“Tricky unless the forts are taken out first,” Dwynn replied thoughtfully. A battleship could go up the fjord – if the captain was willing to risk a torpedo attack. The Norwegians had done that to the Germans in 1940, and Dwynn saw no reason to assume that the Germans could not do the same. “They’ve probably mined the fiord as well.”
“Not very well if they’re still letting fishermen out,” Chang said. “Didn’t the Sergeant find a job on one of the ships?”
Dwynn nodded. Forging the German identity papers had been easy. “Yes,” he said. “They might just be testing the minefields.” He chuckled. “If there are minefields, but I don’t think that we can rely on them overlooking that little detail.”
Chang jumped as a warning tone sounded. The little hut was isolated, but the team had taken care to scatter sensors around, watching for intruders. Dwynn grabbed his rifle, preparing to fight, before Chang chuckled. “It’s just Corporal Plummer,” he said.
“Good,” Dwynn said. He glared at the map. “I think they’ll be landing directly on the islands, which is going to be hazardous enough, and then marching overland to Bergen… except there are no bridges.”
“Send the first troops to clear the islands, then send in the minesweepers,” Chang suggested, as Plummer entered the cabin. “Morning, bastard.”
“Up yours,” Plummer replied. If he’d said anything else, the two men would have known that something was wrong. “Nothing much to report; there’s been no major change in German dispositions.”
Dwynn nodded. They’d estimated that the Wehrmacht had roughly an infantry division – around 17’000 men – in the region, but it had been parcelled out over the islands and Bergen itself. Hitler clearly didn’t consider Norway important; he’d used an older unit, with 1939-era equipment.
“Then we’d better inform the PJHQ,” he said. One of their first actions had been to set up a rely network; they could now transmit directly home. “You’ve been dumping all the data to them?”
“Teach grandma to suck eggs,” Chang said wryly. “Yes, sir; I have transmitted everything the sensors have recorded back to him.”
Dwynn grinned. How could the Germans possibility imagine the horde of high-tech gadgets that they’d been deploying around Bergen? Even if they had obtained some intelligence through their spies in America, how could they find them? The Germans might have been proud of the landline running through the Danish Sea – which had an unpronounceable name – but how could they know that the line had been tapped under the water?
“Excellent,” he said. “Let them know what we’ve found… and perhaps we can get back home.”
The Kremlin
Moscow, Russia
6th May 1941
Visiting the office of the man hailed as the saviour of communism was always a strain, but today it was worse than usual. Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, Foreign Minister of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, had come to dread entering the room.
“The Finns are proving intransigent, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich,” Stalin said, without preamble. The invasion force in Finland had been cut down sharply as soon as the Finnish Army had been crushed – and then reinforced as the size and power of Finnish resistance became clear. “The British are aiding them.”
Molotov kept his face impassive. It was far more certain, he felt, that it was the Germans that were keeping the Finns afloat, working through their Swedish allies. After all, the Germans would hardly allow the British to sail supply convoys through the Baltic, would they?
“They must be punished,” Stalin said, and Molotov felt his heart fall. After the British had used a nuclear weapon in Romania, territory the Russians had long eyed, Stalin’s paranoia had reached new heights. Countless people who might have committed treason in the future had been executed, or sent to the gulags, and the efforts to exterminate the Muslims in the south had been intensified. The NKVD had even worked with the SS, exterminating… unwanted populations in the most brutal ways. Zhukov’s road, the massive logistics chain leading down through Georgia into Iran, had been built with the blood and sweat of the natives.
“The dialect will triumph,” Molotov said finally, aware of Stalin’s growing impatience. “Georgy Konstantinovich is preparing the new offensives now, to be launched in a week.”
“I want them launched today,” Stalin said, and Molotov quailed. “The Americans are in the war against the Germans, but how long will it be before the capitalists turn their attention to us?”
Molotov allowed himself a worried frown. Stalin’s intelligence was more rat bastard cunning than analytical, but there was no denying his ability to see patterns. The Americans knew that Stalin would have gotten the bomb – and would now get it earlier – and their Polish and Finnish lobbies were screaming for action against the Soviet Union as well as the Reich. Once Germany was defeated – with Adolf Hitler running the Reich Molotov had no doubt that that would be the outcome – the capitalists would have bases right at the frontiers of the motherland. It had been the motive behind seizing Iran… until the British had used a nuke.
Molotov shuddered. If the British weren’t scared of their own weapons, the war would have been over within weeks… and the Axis would have lost. It was the reason why the offensive had been slowed down – officially it was for logistics reasons and there was no denying that Zhukov’s logistics had been helped terribly – and why Stalin had dilly-dallied for three months.
Georgy Konstantinovich had been furious about it, although no one expressed such sentiments openly. A quirked eyebrow at the wrong time could get a man in the gulag; what would questioning Stalin’s judgment openly do? Still… if they’d pressed their own offensive, instead of focusing effort on exterminating the forerunners of the mad mullahs, they might have snatched all of the Middle East. Instead of using the German Ally, Subhas Chandra Bose, they could have marched into India themselves and smashed the Raj forever.
“Well, Comrade Vyacheslav Mikhailovich?” Stalin enquired. Molotov hastily dragged his attention back to the discussion. “How will the Americans react to our offensive?”
Molotov hid his sudden concern. “I hardly think that they will care, Comrade,” he said, knowing that the presumption of equality was nonsense. “The Middle East is strictly a British preserve, while the Indian… morass is even more so. The Americans are not yet dependent upon the oil wells” – and may never become so, he added silently – “and are nervous about the British rebuilding their tottering empire.”
He chuckled. “And as for the Indians, they haven’t been able to decide anything since the future arrived and the Japanese launched their offensive.” He didn’t bother to discuss the essential Japanese failure, or the forces being built up in the Far East for the day of reckoning. “They won’t have time to take action, will they?”
Stalin smiled. “Without the Americans, we will force the British out of their empire,” he said. “By now, some of our more… unpleasant weapons will have found their way into India. They should add to the panic and confusion… don’t you think?”
Molotov nodded. Inside, he was panicking. The British had been very clear on the subject; any use of a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ against them would draw a nuclear reaction. It had been the reason why Hitler had refused Stalin’s offer of some biological weapons to use against Britain, and the reason why he was scared. Biological weapons were uncontrollable by definition, and the invasion of Afghanistan had forced millions of people south, trying to flee the Soviets, often carrying their deaths with them.