He extended his hand to help Graf clamber aboard, but hesitated when he saw Biwack. Graf said, ‘It’s fine, he’s with me.’ Schenk hauled the SS man up and slammed the door after them.
Biwack said, ‘Aren’t you forgetting something, Sergeant?’
Schenk looked him up and down, puzzled and then amused. He slowly raised his arm. ‘Heil Hitler.’
The half-track suddenly reversed off the road, then lurched forwards, knocking them off balance. Graf grabbed one of the two fixed swivel seats. Schenk caught the other. With a mocking display of courtesy, like a maître d’ in a smart restaurant, he offered it to Biwack. They bounced over the undergrowth and rejoined the road.
The seats were arranged for the firing control officer and his second in command to observe the launch. Above the panel of instruments, through the narrow slits at the back of the half-track, the road receded behind them. Biwack was examining the dials and switches. He seemed to want another tutorial, but Graf’s mind was too full of misgivings to answer any more questions. There’s an emergency. How many times in the last month had he heard those words?
Jolting around in the stuffy compartment, he started to feel sick. He clung to the sides of the seat. After a couple of minutes, they slowed to pass a column of tankers parked at the side of the road. The soldiers stood sheltering under the trees with their hands in their pockets, forbidden to smoke so close to the fuel. The armoured car stopped and the sergeant opened the door. With relief, Graf jumped out into the cool wet air.
Lieutenant Seidel was waiting for him. There were three batteries in the regiment, each with three launching platoons of thirty-two men. Seidel commanded the second battery. He was about Graf’s age, a fellow Berliner. Sometimes in the evenings, in the mess, if they weren’t too exhausted, they played chess. They never talked politics. Seidel looked grim. ‘We’ve got a fire in the control compartment.’
‘A fire? You’ve shut off the power?’
‘Completely. Come and look.’
They walked around to the front of the armoured car. Two hundred metres down the road, the rocket stood alone and unsupported, ready to launch. Seidel handed him a pair of binoculars. Graf trained them on the V2. Smoke was issuing silently from just beneath the warhead and was being whipped away by the wind.
‘Is she fuelled?’
‘Fully. That’s why we’ve evacuated the site. Apparently they only noticed it a minute before launch.’
Graf lowered the field glasses. He stroked his chin and tugged at his nose with his thumb and forefinger. There was no alternative. ‘I suppose I’d better take a look.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m the one who built the damned thing.’ He tried to make a joke of it. ‘Frankly, it’s not the thought of an explosion that scares me – it’s climbing that damned Magirus ladder.’ It was not far off the truth. He detested heights.
Seidel clapped him on the arm. ‘Right, I need two volunteers.’ He winked at Graf and glanced around. He pointed to a pair of soldiers standing nearby. ‘You and you. Take the ladder over to the missile.’
They came to attention, faces suddenly grey. ‘Yes, Lieutenant!’
Graf called after them, ‘I’ll need a pair of gloves, and tools for the compartment.’ For the first time, he was aware of Biwack, listening to their conversation. He turned back to Seidel. ‘By the way, this is Sturmscharführer Biwack. He’s joining the regiment as our new National Socialist Leadership Officer.’
Seidel laughed again, as if this were a continuation of their joke, but then Biwack clicked his heels and saluted – ‘Heil Hitler!’ – and his smile shrank. He returned the salute. ‘And what exactly will your role be in the regiment, Sturmscharführer?’
‘To raise morale. To remind the men what we’re fighting for.’
Seidel’s mouth turned down. He nodded. ‘Useful.’
Graf had gone back to studying the rocket through the binoculars. Was it his imagination, or had the smoke got thicker? It wasn’t the proximity of the heat to the warhead that worried him – until the fuses were armed, the amatol was no more dangerous than a one-ton lump of yellow clay. But the closeness of the fuel was a different matter. He had witnessed fuel tanks explode before. He had once seen three men blown to pieces directly in front of him. And that was by a small experimental tank, whereas the V2 contained eight and a half tons of alcohol and liquid oxygen. He tried to put the images out of his mind. ‘We’re wasting time,’ he said. ‘Tell them to hurry up with that ladder.’
He set off towards the rocket. There were footsteps behind him, and he turned to find Biwack catching him up. ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing you can do. You need to keep well back.’
‘I’d prefer to come with you.’ Biwack fell in beside him. ‘The lieutenant seems to believe I’m just some pen-pusher from the Brown House, whereas actually I fought in the East for two years. I am making a point to the men – you understand?’
‘As you wish.’ Graf lengthened his stride.
The V2 was a monster more than seven times his height, although at this moment it seemed even taller. As he walked, he took off his hat and squinted up at it. The transformer would be the problem, he was sure. At Peenemünde they had discovered that the rocket had a tendency to airburst at the end of its flight due to the heat of re-entry, so they had added a metal sleeve to protect the upper section. But somehow in the winter weather that seemed to increase condensation, which in turn shorted the electrics. You solved one problem and created another.
The ladder was on its way, towed on a trailer behind a small truck. The driver parked at the base of the rocket, jumped out and immediately began uncoupling it – the type of ladder that firemen used: three sections, extendable. The other soldier handed Graf a box of tools. Both men kept glancing anxiously at the smoke. Graf selected a couple of small wrenches, a screwdriver and a flashlight and stuffed them into his coat pockets.
The men ran the ladder up to a spot just below the smouldering control compartment, then set off on foot back towards their comrades – a dignified walk at first that quickly became a jog. Graf watched them go. Sensible fellows, he thought. He took off his hat, gave it to Biwack and pulled on a pair of asbestos gloves.
He put his foot on the first rung and began to climb. The bottom section, where the ladder was thickest, was firm enough, but as he ascended from one section to another, it became spindly and more rickety, and the wind grew stronger, whipping his overcoat around his legs. He kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, making sure he had his foot firmly planted on each rung before he took the next step. He passed the sections housing the engine compartment, the liquid oxygen tank, the alcohol tank. At the point where the fuselage began to taper to the nose cone, he reached control compartment number two.
Smoke was gushing out of the sides of the inspection hatch. He had to take off his right glove to hold the screwdriver and unfasten the hatch. When he pulled it open, there was a great billow of acrid fumes. He twisted his head away to avoid inhaling it, and the movement forced him to look off to the side. The road, the support vehicles, the distant soldiers watching him all slid into view, and his legs and arms seemed to lose their strength. He clung to the ladder until his nerves had recovered enough for him to be able to take one hand away and pull the glove back on.