Vengeance 10

‘Perhaps you do not recall that in 1938 I had occasion to warn you about an English agent and loose talk?’

‘Yes, quite clearly. Your manners were insufferable then, and…’

Dornberger cut him off sharply and Walsch smiled. ‘Also, last year in Berlin you, Herr Doktor Bethwig, and I had a conversation in a cafe about a similar subject. I recall that you called me an incompetent ass. Well, Herr Doktor, it would seem that this same espionage agent has been here, at Peenemunde, working for Doktor Mundt. He is the man who murdered the SS officer and the three enlisted men who attempted to arrest him.’ The greyish light served only to heighten Walsch’s extreme gauntness by carving great hollows beneath his eyes and in his cheeks so that, for a brief moment, his face became a leering skull.

Bethwig recalled the weedy young man he had met in Arnsberg before the war. He would never have credited him with the ability or the courage, yet three times now this Memling, by his activities, had managed to involve them with the Gestapo. How much time have we lost because of him? Bethwig asked himself angrily.

‘He was employed,’ Walsch continued, ‘in the pre-production shops. He worked there for nine days, and during that time was promoted twice to positions of greater responsibility by that fool Mundt. We also know that he was employed for nine months in 1940 as a quality control technician at the Manufacture d’Armes in Liege. Couple that with your own indiscretions in 1938 and you can be certain that the English are very much aware of what is going on at Peenemunde.’

Walsch paused long enough for them to absorb the impact of his statement, then said in a thoughtful voice, as if it had just occurred to him, ‘It would seem that someone at Peenemunde may be assisting an agent of an enemy nation to obtain information about the rocket development programme.’

It was Major Jacob Walsch’s turn to stand at the rain-streaked window. Tapping his teeth with a finger — an old habit he had given up trying to break — he watched the automobile plough through the flooded streets towards the northern end of the island, and wondered if perhaps they were not chasing the wrong phantom after all. Politically von Braun was too stupid to be attracted by British promises. After all, what could they offer? But Bethwig? Perhaps. He certainly had sufficient cover: important family connections, a long and honourable party record, and friendships in high places. He would bear closer watch. He must be on the lookout, Walsch decided, for a way to control him: perhaps a thorough search of his records? Records — he tapped his front tooth with a pencil. Of course, his records. Now that he thought about it, there had been more than the usual number of requests from Berlin, in fact from SS headquarters, to review Bethwig’s file. Why? Did they already suspect him of something, something they were not yet ready to divulge? How ironic — Walsch chuckled at the thought — if one responsible for the blot on his record should be the one to erase that with a blot of his own and perhaps, just perhaps, an execution?

Having made up his mind, the major picked up the telephone and ordered his aide to release Mundt. Perhaps a small trap could be set. If it failed, no harm done, as no one would know. If it succeeded, well and good. This man Mundt was, after all, Bethwig’s employee; in fact, he had noted in the man’s records that it was Bethwig who had insisted that he be hired, even though the man was considered politically unreliable. One never knew these days.

* * *

Two weeks had passed with no further word concerning the supposed English spy or the alleged murders of the four SD agents, and after trying several times to obtain additional information from Walsch, Bethwig forgot the matter.

On this cloudless Tuesday afternoon in the third week of August, he strolled slowly towards Building 40, the bachelor quarters where he still resided. It had been a frustrating day, beginning with the report of another failure in the A-10’s valving system, which would delay the launch three weeks. Then had come lunch with a very disheartened Wernher von Braun. Apparently there had been an early meeting with Degenkolb and his staff at which the minister had set forth impossible demands for A-4 production, refusing to recognise that the rocket was still in the advanced stages of design testing and nowhere near ready for production.

‘ “Gentlemen, don’t tell me such stories,” ‘ von Braun had mimicked. ‘ “I am not interested in them. I produced a thousand locomotives a month in the interest of the Reich, after being told it was impossible.” ‘

‘I pointed out to the fool that the principles of locomotive Construction have been known for a hundred years. If one encounters a problem, one has only to consult a book for the answer. He refuses to recognise that we are still writing our book!’