‘Gentlemen, I will expect your complete and personal loyalty in this matter. Complete and personal.’
The aide drew the door closed as Himmler vanished.
The aircraft left Tempelhof in advance of a thunderstorm, and for a while the violence of the flight precluded conversation; but by the time they passed over Stettin, the storm had abated and the aircraft had broken out into clear air below the clouds. As Bethwig stared through the window at the limpid, watery sky and landscape he felt for a moment as if they were giant fish gliding above an aquarium landscape.
Von Braun was silent, brooding, eyes fixed on his window. Bethwig was already regretting that he had left his car behind in Berlin for a complete overhaul. The long drive north would probably have benefited his friend.
‘What happened, Wernher?’
For a while von Braun did not answer. Finally, he glanced across the aisle.
‘They thought I had something to do with Heydrich’s murder.’ Bethwig had to strain to hear him above the noise of the engines. They accused me of all sorts of stupid things that first day, even as far back as those asinine charges levelled against Willy Ley in 1931. I was accused of helping him sell VfR petrol on the black market. But the most serious charge, besides murder, was that I was wasting government money and manpower on personal projects.’
‘The A-Ten?’
Von Braun nodded, ‘It’s a political game, Franz,’ he said with no sign of emotion. ‘All of them – Heydrich, Himmler, and the people they control – would throw this war away to line their own pockets. They care nothing at all for Germany. I spent an hour with Himmler before you arrived.’
Bethwig glanced sharply at his friend but kept quiet.
‘Do you know what this was all about? Why they arrested me and threw me in that hole that passes for a jail cell?’ He took a deep breath. ‘When Heydrich was killed, Himmler saw it as his chance to find out what Heydrich had been involved in. People were sent to Prague for his files, just as that SS officer friend of yours predicted. Himmler discovered just enough to whet his appetite. He had me arrested then. At first they suggested that I co-operate. The interrogator was a nice man, about fifty and very pleasant. Of course, I was too dense to realise what they were after, and told him no. So they taught me. God, how they taught me. It is amazing what a rubber hose can do in the hands of someone who knows how to use it.’
He twisted in his seat to face Bethwig. ‘Franz, you cannot help yourself. They do things to you that you would not believe one human being could do to another. It is more than just the pain, it… it’s… the indignity.’ Von Braun fell silent and turned back to the window.
The plane shuddered in the thick air, and Bethwig’s ears popped. The aircraft was losing altitude for the descent into the Luftwaffe airfield on Peenemunde. Suddenly Bethwig was no longer so certain that people like his father could deal with this new element in the party. Wernher von Braun was a famous scientist, an army employee, the son of a wealthy and influential father, yet they had done this to him with impunity. Even the army had been helpless to stop it; and for the first time the vast power of the SS was borne in upon him. The SS had become a state unto itself. All the normal constitutional and legal guarantees did not apply to their victims. What was it that Himmler had said? ‘We do not need the courts to remind us of our duty.’ Nor did they want them to interfere. It was so much easier to conduct business by tribunal.
The rain had begun again as the Junkers aircraft lined up for its approach. Staring at the long streamers pouring down on the scrub and pine forest of the island, von Braun murmured just above the engine noise:
‘We thought Heydrich was the Devil? We were wrong, Franz. He was merely the Devil’s cub.’
RETRENCHMENT
England – Germany
July 1942 – March 1943
Jan Memling turned the jeep into the narrow street and slowed to examine the buildings on either side, particularly the upper-storey windows. His sergeant was doing likewise from behind a fifty-calibre machine-gun mount. Narrow two-and three-storey buildings with decaying fronts lined each side of the road before debouching several hundred feet further on into a sort of village square. He could even see the remains of a fountain that probably had not worked even before the war.
The jeep idled along, its engine rough. It was badly in need of an overhaul, but he knew there was little likelihood of its getting one any time soon. Memling nursed the pedal to keep the revs up. The silence was unnerving. Both men knew the enemy was there.
‘There,’ he muttered, not moving his lips. ‘Third-storey window, on the right, grey-brick building, two ahead.’ The familiar excitement began to build, and he found himself smiling.
‘Right, sir.’ The sergeant shifted his stance. Memling knew they would wait until the jeep was directly beneath, then lob grenades, supplemented by MG fire from one of the other buildings. It was a classic street ambush and a difficult one to survive. The hard choice was which to hit first – providing you spotted them: the bomb throwers or the machine-gunner?
Memling eased the clutch out until the jeep bucked and threatened to stall. He bent forward as if adjusting the throttle and made a quick survey of the buildings on the left. Just along the road and two opposite he had caught a glimpse of movement in an upper-storey window. He described it to the sergeant and pushed the clutch in.
‘Hang on tight. I’ll dash for the left side of the street. Put a burst through that window. I’ll take the bombers. When I shout, you duck. Understood?’
‘Right you are, sir.’ The sergeant was a combat veteran with two years in the desert, and he did not like street fighting one bit. He wanted to be able to see his enemy, and Memling was well aware of the man’s shortcomings in that regard.
‘Just do as I tell you sergeant and you’ll be all right.’ Memling dared not risk a glance behind. ‘Get ready. On three. One… two… three!’
He yanked the wheel hard left, jammed the accelerator down, and the jeep stalled. The MG exploded into action and Memling was out in an instant, crouching beside the jeep, Sten gun poking over the bonnet; but a figure was already in the window, and the stick grenade flew at them before he could open fire.
‘Duck!’ The sergeant landed on the cobbles beside him as the grenade hit the gun mount and bounced to the road. It rolled under the jeep and went off in a plume of choking red smoke.
A whistle blew, and Memling got up, swearing, as the referee strolled from the doorway behind. ‘Afraid you chaps have bought it. Grenade exploded right under your petrol tank.’ He waved his stick at the window where a grinning commando was leaning out. ‘Good pitch, lad. Good pitch.’
‘South Maling will be wanting him after the war.’ The instructor, a reed-thin colonel with an artificial leg, offered Memling and the sergeant a cigarette. ‘American, ‘I’m afraid. All I could get at the NAAFI.’ The sergeant accepted the light, then saluted and went off” to return the jeep. Memling and the colonel walked along the street which was now full of enlisted men in fatigues setting up for the next practice.
‘Weren’t quite quick enough, were you? Next time, Jerry will be using live bombs,’ the colonel observed. ‘Not like you to mess up that way.’
Memling gave him a quirky smile and thought about the jeep’s stalling. Excuses were never acceptable. He should have foreseen that possibility. ‘If we were perfect every time, there wouldn’t be any sense to having a war. No one would get killed. Then where would we be?’