John Schettler - Hammer of God

“Yes, we will,” said Wavell. “We’ve Benghazi to take and hold, Rommel to watch. Beyond that I have the Golden Square and this rebellion in Iraq to worry about, and the situation of the Vichy French in Syria. The Prime Minister keeps nudging me in the ribs about Rhodes, and he’s still lashing me over the lack of support for Greece.”

“If I may, sir,” Fedorov spoke again. “I hate to add insult to injury, but Greece is a lost cause, as I argued earlier. No reinforcement of Greece could have made any difference there. It will be lost within the week, and Crete will soon follow.”

“Crete?” said Wavell. “I’ve received no hard intelligence on that, though I’ve certainly considered that the place is vulnerable.”

“In the history we know it was strongly attacked by German airborne forces, and barely lasted ten days before the order was given to evacuate. That was even with several brigades sent, and subsequently evacuated from Greece, already reinforcing the garrison there. You would not have that 2nd New Zealand Division in hand now if that had been done. Those troops are here, and not on Crete, and so the situation on the island is even more in jeopardy. Perhaps Mister Churchill’s thinking could be counseled by our knowledge of how this war once played out. This is not to say we are omniscient, only that we can provide a useful guidepost as to what the German war plan might soon be, and what their capabilities are. Yet we are speculating. Crete may be next on their list, but they are also certainly planning a major operation against Soviet Russia, or even Turkey.”

“Churchill will demand we hold Crete,” said Wavell.

“Unless he can be persuaded that it is a lost cause,” said Fedorov. “Could you move a full division there now? Even if you did that, the Germans would prevail. They will have three divisions for immediate use, two airborne and one mountain division to come by sea. Your Royal Navy had something to say about their arrival schedule, but we don’t know what will happen this time around. We could make the effort, but the island held for only ten days, and I believe that will be the most likely outcome, no matter what we do.”

“We still have good inventory on our air defense missiles.” Elena Fairchild had been listening closely, assessing the situation, but now she spoke for the first time. “We could hamper the air drop by targeting the transport planes. Would that help?”

Fedorov looked over his shoulder, speaking in Russian quickly to Nikolin, who translated.

“My Captain asks exactly how many Surface to Air missiles you still have?”

Fairchild had the details from MacRae before she left for this meeting, and was not shy about revealing them. “We have 26 Aster-30 and another 80 Aster-15 remaining. That’s 106 missiles.”

“And it would take a very good bite out of the enemy air operation, but the troops will be delivered by no less than 500 JU-52 transport planes. There will also be several hundred other planes in support, Ju-87s, Bf-109s, Bf-110s, He-111s and Do-17s. The Germans assembled over 1100 planes for this operation. Even if you used every missile you had, they would still have over ninety percent of that left.”

“A rather grim assessment,” said Tovey.

“Air power,” said Volsky. “That has long been my main concern here. I believe we can prevail at sea, but the enemy air power is their real strength.”

“Well,” said Tovey. “Our best course of action is to see to this business with Churchill first. He’ll have to weigh in on any further plans we make here, particularly anything in regards to Crete. You raise a good point, Captain Fedorov.”

“We’ll keep our ears to the ground on that situation,” said Wavell. “Churchill may already know more on that then we think. He has been feeding me Enigma decrypts. The information is spotty-we don’t get complete decrypts of these messages-but it does suggest a German plan is in the offing for Crete.”

“General,” said Fedorov. “I have a device in my cabin that can read the German enigma code to the letter. If you would entrust me with those messages, I can decode them reliably.”

Wavell raised an eyebrow at that. “You can decode them?”

“Yes. The device I have was based on the work of your own Bletchley Park, except I have the benefit of their entire wartime effort in that regard, and all the work that followed it. I have already used it to decode German fleet orders earlier in the Atlantic. I can do the same now regarding their intentions here.”

“So you’ve stolen our Mister Turing’s thunder,” said Tovey with a smile. “He would be most gratified to learn that.”

“It may not be wise that he should ever know,” said Fedorov. “It might impede his own effort at decryption, and that could cause… complications. Do you see how knowledge of our real identity an capabilities is dangerous? What if Mister Turing simply suggests that I lend him my device? Then he would never do the work that allows that device to even function! We face a paradox in that, and there is a darkness there that I would not like to contemplate at the moment.”

“Paradox, paradox,” said Director Kamenski. “Your warning is well given, Mister Fedorov. Every disclosure we make, every bit of knowledge we let slip, every missile and round we fire is ripping at the history we once knew, and shredding it. I daresay Mother Time is not happy about this, and there will be consequences, complications as you put it. We have already seen what our earlier interventions have done to this world. Yet we are here! The temptation to try to act, and control the course of events, is overwhelming. Yet we must be very careful. It was your own British historian, a Mister Butterfield, that put this very well when he said: ‘ The hardest strokes of heaven fall in history upon those who imagine that they can control things.’ Mister Fedorov is correct. We are not omniscient, and we must proceed with caution and careful planning here. For mistakes are easily made, and in that we may reap the whirlwind of our own doom.”

Tovey’s message to Churchill was pointed enough to create a sense of urgency, yet with a hint of mystery that aimed to hook the Prime Minister’s curiosity. After a full report on the naval engagements recently fought, and the current situation, he strongly urged that the planned “Tiger” convoy not attempt to transit the Mediterranean. This allowed him to take up the matter of Wavell’s need for armor, and he indicated a most startling development had occurred that was directly related to the victory achieved in the Western Desert, and one that required the Prime Minister’s immediate personal attention-a matter of the highest level of secrecy.

Churchill sat with that for some time, his eye straying over the words even as he held the image of Tovey himself in his mind. “…a discovery of the greatest importance in the southern desert…”

What could that possibly be about? And I’m urged to come forthwith to witness this development personally, as no description would be adequate or advisable given the supreme importance of this moment in the history of our nation. Laying it on a bit thick, isn’t he? Just who was supposed to be the Prime Minister here? In one breath this man dismisses my plan for the Tiger convoy, gives brief lip service to the need to interdict Tripoli, and then summarily summons me to a secret meeting in Egypt concerning this discovery. What, have they been raiding ancient ruins and tombs in Luxor? Yet there were the signatures lined up in endorsement, Wavell, O’Connor, Cunningham, Tovey and two others that he did not recognize, a man named Volsky and another named Fairchild. That was a good family name, but he could think of no one in the current government in any position that mattered with that name, but this only added to the mystery at the heart of the Admiral’s message.