Vengeance 10

Germany – England February 1938

The train was less than fifteen minutes from the German-Belgian border when the two men entered the carriage where Memling was seated. They found places at the end of the aisle facing him. The one to the left shook out a newspaper and began to read. Memling could see the banner Das Eizenblatt, which suggested they had come from Berlin. The second man, clad in a shapeless black suit, was staring out the window, apparently oblivious to the stale air and the crowded train. Winter light carved deep hollows in his cheeks, making him appear tubercular. Their eyes met as the carriage jolted over a set of points, and the man smiled a death’s-head leer.

Memling knew then they were Gestapo and had come for him.

Jan Memling had arrived in the Ruhr town of Amsberg two days earlier to keep an appointment with the manager of the manufacturing concern of Zemwalt GmbH. This was his first trip abroad and the first time he had been entrusted with dealings of such importance. In spite of his nervousness, the initial meeting had gone well enough, he thought, and the following day, to his immense surprise, agreement had been reached. A contract was drawn up with delivery of the required washing-machine parts promised for mid-May.

Memling was in a euphoric mood, and despite the icy rain which had persisted for days, he strolled the three miles back to the Hotel Husemann, whistling happily and peering into shops along the way. Depending on continental insouciance, he had even dared a ladies’-wear establishment where a pretty young clerk, under the maternal eye of an older woman, embarrassed him mightily. Even so, he left with a frothy lace blouse for his fiancée. Not even the outrageous price could dampen his mood.

Back at the hotel, he hurried to his room to change into dry shoes and trousers, brushed up, and went down to the lounge for a celebratory drink. He had been sitting at the bar practising his German on the bored waiter when a hand descended on his shoulder with a thud that almost knocked him from his seat. ‘Jan Memling!’ The words exploded in his ear, and he was spun around to see a square face topped with a shock of unruly long blond hair grinning at him.

‘I thought it was you!’

‘Wernher!’ Memling gaped. ‘Wernher von Braun! I don’t believe it.’ He stumbled to his feet and wrung his friend’s hand. ‘My God, it is you. How long has it been?’

‘Four years. Paris, 1934, remember? Ah, did we get drunk that last night.’ Von Braun stepped back to take a good look at Memling. ‘Are you never going to add some weight? Do the English never eat? You all look half-starved.’ Then, remembering his manners, von Braun turned to the man with him. ‘But allow me to introduce my good friend and associate, Herr Doktor Franz Bethwig.’

Bethwig was as tall and blond as von Braun, Memling noted as he extended his hand. A lock of hair slipped over his forehead, and he brushed it back with a quick, nervous gesture, then shook Memling’s hand once and contrived to bob forward from the waist at the same time. His expression was noncommittal as he said, ‘So pleased to meet you, Herr Memling.’

Von Braun signalled the waiter who hurried over with two more chairs. Bethwig sat down, his posture suggesting quite plainly that he hoped they would be staying no more than a moment or two.

‘This is amazing,’ Jan Memling said, struggling in his excitement for the correct words. ‘Do you work in Arnsberg?’ Von Braun chuckled. ‘In a way. Franz and I have been here for three weeks.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper and leaned across the table. ‘And we are heartily sick of it. There is nothing to do but walk in the hills and drink. As it has been raining so much…’ He shrugged. ‘Why, there is not even a decent cinema in the entire town. Thank God we leave tomorrow. But enough of us. Why are you here, of all places?’

Memling also shrugged, striving to appear nonchalant. ‘Nothing much. A few days on business. To settle a manufacturing contract for my company.’

‘Then you have taken your engineering degree,’ von Braun exclaimed. ‘I recall that you were studying when you came to Paris. Let me see’ – he tapped his forehead – ‘the Imperial College of Science and Technology, was it not?’

Memling looked uncomfortable for a moment. ‘No, I did not finish. The depression ruined my father’s business… I was lucky enough to find a position with a manufacturing firm in their quality control department. I have since been moved to production engineering. But I do plan to finish my degree when I am able.’

Bethwig’s expression was sceptical, and to break the sudden silence, von Braun leaned back and called to the barman for three steins of beer.

‘But you, Wernher, I heard that you not only earned your doctorate but are employed by the army as well. That’s wonderful!’

Von Braun looked at him with a quizzical expression. ‘Where did you hear that, Jan?’

Memling’s cheeks flamed a sudden red. ‘Isn’t… isn’t it true? I mean… I… Arthur Clarke did have a letter from Willy Ley. He mentioned it.’

At the mention of Ley’s name, the two Germans exchanged glances. The barman arrived at that moment, and Memling looked from one to the other as the beer was served, his cheeks still red with embarrassment.

‘Willy, my God, I haven’t heard from him in years, not since he left Germany,’ von Braun exclaimed a shade too heartily. ‘I was just surprised that you knew. One is always amazed at how word gets about.’

‘How do you know Arthur Clarke and Willy Ley?’ Franz Bethwig asked Memling. His expression was guarded, and there was something a bit disturbed, or disturbing, in his eyes, Jan could not tell which.

‘I am a member of the British Interplanetary Society. Memling began, but von Braun whooped suddenly.

‘Franz, didn’t I tell you? Jan is one of us! He has been a rocket experimenter as long as you and I.’

Bethwig’s expression relaxed immediately, and he grinned. ‘Well, then, that is different.’ He raised his stein in toast. ‘To us, everywhere!’

‘After the VfR failed in 1932,’ von Braun went on, ‘as I think I told you before, the army offered to pay my university expenses if I would work for them. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity.’

‘I should think so.’ In spite of himself, Memling could not keep the envy from his voice. ‘Arthur was correct, then. You are working full-time with rockets. I think that’s wonderful. Our people refuse to pay attention to us. They consider us nothing more than cranks. We have so little money, we can barely afford to buy petrol for fuel.’

‘I had heard that the British Interplanetary Society had fallen on hard times,’ Bethwig remarked in his precise English. ‘It is unfortunate, but then we ourselves have discovered that a private venture is simply not practical. Rocket development is an expensive undertaking, and only the government has sufficient resources to fund such work. It was not until the National Socialists took power that we were provided for. Perhaps if you too had a National Socialist government…’ Bethwig smiled and let the sentence trail off.

‘Perhaps,’ Memling replied somewhat uncomfortably, ‘but in—’

Von Braun interrupted, banging his empty stein on the table and shouting for the barman. ‘Please, please. No politics. Politics give me a headache. I do not care where the money comes from so long as I am allowed to build bigger and better rockets. Then one day soon, God willing, we will travel to the moon and beyond.’ Memling instantly forgot his uneasiness. A warm sense of companionship sped through him, and when the barman had departed, he drank off the second stein in one long gulp. They were three young men who shared a dream, and that was all they needed to understand one another.

‘Wernher and I were about to celebrate a very successful day,’ Bethwig told him. ‘We are intent upon the finest supper and the best bottle of hock this hotel can supply. Will you join us?’ Memling did not think to hesitate.

‘…And so, after we poured the liquid oxygen into the tank through a funnel, just as we used to in the old days at the Raketenflugplatz, we ducked behind the logs that formed our shelter and waited three minutes for the vapour pressure to build. Franz ran out and opened the fuel mix valve. You should have seen him trying to scramble back up the slope in that rain.’ Von Braun was roaring with laughter and had to wipe his streaming eye’s. Bethwig was laughing even harder, and Memling could not remember having such a good time since the Paris congress.

‘Anyway’ – von Braun pushed himself up, hiccupped, and gulped another mouthful of wine – ‘he… he threw himself over the barrier just as the fuse burned down – can you imagine? we forgot to bring a fuse with us; I had to go all the way to the army base at Cassel to borrow some – and the rocket lit off with a bang.’

‘It sounded like a cannon,’ Bethwig chortled.

‘I was certain,’ von Braun went on, ‘the explosion had destroyed the motor, but when the smoke cleared away, there it was, working perfectly. The flame was almost four metres long and already settling down into a clear, white torch in which you could see the most beautiful diamond shock waves, one right after another. It was truly a wonderful sight. If only we had known this morning that you were here, Jan, we would have taken you along with us.’

Bethwig leaned forward and tapped the table with his bread knife. ‘And do you know, Jan, that engine ran perfectly for a good four minutes and might have done so longer if we had not run out of liquid oxygen. All our previous motors in that series burned through in three minutes!’

With careful concentration, Memling succeeded in setting his wine down without spilling it. ‘I do not believe it!’ He enunciated each word carefully. ‘Pardon my scepticism, gentlemen. But four- four minutes with liquid oxy – oxygen’ – he grinned in triumph – ‘and alcohol is imposs – imposs – can not be done. Our best engine burned up in two.’

‘Ah.’ Von Braun leaned closer and lowered his voice. ‘But now we know how. When the motor cooled, Jan, we took it back to the machine shop and cut it in half. Not even a discolor – discoloration in the area of the throat.’ He smacked the table with his hand and flipped up the empty bread plate. Bethwig caught it, and as he tried to bow, the waiter moved in swiftly and cleared away the rest of the dishes.

Memling made a rude noise, and Bethwig laughed.

‘’S true, damn it.’ Von Braun had lapsed back in German. ‘Franz has designed a new combustion chamber.’ He leered at Memling and pushed his glass away. ‘He drilled small holes in the walls leading to the throat area. The fuel… fuel is pumped down to the combustion chamber… pardon me… pumped down to the combustion chamber where a little bit is bled off and sprayed through the little holes.’

Memling’s face wrinkled in an effort to visualise what his friend was saying. Bethwig impatiently sketched the design on a napkin. ‘See, here. The fuel comes through the side and cools the combustion chamber walls by absorbing heat here, about the throat, where it always burns through. The extra fuel also adds to the combustion process and… and raises chamber pressures.’ He paused dramatically, but the effect was spoiled when he fell off his chair.

‘And the best part, Jan’ – von Braun took up the story, ignoring his friend’s struggles to regain his seat – ‘is that the motor was machined entirely of brass! If Franz’s new cooling system works that well in a material with such a low melting point, then we should have no trouble at all with a rocket motor made of steel!’

Memling’s face glowed as he listened to von Braun’s recital of the day’s events. Bethwig’s new cooling technique was sure to revolutionise rocket motor design; it was as big a technological step forward as change from powder to liquid fuels forecast by Tsiolkovskii and Oberth.

‘The main concern of all rocket experimenters, whether British, American, German, French, or Russian,’ von Braun went on, ‘is to cool the combustion chamber so that the flaming gases at 2900 degrees centigrade do not destroy it.’

Memling shook Bethwig’s hand so vigorously that he upset the wine carafe, which von Braun just rescued with a well-timed catch.

‘My God, I believe you may have given us the future, Franz. Imagine what can be done now! Huge motors utilising your cooling technique to power cargo and passenger rockets across the oceans, into space, even to the moon. Why, we could build a landing aerodrome – no, no, that’s wrong – not an aerodrome but a lunardrome, on the moon. My God, think of it! A matter of a few years. Why, if we all worked together—’

Memling stopped abruptly as political realities overcame his enthusiasm.

‘Jan’ – von Braun had sobered quickly – ‘you must understand that what we have discussed here must never be spoken of again.’ He glanced around the room and bit his lip.

In an attempt to salvage the mood of the evening, Bethwig poured each of them another glass of wine. ‘Mem-ling’ – he pronounced each syllable. ‘It is not an English name?’

‘No.’ Jan hesitated a moment. Von Braun’s warning had troubled him, causing him to remember the real reason for his trip to Germany. ‘My grandfather emigrated from Belgium. He was a gunsmith.’

Bethwig nodded and asked a few more questions concerning his background, the type of questions new acquaintances ask, more out of politeness than any real interest. But the spectre of political considerations stayed with them, and shortly the party broke up. Von Braun and Bethwig were leaving early to begin the drive back to Berlin, and Memling had morning train connections to make to Ostende and the cross-channel steamer. The excuses served admirably.

Had he seen the man hiding behind the newspaper the previous evening in the hotel dining-room? Did they know he was an agent of MI6, or was it just a coincidence they were on the same train?

Memling looked at the old steel watch that had belonged to his father. The Belgian border was just a few minutes away. Customs and passport control had been accomplished at Aachen where he had boarded the train, so there would be no reason to stop this side of the border. Yet….

He shook his own paper and folded it to a new page. The movement caused the man at the window to glance the length of the carriage. So they were watching him! Memling shifted the newspaper until he could just see over the top. The two Gestapo agents exchanged quick glances, and Memling was certain he saw one nod to the other.

The fear that coursed through him was so intense, so unexpected, that he thought he would vomit. In all the training sessions he had endured, there had never been anything so overpowering as this. He found he could not catch his breath, and an ugly blackness was threatening to overwhelm him. He had only one thought, to leave the train as quickly as possible. That nod could only have meant his arrest before the frontier. As if to endorse his terror, the train began to slow.

The carriage was crowded; students returning from Christmas holiday filled the aisle. He had studied the maps carefully, as he had been taught, and knew that they would cross the frontier deep in the Ardennes forest, a relatively uninhabited area with few roads. The driver would not dare stop on a slope this steep with the tracks certain to be icy. At the crest, then, or in the valley on the far side. Ten minutes, five minutes? Who was waiting? Political police, civil police, or soldiers. Mounted or afoot?

Memling wasted no more time in useless speculation. The only thing that might save him was the unexpected. He lowered his paper and stood up casually as if going to the lavatory. Excusing himself, he stepped over the legs of a fellow passenger and pushed his way along the crowded aisle. He knew without turning that at least one of the Gestapo agents was following. As he approached the end of the compartment Memling risked a glance behind and saw that the thin-faced agent had also pushed his way to the aisle. Desperate to force a way through the crowd, he began to use his elbows. He stumbled through to the draughty platform and shoved a young girl away from the door. Someone yelled at him, tried to grab his arm, but he flung the hand off and yanked up on the handle. It refused to move, and he threw his weight on to it, cursing. He yanked a third time and the handle gave way. Memling lost his balance as the door swung outwards, and was sprawled in a snowbank before he realised what had happened. The train rushed by, and pushing himself up, he saw the Gestapo agent leaning far out of the doorway, shaking his fist in frustration. Scrambling up the side of the cut into the icy wind, he stumbled into the forest.

Memling was half-asleep in his chair, stupefied by heat and exhaustion, when his superior officer, Charles Englesby, entered the room. He gave Memling a distant glance and sat down behind the desk. Memling roused himself with an effort, and Englesby took a cigarette from the open box but did not offer him one. Memling lit a cigarette of his own, ashamed and angry that he could not keep his hands from shaking, even now.

He had not slept in thirty-six hours, and the overheated office, after the intense cold of the forest and the unheated aircraft, was threatening to overwhelm him at any moment.

‘I would like to know why,’ Englesby began in sudden, clipped tones that startled him fully awake, ‘you felt it necessary to create an international incident. Both the German and the Belgian authorities have been on to the Foreign Secretary about your behaviour, and he is quite angry. An illegal exit from a country, in full view of hundreds of witnesses, is not characteristic of an intelligence agent, or did you not know that?’

Memling made an effort to gather his wits. ‘I’m sorry about the disturbance,’ he began, ‘but I felt… felt it was quite necessary. You see, sir, quite by accident I came across some information that may have drastic military implications. I was being pursued by two Gestapo agents when I jumped from the train.’

Englesby pushed his glasses down and stared over the tops at Memling. What he saw was a tall, gangling young man in a badly cut, muddy brown suit and well-worn shoes, one of which showed a gaping hole where the upper and sole had parted company. The man certainly does not display the type of breeding one is used to, he thought, or he would have had a brush-up and a wash before coming in. But then, the new regime… He sighed inwardly. The service seems to be taking in a number of his sort these days.

‘Explain,’ he snapped.

Memling did so. He talked for ten minutes, reviewing his cover as an engineer for a London manufacturing concern, briefly reporting on his contacts with certain members of the Belgian and German engineering societies – his real reason for travelling to Germany – and finally explaining his accidental meeting with Wernher von Braun. He sought to impress upon Englesby the importance of the German scientist’s position and summarised the details of Bethwig’s cooling design for rocket motors. He kept it as simple as possible, sensing that Englesby would not understand the technical details, would in fact be put off by them.

Even before he finished, however, he realised he was wasting his time. Englesby sat staring at him over the pencil with which he had been playing.

‘And you say the German government has given these two scientists all the money they need to develop rockets for use in war? Preposterous! I would certainly expect that you would realise when someone was exaggerating his own importance. Even Hitler and that crew would not waste time and money on such foolishness. Of what use would a giant rocket be? I dare say they do not even celebrate Guy Fawkes Day.’ Englesby permitted himself the trace of a smile.

Memling ploughed on doggedly. ‘To replace artillery and even bomber planes for long-range attacks. The importance of Bethwig’s design is beyond belief. His development will lead to massive rockets that could bombard cities from long distances. Paris and perhaps even London itself.’

‘London!’

‘Yes, sir. The importance of this discovery must not be underrated.’ He knew that he was repeating himself but could not help it; he had to make Englesby understand. ‘In a few years’ – Memling had leaned forward to speak earnestly – ‘using Bethwig’s discovery, it will even be possible to build a rocket powerful enough to travel to the moon. You see…’

This was too much for the civil servant in Englesby, and he threw down the pencil. ‘Enough of this nonsense. Next you’ll be asking me to believe in fairy castles and death rays. I don’t know whether or not you made up this ridiculous tale to cover your mistakes, but I intend to find out. You have, in any event, disgraced the service and yourself by botching your first assignment, which, I may say here and now, I had great misgivings in allowing you to attempt. I do not believe you are suited for this type of work, and you have proven me correct. The minister is displeased, and I dare say the Prime Minister will be livid.

‘Appropriate disciplinary action will have to be taken, but until then you are on ten days’ leave of absence. Before you go, write out a complete report of your activities from the moment you left Dover. Do you understand?’

When Memling nodded, he pushed a button under his desk and the door opened silently. ‘Please show Memling here to the writing-room, Peters,’ Englesby snapped, not bothering to look up.

It was a long drive from Arnsberg to Berlin, and it was quite late when Bethwig wheeled his Lancia into the deserted car park. The thin drizzle that had accompanied them since midmorning had increased as they neared the city until it was a steady downpour slashing at the buildings of the Heersversuchsstelle Kummersdorf (the Army Research Centre at Kummersdorf) in the southern suburbs of Berlin. Wind rushed through the pines surrounding the Centre and sprayed sheets of water from the immense puddles that had gathered on the metalled surface. They snatched their bags from the boot and ran for the administration building where, in spite of the late hour, a lamp was burning in the office of the superior, Colonel Walter Dornberger. The door was open, and Dornberger entertaining a guest, but he waved them in.

‘Ah, there you are. I was beginning to think you might not arrive tonight in this rain. Come in, come in!’

Dornberger’s expression seemed to harden a bit as he turned to his guest. ‘Allow me to introduce Herr Doktors Wernher von Braun and Franz Bethwig. Their work has been invaluable to the programme. Gentlemen, may I present Captain Jacob Walsch.’ Walsch unfolded his gaunt body just far enough to extend a hand, which Bethwig clasped with reluctance.

‘Pleased, gentlemen.’ His voice was quite resonant, in contrast to his appearance. The ceiling lamps served to deepen the hollows beneath his cheeks and eyes.

‘Well, and what have you to tell me?’ Dornberger’s voice was eager. He motioned them to chairs and produced glasses and a bottle of cognac from his desk. He held the bottle up to the light with satisfaction. ‘A gift from Colonel General Brautisch.’ He accented the name and title just the slightest bit and glanced covertly at Walsch, Bethwig noticed, before he poured.

‘Your wire arrived this morning and, of course, I have been waiting impatiently for details.’

Von Braun started to speak, then hesitated and glanced at Walsch. Dornberger nodded.

‘You may speak freely before Captain Walsch.’

Von Braun then began the recital of the events of the past two weeks, and Bethwig sank down in the comfortable chair to nurse his cognac. He eyed Walsch, wondering just who he was. Hauptmann, Dornberger had called him. The title captain implied a military connection, but the man was not wearing a uniform and did not look like military material. As von Braun talked on, Bethwig gradually became aware that although Walsch was listening politely, there was no comprehension in the man’s expression. So then he was not an engineering or an artillery officer. One could also eliminate the Luftwaffe, as air force officers would certainly be familiar with enough technical terms at least to follow what von Braun was saying.

Wernher talked for nearly fifteen minutes, interrupted occasionally by his superior’s exclamations of delight. And each time this happened, the captain transferred his measuring stare to Dornberger for a moment, before returning to von Braun.

Von Braun suddenly leaned over and clapped his friend’s arm, startling him. Bethwig had been so engrossed in watching the strange captain that he had lost track of what was being said.

‘So I would say that Franz here was completely correct, as usual.’

Dornberger jumped up to shake his hand. ‘By God, Franz, I don’t know what I would do without the two of you!’ He slapped a fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘This may well solve the last major technical problem. Now we can proceed with the A-Three design.’

‘A-Three?’ Walsch murmured. ‘I do not…’

‘Our first large rocket,’ von Braun explained, his voice eager. ‘You see, we have not been able to build a rocket motor that was powerful enough or would last long enough to raise a really big rocket vehicle. But with Franz’s development we could build one large enough to travel to the moon if we wanted to!’

‘Ah.’ Walsch nodded and turned back to Dornberger as if von Braun’s statement was of no consequence.

‘You see, Captain,’ Dornberger said, glancing uneasily at Bethwig, ‘I told you these two are the most valuable on my staff. I had word yesterday that General Werner Fritsch, the army commander, will attend a rocket firing demonstration when we are ready. That means that we will probably be allowed to proceed to full-scale development shortly.’

Bethwig exchanged a puzzled glance with von Braun. It was not like Domberger to gush so, and to a total stranger.

‘Perhaps the general will reconsider when he discovers that two of his most valuable scientists cannot be trusted to control their tongues.’

Bethwig looked around so sharply that cognac spilled from his glass. ‘Captain,’ he said slowly, frowning as if the word left a bad taste in his mouth. ‘Captain of what, may I enquire?’

Walsch favoured him with the ghost of a smile. ‘Certainly. I am with the Secret State Police Office, Division Three.’

‘Gestapo,’ von Braun exploded. ‘What have we to do with such people?’ he appealed to Domberger.

The scientist had jumped to his feet and now advanced on Walsch who snapped, ‘Sit down, young man. You are in serious trouble.’

Von Braun stopped short, face flushed, breathing heavily. He towered over the Gestapo agent who stared grimly back. Trouble? How could I be in trouble with… you?’

‘Division Three is, if I recall correctly, counterespionage, is it not?’

Walsch nodded in reply to Bethwig’s question.

‘And how should that concern Wernher and me? Surely you do not suspect us of being foreign spies?’

The Gestapo officer gave him a sour look and took a small notebook from his jacket. He thumbed through it deliberately until he found the proper page, then shifted to a more comfortable position and began to read aloud.

‘Your full name is Franz Hans Bethwig. You were born in Hamburg, 8 January 1909. Your father is a well-known banker and has been a party member since 1923. You yourself were enrolled in that same year. You were graduated from the Berlin Technical Institute in 1934 and have been employed since then by the Army Research Centre. So you are surely aware of the danger to the fatherland, surrounded as we are by enemies. Yet you deliberately chose to betray Germany.’ Walsch uttered the last sentence without inflection. Domberger, obviously unaware of the exact nature of the charges, goggled at the man. Bethwig laughed. He was thoroughly familiar with Walsch’s tactics.

The Gestapo agent was taken aback but only for a moment. He shot forward in his chair and pointed a finger. ‘You have betrayed Germany by speaking of classified military matters to an agent of a foreign power last evening in Arnsberg!’

At that, von Braun joined Bethwig in laughter. ‘Is that all, Captain? Then you are quite mistaken. The young man with whom we dined last night is an old friend and also a rocket enthusiast. He is a member of the British Inter—’

‘You fool!’ Walsch shouted. ‘We know exactly who this Jan Memling is. He is a member of the English secret intelligence service. He was sent to Germany to spy on our scientific progress. He is a scientist who was trained specifically for this task.’

Von Braun stared at Walsch in consternation. ‘No, you must be wrong. How…’

‘I assure you, Herr Doktor, we are rarely wrong. I myself followed this man on to the train at Aachen. Just before the frontier he was warned by an accomplice and jumped from the carriage. He crossed the border illegally before we were able to apprehend him. Several arrests have been made among the passengers, and we will know more shortly.

There are two questions’ – Walsch scowled at them – ‘which you are required to answer. First, how much of what you told this man concerns classified military secrets? And was it done deliberately?’

This was too much for Dornberger. ‘Captain Walsch,’ he roared, ‘you forget yourself. I protest these unwarranted accusations. I have known these men—’

The Gestapo agent waved a weary hand. ‘Colonel, I am very tired. I was forced to fly through this miserable weather to Berlin to speak with these two… gentlemen. I would rather do so here than at my headquarters. However, if you persist in interfering with my investigation, I shall have no choice but to summon assistance.’

‘I can assure you, Captain,’ Bethwig said evenly, ‘that not only did we not have the slightest inkling that this man was a spy, as you claim, but we did not pass on anything of military significance. I would, however, like to know why, if you were aware of his identity at the time, you did not intervene? It would seem that if there are questions to be answered, you have your share to contend with. For instance, the matter of the man escaping from the train? I would suggest not only that you make certain of your facts but that you be sure of the grounds on which you raise this ridiculous story to cover your own incompetence. Otherwise, you may find a lawsuit, or worse, lodged against you personally and your superiors as well.’

Walsch returned his confident smile. ‘Young man, by law the Gestapo is immune to civil proceedings. You would do well to curb your own tongue. I am aware of your father’s position in the party, and it does not deter me in the least. Do I make myself understood?’

Bethwig stood and bowed stiffly. ‘Completely, sir. We shall, however, have to wait for another time to see how this all turns out.’ He turned to a worried Domberger. ‘Good night, Colonel.’

Memling fumbled his key into the lock and entered. Although the walk from the bus was less than two blocks, he was chilled through. The parlour was cold, but coal was piled on the grate, and the house was spotless. The newspaper and magazines he had left beside the chair were now in the rack, and his sweater, he saw when he opened the cupboard to hang up his overcoat, had been washed. So, Margot had looked in while he was gone. Smiling, he slipped it on and stooped to touch a match to the shredded newspaper under the kindling. The fire caught immediately, and he adjusted the draught. While he waited for the fire to warm the room, he lit the kitchen gas ring and put a kettle on.

The clock showed five-thirty. He had spent most of the day in the writing-room completing his report, and he was too tired to be hungry. The small piece of ham and the cheese, which he found in the pantry, dry as they were, were sufficient. The kettle began to whistle, and he fixed a cup of tea and took the ham and cheese back to the parlour.

As he stood before the fire he glanced at the gleaming walnut and shining blue metal of the over-and-under-twelve-bore shotgun which his father had made. The old man had been well known for his fine shotguns, much good that it had done him. The old, dingy house was his only legacy, that and the gun and his own skills at making firearms.

The room was warming quickly, and Memling pulled the chair up to the fire and sank down, weary beyond belief. A black mood that he could not shake had settled over him. ‘What the hell have I done?’ he muttered aloud. His main assignment had been carried out satisfactorily. In addition, he had brought back information about a possible new military weapon, and he had escaped from the Gestapo, using all the skills that he had been taught. Another agent would have been welcomed home with the certainty of a CBE in the not too distant future. Instead, he had been accused of damaging relations with Germany. Nonsense, he snorted. But even so, his actions were to be submitted to the scrutiny of an enquiry board, which would surely support Englesby.

And Memling knew why it had turned out the way it had. He was not a gentleman, moneyed or well connected, all of which were prime requisites for a successful Foreign Office career. What’s more, he had a foreign sounding name and lacked the educational essentials provided by a good school and university. In fact, he lacked a degree of any kind. A month after his father’s business had failed, the old man had shot himself with one of his own shotguns. Memling had often wondered since then if he and his mother could have managed on the small pension. Had he again given in too easily, frightened by future unknowns?

Along with his hopes for a degree, he gave up his activities in the British Interplanetary Society. No more than a few amateur scientists were scattered among the usual collection of astrology buffs, fantasists, and spiritualists attracted by the grandiose name, but those few were dedicated to a dream, an overpowering vision of man’s future in the vast reaches of the universe. Memling was gathered in during his first year at college. His scientific training stood him and the society in good stead but did not inhibit his dreams of space, the frozen, sun-blasted lunar plains, the wonders of multistar planetary systems, or the heights to which man might aspire once freed from the green but confining hills of Earth. Until his father died, every moment and penny Memling could spare were dedicated to one or another of the BIS projects. Then the demands of his mother’s failing health and a succession of part-time jobs cut short these activities, and he was left with only the pages of science-fiction magazines to sustain his dreams.

One of his father’s oldest customers was Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair. After the old man’s death, the admiral visited the house to express his sympathies and, on leaving, pressed a card into Jan’s hand and urged him to call at his club. It was a month or better before he screwed up sufficient courage to do so. His reception was exactly as expected; ignored by the members and treated with disdain by the servants, he was on the verge of leaving when Sir Hugh appeared. He led Jan into a private parlour and opened to him a new vista that he had never imagined to exist outside the novels of Somerset Maugham and Joseph Conrad.

‘I have asked you to come and talk with me so that you can consider whether or not you would be willing to serve your country.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ Jan was completely confused.

The admiral smiled. ‘I have just begun the direction of a certain department in the government that has to do with intelligence matters. The old-fashioned word is spying. I would like you to join that department.’

‘Become a… a… spy?’ He brushed a hand across his forehead, an old gesture signifying his confusion. ‘I don’t know anything about being a spy.’

The admiral shrugged. ‘Neither do I. Perhaps we could learn together.’

‘But why me, sir? I don’t see that I have any qualifications…’

The admiral held up a hand. ‘My boy, the days when individuals might ferret out the secrets of a mighty nation as did Davies and Carruthers are fast coming to an end. Today spying, a distasteful but accurate term, is a huge business and takes a good many people to make it go. Now, you take our own spies, of which, I might add, there are more than a few. For the most part they are professional enough. My predecessor saw to that. But since 1918 we’ve tended to go a bit slack. You have a technical education. If ever we must fight another war, that kind of background will be invaluable. Great Britain requires something more than adventurers and titled younger sons. You speak Flemish and French like a native, and I am certain you can improve your German. I was a good customer and, I like to think, friend of your father’s, and so I had a chance to watch you develop over the years. I have a feeling you will do a creditable job on His Majesty’s Service.’

And Jan Memling, thus rescued from a dreary succession of menial posts, began his training two weeks later. He had skills the admiral wanted, but apparently no one else did. When Sinclair died the following year, a new man, Stewart Graham Menzies, also an outsider but of another kind, took the unofficial title of ’C’. If he was aware of Memling’s problems, he was far too busy fighting his own battle against the ‘old boys’ to do anything about them.

The service was prepared to tolerate Menzies – and to a lesser extent, people like Memling – as long as they remained quietly out of sight. He should have realised, he thought with bitterness, that he would never persuade Englesby. And by mentioning space travel and moon rockets, he had given him just the excuse he needed to justify dismissing everything Memling had to say as too fantastic to be believed. He clenched his fists in a spasm of involuntary embarrassment at the memory. How in the name of God had he expected Englesby of all people to understand the promise of space travel?

Memling must have fallen asleep because he woke with a start when the front door closed. Footsteps sounded in the bare hall, and he turned to see Margot standing in the doorway, a frightened look on her face.

‘Oh, Jan! You gave me a start. I didn’t know you were back.’ Margot sighed in relief, took off her coat, and flung it over a chair. She was a tall, lithe girl of twenty-three with soft brown hair, a fair English face, and a figure that reminded Memling of the Wyeth illustration of Maid Marion. She was wearing an old but neatly-pressed wool skirt, a sweater, and sensible shoes. The sight of her caused the breath to catch in Memling’s throat.

‘It’s so cold in here. You’ve let the fire go out,’ she reproached him, but with a smile and a kiss. Then she knelt and placed several lumps on the grate and blew up the embers with the old leather bellows until bluish flames were licking the undersides of the coals.

‘You’re back,’ she repeated fondly. ‘Have you had anything to eat?’ When he nodded, she shook her head. ‘It couldn’t have been much. There was only a bit of ham and some cheese.’

Memling was comfortably warm and relaxed, and to have her in the house made everything complete. The Westminster clock on the mantelpiece chimed seven, and he found he had not the slightest inclination to move. Margot went into the kitchen, and he could hear her filling the kettle. She was back in a few minutes with a tray, which she placed beside him. The light scent she wore drifted about the room, and he caught her hand and pressed it to his lips.

‘Tea and biscuits,’ she said archly, disengaging her hand. ‘And I must leave in a few moments. Mum thinks I’ve just popped across to check the gas.’ She drew up a cushion and perched before the fire to pour his tea. ‘Tell me about your trip. Was Manchester cold and snowy?’

With a start, he was aware again of the necessary gap between them. So much had happened in the past two weeks that she could never know. Memling sipped his tea before answering.

‘A bit of both,’ he replied, hoping the indefinite answer would serve. ‘Very depressing this time of year.’

‘At any time of the year, I should think.’

He smiled again and took the biscuit she offered. ‘My luggage was lost somewhere along the line. I brought you a gift but it was in my suitcase. ‘I’m to call at Euston tomorrow to see if it has been located.’

‘What a bother, but I suppose I must wait. Did you learn anything that will be of any use in your position?’

Memling hesitated before answering. He and Margot had grown up together in adjoining houses. When they were younger, his father had even installed a small gate for them in the fence separating the two gardens. There had always been the understanding they would marry some day, and he had been more than content to accept it as so. Margot was a very attractive and intelligent young woman, and he felt they would be very happy, but lately she had shown a tendency to push. Gently of course, as she did everything. But at times like this he wondered if the tendency might not intensify after they were married. And he wondered how she would react when he finally told her what he really did for a living. As far as she knew, he had just been promoted from the quality control department of a small electrical appliance manufacturing concern. They had given him that cover, he reflected bitterly, as he did not have sufficient polish for the Foreign Office, the usual sinecure for MI6 personnel.

‘I doubt it,’ he answered truthfully enough. ‘Anyway, as things are slow, they’ve given me a fortnight’s leave.’

Margot sat up suddenly, alarmed. ‘With pay, I hope?’ Both were all too familiar with the implications of a sudden leave without pay in these times.

He nodded, chuckling at her expression. ‘I’ve told you often enough, ‘I’m much too valuable an employee for them to do without.’ At least part of that was true, he thought. Once taken into the fold, you were with them for ever. No one ever quit or was dismissed; in extreme cases, you would be shuttled into a safe job somewhere in one of the ministries where you could be watched.

‘You work long enough hours, at any rate.’ But her expression was still troubled.

The clock struck the half-hour, and Margot stood up reluctantly. ‘I’d better go. Mum will be expecting her cup of tea and a read before bedtime. You know how cranky she gets if anything disturbs her routine.’

Memling helped her into her coat and, as she reached for the latch, took her hand and pulled her to him. ‘I’ll wait outside the store tomorrow evening and walk you home, all right?’

Margot nodded, smiling, then threw her arms around him with sudden passion. He pressed her body to his, holding her, experiencing the all-too-familiar ache. They had waited so damned long. She crushed her mouth to his for a long moment, then pushed away shakily. ‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ she whispered. ‘Things go so much better.’

Memling knew Margot was referring to her mother, a bedridden arthritic who would try – deliberately – the patience of a saint. They would have been married three years ago if it hadn’t been for the old woman.

Margot gave him a quick, final kiss and ran lightly down the path as he remained in the shadows. The block of semi-detacheds was full of elderly gossips, and Mrs Cummings’s only remaining delight was the long whispered conversations with her cronies. If the gossip concerned her daughter, Margot’s life became a hell for days. Thinking of the predatory presence propped up in the front room next door, waiting for her daughter’s return, he found it hard to reconcile the nasty old crone with his memory of the sweet-voiced, plump, and laughing woman who used to serve them biscuits and cocoa when they were children.

Germany August 1939

The Baltic island of Greifswalder Oie was a scorched speck in the placid sea. Shimmers of heat rose amidst the gaunt concrete structures scattered throughout the pine forest. Roads snaked among the sprawl of buildings, disappeared into the forest, and reappeared along the coast, all leading to a single open space one hundred metres in diameter overlooking the beach. Several sandbagged bunkers delineated its landward periphery, and set squarely into the middle of the clearing was a sheet-metal tower now tipped to one side. A squat, pencil-shaped rocket painted yellow and red stood beside it on a metal table.

A loudspeaker spewed instructions, its iron voice bouncing across the island to the sea. Overhead a small aircraft flew in monotonous circles at a thousand metres.

Two lines of folding chairs had been set out beside an elaborate silver bowl from which a uniformed Luftwaffe mess attendant ladled well-laced punch into crystal cups for the various dignitaries. From where he was standing beside his instrument panel, Franz Bethwig could hear their conversation only as a meaningless buzz, clarified now and then when a breeze whispered past. Colonel General Hermann Goering, commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, a corpulent figure in tailored uniform, was surrounded by sycophants. He had already greeted Bethwig profusely, more to demonstrate that he was a hail-fellow-well-met than to show respect for Franz’s father.

The A-5 rocket squatting on its launch table in the centre of the cleared circle would be the vindication of his hard-fought theory, the deciding factor in his continuing arguments with Walter Tuchman, the stubborn old scientist who disregarded all ideas but his own, who alienated everyone who worked for him, yet who was undeniably a genius. Tuchman maintained that Bethwig’s cooling system would so weaken the combustion chamber walls that they would burst long before full power was achieved.

Bethwig, improving on his original idea, had designed a series of injectors mounted in the inner wall of the combustion chamber. Where originally the fuel had been sprayed in, it was now forced through the ports under just enough pressure to form a thin film along the chamber walls. To test his theory under actual flight conditions, he had installed a series of pyrometers inside the motor. Dr Tuchman had refused him more than a single radio channel, and he had been forced to wire each pyrometer in series, hoping to obtain useful data by means of a small integrator he had designed and built to average the temperature readings and transmit them through the Siemens radio control equipment. He finished his work, noted the results, climbed out of the bunker, and walked across to the shade of a service lorry. Across the way, he could see the technicians removing the tarpaulin from the bunker housing one of the three cine-theodolite cameras, which would photograph the rocket during flight. A patrol launch idled across the bay, and the sun continued to pour down.

A plume of vapour twisted above the fuel bowser, and the liquid-oxygen hose snaking up to a valve in the side of the A-5 glinted with frost crystals. On the other side of the test area a door in the main bunker opened. Bethwig shaded his eyes and saw Wernher von Braun turn to speak to someone inside, then hold up an instrument to measure the inclination of the rocket on its launch table. Von Braun saw him and waved. The loudspeaker’s hum increased abruptly, crackled, and announced five minutes to firing.

A green flare arched over the test site to warn the aircraft and patrol launches to take stations. Bethwig walked back to the bunker for a last check of his instruments.

A hand descended on his shoulder, and he turned to see the bloated face of Goering peering at him.

‘The scientist at work. Gentlemen, see how the Reich’s young men are so totally engaged. Not like those foolish children in England and France who protest and march for pacifism. Come, Franz, can you not spare a moment to describe your work?’

With difficulty Bethwig refrained from shrugging off the pudgy hand. He tried to explain his experiment, but the combination of heat and champagne punch had glazed the Luftwaffe commander’s eyes. An aide stepped in to divert Goering’s attention, and Bethwig, scanning his dials, cursed the lost seconds under his breath. The radio transmitter signal was strong, showing a temperature reading near normal. The sensors attached to the combustion chamber walls were on-line, and the integrator seemed to be working properly.

A lorry engine racketed to life as a technician stripped the shroud from the rocket’s nose and descended the ladder. The lorry drove towards the gap in the high concrete wall, leaving the launch area clear. Two minutes to launch.

The fuselage was captured in a sheath of glistening ice crystals as the minus-two-hundred-degree-centigrade liquid oxygen sucked moisture from the humid air. A thin plume of vapour shot from a vent half-way up the rocket’s side to signal that the oxidiser tank had reached full pressure. The red flare indicating an imminent launch arched up from the control bunker. At minus twenty seconds the merest wisp of vapour appeared beneath the rocket, and a collective sigh of relief went up from the technicians in the bunker. Bethwig heard Dornberger explaining to Goering that the vapour had been vented through the fuel feed system to make certain that everything was operating properly and that no valves were stuck.

At minus ten seconds sparks showered from the nozzle as the pyrotechnic igniter went off. A gout of reddish-black flame belched from the rocket’s base, steadied, faded to yellow, and a sound like a giant blowtorch gone mad swept the island. The flame turned an incandescent white impossible to watch without protective glasses, and clouds of smoke and dust sprang up to obscure the rocket. For a moment, only its nose was visible, and then, like some prehistoric monster rearing slowly above a primeval fog, the A-5 appeared. Bethwig could see it turn slowly on its axis as its fins cleared the smoke. It tilted slightly and was gone, a fast-dwindling dot of flame directly overhead.

Silence held the launch site for a moment, then cheers and shouts erupted. Bethwig turned to see the officers gathered about Goering pointing upwards, shading their eyes against the sun, all talking at once. His instrument panel was registering perfectly, and the whir of the cinecamera focused on the gauges surprised him. In the excitement he had not recalled having turned it on. The temperature gauge was holding steady at 2902° centigrade, five degrees below his prediction. Satisfied, he turned his glance upward and, after a moment of practised search, found the white dot now moving slightly to the east.

‘Thirty-five seconds,’ blared the loudspeaker.

Even through his powerful Zeiss binoculars Bethwig could not resolve the pencil-shaped A-5 completely. This was far better than they had hoped, and he glanced quickly at his instruments again. No change.

‘Forty-five seconds,’ and a moment later, ‘Brennschluss, end of combustion.’ The white dot disappeared.

‘Rocket motor burning time was forty-six seconds,’ the loudspeaker intoned, ‘and altitude at burnout was eight point one kilometres.’

Through the glasses Bethwig watched as the rocket continued to climb under the momentum imparted by the engine until the shape elongated and he knew it had reached its peak altitude. At any second von Braun would press the button that would send a radio signal to deploy the parachute. The rocket was tumbling now, and sunlight flashed from the alternating squares of red and yellow painted on the fuselage. Abruptly the tumbling stopped. He could make out a hazy stream behind and the main parachute deployed in a perfectly-shaped canopy.

The missile hung quiescent in the shrouds, and the air was so still, Bethwig could follow its descent until foreshortened trees appeared in his binoculars and the rocket splashed into the Baltic. There was a puff of yellow smoke as the explosive charge cut away the parachute, and the A-5 bobbed, stern up, like a child’s bath toy The patrol launch described a sharp turn and raced across the harbour.

For a moment Bethwig remained standing on the lip of the bunker, glasses pressed against his eyes, wanting to impress the picture on his mind: the colourful rocket, paint bright against the intense blue sea, gleaming wakes, the tiny Storch aircraft swooping low over the tilted gnomon surrounded by the creamy parachute. There had been dozens of launchings, and hundreds were yet to come, but none, he knew, would ever be as important, or as perfect, as this.

Colonel General Hermann Goering had departed as darkness crept in over the Baltic. The evening brought cooling breezes that were gratefully received, and Dornberger ordered supper served on the roof of the canteen, overlooking the tiny harbour.

Bethwig had noticed the man earlier, standing a bit apart from the officials and officers fawning about Goering. He was of medium height, balding, and he wore a simple but expensive summer suit. His eyes missed nothing, Bethwig thought. He arrived shortly after Goering’s plane had landed, and Dornberger hurriedly introduced him as Albert Speer, mentioning something about a post as Hitler’s personal architect. How did one go about becoming a personal architect? he wondered. Yet Dornberger had seated Speer on his left, a position that would have been given to Goering had he remained.

Bethwig and von Braun were seated further along the table, but several times during the meal Speer leaned forward to ask them questions. Each time, others engaged in conversations of their own stopped to listen.

‘Colonel Dornberger tells me,’ Speer said to Bethwig as the waiters removed the last course, ‘that today’s test flight of the A-Five rocket vindicated one of your developments.’

Bethwig coughed to hide his embarrassment and stole a glance at Tuchman. The old man was watching Speer and Dornberger in tight-lipped silence.

‘Come now, young man, no modesty please,’ Speer prompted.

‘Well, yes, the test flight did bear out a few of my thoughts.’

‘I would like to hear about them.’

Bethwig appealed silently to Dornberger, who chose to misinterpret the glance. ‘You may speak freely, Franz. Herr Speer has the highest clearances.’

‘Was it the graphite vanes?’ Speer asked.

‘Ah… no, sir. We knew they would work.’ Bethwig was surprised that Speer knew that much.

Speer laughed at his expression. ‘You were correct, Colonel. Herr Doktor Bethwig is a modest young man. He reduces the cost of the vanes from one hundred fifty to one point five marks and claims to have known it would work all along.’

Dornberger grinned at Bethwig who was now flaming red. Von Braun chuckled, nudging him with an elbow as Tuchman stalked away from the table without an apology. Under prompting by Domberger and von Braun, Bethwig explained the film cooling system, and Speer listened closely, asking occasional questions.

The military officers and civilian officials invited to watch the launching filtered to the far end of the table as the talk became increasingly technical, and the scientific staff gathered about the head. Bethwig thought it strange that Speer, who for all his interest seemed a lightweight in scientific matters, should prefer to indulge in what must have been a boring discussion of velocities, specific impulses, radio telemetry techniques, and a myriad other engineering concerns.

When he finished, Speer turned to Dornberger. ‘I understand, Colonel, that another purpose of today’s launching was to test a guidance system?’

Dornberger nodded and folded his napkin. ‘Our A-Three rocket was cursed with the problem of maintaining directional stability. The rocket would turn on its axis during powered flight, thus making it impossible to keep a proper course. At first we thought this a result of wind acting upon the fins, but wind-tunnel tests disproved that. It was due rather to fluctuations in the exhaust stream. To correct the problem, Wernher developed a gyroscope system that controls the movement of the vanes in the exhaust stream. Now, when the rocket begins to veer, the gyroscopically controlled vanes bring it right back by bending the exhaust in the opposite direction.’

‘I see. Exactly how does the system work?’ Speer asked. Dornberger began to sketch on a napkin. ‘It is really quite similar to a child’s top spinning inside a metal cage. Like a top, it always remains upright, no matter which way the surface on which it is mounted tilts. To take advantage of this natural phenomenon, a metal rod fixed to the rocket is passed through the top’s centre. A series of electrical switches are placed along the rod, and as the rocket begins to veer off course the rod turns with it, thus touching the top and closing a switch, which sends an electrical impulse to the motor controlling the graphite vanes extending into the rocket’s exhaust. The rocket is thus turned back on its proper course.’

‘My congratulations, Herr Doktor.’ Speer rose and bowed to von Braun.

Von Braun laughed and shook his head. ‘Thank you, Herr Speer, but the credit goes to spy work, not to us.’

‘Spy work?’

The others at the table groaned. It was an inside joke that had grown hoary with age but always drew the expected reaction from outsiders.

‘Yes, the system was developed by an American named Robert H. Goddard who developed the first liquid-fuelled rocket in 1923 and is now working with a small grant from the American government somewhere in their western states. Dr Goddard published a paper in 1937 which was ignored by nearly everyone in the world, including the Americans. But one of our embassy employees in Washington obtained a copy from the Library of Congress and sent it on to the Army Weapons Development Centre at Kummersdorf on the chance that it would be of value. Dr Goddard was actually the first to use vanes in the exhaust stream to control flight, and I would say that his work has saved us at least three years. Fortunately for us, his own people have ignored him entirely.’

The rowdier members of the party had begun to stagger off to bed, and the table grew quiet. A soft breeze blew landward, drawing its cooling breath across the parched island. Speer asked a few more questions about technical problems, then leaned back in his chair and regarded Dornberger for a moment.

‘Where will you go from here?’

‘To the A-Four,’ Dornberger replied without hesitation.

‘A-Four? I must admit that I was curious as to what intervened between the old A-Three and today’s A-Five.’

‘The A-Four is a very ambitious step forward and has been our objective all along,’ von Braun told him. ‘We did not realise just how ambitious until we were rather far along in its design. We saw very early that we needed a great deal more information than we possessed or could ever hope to gain from the A-Three. So, we dropped it and designed the A-Five as our test vehicle.’

‘Wait just a moment.’ Speer clutched his head in mock despair. ‘You are making me dizzy with so many numbers. Tell me, just what do you intend the A-Four to do?’

All eyes turned to Colonel Dornberger. ‘It will carry a thousand-kilogram high explosive warhead three hundred kilometres.’

An artillery officer, who had remained, whistled in amazement. ‘What do you intend its accuracy should be?’

‘Plus or minus two kilometres. And,’ Dornberger added, ‘we hope to improve that to within half a kilometre.’

The officer calculated the range in relation to impact deviation on his slide rule and shook his head. ‘Impossible,’ he said flatly.

‘I do not understand the technical details of artillery ballistics,’ Speer murmured, ignoring the officer, ‘but even I can recognise the value of such a weapon. How long would it take to produce one operational by troops under field conditions?’

‘That depends upon the priorities and budget restrictions under which we would have to operate. And of course, approval from the chancellory. The Führervisited us early this year at Kummersdorf and seemed not in the least impressed with our rockets.’

Speer only murmured a noncommittal response to Dornberger’s probe, and during the long silence that followed they could hear the gentle slap of waves on the sand.

An hour later Franz Bethwig and Wernher von Braun walked along the beach as they often did before retiring. Usually they reviewed the day’s events, discussed new ideas, or speculated idly about the future of rocketry. Tonight von Braun was quiet, resisting Bethwig’s attempts to draw him into conversation. Finally, in exasperation, Franz swore at him.

Von Braun grunted and shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. ‘I have a feeling that everything is about to change, and I don’t know if for better or worse. It seems to me that today we took the first real step towards space. The A-Five performed beautifully under control. We’ve proven what we knew all along, and now we have only to build ever bigger versions until we are there.’ He waved a hand vaguely at the sky and shook his head in exasperation. ‘But I… I just have a feeling that we are being sidetracked. Walter talks only about war rockets, and this Speer character agrees with him. Did you see how they all listened whenever he said anything? I don’t want to waste time building war rockets. Let the army find someone else to do that. We’ve shown them how.’

‘Don’t forget’ – Bethwig grinned – ‘you are in the army, my friend. Or at least paid by them, which amounts to the same thing.’

‘Don’t remind me.’

‘Why not? So far you’ve just wasted a great deal of energy kicking against the inevitable. You know as well as I why the army wants rockets. Goering was here today to see how much of a threat they might be to his precious bombers. I have a feeling this Speer is more than he seems; in fact, I suspect he was sent to keep an eye on Goering. Who knows what’s going on in Berlin these days? Even my father has gotten to be quite vague about it. But whatever, our salary is paid by the army, and if they tell us to build war rockets, I don’t see that we have any other choice. Do you?’

‘I guess not,’ von Braun mumbled.

The moon was nearly full and hung in mid-sky, a silver beacon strong enough to light the beach. Franz stared at it, trying to imagine as he had done a thousand times since childhood what it would be like to walk across its surface. It was not only that barren desert of frozen, airless stone that drew him, but rather the promise of what was to follow. The moon and the various planets of the solar system were only the beginning. There was a universe beyond to be explored and bent to man’s will. Mankind needed something greater than itself to challenge, if for no other reason than to refocus selfish thoughts and petty concerns. Space travel offered the ultimate goal, stars in their billions with unlimited room for the race to grow and expand.

Bethwig and von Braun shared that dream, had done so since the early days of the Verein fur Raumschiffahrt (Society for Space Travel), a small group of dedicated amateurs with a common goal: the realisation of space travel. The VfR was formed in 1929, and in the ensuing months he and von Braun had forged an uneasy alliance – this despite his own shyness and von Braun’s unconscious arrogance – as they were two of the very few members with sufficient private resources to allow them to devote endless hours to society projects.

Their friendship had grown, and when the Gestapo disbanded the society in 1932 and the army seduced von Braun in return for a university degree and a well-paying job building rockets, it was Bethwig he had hired first. Franz still remembered the excited telephone call, could still hear von Braun shouting over the static: ‘I tell you, they will actually pay us to build rockets!’

Bethwig broke the silence. ‘I talked with an army officer this morning. He told me that troops are gathering along the Polish border and have been doing so for weeks now. He thinks we’ll attack Poland before summer is out. If that’s true, we could be at war with England and France within a few months. And if that happens, the Reich will need war rockets, as many as we can build, and the fatherland will not be able to afford the cost of building a moon rocket. At least not for a good many years.’

Von Braun went on a few more steps. The night was growing cool, and they both shivered when a vagrant wind slid landward.

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t know. How can you believe anything they tell us? You would think we were surrounded by bloodthirsty enemies just waiting to destroy Germany for ever. First it was the Czechs and now the Poles. Who’ll be next? The French, the Russians, the British?’

‘But, they are waiting to destroy us,’ Bethwig protested. ‘Didn’t they try in 1919 and almost succeed? We were sold out then, but there were still enough loyal Germans to resist total destruction. Then they tried to destroy our economy by insisting on unjust war reparations. And now the Jewish merchants and bankers have joined with the capitalists to urge the Slavic nations to attack our blood-German people held prisoner within their borders. Only, we will fool them. The Führerhas seen to it that Germany is much stronger than they expect. I tell you, Wernher, the coming war means the life or death of Germany, and to win it we will need war rockets.’

‘Damn it, Franz, you sound like one of those radio propagandists.’ Von Braun turned away, plainly anxious not to be drawn into another political argument. ‘I… of course, you’re right’ – he relented ‘but still, it seems such a waste of time and energy.’

‘Not really.’ Franz grabbed his arm and brought him to a stop. ‘If we go about it correctly, we can turn it to our advantage.’

‘Is that so? How?’ Von Braun was teasing now, but Franz remained serious.

‘If war comes, it is certain that England and France will be drawn in by virtue of their alliance with Poland. Unless we can defeat them immediately, the war will go on, and ultimately the United States must be drawn in. Her sympathies have always lain with England and against us. Everyone in Berlin says that Hitler is frightened of the United States becoming involved again and is determined the mistakes of the last war will not be repeated. But even so, it is almost certain the Americans…’

‘Franz, get to the point. Politics give me a headache.’

‘Just a moment, Wernher, it is important to follow the reasoning. War has become a matter of who can produce the most and best weapons and maintain adequate supply lines. English and French industries are exposed to our bomber aircraft, American factories are not. If we are to fight America, we must destroy her industrial capacity – you’ve heard Dornberger and others say that a hundred times. Now, if our rockets had a transatlantic capacity…’ He let the thought trail off.

Von Braun shook his head. ‘A range of up to six thousand miles would be needed. The guidance problem alone is almost insurmountable. You know we are a long way from there.’

Bethwig knelt and drew two circles in the sand, one large, the other a metre away and smaller. The moonlight was so bright that von Braun had no trouble seeing as Bethwig wrote their Latin names beneath each circle: terra, luna. He then drew a curving line to connect the two.

‘This is the ballistic trajectory of a rocket flying to the moon. We are agreed there is no way to carry sufficient fuel for powered flight the entire distance, so the rocket will coast under its own momentum once it enters space.’ He drew a deep breath.

‘The main difficulty will be in climbing out of Earth’s gravity well. Once out, as long as sufficient velocity is achieved – on the order of eleven point two kilometres per second – the rocket will be pulled by the moon’s gravitational attraction towards itself.’ He reinforced the curving line with a finger. ‘In short, as long as proper velocity is achieved, there is no way the rocket can miss the moon. Agreed?’

‘Of course. Why…?’

Bethwig held up a hand for patience. ‘Reverse the process.’ And he described another, flatter curve from moon to Earth. ‘The same laws of physics hold true. The flight will be faster, as Earth’s gravitational pull is much stronger than the moon’s. But the result is the same.’

‘True, within reason…’ von Braun began, but again Bethwig shushed him.

‘You and I once calculated that a lunar rocket must carry at least a five-thousand-kilogram payload and have a total thrust equal to three million kilograms. Now, when you come right down to it, there is no need to separate the military and civilian aspects of space travel. The oldest military axiom in the world requires that you always hold the high ground. Therefore the objective is the same: to transport a human being to the moon.

‘A speed of eleven point two kilometres per second is required to overcome Earth’s gravity in order to reach the moon. But to escape from the moon requires only two point four kilometres per second. In short, we need only double the speed attained by the A-Five. Tonight Dornberger described that rocket to Speer – the A-Four.’

Von Braun studied Bethwig’s smug expression. ‘I’ll be damned,’ he said slowly. ‘Are you suggesting we fire rockets from the moon to Earth?’ The thought took hold, and he exclaimed, ‘Good God, Franz, that would be an invincible weapon, wouldn’t it!’

‘Exactly!’ Bethwig shouted in triumph. ‘Only the simplest of guidance controls would be required. The speed of such rockets could vary between two point four and eleven point two kilometres an hour, and we could still shower them on to an enemy nation. There would be no way to stop them. And in two years, if all goes well, the A-Four will be perfected. We need only build a more powerful version of the A-Four to take us there to begin with.’ He hesitated only a moment. ‘I’ve already assigned it a project code, A-Ten. Are you game?’

Von Braun shot his hands above his head and roared with delight. ‘Of course. My God, think of it. The moon. We really can do it, Franz!’ He wrapped his friend in a bear hug. ‘You have the rationale for the moon landing programme. A weapon to end all weapons, perhaps even to end war! Think of it. Whoever controls the moon controls the Earth! Why, with our A-Ten the Reich could enforce a veritable Pax Germana!’

Bethwig untangled himself and brought von Braun’s Indian dance to a halt. ‘We will need someone to sponsor us,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘Someone with stronger political connections than anyone in the army possesses.’

‘Speer?’

‘Perhaps. But we have to know more about him first. Does he have access to the Führer? Is he sufficiently high in the party? Such a project will be damned expensive and we will need someone very high up to back us.’

Von Braun grinned at that. ‘Franz, for a chance like this I’d make a pact with the Devil.’

Occupied Belgium December 1940

The ruined citadel frowned over Liege. SS guards, rifles slung muzzle downwards to keep out the insistent rain, eyed the line shuffling towards the dirty brick building. Barbed wire was strung to a height of three metres, and red signs warned in Flemish, French and German that it was electrified. A young officer watched, his expression one of ill-disguised contempt. In spite of the cold wind and the rain, he appeared comfortable enough in his black leather overcoat and uniform cap.

Jan Memling had ridden his decrepit bicycle to the first checkpoint at the intersection of the rue Saint-Leonard and rue Marengo to join the throng moving towards the factory gates. The rain slanted down without respite, splattering cobbled streets, soaking threadbare coats and trousers, shoes and boots.

The officer looked his way, spoke to an aide, and Memling cursed silently. An SS officer’s interest almost always led to deportation and labour service – slave labour. Deportation was the terror of Memling’s life. Once he got to Germany, it would only be a matter of time before his identity was uncovered.

The aide went to the sergeant supervising the checkpoint guards and spoke to him, again glancing in Memling’s direction. Jan clutched the bicycle as his fear grew; he was helpless, there was absolutely nothing to do but play it to the end with as much dignity as he could muster. It would be useless to run.

The sergeant shouted, and three soldiers vaulted the barricade and grabbed the man ahead of him. The officer watched, his expression bored, and, after a moment, lit a cigarette and resumed his scrutiny of the line as the unfortunate worker was dragged away.

There was not even a mutter of protest. Memling shuffled forward and the line followed. The man had ceased to exist.

This was Jan Memling’s first field assignment since February 1938. He had been sent to Belgium in early May to investigate rumours of German troop movements along the Belgian border. But von Reichenau’s sudden panzer attack on the tenth of that month had come as a complete surprise. The following day Fort Eben Emael was captured by glider troops, and the city of Liege occupied, cutting off any possibility of escape. It was not until late June that a courier had found him, issued a set of ambiguous instructions from London, and arranged an emergency contact with the fledgling Belgian underground. Since then he had lived in a nightmare of constant terror. There was no foreseeable way that he could get out of Belgium, and if Great Britain surrendered, as was rumoured likely… he did not want to think about that.

Those elderly Belgians who remembered the relatively benign German occupation of 1914-18 expected much the same in 1940. But with the conclusion of the French armistice on 22 June at Compiegne, army troops had been replaced by SS units and the occupation stiffened. Stern reprisals were meted out for the most absurd infractions of the stringent rules. Curfew violators were executed on the spot. A priest who had received an urgent call to attend a dying man had not waited to telephone the occupation authorities for permission. An SS patrol had stopped his bicycle, pushed him against a wall, and shot him. His body had been left as an example.

Memling had found his position in the quality control department of the Manufacture d’Armes in mid-May, before the occupation forces had established themselves. He had been lucky to find it, but the army officer running the factory was desperate for trained technical personnel and not overly inclined to ask questions. Jan had given his birthplace as Barchoa, a small town east of the Meuse destroyed by German artillery. As long as he gave the Germans no reason to investigate his background, he felt safe enough.

In the meantime the factory was run efficiently, and some consideration was even given to the workers. In contrast with their counterparts in other German-run factories, they were provided a bowl of hot if watery soup at midday to supplement their rations, were released from work at mid-afternoon on Saturdays, and, if lucky enough to work in an office, enjoyed a measure of heat in the winter. Memling’s current task was to prepare quality control inspection procedures for two new German machine-gun designs, the MP40 and MG42.

‘Ah, Memling, here you are. Good. I must have you go down to the director of production’s office and bring back the latest MG-Forty-two estimates for the coming year.’

Hans Belden, his superior, was a fat, timorous, and self-pitying German civilian who enjoyed the rank and privileges of his position as director of quality control in a factory of great importance to the Third Reich. He was not inclined to pamper his Belgian subordinates – except for Memling. For some reason he had taken a liking to Jan, even to the extent of occasionally inviting him into his own office, which had an electric fire, and offering him coffee and cigarettes. He like to pat Memling on the shoulder or put an arm about his waist. Belden was Nazi to the core, and Memling did not trust him for an instant. Instead, he treated his boss with a deference – verging on sycophancy – to which Belden responded with privileges now and then.

Memling showed his pass to the sentry and went out on to the vast production floor. A dirty, nearly opaque skylight allowed only the palest version of daylight to filter through. The Manufacture d’Armes, or the Gun Factory, as it was known locally, was the largest in the world. Beneath the endless glass roof, in carefully-guarded areas, were manufactured and assembled a wide variety of weapons ranging from the Browning nine-millimetre automatic pistol to the panzer tank. Hundreds of lathes, milling machines, and polishers ran twenty-four hours a day to feed the insatiable maw of the German war machine.

The German production director occupied a spacious suite with a carpeted reception area. His amply endowed Belgian secretary attracted German officers like flies. When Memling entered, an oberleutnant in the dark blue of a Luftwaffe dress uniform was leaning on the counter above her desk staring into the front of her blouse as she reached for a folder. He said something that Memling could not hear, and the girl hesitated, half-twisting to smile at him so that her blouse opened a bit more. Memling walked to the desk and, ignoring the German officer, handed over the requisition.

‘What do you want?’ the officer snapped in annoyance.

Memling turned to him, pretending not to understand German.

The lieutenant tried to repeat the question in halting Flemish, then in French, and gave up as Memling continued to stare.

The secretary made a remark in German, and they both laughed before she turned to Memling.

‘Director Belden asks for the summer production figures on the MG-Forty-two.’ His voice was steady enough and devoid of any emotion.

‘Oh, all right,’ she answered petulantly. ‘But it will take a moment. Wait over there.’ She indicated the far side of the room.

The girl stood up, brushing her dress smooth across her hips, and with practised movements swayed across to the filing cabinets. The drawer she wanted was in the lowest tier, and rather than kneel, she bent forward so that her skirt drew tight across a shapely bottom. It took her several moments to find the correct folder, and during that time Memling could have removed the officer’s sidearm and boots.

She found it at last and, turning, dropped the folder. This time, when she bent down to retrieve it her blouse opened far enough that even Memling, across the room, was aware of soft breasts barely restrained by wisps of silk. The lieutenant grunted as if hit, and Memling closed his eyes, stricken suddenly with the memory of Margot’s soft, strong body.

‘Here,’ she snapped, and Memling came to the counter. He signed the register she pushed towards him, and when she handed back his identity card from which she had recorded the numbers, she gave him a slight wink. Memling’s answering nod was barely visible.

‘Next time, you are to advise me ahead of time which file you wish to see.’ She turned away, dismissing him. The lieutenant’s hands twitched as she slid into her chair.

Lucky bastard, Memling thought as he left the office. He knew where the German would sleep that evening.

He had been gone long enough for Belden to begin to fret, and so he hurried along the aisles between the machines. He had eaten only a hard crust that morning, and there were rumours that the meat and sugar rations would be reduced by a third in January. Perhaps Belden would offer him a cup of tea and possibly even one of those tinned biscuits. The idea was overwhelming.

Preoccupied, Memling almost missed the tall muscular man in civilian suit escorted by the director of production and a high-ranking army officer. As he glanced back, his heart turned over, but the civilian had continued on without a sign of recognition. Memling had last seen him in 1938, in Amsberg, Germany. He was not surprised that von Braun had not recognised him; he was twenty pounds lighter, his hair was twice as long, and there was still a bit of newspaper stuck to his chin where the worn-out razor had nicked him again.

But what the devil was Wernher von Braun doing there? He was a rocket scientist. Had he been drafted to work on more conventional armaments? Memling puzzled over the question, so absorbed that the sentry had to ask twice for his pass. He delivered the folder, accepted the half-filled cup of tea, fending off Belden’s arm with what grace he could, and listened to the familiar complaints concerning changes and revisions to plans about which they were never consulted. He soon escaped to his own desk against the windows overlooking the vast production floor.

From his vantage point he could see across and down into the various partitions that divided the factory floor and made it such a warren. Against the far end of the building the Germans had built a tightly closed and guarded section roofed and walled with plywood. Uncharacteristically, they had used their own engineering troops for the job. The area was guarded by heavily armed sentries, and rumours spoke of a miracle weapon under development. But like all rumours under the Nazi occupation, these were both contradictory and fantastic. The quality control department was the pivot in any production facility, especially one dealing with mass-produced weaponry. Vast quantities of specialised materials were demanded, and specifications were rigid. Tolerances between parts were often no more than hundredths of a millimetre. If any kind of weapon were being developed within those plywood walls, they would know about it in quality control – unless, he thought, it was so secret that the Germans had installed a separate quality control department.

But that was absurd. Belden, as fretful of his standing as he was, would hardly have remained unaware of such an operation. And if that was the case, Memling could hardly have failed to hear of it. Or could he? Suppose it was so important that even Belden was keeping his mouth shut? He glanced at the mock-up of the MP40 machine pistol lying on his desk – a cheaper version of the MP38, he knew; compared with what might be hidden behind those walls, it was nothing. Was that why von Braun was in Liege?

It was still raining hard when the final whistle blew. This winter gave every appearance of being much like the previous one – the hardest in Europe for nearly two hundred years. Memling rode his bicycle slowly, lost in the silent, sullen crowd. The wait at the checkpoint seemed longer than usual.

Memling lugged his bicycle up the steps of his boarding-house and nodded a greeting to his landlady who was waiting beside the doorway. Tomorrow night she would want his weekly rent. Arrests were so common these days that rents were demanded on a weekly basis. A few, like his landlady, determined not to lose a penny due her, had tried to collect daily; but someone had complained to the civil authorities, and a man had come round to forbid the practice.

In his room at the top rear of the ancient house, he shed his wet pants and coat and wrapped himself in a blanket, then set about heating his half-can of soup over a tiny gas ring. As had become his habit, Memling remained huddled in the chair to conserve warmth and energy, reviewing any information he had memorised. But tonight his mind refused to concentrate, insisted instead on speculating over the presence of Wernher von Braun in Liege until he fell into an exhausted sleep.

The clock chimed eleven as Hans Belden opened the door and motioned him inside. Memling could see that Belden was angry and knew there would be no tea this morning and probably precious little time to warm himself by the electric fire.

‘I’ve just had a telephone call from the production director’s office. Raw material delivery schedules have been delayed again, and all production figures must be revised this week. Take this folder back to his office. We shall have to wait until they are finished, and do it all again!’ He slapped the desk with his hand and flung himself around in the chair to stare at the rain spattering the window.

‘A miserable country. It does nothing but rain,’ he muttered.

Memling varied his route to the director’s office, to pass the closed-off section, but there was little to see except plywood walls and unsmiling guards.

He returned the folder to the blonde secretary, who sniffed at him but did not speak. Returning by the same route, Memling noticed as he turned into the corridor that one of the plywood sections had been moved aside to allow a cart carrying a large canvas-shrouded object into the area. The man directing the operation was wearing a white laboratory coat – the Germans allowed no one but their own people to wear white coats. His own was a dirty brown. The cart snagged on the edge of the door, and one of the soldiers swore. The guard stepped forward to help push, and while all eyes were on the cart Memling, who had stopped behind the guard, leaned forward to peer into the opening. He was back in position an instant before the guard straightened and returned to his post. He had seen all he needed.

Sunday was cold and windy, and rain fell intermittently. Jan Memling pedalled into the Parc d’Avroy past the monument to Charles Rogier. In spite of the rain and cold and the late season, the park was crowded with shabby citizens sitting on benches, examining the great equestrian statue of Charlemagne, or wandering the paths and eyeing the food stalls affordable only to German soldiers and their well-dressed collaborators. There was little else to do in the city. The shops were empty, and those theatres that remained open were too expensive, and full of Germans in any event.

Twenty minutes later he crossed the boulevard Piercot and rode up the rue Saint-Jacques. The gardens of the Place Emile-Dupon at the end were practically deserted. Tall Flemish-style houses from the 1700s frowned across the lovely miniature park. Its once immaculate gardens went untended, but the long rows of trees leading one inevitably to Pollard’s bronze group, The Forsaken, were still magnificent. As he found a bench the sun slipped through the cloud briefly, and he soaked up its warmth in gratitude. Two old men huddled on a bench across the way, oblivious to him and each other. An officer in Luftwaffe uniform strolled past, hands behind his back, a contented expression on his face. In one of the houses opposite, Memling caught a glimpse of a small child peering out.

Memling saw her coming along the footpath and grunted in relief. She was wearing a shabby overcoat and a scarf that hid her blonde hair. Her collar was turned up, and she wore the heavy rubber galoshes that had become mandatory in the winter, now that the trams had stopped running.

‘It was dangerous to contact me at the factory. Don’t do it again.’

Memling nodded, knowing she was right. Maria Kluensenayer, the production director’s secretary, was his sole contact with the Belgian resistance movement.

‘I have to see Paul.’

Maria frowned at that. ‘It is far too dangerous.’

‘What I have to tell him could be even more dangerous if ignored.’ Even as he spoke he realised how melodramatic that sounded.

The girl nodded after a moment. ‘All right. I will see, but it will take time. I will meet you here this evening, at eight.’

‘No. The gates are closed at six.’

Maria bit at her lower lip, indecision plain on her face, then shook her head. ‘It cannot be done. It is far too dangerous.’

‘Look,’ he said, striving to keep the desperation from his voice. ‘I’ve never asked for anything from you people. I could have made a nuisance of myself, but I haven’t. Now I am telling you, I have to see Paul!’

Her fingers were tapping nervously on her thigh, and for an instant he had a vision of the smooth, satiny skin the threadbare coat concealed. He swore at himself and jerked his mind back to the problem at hand.

‘All right. Meet me in the Parc de la Citadelle at four-twenty-five exactly. Make certain that no one follows you.’

Memling started to ask where in the park, but she turned quickly, slapped him hard, jumped to her feet cursing in French, and was gone. What the hell was that for? he wondered. Then he caught sight of one of the old men grinning slyly, and understood.

A thin spatter of rain drifted across the cobbled street, and he glanced at the sky apprehensively. He had no money to buy lunch at a food stall, but if he went back to his room to eat, the landlady would wonder when he went out again, and there would be a thousand questions to dodge. Cursing the Germans and Maria, he mounted the bicycle and turned into the boulevard Piercot, trying to ignore the rhythmic bumping against the end of his spine as the patched tyre revolved on the cobbled street.

The original citadel was designed and constructed in the seventeenth century by Prince-Bishop Maximilian Henry of Bavaria. With each succeeding war or threat of war, the fort was expanded and strengthened until by 1914 it was thought to impose an impenetrable barrier to German designs.

The Imperial German offensive was begun on 5 August 1914. On 7 August General Erich Ludendorff entered Liege, and that same day, under bombardment from Krupp’s sixteen-inch howitzers, nicknamed the Big Bertha, the citadel surrendered. It would not be the last time an impregnable static defence position was overrun by superior technology. In 1914 it had been accomplished with giant cannon; in 1940, by glider-borne parachute troops.

Memling entered the gracious city park that had been constructed on the grounds of the old citadel and wandered about idly, examining the overgrown ruins of the strongest in a chain of twelve forts once thought sufficient to defend the city below. Liege, Namur, Mons, Maastricht, ancient citadels in the most fought-over area in Europe. His stomach protested its emptiness, and he was shivering in the chill breeze and wet clothes.

‘You must be the Englishman?’ A hand fell on his shoulder and? squeezed. ‘No, no. Keep walking. Just greet me as an old friend you expected to meet. Your cover name is Pieter Diecker, I believe?’

The shock of the unexpected approach, of being called an Englishman, had almost unnerved Memling, and he faltered. The hand held tightly to his shoulder, and he tried to smile but failed, miserably.

‘Maria’s description was quite accurate. I had no trouble spotting you.’

Memling glanced at the man walking beside him. Rather tall and spare, he had a thin moustache and a three-day stubble of beard. His hair was concealed beneath an army garrison cap that had seen better days, and the uniform greatcoat that flapped about his knees was filthy and carelessly mended. He walked with a pronounced limp – which had probably kept him out of the camps where soldiers of the former regime were required to do a period of labour service. The armistice had been in effect for seven months now, and very few men had yet been released.

‘By the way, my name is Paul. I apologise if I startled you, but your reaction confirms your identity.’

Memling’s breathing had begun to return to normal. ‘And if…. it hadn’t…?’

The man shrugged. ‘We would have walked into those trees.’ He palmed a thin-bladed military fighting knife before sliding it away in the depths of the coat. Memling drew an even deeper breath.

‘Where can we go?’

Paul laughed at that. ‘Right here, my friend. I do not know you well enough for anyplace else. And we must hurry. The Gestapo and the SD vie with each other for my head.’

They found a bench on the edge of the bluff overlooking the city. Memling struggled to find an opening that would catch the attention of this self-assured man. He knew nothing about him other than that he had been an army officer. How to explain something as complicated as rockets in a few minutes’ time? he wondered.

He decided on a straightforward account. ‘The Germans are developing a powerful rocket which will have the capability of flying perhaps three hundred and fifty to four hundred and fifty kilometres,’ he began. ‘It will carry an explosive charge of up to twelve hundred kilograms. The motors for this rocket are being constructed down there.’ Memling pointed to the distant roof of the Manufacture d’Armes.

‘In the Royal Gun Factory?’ Paul asked in surprise. ‘A rocket? Like a fireworks rocket?’

Memling shook his head impatiently. ‘No. Nothing like that at all. This one will be all metal, perhaps thirty metres high, with a powerful motor in which a mixture of petrol or alcohol and liquid oxygen will be burned. It will be able to climb thirty or more kilometres into the stratosphere and continue on for up to four hundred and fifty kilometres.’ Memling became aware that he was speaking much too quickly and drew a breath, fighting to slow himself down.

‘If launched from anywhere along the Atlantic or North Sea coasts, it could fall anywhere in London. It could be fired north to devastate Stockholm or across the Mediterranean against Egypt or targets in the Middle East.’

Paul whistled softly. ‘How do you know all this?’

The question was logical and at least did not express the complete disbelief he had been expecting. He began to relax a bit. ‘I saw the motors.’

‘Just the motors?’

Memling nodded.

‘Tell me where and when.’

The cloud along the western horizon had broken, and reddish light rushed through to flood the distant hills. Below, the city, shrouded in a century of industrial grime, remained grey and dismal. Memling began by describing his chance meeting in 1938 with Wernher von Braun and Franz Bethwig, his subsequent flight from the train, and the encounter with von Braun three days before, which had led to his glimpse of the sealed area.

‘I studied mechanical engineering and was also a member of the British Interplanetary Society,’ he continued, noting that Paul did not smirk or grin at the name as so many others had. ‘Before the war I helped to develop several small rockets that used liquid fuels. I am quite familiar with some of the problems.’

Paul nodded. ‘I think I understand. Tell me about what you saw at the works.’

‘There was sufficient time for me to get a good look. It was a bell-shaped object one and half metres high and half that wide. The bottom flared into a bell muzzle as a rocket nozzle would do. Above the nozzle was a spherical container from which a series of pipes depended. The sphere was most certainly the combustion chamber.’

‘How can you be certain of the size?’

‘The soldiers were moving another one inside. It was on a standard factory cart which stands exactly thirty-six centimetres high on its wheels. I measured one. The rocket motor rose to the level of the soldier’s chin. When he stood upright, he was as tall as I am, which is one point eight metres exactly.’

‘You are very perceptive. Where did you obtain the performance characteristics?’

Memling cleared his throat. ‘An engineer must be a good observer. As for the specifications… I – I calculated them from the dimensions of the engine.’

Paul nodded for him to continue.

‘From the apparent diameter’ – Memling’s voice was feverish with the urgent need to make this man understand – ‘of the nozzle it is possible to estimate the width of the rocket. From the diameter of the combustion chamber it is possible to construct a series of estimates of specific thrust based on the fuels that might be employed. Given that, the rate of fuel and oxidiser use can be estimated, which suggests the amount of fuel that can be carried and thus the possible range. That, in turn, provides an estimate of the weight of explosive that can be carried. Military considerations would further limit the choice of weights; for instance, it would make no sense to shoot a fifty-kilogram payload a thousand kilometres or a six-thousand-kilogram payload ten kilometres.’

Paul was watching the sunset, and Memling wondered if he was really listening. ‘Von Braun told me two years ago that their major problem was to contain the twenty-nine-hundred-degree-centigrade temperatures developed in the combustion chamber. He mentioned at the time they were using liquid oxygen. The only fuels that combine with liquid oxygen to produce that temperature are petrol and alcohol. Knowing the fuel and oxidiser, the combustion temperature, and approximating the rate of propellant/oxidiser feed – which is dictated by the combustion rate – it is possible to calculate speed and range versus payload. The targets are obvious and all within a four-hundred-kilometre range of occupied European territory.

‘For instance, a rocket capable of striking London from this side of the Channel will travel approximately two hundred kilometres from, say, the vicinity of Antwerp. If we assume that the rocket must travel at least three hundred metres per second, and the fuel consumption is thirty kilograms per second, or twice the acceleration of gravity, you can calculate to find that the rocket must produce five hundred and sixty thousand horsepower. With that figure you can refine your assumptions and define such characteristics as fuel load, desirable payload in explosives, and so on. These, of course, provide you with the maximum and minimum dimensions of the rocket.’

Paul had remained silent throughout the discourse, and Memling was afraid that he had overdone it. The Belgian was staring out over the city to the western horizon where the storm clouds had regrouped, forcing the sun to retreat.

‘You are certain of these calculations?’ he asked, and when Memling nodded, he smiled. ‘I was an artillery officer, of the rank of lieutenant colonel. I am an engineer by training.’ He was silent a moment, then stood and motioned Memling to walk with him. They started back along the path, Memling pushing his bicycle and cursing his rumbling stomach.

‘I will do this much,’ Paul said after they had covered half the distance. ‘A message will be sent to London briefly describing your information and conclusions. They may well want a follow-up report.’

Memling clenched his fists on the handlebars and strove to keep his voice normal. He shook his head. ‘That won’t do.’

Paul glanced at him in surprise. ‘Why not, may one ask?’

Memling described the reception his report had received in 1938.

‘Perhaps things have changed… new personnel….’

‘Maybe,’ Memling replied doubtfully. ‘But my superior, the man with whom they will check, is the same as then.’

Paul nodded. ‘I understand. However, there is nothing else I can do. Our contacts with London are as yet quite limited. Your government is only beginning to pay attention to resistance organisations on the Continent. They are still preoccupied with a Nazi invasion threat.’ He glanced about suddenly.

‘I have spent far too much time here as it is. I will send a report through as soon as possible, and if there are further requests for information, they will be passed on to you. Otherwise’ – he paused and laid a hand on Memling’s arm – ‘everything will remain as before. Do not contact us except in an emergency. You have done quite well to date. If I need any further information, the request will come through Maria.’

Memling could not keep the concern from his face, and Paul chuckled. ‘If you doubt her reliability, then she has done well. Believe me when I tell you her attitude towards the Nazi is an act. She is my most valuable source of information. You may continue to trust her with your life.’ Paul stressed the word continue.

The Belgian clapped him on the arm and walked away without looking back. Memling leaned on his bicycle and found a cigarette. Two in one day was extravagant, but in view of the risk, the tension, the disappointment, and his empty stomach, he felt he deserved it. The sun had broken through in one final gesture of defiance and set the storm clouds afire. The Hopital des Anglais glowed as did the distant buildings of the Academie des Beaux-Arts. It would require a Constable to capture those colours, he thought; and the homesickness that overwhelmed him then was devastating.

The door slammed back against the stop, and two SS men stamped into the office, followed by a young officer. Work stopped abruptly as the five technicians stared in fear at the sudden apparition. Memling’s fingers convulsed, and his pencil snapped, cracking across the silent room like a gunshot. The door to Belden’s office flew open, and the director of quality control rushed out ready to protest the intrusion – until he saw the SS flashes on the officer’s collar. The officer ignored him and stared at each technician in turn, but it was on Memling that his stare lingered longest.

‘Pieter Diecker?’

Memling stood. ‘I am Pieter Diecker,’ he said, hoping the terror in his voice was not apparent.

The officer glanced at him, then at the partially disassembled machine pistol on the workbench and nodded. One of the SS enlisted men slung his rifle and stepped forward to grasp Memling’s arm, and he was led to the door without a word.

Eyes followed their progress as Memling was hustled through the factory, but not a head was raised. Crammed between the two soldiers who followed the officer, he was conscious of the smell of their unwashed uniforms, the odour of heavy Balkan tobacco that hung about them both, and the red smear of birthmark on the neck of the man to his left.

Even before they crossed the yard, which was swathed in a frigid mist, Memling had been under no illusion about their destination. And he was badly frightened. If they had found him out, there was no hope. The fear that gripped him was like nothing he had ever experienced before. He felt as if he were frozen, as if time had slowed, his body reacting only to autonomic control.

He was taken to a single-storey building, little more than a shed, where a man several inches taller and at least two stone heavier than him, signed a receipt, then pointed to an ironclad door.

The room beyond contained a single chair and a bright lamp fastened to the ceiling. Memling was shoved to stand beneath the lamp. He raised a hand to shade his eyes, but it was slapped away. He heard footsteps and the door slammed.

It was intensely wearying to stand with his hands at his sides, squinting against the glare that grew more painful as the minutes crawled by. His feet began to protest, and the joints of his knees throbbed. When he heard the door open, he actually experienced a moment of relief; an instant later a blow sent him sprawling against the wall.

Memling suppressed the oath just in time and pushed himself up – only to receive a sharp kick in the ribs. A hand grabbed his hair and yanked him up to meet a punch that snapped his head back against the wall. A second punch beneath the heart drove every bit of air from his lungs and left him paralysed and gasping. He rolled on to his side, knees drawn up, and struggled to breathe.

‘Please, Mr Diecker,’ a quiet, understanding voice murmured. ‘You must stand quite still. My friend here has had a bad night and is quite impatient this morning. You have been invited to assist in a police investigation. It is a small, rather unimportant matter, but’ – the man’s tone was apologetic – ‘we are still required to perform our duty. We do hope you will be willing to help. It would save us a great deal of time and trouble.’

Memling regained his feet and staggered away from the wall gasping. He was shoved back beneath the lamp.

‘First, I must admit to an unfair advantage over you. I know your name, Herr Diecker, but you do not know mine. I am Captain Jacob Walsch of the Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt. The Secret State Police,’ he translated.

There was a pause and then his hand was shaken.

‘Perhaps now we can become friends. The German government does not wish to inconvenience Belgian citizens any more than the needs of the occupation require. But in times like these we must be ever vigilant, heh?

‘Now.’ There was the sound of turning pages again. ‘You were seen in the gardens of the Place Emile-Dupon yesterday, about midday? Is that correct?’

The man’s French pronunciation had a curiously guttural flavour, overlaid with the intonations of the south. He was clearly a German speaking French in the accents of that area. The only German he had spoken, the name of his police organisation, carried a singsong lilt that suggested the Schwarzwald.

‘I asked if that was correct, Herr Diecker?’

‘Uh… yes,’ Memling mumbled, trying to sound dazed even though his mind was working now. The blow that followed was as sudden and unexpected as the first. The man seemed to have mastered the technique of striking high on the spine, just below the shoulders, while kicking the victim’s legs away so that he landed head first. Half-conscious, head lolling from side to side, he was yanked to his feet and slapped hard.

‘Herr Diecker’ – the voice was annoyed – ‘I must ask you once more not to provoke my associate. You must speak up immediately and clearly when I ask a question. Please repeat your answer.’

‘Yes…. he managed to force out.

‘Yes what?’ the man prompted.

‘I was in the Place Emile-Dupon… yesterday.’

‘Was it not rather an unpleasant day for taking the air?’

‘Yes… but Sunday is the only day I have, otherwise…’

‘I see. And while you were at the Place Emile-Dupon did you meet anyone?’

Christ, Memling thought, they know. The bastards were playing a game with him.

His vision was clearing as his eyes adapted to the glare, and the faces were beginning to take on detail.

‘Yes.’

‘And who would that have been?’

Memling twisted his hands together as if embarrassed, and drew a deep breath. Dissemble, they had told him in the all-too-brief training classes. Confirm enough of their story that they may believe your lies.

‘I… met’ – he took a deep breath – ‘a girl.’

‘Ah. And why should you be shy? Certainly you are a normal, healthy young man. Tell me, please, what you and this young lady talked about? By the way, what is her name?’

The Gestapo officer was watching him closely now, and Memling realised with a shock that he had seen that gaunt, skull-like face before: the man on the train! My God, he thought, as fresh waves of fear coursed through him, turning every muscle in his body to water. Do they know who I am?

He struggled against the panic, knowing that if he gave way now he would lapse into grovelling terror, and the thought brought such intense shame and self-loathing that he stopped wringing his hands and tried to stand straight.

As if to encourage him, Walsch chuckled. ‘Herr Diecker, whatever you tell me remains in the strictest confidence. Now, what was her name?’

‘Maria… Kluensenayer,’ he choked. There was nothing to be lost by telling him. Walsch was certain to know anyway, probably had known the instant she sat down beside him. He could anticipate the next question, and the answer was beginning to form in his mind as it was asked.

‘My my, the secretary to the director of production. Now, what would you two find to talk about?’

Memling took a deep breath. ‘We did not talk very long, sir. I…. asked -I asked her to come to my room,’ he finished with a rush.

‘And?’

‘She left.’

‘Left? Just like that?’

Memling let his head droop a little more. ‘Yes… no. She slapped me.’

‘I shouldn’t wonder. Whatever possessed you, young man? Do you know her very well? Did you have reason to believe that she might agree? What a dog you are! And so hasty. Don’t you know you must first court a young woman? They are all prostitutes and whores at heart, and so you must go about it correctly. First a present, then the theatre, and perhaps a meal in a fine restaurant.’ There was a dry chuckle. ‘Then you take the lady to your bed. Not before – and never, never ask.’

‘I… I do not have the money for that sir.’

‘Not enough money!’ Walsch shook his head in exasperation. ‘Why, you have an excellent job, a responsible job. Surely you are not complaining about the salary paid you by the Reich?’

‘Oh no, sir,’ Memling replied hastily, already weary of the game. ‘It is not that, only… I…’ He shuffled his feet and rubbed his nose. ‘I… I am quite shy. You see, I am an orphan—’

‘Yes, yes, I know all that.’ For the first time Walsch had departed from the gentle chiding tone. ‘Where did you go after the whore rejected your advances?’

Memling took a step towards him. ‘She is not a… a… ’ He stopped as if unable to pronounce the word. Walsch raised a hand to stay the other man.

‘You treated her like a whore, so obviously you must think her one. Answer my question.’

‘I did… I went to the Parc de la Citadelle. I go there sometimes, to be alone.’

‘To the park? I see.’ More pages turned. ‘This woman, Maria, have you met her before, outside the works?’

‘No. No, sir,’ Memling answered, astonished that Walsch had not asked about the park and who it was he had met there. Didn’t he know?

‘But you have met her, spoken to her, inside the works?’ Bemused, Memling did not see where the trap was leading. ‘Yes, I have spoken to her… in her office.’

Walsch tapped the notebook. ‘In violation of the law forbidding personal intercourse during work hours?’

‘Ye – yes.’

‘Are you not aware that such violations are considered sabotage by the occupation authorities? And that sabotage is punished by hanging?’ Walsch’s voice had become cold.

‘Yes… but I… thought perhaps a word….’ What is he doing? Memling wondered. Didn’t they follow me to the citadel?

‘A word? Just a word? And next time it will be two words, and then several, and perhaps a long conversation will follow while your work suffers and the weapons needed by our front-line troops are not delivered on time and they are killed because you were compelled to speak to a whore,’ Walsch shouted.

Memling could only remain silent. He had walked directly into the trap. His mind was in total confusion now. What was Walsch really after? If he had been followed to the citadel, they would surely have seen him with Paul.

Walsch uttered the next words with no hint of threat. ‘You do realise that I could have you before a court-martial immediately and hanged before this evening? I can assure you the execution is most unpleasant. Perhaps you would be interested to know the procedure? One’s last moments should be meaningful, their significance understood. As sabotage is the worst crime one can commit, the government has decreed that the method of execution should be made a deterrent to others. Therefore the prisoner is stripped to the waist and paraded before his fellows who are assembled to watch. The gallows bar is placed some three metres above the ground, so the victim’s struggles are plainly visible to all.’ Walsch’s voice had taken on a grotesque humour.

‘The prisoner is mounted on a footboard. A wire noose is placed about his neck and snugged up so that there is no slack. At a signal the footboard is withdrawn leaving the prisoner to strangle. It can take as long as ten minutes to die if the hangman places the noose correctly. As you might imagine, it is very unpleasant. And that, my friend, by your own admission, is the penalty which awaits you, this very afternoon.’

Even through the intense fear that seemed to have shut out everything else, it was becoming clear to Memling what was happening. The Gestapo knew who he was. The files had disgorged his name in response to his fingerprints. But Walsch could not possibly admit to having overlooked a British spy in a most sensitive position all these months, particularly one who had escaped him once before. So Walsch had waited to see where he would lead them. Somehow the meeting with Paul had been missed, but not the one with Maria, and that meant she was now under Gestapo suspicion as well. Now that they had a connection, there was no further need for him. He could be eliminated and at the same time provide a cheap lesson in continued obedience. The floor shifted and he staggered, nauseated by fear. The thought of strangling to death from a wire noose…

‘…be a way to avoid such a severe penalty,’ Walsch continued. ‘After all, death is rather a severe penalty for speaking to an attractive woman, a temptation to which anyone may give way.’ Memling closed his eyes, shutting out the light, the sound, everything, as he struggled to understand what the Gestapo officer was saying. ‘How?’ he choked.

‘If you are willing to co-operate with me, I may be persuaded to intercede with the court. It has happened that such charges have been greatly reduced if the service rendered is of sufficient importance.’

Gaunt to the point of emaciation, Walsch smiled. He lit a cigarette and, as an afterthought, offered one to Memling. Feigning gratitude, Memling accepted and lit it from the match Walsch held for him.

‘It really is quite a simple task. And quite pleasant, I might add. In fact, I might even be doing you an unexpected favour.’ Memling waited, sucking greedily at the cigarette in spite of the harshness of the German tobacco that must have been half dried oak leaves.

‘This woman, Maria Kluensenayer, is of interest to you, of course. You must therefore continue with your suit. Become friendly with her, spend time with her. I am quite interested in knowing what she does in her spare time.’

‘Maria,’ Memling blurted out. ‘But she is….’

‘A whore.’

Memling blinked.

‘A whore,’ Walsch repeated. ‘That, however, is beside the point. Except,’ he added, chuckling, ‘as it makes your task easier and more pleasant.’

‘That is all you want me to do…?’

‘Yes. If you agree, I am willing to suspend the charges for the moment.’

‘For the moment?’ Memling could not keep the bitterness from his voice.

‘Do not try my patience,’ Walsch warned. ‘Remember the wire noose. A few days’ grace?’ He stubbed out his cigarette and glanced at Memling. ‘You do understand?’

‘But I do not have… ’

‘You what? Speak up!’

Memling was shaking badly. ‘She will have nothing to do with me,’ he gabbled. ‘I do not have money. I am not the kind she…’

‘That is your problem.’ Walsch waved a hand in dismissal. ‘You have three days, until Friday afternoon.’

No one said a word about the blood-encrusted abrasions on his forehead or the stiffness with which he carried himself when he returned to the laboratory. The double vision persisted, and bouts of nausea assailed him. The door to the director’s office remained tightly shut. The attention of the Gestapo was the curse of death.

Jan Memling knew he was under surveillance. They wanted him to know. A black Volkswagen followed him wherever he went through the streets of Liege. No one spoke to him or looked at him, and even his landlady hurried inside and slammed her door when he returned in the evening. That first night, in the refuge of his dingy room, he wrapped himself in the blanket and, too frightened to eat, sat staring at the blackout curtains long into the night, waiting for the shivering to stop and the fear to abate to its usual tolerable level. But like the nausea that wracked him at regular intervals, it refused to do so. He was under no illusions that his life would extend beyond his immediate usefulness to Walsch. If the Gestapo agent knew who he was, he would also know that he must have a connection to the resistance. Was Walsch gambling that Maria was that connection?

For the first time in weeks he allowed himself to think of Margot. Her features were there, just beyond memory, eluding him now in a way he had never thought possible. Until tonight he had sought to dismiss her, to ignore the intense longing thoughts of her always induced, and he had done so successfully enough that she was slipping away. They had married a year ago, the previous October, after her mother had finally succumbed to a combination of disease and pent-up bile.

There had been a week’s leave for a honeymoon in the Lake District where he had obtained a tiny cottage overlooking the far north end of Lake Windermere. Indian summer was giving way to autumn, and the wind blustered with rain. Inside, Jan kept the fire high, and between long, soothing stretches of lovemaking they had taken walks in the hills, discovering one vantage point after another as the lake displayed its moods: iron-grey under the lash of rain, sapphire in the brief periods of intense sun. Dry leaves under graceful oaks amid golden sunshine had more than once served as a lovers’ couch. It had been quite as both expected it would be, loving and companionable after the years of impatient waiting. In the long evenings before the fire they had discovered unknown facets of each other’s character.

He had never told Margot for whom he worked. She was still under the impression that he was employed by a small electrical appliance manufacturer. When he had left for Belgium that late April day, he had laughed at her fears about war on the Continent. After all, the war had been nearly eight months old and nothing much had happened since the previous September.

Memling woke with a start. The image of Margot sitting across from him before the fire, the memory of her soft body beneath his in the high, handcrafted bed, her gentle laughter at his attempts to master the kitchen plumbing, were gone. He knew then that he would never see her again.

By mid-afternoon, Thursday, Jan Memling had formulated his plan. It was desperate and full of loose ends, but anything was better than waiting to be slaughtered at Walsch’s command. The resistance had to be warned away, and he had to disappear. The Ardennes was the only possibility. There in the forest he might survive long enough to carry out a few acts of sabotage.

Memling knocked on the director’s door with his excuse all prepared, a mistake in the projected production figures for the MG42. The director wrote his pass quickly and slammed the door. The mark of death, Memling thought grimly.

Maria glanced up as he entered, and except for a slight tightening about her eyes at the sight of his bruises, she gave no indication that he meant any more to her than any other employee – and thereby signed her death warrant. Walsch would be watching her. When a woman shows no sign of recognising a man who three days earlier invited her into his bed, and whom she turned down with a public slap, she must be concealing something.

Memling showed his pass and asked for the production estimates. The only other person in the room was an army sergeant. Memling watched her as he would have been expected to, and the German did likewise. As Maria straightened up from the file drawer the sergeant gave him a slow wink, and Memling grinned weakly.

Drawing a slip of paper from his pocket, he unfolded the sheets on the counter and pretended to study them while Maria returned to her desk. After a moment he muttered a curse. Maria glanced up and he called her over.

‘These are not the correct sheets. I wanted numbers six to nine.’

With an air of injured patience, Maria obtained a new set of papers. ‘Are these the ones?’ she asked in tones dripping with sarcasm. She waited while Memling unfolded the sheets and checked page numbers.

‘Yes. Thank you.’ His sarcasm matched hers, and under his breath he whispered as he bent forward, ‘The Gestapo saw us. They called me in yesterday.’

The girl gave no sign that she had heard, but rolled her eyes in exasperation and flounced back to her desk. Just for an instant Memling was tempted to call her back and repeat the message, but it was far too dangerous. He would have to hope she understood. His face was flushed and his heart pounded as he gathered up the sheets and left.

Walsch was waiting in the corridor. ‘I hope that you have made progress.’ He chuckled and walked away.

The final whistle sounded, and he joined the throng of workers edging towards the gate. The sun was setting in a burst of colour, and it was intensely cold. The line shuffled forward, and as it rounded the building Memling saw with a sinking heart that the guards had been doubled. Troops in full combat gear stood elbow to elbow along the way leading to the barrier. Memling noticed that none of the workers were being motioned out of line. This kind of intense inspection was usually carried out only as a pretext for selecting deportees.

As Memling neared the barrier a civilian stepped from the shed that housed the security offices, and spoke to an officer standing near the checkpoint. Wisps of vapour wreathed their heads as they talked, and then the civilian pointed directly at Memling. The officer turned, nodded, and sauntered towards the line of soldiers. The man went back to the shed, and Walsch appeared in the doorway. He smiled at Memling and nodded.

Walsch motioned again with his head, and Memling turned. A gallows had been erected on a wheeled cart stored in the alley between two buildings. From the crossbeam glinted a wire noose. Memling swung around, anger overriding the shock of fear. His lips formed a single obscenity, and Walsch laughed and turned back into the shed.

‘Papers, you stupid bastard,’ a soldier shouted at him, and Memling jerked around to see that he was already at the barrier. He braced himself as Walsch appeared behind, grinning his death’s-head grin. The soldier had slung his bayoneted rifle over his right shoulder to leave both hands free to handle the papers. With any luck, Memling thought, I could take it from the guard. As he reached inside his coat for the papers he rehearsed the moves in his mind. With the rifle and bayonet he might kill two Nazis before they shot him down. With any luck, one would be Walsch. The guard took his papers, and Memling was suddenly elated. It was over. They would not dangle him from a wire noose today. He drew a breath, drunk with the cold, acrid tang that filled his throat and lungs.

‘Pass.’

The barrier was open, and the guard motioned him on impatiently. Memling stumbled through, the sudden reversal draining away the adrenalin to leave him weak and nauseated. Somehow he found, and mounted, his bicycle. A trick, another damned trick to terrorise him, he realised. Walsch was playing with him, keeping him off balance with fear so that he would never know when they might drag him to the wire.

Headlights swept over him, lighting up the street. He glanced over his shoulder at the thin slits of hooded light from the familiar Volkswagen.

The explosion knocked him from the bicycle and spun him against the kerb. Dazed, he struggled to his knees just as the Volkswagen’s petrol tank went up in flames. A man flopped half out of a door, clothes burning. A figure dashed across the road, reached into the flames, and jumped back, holding a machine pistol triumphantly aloft for an instant before firing one shot into the burning man’s head. Several more shots were fired, and a lorry burst into the street. Figures jumped down, grabbed and hustled Memling into the back. A second explosion blew the Volkswagen to pieces, digging a huge crater in the street. Someone laughed, and the lorry lurched, backed, jerked once more, as it ran up and over the kerb to the sound of automatic weapons’ fire and a third, crashing explosion.

The lorry raced through the narrow streets, throwing him from side to side on the splintered floorboards. Two men were framed against the open back as they crouched behind the tailboard, machine pistols pointing out. A match flared, and he turned to see Paul’s face illuminated a moment as he lit two cigarettes. He passed one to Memling.

‘Surprised?’

Memling pushed himself up on the hard bench beside the resistance leader and took the cigarette. The lorry hit a pothole, and both were thrown against the side. Paul swore and rapped on the glass window above his head with the butt of a pistol; the lorry slowed appreciably.

‘Everyone drives like a Chicago gangster,’ he muttered.

Memling finally managed to assemble an entire sentence. ‘What in hell is going on?’

‘The Gestapo was on to you. We could not afford to let you be taken.’

Memling grunted and braced himself. ‘Did you get Maria away?’

Paul flung the cigarette on to the floorboards where it exploded in a cascade of sparks, and swore bitterly. ‘We knew that you were interviewed by one Captain Jacob Walsch at thirteen thirty-five yesterday afternoon. They had hoped to panic you into doing something foolish, but you appear to have handled them admirably. When Maria’s telephone message came we decided to move tonight. Unfortunately it was too late for her. She was arrested this afternoon.’

Memling was shocked into silence. He had not expected that Maria would be arrested, rather that she would be watched and followed to uncover other members of the resistance. Paul sensed the direction of his thoughts.

‘The Gestapo would not waste the time watching her. As soon as they were certain she was a member of our group, they took her in for interrogation. They have methods which are much quicker and surer than cloak-and-dagger games.’

‘Interrogation,’ Memling echoed, remembering the beating.

‘It is much worse for a woman,’ Paul went on remorselessly. He paused to light another cigarette, and in the glow of the match Memling could see the bleakness in his eyes. ‘There are so many more things they can do to…’

‘Christ, I….’

The Belgian was silent a moment, then Memling felt the movement as he shook his head. ‘Don’t worry about it. It was not your fault. You did exactly what you should have done. They may have been watching her before you made contact. It was probably through her they came on to you. Not the other way round.’

‘Where is she now? Do they…?’

‘As I said, do not worry. She is beyond their reach, and she told them nothing. Of that I am certain.’

‘But how…?’

‘It was her decision, made when she joined. Maria had a family. She knew what would happen to them if she were caught, and so did they. She could not run. Therefore she could only wait to be arrested. She will be dead now. All of us carry a small poison pill.’

‘Good Christ!’

‘You have no idea what they can do to you in their torture chambers.’ Paul described a few of their methods, and Memling felt sick. ‘They are not human, none of them. They, men like this Walsch, delight in inflicting pain, the most savage pain imaginable. You would have had only a taste. Death is a small price to pay to escape their attention.’

Memling took a deep breath, beginning to recover from the shock. He shook his head as if to rid himself of the knowledge, and his fists clenched so hard, a joint popped. He stared at his hands in the darkness, struck by the certain knowledge they were covered with blood. In spite of what Paul had told him, he knew that he was at fault, that he and he alone had led the girl to her death by insisting on the meeting.

The lorry lurched over a grade crossing and sped on. The canvas flap had been lowered, and the air inside had grown stuffy in spite of the frigid dampness. ‘Where are we going?’ he muttered.

‘To meet an aeroplane. I am having you flown out tonight.’

In spite of his self-loathing, Memling felt a surge of hope. ‘I don’t understand. Did London agree?’ It was inconceivable they would… he was far too unimportant…

‘You could say so. However reluctantly. They do not, understandably enough, wish to give up an agent on the ground. But I convinced them that your information is much more important than any vague plans they have for the future.’ The lorry rounded another comer, and in the fading light cast by a lone street lamp Memling could see Paul’s cold expression. ‘Be thankful they did agree. Otherwise, we would have had to kill you back there.’

‘But…’

Paul’s voice was harsh now. ‘You were to be arrested tonight. After interrogation, what was left of you would have been hanged in the factory yard tomorrow morning. Maria would have been hanged beside you.’

He drew an audible breath. ‘We could not chance your arrest. Your information concerning the rockets is far too important to be lost. I repeated your calculations and arrived at much the same answers. With such weapons, the Nazis will win this war. If you had been taken, you would have betrayed us. You had no way of killing yourself quickly, whereas Maria did. It is impossible to resist them – if pain does not work, drugs will.’

Jan nodded. The news of independent confirmation of his calculations did much to relieve his indecision. Looked at in that light, his nebulous plans for coursing the hills to inflict damage on the enemy in a series of brilliant, if short-lived, guerrilla actions was more than foolish; it was stupid, little short of an adolescent fantasy.

His thoughts turned inevitably to the woman. She had exuded sexuality as some people did friendliness or hostility. That was a valuable, a priceless, asset that could have provided her a comfortable life under the German occupation. Instead, she had chosen to live on the edge of madness. Why? What was it that drove people like her, like Paul, like the driver and the two men crouched beside the tailboard? He discounted his own activities on the grounds that he had been forced by circumstances. But they had not. Why? Patriotism? He doubted that. Certainly there were other, safer ways to fight the Nazi, ways that did not mean a slow, painful death at the hands of sadists who delighted in inflicting the worst possible pain.

After what seemed hours the lorry slowed and lurched to one side. They had turned off the road and were travelling at a much slower speed now. Memling had the impression that they were moving uphill, up a slope full of turns and twists that caused the motor to labour and the gears to grind painfully. The canvas cover had been rolled up again, and he could see dark masses of trees on either side. The lorry slowed again, and at a word from Paul the two men scrambled over the back and disappeared. They were travelling at a walking pace now, and Paul knelt at the rear, his machine pistol resting stock down on his bent knee. There was silence except for the rumble of the engine. He saw Paul’s head lift to search the sky which was filling quickly with broken cloud.

The lorry stopped, and the driver rapped on the window. Paul climbed out, followed by Memling. A torch beam sprang out of the blackness, and Memling jumped. One of the men materialised beside them and made his report to Paul in tones too low for Memling to hear. The man disappeared again, and Paul gestured with his torch, indicating a narrow path through the forest. They walked until the trees fell away on either side, and the Englishman realised that he was on the verge of a large clearing.

‘Is this the landing site?’

‘We’ve used it only once before. We’re sure the Germans do not know about it. They are scattered thinly in the countryside as yet, preferring to hold most of their forces in the metropolitan areas.’

Memling shifted from foot to foot, uneasy that he could think of nothing to say. His guilt was growing with the realisation that soon he would be going home, flying out of danger, while Paul and the rest had to remain behind. He refused to let himself think about the girl.

The wind was fresher here on the edge of the trees, and the sense of oppression caused by the dense forest had eased. Memling stamped his feet and jammed his hands deeper into his pockets, wishing he had a decent coat and gloves. Paul gave him another cigarette, and they smoked behind cupped hands. Afterwards the Belgian tucked the packet into his pocket without a word. It was nearly an hour before they heard the distant drone of an aircraft. The wind played tricks with the sound, so that he was taken by surprise when the first flare shot up. In the pitch-blackness the orange glare seemed to light the entire horizon. The plane circled once as the pilot lined up on his landing approach. Paul stamped impatiently, turning to stare back into the trees or around the far unseen edges of the clearing as the aeroplane drifted towards them. Memling sensed the air of uncertainty, and his stomach knotted tighter until nausea caught at the back of his throat. He restrained the gag reflex with great difficulty.

The aircraft had reached the far edge of the clearing, and they could see it now as a vague shape over the first of the oil flares. The engine beat changed as the pilot throttled back. It fled past then and settled with an audible thump on to the frozen field. The engine ran up as the plane swung about and, as Paul waved his electric torch, began to taxi back towards them.

Memling followed him on to the frozen field. Paul was shouting to him now over the noise of the approaching aircraft: ‘…damned fools in London we need weapons and food. Impress that on them. No more propaganda leaflets…’

The passenger door swung open as the pilot turned around once more, ready for take-off. The sky exploded with light, and geysers of dirt and grass shot upward. Paul shouted for him to run, but the field was uneven and full of grassy hummocks and dead berry vines that clutched at his boots and trouser legs. A heavy machine-gun ripped the surface as he ran, gasping for breath. The Lysander aircraft was painted a flat black, and it was a moment before he realised it was rolling forwards in fits and jerks, propeller turning at full speed, the pilot allowing him every last possible chance by standing on the brakes.

An amplified voice shouted at him to halt, first in Flemish, then in German, and finally in English. There was a burst of explosions at one end of the clearing, and he could see the flicker of small-arms fire. Memling veered suddenly to his right, and a stream of bullets cut a deep furrow past his feet. He stumbled and nearly fell. The pilot saw what he was doing and at the last moment released the brakes. The aircraft jumped ahead. Memling ducked to avoid the strut, and as the pilot stamped the brakes one last time, he jumped and caught the cockpit coaming where he hung, feet scrabbling for purchase on the landing step, while the aircraft bounded ahead. The field was now in continuous eruption as successive explosions sparkled about them; something slicked past his leg as he hauled himself up and into the cockpit. The Lysander bounced one more time and was airborne. Memling could still hear the iron voice roaring at them as streams of tracers hosed the sky and they banked for the protection of the forest. There was just time to look back and impress upon his mind for ever the searchlight playing along the fringe of trees, the two armoured vehicles firing long strings of tracers, the flaring oil beacons at either end of the field, and, from the forest itself, the pinpoint flashes of answering gunfire as Paul’s group delayed the inevitable.

Then the engine shuddered and racketed as the Lysander lurched. Tracers whispered past, and for an instant they were standing on the left wing thirty feet above the treetops. The plane came upright with insane slowness, and the trees fled.

Not until the Channel coast had they outflown the anticyclonic disturbance and broken out of the nightmarish winds and cloud. There was nothing to see below, not even the lights of a ship to break the immense darkness. Not until the pilot was lining up for his approach did Memling realise they had crossed the English coast and were home.

Three men in civilian clothing were there to greet him. They introduced themselves too quickly to be understood and led him to a waiting motorcar. They were the immediate debriefing team, they had told him, and a few moments later the car drew up before a darkened building. Vague shapes came and went, and he blinked and closed his eyes as they pushed through the blackout curtain into a lighted hallway. The chatter of voices, the sound of gramophone music, the sight of women in short dresses, their groomed hair and make-up, were overwhelming, and he stumbled after his hosts in confusion.

They took him inside and sat him at a table near the far wall where there was a measure of peace and quiet, and the younger man went to fetch a tray of food. Jan looked around him, fighting down a feeling of naked exposure.

‘It is often like this, my boy,’ the older man told him in a kind voice. ‘You mustn’t take any heed. It will all begin to seem normal in a day or so as old habits reassert themselves.’

The younger man returned, placed the tray in front of Memling, and poured a cup of hot tea for him. The tray held buttered toast and some dried American breakfast cereal in milk. He started in on the tray without complaint, wondering if he dared ask for seconds, but found that after the tea and toast he wanted nothing more.

‘You aren’t used to rich food, my boy.’ The older man chuckled. ‘Had others before you get quite sick. Fat content’s too high. You must build up your tolerance again. Stick to tea and light pastry or wheaten products for a few days. Eggs, some milk, and fruit. No ham or bacon for at least a week, although you will find that easy enough in view of the rationing.’

When he had finished the tea, Memling searched his pockets and found the packet of cigarettes Paul had given him, but the young man nipped them from his hand quickly.

‘Thank you. We can always use these. ‘I’m sure you won’t mind a trade.’ He opened his case, removing a full carton of Player’s. ‘These for a German export brand?’

Memling took the carton and shook his head. ‘I could… could live for three months on these… just on what I could earn in the black market, a packet at a time.’

The three exchanged smiles, and the third man, who had remained silent so far, leaned across the table as Memling lit one of the cigarettes. ‘Tell us, why was Paul’s group destroyed?’ Memling jerked up.

‘What happened?’ the man repeated.

Memling closed his eyes a moment. Of course. They are dead, he thought. He knew the Germans had been waiting… Why had he refused to think about it until now? It wasn’t his fault… but it was and he knew it. How? How had Walsch known? He opened his eyes to see that everything was as it had been, the room still swirled with people, most in uniform, dishes clattered, and the gramophone swung into another record. The three faces were watching him with an intensity he found frightening.

Memling told them what had happened, speaking slowly and distinctly above the noise, smoking three cigarettes one after the other as he did so. He described his relationship to Paul’s group, his first request for contact, his meeting with Paul, and his subsequent interrogation. He left out the threat of hanging, his fear of Walsch, the terror tactics employed to break him, and, by doing so, aroused their suspicions. He described the attack on the Gestapo car following him, the wild ride into the Ardennes forest, and Paul’s explanations of why he was being taken out. When he finished, he was more exhausted than he thought possible. They asked a few more questions which he answered as well as he could, and the third man nodded grimly.

‘Tell us about this report that you felt was important enough to justify the possible destruction of an entire resistance cell?’

Memling swore and stood so abruptly his chair fell over with a clatter. Some people looked in their direction, but most paid no attention. The other two scowled at their companion, and the younger man urged him to resume his seat.

His anger came as much in response to the past eight months in Belgium as to the man’s implication. ‘Please, Mr Memling’ – he tried to soothe him – ‘please realise that we must dig into every facet of what happened while it is still fresh in your mind. What we learn may save someone else’s life. You have stated that Paul felt you must be got out immediately. Why? Did he give you any reason?’

‘Of course,’ Memling snapped. ‘He knew I was going to be arrested within hours. It was for the protection of his own people. His alternative was to kill me, which I am certain he would have done if he had not thought my information so important. He knew I would never be able to withstand a Gestapo interrogation.’ He saw them exchange quick, knowing glances, just as they had when he mentioned Paul’s alternative, and for an instant he wanted to smash their smug, well-fed faces.

‘You don’t understand,’ he snarled. ‘You think the Nazi plays by the rules, do you? Maria knew better. She committed suicide. You just do not know, you have never been there… you just…’

‘Did you witness the suicide of this young woman?’ the older man interrupted. ‘Then how do you know,’ he went on when Memling shook his head, ‘that she actually did kill herself?’

Memling clenched his fists under the table and tried to make them understand. ‘Because she would have! Because Paul told me she had!’

‘But surely that is not sufficient…’

‘Damn you.’ Memling pounded the table. ‘You have no idea what the Gestapo will do to you, especially to a woman. They begin with rape, many rapes, one after another. The beatings, the red-hot blades and electrical shock, the drugs…’

The three men were shushing him now as others in the room paused to listen. The young man poured something from a flask into his empty teacup, and they urged him to drink it. It was Scotch, fine old malt Scotch, but it only made him choke and cough.

‘Do you want to know what they did to me in a routine interrogation?’ Memling demanded, and brushed his hair back so that they could see the massive abrasion that covered half his forehead. But again there was scepticism and disbelief in their expressions. An hour later, after he had refused to talk to them any more, they put him aboard the train for London.

Jan Memling was shocked at his first sight of London. He had come down by train from Hornchurch where the Lysander had landed after an uneventful crossing. The train ran into Liverpool Street Station before dawn, and the fires lighting the skies above the city reminded him of a painting of Dante’s inferno.

The station was worse. Sirens wailed an all clear above the battered streets, and people streamed up from subterranean caverns like troglodytes, blinking in the relative brightness of the main hall and mingling in well-behaved, shuffling throngs with the passengers. There was something about them that Memling could not identify for a moment, that made them different from the people of Belgium. As he stood to one side, watching, it occurred to him that many were laughing. Laughter in occupied Europe was reserved for the Nazis.

Memling had expected to find a taxi, but as he came out of the station into the raw, dark morning there was only a single cab waiting with its light off. A military officer jumped in, and it drove off without hesitation. Memling turned back into the station then and went along to the Circle Line to join the long, long queue.

He came up the well-remembered steps. The cold fresh air blowing off the Thames helped dissolve the memory of the interrogation and the smugness of those who had not been there and who twisted facts to suit their preconceptions. He was free of the terror, and that made the rest endurable. No matter what happened now, Walsch could never touch him. He drew a deep, icy breath and laughed.

Memling crossed Victoria Embankment to stand watching the river for a moment. A policeman hesitated, taking in his worn, baggy clothes, then passed on.

The sky was turning from grey to blue as the sun edged up and the cloud eased away; but the wind had also stiffened, and Memling was thoroughly chilled by the time he had walked up Northumberland Avenue to the grey unassuming building that had been MI6 headquarters for so many years.

Inside, the same elderly porter nodded politely to Memling, as if he had seen him only yesterday. There was no recognition in the nod, and no surprise either at his ill-kempt appearance. It was said the porter condescended to recognise the director but only now and again.

Memling gave his name and asked to see Englesby, and the porter consulted a child’s exercise book in which he kept a list of appointments for the day.

‘I am afraid, sir, that your name is not here. Do you perhaps have the wrong building?’

‘Perhaps Mr Englesby has forgotten, or has not been notified. Please telephone his office.’

A marine sergeant stepped from a tiny cubicle and looked Memling up and down. ‘Here now. What’s this? Lost your way, have you? Off with you now. There’s no…’

Memling shook his hand off. ‘My name is Jan Memling, and I have business here. Who the bloody hell are…’

He shut up abruptly as a revolver was pressed against his head and he was surrounded by three other marines, all heavily armed. His wrists were cuffed, and he was shoved into the cubicle and slammed against the wall.

‘All right, now,’ the sergeant snapped. ‘Just you stand right there, mate. Try any more funny moves and I’ll break your neck.’

Memling heard a clatter of high-heeled shoes on the stairs, and a moment later a woman’s voice was demanding to know what was going on. The officer tried to send her on her way, but she pushed past him.

‘Are you Jan Memling?’ she demanded, and he nodded, bemused.

‘Turn around,’ she snapped, and when he did so she compared his face with the photograph in her hand. ‘Take those handcuffs off that man,’ she told the red-faced soldier, ‘and next time, know what you are about.’

Memling rubbed his wrists where the steel rings had bitten deeply. The sergeant glared at him.

For a long moment he said nothing, then, ‘There are a lot of people like you, Sergeant, across the Channel. They wear black uniforms and they like to abuse people too.’

The man’s face went even redder, and Memling turned to the woman. ‘Thank you, miss. I wish to see Mr Englesby.’

‘I know,’ she smiled. ‘I’m his secretary, Janet Thompson. I’ll take you up.’

She turned without waiting for an answer and started up the stairs. Memling followed, thinking that her accent was definitely not London. Closer to south-west with the burr and the zz’s removed. At the top of the steps she gave him a quick smile and led him along to the well-remembered office. He noticed, as she opened the door and half-turned to see if he was following, that her figure was slim but full and that she walked with a slight sway, all of which reminded him very much of Margot. My God, he thought, I’ll see her in a few hours. What a surprise… she’ll come home from the shop and I’ll be there. It was only the strictest self-discipline that had kept him from going straight home as it was.

‘Mr Memling?’

He snapped awake as if from a trance, and she smiled at his awkwardness. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘Don’t quite know where I am yet.’

Englesby was waiting for him in the inner office. He looked up as Janet ushered Memling in, then motioned to a chair set before the desk. ‘Be with you in a moment, Memling.’ He could have been gone only a few hours rather than eight months from the warmth of Englesby’s reception, but he was too tired to care.

To cover the lapse, Janet asked him if he would have a cup of tea; and when Memling shook his head, she glared at Englesby and went out. Englesby read on for a moment more, then closed the file and looked up.

‘Sorry about that. Too damned much to do. Home safe and sound, I see. Bit of a bad time over there?’

Memling realised the questions were rhetorical, and contented himself with a nod.

Englesby shifted in his chair. ‘Had some nonsense come through on the blower that you were asking to be pulled out. Something about vital information. Can’t be true, I told the director.’

Memling took a deep breath. ‘I did not ask to be pulled out,’ he said through clenched teeth as his anger welled up again. ‘The head of the local resistance unit made the request – without my knowledge.’ Thirty seconds had not passed and already Memling knew exactly what Englesby was doing – if this blew up, he wanted to make certain that the blame fell anywhere but on him. ‘As my controller, you had the option of accepting or refusing that request.’

‘True enough.’ Englesby’s stare was empty. ‘Now that we have that settled, suppose you tell me what this is all about.’

‘It’s to do with rockets again,’ Memling said quietly. He could not for the life of him have explained why he was deliberately antagonising Englesby, except, he realised, it made no difference either way.

Without raising his eyes from the sheet of paper on his desk, Englesby growled, ‘This had better be good, Memling. As I am certain you know by now, you have cost us an entire resistance network.’

Memling stared at his hands, watched them clench until the blood was squeezed away and the roaring grew and grew in his ears. How had the Germans known they would be there in that clearing…? Had the girl, Maria, not been able to commit suicide after all…? But then, Paul was so certain…

‘Damn it, Memling, answer me. What about these rockets of yours?’

Jan looked up, and the blackness that had threatened to engulf him began to recede. But his face was stark and white, and even Englesby was a bit shaken. ‘Are you all right, man? Shall I call for a doctor…?’

Memling shook his head and wiped at his damp forehead. He took a deep, shaky breath and heard Englesby telling the girl over the telephone to bring in some tea after all.

He forced himself to concentrate then, to ignore the implications of his reception. In a strained voice he described the past eight months in Belgium, the position he had held at the Royal Gun Factory, his glimpse of Wernher von Braun, his look at the rocket engines, and his calculations. ‘Paul was an artillery engineer, as you are no doubt aware. He repeated my calculations, and when he was convinced, he made the decision to take me out. The first I knew of it was last night’ – my God, he thought, was it only last night – ‘when they killed the Gestapo people following me.’

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.

Peenemunde – Prague September 1941

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…’

‘Please, gentlemen, we are all friends here. You must call me Reinhard.’

Von Braun glanced at him, his expression dubious. ‘Thank you… Reinhard.’ Turning back to Franz, he tapped a finger on the table. ‘He has agreed to help us.’

‘Help us do what?’

‘For God’s sake, Franz, stop it. Reinhard has…’

‘Franz, I may call you Franz?’ Heydrich’s voice was friendly enough, but his expression was deadly and his eyes hooded, and for the first time in his life Bethwig knew what fear was. What in the name of God had Wernher got them into? This man was as deadly as a cobra and twice as unstable.

‘You are right to remain silent… to a point. But I am in a position to give you all the assistance you require. You have only to accept it.’

‘I have described our plan fully to Reinhard,’ von Braun told Bethwig, expression intent. ‘He is of the opinion that it can be made to work politically.’

Heydrich chuckled at that, and his menacing expression disappeared. ‘Yes, I suppose you could put it that way.’

Bethwig studied them both. ‘Let me get this all straight, Wernher. You have described to Reinhard our lunar rocket plans, and you, Reinhard, have accepted them?’

‘Of course. Do you take me for an ass? I am well able to understand the military and political advantages of such a weapon. And unlike so many others that infest positions of importance in Germany today, I am not frightened by new technology. This could very well be the ultimate weapon. If all you say is true, a rocket base on the moon would control the destiny of the earth. Germany could establish the new world order under the leadership of the Führer, and we would cease wasting our national treasure on weapons development.’ Heydrich leaned towards them, eyes glowing. ‘Think of it, gentlemen. A world without war, a world led by the German people, the master race, the chosen ones. Why, there is nothing that we could not accomplish then!’

For an instant Bethwig was almost carried away by Heydrich’s oratory. Perhaps Wernher was right. Perhaps Heydrich had the vision as well as the political power to help them. But only for an instant: he had heard too many tales from his father about the power of the SD and its constant misuse.

Heydrich raised a cautioning finger. ‘There is, however, one vital element which your project lacks.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Von Braun’s voice expressed his puzzlement.

‘In the plan you state that explosives up to a thousand kilograms, and even rocks gathered from the moon’s surface, can be used to bombard an enemy nation. But rocks accelerated to three kilometres per second will only have the destructive force of ten thousand kilos of high explosive.’

Von Braun nodded. ‘That is correct. But…’

Heydrich’s withering glance stilled the interruption. ‘According to my staff, that is insufficient to destroy a broadly based manufacturing economy which is spread across nine point five million square kilometres. In addition, if rocks – which you so cleverly suggested – are used, they must be of a certain size and configuration, otherwise they will burn up like meteors when they strike the earth’s atmosphere. There is, however, a way to raise the destructive potential of your rockets from the moon to something on the order of a hundred thousand kilograms or more of high explosive.’

Heydrich paused and snapped his fingers at the waiter, who rushed forward to refill the brandy glasses. When he had retreated, Heydrich smiled and raised his glass, but did not offer a toast. ‘You gentlemen lack certain vital knowledge. That knowledge, and the means to put it into practice, will be my contribution to our partnership. You see, I am a very fair-minded man.’

Bethwig, tired and still irritated at his friend for having brought someone like Heydrich into their plans, allowed his irritation to override his caution.

‘Herr Heydrich, please stop beating about the bush. What are you trying to tell us?’

It occurred to him that it must have been years since anyone had dared to talk to Heydrich in that manner. The man’s face flushed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively. His eyes narrowed, and his lips drew together to form a white streak. Bethwig realised at that moment that he was looking at a man who kept his insanity under very careful control.

‘Yes, perhaps I should.’ Heydrich bit out the words. ‘It seems that my attempt to put you at ease has failed, or been rejected.’

‘My apologies,’ Bethwig began, but Heydrich slashed a hand down.

‘Your lunar rocket must have a uranium bomb warhead attached to it. Then it will be as effective as required.’

‘A uranium bomb,’ Bethwig started to exclaim into the shocked silence but caught himself and lowered his voice. ‘Is there really a uranium bomb project?’

Heydrich gave him a thin smile. ‘You see, we can be of service to one another. Yes, there is. It is the most highly classified weapons project in the Reich. Less than two hundred people even know such a project exists. Now, would not a uranium bomb make the perfect warhead for your rocket?’

‘Of course,’ von Braun grinned, ‘if it will be as powerful a weapon as postulated. It would only require one or two demonstration weapons exploded into the ocean to—’

‘Into the ocean? Surely, my dear Wernher, a more severe demonstration would be required. Perhaps a city or two, New York, London….’

‘Well, perhaps… although an explosion in a desert… it might show that we are—’

‘Of course, my dear Wernher.’ Heydrich’s smile was even thinner than before. ‘An excellent suggestion. I will have my staff look into it. The final condition of his defeated enemy must always be a major concern of the victor. They must either be crushed ruthlessly, to the last human soul, or they must be treated with benevolence and kindness. Anything between the two extremes will only allow the vanquished to rise up once more in revenge. Germany herself is a case in point.

‘But to return to the subject at hand.’ Heydrich paused to light a fresh cigar. ‘I am in sympathy with what you gentlemen are attempting to do. With the understanding that military considerations must always take precedence, I am willing to assist you. With my help there will be no more need to indulge in childish and time-wasting – and what could be interpreted in some quarters as criminal – manoeuvrings for materials and equipment. Under my protection there will be no more need to hide requisitions for A-Ten development among the legitimate needs of the A-Four.’ The two scientists exchanged uncomfortable glances. A strict interpretation of the sabotage laws would see them both sentenced to long prison terms, or even executed, if the full extent of their activities in developing the prototype A-10 rocket engine were known.

Heydrich stared at his cigar a moment. ‘I think we understand one another, gentlemen. Do we not?’

Both nodded.

‘Then you will please furnish me with a complete set of your plans and a list of your needs, ranked in order of priority. All costs should be fully detailed, special suppliers designated, and the reason for their selection stated. I will then undertake to see that your needs are met at the earliest opportunity.’ Heydrich paused and chuckled. ‘Even though we will never make public my interest in your project, I think I can assure you that there will be no interference from other, shall we say, interested quarters.’

He paused and tapped the table to rivet their attention. ‘As you are no doubt aware, the generals do not stand high in the Führer’s favour at the moment. The army is now approaching Moscow after having delayed and complained for weeks. Already the weather has worsened. The rains have come early and will soon turn to snow and ice. When that happens, the advantage must inevitably shift to the defenders. In the spring the army may be able to complete its task, but for now the Führer’s disaffection will grow. I am not one who thinks the war will end quickly. If we were to beat Russia, we should have done so by now. The war will be long, and you must give some consideration to your own positions.’

The delicate allusion hung in the air between them, and it was von Braun who broke the silence with a nervous laugh.

‘Are you suggesting we join the SD?’ he asked.

‘It is certainly worth considering. There are a great many advantages. But enough of that.’ Heydrich smiled suddenly. ‘The uranium bomb project is well along. I tell you this in the utmost confidence. Now that Norway is fully occupied, shipments of heavy water, a vital ingredient in its development, have begun. The total quantity of heavy water to be produced in 1942 has been raised to 4500 kilograms. My staff forecasts that it will be ready by late 1944 or early 1945. No matter the outcome in Russia, our greatest enemy will by that time be the United States. Only a blind man could fail to see that. By then we may also have to deal harshly with England, particularly if we do not gain a quick victory in Russia.’

‘You seem quite pessimistic on that score,’ Bethwig commented, searching for safer ground. ‘The predictions are that the war will be won by the end of next summer and that England will be ready to negotiate an armistice.’

‘I admit it. And with what I think is good reason. The Soviet Union has massive reserves of men and resources. They are a strange and insular people who have always contested bitterly any incursion on to their territory. They show a positive genius for defeating invaders, and they have always been willing to make an alliance with anyone who will aid them. That is why I am not surprised that Stalin has concluded a treaty with Churchill.’

‘But perhaps that may work to our advantage,’ Bethwig suggested. ‘Eventually they must fall out. The English fear communism as much as we do.’

Heydrich dismissed the subject with a wave. ‘Perhaps. However, our concern at the moment has to do with the lunar project. I take it we are agreed upon the terms of our partnership, gentlemen?’

Bethwig learned at that moment that Heydrich could and would expound his own theories by the hour but was completely uninterested in those put forward by anyone else. The ultimate ego, he thought, and therefore most treacherous. Nothing and no one but himself would ever matter to Reinhard Heydrich.

‘I think Franz and I would like to discuss it a bit first,’ von Braun ventured.

‘Of course!’ Heydrich waved his cigar jovially in the direction of his aide, who sprang to the table. ‘But I return to Prague tomorrow morning at seven. We do seem agreed on what needs to be done, so why not assume your decision will be favourable? Heh?’ He stood up, carelessly stubbing out his cigar on the tablecloth. ‘I am certain you will enjoy the advantages of working with the SD. Good night, gentlemen.’

‘Finding the moon will be relatively simple,’ von Braun went on. ‘The basic tools one uses are radio, radio direction finding, and the stars, which in effect become signposts that do not vary in the slightest – at least for our purposes. If one calculates the angular distance between the moon’s centre and a certain star before starting, it is possible to measure any deviation in the spacecraft’s flight path or orbit as one approaches one’s target simply by observing the angular distance.’

‘Orbit? I thought only planets travelled in orbits.’

Von Braun chuckled with an expert’s superiority. ‘They do, but any object travelling in space describes a curved trajectory. You see, the gravitational effect of the Earth, the moon, the sun, and even such major planets as Jupiter and Saturn, all affect the object, causing it to be pulled this way and that. If each of these gravitational tugs is balanced perfectly, the effect is really a curved line.’

‘I see.’ Heydrich nodded. ‘I assumed that once a craft reached airless space it merely coasted under the effect of the target planet’s gravity field.’

‘Basically it does, providing that such gravitational force is not overcome by one even stronger. Many people reading Professor Oberth’s book made that mistake.’

‘And how do you make certain that does not happen?’ There was a trace of annoyance in Heydrich’s voice. Clearly, Bethwig thought, he does not like being talked down to.

‘It is a matter of acceleration or speed,’ Bethwig broke in before Wernher could make matters worse. Heydrich had surprised him by showing genuine interest in the details of the project.

‘The correct speed must be selected to place the craft into the proper orbit. Too slow a speed will cause it to fall back to Earth. Too fast, and it will fall into the sun. Even faster, and it will escape the solar system altogether.’

‘Correct,’ von Braun broke in. ‘As the spacecraft approaches the moon, our observations become more accurate, allowing the speed to be adjusted. The occultation – disappearance of selected stars – behind the moon enables us to determine the exact course of the rocket as it approaches for a landing.’

In spite of the veiled threats of that evening three weeks before, Heydrich had since been polite and considerate, had even invited them to Hradcany Castle, his Prague headquarters, for a weekend. With brilliant autumn sunshine streaming across the pleasant garden beyond the french doors, Bethwig could feel tired muscles and tense nerves relaxing. That morning he and von Braun had strolled around Prague, and the mood of the city had certainly suggested that Heydrich was the model administrator he claimed to be. Bethwig recalled his comment about benevolence versus destructiveness. People seemed content, well fed and dressed, and there was none of the sullenness one encountered in Belgium, France, or even Denmark. The Czechs seemed to have adapted well enough to National Socialist rule – or Heydrich had adapted it to them.

Von Braun had begun to describe the rocket. ‘We have determined that a single-stage rocket, a vehicle designed to complete a mission as a single unit, is not practical. It would be far too large, given our present fuels, and cause insurmountable aerodynamic problems. So we have designed a three-stage vehicle, that is to say, three complete rocket vehicles stacked one atop the other. The first rocket, or stage, is the most powerful, as it must lift the combined weights of the others. Once its fuel is exhausted, it will be jettisoned, and the second stage will drive the rocket into space and temporary orbit around the Earth. Then, when it’s in the right position, the second stage will fire one last time, sending the third stage on its way to the moon. This final stage will coast along its assigned trajectory, firing its engines only to make course corrections and to brake itself to a landing on the moon. The rocket must then be refuelled from supplies brought up by drone rockets before it can return to Earth.’

Heydrich had leaned forward to listen. ‘You find it necessary to build three separate rockets? I thought the guiding principle in engineering was to make things as simple as possible. It would seem that the use of three rockets would increase the chance of failure thrice over.’

‘Actually, nine times, Herr Heydrich. But, as Franz said, we have not the fuels to build a rocket that can reach the moon in a single stage. In fact, even with three stages it will barely be sufficient. We must cut everything to the bone to save weight. Our navigational equipment, for instance, will be of the most primitive – a simple sextant. The smallest possible radio-direction-finding set will be used. And the pilot must be able to fix anything that goes wrong, as we cannot afford the mass to carry a spare set.’

‘Is it a matter of more money?’ Heydrich was smiling as he asked the question, but he was watching the young scientist closely.

‘No. Rather a matter of technology. Our fuel experts have been able to find only one or two fuel combinations that are more efficient than the alcohol and liquid oxygen mixture we now use, and they have drawbacks that negate their value.’

‘I am not certain I understand what you mean.’

‘For instance’ – Bethwig broke in – ‘the alcohol and liquid oxygen mixture we currently use approaches optimum in terms of energy obtainable from chemical fuels. The power, if you will, of a rocket fuel is measured in terms of specific thrust per second, which is simply the push per unit of fuel consumed. Liquid oxygen and alcohol provide a specific thrust of one hundred and eight kilograms per second. We could obtain a greater specific thrust with a combination of, say, liquid oxygen and hydrazine which provides one hundred and seventeen, or even liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen which provides the greatest specific impulse of all chemical fuels, one hundred and fifty-two kilograms per second. But we do not have the facilities to manufacture or handle liquid hydrogen. Hydrazine would be ideal, but Germany does not produce it in sufficient quantities, and the resulting performance increase would not justify the added cost of developing a manufacturing capability. Above all, an engineer must be practical.’

Heydrich replied, with a trace of annoyance, ‘Yes, yes, I understand.’ He got up to pace the room as von Braun took up the briefing again, but it seemed to Bethwig that his patience was nearly exhausted. The more detailed the explanations became, the more restlessness the reichsprotektor displayed.

‘…will stand fifty-one point eight metres tall. At the base the first stage will measure nineteen point eight metres. The entire rocket will weigh 4,082,331 kilograms, nearly as much as a naval cruiser. We have designed a cluster of twenty-one rocket motors to provide a combined thrust of 3,401,942 kilograms. The motor will consume 3,985,230 kilograms of fuel in less than one hundred and twenty seconds. The second stage will have four motors providing a total thrust of 635,028 kilograms. The third stage will have a single motor providing 158,757 kilograms of thrust and will carry the crew and equipment. It will…’

‘Please, spare me a recital of further facts and figures.’ Heydrich heaved a sigh, then turned and smiled. ‘I really do believe you gentlemen know what you are doing.’

He went to the window, and Bethwig realised the man was posing for them. He was dressed in what the English would describe as ‘country clothes’. Tweeds made in Scotland and probably tailored on Bond Street or wherever that sort of thing was done. Heydrich was, of course, the party’s prototype Nordic – tall, blond, blue-eyed, ruggedly masculine; and standing at the window gazing into the distance as if concerned with all manner of problems affecting the direction of the human race, he certainly looked the part.

‘Gentlemen, it is too beautiful a day to remain cooped up inside. You do both ride, of course?’ Not waiting for a reply, he threw open the windows and stepped on to the terrace, motioning them to follow. ‘I am certain that you will find the course challenging. I laid it out myself.’

Von Braun gave Bethwig a startled look and followed him out. He did of course ride, but it was clear from the set of his shoulders that he would rather have spent the day cooped up in the library discussing the A-10 project, willing audience or not. Bethwig followed both men on to the terrace where the horses waited, thankful that Heydrich had suggested the diversion. It had just occurred to him that he was intensely weary of Peenemunde and the host of new problems that had grown out of Hitler’s refusal to grant overall priority to either the Luftwaffe or the army for the development of advanced weaponry. In that single respect Heydrich had been a godsend.

‘Come, gentlemen. You will enjoy fresh air not filled with the exhaust of rocket engines.’ He laughed at his own joke, swung into the saddle, and, without waiting, urged his mount to a canter. Bethwig waited until von Braun, grumbling and muttering to himself, was safely mounted before following.

Heydrich set a stiff pace, and although it had been four years since he had last sat on a horse, Bethwig found himself falling easily into old patterns. The air was crisp and the sun pleasantly warm. Sunlight glinted on massive chestnuts and oaks in the parklike forest, and not until he noticed the huge trunks did he realise that he was in a medieval hunting park that had belonged to Bohemian kings.

The horses clattered over a small wooden bridge arching a deep brook. Bethwig, who had fallen behind, pulled up a moment to examine the lovely stream, drawn by the mysterious way it disappeared into a stand of willow. He was about to investigate further when his attention was caught by a flash of sunlight on metal in the shadows. Bethwig turned his horse in that direction, curious as to who else might be riding in a park belonging to the protector of Czechoslovakia, and saw a horseman watching. The man stared at him for a moment, then turned and disappeared into the trees. Franz had a momentary glimpse of a steel helmet and carbine. Of course, bodyguards. Suddenly, the day was no longer quite so pleasant. The war had intruded and with it the realisation that they were the guests of a man who must, by all odds, be a major target of any resistance movement in Czechoslovakia. Slowly now he pulled the horse around and followed along the trail after von Braun and Heydrich.

Franz Bethwig mentioned the experience at dinner that night. He and von Braun had been seated to the left and right of Heydrich, and their table formed an elevated T to that occupied by the majority of guests. Beneath the huge vaulted arch of a ceiling the vast dining-hall was lit by thousands of candles. Heraldic banners and burnished armour decorated the stone walls, causing Bethwig to feel as if he had stepped into the thirteenth century.

Heydrich repeated Bethwig’s comment to the dining-hall at large, and the guests laughed dutifully. Heydrich finished his wine and motioned for the silver goblet to be refilled. ‘Your question is perfectly valid of course. When you reach a position such as mine, you are aware very soon that there is only one defence against an assassin.’ He waited, and Bethwig asked the question as expected.

‘Keep the people sufficiently happy and pleased with you, and they will not fall prey to the blandishments of malcontents. By making this my rule, I have seen to it that the Czechoslovakian people will support a National Socialist government.’ Winking at Bethwig, he raised his voice so that the majority of diners could hear.

‘Why, there is every likelihood that as soon as the war is finished, Czechoslovakia will be invited to join the Reich under the same status as Austria, that is, as an integral part of the nation.’

Bethwig could see that the impromptu speech was having the desired effect. Many of the guests he had been introduced to before dinner were Czechs. From their smiles and whispered asides he could tell that Heydrich had made his point.

‘As you can see,’ Heydrich went on, ‘the Czechs already enjoy many of the fruits of our victory. There is certainly no reason why they should not continue to do so.’ He paused, then bent towards Bethwig as if to confine his remarks, but spoke loudly. ‘Unless of course I were to be replaced and my successor to treat Czechoslovakia as a conquered country.’

A dead silence fell over the hall. Faces turned in their direction as if attached to the same wire. Nationality was obvious by expression. The Czechs were frightened, the Germans interested. Everyone had heard the stories emanating from Poland and occupied Russia.

Heydrich beamed at the upturned faces, and Bethwig knew that he was enjoying himself immensely, and he realised then what it was to have the power of life and death. He shivered, even though the dining-hall was overwarm from candles and close-packed bodies.

It was long after midnight before Bethwig broke free of the favoured few swirling about Heydrich and edged out of the dining-hall. Von Braun was still in there somewhere, smiling and laughing and having the time of his life. Wernher liked people and functioned well in such situations even though he preferred to avoid them whenever possible. The halls were quiet, and Bethwig found his way to the main staircase without assistance. SS guards stood like black statues guarding the corridors. Heydrich was obviously a great deal more concerned about assassination than he pretended to be.

Low-wattage electric lamps burned where candles had once blazed, the only sign so far of wartime economies. The walls of the echoing hallways were panelled in rare woods and adorned with magnificent paintings, most of which, Bethwig was certain, had not been hung in the castle before 1939. Heydrich certainly spared himself nothing.

He found his room again with some difficulty, and the door was unlocked. ‘No need to lock doors here, Herr Professor. Who would steal in the house of Reinhard Heydrich?’ the footman had observed when he enquired about a key. Who indeed?

It was a three-room suite: sitting, bed, and bath, all in differing shades of blue that were not quite contrasting, not quite matching. The effect was striking but vaguely uncomfortable. An exquisite Botticelli reposed on the eighteenth-century credenza that had been rebuilt inside to house a record player. Over the Empire sofa hung a magnificent Renoir, somewhat out of place but acceptable for itself. He had studied the painting that morning but had not been able to decide if it was real or a clever fake. Bethwig crossed the Persian carpet to the bedroom, switching on the light as he entered. Weary of the day’s equal servings of sense and nonsense, he shed dinner jacket and shoes and started for the bath. A muffled whimper stopped him dead, and he turned to see the bedclothes thrown aside to reveal a pale face crowned by a tousled mass of long reddish hair. The apparition was so startling that he halted in midstep.

‘What the devil…’ he began, wondering if he had not got into the wrong room. His shock turned to embarrassment as a woman sat up, unmindful of the eiderdown slithering away. Bethwig’s protest stuttered into incoherence, and the girl laughed, a quicksilver sound that filled the room. She turned to look at him, drawing her legs under so that she was kneeling on the white satin sheets. She brushed the blanket aside with a lithe gesture, and Bethwig was struck dumb by her unexpected beauty.

‘You are Herr Professor Franz Bethwig, are you not?’ she asked with a smile that made him catch his breath. ‘They told me you were quite handsome and very athletic. I can see that they were correct.’ She shifted her legs, so that she was now sitting, and patted the bed beside her. ‘Come, here beside me. I can promise you I will bite.’ This last pronounced with laughing authority.

Desperate for something to say, Bethwig cleared his throat. ‘What is your name, please?’

‘Oh my, so formal.’ She pouted a moment, then gave him that heart-stopping smile once more. ‘Inge. Do you like it?’

Even though Bethwig was experienced enough to know that her entire manner was a well-practised art, he nevertheless felt drawn to the girl and moved to sit beside her. His hands were shaking, and he clenched his fists to hide his nervousness. Inge touched a fingertip to his cheek and smiled again.

‘Do you like Inge?’ She postured for him, thoroughly enjoying herself. Her voice was pitched quite high, and as he turned to her the soft light shone into eyes that were little more than dark pupils. ‘Men always tell Inge she is beautiful. They always want me to take off my clothes.’ She laughed again. Bethwig closed his eyes a moment, in pain as he realised that she was mentally retarded.

‘Well,’ she demanded.

‘Yes, very much so,’ he told her softly. ‘You are quite beautiful, Inge.’

The girl preened like a cat, arching her back so that her breasts shivered seductively. In spite of himself, Bethwig touched a gentle curve, tracing it upward towards the nipple.

‘I have never before made love to a professor,’ she whispered. ‘Have you ever had a girl like me? No? Well, I can teach you and you can teach me. Would that be all right? Isn’t that what professors do?’ Her hands were busy unbuttoning his shirt. He made a half-hearted effort to brush them away, but she persevered with a giggle. A musky odour compounded of sleep and French perfume enveloped them, and he drew a shaky breath. In spite of his inclination not to touch this beautiful but helpless woman, his defences were crumbling. As if able to sense his misgivings, Inge sat back and regarded him with the perceptive understanding of a child.

‘Please, Franz, I am a woman. Please do not deny me that.’ She stared anxiously, willing him to understand. The combination of her appeal, her nearness, and her obvious need for him shattered his good intentions.

‘I can help you if you let me. Will you?’

There was nothing else he could do, and he nodded.

They lay quietly side by side, and Bethwig wondered if he would ever again experience anything as emotionally trying yet satisfying. That the girl was an accomplished sexual artist, there was no doubt. Strange as it seemed, it did not trouble him when he thought of how she had learned. There was a sense of giving, of sharing pleasure, that he had always thought represented the state of love, and to find it in an SS prostitute had taken him completely by surprise. Bethwig wondered what would eventually happen to the girl and discovered that he very much cared. He propped himself up and caressed her shoulder until she murmured sleepily, snuggled into his body, and, with her fingernail, began to trace patterns that made him catch his breath. His erection came swiftly, and Inge was astride him before he could protest. She put her hands on his shoulders and rocked and rocked until his thrusts matched hers in desperate need, and, inconceivably, their lovemaking was better the second time, seeming to last for ever until both exploded into exhaustion.

Afterwards, when the girl had fallen asleep, Bethwig got out of the bed and covered her with the eiderdown. He stood a moment, studying her face, then found his cigarettes, filled a large tumbler with brandy, and went through to the bath. Lighting a cigarette, he eased himself into the hot water. Trying to concentrate on Inge, he discovered he was too emotionally exhausted. He took a deep pull at the brandy and then a second, half emptying the glass.

Franz Bethwig was certainly not a virgin; he was far too attractive and personable for that. Inexperienced perhaps; but even so, there had been affairs, and once he had nearly married. He supposed the sum total of those experiences must have taught him something about lust, if not about love. And then there was the contribution of the party to the health and welfare of the German people, or so the joke ran: the promotion of free love – as long as you were a party member. A perk, one might say.

But never had he been subjected to an emotional assault like this evening’s. No one had ever done those things to him nor, literally, begged him to do them to her. And it had all been so free, so natural: Bethwig shook his head. He did not want this; she was a cripple, a mental cripple. He could not afford such an affair. And she belonged to the SS. How in the name of God could he cope with that?

The bathwater had cooled, and the brandy was gone. He got out, dried himself slowly, and returned to the bedroom. The night was warm, and in her sleep Inge had thrown off the eiderdown. A pale moon had risen and was shining fitfully through the curtains, touching her body here and there with silver. Bethwig drew the curtains open and returned to the bed, entranced with the vision. For a moment he had an inkling of the power that drove men to kill for a woman’s body.

Thinking of the soft presence beside him and the brief gleam of insanity he had glimpsed twice now in Heydrich’s eyes, Bethwig slept little that night.

Norway – England April 1942

Lieutenant Jan Memling crouched behind the pilings of a warehouse, spooning tasteless rations from a tin. A frigid wind flung spatters of rain, and his sergeant cursed. The fjord fled into the fog less than half a mile from where they were sheltering. Beyond that, he thought, anything could be happening. Rumour had it that a German destroyer was on its way from Bergen, but rumours weren’t worth a damn. He dug the last of the pasty mess from the can, licked the spoon, and slipped it into the light pack lying beside him. Memling then turned the tin this way and that, trying to read the scratched label in the failing light. It was impossible to know what he had eaten from its taste alone.

They had landed shortly before noon, in full daylight. A diversion, they had been told. ‘Need someone to distract Jerry’s attention while we drop a load of paratroops up on the plateau. Very important job, hush-hush. Wizards tell us there’s a big hydroelectric plant at Rjukan the Nazi needs.’

Their target village was defended by a small army detachment that had grown a bit soft with garrison duty, or so they had been informed. No one, it turned out, had so informed the Germans.

His section had been targeted on the wireless facility, which intelligence had pinpointed in the local school, a single-storey redbrick affair that looked very much like an English village school. It stood on the highest point in town, barring the mountains rising almost vertically from the fjord, and so was a logical choice. Apparently the Germans thought so as well, and no one had checked the information with MILORG, the Norwegian resistance organisation.

Memling had realised there was no radio in the building as soon as the door was kicked in. An elderly teacher and fifteen or so students had stared at them in wide-eyed fright. Ten vital minutes had been wasted before the radio was located in the town hall and destroyed, by which time every German garrison in central Norway had been notified.

The wireless set rattled and the sergeant major took the headset from the operator and pressed it to his ear, muttered something in reply, and shook his head.

‘Captain says to watch along the northern road. They’ve picked up something about SS troops coming down from Hergen.’

Memling nodded and went on staring out over the empty fjord. If he were the German commander charged with ousting a bunch of bastards from a tiny pinprick of a town that made absolutely no difference to anyone but the people who lived there, that is exactly what he would want them to think. In the meantime he would be doing his level best to bring his troops up by boat, especially now that he had the fog for cover. Norway’s west coast was long on water and boats, short on roads and vehicles.

‘Well?’ the sergeant major demanded.

‘Bugger the road. If they’re coming… ‘ Memling waved a hand at the fjord.

The sergeant major was a regular, and even two years in the Royal Marine Commando had not broken him of the habit of holding all officers in awe. ‘But the captain…’

‘Bugger the captain as well. What the hell does he know?’ Memling sighed and shifted position to take the strain off his thighs, ‘If it bothers you that much, send two men to the end of the road. But no further, mind. I want them within shouting distance when the Nazis come out of that fog. And make damned certain the machine gunners know their fire points.’

The two troopers were sent off grumbling as the rain began in earnest. Visibility was even worse now, especially with the coming dusk. The grey-blue sky seemed to have lowered right to the water. Across the fjord, streamers of cloud billowed in slow motion along the dark mountain slopes, and Memling, who had a fondness for just such days, spent a few moments enjoying the spectacle.

Everything about this raid had been screwed up from the beginning. The chief planning officer was killed by German bombs in London the day before the rendezvous in Dundee. His replacement, a hopelessly inept army officer who had given the plans only the sketchiest of readings, had undertaken the briefing, and consequently they had received a great deal of misinformation. And there had been no proper co-ordination with the RAF or the navy.

Two days earlier they had marched in full kit to the docks, to find the berth for the Dutch navy destroyer that was to take them to Norway empty. Three hours in the freezing rain and they were marched back again, eight miles in each direction. An old British destroyer was finally substituted, one of the American lend-lease four-stackers that lacked the speed to get them in and out quickly. As a result, the landing was made in daylight rather than at dawn. Of course no one had thought to inform the RAF, who were to raid three airfields nearby, of the delay, and so they had gone according to the original schedule. Consequently the Mosquitoes, laid on hastily to provide badly needed close support, were jumped over the North Sea and turned back.

That and the fact that Captain Miles Renson, a regular marine officer with extensive service in Greece and Crete, had proven to be a bungler. Renson was making drastic mistakes, and Memling was damned if he was going to contribute to them. If Renson insisted upon concentrating his forces in the wrong spot, he certainly would not help him commit suicide.

The more he studied the narrow beach, the more he was convinced the German attack would come this way. Renson had already ignored his radioed warning as well as the runner sent to convince him. The captain was going to make damned certain he did not take advice from a junior officer, and a mere volunteer at that.

Memling made up his mind abruptly. ‘Sergeant Major, keep the men here and under cover. No one is to move without my express permission. That includes instructions from the captain. Understand?’

The man’s expression was apprehensive, but he acknowledged the order.

‘I’m taking Corporal Hayward with me to make a sweep along the beach to the north and west. If anything happens, I’ll fire a red flare. Either way, you’ll know I was right.’

The sergeant major gave him a sceptical look, and Memling shrugged and motioned Hayward after him as he started up the slope to the road edging the beach.

Thirty yards on, the road swerved inland a few hundred feet. Memling vaulted the low wood fence and jumped down to the beach. The road would have been easier, but there were still snipers about and Renson refused to clear them out, claiming the risk was too great.

They trotted along, keeping a wary eye out for enemy troops that might have infiltrated to test their defences. The beach was littered with a winter’s accumulation of driftwood, making progress difficult.

Hayward had fallen behind a few paces and was moving swiftly, scanning to the sides and rear. Memling was glad that he had picked the stubby Yorkshireman. He was probably the steadiest of the lot, and that was saying a great deal. Nearly all of the commandos were regulars chosen from the various branches of the service. If any survived, it would be because of their skill. Most of the men on this job had seen action before, hit-and-run nuisance raids such as this or else with a variety of units in Greece or the desert. Renson had as well, and that made his behaviour all the more inexplicable to Memling.

They had gone about a mile when Hayward hissed at him:

‘Listen!’

Rain was falling heavily, and the wind was strong enough to set the trees swaying, so that it was difficult to distinguish sounds. Memling knelt close to the water’s edge and cupped an ear. After a moment he heard it too, an oar striking water.

Visibility was now less than a hundred yards in the gathering dusk, but the sound told him that there was at least one boat approaching the town. He swore to himself. Who the devil is in that boat – German troops or Norwegian fishermen? The question had not occurred to him before. If they were fishermen, they might not know of the British raid; and if he guessed wrong and fired the red flare, it could give his ambush away. Yet if he held back until he was certain, there would be no time for Renson to move his troops to meet the threat. The familiar surge of exhilaration coursed through him then, and he laughed. The corporal stared at him in astonishment.

‘Hayward, fire a burst towards the boat, high enough not to hit anyone.’

‘Bloody ‘ell!’

‘Damn it, do as you’re told!’

Hayward stared at him a moment, then as the puzzle of the boat’s identity occurred to him as well, slipped the fire selector button on his Sten to the right for automatic, rested the wire stock against the side of his hip, and glanced to see that Memling had the flare gun out and ready.

Memling nodded, and Hayward squeezed off a short burst.

The result was an instant’s silence, followed by shouts and gunfire. They were Germans all right, and Memling fired the flare gun as both he and Hayward dived for the meagre cover offered by the trees.

The German barrage lasted only a few moments. Hayward raised his head, spat a mouthful of sand, and gave Memling a steady look. ‘Yer a fookin’ idiot… sir.’

By the time the two men reached the wharf, the firefight was over. Drifting through the fog were the shattered remains of two fishing boats and several bodies. The shingled beach was littered with debris, and two commandos stood guard over a huddle of German prisoners while a third helped an exhausted soldier from the water. Captain Renson was talking to Lieutenant Peter Driscoll, commander of the second Special Service company. Memling was both surprised and relieved to see that his own company was still drawn up into the perimeter as he had ordered. The rest of Driscoll’s people could be seen filtering back through the town.

Memling saluted Renson. Renson returned the salute with a suspicious glare, ‘I do not think it was a good idea for you to leave your command, Memling.’

Jan took a deep breath. Renson, it seemed, was not about to give an inch. ‘My sergeant major is very capable, sir. I had no doubt that he could hold the position.’

Renson remained silent for a moment, then turned pointedly to Driscoll who was watching Memling with a puzzled expression. ‘Then the aircraft are not totally destroyed?’ the captain asked.

‘Not totally, sir. However, we damaged all those found on the apron and set the main hangar on fire. We got two more as they were being rolled out.’

Renson swore quietly, then turned away abruptly and hurried down to the beach.

Driscoll drew a shaky breath. ‘What in hell is going on here, old man? I come back after nearly getting our arses shot off, and he’s fuming mad. Claims you ran off down the beach against his orders.’ Driscoll stared hard at Memling. The two had barely met before boarding the destroyer.

‘Damn him!’ Memling swung about as if to follow, then thought better of it. Nothing would be gained by a confrontation now.

‘Then it’s not true?’ Driscoll asked, doubt evident in his voice. Memling turned back to him, eyes blazing with anger. ‘Of course not. That makes it sound as if I had deserted. That fool intercepted a German message ordering a combat party here by road from the north and concentrated everyone in that direction.’

‘From the north? That’s ridiculous.’

‘Exactly. It made no sense to me either. It would have taken them a good two hours to reach us, but Renson withdrew from the waterfront and concentrated on the northern approach to the town. We were wide open to attack from the fjord. I stationed most of my company along the beach, then took a trooper and went along the north shore. When we heard the Germans, we opened fire. That gave Renson enough time to realise what was up and save all our necks.’

‘I see.’ Driscoll nodded. ‘So you are saying that it was your action that saved the party…’

Memling stared at him, unable to believe what he was hearing. ‘Don’t tell me…’

Driscoll held up a hand. ‘Now, now, don’t get excited. ‘I’m just trying to get this straight. Didn’t make sense that you would run off down the beach. The old man has probably been in the desert too long. Doesn’t really believe in boats any longer.’

Memling laughed ruefully at that. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ Renson shouted then, and they started down the beach after him.

It was raining in Felixstowe when the Special Service unit came down the gangway. Memling stood by the railing of the over-age destroyer, trying to ignore the smell of diesel oil, salt air and coal smoke which pervaded the harbour. Grimy docks huddled under the lash of rain. Bits of garbage and wood floated in the oil-slick water. Barely visible as it made for the entrance to the harbour boom, a grey submarine wallowed towards the North Sea. The Luftwaffe had been at work recently. Great holes had been chewed in the line of sheds, and over towards the town the church steeple had been knocked askew. It was depressingly unlike the pretty seaside resort he remembered from before the war.

The last of his company trudged off the ship, and Memling followed down the gangway. A non-commissioned officer wearing the red flashes of the Special Police stepped out from the canvas cover. ‘Lieutenant Jan Memling?’

Memling frowned and nodded. ‘What is it, Sergeant?’

‘I have orders to take you to London at the earliest moment, sir.’

‘London? I’ve just returned from an exercise, Sergeant. I must see to my men and make my report.’

‘Sorry, Lieutenant Memling. My orders state you are to be returned immediately.’

‘Damn it.’ Memling frowned. There was just one reason he would be recalled to London. ‘Just where in London are you supposed to take me?’

The SP gave him a long, steady stare, if you do not come willingly, sir, I am empowered to place you under arrest.’

‘What’s going on here, Memling? Why aren’t you with your people – this time?’ Renson had come up from behind, startling his junior officer.

The calculated insult was too much, and Memling swung around, but the SP interposed himself. ‘I am afraid, Captain, that I am to blame,’ he said, neatly diverting attention. ‘I have urgent orders for Lieutenant Memling that require his immediate return to London.’

‘London? Immediately? What’s this all about, Memling? Found some way to take yourself off active duty?’

Memling started towards him, but the SP gripped his arm tightly. Driscoll appeared out of the mist at that moment, closely followed by Memling’s sergeant major. Driscoll nodded and, glancing directly at Renson, motioned with his head. ‘Go ahead, Jan. We’ll see to everything here, won’t we, Sergeant Major?’ The implication was not lost on Renson who glanced from one to the other, then back to Memling. ‘I see.’ He nodded half to himself. ‘I see how it is now. Perhaps you should go along, Memling. I am certain that we can get along without you.’

‘Go along, sir,’ the sergeant major urged. ‘Lieutenant Driscoll is right.’

Memling nodded reluctantly and handed over his helmet, Sten and kit bag of Mills bombs. ‘Do I have time to clean up?’ he asked the SP, who shook his head with an apologetic grimace.

‘Afraid not, sir. I have a car, and if we hurry we can just make the afternoon train from Ipswich. So if you will follow me.’

Memling had been in Special Services for little over a year, caught up in the first sweep through the forces for officers with special training. Even though intelligence personnel were to be kept out of combat units for fear of capture, his MI6 background had been accidentally overlooked at Portsmouth, and he had managed a transfer from the Home Forces G-2 unit to which he had been assigned. In the months that followed, Memling asked himself why as he was slithering up vertical cliffs or wading chest deep through freezing streams in what was euphemistically called training. And although he knew the answer, he was loath to formulate it to himself. But the Norwegian raid was his third combat mission, and, as before, he felt he had performed creditably. His thinking had been cool and clearheaded, and the cowardly fear kept under control. Not once had he experienced the slightest panic.

The SP led him through a turnstile at Liverpool Street Station and stopped to speak with a man dressed in well-cut civilian clothes. The SP produced a receipt book, which the civilian signed after looking closely at Memling. The SP nodded goodbye and disappeared. The civilian introduced himself and offered a weak handshake. His accent spoke of public school and cricket.

‘Lieutenant Jan Memling, I take it. Name’s Crawford. Work for the Firm, you know. Asked to pop over and bring you around for a chat. Cup of tea if you come quietly.’ He laughed at his own feeble joke and led Memling out to an American car painted army drab. Not a word was spoken as the car began its journey through streets clogged with pedestrians and cyclists.

It seemed that every time Memling returned to London, the city looked ever more dingy and battered. The crowds were larger perhaps, if more ill-dressed, than before – thinner, paler, even dirtier after three years of war. But they still retained that infectious humour that had come to characterise the otherwise dour Londoners the moment the bombs began to fall. Traffic was light, nearly all military, due to petrol rationing.

Finally they drew up before the building in Northumberland Avenue, and Crawford waved Memling out. The car remained in position until he had opened the heavy oak door and stepped in. The hall was much the same, smelling of wax and age. The mahogany panelling still shone from daily polishing, and the porter still sat in his little office, looking less wizened than when Memling had last seen him – as if the war agreed with him. A different marine sergeant watched from the end of the hall. The porter nodded the usual greeting, failed to remark on his dirty battledress, and spoke softly into the telephone.

The hall was cold, as was every building in Britain these days. Jan perched on a chair. His eyes drifted closed as the events of the past few days began to fade. The destroyer had taken them off after dark and had run down the fjord in a nightmare of darkness, fog, and gunfire, which they dared not return. The fog had continued most of the morning before melting away at noon, and RAF Mosquitoes had arrived to provide a semblance of air cover. But by mid-afternoon the planes were forced to leave as the anti-cyclonic front that had favoured their landing in Norway moved west towards Britain, hauling with it the rain and fog and leaving their particular area of the North Sea in weak sunlight. It had taken the Luftwaffe only an hour to find them.

Fortunately for them, Driscoll had done his work well. The Ju.87 dive-bombers had to come from further north, and the ship’s gunners had done a creditable job of holding them off, even damaging one severely enough to send it limping home before dusk caused the Stukas to break off. There had been two submarine alerts during the night, but the threat had never materialised. Memling had snatched an hour’s fitful sleep before the seas began to break and he was seasick.

‘Lieutenant Memling?’

Memling opened his eyes to see a neat pair of ankles. Momentarily intrigued, he followed them up past dimpled knees which even the heavy lisle wartime stockings could not conceal, past the hem of a victory skirt which caused momentary pause, then past a neat waist, breathtaking bust, and a pert and somehow familiar face framed by long dark hair. He got hastily to his feet, suddenly conscious that he had not shaved or bathed in five days.

‘Hello.’ Memling was certain he had met her before.

She smiled and indicated the staircase. ‘Will you follow me, please?’

As they climbed the stairs she glanced back with an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry we must walk, but the electricity to the lift has been shut off.’

Memling shrugged. ‘Climbing stairs is supposed to be healthy.’ He wanted to say ‘good for your figure’, but refrained.

‘I wouldn’t think you needed exercise, Lieutenant. You look fit enough.’

Before he could answer, she hesitated and half turned to him. His head was level with her chest, and he dragged his eyes up to her face with some difficulty. ‘You wouldn’t remember me, Lieutenant Memling, but we met just after you returned from Belgium. ‘I’m Mr Englesby’s assistant, Janet Thompson.’

Even then Memling had to think for a moment. He recalled very clearly his homecoming more than a year before. An image of Margot flashed through his mind, and the pain was still enough to cause him to clench his teeth. Janet Thompson saw the reaction, then turned and completed the climb to Englesby’s office. Memling remained silent as she led him down the hall; and when they paused outside the door, she risked a quick look at his face. His expression was composed enough, but his eyes were wide and angry. His stubbled face had put on flesh, firming the chin and creating sagging pouches beneath the eyes. She kept silent and opened the door.

As the war had stumbled on, her boss, Charles Englesby, had also progressed. He was now responsible for all intelligence-gathering activities in occupied Central Europe. He had retained the same office, but the Ministry of Works, never one to be put off by the exigencies of war, had kept pace with his rapid rise. A dark-green Wilton carpet now covered the floor of the inner office, Memling noted. The walls had been painted cream, almost the same shade as aged watered silk. Several original oils in the manner of Sargent had replaced the hunting prints, and the massive walnut desk that occupied one end of the room did more than anything else to establish Englesby’s new rank and influence. The man himself looked as prosperous as his office and appeared not to have missed a night’s sleep since the war began.

‘Well, Memling.’ Englesby stood up and motioned to a chair beside the desk. He did not offer to shake hands, and his expression changed subtly as he took in Memling’s filthy battledress. His nose wrinkled briefly as the odour of perspiration, cordite and petrol fumes crossed the polished desk. Certainly he has not changed, Memling thought. About to make a remark to that effect, he noticed another man in the room, a middle-aged army officer with a colonel’s crown and pips on his shoulder boards.

‘I would like you to meet Colonel Oliver Simon-Benet.’ Englesby turned to introduce the other. ‘The colonel is from SOE.’

Simon-Benet was youngish-looking seen close to, one whose easy grin belied the formality of his name. He shook Memling’s hand with a firm grip. ‘Englesby here has just been telling me they snatched you straight off a ship from Norway. I can see you must have had a fun time. Successful?’

Memling glanced quickly at Englesby who was looking faintly annoyed. There was no help there, he could see. ‘Some. Did what we were supposed to and got back with light casualties.’ Simon-Benet stared at him for a moment, a faint smile lurking at the corners of his mouth, then clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Good answer, Lieutenant, could mean almost anything.’ Memling’s nerves were on edge, and the colonel’s bonhomie was not helping. It seemed that it was always like this whenever he was required to visit Northumberland Avenue. He decided to take the offensive for a change.

‘All right, Englesby, what the hell is this all about?’

The MI6 executive started, blood suffusing his face. ‘Just one moment,’ he began, but Memling cut him off, now beginning to enjoy himself.

‘I’m not one of your people any more, Englesby, and I don’t have to put up with your nonsense. Why did you drag me all the way to London? And who is this’ – he hooked a thumb at the colonel – ‘and what the devil is an SOE?’

‘I see you two are old friends,’ Colonel Simon-Benet murmured. ‘Perhaps, Charles, I had better explain.’ Without waiting for Englesby to agree, he pulled his chair up to face Memling and chuckled. ‘You commando boyos do tend to run a bit roughshod at times. But don’t blame poor old Charles here. This is my doing. He tends to frustration, stuck here in London when we all know he would rather be in North Africa or somewhere doing something useful. But then someone has to keep up the home front, hey, Charles?’

Englesby snorted but otherwise paid no attention to the colonel’s heavy-handed humour.

Simon-Benet scratched his head, then stared at his fingernails absently as if expecting to see something there. Memling relaxed. The gesture was familiar and indicated that the colonel had spent a great deal of time in front lines somewhere.

‘You see, we have a problem, one that requires someone with a rather unique mix of talents to help us out.’ He stopped abruptly and turned.

‘Ah, Miss Thompson, much as I regret having to ask this, I don’t think we need a record of this conversation. Would you mind?’

The girl smiled and got up quickly, unembarrassed by the abrupt dismissal. It had happened many times before. Englesby had an obsessive desire to record every word spoken in his rooms. But his visitors rarely shared that desire.

When the door had closed behind her, the colonel sighed dramatically, then turned to Memling. ‘As I was saying, we have a problem and one that must be solved quickly. So, the General Staff came to SOE.’

‘And SOE is…?’ Memling prompted, sorry the girl had gone.

‘Special Operations Executive. We do odd and dirty jobs, mostly behind enemy lines, which these days can be just about anywhere.’

‘I see,’ Memling murmured. There were all sorts of strange, irregular groups popping up all over Great Britain these days. His own commando unit had started life in 1940 under the sixteenth-century name Independent Companies.

‘I am certain you do. In any event, the Czech government-in-exile has reported an alarming decrease in resistance activities inside Czechoslovakia, which they ascribe to three factors: the relatively benign occupation; the belief, heartily encouraged by the Nazis, that the war is nearly over and that we have lost; and finally, the personality of the man heading the occupation, Reinhard Heydrich.’

That name sounded familiar. Memling recalled his pre-war studies of the Nazi party hierarchy. ‘Heydrich,’ he muttered. ‘I believe that he was once the number-two man in the Gestapo, reporting directly to Himmler?’

‘Close enough. He was, and is still, in command of the SD, the Sicherheitsdienst, or Security Service, of the party. He has become a very powerful man – some say he will be named to succeed Hitler – primarily because he has the dirt on every official and officer in Germany and occupied Europe.’ The colonel paused long enough to light a cigar. When it was going to his satisfaction, he remembered his manners and offered his case to the other two. He could not quite hide his relief when they declined.

‘We have been assigned to eliminate Herr Heydrich.’ His voice was soft but with sufficient menace to cause Memling to shiver. ‘And we need your help to do that.’

‘Me? Hell, I don’t even speak Czech. How…’

‘You do not have to speak the language. You are needed for another reason. The agents who will do the actual work are Czech nationals. But they still need a cover. You are going to supply them that cover… as skilled technical types assigned to the Skoda arms works. We believe the skilled worker is accorded high status in occupied Europe. And the Germans positively kowtow to quality control technicians. They just don’t have enough, and a skilled QC man can literally get away with anything short of murder. Do you see?’

Memling nodded. From his own experience he knew Simon-Benet’s theory to be essentially correct. ‘And you want me to teach them how to talk and act like quality control technicians?’ He felt the slow but inexorable surge of fear expanding in his chest at the thought of being sent back into occupied Europe. It had not left him after all; he had not managed to overcome it, and for a moment he thought he might be physically sick.

‘Correct. An easy enough task. You aren’t being asked to parachute in with them, only to teach them what they need to know to survive. You spent enough time in Belgium to see how the Nazis work. And too, they will only have to stay long enough to get the lie of the land, do the job, and get out again. What do you say? I know it’s not as exciting as a commando raid, but it is rather necessary.’

Memling grinned in relief at the news that he would not be expected to accompany them. ‘Of course. Not that I expect I have any choice in the matter.’

‘Decidedly not.’ Simon-Benet turned to Englesby who had remained silent during the exchange. ‘Well then, Charles, you can get on with the paperwork for transferring Lieutenant Memling here on to your ration strength.’

Englesby snorted. ‘I expected that you would want him carried on my budget. I tell you, it just cannot be done. We are already seriously over for my quarter and—’

‘Now, Charles,’ the colonel interrupted as he stood up and motioned Memling to his feet, ‘I’ve always said that no one can figure a way around red tape as well as you.’ He glanced about the room appreciatively. ‘Why, I was telling that to Stewart just the other day, and he agreed with me.’

Stewart Graham Menzies was the director of MI6 and the man known as C. The use of his first name seemed to do the trick, for Englesby subsided with no more than a grimace.

In the outer office Janet Thompson looked up as they closed the door, and the colonel winked at her. She coloured and bent to her typewriter.

‘Look here, Memling, don’t be too concerned. This shouldn’t take more than two or three days. Then they’ll be on their way, and you can return to your unit. In the meantime enjoy a little light duty. I know what you chaps go through. Helped to design the training course myself.’ He saw a bit of scepticism creep into Memling’s expression, nodded, plucked the Fairbairn knife from its scabbard in Memling’s jacket, and whipped it across the room to the door-frame where it thudded directly above an indented nail hole which paint had not quite filled.

‘Didn’t want to break off the point,’ he chuckled. ‘Now, Miss Thompson here, who seems to have taken a shine to you, will fix you up with quarters. Your end of the training will be done in London. Miss Thompson will arrange to have a car call for you at 0700 sharp. Cheerio.’

Simon-Benet flipped the knife back as he went through the door, and Memling caught it by reflex.

‘He’s nothing but an over-age boy.’ Janet shook her head in prim disapproval, imagine, throwing a knife in here like that. What if someone had come through the door at that moment?’

‘I expect they might be dead by now,’ Memling replied thoughtfully. ‘Maybe he did have a hand in designing that damned course after all.’

‘Colonel Simon-Benet? Of course he did. Now, suppose we see about getting you fixed up. First you could do with a bath and a shave.’ She picked up the telephone and dialled a number.

While she was talking on the phone, Memling went to the window and stood looking down on the street below. Again he was struck by the absence of motor traffic and the tremendous number of pedestrians. It was as if the population of London had doubled. And everyone seemed to be in a hurry.

‘Bother!’

He turned to see Janet replace the telephone with an impatient gesture. She glanced at him and her expression softened to a smile, ‘I’m afraid there is nothing available at the BOQ until after 2400 hours. Do you have any friends you can visit until then?’

Memling had to think before he realised there were none. In the entire city of London, he doubted if he knew anyone well enough to impose even for a single night. His few friends or acquaintances had all lived in the same road, and all had died in the bombing raid or been resettled elsewhere. His stomach lurched at the memory of the raid, and he struggled to get hold of himself. The girl was watching, her look of concern suggesting she suspected what was passing through his mind.

Memling shook his head, ‘I’m afraid not.’ He tried to smile, ‘It’s been too long since I’ve spent any time in London… Look here, that’s no problem really. If you can arrange the proper papers for me, there’s an officers’ club in Curzon Street. I can wait there until midnight. I can also get a bath…’

‘You will do no such thing. Those places are terrible and overcrowded. Here.’ She took a key from her purse and pressed it into his hand. ‘You can use my flat. There should be plenty of hot water, although you’ll have to buy a razor. I shall have to work late this evening anyway and probably won’t be home until nearly eight. You get some sleep, and I’ll cook you a hot meal when I come in. And it’s only a short walk to the BOQ in Cleveland Street.’

Memling started to protest but the girl would have none of it. She forced the key into his pocket, wrote out directions for the underground, and gave him his new orders, ration book, and enough money to replace his battledress with civilian clothing.

‘Now go along with you. I have a great deal of work to finish.’ She picked up her notepad and went into Englesby’s office, shutting off his protests. He took the key from his pocket, looked at it a moment, then, conscious of his utter weariness, did as he was told.

Memling was still asleep when Janet unlocked the door and entered the flat. She struggled out of her wet coat and for a moment remained in the narrow entry, too tired to go further. In a strange way, she found herself conscious of Memling’s presence and realised that she could not have explained to anyone else why she had offered him the use of a bedroom – could not even have explained it to herself. It was more than the fact that he was clearly on the verge of exhaustion. London was full of exhausted soldiers. Now that she thought about it, Janet expected it had something to do with their first meeting and Memling’s reaction to Englesby’s fumbled attempt to tell him of his wife’s death. She tried to recall the young, frightened boy who had come to Northumberland Avenue more than a year before and to compare him with the quiet, tense, and competent man now sleeping in the other room. And she thought of her own husband, how two years in the desert had hardened him, changed him irrevocably from the boy she had once known – before he was killed.

Memling had left tea things set out for her, and she smiled at this bit of thoughtfulness as she heated water and took a plate of cold meat from the refrigerator, the last of her week’s ration. She saw a shopping bag full of food and realised that he must have stopped on his way to the flat and used his coupons to buy it. She cleaned up the kitchen quickly, then went through the hall to the bedroom. He had picked her room by the luck of the draw, and she stood just inside the door, the dim hall light spilling over his covered form. He lay sprawled on his back, one arm thrown across his forehead, the other tucked beneath his head; he slept soundly. He did not move when she opened the cupboard door for her night things. For a moment she hesitated, biting her lip, not quite understanding what was happening to her, then went out, closing the door behind her. Janet went back into the kitchen, poured her tea, and picked at the cold tasteless meat until she found herself nodding off. She got up slowly then, recalling her promise to fix him a hot meal. Obviously he needed sleep more at this point.

Janet undressed slowly in the bathroom, shivering in the cold air and grimacing at the way her skin tightened into goose bumps and her nipples grew erect. The last thing she was capable of this night was sex. And she blushed furiously at the thought. Quickly she slipped the woollen nightgown over her head and went through to the empty bedroom. In spite of her exhaustion, sleep did not come quickly. When she did begin finally to drift off, Janet knew why she had offered Memling the room. She needed to feel the presence of a man nearby.

Twelve hours’ sleep had done much to restore him, Memling thought as he peered into the mirror and scraped away six days of stubble. The blackish pouches beneath his eyes were still there, however, and unaccountably, there was a great deal of grey in his hair. Or was that just the electric light? he wondered, twisting his head to see better.

It had taken him a few moments to recall just where he was and why he was in a real bed beneath a feather tick. He had remained motionless, knife in hand, while the fear drained away and objects took on a semi-solidity in the darkness. Finally he sat up and found the bedside lamp. Memory returned with the light, and he was again ashamed of his fear. That strange colonel – what the devil was his name? Simon something, damn it, another of those double-barrelled names; in any event, he had been promised a car for 0700 hours.

He rinsed his face and pulled on his shirt. The clothes he had purchased from stores did not fit all that well, but they were clean and so was he – for the first time in more weeks than he cared to recall. In spite of the regulations, he had run a hot bath the day before. The girl – he persisted in thinking of her as such in spite of the fact that she had to be at least his age if not a bit more – had said to make himself comfortable, and he had extended this to include the use of a bottle of bath salts. He smelled like a French whore, but the luxury of the bubbles and the hot water had been worth it.

Memling found an army topcoat in the hall cupboard and slipped it on wondering to whom it belonged. It was a bit too large but would do. He did not think Janet would mind if he used it. He hesitated outside her bedroom door, then changed his mind. She had looked tired enough when he left Northumberland Avenue the afternoon before, and there was no sense in waking her just to say thank you.

It was just seven o’clock and deathly cold when a green Humber stopped at the kerb and he stepped from the doorway into the back seat. The driver gave him a sullen good morning and wheeled the car out into the empty street. Memling lit a cigarette and sat back, huddling into the coat against the penetrating chill. The only competing traffic was military plus a few essential civilian vehicles.

The driver made good time along Uxbridge Road, even though a light rain had begun to fall. Turning on to Greenford Road, they eased to a stop before a barricade. An SP in a yellow mackintosh peered into the car and examined the card the driver held up. Satisfied, he nodded, and they shot ahead. The driver barely slowed for a sharp curve, and then they were driving across a level sweep of brown and lifeless lawn. The car stopped before a bungalow-style building, and Memling got out. He looked about the golf course. Then, as he started to ask the driver a question, the car pulled away, leaving him to his own devices.

Somehow the army had managed to make the luxurious clubhouse look like every other military installation in the world. The interior was nearly as cold as the exterior, and several overcoated clerks worked busily at ancient green desks, ignoring him. The peeling walls were plastered with posters commanding closed mouths, purchase of defence bonds, and increased productivity. An SP came forward to ask his name; his manner and voice were polite. None of the clerks seemed to think that in the least extraordinary, and Memling followed him down a draughty hall lined with closed and padlocked office doors. Standing outside one office was another armed SP who nodded pleasantly to Memling’s guide. Memling found it all rather unmilitary.

The SP opened a door and ushered him in. Colonel Simon-Benet was waiting for him, full of questions about his well-being, as if he were really interested. Memling replied, wondering what was going on, and when Simon-Benet discovered that he had not yet had breakfast, he ordered a tray from the canteen.

Afterwards he took Memling across the corridor to a largish room furnished with school desks. Two men were waiting, and they rose and nodded as the colonel made the introductions. ‘Good, now let’s get down to cases. I have asked the lieutenant to teach you gentlemen how to conduct yourselves as quality control technicians. Lieutenant, you have only three days in which to do so, but they needn’t be letter-perfect, as they have only to fool border guards and security patrols, not other quality control technicians.’

It was late evening before Memling returned to Janet’s flat for his things. The session had lasted all day and into the evening. Meals fetched by the SP guarding the door were taken in the training room. The two men, both Czechs, were quick to learn. Both had university training and so he was able to cover the concepts of statistical sampling, specifications establishment and production records smoothly, in western countries,’ he told them, ‘the quality control organisation almost invariably reports to the legal department. In occupied Europe it seems to report directly to the occupation forces in the person of the German works manager. In the former instance the object is to prevent undue influence by the production or accounting sections, while in the latter case it is to provide a very close check on the native workers to ensure that sabotage is eliminated or at least minimised.’

They left once for an hour in mid-afternoon, and Simon-Benet came in to question him about their progress.

‘Just get them speaking the lingo. All you scientist types have your own jargon meant to confuse the layman and keep him outside your magic circle. By the way, I’ve arranged to transfer you back to your unit as soon as you’re finished here. Unless, of course, you’d prefer to remain and work with me?’

Memling did not hesitate, and he thought afterwards that he may have injured the colonel’s feelings by his quick rejection. ‘Thank you, sir, but no. I would rather return to my unit. I’ve discovered that ‘I’m really not cut out for clandestine work.’ Simon-Benet nodded. ‘As you wish, my boy.’ He hesitated, then said quietly, ‘We’ve just had the news through from MILORG headquarters. The parachute raid on Rjukan failed. Both gliders crashed on the plateau. The survivors were shot. I thought you would want to know.’

The flat was empty when he unlocked the door and entered. Janet had left a note stating that a billet had become available at the officers’ club but inviting him to stay on if he wished. When he looked into the bedroom he found his clothing was gone. Another note told him that it had been sent out for cleaning, and gave the address where he could call for it the following afternoon. The notes provided a sense of contact that surprised him. They, like the author, had a certain vivacity that had become almost foreign to Memling. A third note, slipped into the frame of the bathroom mirror, told him that she did not expect to return until after eight o’clock again, but that she would then cook him the meal that he had missed the previous evening. The proposition startled him; its generosity reminded him so powerfully of Margot that he could only stare at the slip of paper in shock. He snatched up his kit then and hurried out of the flat.

Memling finished his course of instruction on Thursday afternoon, satisfied that short of actual practice in a factory, he had taught them all he could. He watched them go and, for some unaccountable reason, shivered. The SP asked Memling to wait, and a few minutes later Simon-Benet came to thank him for his help. Memling had not seen the colonel since the first day, and now he appeared preoccupied.

‘Really appreciated your help, Memling. Anything I can do for you, just let me know.’ He started for the door, then hesitated. ‘None of my business really, but I was in Englesby’s office this forenoon. His girl, Janet, asked about you. Pleasant enough little thing. Your orders allow you to stay over until tomorrow evening if you like.’

He gave Memling a wave and, as if embarrassed, went out quickly. The SP motioned for him to follow, and at the front door he was handed a packet containing travel orders and train ticket.

A car and driver were waiting. The weather had moderated, and with the omnipresent stench of coal smoke banished by the war rationing board, the air was springlike. Memling got into the car, and the driver waited until he remembered to tell him to go to the officers’ club in Curzon Street.

Janet had asked about him. Then she obviously had not yet received his thank-you note. The mail, like all other civilian services, had been slowed by the requirements of war. He decided to take advantage of Simon-Benet’s generous offer of an extra day’s leave. He could call at the flat, and perhaps they could even have dinner. He was struck by a powerful longing for her company that was clearly sexual. What the hell, he chided himself, the first damned skirt that shows an interest… Yet he knew that there was more than a casual attraction between them. Not even in wartime London did women invite men to share a flat so readily.

For eight months in Belgium and then the intervening year in the Special Services, he had lived a monk’s existence. And with good reason, he thought with sudden insight. It was impossible for him to endure the anguish of losing someone again. Those few months with Margot had contained more happiness than he ever imagined existed and somehow left no room for another woman. That’s a lie, he told himself savagely. But only partially so.

The car rounded the corner and drew up before the blacked-out bulk of the building housing the officers’ club, a former dormitory for one of the many medical schools in the area.

‘Will you need me further, sir?’

Memling turned his wrist to catch a bit of stray light from the dashboard. His train left Euston in forty minutes. For a moment the urge to stay was overwhelming.

‘Yes.’

The driver waited patiently, and Memling forced the words: ‘You can drive me to Euston Station.’

The coward has won again, he thought.

Peenemunde – Prague – Berlin April-June 1942

Wernher von Braun tore the end from the envelope and extracted the letter. He read it quickly, then flourished it at Franz Bethwig and Walter Dornberger.

‘You would not believe me,’ he crowed, ‘but here it is, in black and white and from Heydrich himself.’

Bethwig grabbed the paper. It was true: official recognition from someone powerful enough in both party and government to make it work. He shook his head in admiration. ‘I have to admit, Wernher, I would never have believed it possible.’

‘And he says that he has the Führer’s backing as well.’ Von Braun slapped the desk. ‘Damn, but this is good news!’ Dornberger tapped his pencil on the desk, if you gentlemen are quite through; I have a great deal of work to finish today.’

Von Braun laughed and clapped his boss on the shoulder. ‘For God’s sake, Walter, I should think you would be as happy as we are. We can proceed with the A-Ten project now and with the full backing of the government. You are in an even more powerful position than before.’

Dornberger looked unconvinced. ‘Perhaps,’ he finally replied. ‘But it is easy enough to get such a paper. And these days everyone uses Hitler’s name as if it were a talisman. If the Führer spends as much time reviewing and approving these pet projects as everyone claims, I do not see how he finds time to eat or sleep, let alone to direct the war effort. I have warned you too many times before not to mix in politics, especially at Heydrich’s level. The favourite today can just as easily disappear tomorrow. We have all seen it happen. Remember Roehm? They shot him. And he put Hitler in power.’

‘But this is Reinhard Heydrich we are talking about.’ Von Braun grinned. ‘Who in Germany is strong enough to pull him down? The head of the SD has got to be—’

‘All-powerful?’ Dornberger supplied, in today’s Germany there is no such person, perhaps not even the Führer himself.’ He paused to study each of them in turn. ‘The SS never relinquish anything. The A-Ten will come under complete SS control, you two included.’

Bethwig shook his head. ‘No, Walter, that’s where you’re wrong. We have Heydrich’s own assurance that is not so. There will be no interference from the SS. It’s our show, start to finish.’ He smiled at Dornberger. ‘Wernher and I swore that we would work with anyone to get this project under way, and you yourself agreed that it might well be Germany’s only salvation now that the Americans have entered the war.’

Dornberger gave him a troubled look and picked up several folders from his desk. ‘I only hope it does not turn out that you’ve sold your souls without realising their true value.’

At the end of March von Braun flew from the Luftwaffe airfield on Peenemunde to report to Heydrich in Prague. Bethwig watched the little blue Bf.108 disappear into the low cloud, then drove back to his office, conscious that his initial excitement was dissipating the more he delved into the numerous problems surrounding the new project. But then, it was always like this: intense excitement giving way to the hard work and sheer hell of wrestling with recalcitrant technical problems. He was also worried about von Braun. Bethwig had to admit that for a young man to become the director of a major military project was a heady experience, but more and more the man was acting like a child with a new toy. Particularly when it came to the Messerschmitt aircraft that Heydrich had put at his disposal. Von Braun was an enthusiastic pilot and a good one, but his first itinerary was definitely too ambitious. He would be gone at least two weeks. Following the Prague meeting he would visit contractors’ plants from Munich to Stuttgart before returning to Peenemunde. Then there was the side trip to Liege to check on the injector systems being built at the Manufacture d’Armes. As no one high in management had visited the factory since the contract had been established eighteen months before, it was time someone did so, Wernher had told him. Showing the flag, he had called it.

Privately Bethwig felt it all had gone to von Braun’s head; yet at the same time he did not feel as if he could begrudge him his fun. Certainly he had an outsized ego. All good scientists did; it was a prerequisite for anyone who wished to accomplish grand schemes. But in the meantime here at home where the work was done, he had several knotty problems to contend with. And now Heydrich was pressuring them to move the project schedule up unrealistically for political reasons. So far, von Braun had resisted his blandishments; nevertheless, the reichsprotektor was pushing them to reconsider. His last cable had been tantamount to an order and was at least part of the reason von Braun had rushed off to Prague.

They were, he thought, beginning to discover that Dornberger might well have been correct in his assessment of Heydrich’s support; the priority assigned the A-10 project was more illusion than substance. Dornberger had pointed out to them just the evening before that even in Germany the anomaly of a political policeman conducting his own military weapons project at a research station owned and funded by the army would hardly pass unremarked.

‘The political situation is becoming murkier all the time, damn it,’ Dornberger had snapped. ‘There is no telling which way the winds will shift next. After the army’s failure to take Moscow last year, we are all on probation. Another failure, and heads will roll. And I mean that literally. You two are employees of the army – civilians yes, but still employees. So don’t think you would be spared if someone took it into his head that we are wasting time, money, and vital resources up here.’

As the spring wore on, von Braun made several flights to Prague and to various contractors in occupied Europe, while Bethwig had managed only three short visits to Hradcany Castle himself. He was left more and more with the day-to-day operations of both the A-10 and A-4 series – the latter now approached flight-test status – and spent long hours in the construction sheds watching the assembly workers closely as the parts were slowly integrated and the first three rockets began to take shape. In the evenings he wrote reports to Heydrich’s staff and fended off their demands for faster progress. Dornberger lent a hand whenever possible; but as the test centre had grown, he had moved into the administrative end and was more often than not in Berlin.

In the nights, between his infrequent visits to Prague, Bethwig was tortured by images of Inge. At first he was inclined to dismiss his reaction as simple sexual desire. But then he became convinced, or convinced himself – he was never certain which – that there was more to his feeling for Inge than mere lust. Uppermost in his mind was the intense desire to protect her from – and here Bethwig faltered, embarrassed – the clutches of the SS. It began to sound to him like one of those stage melodramas in which the hero rushes in at the last moment to save the beautiful heroine from a lifetime of degradation.

He could not even bring himself to talk to von Braun about her. Somehow the thought of having his best friend know about the girl was too much for him. How do you explain your infatuation with a retarded prostitute? he wondered. Consequently, the more he thought about her, the more confused he became. And night after night he lay awake trying to understand his feelings for her.

In late April Heydrich arrived by steamer and was met at the wharf by a band and high-ranking officers of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe staffs who watched stiffly as the great man and his entourage strode down the gangway. Bethwig did not attend the ceremony. He was too busy in the wind-tunnel lab arguing with Dr Rudolph Hermann, the director, over the meaning of new supersonic test results. Their discussion was interrupted by a messenger with peremptory instructions for him to present himself immediately.

Bethwig did not bother to change from laboratory dungarees but crossed the road to the administrative building white-faced with anger. Heydrich had commandeered the canteen, closing it to the staff, and was holding court.

In the two months that had elapsed since his visit to Prague, Bethwig was shocked at the way the man had aged – dissipated is perhaps a better word, he thought. The head of the SD and the chosen successor to Hitler stopped speaking and glared as he entered. An aide jumped forward, frowning at the interruption, and motioned brusquely to a chair near the front of the semi-circle of attentive listeners. Bethwig ignored him, dragged a chair from the wall, reversed it, and sank down, resting his chin on crossed arms. The aide started towards him, but Bethwig waved him away in exasperation. Heydrich resumed his monologue. Bethwig barely concealed a yawn. He had no idea why he was going out of his way to antagonise the man. Idly he supposed it had to do with his father’s opinion that Heydrich represented the almost criminal element that seemed to have captured the party since the war began.

‘These people have little concept of the fight the Führer is waging for Germany’s chance to resume her rightful place among the world’s nations,’ the old man thundered at the least provocation, instead, they think only of personal empires, of thrusting as much money and power into their bottomless pockets as possible.’

Bethwig knew his father was correct, and the thought that both he and Wernher could become like them was disturbing. It was a few minutes before Heydrich’s voice penetrated the haze of weariness and indifference that had overcome him. When it did, he sat up with a jerk and noticed that von Braun was giving him worried glances.

‘…and now that the liquid-oxygen problem has been solved, the A-Four is expected to be operational by mid-1943 and the A-Ten in December of the following year.’ Heydrich beamed around at the assembled scientists. One or two here and there nodded and smiled, but the majority exchanged worried looks. Von Braun’s fingers tapped nervously on the table for a moment.

‘Herr Heydrich,’ he said into the silence, ‘I am afraid your timetable is off. The A-Four has yet to fly, and the A-Ten engines have yet to be tested. We do not know what problems we may encounter. I have just spent the morning discussing the effects of aerodynamic drag on the rocket’s structure as it re-enters the atmosphere. Several new facts have come to light that may—’

Heydrich laughed and held up a hand. ‘Please, Herr Doktor von Braun, I certainly do not presume to tell experts how their work should be done.’ He chuckled in depreciation of his own abilities. ‘But I have observed that the successful scientist never knows when to turn his energies to new tasks.’ He beamed at them all like a kindly uncle. ‘Once you have fired the first one or two A-Four rockets, you simply must turn the project over to others and devote your attention strictly to the A-Ten.’ Heydrich stood abruptly. ‘But now we must discuss another subject, gentlemen – the use of slave labour to supplement the work force already at Peenemunde.’ Heydrich frowned at the murmur of protest and waved a hand at an SS major standing behind him.

The sturmbannführer stepped around the table, glaring at the assembled scientists. He was tall and thin and wore steel-rimmed spectacles. Points of light glinted on his silver braid and on the death’s-head insignia decorating his collar. His very presence was intimidating, and the officer played it like a well-practised musical instrument.

‘The Reich can no longer continue to supply the reserves of manpower you demand. They are needed for front-line duty with our fighting forces. In fact, it may soon be necessary to call up some of your technical staff.’

The silence that greeted this last pronouncement was strained, but no one dared protest.

‘We are aware that you need manpower, and we will make available to you within the next few months ample supplies from our prisoner-of-war camps. The Reich will no longer feed, clothe, and house these parasites without compensation. As good German citizens, you will be expected to set satisfactory production norms and see they are properly met. Labour will come to you in two categories: those with technical skills and those without. The latter may be used as you see fit, in non-skilled positions.’

The officer continued in this vein for some minutes before he snapped to attention, bowed once, and resumed his seat. The meeting broke up then, and as Bethwig lit a cigarette he noticed von Braun engaged in an intense conversation with Heydrich. He was about to join in when Dornberger sat down beside him. ‘You never listen to me, do you?’

Bethwig glanced at him in surprise. ‘What are you talking about?’

Dornberger shook his head angrily. ‘You put yourself under obligation to Reinhard Heydrich, head of the SD and reichsprotektor of Czechoslovakia, and then you insult him.’

‘Insult him? How?’

‘By not coming to this meeting, you damned fool! Then, by appearing in work clothes and taking a seat at the back of the room. If that is not insulting behaviour I do not know what is.’

Bethwig grinned impulsively. ‘Do you think he deserves any better?’

Dornberger hesitated, then smiled in return. ‘Of course not. But he is an extremely powerful man; and if you cross him, neither your position here nor your father’s influence will protect you. The concentration camps contain a good many people who thought they could snub high-ranking party members. Do you understand what I am telling you?’

Bethwig did, and for a moment apprehension nudged at him. But he decided after brief reflection that he was safe enough from political manoeuvrings. Nevertheless, as it was worrying Dornberger, he decided to placate his boss. ‘All right, I’ll play the game. Tell me what to do.’

Dornberger gave him a sceptical look. ‘I hope you mean what you say, Franz.’ He started to say something more, then thought better of it. ‘Heydrich is giving a reception this evening. I have to fly to Berlin in an hour, so he’ll be using my quarters. I want you at that reception, on your best behaviour, keeping an eye on Wernher. He is getting in over his head.

‘I should be back before the weekend. Fortunately, Heydrich will leave tomorrow for Wolfsschanze. There is a rumour the Führer is giving him a new position. No one knows for certain whether it is a promotion or a demotion.’

Bethwig looked alarmed at that, and Dornberger clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Come now, if you wish to play the political game, you must accept setbacks as well as advantages. As far as I am concerned, nothing would please me more than to have that man lose interest in your project.’ Dornberger sighed and got to his feet. ‘Unfortunately, there seems to be little chance of that.’

Bethwig, carefully dressed in his best suit, hurried across the windy common to Dornberger’s spacious bungalow. An armed SS guard opened the front door smartly, and Bethwig caught a glimpse of several others stationed about the house. The hall was filled with fellow scientists and high-ranking technical staff waiting in a subdued line. Many wives were present, and they seemed more lively, chattering among themselves, each grateful for a rare chance to show off pre-war finery.

As the line moved forward, taking him into the living-room, he saw a row of SS officers, all resplendent in dress uniform, leading up to Heydrich. All officers above the rank of standartenführer, equivalent to colonel, were in the receiving line, those below were acting as serving staff. Even here there were armed SS troopers evident. Heydrich, at his most charming, was bending over the wrinkled hand of the wife of a Luftwaffe general officer, a shrill-voiced shrew whom Bethwig had encountered before. Heydrich said something to her, and she went into gales of laughter that cut off abruptly as he handed her on to Wernher von Braun who was the next in line.

Von Braun murmured something to the woman, and she returned a frosty glance before stepping away. Not even standing to the right of Reinhard Heydrich made a civil servant acceptable to the wife of a Luftwaffe general officer.

Bethwig shook hands with Heydrich when his turn came, and the reichsprotektor nodded. ‘We missed you at the meeting this afternoon. Fortunately, someone found you, I noticed. Perhaps we may talk later.’

Bethwig returned a smile just as cold. ‘I am at your service, Excellency.’

Von Braun gripped his hand and squeezed hard.

‘Why the hell did you do that?’ Bethwig demanded in surprise.

‘Keep your voice down.’ Von Braun grinned all the harder. ‘Because you are a jackass.’ Bethwig saw that the smile was fixed, and before he could retort von Braun had turned to greet the next guest. Puzzled, Bethwig stepped away from the reception line and snatched a drink from a passing tray. Turning slowly, he surveyed the room, counting four SS guards. He also noted that each SS officer carried a sidearm, whereas the army and air force officers present did not.

The line was coming to an end; the lower ranking technicians were being sped through now. With the usual attention to status, the guests had timed their arrivals to engage in the minimum of shuffling about as the line formed, always according to rank, imagined or real. Now they stood about in glum little clusters, nursing drinks and chatting about inconsequential topics. Clearly Heydrich’s visit and the news concerning slave labour were having a dampening effect.

Bethwig could not understand their attitude. Every section head and administrator had been demanding additional manpower for months, even though they knew it was not to be had. Captured soldiers were an ideal source. And certainly they would find labour at Peenemunde more rewarding than the maddening boredom of a POW camp. There was no reason why they should not be put to work. Most would probably be French, Norwegian, Czech or Danish – good intelligent types. But even Russians and Poles would be acceptable as unskilled labour.

He felt a hand on his arm and turned to see von Braun smiling at him. ‘Come, jackass, our master wishes to see us.’ Again the smile remained fixed as von Braun steered him towards Dornberger’s study, politely fending off two fellow workers who wanted to talk. Bethwig made him stop short of the door and pulled him towards the wall.

‘What the hell is this all about, Wernher? Why do you keep calling me a jackass?’

‘Because you are. Are you trying to get us both in trouble? Why didn’t you come to the meeting?’

‘I had something more important to do. The latest tests…’

‘To hell with them. Nothing is more important right now than keeping that shithead in there on our side.’

‘Shithead? Why, Wernher, I don’t think that quite expresses the proper respect for our revered – what was it you called him? – master?’

‘Stop acting the fool. You know what ‘I’m talking about. There was also that little staring contest between you two a few minutes ago.’ Von Braun hesitated, and Bethwig waited to hear what he was nerving himself to say.

‘Franz, you aren’t in his league. And even if you were, it doesn’t make sense to antagonise the man. If you make him angry enough, you could disappear for ever.’

‘Ah, so you are beginning to recognise that fact, are you?’

‘What the devil are you talking about? Heydrich is a… a ..’

‘Gangster?’ Bethwig supplied. ‘Worse than anything the Americans ever turned out?’

‘Of course! So why antagonise him? You are the one who told me we could work with anyone, anyone at all, as long as they made it possible for us to develop the lunar rocket. Remember?’

‘Wernher, I do not understand you at all. Did you not publicly disagree with Heydrich at the meeting?’

A grimace of exasperation flashed across von Braun’s face. ‘Of course I did. But that was entirely different. A matter of disagreeing as to procedures, not outright contempt such as you showed.’

Bethwig recognised the note of entreaty in his friend’s voice and gave in. He clapped von Braun on the shoulder.

‘You are correct, as usual. From now on I will be on my best behaviour, so you can stop worrying.’ Bethwig shook his head as von Braun turned to open the door. He was so damned naive that he probably did not believe Heydrich would view a difference of opinion as an outright refusal to obey orders.

The reichsprotektor broke off a conversation as they entered and crossed the room to shake hands. Bethwig was again surprised at his limp grasp.

‘We have much to discuss, so please make yourselves comfortable.’ He motioned for drinks, and they sat down.

‘As you know’ – Heydrich waved a hovering officer away – ‘Wernher came to see me in Prague two weeks ago. As I told you then, my friend’ – he smiled at von Braun, but his eyes were on Bethwig – ‘I was not satisfied with your report. The entire timetable for the project must be speeded up.’

Heydrich stopped; he seemed to be considering, then, apparently having made up his mind, he turned in his chair and waved at a group of officers. Obediently they trooped from the room, leaving only the aide sitting beside the door, apparently engrossed in a technical magazine he could not possibly have understood. Bethwig noticed that his holster flap was unbuttoned.

‘Much better,’ Heydrich said. ‘Now we can speak freely. There is good reason for the urgency. The Americans are rushing troops to Europe. It is possible that a second front will be opened before the next year is out. Even though you are not military men, there is no need to tell you what that means. The Führer has bitten off more than he can chew in Russia. I was against the campaign at the time, preferring to wait until we had arrived at an agreement with the English. If the Russian attack had been held off until this year, I am certain that we could have weaned Churchill away from Stalin and would not then be wasting resources along the Atlantic coast and in North Africa. But that is neither here nor there. The Führer prevailed, as is correct.’

Heydrich sipped his drink, eyeing them carefully. ‘What I am about to tell you must go no further than this room.’ Both nodded solemnly.

‘Then understand this. We will not prevail in Russia this year and perhaps not the following year either. Our tactics are incorrect as you have heard me state before. The Ukrainians are anti-communist for the most part and could become our strongest allies, but we persist in oppression. I have slight hope of changing the Führer’s mind concerning this policy.’

Heydrich paused, and again Bethwig had the feeling that he was gauging their reaction, much as an actor would ‘feel’ the house. ‘I am to be made commander of all SS in France, a position from which I will command unlimited funds, material and manpower.’ He smiled at their surprise. ‘Now you know why Peenemunde will soon receive levies of POWs. But that is not the point. I have had occasion to examine our defences in France, and I find them quite inadequate in the event of a major invasion. In fact, no matter what is done to fortify our position along the Atlantic, it will be insufficient. Unless our policy concerning conquered peoples changes, which I seriously doubt, eventually we will be overwhelmed from inside as well as without. To prevent that inevitable day, we must cause the Americans and their English allies to leave the war. As long as the Americans are safe from the ravages of war on their own soil, they will continue to contribute material and men to the Allied effort. After all, it is good business. But let them have a taste of bombing and killing across the Atlantic and they will soon fall out.’

Bethwig squirmed on the sofa. He had made this very point to Heydrich some months before. Obviously the man had forgotten the source.

‘Our uranium-bomb project is going ahead at a good clip. We expect to receive large shipments of heavy water from Rjukan, ‘Norway, before the autumn. The Allies made a desperate attempt to destroy the hydroelectric plant, but all of their commando troops were killed. In spite of such annoyances, my planning staff informs me of the following: one, the first uranium bombs will be available for testing by late 1943 and operational in 1944, somewhere about mid to late spring; two, the Allies will not be in a position to invade Europe until May of 1943 at the earliest, with the most likely date of invasion in the autumn of 1944 or the spring of 1945. Gentlemen, we must be ready to knock the United States out of the war by the beginning of 1944.’ This last was punctuated by Heydrich’s fist descending on the arm of his chair. ‘And that, gentlemen, can best be done by throwing the uranium bomb at them from the moon. It is nothing less than the survival of the Reich of which we are speaking!’

Bethwig was surprised by Heydrich’s emotion. Perhaps he had misjudged the man. Maybe he was more than an opportunistic gangster after all?

‘Therefore, gentlemen, it is time to stop pussyfooting around.’ Heydrich favoured them with a cold smile and stood up to pace for a moment, hands clasped behind his back. A tall figure in black. The perfect Aryan, Bethwig thought admiringly in spite of himself, the essence of the Germanic spirit.

‘You came to me because you were unable to gain backing for your project from your own employers, the army. You convinced me that farfetched though your ideas seemed, they had a great deal of merit. I therefore placed myself in some jeopardy in backing you. Certain people have been promised results, results based upon a very rigid time schedule.’ He paused to stare at them both, and Bethwig knew what was coming next. From von Braun’s grunt, it was clear that he did as well.

‘Now you both tell me that perhaps it was not such a good idea after all. That more time is needed, that the problems are of such magnitude that time schedules cannot be met.’

‘Herr Heydrich,’ von Braun began, but the reichsprotektor cut him off.

‘Please, no excuses. We allow no excuses in the SS. Only success is recognised. There is no such thing as failure, is that clear? You two gentlemen have deceived me…’

That was too much for von Braun. He jumped up and advanced on Heydrich who backed away a step in surprise. The aide came slowly to his feet, one hand on his pistol. ‘Just one moment, Herr Reichsprotektor.’ Von Braun’s voice was cold and his face pale. Bethwig had never heard him use that tone of voice before, and he stared, fascinated by this new aspect of his friend’s character.

‘We presented to you a technological concept, not a finished product. Our proposals made it perfectly clear that this was the case and that rigid time schedules had no place in the development plan. Obviously your so-called planning staff has chosen to ignore—’

‘That is enough!’

In that single command Bethwig and von Braun understood how Heydrich had come to be the number-two man in the Schutzstaffel, the head of the Sicherheitsdienst, and reichsprotektor all at the same time. It was not so much the threat in his voice as the confidence – confidence that any order he gave would be carried out instantly. Bethwig found his opinion of Heydrich undergoing an abrupt change. Perhaps his father had been wrong. Heydrich was correct. If the Americans remained an active enemy, the war was lost, and contrary to the party line, Heydrich had freely admitted it. It occurred to Bethwig then that very few people in Germany possessed such power. Even fewer knew how to use it for the good of the nation, for mankind as a whole. Thank God, Heydrich seemed to.

Heydrich stared at them without concealing his contempt. ‘You are boys playing a game, expecting everything to go by the rules – rules you make up as you go along. Well, I must disappoint you. You are no longer boys playing boys’ games. You are citizens of a nation involved in a war for survival. If we lose, we will disappear into oblivion in the worst bloodbath the world will ever know. If we win, we become masters of the world. With such stakes, your personal desires and feelings are of no importance.’

Heydrich picked up his brandy glass and stared at them over the rim. ‘The schedule I gave this afternoon will be met. It is not open to discussion. If you cannot do so, or do not desire to do so, please tell me now. Others can be found to take your place.’ He waited, watching them.

Bethwig knew then how a small bird felt as the snake approached. There was horror, a premonition of what was to come, and, worst of all, the knowledge that there was absolutely no way to avoid one’s fate.

‘Admirable sentiments,’ von Braun snorted, and Bethwig turned to his friend in amazement. Even Heydrich was astonished. ‘You can threaten and bluster all you wish, but it will do no good. The dynamics of technological development refuse to recognise fear as an incentive,’ he went on dryly. ‘Put us in one of your famous concentration camps and threaten us with every punishment you can devise. Perhaps you might gain a day or two, but no more.’

Von Braun picked up his own glass and watched in turn for Heydrich’s reaction. The reichsprotektor shook his head and burst into laughter.

‘What do you think of this, Karl?’ He addressed the aide. ‘I am unable to impress Doktor von Braun.’ The aide permitted himself the trace of a smile. ‘You have convinced me, Doktor. Perhaps my planning staff has failed to take the stubbornness of your technology into account. Let us not argue further. If I can have your assurance that everything possible will be done to speed up the project, I will be satisfied… for now.’

Just then the door opened and a senior aide looked in to tell Heydrich he had a phone call from Berlin. The reichsprotektor excused himself and left the room, but not before inviting Bethwig for another visit to Prague.

The two scientists left the reception, exiting through the back of the house a few minutes later. A sentry escorted them out to the road, and they walked along in silence.

‘He is even more dangerous than I thought,’ von Braun muttered under his breath. ‘I thought he was intelligent enough to realise that certain things cannot be made to go faster merely because one threatens and blusters. This business of slave labour – how foolish can one be? Such people are not dedicated workers and therefore cannot be depended upon to do things correctly without constant supervision. In addition, they will show no initiative. You know as well as I how much we depend upon the observations of our own trained workers to solve problems.’

Von Braun stopped. Their path had taken them along the edge of a stand of pines defining the border between beach and sea. He stood for a moment, hands clasped behind him, brooding over the waves thundering against the sand. The wind was fresher here, and the air was sharp and filled with the tang of salt and rain. ‘Perhaps you were right when you said I had chosen the wrong man.’

Von Braun’s depression was so obvious that Bethwig clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Come, Wernher. It isn’t that bad. Heydrich is an intelligent and very powerful man, more so than ever now that he is going to France. At least he will be in a position to make certain the group of labourers sent to us contains a large number of trained scientists and technicians. And you certainly showed that you could handle him tonight. He backed off immediately when you stood up to him.’

In the blue light from the hooded blackout lamp above the road Bethwig could see von Braun shake his head. ‘I don’t think so. My impression is that he never deviates once he has set his path. Your visits to Prague are merely one more element in his strategy. He isolates you in that damned castle and persuades you to do things that you know are impossible.’

‘Oh, come now, Wernher…’ Bethwig objected. Although he knew von Braun was right, the thought of seeing Inge once more overrode his misgivings.

‘Don’t scoff.’ He faced Bethwig. ‘He is like the devil tempting Christ; he shows you all the world’s treasures, then offers them to you in exchange for your soul. And the damnable thing is, you know that he can deliver. How do you think these people gain and keep the allegiance of so many people? Simply by bribery. What do you want? Money, power, women? Once they have you hooked, they threaten you, and their threats are very real. Very real! No, don’t look at me like that. He has done it to us, Franz. He’s offered us what we want most; the opportunity to build a rocket capable of reaching the moon. How long have we dreamed of that? Haven’t we schemed and connived for more than fifteen years to bring it about? He has given us what we want in exchange for our souls – and he means to collect. Wait and see. And if we refuse to pay, well… you’ve heard the stories just as I have.’

Spring was in full bloom, Bethwig noted as the Mercedes limousine swung through the streets of Prague. Heydrich had sent his own car this time, a singular honour. The reichsprotektor’s aide engaged him in polite conversation concerning the amenities and shops available at Peenemunde and opportunities to visit Berlin or nearby Denmark until it dawned on Bethwig that the officer was probing subtly into the condition of his wardrobe. If von Braun was correct in his assessment of Heydrich’s reason for inviting him to Hradcany Castle, he could expect a visit from a tailor for which he would never see a bill. Inclined at first to refuse the gift, he quickly changed his mind. Good clothing was becoming expensive, so why not take advantage?

The tailor indeed appeared and departed with an order for three suits, a dozen shirts, a dinner jacket, several pairs of shoes, and a riding outfit. ‘A gift from the people of Bohemia and Moravia,’ he was told.

Franz had been impatient to get the fittings over with, but now that the tailor was gone, he had no idea what to do next. On his three previous visits Inge had been waiting for him in the suite. He supposed that he could ring down to reception and enquire about her, but that would certainly be considered bad form. The only other alternative was to wait. He poured a stiff cognac from the well-stocked bar and wandered out on to the balcony. His room was on the third floor overlooking the gardens behind the castle. Standing by the railing in the soft sunshine, sipping his drink, he gazed out over the carefully tended lawn and forest thinking that from this vantage point one would never suspect that half the world was engaged in a war to the death.

As the afternoon waned, Bethwig’s impatience grew. He quickly exhausted the possibilities of the balcony but was afraid to leave the apartment in case she should come. By four o’clock he was beginning to wonder if he had misjudged the nature of this visit. To occupy his attention, he opened his portfolio and, replenishing his drink, tried to lose himself in calculations for a new nozzle design based on the latest wind-tunnel tests describing supersonic flow.

He found he could not concentrate. His mind kept turning again and again to Inge, recalling every detail of previous visits. She was not, as he had first thought, a mental defective; rather she lived in a world of her own, and he had pieced together enough of her background to understand why.

Inge was born in Thuringia to elderly parents who had died within months of one another when she was quite small. A cousin inherited their farm, along with the responsibility for Inge’s care and education. The cousin was a drunkard, his wife a chronic invalid, and before she was twelve, Inge had been raped repeatedly – a not uncommon story in the more isolated rural areas of Germany.

The child was removed from the farm after neighbours protested to the authorities. Silent and withdrawn, she was several times placed in foster homes but continued her slide into a world of silence and inaction. Finally, she was placed in an institution for mental defectives where she remained until it was taken over by the SS in 1939. Because of her physical beauty she was spared the various ‘experiments and training sessions’ and became instead a plaything for the senior SS officers at the facility. How she had come to Hradcany Castle, Bethwig never found out, as Inge herself did not know. She had no sense of time, cared nothing for anything beyond the parameters of her existence, and was an intensely physical being. Bethwig did not know enough about psychology to do more than guess at an interpretation of her condition, but he had to believe that her nymphomania was in fact a reaction to her treatment as a child and later as an adult by the SS. Whatever, for reasons derived as much from sympathy as sexual need, Bethwig found that he very much cared for the girl.

Yet there was little that he could do to change her situation; the SS, by virtue of their special legal position, were virtually immune to the normal processes of German law. They were a physical and legal entity apart, and only one man, Reinhard Heydrich, had the power to release her. To obtain that release, Bethwig must please Heydrich.

Restlessly he pushed himself away from the desk and went out on to the balcony. The sun had swung deep into the west, and a golden haze lay across the vast sweep of lawn. The air was fresh, and the grass was that incredible spring green. Standing on the balcony, Bethwig thought the setting as pleasant as any on Earth.

‘Hello, Herr Doktor Bethwig.’

He turned so fast that cognac spilled from his glass. For a moment he was speechless. Inge, wearing only a flowing, diaphanous negligee, was standing in the doorway, more lovely and desirable than he could remember.

Light was fading outside when Bethwig lit a cigarette and offered it to Inge. He propped the pillows against the headboard and smiled as she shook her head, stretched languorously, and burrowed against him. ‘Good,’ she murmured.

Her propensity for framing questions as statements intrigued him. She was so certain of herself, and with good reason. He muttered an answer, and she nipped at his ribs with sharp teeth. He protested and wriggled away. Giggling, Inge pursued him across the wide bed until he was trapped on the edge; then she swarmed over him, all legs and arms and teeth, until he was laughing so he could hardly stand it. She stopped then, and they began to make love again, more slowly and with deeper pleasure than before.

‘I understand that dinner was served in your apartment last night.’ Heydrich smiled, I trust you found everything to your satisfaction?’ He was obviously enjoying Bethwig’s embarrassment. ‘Inge is a very lovely woman.’ Heydrich frowned, then went to the window and stood with his back to the room.

‘This is difficult for me,’ Heydrich said with some hesitation. ‘I do not want you to misunderstand my meaning. I do not want it to sound like a threat, only a fact, a fact we must all live with.’ He turned back to see Bethwig waiting politely and thought to himself that he had not misjudged this one. Von Braun was a brilliant man but a fool where politics were concerned. This one, a realist, seemed to understand the game. Certainly his father was important enough for him to have learned early. And he is also greedy for what I can give, his stupid moon rocket and the whore.

‘So let us get down to cases. Your friend von Braun has become an obstruction. He must be removed as the director of the A-Ten project.’

Bethwig laughed in spite of his knowledge that it was dangerous to provoke this man. He could not help himself.

‘Herr Reichsprotektor, I would not presume to tell you how to rule Czechoslovakia. You are the expert here. So why, then, do you persist in telling us how to manage a scientific project? In any effort involving groups of people there must always be one person with the ability to make all elements work. Doktor von Braun is that person at Peenemunde. Take him away and your project will never be completed – at least before this war is over.’

‘I had it in mind,’ Heydrich said, ‘to appoint you project director in von Braun’s place.’

Bethwig stared at Heydrich in surprise, then shook his head, ‘It would do no good. I am not a leader. Von Braun is. Colonel Dornberger will tell you the same thing.’

As if accepting Bethwig’s opinion, Heydrich stretched in the chair, yawned, and patted his mouth with one carefully tended hand. ‘Then what do we do?’

‘We, Herr Reichsprotektor?’

‘We, Herr Doktor Bethwig. For if I fail in this, we all fail. For me it will be no more than a slap on the wrist. My position is secure. But for you and your friends at Peenemunde it could be worse.’

‘In what way?’

Heydrich gave an elaborate shrug. The research centre could be closed. There is already more than sufficient sentiment for that. You and your friends might then find yourselves in combat units, perhaps on the eastern front.’

‘Ah, I see.’ Bethwig studied him for a moment: let the reichsprotektor win this round and Heydrich would own him for ever. ‘Even as head of the SS in France, Herr Reichsprotektor, do you not feel that you are overstating your case?’ His question was blunt. ‘Certainly the SS is strong politically, and your own position is so secure as to be unassailable. But there is still the army to consider and the party infrastructure. Even the SS cannot dictate to both at the same time.’

Heydrich sat forward with a huge grin, snapped his fingers, and pointed at Bethwig. ‘I knew I had judged you correctly. You are a sensible man, and you understand the use of power. It is good to talk things out like this, to make certain that we understand one another.’

Bethwig nodded, not at all relieved by his jovial mood. ‘Yes, I agree. I do, however, wonder why you are bothering to explain all this to someone as unimportant as I am.’

‘Ah, hardly unimportant, and I think you know that as well as I. Your father is a very powerful man in the party, and your own position as an early party member counts for a great deal in itself. Also I consider you the key man at Peenemunde. I fully believe that you are every bit as intelligent and capable as Herr von Braun. Now, let’s stop complimenting each other and get down to business.’

Heydrich leaned forward and tapped out his points on the table between them. ‘Number one, in spite of Doktor von Braun’s reservations, the project must move forward as close to the timetable I have established as possible. The situation has been discussed with Minister Speer, and he has promised every cooperation in the matter of material and manpower priorities. I have arranged for him to obtain the release of a thousand technically trained people to be transferred from the army to Peenemunde. They will be reconstituted as a reserve army unit to provide security. In fact, they may be used as necessary.

‘Point two, the rocket must be ready as soon as possible. Even if all the safeguards possible have not been incorporated. There will be no end of volunteers ready to risk their lives for the Reich.

‘Third, Herr Doktor von Braun must be replaced. I see no other choice. Somehow I must convince you to accept the position.’ Heydrich smiled pleasantly. ‘There are any number of incentives that can be supplied. However, it must be understood that we are constructing a military weapon which will be less than perfect. That is the sticking point with von Braun. He demands absolute perfection and safety. As long as the task can be done, I am not interested in the cost, in money or lives. My God!’ – he threw up his hands – ‘if we had to wait until our fighter aircraft or tanks were absolutely perfect in every respect, we would still be flying gliders and driving automobiles with tin plates welded on for armour.

‘Finally – and this is the reason for haste – ‘ He paused and stared hard at Bethwig. ‘And this information is not to leave this room, do you understand?’

Bethwig nodded, not certain what was coming next, in spite of the hindrance of other agencies, this information has been gathered. We have recently learned that the Jew scientist Albert Einstein, who defected to the United States some years ago, has convinced Roosevelt that a uranium bomb is feasible. We believe that work has already begun by the Americans, and perhaps by the British, to perfect a bomb. A number of traitor Jew scientists are working feverishly on the project, and there is no doubt that the bomb will be used against Germany. Morgenthau will see to that. So time is running out. My planning staff, which you disparage, has estimated that the Allies will have a uranium bomb at the earliest in the autumn of 1944 and at the latest the summer of 1946.’

The information stunned Bethwig. He had been so certain of their position that he had never considered the possibility that the Allies might beat them to the uranium bomb. ‘Does Wernher know this?’ he finally managed to ask.

‘No. I did not feel secure in telling him. He is not a party member and I am not certain of his politics.’

Bethwig leaned forward. As he spoke a finger punctuated each word: ‘Herr Heydrich, this information does not change my mind. Von Braun is the best man for the job. I will not replace him under any circumstances. As much as I desire the post of director, to accept it would be a major mistake.’

‘I do not agree.’

I Franz threw himself back in his chair. How to make this man understand? ‘There is more than just friendship involved. In wartime there is no room for such considerations. Doktor von Braun is the only man who can do this job.’

Heydrich shook his head. ‘You could be as effective. Perhaps more so, as you understand the political considerations.’

‘No!’ Bethwig slapped the table. ‘I must insist that you are wrong in this matter.’

Heydrich stared at him a moment, considering, then nodded brusquely, ‘Is there anything else to be discussed?’

‘There is another problem.’

‘And that is?’

‘We are feeling increasing resistance from the army over use of the facilities at Peenemunde for the A-Ten. As you know, our highest priority from the Weapons Development Command is the A-Four rocket.’

‘I am aware of that problem, and steps are being taken to solve it. Within a week you should see the interference disappear.’ Bethwig was now conscious of an awkward silence. He did not know what else to say. Although the need was pressing, he knew that applying more pressure could not possibly make the project move faster. He was also aware that nothing under the sun would convince Heydrich of that fact.

For the next hour they reviewed the A-10 project. Bethwig was able to report that the first engines had been assembled for testing and that the instrumentation was nearly all in place. Beyond that, aerodynamic and structural studies were nearly completed, and the shops had already begun fabricating those components with the longest lead times. Any final changes necessary could be made as they went along.

Heydrich professed himself satisfied. Leaning back in his chair, he regarded Bethwig closely. ‘You will accept the position of A-Ten project director then?’

The question startled him. He thought that Heydrich had satisfied himself that he would never replace von Braun. Bethwig spread his hands in exasperation. ‘How can I, Reinhard? I have given you my reasons for refusing. Von Braun is the only man who in my opinion can do the job. I certainly recognise the urgency but…’

Heydrich’s expression had become hard and frightening. ‘You must do more than that, Herr Doktor Bethwig. You must accept. We will discuss the matter further tomorrow, before I leave for Paris.’

Bethwig nodded, relieved that the inquisition was over, at least temporarily.

His exasperation began to wear off as soon as he left Heydrich’s office. The afternoon and evening he would spend with Inge were as much as he wanted to think about for now. He had decided that they would go for a drive during the afternoon, but when he tried to arrange for a car at the reception desk, he was told by an apologetic clerk that all were in use. On the way to his suite he noticed that a guard had been stationed at the end of the corridor.

Inge was gone, every trace. The bed had been made and an antiseptic-smelling deodorant sprayed about the room to cover even the trace of her perfume. When he phoned the reception desk, they of course knew nothing, and the SS guard at the end of the corridor would only stare silently ahead.

Bethwig tried to remain calm, but after the first hour he was pacing from one end of the apartment to the other. He knew what Heydrich was up to – a demonstration. The lesson was bitter but not unexpected. Heydrich meant to show him what it was like to have a favourite toy taken away. The bastard! Inge had become more than a toy. Though why he loved her as he thought he did, he could not be certain.

Inge was returned at nine o’clock that evening. He heard a timid knock and threw open the door and the girl collapsed against him. Franz kicked the door shut and carried her into the bedroom. For a moment he thought she was drunk, but there was no odour of alcohol. Her head lolled to one side as he placed her on the bed, and she moaned when he lifted her arm on to the cover. He pushed the sleeve back and shock jolted through him. Swearing like a madman, Bethwig tore away her light summer dress. The sight was stunning. Her chest and back were covered with purplish bruises. Cigarette burns dotted her breasts. Wire marks encircled her thighs and upper arms, and a livid SS brand had been burned into each buttock.

When Bethwig calmed down enough to lift the telephone to call for a doctor, the line was dead. The door to the corridor was locked, from the outside. An SS guard stood beneath the balcony, and when he looked over, the sentry raised his rifle and ordered him back inside. Unable to believe what was happening, Bethwig lowered himself into a chair beside the bed. Inge seemed to have been drugged. She tossed restlessly but was semi-conscious and totally incoherent.

After a while he wet a towel in the bathroom and began to bathe her carefully. The cool water had a soothing effect, and her restlessness ceased. In the dark hour before dawn she wakened screaming. Bethwig took her in his arms, whispering her name over and over until she calmed. Then he filled a glass with brandy and persuaded her to drink. Afterwards Inge lay back, movements stiff and slow, and as she told him what had happened he examined her body under the bed lamp until convinced that the damage was more painful than dangerous. None of the burns were deep except for the two SS brands, and those seemed to have been treated with an antiseptic.

From what he could make out from her childish narration, it seemed she had been ordered back to her room after he had left for his appointment with Heydrich that morning. Her story was not always coherent, and he had to interpret a lot that she did not understand. Assuming that he had left and that she would be reassigned, Inge had done as she was told. Instead, the matron had sent her to the basement. Though frightened, she had still expected nothing more than a beating. It was not the first time. There were so many rules and a guest’s single negative comment was considered reason enough for a whipping. But such punishments were limited to no more than ten strokes with a rubber hose administered by the matron. The hose left no marks and, while painful did no damage. The matron apparently enjoyed the punishments, and they were given liberally.

Only, this time the matron was not in the punishment room. Two men stripped her, then tied her hands to a hook in the ceiling and beat her with hoses. Between beatings they left her hanging from the hook. The day became a nightmare of electric shocks, cigarette burns, and more beatings. She was raped repeatedly and finally branded. They revived her especially for that.

Bethwig heard her out, not interrupting, knowing that she had to purge herself of the ordeal. Then she drifted back into a restless sleep, and he covered her gently with a sheet and stepped out on the balcony. Again the sentry shouted at him, and for an instant Bethwig’s sanity came near to snapping. A plaster urn filled with geraniums rested on the ledge, and without thinking, he swept it up and hurled it at the man. The pot burst on the steps, but the soldier had ducked inside. Bethwig shouted a curse after him and went back to the bedroom.

An hour later a doctor came for Inge. With him were a nurse and two orderlies. The doctor examined her, shook his head, and had the orderlies place her on a stretcher. The nurse stared at Franz, eyes blazing, and he knew then what the next step would be.

An SS officer appeared next. A standardtenführer who introduced himself as Edgar Ullman, he was accompanied by an enlisted clerk and two armed guards. Bethwig was ordered to sit beside the desk, and the officer opened his portfolio.

‘Herr Bethwig, it is my duty to inform you that charges of rape, assault, and battery have been lodged against you by one Inge Schuster, employed as a staff maid. She has charged that you forced her to commit unspeakable sexual acts, and that when she resisted, you beat and tortured her into submission. I myself have seen the results.’

The officer’s expression of contempt was so real that Bethwig decided he could not be a party to the charade.

‘Do you have anything to say in your defence?’ the officer asked. Bethwig remained silent, and after a moment the SS officer stood, in that case I must report that you refused to speak to me. I will remind you that Prague is under martial law and that you will therefore be tried by a military court-martial. The incident has come to the attention of the reichsprotektor, who has promised to review the details when he returns from the city this afternoon. He told me personally that if he must delay his departure for Paris he will do so.’

‘I would imagine so,’ Bethwig replied dryly, speaking for the first time since Inge had been taken away. ‘And where have they taken Inge?’

The officer’s stare was cold. ‘To a hospital, of course.’

Bethwig thought for a moment. ‘Colonel, I believe that you are doing what you think is correct. So do this for yourself, not for me. Check and see what hospital Inge was taken to. Then go and ask her who treated her like that.’

‘Are you saying you are not responsible?’

‘Just do as I suggest.’ Bethwig turned his back on them then, and a moment later the door slammed.

For the next four days Bethwig was held a virtual prisoner in the apartment. His door was locked from the outside, and his meals were brought by an elderly man who spoke no German. The guard below the balcony had been supplemented after the flowerpot incident, and he was not allowed outside. During the long hours he rationed his cigarettes, tried to read the few books he could find in German, French, or English, and stood at the window for what seemed ages worrying about Inge. He was safe enough, he decided. All he had to do was agree to Heydrich’s demands; and once he had done so, Heydrich would probably agree to release the girl, and perhaps even allow him to take her away from Prague.

But by Sunday he was beginning to wonder if he really did understand Heydrich’s game. He had heard nothing since the SS officer’s visit on Wednesday morning. Heydrich must have realised he had won by now. A hot bath did not help to settle his nerves, and Bethwig now stood before the bathroom mirror, first wiping the moisture clear and then studying his face. The constant state of uncertainty was starting to tell on him. He combed his hair and wandered into the living-room where he dragged the furniture against the walls and spent a rigorous half-hour doing calisthenics.

Late Sunday afternoon the door was thrown open and the SS colonel stalked in. He glared at the sentry who had tried to follow, and slammed the door in his face.

‘We do not have much time,’ Ullman muttered as he checked the other rooms in the suite.

‘Did you do as I suggested?’

‘Keep quiet and listen to what I tell you.’

‘What in the name of God are—’

‘I went to see the young lady,’ Ullman interrupted. ‘That is why I am here. It has taken this long to find her. She is being cared for at a nursing hospital in a small town nearby. Held in protective custody would be a more accurate description. She told me what happened.’ He stared at Bethwig a moment, his expression quizzical. ‘She is halfwitted, you know?’

Franz nodded. ‘Go on.’

The officer turned to the window and studied the grounds below, then glanced at his watch, it was rather difficult to understand her story, but I finally made sense of it.’

He turned again to face the room. ‘I do not know exactly what Herr Heydrich was trying to do to you, but I discovered that you have a distinguished background as a scientist. You are too valuable to the Reich to be wasted in petty political nonsense. If you do as I say, you may yet leave Prague alive.’

‘For God’s sake!’ Bethwig stared at him, not able to believe what the man was saying.

Ullman offered a cigarette and lit it for him. Bethwig drew the smoke deep into his lungs. Something was radically wrong, he realised. ‘This is unbelievable. Why would Heydrich want to harm me? He has gone to these ridiculous extremes to force me to accept a position which he is certain only I can fill. Why would he change his mind so suddenly?’

Colonel Ullman shook his head. ‘Then no one has told you?’

‘Told me what?’

‘On Wednesday morning, as Herr Heydrich was driving to his office in Prague, British agents shot at his car and threw a bomb. The chauffeur was killed and Herr Heydrich was severely wounded. He is in hospital now and not expected to live.’ Bethwig swore in astonishment.

‘Soon someone will come for you. You will be taken to the basement and shot. The story will be that your aircraft was destroyed returning you to Peenemunde, or some other such foolishness.’

Bethwig sat down abruptly. ‘Shot… but why?’ he protested. Ullman shook his head. ‘I have no idea. Apparently the game you are playing – were playing, rather, with Heydrich had higher stakes than you were aware. In any event, with his death imminent his personal staff is scurrying about cleaning up any messes. You happen to be one of them.’

‘My God!’

‘It is not as bad as it sounds – yet. If Heydrich survives, you resume your game. If he dies, you die. It is as simple as that. But if you wish to leave Prague, you must do so now. I cannot promise that you will be left in peace afterwards, but at least your chances will be much better than waiting here for the execution chamber. The decision is yours.’

With a tremendous effort Bethwig pulled himself together. He went into the bedroom, and Ullman followed, ‘I assume you have some kind of plan?’ Bethwig asked as he began cramming clothes into his suitcase.

The colonel nodded. ‘Yes. We will simply walk out of the apartment and down the stairs to the main floor. My car is waiting at the door. I will drive you to the airfield, and if God is with us you should be home by midnight.’

‘Just like that? Won’t the guards have something to say?’

‘About what? There are no charges against you.’

‘What about rape, assault, and what was the other – extreme cruelty, or something like that?’ Bethwig growled.

‘All charges against you have been dropped. I saw to that before I came here. The orders were direct from Heydrich himself. Too bad he will never know about them.’

Bethwig straightened to study the officer. ‘Aren’t you taking one hell of a chance doing this for me?’

‘Only if Heydrich should recover, and that is not likely. Blood poisoning has set in. Now, no more talk. We must hurry.’

Bethwig shook his head. ‘There is one more consideration – Inge. She has to come with us.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Nothing is impossible.’

For a moment the irony of repeating Heydrich’s own words struck Bethwig as funny, and he almost laughed aloud.

‘This is.’ Ullman gripped his arm. ‘Listen to me. She is under guard. There is no way that I can get her out. If it is known that I even spoke with her, I will be in serious trouble and might find myself part of the clean-up. I can assure you that she is safe for now. She will be released from the hospital in three days’ time, then I can arrange for her to leave Prague. But until Heydrich is dead, it is impossible for me to do more.’

Bethwig hesitated, his mind a whirl of apprehension.

‘Make up your mind,’ Ullman snapped, if you are dead, you can do nothing for her. This way she still has a chance, and so do you.’

Bethwig’s face was a study in frustration as he nodded. When they left the apartment, Ullman walked behind and a sentry followed at his nod. The three flights of stairs and the ornate lobby seemed endless, but no one paid them the slightest attention. The chauffeur was stiff and correct as he held the door, and the colonel dismissed the sentry.

A curious silence seemed to have fallen over Prague. Military patrols were everywhere, and on some street corners groups of people huddled together under the hostile eyes of SS detachments. The car stopped at four separate checkpoints where their papers were meticulously examined.

‘The round-up has begun,’ Ullman observed. ‘Orders have come from Berlin to find the assassins at all costs. Examples are already being made. They say that the Führer broke down and cried like a child when the news was given to him. Heydrich was his favourite.’

Bethwig kept silent, troubled by the haunted eyes that had stared at their car as they stopped at an intersection for a convoy of military trucks. The people – men, women, and children – seemed to have been rounded up indiscriminately, and all were clearly frightened. If what had been done to Inge was merely a casual lesson to persuade him, they had every reason to be afraid.

‘And I thought the Czech people loved him so much,’ he observed bitterly after the car had started up again.

‘Who told you that?’

‘He did.’

The colonel’s laugh was bitter, ‘It’s hard to love your hangman. That’s what they called him, you know.’

Colonel Ullman’s estimate was not far wrong. It was just after midnight when Bethwig raced from the Peenemunde airfield to von Braun’s quarters. He pounded on the door until he heard a sleepy muttering on the other side.

‘Damn it, Wernher, open the door!’

‘Franz? Just a moment.’

The door opened and von Braun waved him in. ‘Damn it, Franz, couldn’t you have waited until morning to tell about the fleshpots of Prague?’ He shuffled back into the room, turning on the light and sorting through the jumble of papers on his desk for a cigarette.

Bethwig kicked the door closed. ‘Shut up and sit down. This is serious.’

‘What the devil are you…?’

‘British agents shot Heydrich on Wednesday morning. He is not expected to live.’

Von Braun gaped at him. ‘Shot… Heydrich?’ He swallowed. The packet of cigarettes found, Bethwig then waited while he lit one, allowing him time to absorb the shock.

‘There was nothing about it on the wireless… or in the papers…’

‘Of course not. And there won’t be until he dies.’

‘He isn’t dead yet?’ Von Braun’s voice was hopeful.

‘He is dying,’ Bethwig said harshly. ‘Blood poisoning. And good riddance as well.’

‘What are you saying, Franz? Without him, how can we continue the A-Ten?’

‘Damned good question. First you had better hear what happened to me. Then you might not be so saddened by our dear patron’s imminent departure for hell.’ Bethwig told him the entire story, leaving nothing out except the details of Inge’s mental history.

Von Braun listened with a growing amazement that quickly turned to grim anger. When Bethwig finished, he stubbed out his cigarette with a vicious twisting motion.

‘It’s damned good riddance then, as you said,’ he snarled. ‘Until things clarify themselves, I suppose we had better continue as we have. Try to get as much done as possible in case we have to persuade someone else to support us.’

Bethwig nodded. ‘That’s my feeling as well. As for finding someone else to back us, we’re still not out of the woods as far as the SS is concerned.’

‘Perhaps not,’ von Braun replied, his voice thoughtful. ‘But perhaps it is possible that we have enough results now to persuade the Army General Staff to back us, particularly if we let it slip that the SS, in the person of the soon-to-be-martyred Reinhard Heydrich, was behind it. That would scare the hell out of them.’

‘It might also get us shot by our own employers,’ Bethwig snorted.

Three weeks later two SS officers accompanied by the Gestapo officer Walsch arrived at Peenemunde to arrest von Braun. Walsch politely introduced himself and reminded von Braun that they had met several years before in Berlin, in the office of Colonel Dornberger. He smiled when von Braun recalled the circumstances, and they flew to Berlin that afternoon, in spite of Dornberger’s strenuous protests. The aircraft took off even as Dornberger was trying to get through to Gestapo headquarters.

Bethwig telephoned his father that evening to ask him to use his influence to fix an appointment with Reichsführer Himmler, reasoning that the order for the arrest of Wernher von Braun, an army employee, by the SD could only have come from his office. His father agreed to help, but it was three days before the meeting could be arranged. Dornberger threw up his hands in despair when he heard what Bethwig had done.

‘For God’s sake, Franz, now there will be two of you to get out of prison, or worse.’

Added to his worry about von Braun was the lack of any communication from Colonel Ullman. Twice he had tried to phone through, only to be told that lines were unavailable. And there was little news of any kind from the protectorate. God only knew what havoc the SD were causing there.

The following day Bethwig, taking a roundabout route through Hamburg, drove to Berlin to consult with his father.

‘Hah! British agents indeed,’ his father had exploded in anger. ‘Mark my words, young man, the deed was done and Heydrich murdered at the express order of that weak-chinned jealous little sadist Himmler.’ Bethwig had told him what he knew of the happenings in Prague.

‘Jumped-up chicken farmer!’ his father muttered, pacing about his cluttered office. The swastika armband he was never without seemed somewhat shabby on the sleeve of his suit jacket, Bethwig observed. As shabby as the party’s morals and mission were becoming. What happened to them? he wondered. It had all changed in such a short time. The war was to have tempered the movement; instead it seemed to be destroying it.

‘I do not understand why we must put up with such men as these. Even Goering has become a good-for-nothing drug addict. Such nonsense brings trouble in the end. Gangsters, that’s what they are. Nothing but gangsters.’

He spun and pointed a blunt finger at his son. ‘Do not let that little toad intimidate you. He is not quite as secure as he thinks. The Führer said to me not more than a week ago that perhaps it was time for the party to clean house again, and I heartily agreed. You know how he works; first the suggestions to high party members to test their opinion, then intensive planning and decisive action – swift, merciless action. That was the way it was when we got rid of Roehm. I suspect that this time he has people like Himmler and perhaps this Goebbels in mind. Never did like that little cripple. Too shrill.’ The old man sighed then. ‘Well, Franz, if you have told me everything, I doubt if you have anything to worry about. There seems to be nothing that monster can hold over your head. Be firm and remember your position and your strengths. We are Bethwigs and we are German. And the Führer knows who his supporters are.’

You would never think there was a war, Bethwig mused as he drove along the Charlottenstrasse past the well-dressed crowds. An amazing number of soldiers filled the streets, eyeing equally large numbers of girls clad in summer frocks. The mood was certainly not what one would have expected in the capital of a great nation at war. There were few signs of bomb damage visible, but air-raid shelters were conspicuously marked. Shop windows, although taped, were as full of goods as ever; and with war production in full swing, people had plenty of money to spend. Hitler’s promises were coming true, Bethwig thought, even though, by virtue of his father’s position and wealth, he tended at times to look upon the Austrian as a fool and a buffoon. Yet one had to admit that he had drawn the German people so solidly together after the disillusionment of the 1920s that the country was totally unified, and willing and able to meet the final Allied offensive against it. This time it will be different, he thought in a sudden burst of grim determination.

Opportunity enough, after the war was won, to clean out the scum that invariably worked its way to the top during periods of conflict. If only the Führer did not show so distinct a predilection for such men.

At the SS headquarters in Prinz Albrechtstrasse an elderly porter checked his credentials against a huge appointment ledger, and an unarmed corporal orderly then escorted Bethwig through quiet oak-panelled hallways to a tastefully furnished outer office where a receptionist offered him tea and telephoned through to announce his arrival.

He was made to wait less than five minutes – a gesture of high respect in Berlin these days, he realised – before an aide stepped through a side door, shook his hand, and in a flurry of meaningless small talk ushered him directly into Himmler’s office. A vast expanse of carpet stretched away to the far end of the room which, although the sun was bright outside, was shut into deep gloom by close-fitting curtains. So the rumours that Himmler expects to be killed by the British are true, he thought. Heydrich’s death must have sent him into a near panic.

A recessed ceiling lamp shone directly on to a single hard-backed chair set squarely before a large walnut desk. A smallish man bent over a single sheet of paper.

As Bethwig approached, Heinrich Himmler looked up, then removed his gold-rimmed pince-nez, and studied him.

The man does have a weak chin, Bethwig thought in surprise. Everyone said so, and it was rumoured that the Reichsführer kept it disguised by forbidding photographs from low angles. But in person there was no hiding it. Dark, nearsighted, and paunchy, Himmler was hardly the propagandist’s classic Nordic. No wonder Hitler had preferred Heydrich.

‘Ah, young man. You are the son of Johann Bethwig.’ Himmler had neither risen nor offered to shake hands. He inclined his head towards the chair, his manner making it quite clear that he was seeing Bethwig only in deference to his father – a politician storing up small favours.

But Himmler surprised him. He studied Franz from pop eyes for a moment, then flicked the sheet of paper so that it shot across the desk. Franz had to lunge forward to catch it. ‘I suppose you have come to see me about that?’ He pronounced the word that as if it contained all that was contemptible.

Bethwig began to read the sheet of double-spaced typing, but the accusations were so absurd that he had to start over again and read each sentence deliberately, like a lawyer. It bluntly accused von Braun of complicity in the plot that had resulted in the murder of Reinhard Heydrich by English espionage agents. Further, von Braun was accused of diverting scarce raw materials to his own ends, and establishing liaison with an enemy foreign power to destroy the German Reich. When he finished reading, he placed it back on the desk.

‘These charges are patently ridiculous. This entire document is the work of an incompetent ass.’ Bethwig was both calm and assured, and Himmler was clearly surprised, having expected either fearful denial or indignant argument.

‘An ass?’ He pushed his chair back and half swivelled away, only to spin back immediately. ‘That indictment was prepared by an officer of the Gestapo. How dare you call him an ass?’

‘Because he is.’ Bethwig stared at the Reichsführer, thinking of what had happened the last time he had challenged a high security official. ‘Wernher von Braun is one of the brightest and most loyal scientists in Germany. There is not one shred of truth in these accusations. Perhaps, Herr Reichsführer, the man who composed this is your real traitor.’

Himmler’s face flushed. ‘How dare you insult one of the finest officers of the State Police…?’

‘How dare he insult one of Germany’s finest scientists?’ Bethwig shot back. ‘Your man has disrupted a carefully thought out plan of research that can make Germany impregnable. The very man Doktor von Braun is accused of murdering commissioned this project and took an active interest in its development, with the express permission of the Führer.’

Himmler stood up and came around the desk. Bethwig could see that he was barely controlling his temper. ‘And that, Herr Bethwig, is the only reason I agreed to speak with you at all. Reinhard Heydrich was a close personal friend of mine. I was aware of his interest in the work being done at Peenemunde. I do not mind saying that he was so excited by it that I was obliged to counsel him against overeagerness. He, of course, was convinced that his plan was correct and chose to ignore my counsel.’ Himmler turned away then and paced around the desk.

‘That was his choice. But he is dead now, murdered in a conspiracy organised and directed by British intelligence. In a routine review of the circumstances the name of your friend von Braun came up. It was noted that he travels freely about Europe in a private aircraft, has access to the highest state secrets, and, in the past, has had contact with a British secret agent. As recently as 1938, if memory serves.’

Himmler held up a hand to forestall Bethwig’s protest. ‘You should know that less than eighteen months ago this same British agent was active at a factory in Liege, Belgium, which produces parts used in your experiments at Peenemunde. We know that this agent had direct contact with the criminal Belgian underground, members of which were also employed at the factory. Our investigations show that your von Braun has visited this factory several times.’

Bethwig felt his temper rising and drew a deep, if concealed, breath. Himmler was watching his reaction, his bright, protruding eyes staring fixedly.

‘Of course Wernher visits the factory. As I do. When Wernher last met this man, we were not aware that he was a British spy. I say “we”, as I also met the man. We learned his identity from a Gestapo officer a day later. That officer, the man who arrested von Braun, was sitting in the same room that night and did not think it important enough to warn us at the time. In fact, he waited until the man had slipped away before doing so. Now he claims – and I have no doubt that the one who prepared this indictment is that same officer – the encounter was of sufficient importance to implicate Doktor von Braun in a plot to murder his sponsor, Reichsprotektor Heydrich. I say it is nonsense and would not be permitted in any German court of law!’

Himmler walked behind his desk again and stood tapping his fingers on the wood. ‘Young man, you clearly are not aware of all the facts. Your defence of your friend does you credit, but it is also quite dangerous. Because of my long friendship with your father I will overlook your arrogance. Perhaps there are oversimplifications in that document; it is a preliminary indictment and this entire matter is under administrative review at the moment.

‘I am given to understand that powerful friends of Doktor von Braun, some of them of questionable loyalty to the Reich, made representations against this officer merely for doing his duty. As did your father.’ Himmler raised a pale eyebrow.

‘If my father did so,’ Bethwig answered stiffly, ‘it was without my knowledge. The man was…’

‘His personal deportment is neither here nor there,’ Himmler snapped. ‘The man has been completely reinstated, and his superiors speak highly of him. As for a court of law, the SS needs no court to instruct it in its duty. Herr von Braun is accused of treason. He will be tried by an SS tribunal.’

Even though Bethwig had expected nothing else, Himmler’s pronouncement shook him. The SS had the power of life and death over every party member in Germany through its secret police, the Gestapo. But members of the armed forces were exempt. Von Braun was a civilian employee of the army. Is that enough? he wondered.

Before he could capitalise on the theory, Himmler resumed his seat and, in abstracted manner – as if the subject really did not interest him – asked, ‘Just what was the objective of this so-called A-Ten project? I believe it involved rockets of some sort?’

‘The A-Ten is…’ Bethwig hesitated only the barest fraction of a second as the thought occurred to him that Himmler had set this whole ridiculous drama in motion only to discover what his second-in-command had been up to.

‘But surely you know, Herr Reichsführer’ – he tested – ‘as your subordinate, Reichsprotektor Heydrich certainly would have explained the details of the project to you?’

Himmler’s eyes flashed at him, and in that instant Bethwig realised that his flippancy had made him an extremely dangerous enemy.

‘Of course he explained it to me; however, I am essentially a non-technical person so I did not understand all of what he was saying,’ Himmler answered smoothly. ‘Reinhard trained at Kiel and understood complicated engineering and scientific concepts. Myself, I am little more than a simple country farmer, serving the Reich as best I can.’

This last was said with a completely straight face, and Bethwig coughed to smother the laugh that threatened to overwhelm him. Choosing his words with care, he explained the concept of the A-10 rocket as applied to the military situation, and ended with Heydrich’s latest information concerning the uranium bomb.

After he finished, Himmler was silent for several minutes, staring at the huge party banner that dominated one wall of the immense room. ‘An interesting, if risky, conjecture.’ Turning back to Bethwig, he said, ‘It all smacks of that silly cinema film of a few years ago in which a girl goes to the moon.’ Bethwig knew he was referring to the Fritz Lang film of the late 1920s Frau in Mond – The Girl in the Moon – inspired by Hermann Oberth’s first serious study of the problems of space travel Rakete zu den Planetenraumen – The Rocket in Interplanetary Space. His own first experience with building rockets had come about because of that movie. He had been part of a group of young amateur scientists and technicians, as was von Braun, hired by Hermann Oberth in 1928 to help with the construction of his famous Model B rocket, which was to have been launched in conjunction with the film’s premiere.

Himmler questioned him closely for twenty minutes, showing a greater grasp of technology than he admitted. It became clear later, when Bethwig had a chance to think about it, that Himmler’s questions signified some, but not a great deal of, knowledge about the project; it was as if he were filling gaps. It occurred to him that perhaps Heydrich had kept his boss in the dark about the project, and Himmler, never one to ignore a possible advantage, was now taking the opportunity to explore it fully – before someone else did.

Himmler appeared satisfied and hummed to himself as he made notes on a small pad. ‘You could be in a great deal of trouble yourself.’ He looked up suddenly.

Bethwig smiled. He had nothing to fear from this, in his father’s words, ‘jumped-up chicken farmer’.

‘How is that, Herr Reichsführer?’

‘You, my boy, are in possession of one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Reich – the uranium bomb. I believe that if our files were checked for those persons with access to such information, your name would not be among them. The penalty for such an offence ranges from ten years’ imprisonment to death.’

Bethwig inclined his head politely. ‘In that case, Herr Reichsführer, you would have to imprison or shoot half the scientists in Germany.’

Himmler laughed. ‘Probably so,’ he conceded. ‘Probably so. But in any event, I must take what steps I can to remedy this situation. We do know that the Allies are also working to develop a uranium bomb, and we would not want them to learn of our progress.’

‘No, we would not,’ Bethwig answered, his voice smug.

Himmler stood up abruptly. ‘Well, we shall get to the bottom of this. My aide has arranged quarters for you in the city. You are not under arrest, but you must not leave Berlin. I will give every consideration to the case against Wernher von Braun, but I can tell you that it does not look good. In spite of what you think, the evidence is strongly against him.’ He held up a hand to prevent Bethwig’s protest, and the door opened behind them.

‘Right this way, sir,’ the aide announced. Himmler had already resumed his seat behind the desk. Glancing up to see Bethwig hesitating, he waved a hand in dismissal.

‘That is all. I will call on you if necessary.’

Bethwig stalked from the room, and the aide had to hurry after him, waving a small card with the address of a hotel written on it. Bethwig snatched it from the man and pushed through the door into the corridor as the aide tried vainly to describe the restrictions imposed on him. Bethwig had no intention of paying them the slightest attention.

Himmler kept him waiting for two days. During that time Bethwig remained at the Hotel Bauer, staring for long hours through the window at passing traffic. The weather had turned quite hot and the room was stifling, even with the windows thrown wide. On the afternoon of the second day, when he could stand it no longer, Bethwig went out for a walk. In the Liepziger Platz he watched a passing military convoy for nearly an hour – long lines of Mercedes lorries and tank carriers with their cargoes of Panzer IV tanks destined for the Russian front and the summer offensive everyone seemed to know was coming. The troops filling the transport lorries waved and shouted to the pretty girls who threw them small packets of candy, ersatz coffee, and cigarettes. Franz found that he was smiling. This is what the war is all about, he thought; Germany regaining its rightful place as it should have done long ago.

He turned away as the last of the tank transporters disappeared towards the Tiergarten, and found a small sidewalk cafe only half-filled. He took a table, ordered the house wine – which turned out to be French, surprisingly good, and cheap at the same time – and a plate of wursts.

The convoy had done much to restore his spirits. The war would end within a few years – no one thought it would be over within the year – and the future would be Germany’s to shape. The A-10 would give them their first step to the moon. Guided rockets with uranium bombs would be followed by lunar bases manned by scientists and technicians. God only knew what benefits would be derived and how they might change the world. It was good to be alive, to be a pioneer. For a moment he was embarrassed by his private enthusiasm.

A thin-faced man in an old trench coat stopped by the next table, flipped open a wallet, shoved it under the nose of a soldier wearing an eastern front campaign ribbon, and ordered him and his girl to leave. The soldier started to protest, but the gaunt man asked the girl for her name. They went quickly then, and the man sat down and snapped his fingers for the waiter. He turned and smiled at Bethwig. Captain Jacob Walsch.

Bethwig hesitated. Uncertain, then angry, he got up and approached the table. Walsch, smiling lazily at him, stood. The other patrons had witnessed the scene with the soldier and now stopped their conversations to watch.

‘Captain Walsch, I believe?’

The Gestapo officer inclined his head. ‘Major, Herr Bethwig. I received a promotion a year ago.’

‘My congratulations, Major. Cream rises to the top, they say. But then, so does sewage. I was speaking about you just the other day, to Reichsführer Himmler.’

Walsch nodded, on guard now. ‘I am most flattered that you remembered me.’

‘Yes,’ Bethwig went on, his voice rising a bit so that the other patrons could hear. ‘I believe I told Herr Himmler that you were an ass.’ Bethwig chuckled into the sudden silence. ‘An incompetent ass, I think I said.’

Tension was palpable in the tiny restaurant, and the head waiter started as if to intervene, but another waiter wisely held him back.

‘I am sorry that you retain such a poor opinion of me…’

‘You brought the charges against Herr Doktor von Braun, did you not?’ Bethwig continued. ‘Only an incompetent ass would present such a monstrous series of lies in the form of an indictment. You, Major Walsch, are a disgrace to the position you hold and to the Reich.’ Bethwig had carried his half-empty glass with him, and as he finished speaking he threw the contents into Walsch’s face. The Gestapo officer jumped back, tripped against his chair, and fell over backwards. Bethwig calmly extracted a five-mark note from his wallet and tossed it on the table.

‘That will pay for cleaning your coat, Major. Good day.’

He turned and walked out of the restaurant to the spontaneous applause of the other patrons as waiters rushed to help Walsch. One began dabbing his coat with salt and water, but Walsch pushed him away and went to a telephone.

It was a foolish thing to do, Bethwig thought as he strode along the busy street. A cloud had passed in front of the sun, easing the heat but increasing the mugginess. The city had suddenly become stifling. He returned to his hotel room and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening sitting by the window with his shirt off, enduring the heat and the uncertainty. The summons to Himmler’s office came the next morning.

Himmler was standing with his back to the room, peering through the heavy curtain behind his desk. The single ray of sunlight dispelled some of the gloom, enough anyway to permit Bethwig to see von Braun sitting in the chair before the desk. A second chair had been placed two metres away, also facing the desk. Von Braun half turned to see who had entered; his face was expressionless.

‘Please have a seat, Herr Doktor Bethwig.’ Himmler dropped the curtain and turned, twisting the pince-nez between his fingers. He took a gold pocket watch from his trousers, snapped the lid open, and gazed off into space as if considering. Then, having decided, he shut the lid and put it away.

‘Come, come. I haven’t much time. I must leave shortly for a tour of our resettlement camps in the Government-General of Poland. My staff expects to demonstrate their latest procedures.’ He was smiling now as he motioned to the chair.

‘But then, you two gentlemen do not wish to hear about my administrative problems. I am certain that you have sufficient of your own.’

Bethwig sat down, glancing cautiously at von Braun, who was staring at Himmler with a look that Bethwig could not quite describe. There was a bandage on his forehead and several bruises about his chin. When he moved his head, he did so as if his neck were stiff. The image of Inge’s battered body flashed across his mind.

‘I suggest, then, Herr Himmler,’ von Braun rasped, ‘that we stop all needless conversation and get right to the point.’

Himmler raised an eyebrow at him but only murmured, ‘As you wish.’

Von Braun turned by twisting his upper body so that he was looking at Bethwig. ‘Herr Himmler has made an interesting proposition. I refused to give him an answer until you could hear it as well.’ Himmler nodded in agreement. ‘Basically he is offering to allow work on the A-Ten to continue, but under his sponsorship and direction. Herr Himmler is convinced that Reichsprotektor Heydrich was doing the correct thing when he instituted the project.’ Von Braun’s voice had a sarcastic tone that Bethwig had never heard before. ‘We are to meet the time schedule laid down by Heydrich.’

‘That’s all?’ Bethwig glanced at Himmler, thinking that Heydrich had won after all and that this had all been a charade… to a point.

‘All? What more would you expect?’

‘The charges, Herr Reichsführer. What about them? Does Doktor von Braun remain under – what is your fancy legal term? Schutzhaft, protective custody?’

Himmler waved a hand. ‘Ah, the charges. Probably nonsense as you suggested the other day. In due course the investigation will be completed and, if warranted, the charges dismissed. In the meantime I see no reason why an eminent scientist such as Doktor von Braun should not, with the proper security supervision, of course, continue work that best serves the Reich.’

‘With the proper security supervision? I understand that political prisoners and Jews are allowed to function under those conditions. Not eminent scientists.’

‘Well, young man, you must keep in mind that Doktor von Braun has been charged with a serious crime. I would be derelict in my duty if I neglected to order such supervision, particularly when the person in question is engaged on a project of the highest importance to the Reich.’

‘Of course,’ Bethwig murmured. ‘Derelict.’ He turned to von Braun who was staring down at his hands. ‘What do you think, Wernher?’

Von Braun nodded without looking up, and Bethwig noticed that a bruise on his cheek was fresh enough to show a crust of blood. ‘Was that necessary?’ He swung back to Himmler, who seemed to know exactly what he meant. The Reichsführer shrugged.

‘You must understand that the SD deals with the worst sort of animal, the traitor. Because they are exposed to this filth so often, they tend to become overzealous.’ There was no hint of apology in his voice.

Bethwig restrained a comment. ‘As I understand it, then, the project will be allowed to continue as before. Will the army not have something to say about such interference?’

Himmler smiled. ‘The OKW has agreed with my assessment and stand ready to co-operate. As Doktor von Braun remarked, I believe that my good friend Reinhard made a wise choice. Yes, the project must continue, on the schedule as modified by the Reichsprotektor’s planning staff.’

That was too much for Bethwig and he started to protest, but von Braun held up a hand. ‘Never mind, Franz, we will do our best.’

Himmler bounced to his feet then as the door opened and the ubiquitous aide stepped in.

‘I apologise for my haste, but I do have to leave. An officer will be assigned to act as co-ordinator. Webel here will provide the details.’ Himmler stopped half-way across the room and turned once more to face them.

‘Gentlemen, I will expect your complete and personal loyalty in this matter. Complete and personal.’

The aide drew the door closed as Himmler vanished.

The aircraft left Tempelhof in advance of a thunderstorm, and for a while the violence of the flight precluded conversation; but by the time they passed over Stettin, the storm had abated and the aircraft had broken out into clear air below the clouds. As Bethwig stared through the window at the limpid, watery sky and landscape he felt for a moment as if they were giant fish gliding above an aquarium landscape.

Von Braun was silent, brooding, eyes fixed on his window. Bethwig was already regretting that he had left his car behind in Berlin for a complete overhaul. The long drive north would probably have benefited his friend.

‘What happened, Wernher?’

For a while von Braun did not answer. Finally, he glanced across the aisle.

‘They thought I had something to do with Heydrich’s murder.’ Bethwig had to strain to hear him above the noise of the engines. They accused me of all sorts of stupid things that first day, even as far back as those asinine charges levelled against Willy Ley in 1931. I was accused of helping him sell VfR petrol on the black market. But the most serious charge, besides murder, was that I was wasting government money and manpower on personal projects.’

‘The A-Ten?’

Von Braun nodded, ‘It’s a political game, Franz,’ he said with no sign of emotion. ‘All of them – Heydrich, Himmler, and the people they control – would throw this war away to line their own pockets. They care nothing at all for Germany. I spent an hour with Himmler before you arrived.’

Bethwig glanced sharply at his friend but kept quiet.

‘Do you know what this was all about? Why they arrested me and threw me in that hole that passes for a jail cell?’ He took a deep breath. ‘When Heydrich was killed, Himmler saw it as his chance to find out what Heydrich had been involved in. People were sent to Prague for his files, just as that SS officer friend of yours predicted. Himmler discovered just enough to whet his appetite. He had me arrested then. At first they suggested that I co-operate. The interrogator was a nice man, about fifty and very pleasant. Of course, I was too dense to realise what they were after, and told him no. So they taught me. God, how they taught me. It is amazing what a rubber hose can do in the hands of someone who knows how to use it.’

He twisted in his seat to face Bethwig. ‘Franz, you cannot help yourself. They do things to you that you would not believe one human being could do to another. It is more than just the pain, it… it’s… the indignity.’ Von Braun fell silent and turned back to the window.

The plane shuddered in the thick air, and Bethwig’s ears popped. The aircraft was losing altitude for the descent into the Luftwaffe airfield on Peenemunde. Suddenly Bethwig was no longer so certain that people like his father could deal with this new element in the party. Wernher von Braun was a famous scientist, an army employee, the son of a wealthy and influential father, yet they had done this to him with impunity. Even the army had been helpless to stop it; and for the first time the vast power of the SS was borne in upon him. The SS had become a state unto itself. All the normal constitutional and legal guarantees did not apply to their victims. What was it that Himmler had said? ‘We do not need the courts to remind us of our duty.’ Nor did they want them to interfere. It was so much easier to conduct business by tribunal.

The rain had begun again as the Junkers aircraft lined up for its approach. Staring at the long streamers pouring down on the scrub and pine forest of the island, von Braun murmured just above the engine noise:

‘We thought Heydrich was the Devil? We were wrong, Franz. He was merely the Devil’s cub.’