Vengeance 10

Janet had paused for a moment. ‘If it really is the last year, then I want a special Christmas present.’ When he had asked what it was, she grinned. ‘Throw away those damned rubbers. I think Christmas Eve is a good time to start a family.’

He shook his head, muttered, ‘Just a wrong number,’ and kissed her soundly, then nuzzled the hollow of her throat.

‘The steaks,’ she protested, the phone call and his expression already forgotten. ‘We should start them, shouldn’t we?’

‘When I was a boy,’ Memling offered impishly, ‘we followed family tradition and always opened our presents on Christmas Eve, before supper.’ He undid the gown’s single tie and slipped it from her shoulders. ‘I believe in tradition, don’t you?’

* * *

Janet lay quietly against his chest. Her breathing had evened, and he thought she might be asleep. For a long moment he revelled in the silky feel of her body and its gentle pressure, but only for a moment, as the memory of the telephone call came crowding back.

As much with Janet’s help as the psychiatrist’s, he had come to terms with himself, and with her, after his return from Poland. Not even the committee’s disappointing rejection of his contention that the A-4 rocket was not radio-guided, as the rocket recovered from Sweden suggested, could surmount the satisfaction and contentment that Janet had brought to him during the past months.

Both the doctor and Simon-Benet had suggested that he take a long holiday in the Irish Republic, away from the ‘alarms and excursions’, as Simon-Benet had phrased it. For once, he had done as he was told, and Janet’s patience and humour had helped him overcome his imagined impotence. Looking back then, he was astounded that he could have taken fear so seriously, could have built it into such a mountain. He realised that continually dwelling on one’s own problems was the height of selfishness and that to do so until they assumed such awesome proportions as to block every other consideration was worse than selfish — it was the path to insanity.

Surprisingly, the doctor had agreed with his self-analysis, and as the weeks passed, Memling had gradually cancelled so many of his appointments that two weeks had gone by before he realised he had completely forgotten the last one. When he phoned to apologise, the doctor pronounced him out of danger.

The V-2, or Vengeance Weapon Two — as the A-4 had been renamed — offensive began on 8 September 1944. The first rocket fell on Paris, near the Porte d’ltalie, and caused minor structural damage. The following morning two V-2s smashed into London, one on Chiswick Road and the other in Epping Forest, killing three people and smashing water and gas mains.

Eight more V-2s fell on or in the neighbourhood of London during the next five days. At first the Ministry of Home Security’s Research and Experiments Department tended to dismiss the V-2 as a no more effective, and a good deal less accurate, weapon than the V-1 unmanned bomber aircraft. Memling had argued, but without success, that the German launch crews needed time to break in, and that for the first weeks it would be impossible to judge the effectiveness of the V-2s, much as it had initially been difficult to rate the effectiveness of the V-1s. But his argument had been dismissed, and Home Security had presented a chart of the first week’s operational use of the V-2 showing that the average number of people killed or wounded was similar for both the V-2 and V-1:2.7 killed and 8.5 wounded per launch, as against 2.7 and 9.1, respectively.

Because of his active and very loud opposition to measures being taken to defend London, Memling’s involvement with V-2 analysis came to an abrupt end. A week later, direction of the ‘New Battle of Britain’, as the newspapers were calling it, was transferred to a special committee, code-named Big Ben, that was charged with the responsibility of ferreting out launch sites and perfecting defences against the rocket. Before his transfer to Combined Operations Headquarters in London where he was to begin planning commando-style actions against the Japanese home islands, Memling had the distinct pleasure of seeing his original suggestion for a concerted bombing campaign against operational launch sites of both the V-1 and the V-2 put into operation by direct order from the Prime Minister. He had only just received orders to report to Honolulu in April and had been saving that, and the news that he had wangled Janet a place on his personal staff, as a Christmas present.

Now everything was shattered by Simon-Benet’s phone call. As before, it had been put to him as a voluntary operation. He could accept or refuse as he wished; yet the general had known he would go.

Janet mumbled something and lifted her head. She smiled sleepily at him. When he was certain she was asleep again, he got up and went out to the kitchen. The steaks lay ready on the sideboard, and he picked up the bottle of barbecue sauce given to him by a ranger captain from Lubbock, Texas.