Stalin decided on a reconciliatory approach.
“Don’t blame the woman, Lavrentiy. She means well and has the Motherland as her priority. Look to those who misinformed you, eh?”
Beria sat heavily, his morning exertions having unusually tired him.
“Yes, Comrade General Secretary. I’ve already addressed that matter, and the new Commission is already assembled. There will be no repeat of that shambles. I’ll not let that bitch make a fool of me like that again.”
Stalin chuckled.
“Of course, you mean that you’ll not let a commission falsely report to myself and the GKO again.”
Beria looked at his master and was unable to mask the genuine anger still burning inside.
Stalin placed the pen on the desk and steepled his fingers.
“Sometimes I really do wish that you and she could be rolled into one… then I would have the best of both your worlds.”
Far from helping the situation, the General Secretary’s words fanned the flames even further, which he realised without Beria uttering a word.
“Right then. Before I eat, the matter of the money. Where are you with that?”
Beria took the opportunity to gain some of his self-esteem back by falling back on a project in which he was totally confident.
“The counterfeit currency is too bulky to dispatch via normal channels, and if we did do so, it would arrived in small quantities. My advisors say that, for maximum effect, it all needs to be put into the system as quickly as possible, not fed in over a period of time.”
Beria produced a simple document.
“Five hundred million pounds of currency occupies a huge space, and getting it to where it would cause the most damage is an extremely difficult exercise in logistics. This is the NKVD proposal, draft only at the moment. I’m sure the mechanics of it can be sorted out, so the main issue of note would be the Irish.”
Stalin dropped the document onto the table.
“Quickly… I’m hungry… explain this master plan to this poor peasant.”
“Simple, Comrade General Secretary. The biggest problem is transport. That can be overcome with your backing. We can order the Navy to detach submarines for our purpose. They’ll take the currency to our contacts in the IRA. In turn, the Irish will move the counterfeit notes into England and flood the system. The chaos will be immense and the damage to their financial structure catastrophic.”
“How does that work, Lavrentiy?”
“In a number of ways, so my financial advisors tell me. Confidence in the currency will waver and plummet. Inflation will rise critically for their economy. Money, good or counterfeit, will take on less value. Simply put, it will throw them completely off track and, if you bear in mind how they bankrupted themselves for the German War and the recent fighting, their house will come falling down around their ears in short order.”
“So, for the risk of a submarine or two, we can take that drunken shit Churchill and his pack out of the equation for the foreseeable future?”
“Yes, Comrade General Secretary, although it hinges on the Irish being able to perform some simple tasks.”
“How long before you find out if they can do what we need?”
“I already have my staff in Dublin working on the matter.”
“Excellent. Once that’s resolved, you may present this plan to the GKO.”
Stalin’s lunch was simple, but he enjoyed it with a relish he hadn’t felt for some months.
Chapter 176 – THE USPENKA?
Of all those in the army close to the commander none is more intimate than the secret agent; of all rewards none more liberal than those given to secret agents; of all matters none is more confidential than those relating to secret operations.
1537 hrs, Monday, 23rd September 1946, US Fleet Activities Sasebo, Nagasaki, Japan.
The task of sifting through the documentation was not easy, for more than one reason.
Admittedly, Yoshiro Takeo had it easier than many, for he needed no interpreter, either for spoken or written Japanese.
After all, he was Japanese, or at least that was how he was viewed by those around him.
Yoshiro Takeo had been born in Waikoloa, Hawaii on 1st January 1922, and considered himself an American through and through.
His elder brother fought with the Nisei warriors in Europe, but Yoshiro had been denied combat, and was instead sent to Naval Intelligence, where his keen mind and language skills were put to great use.
With the surrender of the Empire of Japan, he found himself back in the land of his ancestors, his skills employed in sifting through mountains of official paperwork and intelligence reports in order to record and log all aspects of the Imperial Navy’s war.
Which brought him to the records in front of him.
He sipped gently at his tea, savouring the flavour as he focussed his mind on the figures in front of him.
He didn’t bother asking for a second opinion; confidence in his own ability was never lacking.
In simple terms, many tons of steel had been delivered to Sasebo and some of the records that recorded their disposal had survived the Allied bombing campaign.
Enough to indicate considerable allocation to two special projects that commenced in April and October 1943, neither of which, at first sight, attracted any other mention in any of the remaining dockyard records.
He had caught that first sniff of something, the ‘Mongoto’ as he called them, a week previously but it was not until this morning that other information had come to light.
Whilst the Japanese Naval records had generally suffered from the attentions of the Allied air forces, the dockyard armaments distribution and allocation administration had somehow avoided any losses, meaning full records were available.
It was a portion of these that sat in front of him now and, try as he might, he could not tally a number of weapons with the stated receiving vessels and remaining stock, less those marked as destroyed in air raids.
Six Type 96 triple AA mounts were simply unaccounted for, as well as two 140mm 11th Year gun mounts.
The 140mm 50-caliber was a standard naval weapon, issued to surface vessels.
It had taken Takeo a moment to realise that the notations seemed to indicate a 40-caliber weapon.
What had piqued Takeo’s interest further was the casual remark of his submariner friend, Baumer.
He did a little research to confirm Baumer’s observation and quickly established that the 40-calibre 11th Year guns were indeed almost exclusively mounted on the IJN’s big submarines.
He had found Baumer back at his desk that lunchtime and questioned him on the larger IJN submarines, specifically the huge AM class that were Baumer’s special area of reference.
Initially, the former submariner rained on Takeo’s parade.
Type 96 mounts for submarines had a different make-up, with large amounts of stainless steel to help resist corrosion.
Plus the AMs had two triple mounts and a single mount of Type 96s.
There were traces of two single mounts that could possibly be involved, having been tasked for an abandoned submarine project but not installed. Pencil notations recorded both as ‘特型潜水艦’, which he translated into ‘Special Type, Submarine.’
They were both of the modified stainless steel variety, which supported their probable use in submarines.
“So that means the numbers don’t add up basically, Marvin.”
Baumer could only agree and he seized the moment.
“Yep. Anyway, now that you’ve barked up the wrong tree, gimme a hand with this lot, will ya?”
The matter of the guns was side-lined in favour of translating dockyard records on Sasebo’s abandoned AM submarine projects.