V2 A Novel of World War II - Robert Harris Page 0,21

support these days if you aren’t prepared to show some commitment. I don’t have to go to meetings or anything like that.’

And again in 1940, when they had entertained some bigwigs from the SS at Peenemünde, and he had turned up in the black uniform of an SS Untersturmführer – blond-haired, broad-shouldered, chin jutting, looking like an illustration from Das Schwarze Korps. ‘It’s purely an honorary rank. Himmler insisted. Don’t worry – as soon as these fellows have left, it’s going right back in the closet.’

A knock at the door of the hotel room. The voice of Sergeant Schenk: ‘Dr Graf? It’s after midnight.’

He had not realised it was so late. At some point he must have fallen asleep. He sat up in bed and stared with regret at his burned-out cigarette. It would be the last he would be able to enjoy for some hours.

‘Thanks. I’m coming.’

He picked up his torch from the nightstand, switched it on and shone it around the bedroom. Its thin light showed the sort of modest seaside accommodation he remembered from childhood holidays: an armchair, a chest of drawers, a tiny washbasin in the corner with a mirror above it, a wardrobe. Beside the wardrobe was a small roll-top desk and an old office chair that he had managed to scrounge soon after his arrival and where he sometimes sat and worked. He flicked the beam back to the wardrobe and let it travel up the centre of the doors to the suitcase lying on top. He hadn’t looked at it for weeks.

He got off the bed and turned on the overhead light. He closed the curtains, dragged the chair next to the wardrobe, stepped up and took down the case. It was old, made of good-quality scuffed brown leather. Von Braun had given it to him just before he left Peenemünde. ‘Do me a favour and look after this, will you?’

‘What is it?’

‘Insurance.’

He laid it on the bed, snapped open the catches and lifted the lid. Inside were a hundred or more small cardboard cartons, each containing a roll of 35 mm microfilm. They looked to be undisturbed. He had occasionally wondered if he should find a better hiding place, but it had always seemed to him wiser simply to leave it where it was. He was sure no one would think of bothering with it. Even so, he plucked a strand of hair from the side of his head and carefully placed it in one of the catches before he closed it and put it back on top of the wardrobe. He turned off the light and descended the stairs.

Outside in the darkness, he could hear the whistle of the train approaching, the heavy clank of its wheels on the tracks as it crept slowly through the town at the end of its long journey from the rocket factory in central Germany. It took him less than two minutes to walk to the railway station, but the train beat him to it. He heard the exhalation of steam in the distance as the locomotive came to a stop.

The scene that greeted him had a certain surreal glamour, as if a movie star had arrived in town: hundreds of men waiting in the sidings under arc lights, breath billowing in the cold; a huge convoy of vehicles of all descriptions – transporters, tankers, bowsers, some with their engines already running – deployed alongside the flatbed trucks. The locomotive had halted so that the first of the missiles was directly positioned under the big crane that straddled the line. Already the technical troop were clambering over it, pulling away its tarpaulin, guiding the crane’s steel cables into position. Once it was hoisted out of the way and swung over onto one of the transporters, the train would inch forward and the next missile would be lifted clear. The warheads were packed separately in big metal drums. Further down the train were the fuel tankers.

The soldiers had been trained to work quickly to get the rockets unloaded before daybreak, but tonight they seemed to be going through the procedure even faster than usual, and Graf guessed they must have been told that the regiment was under orders to conduct twelve launches by the end of the day. He could see Biwack standing with Huber. The colonel was gesturing, no doubt explaining what was happening.

Graf stood watching for a while. There would be nothing for him to do until the first missiles had been taken to