V2 A Novel of World War II - Robert Harris Page 0,41

was probably no more than two or three minutes, they breasted the clouds and the cabin was filled with sunshine. The Dakota levelled off. Flying beside them about three hundred yards away she noticed a Spitfire. It was maintaining the same course and height as theirs. Through the window opposite she could see another. They must have been given a fighter escort. Either someone important was on board whom she had not recognised, or this was for the WAAF unit.

Once everyone had registered the Spitfires, the tension relaxed. The WAAF stopped crying. Kay searched her pockets for a handkerchief, unfastened her seat belt and leaned across the aisle to offer it to her. The sergeant gave her a grateful look. ‘Thank you, ma’am.’ She wiped her eyes and offered it back.

Kay waved it away. ‘Keep it for now. I’m Kay Caton-Walsh, by the way.’

‘Ada Ramshaw, ma’am.’

‘Where were you before this?’

‘Filter Room, Stanmore. Do you know where we’re going, ma’am?’

‘Belgium, I believe.’

The Dakota jolted violently, lifting her out of her seat. She refastened her belt. For the next fifteen minutes the plane threw them around like a fairground ride. A few places to her right, one of the soldiers was sick over his luggage, and the stench quickly filled the cabin. Kay felt her stomach coil. She put her hand to her nose and turned away to look out of the window again. The clouds were a sea of foam far beneath them. She wondered if they had crossed the English coast yet. She tried to visualise one of the maps from Medmenham. A straight course to Belgium would take them just north of Dover across the North Sea to Ostend. What was that? About a hundred and fifty miles? And what was the cruising speed of a Dakota? Two hundred miles an hour, more or less? The journey shouldn’t take them too much longer.

It must have been about fifteen minutes later, when she sensed by the pressure in her ears that they were descending, that her eye was caught by a movement. What looked to be a thin white fountain was rising like a needle point at tremendous speed far in the distance at an angle of about forty-five degrees. As it climbed, its contrail broadened and in several places sheared as it was caught by the crosswinds, leaving behind a narrow broken arc of cloud. She watched it for a few moments, hypnotised, then shook the shoulder of the unfriendly woman to her left. ‘Look! Is that what I think it is?’

The sergeant turned to follow her gaze. ‘My God, it’s a bloody rocket! Girls – there’s a V2!’

Everyone on the left side of the Dakota pressed their face close to the window. Those on the right got up and bent over their shoulders to get a better view. The plane rocked. They slid into one another. The door to the cockpit was flung open. A man’s voice shouted, ‘Sit down, for God’s sake, you’re destabilising the plane!’

As people returned to their places, Kay crouched down in her seat and twisted her head for a final glimpse, but the V2 had already passed out of sight on its way to London.

9

GRAF WAS STANDING IN A slit trench in the Scheveningen woods, scrutinising the sky through a pair of binoculars, following what he estimated to be the trajectory of the rocket. It was more than a minute since it had vanished into the clouds. Its exhaust plume had been normal during launch; at four seconds into its flight, the start of the forty-seven-degree-tilt manoeuvre had been executed perfectly. Even so, he continued to train his field glasses in the direction of its low rumble. Around him the men of the firing platoon were still crouched with their hands over their heads: after the previous night’s disaster, no one wanted to take any chances. Finally he lowered his binoculars. ‘She’s gone,’ he announced. He tried to disguise the relief in his voice. ‘It’s safe.’

Slowly the soldiers straightened. The regiment was made up of two types of men, Graf had observed. The older ones, the cynical veterans of the Eastern Front, had seen so much death they regarded a tour in occupied Holland as a well-earned holiday; their priority now was to survive the war. The teenagers straight from training were more ideologically committed to the struggle, but also usually more frightened. To judge by the number of red eyes and slack white faces evident in both groups this morning, a lot