Page 25 of V2

‘Congratulations. And now what?’

‘Now?’ For the first time, von Braun had looked uncomfortable. ‘Now he wants us to build ten thousand of them.’

‘Graf!’ Seidel shouted from somewhere through the trees. ‘Have you finished? Shall we go?’

‘Coming!’

The jet vane was perfectly crafted, an object of beauty. He ran his hands over its smooth shape, feeling the fluted indentations that helped it to direct the plume of burning gas. His fingers came away coated with the sticky black residue of the explosion. Suddenly overcome with disgust, he turned from the crater and flung it into the scorched bushes.

Crouched on the ground, a figure watched him.

He was too startled to move. The figure also remained perfectly still – slight, a shadow, not much bigger than a boy, three paces distant, partly concealed by a tree. From beneath a workman’s dark blue cap, a pair of eyes stared out of a dead white face.

Several seconds passed during which Graf’s mind tried to assimilate these details. Was he a survivor from the launch platoon, accidentally left out overnight in a state of shock? Was he a ghost, even – not that he believed in them? He felt his hair stiffen on his scalp. He took half a step forwards and the apparition vanished – jerked behind the tree trunk, turned and ran. No ghost, then.

‘Seidel!’ he yelled. ‘There’s someone here!’

He set off in pursuit. Whoever it was, he was nimble, but not strong enough to force his way through the undergrowth, and Graf, crashing straight ahead, was soon close enough to make a grab at his jacket. He missed the first time, but the second time seized his collar and hauled him backwards, dragged him down onto the ground and squatted on top of him, pinioning his arms with his knees, as if it were a children’s game. And that was what this wriggling creature was, he realised – a child: a teenage boy with a delicate, small, sharp-featured face. But when he pulled off the cap and saw the thick blonde hair, he realised he was sitting on a young woman of eighteen or twenty. He reached out to brush away her hair to get a better view of her face. She twisted her head and bit him on his thumb. He swore and snatched his hand away.

‘Graf! Where are you?’ It sounded as though Seidel was still some distance off.

At the sound of another man’s voice, she bucked and writhed helplessly beneath him, then gave up and lay still. Her eyes were fixed on his – full of fear and wild defiance, like an animal’s in a trap.

The lieutenant’s voice came again, closer now. ‘Graf! Are you all right? I’m over here!’ He let off a round from his pistol. The crack of the gunshot rang around the wood.

Graf looked over his shoulder towards the place where the gun had been fired, then stared down at the girl. What should he do? If he handed her over to Seidel, the army officer would be duty-bound to turn her in to the SS. They would shoot her for sure. She was not much more than a child. The idea was intolerable to him. He put his weight on one leg and then the other, hoisted himself clear and carefully stepped away from her. She didn’t move. Was she half-witted? Had he injured her? He gestured with his head and hissed: ‘Go!’

She scrambled to her feet without a word and slipped away into the trees.

‘Graf!’

‘It’s all right! Stay where you are! I’m coming!’

He hurried back through the undergrowth. The lieutenant was at the edge of the crater. His gun was drawn, his expression irritable. ‘What the devil’s going on? What were you shouting about?’ He glanced over Graf’s shoulder as if he suspected he might have been followed.

‘I thought I saw someone. But it was nobody. I’m sorry. This place gets on my nerves.’

‘I heard you running.’

‘I was chasing a shadow.’

Seidel looked him up and down. For the first time Graf was aware of the dirt and leaves stuck to the front of his coat. He brushed them away. His hand was bleeding slightly from her bite. Some kind of explanation seemed to be required. ‘I fell.’

‘You fell?’ It was clear from his tone and the way he raised an eyebrow that the battery commander did not believe him, but after a moment he returned his pistol to its holster. ‘We should go.’

10

THE DAKOTA WAS DESCENDING FAST, shuddering so violently in the turbulence Kay could see its fuselage twisting. It didn’t take much effort to imagine it shaking itself to pieces. In the last five minutes, two more passengers had vomited up their breakfasts. The smell in the unheated cabin was cloying, inescapable, contagious; she had to fight the urge to be sick herself every time the plane bucked and her seat belt cut into her stomach.

She forced herself to stare ahead through the window opposite at the dirty white gauze of cloud. Rivulets of raindrops crawled across the glass like drops of sweat. She gripped the metal seat struts. With a final vertiginous plunge that reminded her of an express lift, they dropped out of the cloud base. The colour in the window changed abruptly from white to grey. She turned to look out the porthole behind her. They were coming in low over a town. She could make out streets and red-roofed houses, several big square church towers in the distance, and beyond them a wide navigable river with docks and cranes, shaped like a mortise key with a long straight handle and stubby levers. The distinctive pattern was familiar to her from Medmenham, so that when the sergeant next to her said, ‘Where are we, ma’am?’ she was able to answer, ‘Ghent.’

She had expected them to land at an aerodrome like Northolt, and as they lost height, she kept looking out for one, but at the last moment she realised they were coming down onto a field. Trees flashed past alarmingly close and she braced herself for the impact. They hit the ground once and bounced up again, then hit it a second time and a third before jolting at speed over the uneven ground. The Dakota braked suddenly and flung them forward. The engines cut.

‘Christ,’ drawled one of the army officers, ‘that was bloody awful.’

Kay laughed with the others.

Never had she been more relieved to arrive anywhere than she was that November morning, carrying her suitcase the length of the fuselage, stepping out of the fetid cabin into cold fresh air and down onto the damp grass. The RAF airfield consisted of nothing much: a couple of big tents, a fuel tanker, two lorries, a staff car and half a dozen jeeps, one of which had a machine gun mounted on its back. But to her it was the primitiveness that was thrilling. She walked up and down and took a few deep breaths and pressed her shoe into the spongy ground. So this was Belgium – an enemy-occupied country less than three months ago. This was what it had all been about. This was the war. The fact that the other WAAFs still seemed to be deliberately ignoring her did not bother her in the least.