Vengeance 10

Memling took a deep breath. ‘I did not ask to be pulled out,’ he said through clenched teeth as his anger welled up again. ‘The head of the local resistance unit made the request — without my knowledge.’ Thirty seconds had not passed and already Memling knew exactly what Englesby was doing — if this blew up, he wanted to make certain that the blame fell anywhere but on him. ‘As my controller, you had the option of accepting or refusing that request.’

‘True enough.’ Englesby’s stare was empty. ‘Now that we have that settled, suppose you tell me what this is all about.’

‘It’s to do with rockets again,’ Memling said quietly. He could not for the life of him have explained why he was deliberately antagonising Englesby, except, he realised, it made no difference either way.

Without raising his eyes from the sheet of paper on his desk, Englesby growled, ‘This had better be good, Memling. As I am certain you know by now, you have cost us an entire resistance network.’

Memling stared at his hands, watched them clench until the blood was squeezed away and the roaring grew and grew in his ears. How had the Germans known they would be there in that clearing…? Had the girl, Maria, not been able to commit suicide after all…? But then, Paul was so certain…

‘Damn it, Memling, answer me. What about these rockets of yours?’

Jan looked up, and the blackness that had threatened to engulf him began to recede. But his face was stark and white, and even Englesby was a bit shaken. ‘Are you all right, man? Shall I call for a doctor…?’

Memling shook his head and wiped at his damp forehead. He took a deep, shaky breath and heard Englesby telling the girl over the telephone to bring in some tea after all.

He forced himself to concentrate then, to ignore the implications of his reception. In a strained voice he described the past eight months in Belgium, the position he had held at the Royal Gun Factory, his glimpse of Wernher von Braun, his look at the rocket engines, and his calculations. ‘Paul was an artillery engineer, as you are no doubt aware. He repeated my calculations, and when he was convinced, he made the decision to take me out. The first I knew of it was last night’ — my God, he thought, was it only last night — ‘when they killed the Gestapo people following me.’

Of a sudden, Memling knew how the Germans had found the landing site. Walsch had cared nothing for Maria or for him. They were merely pawns, expendable, as were his own people, the two men in the Volkswagen. By applying enough pressure, Walsch had forced the Belgian resistance to move, to attempt to spirit Memling away, and he had then followed them to the landing site. Memling felt physically sick as he came to the realisation that he and not Maria was the Judas goat. He had been used to set up the Belgians. The presence of von Braun, the shrouded rocket engines, the closed section of the factory, were all part of an elaborate plot — Walsch, knowing of his friendship with Wernher von Braun, would certainly have guessed that he would be intrigued enough by rocket motors to contact the resistance and send word to London. And it had worked. Ah, Christ. He closed his eyes, wondering how he could have been so stupid.

‘I see,’ Englesby murmured. ‘You say this Paul considered this information you have about these German rockets to be quite important? Then I suppose you had better talk with the ordnance people. I’ll try to set something up immediately. And you’d better work up a report right away while everything is clear in your mind.’

He paused, then shook his head. ‘‘I’m certain that what you say is substantially true, Memling. However, you must realise there’s bound to be a bit of a flap over the loss of an entire resistance group involved in bringing home one operative with a wild claim to having uncovered a new secret weapon…. again. Whatever you say will be interpreted in that light. Perhaps in your excitement, or in the pressure of the moment, a bit of exaggeration crept into your estimates? Entirely understandable of course, but you must keep in mind that when the NBBS got the wind up about aerial torpedoes or some such nonsense last August, nothing came of it.’

‘The NBBS?’ Memling asked dully.

‘Heh? Yes, I suppose you wouldn’t know about that. The New British Broadcasting System, they call themselves. Run by that fellow Goebbels. Radio station in Berlin, beamed here. Nothing but propaganda by renegade Englishmen. Anyway, like so many of Goebbels’s claims, there was nothing to this aerial torpedo nonsense. BBC did an analysis of their broadcasts over several weeks. Found most of them came right from those — oh, what do you call that silly stuff by that man Wells, and Verne… and, well, your kind of stuff, rockets to the moon and all that?’

‘Science fiction,’ Memling answered tightly.

‘Ah, yes. Science fiction. Buck Rogers and all that. Most of it seems to be American, doesn’t it?’