“All things considered, Mister Wells, I find your actions and deployment entirely consistent with the guidelines for fighting instructions involving fleet action with a retiring enemy.”
“I wish we could have done more, sir,” said Wells, still beset with mixed feelings over the engagement.
“We all do, and I regret that I was unable to lend a much needed hand. The task assigned you was arduous, not only from a tactical standpoint but also considering the fact that you were asked to raise your hand in anger against a former friend and ally. We all felt the same way, Mister Wells. Most every senior command level officer in the Med expressed strong reservations over what we were ordered to do. I can imagine your stomach was in your throat when you received code ‘Anvil.’ To ask you to break formation, move out ahead of the battlefleet, and find and strike the enemy was a hard task, and it was one you performed admirably.”
“Thank you, Admiral, but I must point out that the bulk of the French fleet was able to reach Toulon safely in spite of our actions. Now look what has happened.”
“That may be so, but your tactical approach was correct. You followed section E guidelines regarding air striking force operations, to the letter I might add, by correctly attacking the rear enemy capital ships with the objective of reducing their speed. In this case your attack produced stronger results in the sinking of two battleships which would otherwise now be at large.”
“Yet the consequences, sir…”
“The consequences are not your consideration, Mister Wells. They were not my consideration either after Whitehall and the Admiralty had set these orders in stone. Had I come up on the French, my intention and effort would have been to do exactly what you accomplished. The French rejected all our fair terms. It was therefore our objective to sink those ships.”
“I understand, sir.”
Somerville gave Wells a long look, a sympathetic light in his eyes. He knew exactly what the younger man must be feeling now, that it was all on his shoulders, the burden of all the consequences that might result from this operation, the alienation of Vichy France and the deep feelings of resentment and ill will that this engagement would foster between former allies.
“I know you put men in the water yesterday, Wells, and a good many lost their lives. Take my advice and try not to think you put your hand on each one’s head and held the man under. This is war. It’s cruel, mindless violence at root, ever so carefully planned but yet wholly unreasonable. I will tell you that the Germans gave no quarter during the recent evacuation forced upon us. We lost a good many men, civilians too. I would be foolish to say we could put those French sailors on the scales to try and balance that. They were simply doing their duty, as you were. We did not want to make an enemy of them, but this war has done as much, and I’m afraid this is only just beginning. You will find yourself in similar circumstances again, Captain, perhaps even more trying. I know this is the second hard blow you’ve been dealt.”
“Sir?”
“I am aware that the ship you now Captain is only on the fleet active duty roster because of your actions in getting her to safe waters under equally trying circumstances. That was the hot fire of war, and you weathered it when you were on the anvil. This time you were the hammer. So you’ve seen both ends of it now, and that is what really shapes the metal of a man’s character. Stand proud, Mister Wells. That will be all.”
“Sir!” Wells saluted, feeling just a little better about what had happened, yet not knowing which was worse-to be on that anvil, or to be the hammer.
Life is a forge, he thought, and he put the matter out of his mind.
Alan Turing was having a very bad day. Thankfully his hay fever had abated somewhat, and he could at least breathe again. And he had managed to keep his coffee mug chained up until he wanted it. But the pressure was now mounting, as one intercept after another began to pile up on his desk, in a well named German naval code that was proving to be a real enigma.
Admiral Tovey had been on the hot seat at Whitehall over losses and damage to the Home Fleet in the recent duel with the Germans in the Denmark Strait. Questions had been asked about the W/T intercepts of German command level signals, and why they were not deciphered, but more so about the strange decision to parlay with the Admiral of a Russian cruiser-the very same ship that Peter Twinn had dropped in his lap with that handful of photographs. Now they wanted to know more, and Turing was back in the storeroom rummaging through boxes of old photo reconnaissance material. And that was when his day went completely bonkers.
How could we have missed the construction and commissioning of such a ship, he thought? They were saying that it must have been a secret project, possibly built in Odessa or the shipyards at Nikolayev South, also known as Soviet Shipyard No. 444. It was certainly not laid down in any of the Baltic shipyards, and we have no evidence to suggest that the Soviets could build a ship of that size at any of their northern ports. If it was laid down at Shipyard 444 then they damn well must have had a magician’s cloak over it the whole time.
I was never on ship watch. I’m here to sort through the signals intelligence and decipher the damn things. And that is all I’ll be doing for months now-going over anything they pile up from three and four years back to ferret out the trail on this ship. Surely there were orders, message traffic, commercial contracts, personnel assignments, materials acquisitions. It would simply be impossible to hide all that for very long. We should know about this ship, chapter and verse. But yet I find nothing; nothing at all in the archives here.
He stood up, frustrated, and ready to call it a long afternoon and go unchain his coffee mug. Then he saw it, the box tucked discretely away behind the last indexed photo box on the reconnaissance shelf. Someone got hasty, or very sloppy, he said to himself. Here they’ve gone and mislabeled a photo box. He stooped down, leaning in and wishing there was better light in the musty old storage room of the archive. Well, what is it then? He pulled the box out, sliding it in to an open space on the hard tiled floor, right beneath the bare light bulb hanging from a cord above.
We simply must find a better way to keep track of things. Now where does this belong? The box was very odd, and it left him feeling strangely unnerved. No label at all… Just stuck in here in a nook against the wall behind that entire indexed series of photo boxes, and taped up rather well.
Curiosity got the better of him now. If had always been one of his salient personality traits, or flaws-that persistent curiosity that so often accessorized the mind and character of a scientist and intellectual. Wondering about things was always the first step down the garden path to the roses of understanding. Now he wondered what he had dragged away from the old daddy long-legged spiders, layered in dust and looking like it wanted nothing more than to be left alone-for another century or two.
But to Alan Turning a closed box wanted opening, just as any puzzle or chess problem needed solving. He reached for the tape and had it off in a minute, slowly opening the lid to the box and setting it aside. A last bit of masking tape clung plaintively to one end of the lid as he did so, but Turing had his way.
Now what have we here, he said to himself, his curiosity redoubled? There was a nice fat row of well stuffed manila envelopes, typical of the sort they all used here to store files and reports and photos pertaining to one thing or another. This one did have a label, which he read, though it rang no bell in his mind as he did so. Must have been before my time here, he thought, though the writing did not look all that weathered. Strangely, each and every envelope bore the same label.