Kirov II: Cauldron Of Fire (Kirov Series) (18 page)

The public
never knew about it, as the whole incident was a closely guarded secret, spun
out instead as a dastardly combined German U-boat and surface raider attack on
a neutral American naval task force. Few knew all the details of the encounter,
and those that did lived with a terrible fear those next six months. They
waited, eyes white with fear, every time a flight of German bombers would
appear over London, thinking the next one would surely deliver another fatal
and catastrophic blow with this horror weapon, but it never came.

Sailors who
had been involved in the battle spread rumors in spite of warning to hush the
matter, and the fleet soon came to believe that the Germans were developing fearsome
new naval weapons to counter the Royal Navy’s advantage at sea. But they were
never seen again. Even in skirmishes with the last big German battleship, the
Tirpitz
,
lurking in the cold icy water of the Norwegian Sea where this strange raider
had first been spotted, there was no further deployment of the “wonder weapons”
this ship has used with such deadly effect.

Weeks became
months, and became a long year. All the information, Admiralty reports,
interviews with senior officers in command and individual ship diaries, along
with all their signals logs had been bundled, collected, classified, and
coalesced under one file—“
the
file” as Turing had once called it—and a
copy was still here, sitting right there in Hut Four with a plain white
typewritten label on the box that read simply: “GERONIMO”.

Something in
the feeling that lodged in his gut sent Turing right to this very file, and he
opened the box with some trepidation, reaching first for the sheaf of photo
samples that had been obtained— all too few considering the resources that had
been thrown at this raider. He took the best of them out, remembering how he
had squinted and stared at it when he first saw the image a year ago, and how
he had noted the shadow of a man standing there on the long foredeck to work
out the scale and length of the ship. Now he held the photo in his left hand,
and compared it to the new arrival in his right. He stared at them, for a very
long time, his eyes darkening further as he studied them both under a
magnifying glass. Then he sealed up the box and walked briskly back to his desk
and picked up a telephone.

“Special line,”
he said tersely. “Admiralty.”

“Right
away, sir.”
A
switchboard operator returned, and he was soon patched through on an encrypted
channel. There was a brief delay, that seemed like long minutes to Turing, and
in time a voice answered on the other end.

“Admiralty,
special operations and intelligence.”

He
identified himself, saying simply “Turing, Hut Four. Geronimo. I repeat.
Geronimo.”

There was a
pause, a very long pause it seemed. Then the voice said in quiet confirmation.
“Very
good sir. Geronimo. I’ll pass it on to the proper authority.”

In the
early
morning hours
of August 12, 1942 a telephone rang in the personal quarters of Admiral and
Commander-in Chief, Home Fleet, John Tovey. Its strident alarm roused him from
much needed sleep, and he groped fitfully for the receiver on his nightstand,
finally grasping it and muttering an irritated “yes?” that was clearly tinged
with “how dare you.” Yet he knew, on one level of his still sleep fogged mind,
that he would not be receiving a call at this hour without real urgency behind
it.

What could
it possibly be this time, he groped? Home Fleet had no operations in progress. The
Dieppe Operation was not yet teed up. Operation Pedestal was not in his
purview. The only thing on his calendar was the laborious agony of hosting the
Turkish Ambassador and Naval Attaché aboard
King George V
tomorrow. All Russian
convoys were suspended after the disaster of convoy PQ 17 and also because of
the transfer of Home Fleet units to the Mediterranean for Operation Pedestal.
He had received the bad news concerning HMS
Eagle
before he turned in
for the night. What more could have happened? Good God, he thought suddenly.
Don’t tell me they’ve put another carrier at the bottom of the sea—or even one
of the battleships.

“Yes, John
Tovey. What is it?” This time there was less irritation and more accommodation
in his voice.

“Admiralty
intelligence on the line sir. Please hold while we secure the connection.”
Tovey waited in the darkness of his
quarters, dreading the inevitable bad news. It was far too early to hear any
good news concerning the only major operation they had going now in the Med. So
it had to be bad. What else?

The line
cleared. He heard a low tone indicating an encrypted connection had been
established. Then a voice came on the line with a single word, and his heart
seemed to skip a beat when he heard it.
“Geronimo.”

There was a
long silence while the other party waited, and Tovey realized the caller was needing
his confirmation that the codeword was received and understood. “Very well,” he
said haltingly. “Geronimo…. Has First Sea Lord Admiral Pound been notified?”

“Yes sir,
and Admiralty would like to request your participation in a meeting this
morning at zero 8:00 hours, sir. The usual location. A Fleet Air Arm plane will
be waiting for you at Hatston in…one hour, sir. I’m very sorry for the short
notice, but we only just received this. Home Fleet staff has been advised that
you have been taken ill and will not be able to receive the Turkish Ambassador
this morning at Scapa Flow.”

“I will
confirm my attendance now—anything else?”

“No sir,
that is all.”

That was
quite enough, thought Tovey as he hung up the receiver. It seems he would not
have to suffer the boredom of formal protocols this afternoon after all.
Instead it would be Sir Dudley Pound and all the other hatbands and cuff
stripes at the Admiralty after a long, cold flight to London. Yet the nature of
the call—that single word known to so very few—filled him with dread and
foreboding. Intelligence has got their mitts on something new, he thought. What
could it be?

He eased out
of his bed, reaching for the light. There was very little time to waste if he
was going to catch his plane at the appointed hour. God help us if there’s been
another ‘incident,’ he thought, thinking that word so completely inadequate for
what he and his men had gone through in the North Atlantic…well…a year ago,
wasn’t it? Yes, a full year, almost to the day.

They put
him
on a fast Coastal
Command Beaufighter, which was no surprise if they wanted to get him to the
Admiralty in good time. The plane climbed through the typical shroud of low
lying fog and up into a drab pre-dawn sky, the throttle opening up to near full
power for most of the 500 mile run in. They landed at a little used RAF
station, as close to Whitehall as possible, but one requiring a short drive to
reach the Admiralty citadel. The grey dawn was breaking by the time Tovey’s car
reached his destination, and he was all of thirty minutes early, working his
way in through security to eventually reach the citadel command center of the
Admiralty, Special conference room 1. The door was plainly marked: MOST SECRET
– AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

A solitary
Marine guard stood to attention and saluted as he approached. When Tovey had
returned the salute, the guard turned, knocked quietly on the door with a white
gloved hand, then opened it for the admiral, standing stiffly to attention
again as Tovey entered. The door was pulled quietly closed behind him, and he
crossed the antechamber, opening the inner door to find four other men seated
at the conference table. The guest list was not surprising. First Sea Lord, Sir
Dudley Pound sat at the head of the table, flanked by his Second Sea Lord Sir
William Whitworth and then Tovey’s old friend Sir Frederick Wake-Walker, now Third
Sea Lord. The fourth man was not in uniform. He wore dark pressed trousers,
white shirt under a fine knit vest and a grey tweed jacket. His tie looked over
worn and ill tied, as though he threw it on as an afterthought. A dash of
straight brown hair fell on his forehead above coal dark eyes, bright with
fire.

The men
stood to greet him, and Admiral Pound extended an arm as they exchanged
handshakes. He made the introduction. “I can see you were surprised to see a
man in civilian clothing in these chambers, Admiral,” he said warmly. “May I
introduce Professor Alan Turing, called in this morning from Bletchley Park.”

“My
pleasure,” said Tovey as he shook the man’s hand. “If I understand correctly,
you led the decryption effort for German Navy Enigma traffic?”

“I did my
part, sir,” said Turing, his voice high and thin. “The chaps in Hut Eight had a
good deal to do with sorting it all out.”

“Well it’s
been a godsend, in more ways than you can imagine. First rate, but I’m inclined
to think that we’ve just bit into a fairly salty cracker considering the number
of stripes in this room.”

Pound got
right to the point, “Professor Turing received some gun camera footage taken by
a Coastal Command Beaufighter at mid-day yesterday. Air Vice Marshall Park of
the Malta Air Defense had a look at it and thought he better send in on to
Gibraltar, where it was received at 17:00 hours and just happened to catch the
last plane out an hour later. It’s a miracle it got in to Bletchley Park as soon
as it did. I’m to understand that Park also phoned ahead and set a watch on the
parcel, putting the spurs to it, if you will. Just our good fortune that
Professor Turing was also working very late last night, and round midnight he
had a look at the footage and made a rather alarming deduction.” The Admiral
gestured to the chairs as all the men seated themselves.

Tovey’s
heart sank as he knew from the code word he had received what the general
subject of this meeting was to be about. Admiral Pound settled in, and then extended
a hand to Turing, inviting him to take the floor.

The young
man cleared his throat. “Well gentlemen,” he began, his eyes widening a bit as
he spoke, “it was a simple enough request for identification of a vessel
sighted in the Tyrrhenian Sea yesterday. There were two photos, he pushed a
file over to Admiral Pound, “and I’ve taken the liberty of including
photography taken of the
Geronimo
raider incident last August as well. I
ran the footage and something about the look of this ship just set my stomach
turning—considering the impact
Geronimo
had on our operations.”

Pound had
seen the photos and he passed them to Whitworth on his right, who studied them
closely, a look of intense interest on his dignified features. He had been in
the Royal Navy since the turn of the century and had commanded the
Battlecruiser Squadron with its flagship HMS
Hood
in the first years of
the war. No stranger to combat at sea, his flag was on the battlecruiser
Renown
when he mixed it up with the German raiders
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
in the Norwegian Sea, besting both ships in the action and driving them off to
lick their wounds. Just a few weeks before
Bismarck
sortied, he had been
recalled from
Hood
to the Admiralty to take up a new post as Lord
Commissioner of the Admiralty and Second Sea Lord. The loss of
Hood
days
later was a shock to him, and he realized the change of command may have very
well saved his own life, though he still regretted not being with his ship when
she made her last desperate voyage. He ran a hand through his grey-white hair,
high on his forehead now, but still full.

Whitworth
passed the photos to Wake-Walker, a man who’s career had been dogged with some
misfortune, though it did not impede his steady rise in the ranks to his
present position as Third Sea Lord. He had been found liable for mishandling
his ship, then HMS
Dragon
, in 1934. Last year during the hunt for the
Bismarck
Admiral Pound had faulted him severely after the sinking of
Hood
for not
re-engaging with
Norfolk
,
Suffolk
and
Prince of Wales
. In
that incident Tovey had to come to his defense and threatened resignation if
charges were brought forward, saying he would sit as a defense witness in any
proceeding brought against Wake-Walker. The matter was eventually dropped.
Then, scarcely a few months later, it had been Wake-Walker’s carrier Force P
that had first sighted, shadowed and engaged the
Geronimo
raider, which
is why he took particular interest in the photos, staring at them a long time
before he gave them over to Admiral Tovey.

“Please note
the antennae situated on the secondary mast, on both photos,” said Turing. “See
how the panels are tilted at the same angle. Some thirty degrees off the
vertical? That was one similarity that immediately caught my eye.”

Tovey looked
up, somewhat surprised. “You believe the Italians have mounted radar sets on
their capital ships—perhaps technology given them by the Germans?”

“That was
what I suggested,” said Admiral Pound. “It’s clear that this could not possibly
be a German ship.”

“My pardon,
sir,” said Turing, “But isn’t that what we deduced a year ago—that the
Geronimo
raider could not have possibly been anything in the German inventory?” They had
scoured every harbor, every shipyard, and came to the conclusion that the ship
they had faced a year ago in the North Atlantic had been a pariah. Every other
known ship in the German Navy that could have exhibited its speed, and
characteristics had been accounted for. Yet this ship was a complete mystery.
How it could have been built by the Germans without being seen and documented
by Royal Navy Intelligence was a matter of lengthy discussion, and it had
forced the Boys at Bletchley Park to review reams of signals traffic for months
after. Yet they had found nothing whatsoever that in any way hinted at the
existence of the ship, let alone the weaponry it deployed and used with such
dramatic effect.