Vengeance 10 (26 page)

‘Our letters were infrequent and after 1936 stopped altogether. The following year I joined MI-Six and soon had to give up my position in the British Interplanetary Society for, well. . . other reasons.’

‘You did not correspond with, or see, von Braun from 1936 to 1938?’

‘No. And then strictly by accident. We just happened to be staying at the same hotel. We had dinner that night, and he introduced me to a colleague, a ... Franz something or other.’

‘Bethwig,’ Simon-Benet supplied.

‘Yes, that’s the name. I next saw von Braun in 1940 at the arms factory in Liege.’

Simon-Benet sipped his tea. ‘Both times you made reports concerning Germany’s research on long-range rockets?’

‘Yes. I assume they are in the files somewhere.’

‘The first was, yes. The second seemed to have been misplaced. Carelessness, I was told when it was finally found.’

Memling grinned. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised. The start of the war caught the old bureaucracy at Northumberland Avenue by surprise. I doubt they have adapted to it yet.’

‘They haven’t,’ the brigadier replied wryly. He paused, as if arranging his thoughts. ‘At the moment I am assigned a special task, that of co-ordinating information concerning Germany’s scientific and technical progress in one particular field, that of rocket research.’ ‘I’ll be damned.’

The brigadier ignored him. ‘I put my staff to searching for further information among various Allied intelligence agencies, and bits and pieces began to crop up, especially from Polish intelligence.’

‘Polish intelligence?’ Memling murmured in surprise. ‘Why ever in the world would they be interested in rockets?’

‘Seems that parts of Poland are being surveyed for testing sites. In any event, there were quite a few reports stuck here and there that, when assembled, suggest that more is going on than meets the eye. And none of them were duplicated in MI-Six files. I had a talk with Englesby, and he tended to dismiss their importance. When I mentioned your reports he shrugged and made remarks that gave me the impression there was a personality conflict between the two of you.’

The brigadier waited and, when no comment was forthcoming, called to the waitress for more tea. When she had gone, he fixed Memling with a steady look. ‘I am convinced there is something to this business of German rockets. What about you?’

Memling shook his head. ‘I thought so at one time, before the war. But since then, no. The rocket motors I saw in Liege were part of a put-up job to trick me into leading the Gestapo to the resistance group operating in the city.’ And with that admission came the familiar sickening despair that had always accompanied any memory of those terror-filled last days in Belgium.

‘Nonsense! There is something to all this, and your estimates of the size and range of the German rocket are not so different from those made by my own staff from information obtained through other sources. A remarkable job considering the circumstances. That is why I want you to come to work for me.’

Memling shook his head again. ‘I know damned well that whatever information you have must have been planted by the Nazis. Damn it, they tricked me, and God knows how many people died because of my stupidity.’

The brigadier regarded him for a moment. ‘There does seem to be a certain arrogance in that statement. It suggests that since you were, or thought you were, fooled, everyone else will be as well.’

‘Wait a moment …’

Simon-Benet held up a hand. ‘I know what you meant. I am afraid, however, that you must resign yourself to the fact that you are wrong. The rockets do exist and you are going to work for me.’

‘I can’t . . . sir. At least not until after the next mission. My section is raw and needs ...’

‘One junior officer more or less is not going to affect the war effort all that much. This might. I’ll allow you the rest of the day. Report to number Eighteen Red Lion Square tomorrow morning at 0700 sharp.’

Memling toyed with his cup a moment. ‘You don’t seem to leave me any option.’

‘I can’t afford to. This isn’t a game.’

There was an uncomfortable silence, which the brigadier finally broke. ‘I suppose you will stay on with Janet? Housing is very difficult in London now.’

‘Good Lord, no!’ Memling started. ‘I can’t just move in there ... I don’t even know if she’d have me.’

‘If you want my opinion, she needs you about as badly as you need her.’

‘But good God, man, I can’t just...’

The brigadier stood up grinning. ‘A damned puritan, hey? Let me tell you, boy, none of us may survive this war. If a bullet doesn’t find us at the front, a bomb might get us here in London. So if you can provide comfort to another, do so. Personally, I think prostitution and the theatre are the two noblest professions in which mankind can engage. Both offer entertainment and, best of all, relief from the outrages of the world.’

He touched his swagger stick to his cap and ducked out into the rain. The patch of blue sky, Memling noted, had disappeared, and it was coming down harder than ever.

‘October has been a busy month for us at Peenemunde,’ Franz Bethwig told his gathered staff. ‘The first wholly successful launch of the A-Four was made on the third of this month. I am proud of you all and the work you performed under arduous and adverse conditions.’

The staff applauded, and he smiled in acknowledgement. ‘I’m learning how to handle them, he thought. Perhaps Heydrich was right after all. ‘Today,’ he went on, ‘we have a much tougher job to do. With the A-Four we had behind us the assembled resources of a powerful nation - even though we lacked a meaningful top priority.’ He waited for, and received, the expected laughter. ‘But we are operating under even tougher conditions with the A-Ten. We all know how demanding the SS has become, and with good reason. We must push development as quickly as possible to spare the Reich the damage of a long-term, if ultimate, victory. For that reason Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler will arrive secretly at Peenemunde this morning to witness the first test flight.’

As he expected, a low murmur filled the room. The SS was never welcome; Himmler doubly so. ‘I expect you all to conduct yourselves with the utmost courtesy and respect for his rank and that of his aides.’ Bethwig paused a moment, then grinned wickedly. ‘I myself will do my best to keep those desk commandos out of your way.’

The room remained silent, except for the muffled exclamation of a horrified secretary. No one joked about Himmler.

Scowling, Bethwig continued: ‘I am pleased to announce that the countdown is proceeding well. We are holding at the moment, waiting for the Reichsführer’s aircraft to arrive. We have also received word from our two picket submarines in mid-Atlantic. Both are on station. The count will resume in one hour. We expect to launch this evening at 1900 hours.’

Franz and his new secretary, a pretty young land service girl named Katherine, went out into the watery autumn sunshine; a driver was waiting to take them to Launch Stand XII located near the centre of the island. The car drove off, keeping to the middle lane to avoid the pedestrians and bicyclists streaming towards the canteens for the lunch break. Few of them, Bethwig knew, were yet aware of the A-10; by this evening all would know about it. The massive test stand could be isolated and guarded in its remote, marshy section of the island, and the massive first stage could be shrouded during assembly and its move to the stand. But once the engines reached full thrust and the gargantuan vehicle rose above the trees and, one hoped, streaked down range, there would be no more secrecy. Bethwig’s staff had estimated that the noise would be heard in Stettin, some ninety kilometres distant.

As the car approached the test complex they had an occasional glimpse of the massive structure rearing above the pines, and even after a year and a half Bethwig still could not shake the feeling of awe it inspired in him.

The main control centre was housed in a half-buried bunker located a kilometre from the launch stand. He made a quick series of inspections among the consoles, then went up to the bunker’s roof where the cameramen were running checks on their equipment. One or two nodded, but no one spoke. Ordinarily the crews would have been excited and expectant; but the spectre of Himmler and his SS minions had dampened their enthusiasm. The A-4, a much smaller and less-complicated vehicle, had required three attempts before a successful flight was achieved. And numbers four and five, fired since, had failed. The crews realised that this was to be expected, but no one knew how the Reichsführer, the second most powerful man in the country and reputedly not the most stable individual, would view a failure on their part. The A-4 was an army project, and they were no strangers to failure. The A-10 was an SS project, and the SS did not admit to failure. Himmler’s reputation was on the line, and all recalled how the once mighty Goering had fallen when his vaunted Luftwaffe had failed to polish off the RAF in the summer of 1940; and how the army had sunk in esteem when the Russians shoved them back from the very gates of Moscow the previous autumn.

Bethwig tried to shake off these gloomy thoughts. The test firing sequence from static mountings had been pushed hard during the previous six months and had produced fairly consistent results. Lack of time had prevented them from incorporating the newest versions of his film cooling and fuel injection systems into the A-4 engines, but starting from scratch with the A-10, they had been able to do so. Combustion chamber overheating was a thing of the past. And only rarely did lethal amounts of fuel flood the chamber prior to ignition and cause an explosion. The construction and testing of the engines had proven easier than expected; relatively easier, he amended. The new fuel injection system made it possible to cluster the powerful engines to produce the massive thrust needed to break up and out of Earth’s gravitational well and reach the moon. He shook his head unconsciously. It never ceased to amaze him when he thought how great were the technical strides they had managed in the last three years.

‘Ah, here you are. Daydreaming, heh?’ Himmler had come on to the roof accompanied by two aides.

Startled, Bethwig turned quickly. ‘My apologies for not meeting you. I was not told you had arrived.’ His staff’s method of making certain that Himmler understood that he was not welcome? he wondered.

‘No matter.’ Himmler turned to stare out over the immense circular reach of concrete separating the bunker area from the launch table nearly a kilometre away. He stood with his hands on his hips, bouncing on his toes and smiling. ‘So this is what my late friend Heydrich began, hey? Look, Hans,’ he joked to an aide as he pointed at the concrete apron. ‘How many West Wall bunkers could be built with all that?’

Bethwig missed the answer as the loudspeaker announced the resumption of the countdown sequence. Three hours to go, he thought to himself. Three hellish hours of waiting made worse by Himmler’s presence.

The afternoon wore on at a snail’s pace. Early dusk came swiftly out of the west, and with it a damp cold that drove them inside. Floodlights went on as they re-entered the bunker; and in the distance Bethwig heard the drone of fighters patrolling against Allied reconnaissance aircraft.

Inside, the atmosphere was sticky with waste heat from the electrical motors and instruments. Bethwig escorted Himmler and his staff to the glassed-in VIP gallery, but the Reichsführer refused to stay there, preferring instead to roam about the vast room interrupting the technicians and scientists at their work. At less than an hour to launch, Domberger came in, his expression disapproving yet excited. Although he had no responsibility for the A-10 project, he received a round of applause from the men at their desks and consoles. Domberger was a popular administrator, as dedicated as any of them to rocketry in spite of his official disapproval of the A-10 project. It was understood that he was a soldier first and a scientist second.

Dornberger even smiled and had a good word for Bethwig, the first in months. He was polite to Himmler and his staff, although it was obvious that this took considerable effort.

During the long afternoon the volume of sound inside the bunker had risen gradually until now it was a continuous roar and one had to speak loudly to be heard. The launch crew consisted of fifty-three people sitting at consoles in the concrete vault of a room that had all the earmarks of the Todt Organisation’s hasty wartime construction. The current joke was that in spite of reinforced concrete walls several metres thick, a nearsighted fly ran into and knocked down the bunker’s west wall - an obvious allusion to the vast fortifications under construction along the Atlantic coast of France, which even the Reichsführer had joked about and which was the usual excuse for the lack of building materials at Peenemunde.

An armoured glass viewing window was set into the front wall of the bunker. In spite of mild distortion, the squat, can-shaped rocket with its truncated nose was clearly visible. The concrete apron glistened with evening mist, and the rocket’s fuselage glowed under the batteries of searchlights. Bethwig would much rather have launched during daylight when the cinecameras could have done a better job recording the rocket’s flight. But the submarines would need the daylight to spot the rocket when - not if, he thought - it flashed into the Atlantic two thousand kilometres south-east.

The clock over the viewing window read exactly 1855 hours when the countdown reached minus one minute thirty seconds. The final LOX tank topping had gone off without the expected hitches, and Bethwig called a three-minute hold. The crew relaxed visibly, and the air was suddenly blue with cigarette smoke.

Himmler had begun pacing as the tension increased. Now he approached Bethwig and demanded to know why everything had stopped. Franz’s explanation - time was needed to bring various schedules into line and also to allow the submarine tracking vessel to regain station - barely pacified him.

The controller’s voice was droning the count at ten-second intervals now. At minus forty seconds the wisp of steam that Bethwig had been waiting for appeared near the nose as the hydrogen peroxide generators pressurised the fuel tanks.