Vengeance 10

by Joe Poyer

  Bethwig threw his cigarette away and walked out to the service road. Hands in pockets, he stood with his back to the wind looking down the paved surface to the floodlit gantries surrounding the cone-shaped tower that was his V-10. He could see its entire length, including the two sharply raked wings on the third stage. He stood there for a while, feeling no urgency to return; the launch team was thoroughly drilled. He was like a ship’s captain, needed only for emergency decisions. Unless something completely untoward happened, six more hours would see it finished. For a moment he was close to praying.

  Prager was waiting for him in the blockhouse. The Gestapo agent nodded, and a few minutes later Bethwig crossed the room to the lavatory. Prager followed him in and locked the door.

  ‘Walsch has finished with the three traitors. All confessed and have been executed. He will start on the Englishman soon. I won’t go into details, but if he resists for even one hour, then he is made of iron.’

  Bethwig fought down the urge to scream, to swear, to smash his fist against the wall. They were so close, so damned close. Instead, he held himself rigid, under iron control, until he could think coherently once more.

  ‘How long?’

  Prager shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Walsch has nearly exhausted himself. The man is sick and may decide to rest a while.’ Prager shrugged. ‘Every minute he delays makes it that much easier to break the Englishman.’

  ‘But didn’t you tell me that it would still take time to get arrest warrants from Berlin?’

  Prager nodded, his defeat evident now. ‘So I thought. But as soon as he had the first confession, Walsch persuaded Himmler’s office to issue a conditional warrant. Now he only needs the Englishman’s. He would prefer to do it legally.’ Prager shrugged. ‘But believe me, if for some reason Walsch fails to break the Englishman, he will falsify the confession and kill him.’

  Bethwig stooped over a sink and drenched his face with cold water. ‘I just cannot believe that Himmler would allow us to be arrested, at least before the V-Ten is launched. There is too much...’

  Prager pushed himself away from the wall. ‘Stop thinking like that. Logic has no bearing on the matter. Himmler realises that neither the V-Two nor the V-Ten can affect the war any longer; in fact, I doubt he is even aware you are attempting the V-Ten launching.’ When Bethwig stared at him in astonishment, Prager nodded.

  ‘He is much too busy gathering together the final reins of power. As commander in chief of the Replacement Army, as well as Reichsführer and head of the SS, he virtually controls Germany. Why should he spend time worrying about another secret weapon when the previous ones have failed to live up to expectations?’

  ‘But who ...?’

  ‘Kammler.’ Prager answered his unfinished question. ‘General Kammler chose incorrectly when offered a choice between command of the Vengeance weapon battalions and a division on the eastern front last year. It is said that even Himmler’s staff members no longer accept his telephone calls. Kammler is desperate to regain favour before Himmler remembers to hang him from a meat hook for sabotaging the war effort. He believes the V-Ten will save him.’

  Bethwig thought about that a moment. ‘But Kammler was supposed to arrive this afternoon and did not. How much importance can ...?’

  Prager dismissed the objection with an abrupt gesture. ‘Tempelhof was badly bombed. The runways are not usable at the moment, so Kammler is driving to Peenemunde. Walsch found out and alerted friends at Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Roadblocks have been established to delay him. Again, all this is without Himmler’s knowledge; but then, it makes no difference in any case. Walsch is determined that von Braun and you be arrested before the rocket can be launched. Having failed yet again, you will both be discredited and no one will raise a voice in your defence. And do not forget that Walsch also has a hole card - the old charges of diverting war materials to personal ends are still pending against your friend. As soon as the arrests are made, the same charges will be made against you, using the V-Ten as evidence. An SS tribunal will find you guilty, and the sentence will be carried out. Kammler will have no choice but to agree or be charged as an accessory.’

  ‘What about the SS commander here? You said he might be persuaded to intervene?’

  Prager shrugged. ‘He refused. He won’t help Walsch, but he won’t hinder him either. Hauptsturmführer Schulz knows that Kammler may be for the high jump, and wants to make certain he doesn’t go with him.’

  There was no reason, Bethwig knew, to doubt Prager’s analysis. It made sense according to the Byzantine style of thinking that characterised the upper echelons of the SS.

  His mind was working now at a feverish pace. There were two alternatives remaining. He could press ahead with the launch in the hope that it could be completed before Walsch received the warrants, but as soon as the thought was formulated, he saw its hopelessness. If, as Prager said, Walsch was that determined to stop them, he would merely have them arrested and held until the confession and the warrants were forthcoming. The man was a fanatic; he had known that since their first meeting in 1938. Logic did not affect his thinking. Walsch was determined to destroy them, to demonstrate his own power in return for the slights he had suffered, or supposed he had suffered, all these years.

  That left the second alternative. Walsch had to be destroyed. They might then survive long enough at least to complete the launching. After that, nothing else mattered.

  All these years he had built weapons of mass destruction, had worked willingly, joyfully and skilfully to do so, while enjoying the camaraderie that such difficult and complex tasks engendered among teams of specialists. He had seen such weapons move from his imagination to drawing board to test stand. He had participated in and directed operational launchings of the V-2 on London and Antwerp and Brussels with hardly a thought for the thousands of civilians he was killing by remote control. But now the moment had come when he must kill with his own hands, at close range, close enough to see into the eyes of the man he was murdering. The thought was sickening, and Bethwig experienced a rare sensation of futility and indecision.

  Surprisingly enough, Prager did not protest the conclusion. ‘How would you go about it?’ he asked. ‘You couldn’t get near enough to Walsch now, nor could I.’

  A scheme was already forming in Bethwig’s mind. ‘How many SS troops are left on Peenemunde?’ he demanded.

  Prager glanced at him, then shook his head. ‘‘I’m not certain. Perhaps a hundred. Certainly not more.’

  ‘Would they obey orders given by Walsch?’

  ‘No!’ Prager’s answer was emphatic. ‘Not even if the Russians were crossing the River Peene.’

  ‘But they would defend him if he were attacked?’

  ‘Of course ...’

  ‘How many Gestapo agents?’

  ‘Five including myself, plus another eight clerical staff.’

  ‘And where do you stand?’

  ‘With you,’ Prager answered simply.

  ‘Even if it means killing the policemen you work with ...?’

  ‘I am a policeman. They are murderers,’ he answered simply.

  ‘Then we must work fast and finish them before the SS can interfere.’ Bethwig told him then about the Luftwaffe arms. Prager’s eyes lit up at the news, and for the first time the defeated slump was gone from his shoulders. They left the lavatory and drove the eight kilometres to the tracking station on the north shore where Magnus von Braun was at work.

  Memling heard boots moving restlessly outside. He tensed, waiting for the painful flash of light and the shouted commands, which did not come. Perhaps this was more psychological pressure to intensify his fear.

  He had only the haziest idea how much time had passed since his capture. He knew for certain that at least twelve hours had gone by. The woman’s execution had taken place in darkness; the man he knew only as Hans had been shot during the daylight, although the heavy overcast made it impossible to judge the time of day, and the final resistance agent
had been killed in darkness again; there had not even been time to learn his name.

  As he crouched in a corner of the cell he began to examine the possibility of extinction dispassionately. Memling recalled the relief he had felt when he had thought they were going to shoot him. He had been grateful then that he could escape the pain, that it would end simply in the crash of a bullet.

  His parents had insisted on a parochial school in spite of strained circumstances, but the religion the nuns had endeavoured to impress on their charges had been wasted in his case. Even now, he realised, his thoughts did not turn to salvation. He also found it curious that he thought little about Janet ... as if she belonged to another time and had no business in this present. It was, he knew, a result of his intense preoccupation with his own fate and another manifestation of the selfishness that could drive one to madness.

  When he had been returned to his cell after the first glimpse of Gestapo justice, he had made a singular discovery: he was not afraid of dying. He had never been subject to paralysing fear in combat situations, because he knew death, if it came, would be quick. What he did fear, to the point of gibbering nonsense, was pain and torture. When he thought back to the times he had been frightened into panic, it was because torture seemed an imminent possibility. That first time on the train, then in Liege, during the long walking trip to Peenemunde - and now. He knew the pain would be prolonged and excruciating. No matter what he told them, no matter how he begged, Walsch would see that the torture continued until he died.

  The solution to his fear was therefore simple enough. Suicide. Even though they had stripped him naked, it was possible to kill himself - not pleasantly - but possible. A major vein ran close to the surface of the wrist. A knife or sharp edge would be less painful, but one could bite through the vein and bleed to death in less than thirty minutes.

  Under other circumstances the pain involved would have repulsed him, but compared with Gestapo torture techniques, such pain would be minor. Once he had made that decision, the fear that paralysed him, that had nearly driven him insane in the darkness, receded to a controllable level. And as it did he began to think about alternatives.

  Each time they had come for him, one guard had swung the door open and the other had entered to haul him out, clearly expecting no resistance. In fact, the one guard had remained in the doorway the last time, looking off down the hall as he joked with someone out of sight. Death in action, however feeble, was preferable to gnawing through one’s own wrist, Memling decided.

  A second pair of boots stopped outside, and a key was jammed into the lock. It happened so quickly that Memling barely had time to crouch into position against the far wall before the door swung open. He anticipated the blast of light and shut his eyes tightly. A hand grabbed his left arm and yanked him up, but Memling was limp and the man swore under his breath and reached for his other arm. As his knees came under him Memling straightened abruptly and shot his left arm out straight to break the soldier’s grip. As it reached full extension he doubled his fist into a hammer and whipped it straight back and down to smash into the man’s testicles. The blow was so sudden and powerful that it paralysed him for the vital second needed to spin, flip the holster open, and extract the heavy Walther pistol.

  Memling had thought each move through during the endless hours, rehearsing them over and over in his mind. His thumb sought the safety catch and shoved up as he turned, crouching and pushing the agonised soldier out of his way. A startled exclamation from the guard in the corridor gave him the last bits of necessary data. He fired once, blindly, lining up by instinct and sound. The blast of the nine-millimetre cartridge was deafening, drowning the results, but Memling was already moving sideways. He parted his eyelids the tiniest fraction to focus on the darkness inside the door. Even so, the glare was intensely painful after hours in pitch blackness, and he could distinguish nothing more than a blotch of light as the echoes died inside the cell. There was no answering shot. He covered his eyes with his left hand and peered through slitted fingers. Legs sprawled across the doorway, and shouting could be heard somewhere in the building. Feet pounded towards the cell-block.

  Memling jumped to the door and dragged the body inside. A scraping sound told him that the guard’s machine pistol was still slung over his shoulder. The Walther P-38 held eight cartridges, one now gone. There was no time to check the magazine, but no experienced soldier would keep his weapon less than fully loaded. He eased to the cell door, extended the pistol into the corridor, and fired six shots, three in either direction. A scream told him he had scored at least one hit, and a door slammed. There was now one cartridge left for himself.

  Jan pulled the door partly shut. In the near darkness his sensitive eyes could see enough to strip the machine pistol from the dead man’s shoulder. The guard he had struck was trying to get to his knees, holding his groin with one hand, scrabbling at the wall with the other.

  Memling kicked him down again and in the shaft of light, saw that it was the same unterscharführer who had shot the three resistance people so brutally. Without thinking, Memling jammed the muzzle of the machine pistol against the man’s throat.

  ‘You bastard,’ he snarled in English, pushing on the gun so that the man gagged. The SS officer tried to plead with him. There was another shout in the corridor, a door was slammed open, and a burst of automatic rifle fire ricocheted the length of the hall. Memling stared into the man’s eyes and pulled the trigger once. The body convulsed, and hands tore at the ruined throat.

  Someone had turned out the corridor lights, but his eyes were still hypersensitive, and he could see clearly the two men crawling towards his cell from the courtyard entrance. He waited until both were well along, then fired two short bursts that struck them head-on. A long period of silence followed. Memling slumped against the wall, unmindful of the icy stone on his naked skin. He drew a deep breath, revelling in the loss of his terror. The time had come, he knew, but at least he had accounted for four, possibly five, Nazis, and he knew then how the two Poles he had met in northern Germany an endless time ago had felt. He was ready to die now. Memling took a deep breath and bit down on the pistol barrel.

  An explosion whip-cracked through the building. Automatic weapons erupted and there were more explosions, until the noise and concussions drove him to bury his head in his arms.

  It took Magnus von Braun an hour to assemble four former frontline soldiers at the radio direction station. They came as quickly as they could be detached from their duties, and replacements found, without incurring the suspicions of the SS guards. The four men - one oberfeldwebel, or sergeant major, one stabsgefreiter, or corporal, and two grenadiers - were members of the Versuchskommando Nord, or Test Command North, technically a combat unit assigned to guard the Peenemunde installation, but in reality a device used several years before to assemble six companies of technically trained men to ease the severe manpower shortage. Oberfeldwebel Harmutt Sussmann had served for three years in the Twenty-first Division of the Africa Corps. Wounded at Kasserine Pass, he was among the last to be evacuated from North Africa. After recovering from wounds, he had been assigned to command the VKN, most of which had now been reassigned elsewhere; only a few dozen from a ration strength of one thousand remained at Peenemunde. Sussmann’s eyes glowed when his assignment was explained, and when they were assembled, Magnus left to telephone the news to his brother.

  With a few rapid strokes Sussmann sketched the location of Gestapo headquarters in relation to the village of Trassenheide.

  ‘As you see, the building is separated from the town proper by the sand dunes,’ he explained in gruff Bavarian accents. ‘They are not high but provide the privacy the Gestapo requires for its activities.’ Sussmann stared at them and singled out Prager.

  ‘Lay out the interior,’ he snapped. There was a distinctly hostile tone to his voice, which Prager wisely ignored.

  The building is little more than a large box, thirty metres on a side,’ he began. ‘The front po
rtion is devoted to offices and administrative areas. The files are kept in this locked room here. There are six cells, all three by three metres, on either side of this hall which runs like so.’ He sketched a narrow corridor leading from the centre front to back. ‘There are two rooms on the north wall for interrogation, and all are equipped as physicians’ examination rooms.

  ‘There is a garrison of eight SS and four Gestapo officers. The SS are part of a special unit attached to Division Three. They take their orders from Walsch and not from Kammler’s command. There are also eight more employees, none of them armed, and most will have been sent home for the night. The building is constructed of cement blocks. The interior is plyboard. The cells are reinforced ply and thoroughly sound- and light-proofed. In the rear, separated from the sea by a wall three metres high, is the courtyard where the resistance traitors were executed.’

  ‘Where will we find Walsch?’

  ‘We?’ Prager and Sussmann both asked simultaneously. Bethwig nodded. ‘We.’

  ‘You can’t go,’ Sussmann told him flatly.

  Bethwig leaned across the table. ‘No one has a better right than I do. I intend to kill Walsch myself.’

  Sussmann and Prager exchanged glances, and Prager, knowing why Bethwig felt as he did, nodded with reluctance. Sussmann saw the nod and started to protest, but Magnus von Braun, who had returned a few moments earlier, also agreed. Sussmann gave in and signed Prager to continue. The Gestapo officer placed a fingertip on a room off the administrative area.

  ‘Walsch will either be here or in one of the interrogation rooms with the prisoner.’

  ‘Which is the Englishman’s cell?’

  ‘The middle one, to the left or south side of the corridor.’ Bethwig glanced at each man in turn. ‘You know what we have to do and why,’ he said simply. ‘Let’s get started.’

  The fitful snow had stopped by the time the six men drove up to the gate of the deserted Luftwaffe test area known as Peenemunde West, on the north-west tip of the island. A bored and half-frozen sentry was on duty at the dilapidated barrier, one of the few remaining Luftwaffe personnel on the island. He was in no mood to question Bethwig’s demand for admittance, and they drove on past rows of empty buildings that seemed like evil mountains in the furtive moonlight.