Dark Earth: 1947

No, it doesn't. There were other competitor designs in that role and Vickers had their hands full. The York is an enlarged variant of the Bristol 100 ton bomber with eight engines.

1947 Part 7b: The Road to Miklagard

If Rome was the Eternal City, then Constantinople was the Great City. An ancient metropolis sitting astride one of the most important strategic positions in antiquity and modernity alike, it was the largest city in Christendom for over a thousand years and the seat of the Greek-speaking empire that spanned the Eastern Mediterranean. Her mighty hundred foot high triple layer of walls held out barbarians, orcs, Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Turks and half a hundred other foes for centuries and remain as towering monuments to the glory that was Rome to this day. Within, the mighty dome of the Hagia Sophia loomed over the palaces, churches, bazaars, workshops and towers of the imperial capital down to the bustling harbour of the Golden Horn. The roaring crowds of over one hundred thousand in the Hippodrome were greater than the population of many cities. The halls of the Great Palace were the scene of some of the most complicated and secretive intrigues and machinations of the Middle Ages and the modern period alike and the deep dungeons of the Imperial Library held secret knowledge and ancient records safe as the world grew increasingly darker.

The Roman Empire had dwindled from into decline and fall by the time that Emperor Constantine moved the capital to the eastern city of Byzantium. It had been founded hundreds of years earlier on the shores of the Bosphorus, one of the two great straits of water that would prove so vital and so costly in blood and treasure in the centuries to come. Byzantium grew and it flourished. There followed an age of glory in what scholars would later call the Byzantine Empire, the Greek Christian successor to Rome. After the fall of Rome, the light of civilization burnt low across Europe, but continued to shine brightly in the east. Trade, culture and learning thrived in Greece, Asia Minor and Egypt even as they broke down in the West. Mighty emperors such as Justinian, Maurice and Heraclius forged a new power amid wars with the Persian Empire, with the last capturing four priceless dragon eggs at Ctesiphon. The wave of Arab conquests and the rise of the Bulgarian Empire in the 7th century pressed the Byzantines greatly, but they prevailed thanks to Greek fire, plate-armoured cataphracts and legionaries, the skill of their war wizards and dragons. The great orc and goblin raids of the 700s crashed against the defences of the Great City in vain. Along the border with the Arab Caliphate, the mighty warrior Digenes Akritas held back the foe for many a year, winning immortal fame.

One of the significant forces which was added to the Byzantine Army in this time was the Varangian Guard, an elite unit of Viking warriors from Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland who were to be the shock troops of the empire over the next ten centuries. The wars against the Arabs continued on over the next 350 years until the arrival of the Seljuk Turks and the catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Manzikert. This strategic disaster resulted in the loss of the Empire’s Anatolian heartland and was the worst blow it had taken in seven centuries. It was followed by two decades of further encroachments on the precarious Byzantine defences in western Asia Minor as the Turks reached Nicaea. At the darkest hour in the history of the Byzantine Empire, the call went out to the West and Pope Urban II for aid. At Clermont, he preached to a crowd of nobles and clergy on an armed pilgrimage of milites Christi to aid the Greeks and free Jerusalem from the infidel. Their responses were thundering cries of Deus vult! So it was that the era of the Crusades began.

Jerusalem fell in 1099 after a bloody siege to an army of knights and men-at-arms from France, Italy, Flanders, Germany and England and a dozen other kingdoms and principalities across Christendom. A Kingdom of Jerusalem was established and the southern flank of the Byzantine Empire was seemingly secured. The 12th century was marked by two further holy wars, the Second Crusade, which failed to reestablish the County of Edessa and the Third Crusade of 1187-1193. This saw Jerusalem fall to the forces of Saladin only to be recaptured by a Christian army lead by Richard the Lionheart, King of England, King Philip Augustus of France and Friedrich Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor. The Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos once again tore into the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum at the same time and won a great triumph at the Battle of Philomelium to go with his earlier victory at Myriokephalon. The four Imperial dragons were now growing into their greatest strength and proved decisive in routing the Turkish cavalry with fire, lightning and wyrmfear.

Yet the victories of the Byzantines and the Crusaders were fleeting. The Turks encountered greater success against Manuel’s successors and Emperor Alexios was badly beaten at Philadelphia in 1203. The forces of the Empire fell back from the strategically vital heartland Anatolia and the Byzantine centre of gravity was ever increasingly focused on Ionia and Greece, which were experiencing significant population growth and increased trade with Italy. Saladin’s brother Saphadin attacked the Kingdom of Jerusalem from three directions in 1204, capturing the Holy City after a siege and a Fourth Crusade set out to defeat him. Once again, King Richard took up the cross and his magic sword and lead his knights to Outremer. He won great victories at Ascalon, Ibelin, Holden and Jericho before retaking Jerusalem on April 23rd 1209. A truce between the Ayubbids and the Crusaders would last for almost 10 years before the inconclusive events of the Fifth Crusade.

The wars between Moslem and Christians temporarily subsided as a greater threat raged out of the steppes of Central Asia lead by the cruelest barbarian king since Attila the Hun – Genghis Khan, the Accursed of God. After the conquests of Northern China and Central Asia, Khwarezmian Persia fell to his Mongol hordes in 1220 amid an orgy of bloodshed and destruction and the lands of the Kievan Rus’ were overrun by 1223. The Great Khan intended to press on through Europe to the Great Sea and all of Christendom was in peril. The Great Crusade assembled armies from all over Europe to meet the Mongols on the field of battle at Krakow on May 24th 1225. The forces of Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, Austria, Croatia and the Holy Roman Empire under Emperor Frederick II barely held their positions against over 100,000 Mongol horse throughout the day and night through the desperate efforts of their mages and archers. As the dawn broke on the next morning, two great forces fell upon the flanks of the attacking Mongols. From the north came King Louis the Lion of France, the Knights Templar and the venerable King Richard with his loyal lieutenants Sir William Marshall and Robin Hood. From the south came Emperor George Komnenos, 800 Byzantine imperial knights and the doughty axemen of the Varangian Guard. The fighting throughout the day was brutal and bloody, but in the end, it was the Mongols who broke and fell back into the vastness of Asia after the Lionheart slew the Great Khan in single combat. Such a day was sorely won, with the flower of European chivalry laying trampled and still on the field, but the Mongols would never again threaten Christendom. It also proved to be the highwater mark of cooperation between East and West, as soon the petty squabbles and paltry rivalries tore apart the sense of unity that was so briefly forged on that Polish field.

Decades stretched on and wars came and went. The War of the Wizards and the Dragonstrike wreaked havoc on Western Europe. Whispers came of a cold and cruel darkness in the north beyond the snow and ice. The Mongols were turned back from the walls of Baghdad at great cost and the forces of the Saracens threw themselves again and again against the Crusader kingdoms. The Byzantine Empire contracted further and further in Asia and the Balkans under the pressure of a new foe, the Ottoman Turks, but improved their position at sea with new, powerful galleasses armed with bombards. The Mameluke Sultanate of Egypt overran the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1254, sparking the Seventh Crusade, but the efforts of King Louis IX of France were in vain and the Holy Land was to remain in Saracen hands for many years to come. The earlier victories seemed a very long way away. It was in this era that the first elements of the formal Byzantine intelligence service emerged, as the Greeks sought any and every advantage over their prospective foes given the growing disparity in their forces and fortunes.

The 14th century was an era of further decline for the Byzantine Empire in Anatolia at the hands of the Ottomans and the Ilkhanate before the rampaging hordes of Tamerlane dominated the East from Delhi to Jerusalem. The vile pestilence of the Black Death cut a swathe through the Empire’s most productive and populous lands in the Balkans. The Ottoman army was ferried to Thrace by the Venetians and Genoans and proceeded to overrun vast swathes of Serbian, Bulgarian and Byzantine territory. The Empire barely managed to hold Macedonian Thrace and Morea, losing Adrianople to the Turks in 1362 and suffering the further indignity of it being turned into their new capital. A further Ottoman onslaught was delayed by the Timurid conquests and the resurgent southern threat of the Mameluke Sultanate and the Abbasid Caliphate that culminated in the interregnum of the early 15th century. The fortunes of the Empire were reaching a low ebb, with their only consistent source of aid being the Hospitallers on Rhodes and the Templars on Cyprus.

The capture of Gallipoli and the effective control of the Dardanelles was a seemingly mortal blow to Byzantine power beyond the Sea of Marmara and Thessaloniki, a major centre of Imperial power and a thriving trading hub, fell in 1438. Constantinople survived the great sieges of 1422, 1453, 1510 and 1523 through a combination of Balkan allies, draconic power, technological advantage and uncanny fortune. The Ninth and Tenth Crusades saw the forces of Christendom rally to give a rebuff to the Ottoman attempts to overrun the last bastion of Byzantine power in the East. Morea, however, was lost to the Turks in 1456, although it took until 1491 for the conquest to be completed. The fall of Athens, that bastion of learning and light, saw a great wave of sages, thinkers, scholars, artists, astronomers, alchemists, mages, priests and scientists migrate to Italy, adding the accumulated knowledge of Byzantine Greek civilization to that of the West in what were the beginnings of the Renaissance.

The Byzantine Empire shrank now to the Great City and little else, paying tribute to the power of the Ottomans, but stubbornly resisting its final extinguishment. King Henry VIII’s Eleventh Crusade of 1512 did deliver one of Suleiman the Magnificent’s few defeats, but failed to recapture Jerusalem. The Royal Navy, having fought in these waters on and off since the late 1200s, encountered success in its forays into the Eastern Mediterranean met with similar success, but greater concerns closer to home would occupy them for the majority of the 16th century. Suleiman’s next attack on Constantinople was turned back at the very gates of the city itself, but at the dreadful cost of Quirinus the dragon. The Ottoman defeat at Lepanto in 1571 marked the end of its expansionary period and the beginning of the slow recovery of Byzantine fortunes. The Twelfth Crusade in 1583 marked the last attempt of the forces of Christendom to recapture lost lands as the Siege of Carthage proved inconclusive. On the eastern shore of the Bosphorus, the towns of Chalcedon and Skoutarion grew together as part of a new Turkish fortress city of Stamboul.

The defeats of the Long Turkish War were felt grievously at the Sublime Porte and the Byzantines took advantage of their hard-pressed foe by pushing forward in Thrace and threatening the vital Gallipoli Peninsula and several Aegean islands with a number of naval raids. The Asian shore of the Sea of Marmara and even the Bosphorus was still firmly in Turkish possession, but Constantinople began to spill beyond its medieval boundary walls to her newer outer fortifications. The reign of Mustafa I saw further internal decline and the establishment of Byzantine trading exclaves in Morea. With the aid of Templar gold and increasing trade, Greek ships ranged across the Mediterranean and even established trading posts out into the Atlantic. The Bosphorus forts were briefly held ere they fell to Sultan Murad IV, who even briefly laid siege to Constantinople in 1625, before an opportunely timed Persian attack on Mesopotamia drew his attention away to the east.

It was from this point that the issue of the Byzantines and Ottomans began to move beyond the mere possession of Constantinople and the existence of the former to a broader question of control of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. The kingdoms of Europe were beginning to exert influence and wield power well beyond their borders and England, France, Spain, Austria, Poland, Sweden and the Dutch Republic all became embroiled in the Thirty Years’ War and its subsidiary conflicts. The Turks threw their lot in with the anti-Habsburg alliance and the Byzantines were consequently forced to ally with the Holy Roman Empire and the Spaniards. Whilst the main war itself resulted in a victory for the French, English and Spanish, the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean saw a sharp rebuke dealt to Ottoman power. The Poles and Austrians beat back the Turks in Hungary and the Spanish fleet smashed Turkish naval power at Crete, allowing the Byzantines to secure both sides of the Bosphorus, take Stamboul and establish a foothold on Cythera and southern Laconia.

One result of the war was the swelling of the ranks of the Varangian Guard and Imperial forces with veteran Swedish and Norwegian mercenaries left unoccupied in the aftermath of the Treaty of Westphalia. The period from 1648-1763 would see a dozen conflicts spring up in the Peloponnese and surrounding islands between the Ottoman and the Byzantines, although the borders between the two states in Thrace and Anatolia barely shifted and Turkish control of the Dardanelles remained strong. Constantinople itself continued to grow beyond its walls and new marvels of technology were created by its workshops and factories. The Seven Years’ War saw the greatest Byzantine victories in centuries as the British Empire switched its support away from the Ottomans as part of the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756. By the end of the war in 1763, the Southern Peloponnese was free from Turkish rule and the Greeks had a foothold on the mainland for the first time since 1491. The Duchy of Sparta became a new faction in internal Byzantine politics that would draw influence and power away from the Imperial metropolis over the next fifty years, a circumstance obscured by the larger results of the Seven Years’ War such as the rise of Prussia, British victories in India and North America and the establishment of the Italian Confederation.

The attentions of Russia turned towards the rapidly declining Ottoman Empire, the so-called ‘Sick Man of Europe’ and the Fifth Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774 bought the Eastern Question to the fore. The burgeoning Russian Empire sought to extend its influence and control into the Mediterranean by supporting their Orthodox brethren and vassalizing or defeating the Turks. Austria, faced with the growing power of Prussia, looked towards the south with avaricious expansionist intent. Britain saw its interests in securing its nascent colonial position in Egypt and the Mediterranean as part of its broader policy of maintaining the balance of power in Europe and guarding the sea routes to India. France, its previous continental hegemony challenged by its defeat, desired to strengthen its position in the East and reduce the influence of Britain. All of these coalesced together around the Byzantine-Ottoman conflicts and the Straits.

The French Revolution of 1789 set off another round of great European Wars, as first the Revolutionary government of Robespierre faced down the old powers of Europe and then the French Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte sought mastery of the Continent. Revolts against the Turks lead to the establishment of a Principality of Servia and increased autonomy for the Danubian Principalities, creating the background for Greco-Turkish War of 1812, which resulted in the liberation of Crete, Attica and large swathes of Rumelia and yet greater gains – the Gallipoli peninsula was recaptured, giving partial control over the Dardanelles, and Smyrna and its Ionian hinterland were under the Imperial banner once more. Athens was once again free and began to provide a counterbalance to the influence of Constantinople within the Empire. Significant aid was rendered by the Royal Navy and assorted agents, coordinated by the British Minister to Constantinople, Sir Percy Blakeney.

The Ottoman defeat spurred a period of modernization and renewal known as Tanzimât, or the reorganization of the Empire. Sultan Mahmud abolished the powerful Janissaries and he and his son Abdülmecid I instituted a wide range of modern reforms including the creation of a modern army, the abolition of slavery and the introduction of such trappings of a modern state as a new flag, national anthem and banknotes. This increase in Turkish strength came at a time of internal strife for the Byzantine Greeks, with their own issues of political reform dividing the Senate and nobility in two great factions – those of the City and those of the land. Greek disadvantage was further reinforced by the death of Megas Nikephoros, the most powerful of the Imperial dragons, in a clash with the Ottoman battlefleet off Tenedos in 1836. It was only the careful application of British diplomatic favour which waxed and waned between the two states that kept some semblance of a balance of power. The Crimean War of 1852-1856 resulted from the Russian attempt to completely resolve the Eastern Question in their favour. British and French pressure on the Imperial Court at Constantinople and the Sublime Porte alike lead to a volte face in Byzantine policy and a strengthening of the Ottoman position.

The general Greek strategic position from the 1860s onwards was to stay in general alignment with British strategic and economic interests while playing them off against the Russians in order to secure optimal support. Greek economic growth and gradual industrialization in the final two decades of the 19th century positioned them well to overtake the Ottoman Empire as the predominant regional power in the Eastern Mediterranean. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Greek plan had come to fruition through the increasing confluence of interests between Britain, France and Russia over the rising threat of Germany. Italy was loathe to become involved in any conflict against the British Empire and Spain, as it had since the 1840s, saw its way forward as associated with France. The Ottoman Empire had fallen progressively further into the orbit of Germany and Austria-Hungary.

HMS Dreadnought sparked an international naval arms race upon her commissioning in 1904 and the intense competition between Byzantine Greece and Ottoman Turkey was as keenly felt as that between Germany and Britain. Both ordered dreadnought battleships from foreign yards in 1909 and this was followed by newer superdreadnoughts in 1912. The navies of both powers were growing in strength, yet that of the Greeks maintained a narrow yet distinct edge in quantity and quality. The Imperial Ottoman Army outnumbered the Byzantine Greek forces by over two to one before reserves were counted, but a significant portion of their forces were deployed in Mesopotamia, Syria and the Caucasus.

A major catalyst of the Great War was the final eruption of long simmering tensions in the Balkans into a major regional war between Byzantine Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Romania on the one hand and the Ottoman Empire on the other. The Balkan War of 1911/12 saw the final elimination of Ottoman territory in Europe. Serbia and Bulgaria greatly expanded their territory, but it was the Greeks who made some of the most striking gains, securing most of Thessaly, Epirus and Thrace, save for a long stretch of Aegean coastline occupied by the armies of Tsar Ferdinand. Control of the Dardanelles was once again in Greek hands thanks to a daring offensive spearheaded by the Varangian Guard, although contested by the Ottoman possession of Canakkale and ancient Troy on the southern shore of the strait. An independent Albanian state was reestablished for the first time in centuries and it wasted no time in seeking close ties with Constantinople. The Turks held back in their expansive inland capital of Angora and waited for a reckoning.

War came to Europe and the world in the summer of 1914 and as the two alliance blocs lumbered into each other, the neutral powers found themselves inexorably compelled to take sides. The Ottomans signed a secret defensive pact with Germany on August 2nd and received support for four key proposals: abolition of all remaining foreign capitulations, restoration of its European territories, annexation of Constantinople and control of the Straits and a war indemnity. Animosity towards Britain and the other Entente powers had been growing since their open support of the Greeks in the Balkan War. An Ottoman-Bulgarian Pact was signed on August 25th, followed by mobilization of the potent Imperial Ottoman Navy. The Turks simply had more to gain from alignment with the Central Powers than it did from any arrangement with the Entente and the early course of the war did little to disabuse significant elements of the Sublime Porte from their pro-German position.

Ottoman entry into the war came on November 3rd with elements of the Turkish fleet and the German Mediterranean Squadron breaking out from Alexandretta and bombarding the port of Farmagusta on British Cyprus. Britain declared war on the next day, followed swiftly by France, Russia and Spain. The Ottoman Fourth Army gathered in Gaza for an offensive through Sinai towards the Suez Canal, the Fifth Army was headquartered in Baghdad and the Sixth Army began to engage Russian border fortifications at Olty and Sarikamis. The cream of the Imperial Army, twenty divisions of the First and Second Armies, were launched against the neutral Byzantine Greeks on November 7th, striking against the heavy fortifications of the Kocaeli Line. A declaration of war by the Byzantine Greeks soon followed, with an Allied mission arriving in Athens within a week.

Disaster soon struck for the Greeks. The Third Army, including the elite Imperial Guard Division, was landed on the northern side of the Sea of Marmara by strong forces of the Imperial Navy on November 12th and proceeded to overrun the Greek forces holding the Gallipoli Peninsula by December 8th. Bulgaria had yet to enter the war, but still pinned down substantial Greek forces in Thrace along the border. Constantinople was sorely pressed and the broader Entente grand strategy of the war was endangered – the Straits in the control of the Turks meant that the Russian Empire would be cut off from trade and vital supplies coming through the Black Sea. Planning began in London, Paris and Cairo for a grand amphibious offensive to open the Dardanelles and send a battlefleet through to Constantinople. Containment of the Ottoman and German vessels at Alexandretta was a simple matter of minefields and a predreadnought battlesquadron and the majority of the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean was mustered for the historical landing operations off the Gallipoli Peninsula that began in the early hours of April 25th, 1915.

The Gallipoli Campaign, its heroism, brutality, suffering and ultimate success are well known and need no repetition here. The relief of Constantinople in June 1915 kept Byzantine Greece in the war, but did not prove an end to the war. The stalemates in Thrace, Smyrna and Salonika would only be broken in 1918 and the Anatolian Front was fought in terrain tailor-made for defensive operations. It was in the desert and river wars of Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia that the war in the Middle East was won. The postwar Treaty of Fontainebleau carved up the Ottoman Empire between the victorious Allied powers and the Greek gains along the Ionian coast and at Trebizond marked their largest territorial holdings in Anatolia for over six centuries. At a dreadful cost of blood and treasure, the Byzantine Empire had returned to a position of power.

Turkish resistance to Fontainebleau took the form of one of the many conflicts that grew out of the end of the Great War and dragged on until 1924 before an uneasy truce was agreed upon. Both Greece and Turkey claimed victories of sorts out of the latest Byzantine-Ottoman War and both were largely right. The Byzantine and Ottoman settled in along the armistice lines, constructing great fortified areas and watching the foe across no-man’s land with watchful caution. The advent of the modern aeroplane and airship had removed part of the strategic significance of the Dardanelles and Bosphorus, but extensive negotiations at Montreux in Switzerland in the early 1930s between the British Empire, France, Spain, the Soviet Union, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Greece and Turkey failed to reach a permanent resolution on their status.

Marshal Foch had described the Treaty of Versailles as not a peace, but an armistice for twenty years. He was short by only sixty four days. The Second World War would prove far greater and more terrible than the first and was fought on every continent and every ocean. The valour of the Greeks in their gallant battle against German, Italian and Austrian invading armies echoes down through the ages as one of the most famous struggles against the odds, from the opening engagements in Macedonia to the last resistance on the Mani Peninsula by the Spartan Division. By mid 1941, all of mainland Greece had been overrun and only the Allied fortress island of Crete remained firm against the battering of the Axis. In Thrace, the Imperial Army had been driven back by well equipped Bulgarian forces to the fastness of the Maritsa-Midia Line by May 29th and there they made their stand alongside hastily deployed British and Indian troops. Constantinople was attacked several times by Austro-Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian and German bombers during May, but its heavy anti-aircraft gun defences and the magnificently handled fighter squadrons of the Imperial Air Force ensured that every bomb would carry a blood price.

Below the great air battle, the Byzantine First Army held their line grimly. The only mobile forces were the two finest intact divisions in Greek service – the Evzones Division and the Varangian Guard. Again and again they were hurled into the fray, taking horrendous losses, but emerging victorious each time. The demands of the hard campaign in the Soviet Union began to draw away Axis logistical support, heavy guns and airpower, easing the burden only slightly. Greece was fighting a broken-backed war in every sense of the word, with the factories, steelworks and armaments plants of Constantinople lying virtually silent and only a trickle of supplies making it through a circuitous route. The news of the Ottoman request for an armistice in September 1941 came then as a miracle and the front held until the turning of the tide in 1943 firstly with the Aegean Campaign and then General Sir Edmund Blackadder’s grand invasion of Greece. British troops of the Seventh Army linked up with the Thracian pocket on July 24th 1944, by which time, the Varangian Guard could muster a total of 896 men, having lost over ten thousand of their comrades on the fields of battle over the last thirty eight months.

During the many months of distant siege and even moreso during the aftermath, Constantinople once again earned its title as the capital of subterfuge and intrigue, the wonder of whispers. It was close enough to the battlefront to be full of black market surplus goods and careless talk, but not so close as to be inconvenient for the uses of rear echelon forces and delicate back channel contacts. British, French, American, Soviet, German, Italian, Turkish, Greek and all three Austro-Hungarian factions ran interlocking rings of agents, double-agents and triple-agents in the ideally placed metropolis. The female proprietor of one particular taverna of dubious repute near the Golden Horn served as an informant and agent of influence for no less than five different states, all before opening time. Every word, gesture and affectation was taken by watching eyes to be redolent with hidden meaning as much as the songs and lays of the bards. A number of Special Operations Executive agents made a great game of strange behaviours, bizarre public exclamations, outlandish clothing and randomly hopping down crowded public thoroughfares of an evening. Even before the end of the war in Europe, the battles of an new conflict were being drawn and the Great City would once again be on the frontline.

One name stood out among the others as the foremost suzerain of secrets, captain of cunning and master of disguise in all Constantinople from his auspicious emergence in late 1944 – Herr Otto Flick of the Gestapo. He arrived with two things – a dream and 25 million US dollars. In his time in France, Flick claimed to have perfected the art of playing off various competing factions in the German Army and French Resistance against each other and in the process availed himself of the juiciest black book of secrets in Europe. He used this combination of talents, information and cold hard cash raised from the sale of a long lost Van Gogh masterpiece to establish himself as Constantinople’s premier spymaster for hire, with no espionage rings being able to resist his ingenious array of devilish contraptions. That he evaded arrest by the Allies has been a matter of many rumours and tales, with the best guess being that he traded his freedom and that of his assistant Helga Geerhart for the location of the infamously well-endowed Fallen Madonna by van Klomp. It was Flick’s men who uncovered the Diomedes Plot.

The Diomedes Circle was a group of renegade Byzantine naval officers who considered that the victories of the Soviet Union in early 1945 had decisively shifted the balance of power in Eastern Europe towards them and that it would be better for Greece to throw their lot in with Stalin willingly than having to wait for the inevitable arrival of the Red Army. The passage through the straits of the two Italian battlecruisers allotted to the Soviet Navy as war reparations in March 1946 had been seen as the tipping point of the strategic equilibrium of the region. The British Army of the Danube was disappearing and the red star was rising. Their plans called for a palace coup followed by an invitation to the Soviet Navy to demonstrate its support for the new regime by a goodwill port visit to Constantinople. That the proposal verged on the laughably simplistic raised many hackles within Western intelligence circles, with fingers variously being pointed at the Turks, the French, the Nazis and the Americans. Whatever the origins of the Diomedes Circle, the consequences were felt by all.

Fifty-four military officers, court officials and diplomats were arrested by the Byzantine counterintelligence service, the Excubitors, on February 12th 1947 and thrown into the Imperial dungeons for interrogation. This was followed two weeks later by the expulsion of 123 Soviet diplomats and military personnel, which immediately resulted in vehement Soviet condemnation of Western imperialist warmongering and the affair being held up by the Comintern as evidence of the profound unsuitability of Greece as a guardian of the Straits. Now was the time that these international waterways should be placed under the guardianship of the international forces of peace and progress, trumpeted Pravda. A strong squadron of the Black Sea Fleet of the Red Navy deployed from Sevastopol, Odessa and Nikolayev for a series of naval exercises off Constanta in occupied Romania, raising pressure on the devastated nations of Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey to bow to their will. Leading the Soviet task force were the super battleships Sovetskaya Belorussiya and Comintern and the new aircraft carrier Minsk, all three overwhelmingly superior to any ship operated by any Mediterranean nation east of Malta.

The reaction of the West was swift and coordinated between Washington and London to ensure that the Soviets could not attempt to play the Greeks off against the Turks. A task force of the newly established United States Navy Sixth Fleet consisting of the aircraft carriers USS Iwo Jima and USS Coral Sea and the battleships USS Montana and USS South Dakota made a series of well publicized port visits to Haifa, Beirut, Antioch and Alexandretta to show the direct interest of the American government in regional stability. The Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet made a number of similar goodwill visits to ports around the Aegean Sea, with the sight of the aircraft carriers Africa, Leviathan and Pegasus and the battleships Magnificent, Warrior, Princess Royal and Conqueror cruising off the Dardanelles clearly demonstrating that Britain had a veritable surfeit of goodwill that she would be delighted to share.

The Diomedes Affair and the abortive Soviet play for control of the Straits faded away in the second half of 1947 as cooler heads on all sides prevailed. Rather than divide the Balkan nations, the evidence of Soviet expansionist intent bought about the beginning of what would later become the Constantinople Pact between Bulgaria, Albania, Yugoslavia and Greece. Concentrated counterintelligence operations resulted in the shock defection of Michael Agapos, the Patrikios of the Excubitors, to the Soviet Union on June 30th. The resultant consternation lead to a crackdown on Red espionage in Constantinople that lasted for the next two years, the main effect of which was to drive such activity underground. It was not the last defection or intrigue that would occur in the dark alleyways and golden streets of the Great City in the opening days of the Cold War. Life carried on as it had for the last two millennia, bustling with activity and throbbing with corruption. One definitive effect of the events of February and March 1947 was a reversal of the previous plans to convert the Varangian Guard to a purely ceremonial guard unit. Once again, recruits trickled south from Scandinavia and Northern Europe, as well as the former German Army, down the road to Miklagard.

(From 'A Boy's Own Book of the Byzantine Empire', S. Holmes, Collins, 1969)

1947 Part 7d: Shadows over Oxford

Oxford, England, August 28th, 1947
The four small boys stood in the shadow of the lamppost and gazed intently at their quarry in the brightly lit doorway. He was busy with the evening crowd, yet attentive to his duties. They had to wait for the right time, wait for the precise moment to strike. Dozens of people drifted past him as he stood as a silent sentinel on the entrance to the cave of wonders. As the last of the throng disappeared into the cavernous building, they loped soundlessly forward towards their target, who stood unsuspecting in the doorway. Wordlessly panting in the cold night air, they closed in on their prey and struck him in a rush.

“Come on, Albert, let us in! You promised!” piped the first, a bespectacled tousle-haired scamp named Harry.

“Bloody hell, boys! I told you to wait until everyone went in. You’ve only missed them by seconds!”

“Yeah, come on, you said you would!” chorused Richard, Basil and Victor.

“Alright, alright, hold your horses. I’ll get you in through the side door once the lights go down and you’ve got to be out of there by the end of the film. And you need to be as quiet as church mice, at least until the film starts playing. Right, Harry? Lads?” sighed Albert as his younger brother hopped from foot to foot in nervous anticipation.

They all nodded vigorously and followed him silently as he lead them around side of the cinema lobby into a dark, grimy alleyway and let them into the side door that lead into a small, dusty storeroom piled high with wooden crates. Albert unlocked the door leading into the main cinema for the boys and left for his post with a finger silently raised to his lips. They were good lads, when it came down to it, and they had been pestering him for weeks about getting them in. Of all the things they could get up to, sneaking into the evening cinema session was far from the worst. He’d only got a few months left until he’d be called up for his national service, so he could only give them this bit of a treat for a short while more. Who knew when he would see home and the old Odeon again?

Albert shivered slightly in the unseasonably cool night. The whole summer hadn’t been too warm in what was probably the aftermath of the particularly bitter winter, but things had started to improved towards the end of July for some reason. Still, those poor sods on the Continent had it worse than here. He hoped he would get into the RAF rather than the Army; more chance of getting a nice warm post in India or Egypt rather than grim garrison work in the bombed out cities of Europe. His mate Peter Jenkins had got into the Commandos and was off learning archery from the elves, but he didn’t think he had Tucker’s luck. Oxford had been spared the attentions of the Luftwaffe throughout the war, even from the notorious Baedeker raids. He wasn’t altogether sure why they hadn’t bombed the city and none of his schoolmasters had been able to answer his insistent questions on the matter. The one time he had raised it with his Home Guard platoon commander, he had fixed Albert with a level stare and instructed him stonily to forget he ever even thought about the matter.

Maybe he’d be assigned to the Royal Navy and end up in a battleship in the Mediterranean or a cruiser in the tropical South Seas. More likely he’d get sent out on destroyer patrol in the North Atlantic like Tommy Adams, who had been in the form above him at school, or even worse, end up sweltering with the Royal Marines in jungles of Burma and Malaya or in the swamps of Equatorial Venus. No, it would hopefully be Bomber Command for him, soaring away above the clouds in a silvery Valiant…or more likely peeling potatoes in a dusty airfield near Port Said. He could join those dashing heroes of the Royal Space Force, chasing Nazis through the ether in their rocket ships…or more likely slogging through the Martian desert with a heavy pack and a ray gun. His thoughts drifted onto other more pleasant matters, such as young Mabel Davison, who worked as an usherette inside the Odeon. They’d been walking out for three weeks now and things were getting serious.

Inside the dark cinema, the four boys huddled down in the seats they had slipped into and stared up at the red velvet curtains that were now slowly parting to reveal the silvery screen. Like many twelve year old boys, the cinema was their temple where they would worship their heroes every week. They shared the same general idols as most British boys their age – dashing pilots such as Guy Gibson, Cobber Kain and Dan Dare, bold sportsmen like Denis Compton and Stanley Matthews and gallant soldiers of the Empire such as Jack Churchill, Edmund Blackadder and Charles Ratcliffe – but above and beyond them were the heroes of the screen. Tarzan, Lancelot, Buck Rogers, Professor Elemental, Doc Savage and the Lone Ranger were the focus of their adulation, much to the disappointment of their parents, teachers, Scoutmasters and Army Cadet commanders, who felt that their attentions should be turning towards more serious pursuits and put away childish things now that they had finished prep school.

It was not that they lacked aspirations, character or drive. All four of them always mucked in on the sports field, went about their lessons cheerfully, practiced the sword and rifle with aplomb, were dutiful acolytes in chapel and had been suitably reverent on the school pilgrimage to see the Holy Grail at Camelot. They dreamed of future quests in strange lands and glorious battles in the service of the King in the way that only small boys can. The war had been a great adventure for them in many ways and they had not yet readjusted to the more staid rhythms of peace. The cold world that had emerged from the fires of war was one of the end of the carefree summer of childhood and the beginning of the fall of innocence.

Even now in peacetime, the experience of the cinema wasn’t the same as their hazy memories of the golden days before the war, when cheap sweets, ices and chocolate abounded and even the seats seemed plusher. Whilst most foodstuffs had come off ration, the supplies of chocolate and sugar were still quite limited and rather expensive as a result. The days of having to make do with a carrot on a stick were thankfully well back in the past, but it took the boys the better part of a week to scrounge and hoard enough for the latest delectable concoction from Cadbury, Fry’s, Rowntree or Wonka. On nights like tonight, they could only enviously gaze up at the grown-ups in the balcony seats with their sweets and newfangled American popped corn and dream of what could be.

“New serial tonight. What do you reckon it will be?” whispered Richard.

“I hope it’s Mounties and Indians. With Johnny Canuck and his moose!” Harry replied excitedly.

“No, silly, you know what would be even more smashing? Robin Hood versus the Mongols.” added Basil.

“You’re all crackers. Allen Quatermain. It has to be another Allen Quatermain.” Victor’s whisper was extremely insistent.

The cinema hushed as the familiar fanfare of Pathé News rang out and the old image of the roaring lion and the Union Jack filled the screen, giving way to that of a brilliant blue above an azure sea. “The Mediterranean Sea. The lifeline of the British Empire.” began the narrator in a characteristically stentorian tone. “Across the waters of the middle sea, wars have raged throughout the history of man. Control of the Mediterranean has been bitterly contested by Rome, Carthage, Byzantines, Turks, Venetians and Spaniards down the long centuries. And now, in peace as in war, it is the Royal Navy which is the mightiest force in its waters, just as it has been for over 400 years. Today is one more momentous day for the Mediterranean Fleet, a day when it visits the port of Rome in friendship for the first time since before the Second World War.” The camera now panned to show an array of vast grey ships in line ahead formation cruising slowly towards it, dressed overall with dozens of colourful flags and enormous White Ensigns.

“How did they do that?” asked Richard/

“Steam-powered ornithopter carrying the camera-gnome, you pillock.” shushed Basil.

“First come the battlewagons – six of them. They bear names redolent with history and the accolades of victory. There’s Magnificent, who sunk the Enrico Dandolo at Cape Spartivento. There’s Warrior, who accounted for Settsu in the Battle of Formosa. Princess Royal, one of Cunningham’s finest ships of the line in the long fight from Singapore to Tokyo Bay. Conqueror, the champion of Norway. Vanguard, the queen of the seas and nemesis of the Yorck. And here’s the most famous of them all, the Mighty Hood. The fleet flagship is freshly returned to warmer seas after her refit and New World cruise to mark the anniversary of her sinking of the Bismarck. The big floating airfields, the carriers come next, their decks packed with those new marvels of British engineering, the jet fighter. Their names are well known too: Pegasus, Leviathan, Africa, Victorious and the grand old Illustrious; not the first time she’s visited this particular neighbourhood. Now we can see the cruisers – good old London, still sprightly in her golden years, Belfast and Sheffield, Ulysses, the greyhound of the Pacific and the heroic Thunderchild. They are all followed by the deadly destroyers and fast frigates of the fleet. And look! Now they have some company!”

With a swelling of Italian music, the scene now shifted to show destroyers of the Regia Marina steaming out to greet the British fleet and tens of thousands of spectators lining the beaches and quays to witness the spectacle as it approached the broad harbour. Several small children looked on in a mixture of excitement and awe at the approaching behemoths. “The finest jet fighters of the Fleet Air Arm. Just look at them go!”

Three squadrons worth of light blue swept-wing Hawker Sea Hawks and Supermarine Attackers streaked over the town at low level finger four formation and flew inland over Rome, bringing on cheers and whoops of exultation as they broke through the sound barrier. “This time, though, they are coming as friends. The great nations of Europe are coming together, as are countries all over the free world. The visit of the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet to Rome is a sign of how one-time enemies can become allies in these days of peace.” the announcer concluded triumphantly as the orchestra struck up the chorus to Rule Britannia and the screen faded to black.

“Here it comes.” said Richard.

“Robin Hood. You watch. You just watch!” Basil cooed triumphantly.

“Oh, shut it, you baked potato!” the other boys chorused. The screen brightened once again to reveal the exotic sight of a strange Arabian city and the sound of haunting music The title then leapt forth in shining gold letters: SINBAD AND THE TREASURE OF THE DRAGON. All four boys abandoned their preconceptions and leant forward attentively. This was a new one. Over the course of the next twelve minutes, they gasped with excitement as the bold sailor hero wrestled his ship through an unnatural storm, battled swarthy dark elven assassins across rooftops and flying carpets, bargained for his life with an inscrutable genie, rescued a beautiful princess from a locked tower with the aid of his bumbling companion Abdul and just managed to escape the pursuing guards of the corrupt Vizier before heading out to sea in search of a fabled treasure hoard.

“We have got to see the next one of that.” said Harry, extremely seriously.

“That was wizard!” Victor agreed eagerly, his previous preference for derring-do in Darkest Africa now forgotten.

The trailers looked interesting, if a tad confusing for the lads. They all agreed that Hue and Cry was jolly funny and The Ghosts of Berkeley Square might be worth seeing, but Jassy seemed to be all about boring old girly stuff and Helen Huddleson just left them not wanting to eat fruit for several days. They were just appetizers before the main feast, however; the feature that the boys had come especially to see. The curtains drew back further and the driving overture signaled the beginning of The Ride of the Cavaliers. Harry had figured out he had seen it at eleven times, or twelve if he counted the occasion when he had been collared halfway through by Mr. Fundlegrim and thrown out with a thorough beasting. Richard had seen it nine times and Victor eight, but Basil had only seen it six times as he had to help out in his father’s hotel, to his utter disgust.

This was what they were waiting for. An hour and a half of glorious swashbuckling action set in the magic and mystery of the 17th century, filled with battles at sea, on land and in the air between the valiant English cavaliers and their dastardly Spanish, French and Habsburg enemies. How they delighted at the exciting horseback chases, the thrilling swordfights, the gravity defying feats of skill and the epic charge of the English cavalry lead by the noble Prince Rupert to relieve the besieged Swedes at Leipzig! How they gasped at the fall of Ulfric the Red and his evil wyrms at the Battle of Bremen to the bold dragonriders of the Royal Flying Corps! How they blushed and squirmed in impatience at the tender loving farewells between the heroes and their paramours! How they longed to be dashing knights and heroes like Rupert, Sir William Ratcliffe, Sir Thomas Lacey and Sir Denzil Carey! How they loathed having to slip out quietly five minutes before the end so they could make good their escape!

Filled with exhilaration at the film, they crept carefully through the storeroom and silently let themselves out into the chilly alleyway. Only then did they dare speak.

“Blimey! That was terrific! Did you see how he jumped out of that house?”

“That was nothing! What about when they ran right up that wall? Bet you can’t do that?”

“Bet you I can!”

The exchange suddenly stopped. The temperature seemed to have fallen dramatically and frost had begun to grow on the dank stone walls. The faint light of the gas lamppost at the end of the alley began to seem farther and farther away, quashed by a growing shadow that swirled up from the cobblestones. The boys tried to move back towards the door, but it was like trying to swim through a pool of treacle in plate armour – agonizingly slow and painfully frustrating. They tried to call out, but their voices couldn’t manage to choke out more than a strangled squeak as a great pressure began to grow on their chests. The darkness rose in front of them and began to take form, a twisted, smoky form that defied logic and reason. Each of the four boys felt a icy breath across their throats and a terrifying sibilant voice whispering in their ears and minds.

Young. So young. It has been long since I fed. Give me your dread, the fear of your souls. So young. So sweet. So tender. I shall devour you over centuries on a river of ice. I shall consume you over ages in lakes of fire. Give in to me. Let me in. You know you cannot stop me. Nothing can stop me.

The creature inhaled, a rattling, hacking sound that was like a nightmare come to life. The boys teetered on the edge of fainting away from pure terror, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to think, unable to do anything but stare openmouthed at the creature that now took shape before them.

You know me, human children. You know me.

“Stop!”

The word was spoken loudly and with such power that the shadow shrank back from its prey and turned – if such a thing could turn – to face the mouth of the alleyway. Three figures stood there, glowing with a white, wrathful radiance, taller than men and fell to look upon. The first stepped forward and spoke in a stern voice, holding out his palm.

“Go back to shadow, vile demon, and vanish from our sight! Shrivel like the dust and in your pit go wailing! By the Rood, I abjure thee!”

The second strode forth and declaimed his words in a ringing voice, thrusting out his clenched fist.

“Come not here again, while the world is bright! Fall back in darkness, fiend, from the light unfailing! By the Grail, I banish thee!”

The third stood between the two figures and pointed his outstretched hand towards the creature, which shrank away. He boomed forth in a voice like the dawn itself.

“Ego! Atalelya i ungonna! An Elpino, etementanyë lye!”

A blazing stream of pure light burst out of his hand and engulfed the shadow, which emitted a scream of rage, pain and defeat before melting away to motes of light and then drifting back to the ground as if it had never been. The boys collapsed to the ground as feeling returned to them, filled with the most peculiar mixture of utter terror, profound relief and wonder that they had ever felt. They looked up at the two closest figures. One was a short, rather unkempt chap with bright blue eyes, a pointed bear, wild white hair and an extraordinary moustache. The other was tall and thin with deepset eyes, a hawk-like nose and a similar shock of white hair.

“Rise, boys. It is gone and you are safe.” The third figure spoke in a gentle voice, as the blazing white glow faded away, revealing a tall, grey haired man in his middling years dressed in a tweed suit. He had a merry countenance that at once made him look awfully wise, as regal and fair as an elflord, as splendid as a knight and as kind as summer.

“What was that?” ventured Harry.

“That was a fell creature from an age of darkness long past, thrown aback from this world these past long centuries since the Shadow made its play and lost in the wilderness. They cannot enter this plane without a willing sacrifice, thank the Lord. I will not speak its true name, but once, its kind were known as the Balchrhaug.”

“What was it doing here in Oxford?”

“That is indeed a puzzling question. Their foul kind does feed off innocence and goodness, but beyond that, I believe it was attracted like a moth to a lamp to the aestel of protection that lies over this city, as well as to the ancient ley lines of power that lie here from before the age of men and Annunakei, back in the age of the elves and dragons. That it came here, of all places, is a sign of weakness and a mistake. It is a sign that the last of the dark things called back to this world by the horrors that have been might at last be abating. The morning is coming.”

The boys were quite baffled by this and rightfully so. They had all studied the history of magic at school and undergone the usual arcane aptitude testing that came alongside the eleven-plus, with Richard surprisingly performing the best. But this gobbledygook about aestels and Annunaki was far beyond their understanding and the whole emotional ordeal began to catch up with them. Tears began to well up in Harry’s eyes and Basil gave a long, shuddering sniff.

The gentle voiced man turned to his fellows and nodded. “These boys have seen enough. Merry, send them off home. Catweazle, come with me. We shall need to work long into the night sending off winged monkeys to summon the Circle of the Wise at Stonehenge on this matter.” He nodded goodbye to the boys and walked off.

“There, there, boys. It’ll be alright.” the fellow named Merry said in a voice that soothed them instantly with both its comforting tones and arcane power.

“Who was that?” sniffed Richard, not really understanding why his nose was running all of a sudden.

“That? That was the Minister of Magic, boys. Don’t you know he lives here in Oxford?”

They fell silent. They had all heard of Professor Tolkien, the most powerful archmage in the land.

“What happens now?”

The old gentleman chuckled gently. “First, you shall tell me your names, so that I may put a charm on you for protection and so that you forget. Then, you shall go off home, remembering only the good of this night. Speak now, boys.”

“I’m Harry Palmer, sir.”

“Richard Bucket.”

“Basil Fawlty”

“Victor Meldrew.”

“Very well, Harry, Richard, Basil and Victor. Go forth now and think nothing more of this.” He waved his hand and, with the twinkling of an eye, he was gone.

The boys ran quickly out of the alleyway across the street to the lamppost where they had begun their night. Now they only had to sneak home without getting into any sort of trouble or being spotted by anyone important.

“Imagine if some of the things from that film happened here in real life!” exclaimed Harry, after they had made their goodbyes.

“Here in Oxford?! I don’t believe it!” replied Victor as he turned and walked off down the brightly lit street, taking care to stay out of the shadows.

There have been many Igors, some working for Frankenstein and others working for Dracula and other villains.

They were all descendants of the same broad family group.

The Netherlands were also invaded and occupied by the Germans, following the general strategy in one of the earlier variants of the Schlieffen Plan.

Steve, Richard the Lionheart taking on Genghis Khan alongside Robin Hood was too good an opportunity not to take; the Scarlet Pimpernel is also too interesting simply to leave in the 1790s. There was some exceptionally bloody fighting in Anatolia in both World Wars.