Page 60 of V2

He listened, raised his hand. ‘They’ve launched!’

The bell sounded briefly. Kay picked up her pencil.

The corporal began his incantation: ‘Contact bearing one eight three; altitude thirty-one thousand; velocity three two two zero feet per second …’

‘Hang on,’ muttered Knowsley. He looked at the corporal, puzzled. ‘One eight three? That can’t be right.’ He grabbed a protractor, propelled himself out of his seat and strode over to the map.

Kay kept her head down, writing.

‘Contact bearing one eight three,’ said the corporal, ‘altitude forty-seven thousand, velocity—’

Knowsley interrupted him. ‘Request confirmation of the bearing.’

‘Can you confirm that bearing, please?’ The corporal waited. ‘Bearing confirmed.’ He listened to the voice on the other end. Now he too looked bewildered. ‘The missile’s rising but they aren’t picking up a track, sir.’

‘No, that’s because it’s coming straight at us.’ The wing commander’s voice was calm. ‘Sound the air raid warning. Everyone take cover.’

The V2, its engine cut off by radio signal, flashed over Rotterdam in free flight at twice the speed of sound.

All around the room everyone was ducking to find shelter, apart from Kay. She could not believe this was happening to her again.

Barbara said, ‘Kay – get under the table!’ She had to shout again to get her attention. ‘Kay!’

Kay got down on her knees and crawled into the cramped space. The howl of the air raid siren carried from the street outside. Barbara said, ‘Well, this is thrilling.’ They lay on their stomachs, side by side. Kay turned her head to look at Barbara. Beneath her cheek the parquet floor smelled sickly sweet of beeswax polish. Barbara gave her an encouraging smile, took her hand and squeezed it. Kay placed her other hand over the crown of her head to protect it – as if that would do much good, she thought. She closed her eyes. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death …

The air raid siren stopped.

Time seemed to stretch and tauten, to elongate further and further: unbearably far.

Suddenly, a change in the air pressure – the same minute click in the ears, like the whisper of a premonition, that she had experienced in London – followed a beat later by a tremendous bang overhead. Then came the thump of a distant explosion, subsumed in its turn by the avalanche roar of the incoming rocket.

Kay lay still in the ensuing silence. I have heard that three-part sequence twice, she thought. Not many among the living can say that.

After half a minute, Barbara whispered, ‘Is that it?’

‘I think so.’ She felt a surge of claustrophobia and used her elbows to wriggle out from under the table. The others were emerging from beneath their desks. She stood and brushed the dust from her skirt and tunic. The all-clear wailed from the street upstairs. Someone started to cry.

‘Oh do shut up,’ said Sitwell.

They filed up from the vault and gathered on the pavement outside. Across the road to their right, dark smoke was rising in the distance behind the spires of the Brusselpoort. People had stopped in the street to look at it, exactly as they did in London, thought Kay – shocked by what had happened, appalled to think who might have been under it, relieved it wasn’t them.

Barbara said, ‘I wonder what they hit?’

Kay peered at the tower of smoke. It was toppling slightly in the wind. ‘It looks to be in the same direction as my billet.’

‘God, let’s hope Arnaud’s all right.’

‘Come on,’ said Sitwell. ‘Don’t dawdle.’

As they followed the others towards the headquarters building, Kay kept her gaze fixed on the smoke.

Barbara said, ‘Every time you kiss a man, the Germans drop a rocket on him – have you noticed that?’

Upstairs in the mess room, Knowsley asked for the doors to be closed, then clapped his hands to get their attention. He had an army major standing next to him, square-faced and thickset, like a boxer, who seemed to be examining each of them in turn. Kay could feel him looking at her. ‘All right, listen, everyone. It’s important we stay calm. The Mechelen area has been hit by a couple of V2s before, but they originated from launch sites in Germany and were almost certainly intended for Antwerp. That one came from The Hague where the batteries are only firing at London. So unless they’ve suddenly changed their targeting, we have to assume it was deliberate.’

He allowed the implications to sink in. A nervous murmur ran around the mess.

‘I need to talk to Stanmore and to our head of security.’ He turned slightly and nodded to the major. ‘In the meantime, it’s probably best if we suspend this shift. You can either wait at HQ or go back to your billets, and we’ll reconvene here at fourteen hundred. And please remember – I cannot emphasise this enough – you are to tell no one about what I’ve just said. As far as the local population and our own service personnel are concerned, that was just another rocket meant for Antwerp that went off course. Is that understood? Right, stand down.’