Page 23 of V2

‘Filter Room, Stanmore. Do you know where we’re going, ma’am?’

‘Belgium, I believe.’

The Dakota jolted violently, lifting her out of her seat. She refastened her belt. For the next fifteen minutes the plane threw them around like a fairground ride. A few places to her right, one of the soldiers was sick over his luggage, and the stench quickly filled the cabin. Kay felt her stomach coil. She put her hand to her nose and turned away to look out of the window again. The clouds were a sea of foam far beneath them. She wondered if they had crossed the English coast yet. She tried to visualise one of the maps from Medmenham. A straight course to Belgium would take them just north of Dover across the North Sea to Ostend. What was that? About a hundred and fifty miles? And what was the cruising speed of a Dakota? Two hundred miles an hour, more or less? The journey shouldn’t take them too much longer.

It must have been about fifteen minutes later, when she sensed by the pressure in her ears that they were descending, that her eye was caught by a movement. What looked to be a thin white fountain was rising like a needle point at tremendous speed far in the distance at an angle of about forty-five degrees. As it climbed, its contrail broadened and in several places sheared as it was caught by the crosswinds, leaving behind a narrow broken arc of cloud. She watched it for a few moments, hypnotised, then shook the shoulder of the unfriendly woman to her left. ‘Look! Is that what I think it is?’

The sergeant turned to follow her gaze. ‘My God, it’s a bloody rocket! Girls – there’s a V2!’

Everyone on the left side of the Dakota pressed their face close to the window. Those on the right got up and bent over their shoulders to get a better view. The plane rocked. They slid into one another. The door to the cockpit was flung open. A man’s voice shouted, ‘Sit down, for God’s sake, you’re destabilising the plane!’

As people returned to their places, Kay crouched down in her seat and twisted her head for a final glimpse, but the V2 had already passed out of sight on its way to London.

9

GRAF WAS STANDING IN A slit trench in the Scheveningen woods, scrutinising the sky through a pair of binoculars, following what he estimated to be the trajectory of the rocket. It was more than a minute since it had vanished into the clouds. Its exhaust plume had been normal during launch; at four seconds into its flight, the start of the forty-seven-degree-tilt manoeuvre had been executed perfectly. Even so, he continued to train his field glasses in the direction of its low rumble. Around him the men of the firing platoon were still crouched with their hands over their heads: after the previous night’s disaster, no one wanted to take any chances. Finally he lowered his binoculars. ‘She’s gone,’ he announced. He tried to disguise the relief in his voice. ‘It’s safe.’

Slowly the soldiers straightened. The regiment was made up of two types of men, Graf had observed. The older ones, the cynical veterans of the Eastern Front, had seen so much death they regarded a tour in occupied Holland as a well-earned holiday; their priority now was to survive the war. The teenagers straight from training were more ideologically committed to the struggle, but also usually more frightened. To judge by the number of red eyes and slack white faces evident in both groups this morning, a lot of methyl alcohol had been drained out of the fuel tankers overnight and consumed in the barracks. Graf couldn’t tell whether they were impressed by his display of confidence, or thought him a show-off, or simply resented him as one of the scientists who had landed them with such a dangerously unreliable weapon. Probably all three.

He hauled himself out of the trench. After the noise of the launch, his ears still felt as if they were wadded with cotton wool. It took him a moment to realise that someone was calling his name. He couldn’t see who at first. Then he spotted Lieutenant Seidel’s head protruding through the inspection hatch of the firing control wagon. The battalion commander was waving.

‘Graf!’

‘What?’

The battalion commander cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted something unintelligible. Graf spread his hands helplessly. ‘I can’t hear you.’

Seidel pointed his finger at the spot where Graf was standing. The gesture seemed to be telling him not to move. The lieutenant’s head disappeared.

Graf stamped his feet and blew on his hands. It was another cold November morning – dry for once, thank God, but freezing. The wood was rimed with frost, except close to the launch table, where the ice had melted. He glanced at it, then looked away. He couldn’t rid his mind of the scene at launch site 76 – the six-metre-deep crater, the firing control wagon burning like a furnace, the human remains and fragments of uniform hanging from the blasted fir trees like grisly Christmas decorations. Twelve men – half the firing platoon – were dead or impossible to identify. He had stayed at the scene until the last of the wounded had been taken away. When he finally got back to his hotel room, it had taken him a long while to get to sleep, and when he did, he dreamed of Wahmke at Kummersdorf, in his white laboratory jacket, smoking a cigarette, turning to smile at him just before he touched the kerosene igniter to the jet of hydrogen peroxide, and he found himself running in a panic through the trees, the exploded test stand with the charred bodies and the night-time scene in the forest merging into one. He had woken to find his hands clutching his blanket so tightly they ached.

Seidel approached through the undergrowth, swinging his arms to loosen his stiffness after his confinement in the armoured car. ‘Morning, Graf.’ There was no nonsense from him about a Hitler salute. ‘Did you sleep?’

‘A little. You?’

‘Me? I always sleep well. So – did you hear poor old Stock died this morning?’

‘I didn’t know that. When they took him away, he was still breathing.’ As the vision came into his mind, Graf briefly closed his eyes.

‘Well he’s dead now, poor fellow. It was a mercy. His battalion will have to be reconstituted. Huber’s called a meeting at headquarters. Your attendance is requested.’

‘Requested?’

‘Ordered, then, if you prefer.’

‘For what purpose?’

‘To determine what went wrong, I should imagine.’

‘What went wrong?’ repeated Graf. ‘What went wrong was his insistence on firing twelve rockets in a day!’

‘Well then, my dear Graf, you can have the pleasure of telling him that. In the meantime, he wants us to go and inspect the site for clues. Come – I’ll give you a lift.’

They walked along the road towards the lieutenant’s car. Once they were clear of the launch area, Graf pulled out his pack of cigarettes and offered one to Seidel, who accepted it at once. They halted while Graf lit them. They were ersatz, disgusting; it was like smoking sawdust. He took a drag and contemplated the glowing tip. He didn’t much relish revisiting the crash scene. ‘What kind of “clues” does the colonel imagine we’re likely to find?’

Seidel gave him a pitying look. ‘None. He just wants to cover his arse when he reports to Kammler.’

Kammler was the SS general in charge of the V-weapons offensive: by common consent, a madman.