John Schettler - Men of War

The longer Maud sat with these men the more he was certain of that. They were liars, both of them, and most likely up to no good. Rybakov he could dismiss. He seemed to be what he claimed, but not this Orlov. No, this man had a military air about him. His story had more holes in it than a sieve, and he had a most unusual pistol in his possession. His jacket, too, had a military cut to it, and an odd way of catching the light. He did not fail to note the buttons at each shoulder that were clearly there to mount missing rank insignia, though he said nothing of this. The jacket’s collar also had places to mount pips. Yes, this man was an officer, and he was sure of it as he tapped his Hawthorne walking stick on the deck, concluding his interview.

He had come to suspect that Orlov was probably in some intelligence arm or another. Spain had a way of drawing these sorts like maggots on meat as the war now entered its fifth year. The British SIS had men there, as did the Abwehr, the French underground, the Vichy French, the Italians, and there was still an odd mix of shadowy groups in Spain itself, a remnant of their recent civil war. It would not surprise him to learn that this Orlov was a Russian spy, and with that thought in mind he decided to hold these men in a locked room below decks, and have them sent over to British intelligence in Gibraltar. As soon as they made port, he would make a call once they tied off in the harbor, and have a squad sent over to pick the men up. He would let them know that Orlov was clearly not what he professed to be. Let the boys at MI6 have a look at them, he thought. I’ve enough on my plate as it stands.

Gibraltarwas more than a vital harbor and airfield for the British it was their gateway to the Med itself, and one of the most vital bases in all the empire. Often thought impregnable, the ‘Rock’ was a source of constant anxiety to the British, who feared that any concerted attack might capture it in spite of all defensive measures. There were three major Spanish artillery batteries in range, one in North Africa at Mount Hacho, two others within five miles of the port near Algiceras. Over 30,000 Spanish troops were nearby on the mainland of Spain, and the British feared these could be reinforced by German troops to present an unstoppable siege force against the 15,000 men that could be garrisoned on the Rock.

A bastion of British Sea power for centuries, Gibraltar was the home of Force H under Admiral Somerville, and a nest for the British Special Intelligence Service, there to defend the vital base from saboteurs of every stripe. The Italians had been trying to bomb the place for years, and the night sky was often pierced by the long cold white fingers of search lights during the air raids. By day the RAF kept a watch on the Rock and discouraged such visitations, but the enemy tired to subvert operations there by other means as well.

Italian frogmen from the Decima Flottiglia MAS mounted many operations against the harbor, secretly working out of a private estate at Villa Carmela about three kilometers up the Spanish coast, and then from the Italian tanker SS Olterra . They managed to get at a few merchant ships, but did little other harm, though their presence was also suspected as a means of infiltrating agents and saboteurs into Gibraltar.

To improve the defenses, a warren of tunnels and caves, were drilled into the limestone. Deep beneath the Rock itself was an entire city in a series of tunnels and caves bored out by British and Canadian engineers with diamond tipped drills. It had its own power station, hospitals, troop barracks, and water and food supplies capable of supporting up to 30,000 troops. In fact, the Rock had more miles of tunnels underground than it had roads above.

It was into one of these long, labyrinthine tunnels that Orlov and Rybakov were taken, to a hidden bunker operated by the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. They, too, had a very long look at the pistol Orlov had been carrying, and a lot of questions for him after they managed to locate a man from the Russian liaison in the MIL(R) section and get him in as a translator. It was not long before they called in men from other branches of their intelligence services, Defense, the Technical Group at MI10, Military Security, Eastern European Experts from MI3.

Orlov’s story was not adding up. His weapon was most unusual, and the peculiar scope it mounted soon astounded them when it emitted a thin, narrow beam of greenish light the like of which they had never seen. MI6 had more than a drawer full of its own gadgets: watches, rings, key chains, tie clips, special shoes, but this one trumped them all. Orlov’s explanation that it was simply a flash light did not wash. It only deepened their suspicions about this man and his pistol.

Intelligence services had been more than interested in anything Russian in the waters around Gibraltar ever since the remarkable “incident” involving a strange warship that had set the whole Royal Navy charging to the scene the previous August. There had been a battle off the southern coast of Spain involving the battleships Rodney and Nelson in the covering force for Operation Pedestal, and it was now classified information, and very hush, hush. The scuttlebutt had been that a disaffected sea captain had sailed the battlecruiser Strausbourg from Toulon to try and put some steel in the backbone of Vichy French forces prior to the Torch landings in North Africa. But there were few men of any experience who could believe that single ship could have put damage on both British battleships as it obviously did, and even fewer men in MI6 who bought the story—until they were told in no uncertain terms that that is exactly the line they were to hold to on the matter.

Rumors were that the ship was not French after all, but Russian, and an Able Seaman who claimed he had been present for a meeting between the Admiral of the rogue ship and Admiral John Tovey was suddenly reported missing one day. No more was said about the incident.

The ship, whatever it was, had been “escorted” to St. Helena for the duration of the war. That was another official line, though strange rumors had begun to circulate about it as well. When the veteran diver Lt. Commander Lionel Crabb had been summarily called to special duty and sent out to St. Helena, the rumors gathered even more steam.

Crabb, called simply “Buster” by the Americans on the Rock, was an amiable and experienced diver who had been instrumental in countering the efforts of Italian frogmen against ships in the harbor. He made regular dives to check for the placement of limpet mines on ships, winning him a George Medal and a promotion for his work. Now the Admiralty wanted him to take a good long look at the seabed around St. Helena, where it was rumored the mysterious ship had vanished in a bank of fog in late August, just as it arrived under escort by a pair of fast cruisers. He found nothing at all, not the slightest trace of any wreckage of disturbance of the sea bed, though that report was buried and Crabb was told never to speak a word of it.

He obeyed that order for years until he let slip in a bar one night in 1956 that there had been nothing on the seabed off St. Helena even remotely resembling the wreckage of a ship. Days later Crabb would disappear while again diving to investigate the propeller assembly of another Soviet ship, the cruiser Ordzhonikidze that transported Nikita Khrushchev on a diplomatic mission to the UK.

So matters ‘Russian’ were suddenly given a special sensitivity in MI6, particularly at a vital base like Gibraltar. Orlov’s strange appearance immediately got the attention of a good many branches of the intelligence service, and he was soon locked away in a cave, deep below the Rock.