The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

The Britons; eight


John convinced the two men that he was innocent. He, nor anyone else here either, had been cooperating with the authorities to inform upon them. The pair using the pseudonyms of Adams and Norton decided not to shoot him. The gun was removed from where it had been at his temple. John watched it go back in Adams’ pocket while Norton invited him to sit down and talk with them. Following this suggestion – which he didn’t think it would be wise not to –, John sat down with the two of them in the breakfast room. At any time, John was aware that Adams could decide to take his gun out and shoot him this time. That man said nothing. He just sat opposite to John on the other side of the table in the B-&-B above the Royal Oak. Norton was to John’s left and it was that second man who remained doing all the talking. He and his comrade (he used the term ‘tovarisch’) came within a centimetre of being caught by British soldiers at the safe house they were supposed to go to after completing their mission a couple of nights ago. They had escaped and made their way back here. It was no coincidence that where they had been going had soldiers there. Someone had betrayed them but, thankfully, they had escaped the trap set. It had taken a lot of effort to get back here and they still didn’t feel safe. John reaffirmed to Norton that he had nothing to do with any of that, neither did his wife nor Leah. Leah only drove them to where they were supposed to go, handing them off to someone else, and knew nothing more as he and his wife didn’t. Norton asked whether Leah was East German like he and his wife was. John told him she was English but she was committed to the cause she served. Something quick and in Russian slang was said to Adams by Norton following that, something that John couldn’t pick up despite knowing the language. It had been many long years ago when he’d been taught Russian and that was in formal capacity: he’d spoken with that commando Vanya in the same language but even then that conversation hadn’t been easy flowing. Whatever these two men said when it came to Leah, it didn’t sound like they were speaking highly of her. As to what was their mission, John wanted to ask them what that had been. He wanted to know if they had been off to kill the then Prime Minister. He kept that question to himself though. They were already on edge and had been prepared to kill him. He, naturally, didn’t want them to start thinking again that they should do that because he was pumping them for information.

Norton wanted to know if there were commandos out in the woods nearby, near to the airbase. It was RAF Marham there, wasn’t it? John replied that the airbase was nearby but anything to do with a Soviet special forces team, if there was one, was something that was compartmentalised. His mission orders didn’t allow him to discuss anything like that without permission. Where was their controlling officer then? Norton would talk with him and this would all be sorted out. With a sigh, John told his unwelcome guest that Morgan had died. He made use of Sarah’s excuse for that man’s demise: she had been killed by accident during the link-up between officers on the ground and new arrivals. As he said this, he realised he was giving too much away. This had all come out of nowhere though, the two men in the B-&-B who ambushed him, and he was talking a lot. Adams took his pistol out and placed it on the table. John’s eyes were on it as this happened. The gunman casually told John that he would take him and Norton to those commandos as soon as possible. He would get them there safety and ensure that there was no misunderstanding about what was happening. Despite the open threat, John still couldn’t do that. He could only imagine Vanya’s reaction to two strange men showing up, armed too, with John saying that they were his comrades. Vanya and his men would start shooting, John being certain among the first to be killed. He tried to talk Norton around, purposefully keeping his eyes off Adams and his gun. It couldn’t be done, he said. Norton shook his head: it will be something that you will do.


When Sarah returned with Leah to the house outside of Narborough in the early afternoon, they came back to make only a short stop there. The intention was that the two of the, plus John too, were each to make more trips to Site #1 and Site #2 this evening with more of the signalling equipment to be taken to each. Leah was to go on her own to the first place, the nearer one, while Sarah and her husband were to go the distant second location where those commandos were hiding. They would be moving much equipment with, added in what had already been taken, half sent in total once this series of journeys were done. She wasn’t expecting anyone else to be in the house upon arriving. John was there with those two men who’d been at the B-&-B in the days before the war started. Adams and Norton were sitting in the living room: she couldn’t remember which one was which. John was with them too, though standing over in the corner of the room against the wall and looking rather uneasy. She fought the urge to reach into her pocket, take out the pistol which she had swiped from here, and shoot the both of them. These two looked like the type who would be quick to return fire. There was too the issue that she didn’t know what was going on. Sarah told herself that, if need be, she could do that later. If there was a threat from these two men, she’d take care of them. Sending Leah off to make them all a cuppa – a cup of tea can solve anything! –, she went and sat down. John explained that these two needed to be taken up to Site #2 where Vanya and his fellow commandos were hiding. Sarah wanted to ask much about this though kept her mouth shut on those enquires. She said that it wouldn’t be easy but it could be done. Leah came back with the tray carrying the cups of tea and Sarah noted how the two men reacted to her. Both stared at her, watching Leah’s every movement. Leah was the type to attract male attention, which was why she had been sent here to aid them in their espionage tasks, but these were different type of stares. The two of them looked certain to kill her. John explained that there was a change of plan now. He would take Adams and Norton up to the hidden tunnel where Vanya could be found while Sarah would go with Leah back to that shed that was the closer commando hide. Agreeing to this, Sarah gave away no indication of what she was thinking… that being that if John went off with them, she’d never see him return.

Going back out again, when the worst of the heat of the day had worn off, Sarah waited until they were clear from the house before taking Leah into her confidence. She told the English girl that she was going to leave Leah to make that trip alone and would give her all of the baggage to take. The going would be hard for her and this was only her second trip, but Sarah trusted Leah to be able to do it. As to what she herself was doing, Sarah was going to surreptitiously follow John and that pair of Soviets. Her worry was of John’s safety, she told Leah, though also but the two of them too. Leah replied that that might not be a good idea. Adams and Norton had given her no indication before that they posed any danger to the three of them. Just do as I want you to, Sarah told her: trust me on this. She broke away from Leah and went off quickly to somewhere she had thought about earlier on. There was a hedgerow she reached soon enough. From here, she had a good view of the routing that John would be taking with those two men who were certain to kill them all. They’d start with John, Sarah was sure, and then move to her and Leah next. Why would they do this? John had told her that they were convinced someone had betrayed them and she’d got that feeling herself before he said what he did in a hushed conversation during a moment alone. Adams and Norton would kill them all to protect themselves. She would get rid of them first. The wait was longer than she thought it would be, but eventually Sarah spotted the trio of men moving through cover at the start of their long journey. Sarah saw them only because she was looking hard enough in the right place. She waited for them to move onwards and started following. Sarah had her gun with her and waited for the right time to creep forward and send those two Soviets to hell.

The Britons; nine


Before the three of them left the house, Adams said that he felt unwell. John was busy getting the set of backpacks ready and also looking out of the back window with the binoculars for any sign of life. He heard Norton tell his tovarisch to go sit on the toilet if his stomach hurt but warned him that they didn’t have long. When Adams emerged, John caught sight of him. He looked terrible, like he’d drunk too much alcohol. The Soviet agent was holding his stomach. John asked whether he could make it as far as they were going. Norton spoke for him and said that Adams could. The trio set off with John leading the way. Adams fast fell behind. Norton kept urging him on and grabbing at him. John was frustrated at the slow progress being made. He wanted Adams – no, the two of them – to go back, but Norton insisted that the three of them go to that tunnel which was Site #2 for Vanya’s commandos in the woods. Taking another look at Adams, John was taken aback had how the man was. It really seemed that he had been heavily drinking. Adams was sweating, slurring his words and unsteady. Norton took didn’t look that great either: not as bad as the man he was helping along but similar to how Adams had back in the house. John forced the three of them to stop. He asked Norton how he was feeling and he too said that he had a stomach pain. John had to help Adams get back up off the ground, doing what Norton was unable to do. He couldn’t understand what was wrong with the two of them. If they hadn’t been drinking, had they both eaten something that was making them ill? All they had had was some orange juice that Sarah had given them all. He’d taken a glass from his wife too and he felt fine. The pace slowed down. They’d gotten a third of the distance they should have in the time gone by. John heard Adams hit the ground. Norton was beside him though barely able to talk and especially not help Adams up. This was ridiculous! How could they get as far as they were going, all laden down with all of that heavy electrical signalling equipment too, with the both of them in this state? John went over to the two of them and pulled Adams up against a tree so he could sit up; he had to do the same with Norton despite his protestations that he could do that himself. He left them for a moment and swung his gaze around. Something caught his eye, movement to his left. Then there was the roar of a gunshot.

John hit the ground. He scrambled into cover, crawling into a bush. There was a second shot followed by a shout of alarm from Norton before two more shots in quick succession. Norton called out again – something in Russian slang that John didn’t understand – before there was a fifth shot. That was the final one. John stayed where he was. He didn’t move nor say anything. The gunfight seemed over but he didn’t want to chance it yet. He waited to find out what had happened. Norton hissed at him, asking if he was still there. John spoke softly as he answered that he was. He asked what had happened. Someone shot at us, Norton told him; he was hit but Pasha already looked worse than if he had been shot. John could only assume that ‘Pasha’ was Adams’ real name. He asked Norton where he was hit. It was in the arm, a flesh wound too. Whoever it was who’d shot at them, they were gone now. Norton had seen someone running away to the south and he couldn’t give chase. John still stayed where he was. People shooting, even if it had stopped for now, made him do that. He’d wait a bit more before emerging from where he was safe.


Sarah had taken a bigger gun that she had used before. She had only thought about the damage that it would do. What she realised as she ran was that the recoil on a bigger calibre weapon was far greater than she’d expected. She hadn’t been standing correctly when firing and fallen over after the first shot. Despite what she had hoped, she was still an amateur at guns. Her second shot, taken from the ground, appeared to have had more success than the first – she was sure she hit one of those two Soviets – with a bullet striking home on a target. But bullets had whizzed back at her. They had come mighty close. Whichever one of them firing, whether it be Adams or Norton, they had come close to killing her. She’d panicked and fled, telling herself that she got one with the poison and shot the other one. Sarah had used ethylene glycol as that method of disabling the two Soviets who’d effectively kidnapped her husband by forcing him to take them out into the woods. That chemical was found with their house’s garage where John had never provided room to park the Land Rover but instead filled with all sorts of odds & sods. Among that junk John had there was a can of anti-freeze for the vehicle’s radiator. Many years before, as young officer going through training with the HVA, Sarah had taken a class on poisons where an intelligence officer stationed abroad might have to make use of a household chemical to safeguard themselves and their mission. Anti-freeze had been covered by that. She’d added just a dash to two glasses of juice she’d given to Adams and Norton, making sure that none went into the third glass that she gave John. How long the effects would take depended upon a lot of factors. She knew that there would be a debilitating impact rather than seeing it instantly kill those two men. That had been what she judged enough to allow her to get close enough to them to kill them.

Sarah had made her move too soon. Only one had been truly knocked out of action with the second looking terrible but still able to use his gun. Sarah had seen John dive for cover and worried about him as she ran back to where Leah would be. She hoped that the man she shot would die quickly of his wounds plus what she’d given him and the other one would quickly join him. As she ran, getting close to Site #1, she reckoned that Leah would have reached there by now. Sarah would likely meet her as Leah began her return. She was thinking of what to say if Leah made mention of hearing gunshots in the distance. Just as Sarah came up with a notion of how to handle that possibility, she heard an explosion up ahead. She sprinted forward, not stopping to assess what was happening. It was madness, she knew, but she raced there, worrying over Leah.


John’s ears were still ringing. Norton had fired another shot. He said afterwards that he thought he saw someone coming back to kill them but then told John that he was mistaken. John was still in the hidden position though had eyes on the two men he’d come into the woods with. Adams was flat out on the ground with his face having a deathly pale to it. John thought he was dead and didn’t know how that had happened. Norton was sitting up against the base of that tree where Adams had been at first. There was blood all down one arm and he had a frightening look on his face of someone about to die. Norton vomited on the ground and then apologised. He asked John what was wrong with him and Adams. All that John could say was that he didn’t know but the two of them needed medical attention. He’d go get that too. Up John got as he pulled himself out from below the undergrowth. He sat on his hunches, looking about. He couldn’t see anyone. Norton told him not to bring anyone here. He and Pavel – it was ‘Pavel’ now; John recalled that Pasha was a diminutive of the given name Pavel – would recover soon enough. No one could be brought to them because that would see them put in too much danger. John was glad that Norton was so insistent. Bringing anyone here hadn’t been his intention but now John wasn’t going to have to tell anymore lies. The two of them were going to die here, he knew, but he wasn’t going to be present for that. He took one last look at them both to assure himself that they were both finished and saw that Norton had let his gun drop from his grasp to the ground. The man was barely capable of keeping his eyes open. With that, John took the backpacks and luggage holdalls (quite the load) and left as fast as he could. He no longer had the problem of taking them to meet with Vanya.

Ten, maybe fifteen minutes later, John came across Vanya’s men. They were around him before he realised, covering him with their rifles. Site #2 was still far away but he’d come across some of them out on patrol. He gave the password when challenged and was searched thoroughly by one of them while two more stood ready to kill him in an instant. He spoke only with one of them (the one who patted him down for weapons) and was asked what was happening. John told the truth. The Soviet commando was rather unimpressed at John leading a pair of men towards the hide where he and his comrades were. He said that it wasn’t his men who’d been shooting before but they would be soon enough. Then, he told John to tell Vanya this and wished him luck. John felt a coldness sweep over him and for a second he felt faint. He worried he was sick with whatever had affected Adams and Norton. But then that feeling went. It was fear, not illness. The trio of Soviet commandos, still in the British uniforms, left him. They went in the direction of where Adams and Norton were. John really now didn’t have the worry of them being brought to Vanya. He had his own life to worry about yet those two laid up men certainly wouldn’t have theirs for much longer. There was no doubt in his mind that they were about to die, to be finished off following what someone else had started. Who was that, who had been shooting? It was obvious, wasn’t it? It had to have been Sarah.


Sarah found Leah about a minute away from Site #1. The younger woman was on the ground. There was blood everywhere. Half of Leah’s face was missing. Her chest was torn open. Her left arm was several feet away. Sarah vomited at the sight of the dead Leah. It was that grenade booby trap. Sarah discovered that the equipment that Leah had been bringing here was already inside and the main anti-intrusion / demolition charge had been re-set. Leah appeared to have done something wrong with the smaller, secondary one as she left. It had killed her, probably not instantly too. Leah’s last moments would have been of much suffering. What could Sarah do? Nothing. She went through Leah’s pockets. Sarah was looking for anything that could identify her. There wasn’t anything to find though: Leah had been too professional to be carrying anything incriminating on her if she had been caught by agents of the state. Sarah moved the body, both the main portion and the bit ripped off. She rolled Leah into the undergrowth and placed that severed arm with her too. This was the second time in two days that she had to deal with a dead body and it wasn’t getting any easier. Someone would find Leah soon enough and Sarah was only delaying things with this. It had to be done though. Leah’s remains couldn’t be found anytime soon: it wasn’t as if she wasn’t well known in these parts. Sarah had heard the blast here and there had been all of the gunshots too. She was worried that it all had been heard by others. There were patrols being run by the British with men on the ground operating from RAF Marham and she could picture them closing-in. Once done, she got out of here.

John returned to the house many hours later. He’d survived his meeting with Vanya. There had been many moments when he thought that he wouldn’t but that Soviet commando team leader had allowed him to live. John knew why: without him and Sarah, the mission for the pathfinder’s was going to be impossible. They needed the rest of the equipment. When they got that, then John believed that there would be a score to be settled. He believed that he had time though to figure out a way to get out of all of this. Running wasn’t an option – he had a family back home in East Germany – but he’d complete his mission and somehow escape the attention of someone who’d want to kill him. Vanya had made it clear how unimpressed he was at John leading two purported comrades of his towards his hideout. Those men were dead now, finished off by Vanya’s men, but that wasn’t the point as far as Vanya was concerned. Though he didn’t say so, John understood exactly what Vanya was saying. If he’d been in his shoes, he’d want to kill whoever did such a foolish thing. Coming back to the house, he found Sarah there. He didn’t accuse her of shooting at Adams and Norton… when he was with them! It just wasn’t worth hearing another lie from her. John told her everything that had happened. She then revealed why Leah was missing. After these revelations, the two of them said nothing for some time. They both sat in silence in the dark living room as the night got even later. The time approached twelve o’clock. John hadn’t needed to be reminded by Vanya as he had that the radio in the loft needed checking for a message at the allotted time. Neither John or Sarah, nor Vanya either, was expecting a communication for them to be coming through the link-up. It needed checking though, just in case. Sarah followed him up into the loft and activated the system. It was for listening only, not broadcasting: in theory no one with any fancy tracking equipment should be able to zero-in on them seeing as nothing was outgoing.

A message came at midnight.

Sarah is just massively out of her depth. But then if she'd been trained purely for espionage then there's no need for her to learn anything about combat as the biggest part of her job is to pass unnoticed.