Fraser nodded. “Has he told you who wins this damn war?”
“Yes, we pull through, though from my perspective, it will be a long hard slog before we get there.”
“That’s at least encouraging.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Tovey. “If all these other things never came to pass in his version of the war, then we might not be able to take his prediction to the bank just yet. In any case, we must never be so complacent as to think we have a sure thing on our hands here. I tell myself that every day, just to keep my mind sharp.” Tovey pointed to his forehead. “We could still lose this war, and must never forget that.”
“Alright then,” said Fraser. “Victorious and the old Ark go to Somerville, so let’s do the math. I’d say that would bring about 160 planes to the fight between the three carriers. That’s twice what we brought to cover the operation at Madagascar. Is that going to be enough?”
“It will have to do,” said Tovey. “Intelligence says the Japanese may have no more than 36 fighters on Ceylon now, but they could always send more from Rangoon, so we should go heavy with our own fighters. If you can get hold of any of those new American planes, all the better. With good intelligence, we’ll hopefully get in there without Japanese naval opposition. It seems they have their hands full with the Americans. A remarkable recovery they’ve made this year! They had six fleet carriers in the Pacific last year, lost four of them, and now, as the new year dawns, they still have five, and two new little hybrids to boot.”
“Interesting mathematics,” said Fraser. “If only we had that kind of shipbuilding capacity.”
“If wishes were horses,” said Tovey.
“Will the army bring enough to do the job?”
“16th and 29th Brigades—both for Colombo. That’s the place we want. The Japanese will have only their 21st Brigade there, so we’ll outnumber them two to one.”
“Numbers never seemed to matter before when we were up against the Japanese,” said Fraser with a cautionary tone.
“There’s still the 21st East African, 27th Rhodesian, and the 7th South African Motorized—three more Brigades at hand on Madagascar if we need them. They could also recall one of the good British brigades from the Burma sector. I’m told that front settled down a bit.”
“Seems adequate, and I assume we’ve got the shipping to lift all these troops?”
“We’ll make do,” said Tovey.
“Who’s to lead the invasion? Surely not the Rock of the East again. Not Montgomery.”
“No, he’s busy enough in the West these days. This time it goes to Slim, and I think they’ll work in Mountbatten. There’s another man who’ll support these crazy ideas for new aircraft carriers. I’m told he was even in on that plan to build one on an iceberg.”
Tovey was referring to a hair brained idea proposed by one Geoffrey Pike, Project Habbakuk. He literally proposed that an iceberg, natural or manmade, could be reinforced with a wood pulp material called Pykrete and even refrigerated to keep it from melting. Hangar space for planes and an air strip could be carved out, and motors attached so the “Bergship” could actually sail about on its own power, with a hull composed of 40 feet of ice on either side that was reinforced and deemed to be torpedo proof. Mountbatten would eventually pitch the project to Churchill, Roosevelt and Admiral King, drawing a pistol and shooting at a normal block of ice, which shattered, and then at one reinforced with Pykrete, which ricocheted off the block and almost struck Admiral King’s leg. None too fond of the British to begin with, the irascible King was not amused. It was later determined that the cost of a full-scale ship would exceed that of many conventional aircraft carriers, and Mountbatten discreetly withdrew from the project.
“Whether we build them on battleship hulls or ice bergs,” said Tovey, “I’m beginning to think that the more carriers we can put to sea, the better off we shall be. Since we aren’t likely to get our own naval rockets any time soon, planes will have to do, and we need to stop thinking like battleship commanders, and start thinking like aircraft carrier commanders. That’s what the Japanese taught Somerville, and I hope we’ve learned the lesson. I suppose these new carrier projects are a step in the right direction, but frankly, I’ll miss the day when it was just good steel, guns, and a little backbone in a battle at sea. When that Stuka pilot put his bomb on HMS Hood, he went and ruined everything.”
“That he did,” said Fraser. “And Pearl Harbor showed us just what might happen at Scapa Flow one day if the Germans ever catch us napping. Admiral, I think we’ll name this new hybrid carrier Superb, just as you’ve suggested. Then you can take her out yourself—the best of both worlds, guns, steel, and planes alike.”
“Indeed,” said Tovey, but he still liked his seat on the bridge of HMS Invincible, though it felt different now, particularly after that round from the Germans had nearly put an end to him. Thank God Admiral Volsky was there, he thought, his mind resting fondly on the man, and wishing he could sit down with him again and sort all this business out.
He did not know just how soon that would happen, for miles away, gliding beneath the cold arctic ice, a man was sitting on a stealthy submarine with more on his own mind than he could handle.
Chapter 6
Volsky awoke.
He never could sleep on a submarine. The dreams always bothered him, but nothing like this. He awoke with a start, sitting up with a gasp, as if he had stopped breathing in his sleep, and nearly hit his head on the bunk above. A bright light glared at him, and he blinked, holding up his hand to ward it off.
“Sorry to disturb you sir,” came a voice… He knew that voice, the quiet, steady tones, the sureness when it spoke. Then his eyes adjusted to the light, and he could see the other man’s face, framed in the open hatch to his room. It was Captain Gromyko.
“The officers were going to have a little New Year’s celebration in the wardroom, and we thought you might want to join us. If you’d rather sleep sir, that’s fine. Sorry to disturb you.”
Gromyko looked at him now, his face suddenly registering concern. “Are you alright sir?”
Was he alright?
His mind was spinning with sudden recollection. Gromyko… the submarine… Kazan…. The mission…. It was all coming back, a flood of images that washed over him like a tidal wave, saturating his mind in a confusing and disorienting rush. Yet the mission was over, was it not? They had found Karpov in the Sea of Japan, or at least they found the ship. They had slipped beneath it like an unseen denizen of the deep, and the workings of that arcane magic in the reactor room had saved the day… yes…. Rod-25. How could he be here now, back on the submarine; back on Kazan?
What had happened to all the days after that, returning to the ship, standing on the weather deck off the bridge and seeing the stain of blood there, Karpov’s blood…? Then Fedorov was at his side again, trusty Fedorov, and together the two of them led the ship and crew into June of 1940, but Kazan was nowhere to be found.
There had been battles, the meeting with Tovey in the Faeroes when the Admiral first came aboard Kirov, and it was all playing out in a strange new world—a world only made possible by the interventions they had made with the ship in the past. Where was that other world, the world where this same British Admiral chased me through the North Atlantic, he thought? Where was the world we found when we sailed into the Med, and tangled with the Italians, Germans and British alike? Where was the world that sent that Japanese plane crashing down onto the battle bridge, and saw the ship hounded and pursued by the relentless efficiency of the Imperial Japanese Navy?