them in a town on the upper Euphrates, but I cannot pronounce it. Yet even his operations must be no more than a pin prick in this war. I am afraid the real fighting is only now about to begin. Everything we have seen thus far is merely a preliminary. The war in Russia now darkens my thoughts. It is about to begin, and I have sat awake many a night, realizing what is now soon to befall my homeland, and feeling powerless to prevent it.”

  Tovey nodded, setting his teacup down as he considered the situation. “It must be very difficult for you, knowing what is to come, the losses, the suffering.”

  “Yes,” said Volsky. “I have taken the liberty of sticking my nose into our Captain Fedorov’s library books, a bit like watching your own house burn down for all the good it has done me. Do you realize what is about to happen? Over eight million men will soon face one another on the eastern front. The Germans will commit well over a hundred divisions to the initial operations! They will fling over 4000 tanks and 7000 aircraft at us, and we have numbers exceeding that on defense, though our troops fared very poorly in the opening battles, and casualties and losses were very high. Compare that to all your operations presently in the field, Admiral Tovey. You have all of five divisions in your Western Desert facing Rommel, and no more than another five in Syria. The Germans will be throwing ten times that at Mother Russia, and the hell they inflict there will scar the psyche of our nation for generations to come.”

  “Somewhat humbling to think of it in those terms,” said Tovey. “It’s a wonder we have managed to hold out here in Egypt. Frankly, with that kind of power, it has only been logistics that has prevented the Germans from crushing Wavell and rolling us out of Egypt. The Germans simply can’t supply any more units beyond those they have been able to commit here, and so we have been fairly matched. But yes, to think of the battle you describe, with all those German divisions facing your forces, is somewhat ghastly. Yet you prevailed, in spite of the long struggle and hardship, did you not?”

  “Oh, we prevailed. The Germans destroyed most every city between Poland and the Volga but that is where we made our stand—at Moscow, and at a city called Stalingrad, and the tide eventually turned.”

  “Stalingrad? I am not aware of the place.”

  “Volgograd in this world, the world we have shaped with our own meddling in this war. You see, Sergei Kirov was not leading the Soviet Union in the history we know. There was another man, Josef Stalin, a man as hard as the steel that he forged his name from. He was ruthless, determined, and may I say as evil as the demon you now wrestle with in Hitler. Before the war he launched a purge that killed over 50,000 key officers in our army, all to assure his own power base. Thankfully, from what I have been able to learn, that has not happened in this world. So perhaps our boys will do a little better this time out against the Germans, though I have great fears on the matter.”

  “I understand,” said Tovey. “Your dreams must be much darker than my own, Admiral Volsky. “You have done great things thus far, but as you have so chillingly described, the war has been a small thing compared to what it may soon become.�
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  “Sadly true,” said Volsky. “Soon the fighting begins in earnest, and don’t forget the Japanese Empire is still out there in the Pacific. Fedorov tells me that all that history is as broken as our homeland. As I knew it, Japan entered the war in December of 1941, but who knows what will happen now. They already have Vladivostok, the result of another foolish Captain, and the actions he took with this very ship in the Pacific. Who knows what the Japanese will do this time out? This war is a darkness that is only just beginning to fall. Millions will die in the next few years… millions…”

  There was nothing in Tovey’s teacup that could offer any solace for the look on Volsky’s face now. He could see the Admiral was deeply tormented, and could only imagine what he must be feeling, shouldering the responsibility for all these things, believing it was his own doing that was now bringing the world to the edge of chaos. He tried his best, but his words seemed a thin balm.

  “You must not try to take all the blame on yourself,” said Tovey. “This war was going to be fought, with or without you. It wasn’t your doing, but the darkness in the hearts of this generation of warriors. You have told me that there are wars enough in your own time, but this one is ours, Admiral. We bear the responsibility for what we are weaving here, even if you can see your own handiwork in the loom. Yet I know how you must feel, wishing you could prevent what is about to happen, and feeling powerless to do so.”

  “Not entirely powerless,” said Volsky, a distant, haunted look in his eye. “Yes, with every missile we fire this ship becomes less and less a factor in the war, but Admiral Tovey, I have weapons you have yet to see delivered on the enemy, weapons as terrible as this war that first spawned them. I ask myself whether I could, or should have used them, to stop what we are seeing the enemy do now. I could have prevented the fall of Gibraltar with a single missile—do you understand what I am now saying? Yes, I have a missile so powerful that I could have obliterated the entire German force assembled to attack that place. Yet I stayed my hand, thinking it too terrible a reprisal at this stage of the war.”

  Even before Nikolin had finished his translation, Tovey felt a strange feeling come over him, something emerging from deep within, an old, dark memory rising in the back of his mind and soul, though he could not quite grasp it, or see it clearly.

  “War is deceptive,” Volsky continued. “It starts with a sniffle and a cough, but given time it becomes much worse. On the eve of the attack on Gibraltar, there was really very little else going on. The war had quieted down to a little headache. To use such a weapon at that time, I believed, would remove anything that now distinguishes me from men like Adolf Hitler, or the man I mentioned a moment ago, Josef Stalin. And yet… Now the real war begins. The fever rises, and our throats are sore with the planning of one battle after another. Now it shows us its real venom. In our time there once came a terrible illness that emerged from a backward village in Africa—Ebola. It began in the same deceptive way, with symptoms that seemed innocuous enough—a simple cold, or possibly the flu. Then it flared up to the horror it really was all along, and killed millions. So now I feel like my good friend Doctor Zolkin at times. I sit here with the power to do something about it if I so choose, do something before the illness of war becomes a pandemic that will infect this entire world. It is a torment that is worse than anything I have ever suffered. I might engage the enemy and save millions of lives, yet to do so I must certainly kill men in the tens of thousands, possibly even more. That is a ghastly calculation, and a very bitter choice.”

  Tovey could not quite see what was in the back of his mind, but he could feel it. It was as if that moment, when he first saw the awful grey-white mushroom cloud over the North Atlantic, was blooming in his mind again—not the image of the event, but all the feelings of shock, and terror, and bewilderment. On some deep inner level he knew what Admiral Volsky was trying to tell him. The weapon… The ship… the barest glimpse of the capsized hull of a battleship… the haunting wink of ship’s lanterns, distant cruisers warning him, and then two words finally emerging from the fluttering signal… advise dispersal…

  “The North Atlantic,” he said aloud, and Volsky waited while Nikolin translated. “It was in the North Atlantic. It was used there, was it not? This weapon you speak of was first used there. These are the same weapons Director Kamenski spoke of at Alexandria when he told us about those testing programs?”

  Volsky was stopped cold by Tovey’s words. Did he and Fedorov reveal this to Tovey earlier? He could not remember, but he knew Kamenski had alluded to them at that meeting. That was perhaps the only explanation that made sense to him. Yet now it was Tovey who seemed clouded over with the gloom of his inner muse.

  “Are you alright, Admiral?”

  “Not quite,” said Tovey, still feeling like a sleeper who had awakened with a nightmare in mind, the dream fading, shredding to fragments and slipping from his thoughts, like spirits fleeing to find the darkness that spawned them.

  “You will forgive me, Admiral, but I have not been quite myself since we first met. Well that’s just the point, isn’t it? We met in the North Atlantic during that row we had with the German navy. Yet when I first set eyes on your ship, I had this very same feeling, a little dread on top of a memory so old that I could no longer see it in my mind. I had the distinct feeling that I had seen your ship before, and when we met, that was redoubled, like a bit of déjà vu, if you will. Then came your revelation that we had met before, yet in 1942! Well, that was enough of a shock for this old head, until we discovered those photographs and reports concerning your ship—an archive that seemed to document all the events you were referring to. We never really came to an understanding of how that could be possible, but things you can hold in your hand have a stubbornness about them, and they simply cannot be dismissed. These odd memories that come to me, recollections of seeing your ship, meeting with you in another time, and yes, seeing this terrible new weapon you mention now. Well, it remains a profound mystery, and most disturbing.”

  Admiral Volsky nodded, his heart heavy, seeing that Tovey was as much bound up in all of this soul searching as he was. “One day we may get to the bottom of all this,” he said. “And I think that day may come sooner than we think. Our time here grows short.”

  Tovey offered a wan smile. “You say that like a spirit from a Dickens novel.

  “Ah yes,” said Volsky, “your Christmas Story. Well, my only problem is this—I cannot determine whether I play the role of the Ghost from Christmas past, or the ghost from days yet to come. In either case, I have the feeling that I have brought all of this unwanted torment to your own life and soul, Admiral, and for that I am truly sorry.”

  Again it was Tovey’s impulse to offer Volsky some comfort. “No Admiral, we are bound up in this together, you and I. Fate seems to have billeted us together in this business, and by degrees, I have every faith that we shall work it through to some understanding in time.”

  “In time,” said Volsky, the irony of his statement obvious.

  There came a knock on the door, an officer rushing in and whispering something to Admiral Volsky, which did little to cheer his mood. He seemed surprised by the news. “You are certain?” he asked, then turned to Tovey, the light of discovery in his eyes.

  “Well, Admiral,” he said with a sigh. “Here we get another little tempest in our teacups. We have just received word that the German fleet has left Toulon some eight hours ago.”

  “They most likely got up steam to support this new offensive by Rommel,” said Tovey with a nod. “I was afraid we’d have to lock horns with them again soon.”

  Volsky continued. “I am told that Malta was signaled to be ready to have a berthing ready for the Hindenburg in 24 hours. But here is a little mystery. Do you recall that device our Captain Fedorov mentioned, the one capable of decoding German Enigma Naval traffic? Well we have been doing that, and I am now told that we have another order that purports to send the German flotilla off in quite another direction. T
hey are ordered to steam west!”

  “West? For Gibraltar? Most surprising. I worry enough to think they might be heading east again, though now that Valiant and Nelson finally made it round the cape to reinforce Cunningham’s fleet here, I’ve been sleeping a bit more easily. I wanted both the Nelson class vessels, but Rodney had other business, or so the Admiralty informed me. I had to strip most of Somerville’s firepower from Force H, but we’ll get him some help soon enough from Home Fleet. Now this news is most disturbing. The Germans can only be making for Gibraltar, and anything they do after they get there will be my next little nightmare. I’m afraid I can’t allow myself to become possessed by the burden of trying to sort out this entire war, Admiral. I understand what you must feel, but you may wish to take that as friendly advice. One thing at a time. In this news comes one small piece of this war that will soon be within my charge. If the Hindenburg moves west for Gibraltar, then I must go west as well. Somerville’s Force H is in no shape to handle a ship like that, and let us not forget the Bismarck either. This bit of lemon has certainly soured my tea.”

  “Go west? Through the Mediterranean? Surely you mean you must go South around the cape.”

  “That will be a three week affair. By the time I get into the Atlantic, Hindenburg will have raised hell and will be long gone. I must signal Home Fleet at once. Holland is about to have his hands full, but Somerville with his Force H will be the man of the hour. Yet his main body is well south off the Canary Islands. He’ll need to move at once.”

  “And your ship?”

  Tovey bit his lip. “I know I may be an old fool, but I’m looking at making a run west.”

  “Through the straits of Gibraltar?”

  “I know it sounds like madness, but this ship has damn good armor, and the speed to run like the wind. Yes, the enemy will have air power at Gibraltar. That, I suppose, is my worst problem if I attempt this.”

  “But it is over 3000 kilometers east to Gibraltar from here, and that takes you under enemy air power for most of that distance. They’ll have planes on Sicily, Malta, possibly all along the French African coast.”