“Oh, he’s still rabble-rousing,” Irina said. The gentleman, Leon Trotsky, had been attempting to visit old allies who had been placed outside Stalin’s power structure. Building cells of allies within Moscow was a slow process, even with the leaflets taunting the NKVD. “Don’t you want to know what HQ said?”
Natasha nodded. “What did they say?”
“They’re sending in more people to the drop zone,” Irina said. “They’ll have new supplies; they want us to start bugging the Kremlin.”
Natasha chuckled. British bugs were undetectable by anything the NKVD had; she was confident that they could have bugged Stalin in the bath. The only problem had been the tiny amount of bugs that they had been able to bring with them into Russia. Now that they had a secured base, they could proceed.
“They also want us to become more ambitious in recruiting new agents,” Irina said. “Apparently, the Americans have invaded Norway, and they want the Communists distracted.”
“The news reported massive British tank losses,” Natasha said. “Who would have thought it; Pravda doesn’t live up to its name.” She chuckled. “We’re working on it,” she said. “The problem, of course, is recruiting people willing to risk everything to challenge Stalin.”
Irina waved a hand around the room, taking in the entire city. “You’d think that thousands would be willing,” she said.
“You’re too young,” Natasha said, not tenderly. “Now, do try to look as if I’ve beaten you, dear girl. We have to look real, remember?”
Irina rubbed her behind playfully. “There is such a thing as trying too hard,” she said.
SS Moskva
Nr France
5th June 1941
It was one of the curious legal fictions that made war so difficult to fight when there were more than two nations around. The SS Moskva, a large freighter, was crewed by Russians and operated by the Russian Merchant Marine, but it was flying a Portuguese flag, simply to avoid being blown out of the water by the Royal Navy. It’s long voyages, from Archangel to Lisbon to America, kept it busy, transporting the handful of Russian exports and collecting some imports from America.
The Portuguese position on the matter was that the Moskva could sail where it liked, a position mandated by the presence of German allies in Spain. The British position was that they had the right to search the Moskva on general principles, and if it was smuggling anything they objected to they had the right to confiscate the ship. So far, despite several searches, the Royal Navy hadn’t found anything… much to the relief of the neutral Portuguese.
Captain Yuri Padorin lifted a single eyebrow as the lookout shouted a warning. They were far too close to France for safety – even though the Germans were allies of the motherland – but it was the only way to avoid the dangers of British torpedoes. The trans-Atlantic run was across empty ocean, but at least the British knew what they were and generally ignored them – after having made them run on the longest direct course.
“Captain, boats coming in,” the lookout shouted. Padorin glared into the semi-darkness; Moskva was brightly lit, as required by neutrality rules. The strange boats weren’t flying any flags… and he felt a sudden trickle of fear.
“Ahoy, Moskva,” a man shouted, in accented Russian. “Coming aboard!”
“Come about,” Padorin ordered. “Allow them to board.”
The boats closed in and he cursed suddenly, each of them was carrying a squadron of black-garbed storm troopers. As the SS men scrambled up the side of the ship, Padorin found himself held at gunpoint by the leader.
“I am Obersturmbannfuehrer Kortig,” the leader said. “You and your crew have been selected for a mission.”
Padorin glared wordlessly at him as the SS men rounded up the crew. Some of the Germans had clearly prepared for the mission; they were taking control of the ship very quickly. His crew were forced to kneel on the deck, their hands bound and tied to the side of the ship.
“This is piracy,” he managed to say, finally. “Our nations are allies.”
“Yes, and you have been selected for the mission,” the SS officer said. “You have a choice; you can obey lawful orders, or you will be handed over to the NKVD.
The French port had been worked over by the British RAF, several times, but there was enough left to allow the Russian ship to dock. Obersturmbannfuehrer Kortig watched as the crew – apart from a handful of people – were moved into shore barracks, where they would later be terminated.
Subhumans, he thought, as the Slavic features of the Russian captain grew longer and longer, watching what was being brought onboard his vessel. Apart from the required components for the special weapon, the Moskva was being loaded to the gunnels with high explosive, enough to make the vessel sink lower in the water. The bigger the blast, the better, he’d been told, and as a faithful follower of the Fuhrer, Obersturmbannfuehrer Kortig accepted his fate.
He chuckled, once. He was quite certain that the Americans would not prove quite so accepting of the costs of the war… once it had touched their motherland.
Chapter Thirty-Four: A Stillness Upon the Sea
Government House
Canberra, Australia
6th June 1941
The red blob on the computer-generated map in the conference room had started shrinking five days ago. Now, the red icons near Darwin had been removed into what Colonel Philip Hawkinson had described as the electronic equivalent of a rubbish bin. He’d spoken at great length about multiple rewritings and quantum disruptions, even something called direct hard drive virtual destruction, and attempted to explain why all the technobabble – a word that had caught on in Australia – meant that there was no way that the data could be recovered.
For Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, it meant that the largest Japanese invasion force had been removed from his continent. For the moment, everyone in Australia was grateful; they might even see their way to re-electing him in the coming election. It had been delayed for the war, but as soon as the final Japanese troops at Cape York were removed, his party would begin pressing for elections, hoping to ride the flush of victory. He’d spent a happy hour discussing the issues with Hawkinson, learning what the future held for democracy, and wondering about the republican movement that would appear in the future.
“The final count is in,” Hawkinson said, interrupting his musings. “We have destroyed nearly thirty tanks and countless lorries, at no cost to ourselves. In addition, we’ve captured nearly five thousand Japanese and shoved them in POW camps.”
“How many did they bring?” Menzies asked. “How many did we kill?”
“They brought around eighty thousand to that battle,” Hawkinson said. “The fools put them outside any possible logistic support.”
“You didn’t answer the other question,” Menzies said softly. “We killed seventy-five thousand Japanese?”
“Perhaps,” Hawkinson said. “We killed thousands of them, yes. Hundreds more died on the trek to Darwin, victims of their own criminal government. Hundreds died in the crossing; the Japanese didn’t believe in the submarines, or even sailing in convoy.”