The Moscow Option by David Downing

Author:David Downing [Downing, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Alternate history
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

VI

During the next few days, as 90th Motorised reconnaissance units moved east along the coastal road in the wake of the retreating British, the defenders and population of the Egyptian heartland prepared themselves for the inevitable onslaught. The proud remains of the British Mediterranean Fleet sailed from Alexandria on the night of 19 May; around the harbour the demolition gangs awaited the order to destroy the port installations. The town itself seemed like a ghost town, the effects of a strict curfew compounded by the absence of army units, most of whom had been sent either west to the front or south-east to Cairo for possible evacuation.

In the capital itself streets were jammed with traffic from the front, from the country districts, from Alexandria. It was impossible to find space on the densely-packed trains leaving the main station for Palestine. On the roads leading east and south away from Cairo long convoys carried noncombat personnel towards the Suez Canal, Suez itself and the Upper Nile valley. On an open stretch of ground between the British Embassy and the GHQ buildings a number of bonfires were consuming maps, codes, reports, documents of every kind. Cairo seemed to be echoing Moscow.

In the Abdin Palace a nervous King Farouk was closeted with ex-Prime Minister Ali Maher. The King had promised the British authorities that he would move to Gaza when the time came, but he had no intention of doing so. The Germans had also offered him sanctuary; the Abwehr had promised to spirit him and Ali Maher away to Crete. The two Egyptians had refused this offer. They would ‘disappear’ in the near future, they told their Axis contact, and resurface only to welcome the ‘liberation of our country’.

In the barracks of the Egyptian Army the plotting was also proceeding, though with little apparent effect. The Free Officers were trying to inveigle the powerful leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Hassan el Banna, to join them in mounting a coup. He advised them to wait for further Axis successes. When Rommel reached Alexandria, he told Anwar as-Sadat, then they would act together to free Egypt of the accursed British. While these two were sitting in Banna’s tree-shaded mansion in an expensive Cairo suburb, the British were busy building defensive positions on the outskirts of the capital, around Mena to the north-west and near the Pyramids to the west. Auchinleck was still in the desert, supervising Eighth Army’s retreat into the El Alamein positions, but messages were flashing back and forth between him and his deputy in Cairo, Lieutenant-General Corbett, concerning the defence of central Egypt. Though Auchinleck did not wish to alarm his already despondent army, he was determined to prepare for the worst. A plan to flood large areas of the Delta was being drawn up, a line of defences under construction between Wadi Natrun and the coast near Alexandria. If the worst came to the worst Auchinleck intended to pull Eighth Army back through Egypt step-by- step, half of it

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