Vengeance 10

‘What the hell do you bastards think you’re doing?’ he demanded. ‘Order your men to stop beating those prisoners now!’ The hauptschauführer jerked his arm away and, ignoring Bethwig, started for the truck. Bethwig ran after him, screaming in anger, the terror and tension of the night released all at once in a blind rage. He yanked the man to a stop and swung him around. ‘You rotten son of a bitch, these men have risked their lives…’ Without a change of expression, the hauptschauführer struck him in the solar plexus with his Mauser pistol. Bethwig fell to his knees, paralysed, unable to speak or even to breathe. Two SS men picked him up and threw him into the back of the truck with the Russians.

* * *

Heinrich Himmler stared down at Franz Bethwig with ill-concealed satisfaction. Behind him, General Dornberger glared and two SS officers waited, their faces carefully non-committal.

‘My dear Franz, I seem to find you in the strangest places. Would you care to tell me how you got here?’

Bethwig glared at the Reichsführer — at his carefully tailored uniform, at the shining patent boots, at the carefully formed officer’s cap perched daintily on his head — and a series of answers, most of them blasphemous, occurred to him. Instead, he got wearily to his feet, trying not to allow the pain to show. He swayed a bit but pushed away the hand one of the SS officers extended. Dornberger’s angry glare switched to Himmler.

‘Herr Reichsführer, I demand an explanation for this… this… outrage. It has taken four days to locate this man. Every effort made on his behalf has been frustrated by your… your minions. Unless a satisfactory answer is forthcoming immediately, an apology made, and the guilty parties punished severely, I shall register charges against the SS with the OKW. The Army High Command, I can assure you, will be most concerned that such treatment has been accorded one of their employees.’

Himmler heard Dornberger out, nodding now and again as if in agreement. ‘Quite right,’ he murmured when Dornberger finished. ‘Quite right. In fact, I have already begun such an investigation.’

The two officers took Bethwig by the arms to help him from the cell. His legs were weak and threatening to give way, but he shook them off and forced himself to walk down the corridor. Waiting at the end was the hauptschauführer who had arrested him the night of the bombing and gleefully joined in the first beating. Without a change of expression, the man jumped to attention as the officers approached, then reached over and threw open the door. The daylight made Bethwig blink as he turned to the sergeant who stared past his shoulder as if he did not exist. The light brought tears to his eyes, and he saw the sergeant’s lip curled in contempt. It was all Bethwig could do to keep from ramming a fist into the man’s stomach, but he controlled himself, knowing that he was too weak to make much of an impression.

‘You and I have something to settle, don’t we?’

The sergeant continued to stare past him, pretending not to have heard. Bethwig lowered his voice and leaned closer:

‘Watch out for dark nights and make damned certain I never find you alone, you swine.’ Bethwig straightened and, as the sergeant’s eyes moved in his direction, said, ‘And that, Hauptschauführer Gassner, is a promise.’

Outside, Himmler’s limousine waited, but Bethwig passed it by and headed for the tram stop. An officer ran after him, but Bethwig swung around, fists clenched.

‘Touch me, you filthy SS swine, and I’ll break your back.’

The SS officer stopped abruptly, his astonishment plain, and Bethwig limped to the tram stop and sank down on the bench, refusing to look in the direction of the men clustered around the automobile. After a moment Dornberger detached himself and came over to the bench.

He lit a cigarette and offered it to Franz. ‘You know you are only making things worse,’ he said as he lit another.

Bethwig inhaled deeply, silently cursing his shaking hands. ‘I don’t give a damn. Just keep that filthy bastard and his bullies away from me.’

Behind them, the village lay in ruins. The English bombers had done a thorough job. Even in the prison it was possible to find out what had happened by listening to the guards. He knew that his old friend, Walter Thiel, was dead, killed because he had not the heart to continue working under SS pressure any longer. The old man had been too dispirited to attend the dinner for Hanna and so had died in his house with his family. His own test facilities had escaped with no damage at all, and the major test stands along the north coast had been only slightly damaged. The worst disaster had been visited on the Russian POW camp nearby. Eight hundred prisoners had been killed, and Bethwig wondered just how hard the men who saved the Chemistry Building would have worked if they had known that their reward was to be a beating at the hands of the SS or that eight hundred of their number were being killed by their own allies.

‘What do you intend to do now?’