Kirov (26 page)

“Which
means we may have to assign more destroyer squadrons to convoy traffic from
this point forward, sir.”

“Indeed.”
The Admiral’s mood was darkening with the weather this morning. The war was
finally heating up. 1940 had seen little more than a few enterprising raids by
the pocket battleships
Graff Spee
and
Admiral Scheer
. They gave
his cruiser squadrons a fit for a time, and sunk well over 150,000 tons of
shipping before the first was sunk and the latter slipped back home to German
waters. Then came
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
, even more dangerous
ships. They were faster and more powerful than the pocket battleships, which
were really little more than heavy cruisers in Tovey's mind. Finally
Bismarck
decided to join the party and was thankfully sunk, but at great cost.

Now,
if the Germans were sending
Tirpitz
into the fray, they would again be escalating
the conflict to a whole new level. If that ship managed to get into the
Atlantic and link up with the other two battlecruisers at Brest, the Germans
would have the most formidable task force they had put to sea since Dogger
Bank. He had little doubt that this was what they had originally planned for
Bismarck
,
and perhaps they were out to have another go at it. He had no choice in the
matter now. He would have to put major warships out to sea again, throwing in
his last reserve to forestall any potential breakout by this new German raider,
whatever it was. What else did Admiral Raeder have in the cupboard, he
wondered? He’s planned this very well, because my cupboard is rather bare for
the moment.

Aside
from his flagship, all he had was
Repulse
and
Prince of Wales
in
hand, and the latter was sweeping the decks for this visit involving the Prime
Minister. He looked over his list… The only other battleship available was the
Revenge
,
presently at Halifax and scheduled join the
Royal Sovereign
for convoy
duty in the Indian Ocean. The latter was at the Clyde getting fitted out with
all the new radar sets and was not scheduled to have that work completed until
September. All of his active carriers were already up north with Wake-Walker. The
rest,
Illustrious
and
Formidable
, were in US harbors undergoing
repairs. He still had
Ark Royal
with Force H at Gibraltar, and
Hermes
in the Indian Ocean. Other than that, the only new carrier coming on line was
Indomitable,
just starting her sea trials last month.

Tovey
leaned back, stretching and scratching his head. “Well,” he said. “It looks
like I’m headed out to sea with
King George V
and
Repulse
then—and first thing in the morning. We can't assume this new raider is all the
Germans will bring to the party,” he warned. “We’ll have to keep a close eye on
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
as well.”

“Whatever
Jerry is up to, we’ll give him another bloody nose for it, sir.”

“Yes,
Raeder may be taking on more than he can chew, Brind, but we'll have to plan
for every possible contingency.”

An
orderly rushed in, handing Brind a freshly decoded signal. The grey haired
chief of staff read it with obvious frustration.

“Thick
cloud cover over Kiel,” he said. “Fleet Air Arm says they can’t see a thing in
this weather, and won’t be able to confirm the situation regarding
Tirpitz
until things clear up, sir.”

“Damn,”
said Tovey. “We’ll have to assume the worst then. That’s what Admiral Pound
will do.”

“That
we will, sir,” said Brind. “May I suggest that we get orders off to Wake-Walker
as soon as possible? We can’t very well have him dancing off to the North Cape
in this light. Vian is up there as well, sir.”

“Better
get them both moving west as soon as possible. Even if they can’t cover the
Denmark Strait, at least they can seal off the Faeroes Gap.” Tovey thought for
a moment. “And Brind,” he said, “I suppose we should also cable the Americans
at Reykjavík. They’ve only just begun relieving our garrison there, and they’ll
likely be in for a big surprise if this raider is heading for the Denmark
Strait.“

“Indeed,
sir. I nearly forgot about the Yanks. They’re not in it yet, but there’s a
considerable naval presence assigned to the convoy routes between Newfoundland
and Iceland. That’s going to be their watch now sir.”

“Yes,
well whether they’re in the war or not, the Germans may have something to say
about it soon enough.”

“I
believe they’re planning to send a couple of PBY flying boat squadrons to Reykjavík,”
said Brind. “If we put the word out those planes could come in very handy. And
with that in mind, I’ll order Home Fleet to prepare to get underway first thing
in the morning.”

Chapter 15

August
1, 1941

Wake-Walker
was having a terrible day. His
whole operation had been turned on its head by this unexpected new contact. He
should be up at the North Cape by now, but he was still southeast of Jan Mayen,
and heading back along the track he had taken from Iceland. What he thought to
be a wayward steamer with loose lips had since mushroomed into the considerable
threat of a big German surface raider heading for the Atlantic. His scout
detachment had found the ship, as he feared it might, and the destroyer
Anthony
had been a little too bold, getting a bit of a bloody nose for her effort, but
managing to report the contact’s position nonetheless.

 Just
hours ago his only real worry was a few long range German Kondor recon planes
nosing about. Now this! It was the same nightmare he had just gone through with
Bismarck
a few months ago. He was at least glad that his own instincts
had prompted him to hold station the last two days. Something told him there
was trouble afoot, and when the frantic reports came in from
Anthony
and
Adventure
he took it upon himself to turn about and render assistance,
knowing this would most likely compromise his mission up north. Orders came in a
few hours later advising him to head for the Denmark Strait with all possible
speed. Now he was racing west at 28 knots, and he had Grenfell’s pilots up out
in front of him with their type 279 aerial radars to try and re-acquire this
phantom ship.

The
Admiralty was all in a dither about it, and Admiral Tovey wanted him to do
everything possible to ascertain the nature of the threat. It was a pity his
destroyer captain could not provide a positive identification. If he determined
it to be a
Hipper
Class Cruiser, he was authorized to engage. If
however, he believed this ship to be
Tirpitz
, his orders were to attempt
to maintain contact and shadow. There was nothing in his task force that was a
match for the big German battleship. He could launch an air strike, but
apparently Tovey wanted to coordinate this with his capital ships, only now
getting up steam at Scapa Flow.

The
boys at Bletchley Park missed something, he thought. They had been so busy
rounding up German auxiliary oilers and weather ships after getting hold of the
German enigma code boxes that they let something slip through the cracks.

~
~ ~

Miles
away, up a country lane outside Milton Keynes, the men at work on the estate
known as Bletchley Park were wondering much the same. Naval intelligence was on
the phone, curious as to any ciphers that might indicate the Germans were again
planning some sort of breakout into the Atlantic with a commerce raider. A few
of the analysts over in ‘Hut 8’ were kibitzing over a chess problem, just the
sort of thing to delight a code breaker. Chess problems were said to be the
church hymns of mathematics, and the brilliant Alan Turing had led the effort
against Nazi Germany through the artful music of his craft.

“Riddle
this,” said Atkins, a former student and close associate of Turing at the Park.
Sir Dudley thinks the Germans have pulled another rabbit out of their hat. It
seems there’s a been a sighting up north of what appears to be a large warship.”

“Odd,”
said Turing, fiddling with the chess pieces. “Let’s see what it could be.” He
was familiar with all the intelligence that had been passed on to the Admiralty
late, and had the German Navy all set up in his head like the pieces on the
board.

“Let's
not worry about the pawns,” he began. “The two Rooks,
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
,
are down at Brest taking a pounding night after night from the RAF. So no real
threat there. The two bishops,
Admiral Scheer
, and
Lutzow
, are
both down at Kiel with the Queen. That's where
Tirpitz
is as well, all
three neatly on the back row. Now, there were only five
Hipper
class
cruisers built. The Russians bought one, another's being converted to an
aircraft carrier, and
Blucher
is sunk. So that just leaves the
Admiral
Hipper
and
Prince Eugen
, the two knights. And guess what, the former
is laid up at Kiel, and the latter is laid up at Brest! Jerry's got all his
pieces on the back row; nothing is developed at all. So unless
Bismarck
truly is unsinkable, and has somehow miraculously refloated herself, I don't
think we need put much credence to this report.”

“But
we did get one cable saying that
Admiral Scheer’s
refit was just about
complete,” said Atkins. She was the most successful of the German raiders, and
since we put a torpedo into the
Lutzow
the last time she tried to break
out, I don't think the Germans could have her fit for duty anytime soon. So I'm
putting my money on
Admiral Scheer.”

“Tirpitz
would certainly
be a surprise if she were out and about,” said Turing. “But I rather tend to
agree with you, Atkins. One doesn't sortie with the Queen before there's been
proper development of the minor pieces. And the minor pieces all appear to be
coming apart at the seams these days. If I were the Germans, I'd keep
Tirpitz
safe and sound for a while. Just the fact that she's sitting there on the back
row is enough to keep Admiral Pound on his toes and give John Tovey a case of
indigestion every time the subject comes up. Yes, I rather tend to agree with
you. If this contact is anything at all, it would most likely be the
Admiral
Scheer
. Suppose we say so and get a message off to the Admiralty so they
will leave us alone for a while and we can have a weekend in the country.”

Young
Turing indeed had a brilliant mind, but it didn't take a genius to put these
clues together and determine the ships most likely to be available for duty on
the German roster. He would go on to lead the effort at crypto-analysis
throughout the war, instrumental in deciphering and breaking the German Enigma
code which they used to send and decode signals through a deviously complex
machine, a kind of analogue computer with wheels and levers and rods that would
all work in a harmony, like the inner workings of a clock, to plot the
machinations of war.

Turing
had been busy with his own similar machines for some time. He devised clever
systems where variables could be represented on a long tape and fed into a
machine that could execute instructions and subroutines based on the state of
any given variable it was “considering.” It was, in fact, some of the first
serious groundbreaking development for digital computers, a device he came to
call his “universal machine.”

“Mark
my words,” he had told Atkins one day while they were working on it. “These
machines will do everything for us in time. Imagine an infinite memory capacity
obtained in the form of an infinite tape like this, with a symbol for
everything that matters printed out on these little squares. Why, it could do
anything, anything we told it to do.”

“Everything
that matters, Alan? I’m not sure you could possibly manage that, but I suppose
you’ll try. Just be sure we’re the ones doing the telling in that story. I’d
hate to think what might happen in a world where these things have a mind of
their own.”

“Don’t
worry about that,” said Turing. “They can only know what we tell them to know,
and it’s just a mechanism, Atkins, like a clock—only it will tell us much more
than the simple time of day. Yes, it
will
have an intelligence about it,
not a conscious intelligence, mind you. There’s no heart or soul in the thing.
That’s our part. The logic and intelligence of this machine will just help us
to better use our own. After all, it’s intelligence that will eventually win
this war, not the bombs in and of themselves, but knowing where to drop them. That’s
the main thing, right?”

Little
did he know that the children of his genius would one day defeat the greatest
human chess master alive, and that they were already hard at work that same day,
aboard a ship he would have a most difficult time placing on his chessboard or
fitting into the equations chalked on his blackboard.

~
~ ~

Kirov
had sailed west away from Jan Mayen, and then turned southwest towards the
Denmark Strait on the 1st of August. Radar man Rodenko watched with amusement
as the two British ships,
Adventure
and
Anthony,
scurried away.