Memling hesitated. So far he had managed to pull the SS away to the north as Bethwig had asked. He could head into the southern part of the island and disappear in the marshes and thick forest, and it would take them days to find him. What the hell was he doing here, then? Even if he could make contact with the submarine, there was only the faintest chance they would get to him before the SS. Wasn’t it better to wait a few days, until the uproar died, then find a way to Sweden? He had done it once ... But he was grasping at straws. The SS knew who he was. A few Gestapo personnel killed, a company of SS shot up, would not deter them in the slightest. There was an old score to settle, and he had only added to their anger in the past two hours. Nothing had changed. There was still no other way out.
He realised then that there was something heady about mastering one’s fear, something that made suicide a bit too attractive, and sobered, he stepped around the doorway. Two black-uniformed men leaned over a desk. The operator’s back was to Memling as he hunched over a microphone. A fourth man, an elderly officer with stooped shoulders, looked up as he appeared, his expression changing from annoyance to shock as the muzzle of the MP40 came towards him. He clawed for the pistol at his belt, too late. Memling fired a single burst as he swept the pistol diagonally. The officer collapsed, and the two others hunched over and fell together as the man at the radio slid out of his chair. The room was large, with two entrances - which accounted for the two doors. There was no one else inside, and, without hesitating, Memling knelt and lined up on the entrance doors. The guard burst into the corridor looking wildly in both directions. Memling killed the man with a single shot. Behind him the radio crackled with tinny static.
Jan checked the bodies at the desk. All were dead. He dragged the sentry into the radio room and took a few moments to replace his overlarge boots and trousers. He then stepped outside the building to listen but heard only the steady ululation of wind through the trees and the booming surf on the beach a few hundred metres distant. He glanced at the sky. The cloud cover was almost total now, and the wind seemed to be mounting. He had no idea what weather conditions were required to launch a rocket as large as the V-10, but he doubted if anything short of a full gale would stop Bethwig and von Braun tonight.
Returning to the radio room, he collected weapons and ammunition, moved the chair to face the door, and tuned the radio to the proper frequency. He had decided to give the radio fifteen minutes, and that was cutting it fine. He pressed the microphone switch and began to transmit his call sign.
Stunned silence held the command centre. Every eye had gone automatically to the speaker mounted above the status board.
Wernher von Braun stared at his microphone, then reached a hand forward, as if in a dream, and pressed the transmit bar. ‘Franz ...?’
‘The main control board is showing every indicator at positive.’ Bethwig’s voice rumbled from the speaker. ‘My chronometer has T-minus-fifteen minutes,’ he added, as if prompting a response.
‘T-minus-fifteen minutes,’ von Braun repeated, and looked about the room helplessly. Everyone was staring at him.
‘I have a light indicating fuelling completed and pressure holding.’ Bethwig’s voice came through the speaker again. ‘What is the status of the count? I foresee no further holds.’ His calm, matter-of-fact voice eased von Braun from his daze; but before he could respond, the SS officer supervising the launch pushed through the crowd around his console.
He thumbed the transmit button twice, hoping that Bethwig would pick up on the warning, before the sturmbannführer grabbed his arm.
‘That voice, it belongs to Herr Doktor Bethwig!’ The man was practically screaming. ‘Where is he?’
Von Braun jerked his arm away. ‘Obviously inside the rocket, you ass! Get away from here! You are interfering!’
The SS officer was livid. ‘Get him out of there, immediately! What are you fools up to? I can have you all shot!’
He grabbed for the microphone, but von Braun leapt to his feet and shoved the major so hard he tripped and fell. Von Braun yanked him up. ‘I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,’ he grated, shaking the man like a rag doll. ‘You will not interfere again or I will kill you with my bare hands, do you understand? It is too late to stop now. Too late to stop the launching. Go telephone your boss Kammler for instructions.’
Von Braun flung him away and turned to the console as the major recovered his balance and clawed at his holstered pistol. A technician hit him with a wrench, relieved him of his pistol, and, grinning, dragged the inert body into a corner. Other technicians leapt for the SS guards posted around the room and took their weapons. Von Braun picked up the microphone.
‘Franz, what in hell do you think you are doing?’
Bethwig’s laugh floated from the speaker. ‘Care to change places with me, Wernher?’
‘You have to be mad. You are committing suicide!’
‘Of course. And how better? There is nothing left for me but this. Please, old friend, it’s much too late for recriminations. We both know there is nothing for it but to continue. There will be plenty of time to talk later.’
Someone pushed a note at von Braun and he spared a second to glance at it. ‘My God,’ he muttered, forgetting the live microphone. His voice bounced from the speaker, and everyone in the room turned to him.
‘Peenemunde is under attack,’ he announced, struggling to control his voice. ‘The fuel storage area in Peenemunde West has been blown up. An SS detachment was ambushed.’ This last brought a loud cheer, and the captured guards exchanged apprehensive glances.
Bethwig’s voice broke in on the babble in the control room. ‘Peenemunde is not under attack, at least not by the Russians. A friend is causing a diversion to keep the SS too busy to interfere with this launching. This is our last chance. Get on with it!’
For a single instant every eye was on the loudspeaker, then, as if of one mind, they set to work again; each technician present understood without explanation. Although he too understood and would gladly have traded places, von Braun shook his head in despair and announced the revised mission objective. Within minutes those of the launch crews whose tasks were completed began filtering into the empty VIP gallery, their excitement plain. A hoarse cheering broke out, all fear was forgotten.
The firing control officer announced T-minus-five minutes, and von Braun ticked the final entry in his log and relinquished control. His job was finished; the FCO had charge now. He watched the activity in the room with the detachment of someone far removed in time and space. For a moment he felt as if he had never had any part of the gruelling course that over the past fourteen years had led inevitably to this moment. And then the sensation was gone, and he realised they had done it. Now they would prove that man could travel to the moon. For just an instant there was a flood of bitter jealousy at the thought that he would never be first, but then he realised that for all his hopes and longing he had never really expected that he would be. Had Franz, he wondered, ever doubted? Had he ever thought, all those years ago, what this pact they had made with the Devil would cost? Had he suspected but gone ahead anyway, knowing that this was the only chance? Bethwig had given everything of value for this dream, far more than he, and now he was about to give his life.
The FCO’s voice broke in to announce T-minus-three minutes. Von Braun wished that he could talk to Franz now in these last few moments before the launching, but it was impossible. He could hear Bethwig’s calm, unemotional voice relaying an endless series of data readings to the FCO’s staff to confirm the telemetered readings. Already he could see the repeater dials on his console flickering. Telemetry had always been one of their biggest problems. Franz has chosen the correct course, he thought. Perhaps the Allies would want their services after this damned war ended. If they were still alive, that is, and the sight of the unconscious SS officer in the corner made him doubt that. Even so, no matter what, they would never again have the complete control they had here. If ever again they or anyone else was offered a similar opportunity, the bureaucrats would hound them to an extent that would make Heydrich’s and Himmler’s interference seem like child’s play.
There was so much to learn, to accomplish, so much that could be given back to humanity, but the fools and the bureaucrats would never understand that. Von Braun put his face in his hands and sobbed, as much for the loss of their dream as for his friend going willingly to his death.
Bethwig was relaxed in the couch, ignoring for the moment the constant stream of chatter flowing from the earphones, and hugging the idea to himself as the elapsed mission time chronometer hand wound down. With less than two minutes remaining, there was no way to stop him. Everything necessary to launch the rocket was under his control. He glanced again at the control panel; all lights were glowing green except for the launch sequencer and the first-stage turbine pumps. In another thirty seconds they would be started and those lights would turn from amber to green.
His thoughts turned to the Englishman Memling. He too had agreed to give his life for one final chance at a dream. Why? Was it the same demon that drove him? But how could it be? he wondered. Memling had experimented with rockets in an amateurish way, as they all had, but certainly such limited experience could not ... or could it? For a moment the frustration and hope, the lack of money and food, and the camaraderie he had experienced as a member of the VfR during the primitive Rakentenflugplatz days were more real than the smell of the pressure suit or the glowing control panel above him. And he understood. The demon was the same.
Had they made a pact with the Devil as they so often joked, or had they merely recognised its existence in themselves? Was there any difference between Hitler and Himmler with their dreams of a world empire led by the Aryan race, or between himself and Himmler? He had his own dream as well. And each of them damned the cost, both human and economic, while citing the greater good that would result.
Intentionally or not, he had sold his father and Inge, Memling, Prager, and all the rest, even Wernher, to fulfil his ambition. Bethwig struggled to turn his mind from that line of thought as his elation faded and he realised that he was no better than Himmler or Heydrich after all.
The grinding vibration of the first-stage turbine pumps whining into operation far below brought him back to present awareness. Automatically his gloved hand went to the arming switch, lifted the protective tab, and pressed down. A voice sounded in his earphones, but he did not understand the words.
The chronometer stood at exactly T-minus-sixty seconds. Deep in the instrument bay among the tangle of painfully assembled resistors and transformers and wires and meters, a series of rotary switches were turning in final sequence. Franz watched their progress as lights changed from red to green on the status board to his left; the hydrogen peroxide generator tanks being charged, the auxiliary valves snapping open and the turbine pumps whirring to provide on-board power and pump the metric tons of liquid oxygen and alcohol towards the twenty-one engines of the first stage. Other valves flew open as the fuel and LOX coursed through an intricate net of piping which frosted instantly as damp night air condensed on frigid metal. The same rotary switches sent signals coursing through kilometres of copper cable to the command centre where technicians pressed buttons and turned switches as lights winked from red to green and the umbilical cables that were Bethwig’s last connection with Earth fell away and the spider-work gantries pulled back. Another light prompted a technician to start the massive pumps that pulled sea water through an inlet fifty metres under the Baltic and five kilometres of pipes before emerging in high-pressure sprays to cool and protect the tunnel and flame baffles channelling the near plasma blast of the twenty-one rocket engines into the sky half a kilometre away.
The vibration was growing, and Bethwig was frightened, not of his own death but of what he might have paid to achieve it.
Jan Memling found the path leading to the ridge, which, though less than ten metres high, offered a clear, uninterrupted view of the launching site. He sat down and laid the machine pistol across his knees, too exhausted to run farther. He found the crumpled packet of cigarettes Bethwig had given him. There was one left, and he lit it, shielding the match with both hands.
Memling, forgetting how cold, exhausted and hungry he was, stared at the floodlit space - it was as large as a dozen football grounds - a kilometre away. The gantries had been pulled aside, and the rocket towered against the sky in the full glare of massed searchlights. Its polished fuselage, painted with red stripes, gleamed and scintillated through some atmospheric trick. He wondered if Bethwig had been able to carry through with his plan to board the rocket in place of the pilot, but he did not wonder why.
Something flickered along the rocket’s side, and he found himself wishing for a pair of field glasses. A red flare arced above the area, and he guessed the launching was imminent. He glanced at the dead SS guard’s watch, but somewhere in the past hour the crystal had smashed. The hands were stopped at 11.25, about the time he had shot the SS people in the barracks. It had all been wasted effort in any event as he had been unable to contact the submarine.
A mist rose around the base of the rocket, and he drew on the cigarette, watching with narrowed eyes as if that would help him to see better.
Wernher von Braun watched the clock hand begin its final sweep. The babble in the command centre had risen to its highest level, as always in these final seconds - the result both of excitement and a last torrent of reports. He saw several lights change from green to red indicating problems and just as quickly switch back again. Bethwig was overriding them as they occurred, and he closed his eyes a moment in fear. One light had remained red for several seconds now. It flamed beneath the gauge indicating that pressure in the oxidiser system had failed. The flight control officer was calling over and over into the microphone, trying to bring that fault to his attention, but either Bethwig was ignoring him or the communications link had failed. Then he realised that Bethwig could not have missed the indicator on his own board. He was simply overriding the system to stop the FOC from calling a launch hold.