Vengeance 10 (4 page)

Along with his hopes for a degree, he gave up his activities in the British Interplanetary Society. No more than a few amateur scientists were scattered among the usual collection of astrology buffs, fantasists, and spiritualists attracted by the grandiose name, but those few were dedicated to a dream, an overpowering vision of man’s future in the vast reaches of the universe. Memling was gathered in during his first year at college. His scientific training stood him and the society in good stead but did not inhibit his dreams of space, the frozen, sun-blasted lunar plains, the wonders of multistar planetary systems, or the heights to which man might aspire once freed from the green but confining hills of Earth. Until his father died, every moment and penny Memling could spare were dedicated to one or another of the BIS projects. Then the demands of his mother’s failing health and a succession of part-time jobs cut short these activities, and he was left with only the pages of science-fiction magazines to sustain his dreams.

One of his father’s oldest customers was Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair. After the old man’s death, the admiral visited the house to express his sympathies and, on leaving, pressed a card into Jan’s hand and urged him to call at his club. It was a month or better before he screwed up sufficient courage to do so. His reception was exactly as expected; ignored by the members and treated with disdain by the servants, he was on the verge of leaving when Sir Hugh appeared. He led Jan into a private parlour and opened to him a new vista that he had never imagined to exist outside the novels of Somerset Maugham and Joseph Conrad.

‘I have asked you to come and talk with me so that you can consider whether or not you would be willing to serve your country.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ Jan was completely confused.

The admiral smiled. ‘I have just begun the direction of a certain department in the government that has to do with intelligence matters. The old-fashioned word is spying. I would like you to join that department.’

‘Become a... a... spy?’ He brushed a hand across his forehead, an old gesture signifying his confusion. ‘I don’t know anything about being a spy.’

The admiral shrugged. ‘Neither do I. Perhaps we could learn together.’

‘But why me, sir? I don’t see that I have any qualifications ...’

The admiral held up a hand. ‘My boy, the days when individuals might ferret out the secrets of a mighty nation as did Davies and Carruthers are fast coming to an end. Today spying, a distasteful but accurate term, is a huge business and takes a good many people to make it go. Now, you take our own spies, of which, I might add, there are more than a few. For the most part they are professional enough. My predecessor saw to that. But since 1918 we’ve tended to go a bit slack. You have a technical education. If ever we must fight another war, that kind of background will be invaluable. Great Britain requires something more than adventurers and titled younger sons. You speak Flemish and French like a native, and I am certain you can improve your German. I was a good customer and, I like to think, friend of your father’s, and so I had a chance to watch you develop over the years. I have a feeling you will do a creditable job on His Majesty’s Service.’

And Jan Memling, thus rescued from a dreary succession of menial posts, began his training two weeks later. He had skills the admiral wanted, but apparently no one else did. When Sinclair died the following year, a new man, Stewart Graham Menzies, also an outsider but of another kind, took the unofficial title of ’C’. If he was aware of Memling’s problems, he was far too busy fighting his own battle against the ‘old boys’ to do anything about them.

The service was prepared to tolerate Menzies - and to a lesser extent, people like Memling - as long as they remained quietly out of sight. He should have realised, he thought with bitterness, that he would never persuade Englesby. And by mentioning space travel and moon rockets, he had given him just the excuse he needed to justify dismissing everything Memling had to say as too fantastic to be believed. He clenched his fists in a spasm of involuntary embarrassment at the memory. How in the name of God had he expected Englesby of all people to understand the promise of space travel?

Memling must have fallen asleep because he woke with a start when the front door closed. Footsteps sounded in the bare hall, and he turned to see Margot standing in the doorway, a frightened look on her face.

‘Oh, Jan! You gave me a start. I didn’t know you were back.’ Margot sighed in relief, took off her coat, and flung it over a chair. She was a tall, lithe girl of twenty-three with soft brown hair, a fair English face, and a figure that reminded Memling of the Wyeth illustration of Maid Marion. She was wearing an old but neatly-pressed wool skirt, a sweater, and sensible shoes. The sight of her caused the breath to catch in Memling’s throat.

‘It’s so cold in here. You’ve let the fire go out,’ she reproached him, but with a smile and a kiss. Then she knelt and placed several lumps on the grate and blew up the embers with the old leather bellows until bluish flames were licking the undersides of the coals.

‘You’re back,’ she repeated fondly. ‘Have you had anything to eat?’ When he nodded, she shook her head. ‘It couldn’t have been much. There was only a bit of ham and some cheese.’

Memling was comfortably warm and relaxed, and to have her in the house made everything complete. The Westminster clock on the mantelpiece chimed seven, and he found he had not the slightest inclination to move. Margot went into the kitchen, and he could hear her filling the kettle. She was back in a few minutes with a tray, which she placed beside him. The light scent she wore drifted about the room, and he caught her hand and pressed it to his lips.

‘Tea and biscuits,’ she said archly, disengaging her hand. ‘And I must leave in a few moments. Mum thinks I’ve just popped across to check the gas.’ She drew up a cushion and perched before the fire to pour his tea. ‘Tell me about your trip. Was Manchester cold and snowy?’

With a start, he was aware again of the necessary gap between them. So much had happened in the past two weeks that she could never know. Memling sipped his tea before answering.

‘A bit of both,’ he replied, hoping the indefinite answer would serve. ‘Very depressing this time of year.’

‘At any time of the year, I should think.’

He smiled again and took the biscuit she offered. ‘My luggage was lost somewhere along the line. I brought you a gift but it was in my suitcase. ‘I’m to call at Euston tomorrow to see if it has been located.’

‘What a bother, but I suppose I must wait. Did you learn anything that will be of any use in your position?’

Memling hesitated before answering. He and Margot had grown up together in adjoining houses. When they were younger, his father had even installed a small gate for them in the fence separating the two gardens. There had always been the understanding they would marry some day, and he had been more than content to accept it as so. Margot was a very attractive and intelligent young woman, and he felt they would be very happy, but lately she had shown a tendency to push. Gently of course, as she did everything. But at times like this he wondered if the tendency might not intensify after they were married. And he wondered how she would react when he finally told her what he really did for a living. As far as she knew, he had just been promoted from the quality control department of a small electrical appliance manufacturing concern. They had given him that cover, he reflected bitterly, as he did not have sufficient polish for the Foreign Office, the usual sinecure for MI6 personnel.

‘I doubt it,’ he answered truthfully enough. ‘Anyway, as things are slow, they’ve given me a fortnight’s leave.’

Margot sat up suddenly, alarmed. ‘With pay, I hope?’ Both were all too familiar with the implications of a sudden leave without pay in these times.

He nodded, chuckling at her expression. ‘I’ve told you often enough, ‘I’m much too valuable an employee for them to do without.’ At least part of that was true, he thought. Once taken into the fold, you were with them for ever. No one ever quit or was dismissed; in extreme cases, you would be shuttled into a safe job somewhere in one of the ministries where you could be watched.

‘You work long enough hours, at any rate.’ But her expression was still troubled.

The clock struck the half-hour, and Margot stood up reluctantly. ‘I’d better go. Mum will be expecting her cup of tea and a read before bedtime. You know how cranky she gets if anything disturbs her routine.’

Memling helped her into her coat and, as she reached for the latch, took her hand and pulled her to him. ‘I’ll wait outside the store tomorrow evening and walk you home, all right?’

Margot nodded, smiling, then threw her arms around him with sudden passion. He pressed her body to his, holding her, experiencing the all-too-familiar ache. They had waited so damned long. She crushed her mouth to his for a long moment, then pushed away shakily. ‘‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ she whispered. ‘Things go so much better.’

Memling knew Margot was referring to her mother, a bedridden arthritic who would try - deliberately - the patience of a saint. They would have been married three years ago if it hadn’t been for the old woman.

Margot gave him a quick, final kiss and ran lightly down the path as he remained in the shadows. The block of semi-detacheds was full of elderly gossips, and Mrs Cummings’s only remaining delight was the long whispered conversations with her cronies. If the gossip concerned her daughter, Margot’s life became a hell for days. Thinking of the predatory presence propped up in the front room next door, waiting for her daughter’s return, he found it hard to reconcile the nasty old crone with his memory of the sweet-voiced, plump, and laughing woman who used to serve them biscuits and cocoa when they were children.

The Baltic island of Greifswalder Oie was a scorched speck in the placid sea. Shimmers of heat rose amidst the gaunt concrete structures scattered throughout the pine forest. Roads snaked among the sprawl of buildings, disappeared into the forest, and reappeared along the coast, all leading to a single open space one hundred metres in diameter overlooking the beach. Several sandbagged bunkers delineated its landward periphery, and set squarely into the middle of the clearing was a sheet-metal tower now tipped to one side. A squat, pencil-shaped rocket painted yellow and red stood beside it on a metal table.

A loudspeaker spewed instructions, its iron voice bouncing across the island to the sea. Overhead a small aircraft flew in monotonous circles at a thousand metres.

Two lines of folding chairs had been set out beside an elaborate silver bowl from which a uniformed Luftwaffe mess attendant ladled well-laced punch into crystal cups for the various dignitaries. From where he was standing beside his instrument panel, Franz Bethwig could hear their conversation only as a meaningless buzz, clarified now and then when a breeze whispered past. Colonel General Hermann Goering, commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, a corpulent figure in tailored uniform, was surrounded by sycophants. He had already greeted Bethwig profusely, more to demonstrate that he was a hail-fellow-well-met than to show respect for Franz’s father.

The A-5 rocket squatting on its launch table in the centre of the cleared circle would be the vindication of his hard-fought theory, the deciding factor in his continuing arguments with Walter Tuchman, the stubborn old scientist who disregarded all ideas but his own, who alienated everyone who worked for him, yet who was undeniably a genius. Tuchman maintained that Bethwig’s cooling system would so weaken the combustion chamber walls that they would burst long before full power was achieved.

Bethwig, improving on his original idea, had designed a series of injectors mounted in the inner wall of the combustion chamber. Where originally the fuel had been sprayed in, it was now forced through the ports under just enough pressure to form a thin film along the chamber walls. To test his theory under actual flight conditions, he had installed a series of pyrometers inside the motor. Dr Tuchman had refused him more than a single radio channel, and he had been forced to wire each pyrometer in series, hoping to obtain useful data by means of a small integrator he had designed and built to average the temperature readings and transmit them through the Siemens radio control equipment. He finished his work, noted the results, climbed out of the bunker, and walked across to the shade of a service lorry. Across the way, he could see the technicians removing the tarpaulin from the bunker housing one of the three cine-theodolite cameras, which would photograph the rocket during flight. A patrol launch idled across the bay, and the sun continued to pour down.

A plume of vapour twisted above the fuel bowser, and the liquid-oxygen hose snaking up to a valve in the side of the A-5 glinted with frost crystals. On the other side of the test area a door in the main bunker opened. Bethwig shaded his eyes and saw Wernher von Braun turn to speak to someone inside, then hold up an instrument to measure the inclination of the rocket on its launch table. Von Braun saw him and waved. The loudspeaker’s hum increased abruptly, crackled, and announced five minutes to firing.

A green flare arched over the test site to warn the aircraft and patrol launches to take stations. Bethwig walked back to the bunker for a last check of his instruments.

A hand descended on his shoulder, and he turned to see the bloated face of Goering peering at him.

‘The scientist at work. Gentlemen, see how the Reich’s young men are so totally engaged. Not like those foolish children in England and France who protest and march for pacifism. Come, Franz, can you not spare a moment to describe your work?’

With difficulty Bethwig refrained from shrugging off the pudgy hand. He tried to explain his experiment, but the combination of heat and champagne punch had glazed the Luftwaffe commander’s eyes. An aide stepped in to divert Goering’s attention, and Bethwig, scanning his dials, cursed the lost seconds under his breath. The radio transmitter signal was strong, showing a temperature reading near normal. The sensors attached to the combustion chamber walls were on-line, and the integrator seemed to be working properly.