A pity that Beria didn’t meet his fate with his people, Molotov thought coldly. The NKVD had been damaged by the loss of its headquarters, and then the loss of some of its senior personnel. Beria’s personal… habits had been a feature of the underground newspapers for weeks, ranging from child abuse to being a covert German agent. Intellectually, Molotov understood that the images were faked – but they seemed so real.
“Comrade, we must withdraw,” he said desperately. “There will be other opportunities, ones not on the end of a long supply line…”
“No surrender, no retreat,” Stalin snapped. “I will not order them to surrender! I will order them to fight to the last!”
Tabriz, Iran
27th April 1942
Tehran fell in an hour when a British force surrounded it, Byelorussian and Ukrainian troops shooting the NKVD force in the back and taking control of the city. After a quick negotiation over surrender terms, they left the city and surrendered to the British, leaving much of the city intact.
Far to the north, in Tabriz, General Zhukov knew that the game was up. The British had forded their way around the rivers, or lifted the tanks in by helicopter… for all he knew they had some kind of teleportation device. All that mattered was that British tank columns were snaking their way northwards towards the city, and they’d be at Tabriz within a couple of hours at most.
He stared down at the map, and then at the pistol. In a handful of days, the entire front had collapsed; it had been nothing like his battle at Nomonhan. There he’d had the better tanks, and his enemies had been the ones stupid enough to fight to the death. Here… he was the weaker force, and his enemies could reduce the impact of what advantages they did posses.
“Comrade General, Comrade Major Petra wishes to report that the 23rd Shock Regiment has taken up position inside the city,” Commissioner Petrovich said. The sheer lack of men had forced him to press the Commissioners into service. “We can hold the city…”
“No, we can’t, Comrade Commissioner,” Zhukov said. “We’re caught in a trap.”
He waved a hand at the map. “They’re destroyed our supply lines,” he said. “The tribes in the Caucasus Mountains are in revolt and the Ukraine is simmering. Once we run out of food, it’ll be all over and we’ll starve.” An explosion echoed across the city as a British aircraft made a bombing attack. “They’ve already hit one of the food stores,” he commented.
“The Great Stalin ordered us to fight to the last,” Commissioner Petrovich said. “We must obey his orders.”
“To die?” Zhukov asked. “We’re trapped here!”
Commissioner Petrovich sighed. “You want to surrender,” he snapped. “You are a defeatist!”
Zhukov snapped. “I understand these matters far better than you, you untrained amateur,” he snapped. “We will die here, never seeing the enemy, and we will die for nothing!”
Commissioner Petrovich grabbed his pistol in its holster. “I won’t stand by and let you…”
He started to draw the pistol. Zhukov, faster, shot him neatly through the head. Seconds later, his two guards burst their way into the room.
“We have to end this now,” Zhukov said. They didn’t argue: Commissioner Petrovich had not been popular. “Order Comrade Rabin to round up the other Commissioners.”
“Yes, General,” the guard said. He left the room. Zhukov picked up the telephone and made certain that the lines to Moscow were cut, and then scowled grimly.
“Escort me to the radio room,” he said. “I have to get in touch with the British commander.” He smiled suddenly. “Oh, and put the so-called resistance leader in jail,” he ordered. “We might as well offer the bastard to the British; they want his head on a platter.”
The city had been created by a famous caliph, before the Islamic world fell back into darkness, a victim of its own success. General Robert Flynn watched as the Russian troops, delighted to be out of the war, filed out of the city and headed into POW camps. They were joking and laughing amongst themselves; a far cry from the doom and gloom of the few western soldiers who had been captured during the terror war.
He sighed. There was a duty to do, one that fell to him alone as the senior officer, and it troubled him. He half-wished that he could pass it on, but self-respect demanded he do it himself; there was no one else who could. He smiled wryly as he entered the catacomb-like prison; anyone could do it, but it wouldn’t mean so much, would it?
The building felt empty; the handful of city leaders the Russians had deemed worthy of being kept alive – mainly Iranian communists – had been freed as soon as the surrender had been acknowledged. The only prisoner remained in his cell, abandoned and left alone.
I wonder what you think, Flynn thought coldly, as he reached the final cell. It was the only locked cell; there was no light, but that that came from a tiny window. It stank; he sniffed the air and recoiled. The person inside had no sanitation at all.
“Serves you right,” he muttered, and unlocked the door. He lifted his pistol in his hand as he opened the door, but it wasn’t needed. The prisoner was chained to the wall; his eyes bright with malice. A matted beard hung down from his torn face, covering rags and a skinny body.
Flynn felt no pity. He’d seen the results of the prisoner’s work. “Good evening, Mr Saud,” he said, a deliberate insult. Ibn Saud looked up at him. His face contorted as he took in Flynn’s uniform. “You have been judged by a court of your victims.”
Saud said nothing. Flynn studied him grimly. He had been given very specific orders about Saud; he was not to be allowed to threaten the new Republic of Arabia. Only one form of sanction could terminate the threat forever.
Flynn inclined his head. Saud’s eyes followed his; he was in full command of his mind. “Do you have anything you wish to say before sentence is passed?” Flynn asked. Saud glared at him; his little piggish eyes glittering with malice.
“Then I command your soul to the Lord God for judgement,” Flynn said, lifting his pistol. Saud flinched back as he carefully sighted the pistol, and fired once. The man who had brought Islam to near-destruction in the future that was past died without making a sound. Flynn dropped a thermal grenade near the body and walked out.
He shook his head as the grenade went off behind him. It hadn’t been enough.
Chapter Twenty: The Price of Pride
Over France
27th April 1942
Darkness cloaked the green fields of France, but the bombers were not affected by their inability to locate any landmarks or lights on the ground. They’d seen a handful of burning fires as they’d crossed over the coast – the remains of an RAF attack on the German radar stations – but apart from that France was as dark as ever. No lights broke the darkness; the Germans took a very dim view of it.
“Dark as a nigger’s tits,” the navigator exulted. He glanced down at his screen; the simple GPS system that would tell them when they were over the target, a joint German-French barrack house for the Wehrmacht. The Germans had been moving more and more units into France, preparing for the invasion that everyone knew would be coming soon.
“We’re not allowed to say that anymore,” Captain Paul Goodfellow reminded the navigator crossly. Officially, the USAAAF 5th Air Force was mixed-race; a number of black pilots had already arrived, working with the whites as equals. Goodfellow wasn’t sure what he felt about that; they knew what they were doing, but they were convinced that they were equals.