Vengeance 10 (58 page)
Von Braun shrugged again. ‘We just have no idea what happened. Radio contact was lost. This morning we tried to find him with radar as Earth rotated so that our antennas had a clear view, but we could not achieve a signal. If he had continued on the course prescribed, Franz would have . . .’ Von Braun’s voice broke, and he had to take a deep breath, then ‘. . . would have landed two hours ago.’
Memling took the glass and drank most of the cognac in a single gulp. He leaned back on the couch and closed his eyes. ‘So it’s over,’ he said after a moment, and von Braun was struck by the sadness, the sense of loss, in the Englishman’s voice.
‘Yes.’
‘What happens next?’
Von Braun walked to the window and stood looking out into the darkness. He was conscious of the beginning of a strange alliance that would have been unthinkable six months ago but which now seemed perfectly logical, the culmination of the random insanity that had held the world in thrall for seven years.
‘SS General Doktor Hans Kammler has given orders to evacuate immediately,’ he said. ‘The Soviets are less than fifty kilometres away. He is convinced that Russian commandos were responsible for the damage caused the night of the launching. There was a submarine sighted off the coast that night.’ Von Braun turned back into the room to study the gaunt Englishman, so different from the boy he had known before the war. ‘Franz told me you agreed to help. Were you responsible for the damage?’
Memling ignored the question. ‘Will you go?’
‘I have no choice.’ Von Braun shrugged. ‘We are ordered to make our way to Nordhausen, in the Harz Mountains, where the SS can protect us ... or kill us if necessary.’ Von Braun paused. ‘I understand that you may have brought us an alternative.’
‘I did.’ Memling described SHAEF’s offer of employment following the war, providing the Peenemunde scientists surrendered to the Western powers. ‘On no account will the offer hold,’ he warned, ‘if your surrender is made to the Russians.’
‘I assume there are both political and practical implications to that statement,’ von Braun observed dryly, and Memling nodded.
‘Then you need have little fear on that score. No one wishes to disappear into Russia. Most of us are fighting the war to prevent the spread of communism to ...’
Memling held up a hand. ‘Your motives do not concern me. ‘I’m just the messenger. Arrangements were made to take some of you out immediately, but I doubt if they hold any longer. You will have to find another way to make contact.’ Memling nursed his drink for a long moment while staring into the shadows. ‘What will you tell them about the V-Ten?’
Von Braun sighed as he replenished his glass. ‘Nothing. The dangers of such a weapon, the temptation to use - ‘
‘No one has,’ Memling interrupted, ‘and I doubt anyone ever will, resist the temptation to use any weapon, no matter how deadly, if it will ensure his survival. It may sound naive after what we’ve been through, but perhaps we should make damned certain the next time that the correct side has the V-Ten. And there will be a next time.’
Memling’s eyes were hollowed by fear and privation, and von Braun shuddered. This man is war, he thought, a war which I had no idea existed. ‘Perhaps,’ he said then. ‘In any event, the SS collected all project films for destruction, so there is nothing to discuss. In addition, the Führer is said to have given orders to resist to the last man, woman, and child. This is clearly nonsense, yet how many will and thus prolong the fighting? What will be the attitude towards Germany then? As it was the last time? Or will forbearance be shown? What inroads will the communists make?’ He sat down abruptly. ‘I am tired to death. For now, let us agree to say nothing until we see the shape of the future. We do not know what happened to . . . Franz. Perhaps he died when the rocket motors exploded. Perhaps he did land on the moon. God in heaven only knows.’
On 2 May 1945 Magnus von Braun rode an old bicycle down a mountain road to make contact with a leading element of the American Army, the 324th Infantry Regiment, 44th Infantry Division, in the village of Schattwald, near the Austrian border. A few hours later a party including, among others, Magnus, Wernher von Braun, Major General Walter Dornberger and Jan Memling - disguised as a German technician - surrendered to First Lieutenant Charles L. Stewart, an intelligence officer assigned to the 44th Infantry. Memling was flown to London the following day.
Jan Memling and Wernher von Braun met for the next and last time on 15 July 1969 in a Cocoa Beach, Florida, motel room, and the following day, the two greying, middle-aged men stood beside one another in the VIP gallery as Apollo 11 began its historic journey to the moon. The photograph taken after the launch shows them standing arm in arm, tears clearly visible in their eyes.
I have taken some liberties with events in Germany between 1935 and 1945 and with the characters in my story. Some - the obvious ones - were real people. Others are composites or else made up out of whole cloth. In either event, I trust I have treated those well who deserved it, and ill those who deserved that.
In 1960, President John F. Kennedy announced before the United Nations General Assembly that the United States of America would land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. It was not, as many critics charged, a publicity stunt but rather a notice to the world that the future of man lay beyond this planet. Over the past twenty years, the money, time and effort expended to land Apollo 11 on the moon has been returned a thousand-fold in new technology, business opportunities, and scientific and medical advances. Just as Wernher von Braun predicted in 1939.
It is a tribute to the men of Peenemunde who, although they built war weapons, never lost sight of the ultimate goal, space travel. The American lunar landing programme was solidly based on technology developed first at the Raketenflugplatz, at Kummersdorf and Peenemunde in Germany and later refined at White Sands, Huntsville, and Cape Kennedy.
It is more than possible - given logical decisions at the right times, efficient organisation of industry, military, and science, and a coherent leadership in Berlin - that Germany might well have sent the first human being to the moon. It had always been the intention of Wernher von Braun and his closest associates to do so, as his arrest in 1944 showed.
Twenty-four years later they proved it.
Joe Poyer
Orange, California
1980
By his own admission, Joe Poyer has been fascinated with the possibilities of space travel since he was a small child. The late Wernher von Braun, with whom he corresponded, was a personal hero, and the idea for
Vengeance 10
was suggested by something Dr von Braun once told him. Mr Poyer brings personal experience to
Vengeance 10
, having worked during most of the 1960s on various phases of the Apollo Space Programme. He is the author of twelve novels including
North Cape
, of which Alistair MacLean said, it’s the ‘best adventure story I have read for years’. The
Washington Post
called
Tunnel War
, his previous book, ‘a marvellously detailed and suspenseful fiction’, and the London
Financial Times
described it as ‘a really excellent example of an action novel. . . exciting and intelligent all the way through ‘.
