V2 A Novel of World War II - Robert Harris Page 0,32

stood to watch, Graf included. It was against the safety regulations to expose one’s upper body until the all-clear was sounded, but everyone ignored them. He glanced briefly along the trench. In the reddish glare of the exhaust, the upturned faces were softened by a kind of childish wonder. Then abruptly the light was extinguished and the forest was darker than before.

‘Ten gone,’ said Seidel, in a tone of deep satisfaction. ‘Two to go.’

‘He really means to fire all twelve?’

‘That was what he promised Biwack.’ Seidel shone his torch on his wristwatch. ‘But it’ll be a while before the next one. Stock’s battalion haven’t started fuelling yet. It’s quite a feat, I have to say. Did you ever expect to fire so many birds at the British in a single day?’

‘Honestly, Seidel? I never expected to fire any.’

Graf clambered out of the slit trench and brushed the dirt from his coat. He picked his way through the vegetation back to the launch site. The stench of burned fuel turned his stomach. Here and there the undergrowth was smouldering. Small fringes of orange fire crept across the ivy. He stamped them out with his foot. He felt a sudden surge of self-disgust. He walked across the clearing to the other side and set off along the path into the woods. As soon as he was far enough away, he stopped and lit a cigarette and inspected his shaking hands. It took a few deep draughts of nicotine for his nerves to settle. He looked around him. The evening was cold and still, with a strong tang of pine and just enough of a moon to silhouette the tops of the trees against the sky. Behind him the platoon had already started dismantling the firing platform.

He listened to the silence. From somewhere nearby came a faint whispering sound, an indistinct rustle. On impulse, he started to walk towards it, picking his way along the track for a few minutes. The rustle grew louder, the forest thinned and he found himself climbing sand dunes, his shoes sinking into the soft ground. He pushed on to the top.

A fence of thickly coiled barbed wire barred access to the beach. A sign with a skull and crossbones dangled from it. Achtung! Minen! The low tide had exposed a wide, flat stretch of sand. Shallow pools reflected the moonlight. The rows of angled metal stakes that were supposed to stop the enemy’s landing craft cast sharp shadows. Out at sea, the waves formed luminous soft lines of white.

He sat on one of the grassy dunes and lit another cigarette. The past, so long and so successfully held at bay, came flooding over the beach towards him.

I have spent the last ten years of my life by the side of the sea, he thought, always with the smell of pine in my nostrils and the taste of salt in my mouth, listening to the seagulls and straining my eyes at a wide sky.

They had set off in a convoy of trucks and cars from Kummersdorf just before dawn. That had been the first time: December 1934. So, yes – ten years, more or less exactly. He remembered he had sat in the cab of the lead truck, sandwiched between the driver and von Braun. Stowed in crates behind them were a pair of small rockets, just 160 centimetres long, officially known as Aggregate-2, but named Max and Moritz by the team, after the two naughty little boys in the stories they had all read as children. They were too powerful to be given their first test flights anywhere near a town, so they had to be taken to the seaside. What a lark! Even in the middle of winter, the whole expedition had had a holiday feel.

This was six months after Graf had joined the team at Kummersdorf, and he was lucky to still be alive. In July, Kurt Wahmke, a young physicist whose doctoral thesis had been on the outflow of gases through cylindrical nozzles, had decided to test his theory that they could dispense with mixing alcohol and liquid oxygen and could fuel the rocket much more simply instead with a ninety per cent concentration of hydrogen peroxide. On the day of the test, Wahmke had telephoned the mess to warn them there might be an explosion, in which case would they send help? Then he and Graf had smoked a cigarette in the company of two technicians. The pale blue hydrogen peroxide was suspended