Bethwig started up, but Prager yanked him back and threw another grenade to make certain the courtyard was clear. After it exploded, Prager swung himself to the top of the wall, inched his head up, then swarmed over. Bethwig followed, shouting uncontrollably with excitement.
A man in black uniform lay dead. That made three. Prager held up a hand and edged towards the open doorway. From the front of the building sustained gunfire shattered the night. Sussmann’s rush had not carried the building as planned. Could they obtain reinforcements? he wondered. An explosion came, sharp and crisp against the wind – but from outside, not inside the building.
‘We’ve got to move!’ Prager shouted, and Bethwig peered along the dark corridor. He could just make out a partly opened door and, with a jolt, realised it was the cell in which he had been held the previous autumn. Two bodies were huddled on the floor of the hall. Prager jerked a thumb at them.
‘We didn’t kill those two. Who did?’
Bethwig started to shake his head, then smiled in sudden understanding. ‘Inside! Is that Jan Memling?’ he shouted down the corridor. ‘This is Franz Bethwig. Do you remember me?’
‘Franz Bethwig?’ a voice called back doubtfully.
‘Yes, Wernher von Braun’s friend.’ Bethwig had switched to rusty English and was forced to search his memory for the proper words.
‘We were at Hotel…’
‘I know who you are. What do you want?’
The Englishman must have armed himself somehow. That could be the only explanation for the two dead men in the corridor. ‘How many have you…’ He could not find the English word he wanted and awkwardly substituted one in German: ‘…. töten?’
‘The hell with you, you bloody bastards!’
‘God damn you for a fool, Memling.’ Bethwig was so angry he began to stutter. ‘We must… we need to know how many… remain in… are left, you damned ass.’
The English swear-words must have convinced him, for Memling answered after a moment. ‘Four,’ he shouted. ‘What the hell is going on?’
‘There is not time…’ Bethwig began, then switched to German. ‘There is no time to explain. Do you have a weapon?’
Memling hesitated. It made no sense… but then nothing had for as long as he could remember. ‘Yes,’ he shouted back.
‘Some of us are attacking the front. We must come in through the back. Do not shoot us.’
Bethwig did not wait for an answer but raised his machine pistol over his head and stepped into the corridor. Prager lunged for him, but Bethwig twisted away and started forward, heart in his throat, skin crawling, as he waited for the bullet’s impact. After a few steps he saw a hint of movement behind the partly opened door.
‘If you kill me,’ Bethwig blurted in sudden fright, ‘you will lose your last chance.’
He was beside the cell door now, facing a crouched figure nearly invisible in the shadows. He pushed the door wider. The fear was as evident in Memling’s eyes as he knew it was in his own, but the machine pistol the Englishman held was rock-steady and aimed at his mid-section.
‘Get some clothes and come help,’ Bethwig said quietly, and put out a hand to halt Prager as he came up behind.
‘The Englishman?’ Prager asked, and Bethwig nodded.
Prager stared at Bethwig, then went back down the corridor and removed boots, jacket, and trousers from one of the dead soldiers, tossing the clothes to Memling who began to pull them on as if in a daze. When Prager handed him two stick grenades, Memling clutched them a moment, then shook himself and braced his shoulders.
‘How many are left?’ he demanded in excellent German.
‘Possibly eight,’ Prager answered. ‘I think we should go around the side and…’
‘I hold a commission as major in the Royal Marines.’ Memling’s voice was crisp. ‘This is your show, but I advise you to go through that door and fast.’
Prager and Bethwig exchanged glances, and Prager nodded. ‘Tell us what to do.’
‘How are your men disposed in front?’ Memling demanded as he moved down the corridor towards the door, keeping well to one side.
‘Head-on attack by two men and one more on each flank. Grenades and machine pistols.’
That explained the explosions, then, Memling thought. He had not the slightest idea what was going on, and there was no time to find out. Already the volume of gunfire was slackening. He waved the two Germans to either side of the door; there wasn’t even time to ask if either had combat experience. Jan tried the door, and when it gave, a rictus of anger slashed across his face. He slung the machine pistol, twisted the screw covers from the grenades, and pulled their igniting cords.
‘Damned careless of them,’ Prager grunted as he threw the door open.
Memling stepped forward and lobbed the grenades with easy underhand throws, aiming to bounce them from the walls so that the blasts would fill the long room with shrapnel. He hesitated long enough to see them strike walls; a white face turned towards him, the mouth forming a warning scream; a man in a suit paused in the midst of cranking a field telephone. Then Memling slammed the door. Twin blasts vomited through the front of the building and bulged the iron-reinforced door from its frame. It took the three of them to wrench it open.
The room was a shambles. The cement-block wall had contained the explosion and turned the blast inward, leaving the walls and every piece of furniture gouged and splintered by shrapnel. There were five bloody, torn bodies, one of them barely recognisable as a woman’s. He had once seen an American Sherman tank in Sicily. A grenade had been dropped down the hatch, and the shrapnel had spun and ricocheted around the interior, so that the crew had looked as if they had been blasted over and over with buckshot. These bodies looked the same.
A groan came from a small room off to one side, and Memling kicked the shattered door wide, almost losing one of his too-big boots in the process. Walsch was slumped on the floor. Blood ran down one side of his face, and his arm dangled at a strange angle as he tried to get to his feet. A small Mauser pistol lay on the floor nearby. From behind, Prager was shouting through a smashed window that they had succeeded. The wind howled in sudden fury, and papers flurried.
Bethwig pushed past him into the room.
‘He’s mine,’ he said, swallowing hard to contain the bitter sickness. ‘He killed my father and…’ He could go no further. Walsch looked up and unexpectedly laughed in genuine mirth.
‘And the little whore. Please do not forget her. The Reichsführer gave her to my charge. So, you will kill me now,’ he choked. ‘You must kill me.’ Walsch slumped but recovered himself and stared up at Bethwig. ‘You see, I have a cancer in the lungs. I will die soon in any event. You will spare me the pain.’ He tried to laugh again but collapsed on the floor instead, coughing harshly.
Bethwig raised the pistol. ‘I don’t give a damn for your cancer, you sadistic bastard,’ he screamed.
Memling caught his arm. ‘Have you ever killed before?’ he demanded. ‘Shot a man to death in cold blood?’
Bethwig shook his head. ‘This isn’t a man, he’s… he is an animal.’
‘Then let me do it. It’s not an easy thing to live with.’
Bethwig hesitated just as Sussmann staggered in. Walsch read the uncertainty in Bethwig’s eyes and tried to laugh at him. He knew.
‘It will live with you for ever,’ Memling warned.