Vengeance 10

‘Oh, come now, Wernher….’ Bethwig objected. Although he knew von Braun was right, the thought of seeing Inge once more overrode his misgivings.

‘Don’t scoff.’ He faced Bethwig. ‘He is like the devil tempting Christ; he shows you all the world’s treasures, then offers them to you in exchange for your soul. And the damnable thing is, you know that he can deliver. How do you think these people gain and keep the allegiance of so many people? Simply by bribery. What do you want? Money, power, women? Once they have you hooked, they threaten you, and their threats are very real. Very real! No, don’t look at me like that. He has done it to us, Franz. He’s offered us what we want most; the opportunity to build a rocket capable of reaching the moon. How long have we dreamed of that? Haven’t we schemed and connived for more than fifteen years to bring it about? He has given us what we want in exchange for our souls — and he means to collect. Wait and see. And if we refuse to pay, well… you’ve heard the stories just as I have.’

* * *

Spring was in full bloom, Bethwig noted as the Mercedes limousine swung through the streets of Prague. Heydrich had sent his own car this time, a singular honour. The reichsprotektor’s aide engaged him in polite conversation concerning the amenities and shops available at Peenemunde and opportunities to visit Berlin or nearby Denmark until it dawned on Bethwig that the officer was probing subtly into the condition of his wardrobe. If von Braun was correct in his assessment of Heydrich’s reason for inviting him to Hradcany Castle, he could expect a visit from a tailor for which he would never see a bill. Inclined at first to refuse the gift, he quickly changed his mind. Good clothing was becoming expensive, so why not take advantage?

The tailor indeed appeared and departed with an order for three suits, a dozen shirts, a dinner jacket, several pairs of shoes, and a riding outfit. ‘A gift from the people of Bohemia and Moravia,’ he was told.

Franz had been impatient to get the fittings over with, but now that the tailor was gone, he had no idea what to do next. On his three previous visits Inge had been waiting for him in the suite. He supposed that he could ring down to reception and enquire about her, but that would certainly be considered bad form. The only other alternative was to wait. He poured a stiff cognac from the well-stocked bar and wandered out on to the balcony. His room was on the third floor overlooking the gardens behind the castle. Standing by the railing in the soft sunshine, sipping his drink, he gazed out over the carefully tended lawn and forest thinking that from this vantage point one would never suspect that half the world was engaged in a war to the death.

As the afternoon waned, Bethwig’s impatience grew. He quickly exhausted the possibilities of the balcony but was afraid to leave the apartment in case she should come. By four o’clock he was beginning to wonder if he had misjudged the nature of this visit. To occupy his attention, he opened his portfolio and, replenishing his drink, tried to lose himself in calculations for a new nozzle design based on the latest wind-tunnel tests describing supersonic flow.

He found he could not concentrate. His mind kept turning again and again to Inge, recalling every detail of previous visits. She was not, as he had first thought, a mental defective; rather she lived in a world of her own, and he had pieced together enough of her background to understand why.

Inge was born in Thuringia to elderly parents who had died within months of one another when she was quite small. A cousin inherited their farm, along with the responsibility for Inge’s care and education. The cousin was a drunkard, his wife a chronic invalid, and before she was twelve, Inge had been raped repeatedly — a not uncommon story in the more isolated rural areas of Germany.

The child was removed from the farm after neighbours protested to the authorities. Silent and withdrawn, she was several times placed in foster homes but continued her slide into a world of silence and inaction. Finally, she was placed in an institution for mental defectives where she remained until it was taken over by the SS in 1939. Because of her physical beauty she was spared the various ‘experiments and training sessions’ and became instead a plaything for the senior SS officers at the facility. How she had come to Hradcany Castle, Bethwig never found out, as Inge herself did not know. She had no sense of time, cared nothing for anything beyond the parameters of her existence, and was an intensely physical being. Bethwig did not know enough about psychology to do more than guess at an interpretation of her condition, but he had to believe that her nymphomania was in fact a reaction to her treatment as a child and later as an adult by the SS. Whatever, for reasons derived as much from sympathy as sexual need, Bethwig found that he very much cared for the girl.