Vengeance 10 (12 page)

Of a sudden, Memling knew how the Germans had found the landing site. Walsch had cared nothing for Maria or for him. They were merely pawns, expendable, as were his own people, the two men in the Volkswagen. By applying enough pressure, Walsch had forced the Belgian resistance to move, to attempt to spirit Memling away, and he had then followed them to the landing site. Memling felt physically sick as he came to the realisation that he and not Maria was the Judas goat. He had been used to set up the Belgians. The presence of von Braun, the shrouded rocket engines, the closed section of the factory, were all part of an elaborate plot - Walsch, knowing of his friendship with Wernher von Braun, would certainly have guessed that he would be intrigued enough by rocket motors to contact the resistance and send word to London. And it had worked. Ah, Christ. He closed his eyes, wondering how he could have been so stupid.

‘I see,’ Englesby murmured. ‘You say this Paul considered this information you have about these German rockets to be quite important? Then I suppose you had better talk with the ordnance people. I’ll try to set something up immediately. And you’d better work up a report right away while everything is clear in your mind.’

He paused, then shook his head. ‘‘I’m certain that what you say is substantially true, Memling. However, you must realise there’s bound to be a bit of a flap over the loss of an entire resistance group involved in bringing home one operative with a wild claim to having uncovered a new secret weapon . . . again. Whatever you say will be interpreted in that light. Perhaps in your excitement, or in the pressure of the moment, a bit of exaggeration crept into your estimates? Entirely understandable of course, but you must keep in mind that when the NBBS got the wind up about aerial torpedoes or some such nonsense last August, nothing came of it.’

‘The NBBS?’ Memling asked dully.

‘Heh? Yes, I suppose you wouldn’t know about that. The New British Broadcasting System, they call themselves. Run by that fellow Goebbels. Radio station in Berlin, beamed here. Nothing but propaganda by renegade Englishmen. Anyway, like so many of Goebbels’s claims, there was nothing to this aerial torpedo nonsense. BBC did an analysis of their broadcasts over several weeks. Found most of them came right from those - oh, what do you call that silly stuff by that man Wells, and Verne... and, well, your kind of stuff, rockets to the moon and all that?’

‘Science fiction,’ Memling answered tightly.

‘Ah, yes. Science fiction. Buck Rogers and all that. Most of it seems to be American, doesn’t it?’

‘Submarines were once considered science fiction,’ Memling could not resist adding, but he knew Englesby was right.

‘Yes, I dare say. In the meantime I’ll just get on to the ministry ...’

There was nothing for it now but to admit he had been duped and therefore was responsible for how many Belgian lives?

‘If you don’t mind, sir’ - Memling’s voice was full of defeat - ‘I would like to go home first and see my wife. She doesn’t know ‘I’m back yet - ‘ He broke off.

A strange expression passed across Englesby’s face. ‘Ah, Memling...’ He swallowed and took out a handkerchief to touch his upper lip. ‘As I am sure you saw, London has experienced a very heavy bombing... it began in September. There was a blitz. Caused a great deal of damage and in the first two weeks ...’ Memling had never seen the man at a loss for words before, and then an ugly thought crossed his mind. ‘What are you trying to say, damn you?’ He was half out of his chair and shouting. ‘Your wife was killed during a bombing two months ago.’

For a moment Memling was certain that he had misunderstood. He stared at Englesby, trying to make sense of the words, but it was no use. He tried to rise, but his knees buckled and he fell back.

‘There was nothing anyone could do. The fire brigades were on to it as soon as possible. But there wasn’t anything ... the entire block ... I know what you must be feeling, old man, but the only thing to do’ - he wiped his forehead - ‘is to keep on.’

Memling left the office, thrust past the wide-eyed secretary, and raced down the stairs. Afterwards he was never to be certain how he crossed London. He was able to recall that as he approached the avenue everything appeared normal enough. There was no damage to be seen, and people went about their business in the usual manner. Only the absence of children and motor vehicles was remarkable. But when he turned the corner, the devastation was complete. Where had stood half a block of semi-detached houses and, across the road, a school, a police station, a fire- brigade headquarters, shops, and all the normal complement of a South London neighbourhood, now there was nothing. And beyond that, great gaping holes appeared where buildings had once stood, as if selected teeth had been removed from a giant’s mouth.

All the landmarks were gone, obliterated. Memling could not even know for certain if he were standing where his own house had been. The disposal crews had cleared the rubble from the road into long rows of broken timber, brick and twisted pipe, smashed furniture and torn cloth. He turned slowly, surveying the block. All the neighbours were gone as well; those not killed outright had been removed, said a sad-faced policeman who stood beside him a while and told him how the German bombers had struck in the early morning hours when people generally took shelter under the stairwells or in their basements rather than going out into the cold and wet. There was no reason to expect bombs here; there was nothing to attract them but shops and homes. The policeman shrugged. That was in the early days of the blitz, before they had all learned what was what.

After a while he left Memling standing before the rubble that had been his home. It was safe enough, the policeman judged. The man did not exhibit any of the usual signs of potential suicide, uncontrollable hysteria or violence. And he was profoundly glad of that. He had been on duty since the first raid at eight the evening before, and he was exhausted.

The scream gained in scale and volume. Franz Bethwig watched, fingers gripping the edge of the bench so hard his knuckles were bloodless. When the needle registered 128,000 kilograms of thrust, nearly five times that of the A-4, a slow grin spread across his face. The noise was deafening, even inside the blockhouse, and he could imagine what it was like outside. The twenty-centimetre protective quartz glass was vibrating so much that his view of the test stand was obscured. That was something he had not thought of; the cameras were sheltered behind such windows and the film would be too blurred to be of use.

The television screen, at any rate, was clear enough. As he shifted his glance he saw a white flare spring the length of the engine casing. Bethwig lunged for the fuel cut-off, but there was no time. Just before the test area disappeared in a whirlwind of flame, he thought he had seen the casing split along its centre line. The concussion slammed the blockhouse with a solid hammer of sound, and the television screen went blank.

Fire raged beyond the windows, two of which had been scarred with debris, but even so, he could see that the test stand was being flooded with sea water. The fire blast would cause little damage to the steel and concrete test area where everything was designed to minimise blast effects. But the prototype A-10 engine would be a total loss.

Exhaustion swept over him, and he turned away to gather the tangles of paper tape spewed from the recording instruments. He stripped the circular graph from the thrust indicator and left the building. A hot breeze enveloped him; Indian summer had settled over the island during the last week in September, raising the temperature well past twenty-eight degrees centigrade. The wind blew from the land and seemed starved of oxygen. The mid-afternoon sun glaring from the concrete produced an insistent headache as he trudged to his motorcar, which was parked beyond the safety barriers.

Bethwig drove slowly along the road, squinting at the glare from the crushed oyster-shell paving. The interior of the Lancia was blazing; he was tempted to put the top down but was even too tired for that. The flat, sandy, pine-covered island with its modernistic buildings reminded him of a Florida travelogue his father had taken him to see when he was much younger. Under the white sun Peenemunde seemed to have much the same ambiance as that bit of Florida somewhere near a place called Pensacola.

He had resolved to take the rest of the day off to go sailing in the little catboat he kept at Trassenheide. It had been months since he had had a holiday, and he was pale and sickly looking while the rest of the staff had grown sun-bronzed over the summer. There had been little enough project work, God only knew. Priorities evaporated as quickly as they were set. Speer had been a great disappointment. Not only had he failed to persuade Hitler of the promise of their work and the dire need to avoid delay, but he seemed to have lost interest himself.

Franz parked in front of the block of sterile reinforced-concrete apartments that served to house unmarried scientific personnel, and dragged himself inside abandoning all thought of sailing. He was too tired even to acknowledge the porter’s greeting. The heat seemed to have gathered inside, turning the building into an oven. Air conditioning had been included in the original plans but, like so many other promises, had never materialised. The units had actually been shipped to Peenemunde before being diverted somewhere else. He had seen the cartons stacked on the quay.

A persistent knocking woke him. Bethwig sat up, groggy with the heat and sleep, and swung his feet to the floor, ducking his head at the same time. His blood pressure, always low, had seemed abnormally so of late.

‘Who is it?’ he demanded, still half-asleep.

‘Franz, it’s Wernher. Are you awake?’

Bethwig swore. ‘I am now, yes! What do you want?’

‘I am going out to supper. I would like you to come along and meet someone.’

Bethwig lay back, spread-eagling himself to let the perspiration dry. ‘I don’t think so, Wernher. Not tonight.’

‘Franz, damn it, open the door. I can’t keep yelling like this.’ Bethwig stumbled to the closet and drew on a light robe. ‘Just a moment, just a moment,’ he muttered, and went into the bathroom to rinse his face with the tepid brownish water. Von Braun pounded on the door again and Franz flung it open. ‘Damn it, I told you ...’

Von Braun pushed him back into the room, spun him around, and shoved him towards the closet. ‘I know what you told me. Get dressed. We are driving to Swinemünde for supper.’

Bethwig changed direction for the bed. ‘Like hell. You go - ‘ Von Braun cut him off. ‘You don’t have a choice. It’s in the nature of a command performance.’

Bethwig tried to twist away, but von Braun held him securely. ‘Whose command?’

‘Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich.’

The great windows along the ground floor of the Walfisch Hotel had been thrown open to the sea. A faint movement stirred across the water, bringing hope of a cooling breeze. Bethwig glanced about the room wondering at the political power that could open an hotel and restaurant closed for the season at one man’s whim.

Tall, trim in his tailored uniform with silver SS flashes on the collar and SD rank prominently displayed, Reinhard Heydrich smiled and motioned for his aide to hand around cigars and pour the brandy.

Bethwig had drunk too much wine, and even though the heat was diminishing, he was finding it difficult to keep from nodding off.

‘How did your test go today?’ Heydrich enquired as they finished the obligatory toast to the Führer.

Bethwig came awake instantly. ‘I don’t believe ...’

‘Come, come,’ Heydrich chuckled. ‘Surely you do not think you can hide anything from the head of the Security Service, do you?’

Bethwig toyed with his brandy, while von Braun looked from one to the other, his expression thoughtful. Franz was recalling Heydrich’s first visit less than a month before. Heydrich had explained his presence by telling them he had been asked by the OKW, the high command, to examine security at the test site. But his visit had not been cleared first with Dornberger’s Berlin office. As familiar as he was with the rivalry between the military and the party’s own armed service, Bethwig could not quite believe the OKW would ever permit, let alone request, an intrusion by the SD. He had meant to speak to his father about the affair, but in the press of work on the new prototype A-10 engine, he had forgotten.

‘The test conducted today concerned an army project, a highly classified army project.’

Heydrich dismissed the reprimand with a laugh. ‘Of course. But as I told you, the SD is required by law to be aware of everything that occurs inside the Reich. Why, supposing you had been up to no good, perhaps even sabotage? It would certainly look very bad for me if you succeeded, would it not?’

Neither of the two scientists missed the implied threat, and both stared uncomfortably at Heydrich for a moment. He is obviously, Bethwig thought, letting us see the iron fist beneath the velvet glove. But to what purpose?

‘Your test was successful, then, in spite of the explosion?’ Bethwig nodded reluctantly. ‘Partially.’

‘Partially?’ Heydrich prompted; and although the smile continued, the eyes seemed to have gone pale with anger at Bethwig’s obtuseness.

‘The test proved a new fuel pump and nozzle system’ - Bethwig told him the cover story with obvious reluctance - ‘that meters fuel more accurately and increases chamber pressure so that more thrust can be obtained. A faulty weld appeared to have opened, and the engine was destroyed.’

‘And how do you accomplish this increase in pressure?’

‘We have replaced the intricate nozzle system with a simple iron plate into which a series of holes have been drilled at specific intervals. It is a more accurate system and will be fitted to all new rockets during manufacture.’

‘I see,’ Heydrich murmured with a sardonic glance.

Wernher had been sipping his brandy, and now he set the glass down. ‘Franz, do you recall our talk on the beach a few weeks before the war began? Do you remember telling me that if we are to reach the moon, we need backing from the highest party authority? Two weeks ago I had a frank discussion with Herr Speer. He still sees the value of our special project, but, as he readily admitted, he has been unable to convince the Führer. He suggested that I speak to Reichsprotektor Heydrich ...’