Vengeance 10

Bethwig groped for a chair. Everything he had planned for, worked for, in spite of the ignorance and stupidity emanating from Berlin all these years, was crashing in a heap about him, owing again entirely to the same stupid, ignorant, grasping fools who put their own greed and desire for power ahead of the Reich. People like Walsch, Kammler, Heydrich, Himmler — he raged silently — they were the ones who had betrayed the Führer and Germany, and even now, in the fatherland’s death struggles, they were doing their best to twist the knife.

The agent pulled a chair around to face Bethwig. ‘Look here, I said I would help and I will. Walsch will not finish the interrogations before tonight. Even if one breaks, he still must break the others. One man’s testimony will not be sufficient to arrest someone of your stature. But even then, it will take time to get a warrant for your arrest. The teletype transmission lines have been broken. He will have to telephone to Berlin, persuade someone in Himmler’s office, if not the Reichsführer himself, to issue the warrants, and then they must be flown or driven here before he dare move. He cannot approach Kammler, as the general is counting on the V-Ten to restore his prestige with the Führer. If the rocket is successful, Walsch will not be able to touch you, so he must do so before it is launched.’

Bethwig took a deep breath. When he lit the cigarette offered by the Gestapo agent, his hands were rock-steady. Now that the first shock had passed, he was thinking clearly once more.

‘All right. You have obviously had time to think this through. What do you suggest?’

The agent lit his own cigarette and blew a stream of smoke towards the windows. ‘You must launch the rocket well in advance of the announced time.’

‘Impossible! The sequence is extremely complex and is dependent upon the completion of parallel activities. It can be delayed but not accelerated by more than a few minutes.’

The agent did not waste time arguing. ‘Then you must go about your business as usual. I’ll have a word with Hauptsturmführer Schulz who commands the SS security unit in Kammler’s absence. He and Walsch are at odds, and I am certain he’ll be most happy to make Walsch look bad. He is also in line for the position of aide to Kammler, which would mean a promotion and fat graft before the war ends.’

Bethwig nodded in an absent fashion, then glanced up sharply. ‘Look here, what’s your name?’

‘Prager, sir. Thomas Prager.’

Bethwig studied him a moment, noticing for the first time the thin scar that ran from his hairline, then down his left cheek, to end beneath his chin. Prager stood hunched slightly to one side. ‘Why are you doing this, Prager?’

The Gestapo agent looked momentarily abashed. ‘Until a year and a half ago I was a front-line soldier and proud to be so. Then I was wounded in Sicily. When I recovered, the army discharged me as unfit. My father had been a policeman in Hamburg before the war. He was killed in a bombing raid in 1943, but he still had many friends there. They needed men, and I was hired. A few months later I was transferred to the political police.’

His expression became angry, and he shook his head. ‘I don’t like what they have done to Germany, or the German people. I joined the Hitler Youth and the party at thirteen. But it’s all changed since the war. All the goals have been forgotten, all the good things. Now everyone is out for himself. The worst are the SS. After those army fools tried to murder the Führer, we were given lists of people to arrest. Most had nothing to do with the plotters. They were people who knew someone or had once been friends of, or even went to school with, others who had been arrested. Every name squeezed out by the Gestapo was added to the list and that person arrested. Trials were a farce. The accused were rarely allowed to defend themselves. Those who were not sentenced to death were sent to concentration camps. I escorted many such, and I can tell you that when the war ends, the German people will see how we have been disgraced.’

Prager was silent a moment. ‘Perhaps, if you succeed in this attempt to travel to the moon, you will show that not all Germans are like the SS, that we are still capable of great accomplishments.’

He stopped abruptly then, as if embarrassed, and went to the window. ‘Will this weather interfere with the launching?’

Bethwig stared after him, wondering how many other people there were like him in Germany. If they had only revealed themselves earlier, perhaps… But then, Himmler was a shrewd enough judge of human nature to understand that. His answer to such a threat was the systematic terror that his SS and Gestapo had unleashed. Why had the Führer not stopped him? he wondered; and then the old rumours of Heydrich’s files filtered back. Perhaps they are true, he thought. Even the Führer could be afraid of such men.’

‘Why did the Englishman come to Peenemunde?’