The Flight of Werner von Braun

(A Twilight of the Gods Prequel)

Christopher G. Nuttall

Cover By Tan Ho Sim
https://www.artstation.com/alientan

http://www.chrishanger.net
http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/
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All Comments Welcome!

Contents
Author’s Note
Introduction, By Dale R. Cozort
Prologue: Peenemünde Army Research Centre, Germany, 1949
Chapter One: Berlin, 1949
Chapter Two: Berlin, 1949
Chapter Three: Berlin, 1949
Chapter Four: Berlin, 1949
Chapter Five: Berlin, 1949
Chapter Six: Berlin, 1949

Author’s Note

One of the inherent problems of writing novels set in other counties and timelines is the need to make use of local words and phrases while, at the same time, remaining comprehensible. I’m not particularly fond of books, even alternate history books, that attempt to reproduce foreign accents or make excessive use of foreign terms.  Unfortunately, writing a book set in Nazi Germany makes it impossible to avoid the use of some German words, including a number specific to Nazi Germany and the SS.  I’ve done my best to keep this to a bare minimum and, just in case the meaning of the word cannot be deduced from context, I’ve placed a glossary at the rear of the book.

I have also chosen to go with ‘Werner Von Braun’ as opposed to ‘Wernher von Braun’ and a handful of other anglicised spellings. I apologise in advance for any confusion this may cause.

Please don’t hesitate to let me know if there’s a word I’ve missed during the editing.

CGN

Introduction, By Dale R. Cozort

Stories set in a world where Nazi Germany survived longer or conquered more of the world aren’t uncommon, but this one is a cut above most of them in three ways. First, it is reasonably realistic in how Germany supposedly won and the extent of the victory. Second, it is set in 1949, early enough that Chris can realistically extrapolate the shape of post-war Germany. Finally, this is a darn good story, with high stakes and two smart, powerful, ruthless figures in a battle of wits where the loser will lose everything.

The alternate history background: The novel is set in a world where Hitler didn’t declare war on the US after Pearl Harbour, partly because the Japanese take more losses early in their part in the war, raising Hitler’s doubts about Japanese abilities.  Despite his preference for giving Germany priority in the US war effort, Roosevelt is forced to give priority to the Japanese because the US is actually at war with them. War with Japan limits how much the US can do against the Germans. Japan takes the full brunt of the US juggernaut while the US gives the British and especially the Soviets only limited aid.

By the time the war with Japan winds down, Germany has taken the militarily important parts of the Soviet Union, though the Soviets hold out in the Soviet interior and Germany holds quite a bit more of the Middle East than they took historically. The Germans can’t invade Britain, but without American troops to help, Britain can’t take on the Germans head-on in Europe. After years of brutal war with Japan, the US public is tired of war, not willing to get into a new war with the even more formidable Germans. By this time, Britain depends on Lend Lease to keep the war going and that isn’t going to last forever, so the Brits and the rump Soviets cobble together not a peace but a precarious ceasefire that is still in force in 1949.

Is that a realistic outcome? I think so. I wrote a series of blog posts years ago that parallels the scenario behind this novel and comes to pretty much the same conclusion. 

There is a faction of the alternate history community that feels that the Soviets could have beaten Germany on their own, and they can cite impressive Soviet production figures to prove that. Without getting into the details of that debate, I’ll just say that the Soviets contributed enormously to Allied victory. They fought a smart war at the economic level, using their resources more effectively than the Germans. At the same time, they had fundamental limitations that only Allied aid kept from being decisive.

First, though the Soviets did an impressive job of evacuating industry out of the way of the German invasion, they couldn’t get everything out. Lend Lease filled the gaps, primarily in aluminium production but also in other areas. 

Second, the Soviets couldn’t evacuate good farmland and the Germans took much of the best Soviet farmland. The remainder of the Soviet Union couldn’t feed itself, which meant that Soviet citizens not in the army or defence production were chronically malnourished even with US food aid and would have been worse off without that aid, probably turning malnutrition to starvation. 

Third, the Soviet Union simply couldn’t provide some key staples of war, of which the most important was rubber. World War II armies simply couldn’t operate without enormous quantities of rubber. The Soviets had no source of natural rubber and only a primitive synthetic rubber industry, so the US supplied them with hundreds of thousands of tires, plus bulk rubber.

That’s probably getting a bit too far in the weeds for most of us, but suffice it to say that without US aid, the Soviets were vulnerable, and the outcome Chris suggests was certainly possible.

Finally, on to the story itself. I won’t give away too much, but the two main characters are well-chosen and evenly matched. 

The story moves fast. It keeps you guessing and the stakes are high. Werner Van Braun wants to defect. If the British succeed in getting him to Britain, they will strike a major blow to Germany’s rocket program and German prestige as well as Himmler’s chances of becoming the next Fuhrer. They may also get insights into the German nuclear program. The SS officer in charge of Braun’s security has to get him back or he is a dead man and his entire family will be at risk.

Enjoy the story. This is a good one.

Prologue: Peenemünde Army Research Centre, Germany, 1949

Werner Von Braun was drunk.

He did not normally indulge. He was a celebrity within Nazi Germany, high in the favour of Adolf Hitler, and yet he was all too aware that allowing himself to get drunk, to lose control of himself, raised the risk of saying the wrong thing in front of the wrong set of ears. He liked to think he was apolitical, that the ebb and flow of politics in the Third Reich meant nothing to him as long as the government kept funding the space program, but he understood the dangers. Good men – loyal men – had vanished because their enemies had pounced on the slightest hint of disloyalty and used it to ensure their disappearance. Werner was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and even he couldn’t find out what had happened to the disappeared. He knew better than to ask.

And now Korolev was dead.

Werner ground his teeth in frustration, cursing himself for a fool. Korolev and his men had been spared, in the wake of the Reich’s conquest of the Soviet Union, to lend their considerable talents to the growing rocket and missile program. Werner had had to argue hard, back in 1942, to convince the SS to take the Russian scientists alive, even going to the Führer himself to override Himmler’s conviction that Slavic Untermenschen could not possibly have anything of value to contribute. Werner knew better. He was a scientist and engineer above all else and he was almost painfully aware that the Reich’s decision to drive Jewish scientists out of the country had been a dangerous mistake. No one was quite sure if the Americans had managed to produce an atomic bomb, but they certainly had a lead on the Reich’s nuclear program. He supposed that explained the sense of urgency pervading the Reich’s government. They knew what they would do, if they had a superweapon, and they assumed the Americans would do the same. And yet …

He took another sip of his schnapps, the fancy alcohol tasting sour in his throat. He was an engineer as well as a scientist; he knew things could go wrong. The rockets were put together using labour from the nearest concentration camp, by workers who were underfed and demotivated, following designs that were pushing the limits of human technology to the breaking point. The process needed to be extensively tested before being streamlined, but the Reich was desperate. The Americans could not be allowed to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles first. They could not. It was bad enough they had massive airbases in Britain, with heavy bombers that could carry atomic weapons into the heart of the Reich, but missiles would let them strike the industrial complexes in the ruins of Poland or even destroy Berlin itself. And the push for a success – any success – had led to disaster.

Werner felt sick, as helpless as he’d been when the SS had led Korolev away to be executed. They’d blamed the disaster on the Russian, as if the Russian’s work hadn’t been checked by a dozen German scientists with impeccable bloodlines, and on a multitude of concentration camp workers. Werner had tried to close his mind to the suffering, only a few short miles from the missile complex, but he knew what was happening. Hundreds of workers, most innocent of any real crime, were being executed, pour encourager les autres. And there would be more soon, if the next test launch failed …

He shuddered, cursing himself again for a fool. He had dreamed of space his entire adult life and he had thought the Nazis, the sole Party devoted to the renewal of Germany, would be able to put the human race into space. To stay. It had worked, at first – Werner knew his team had made magnificent advances – but the demands of war had slowly pushed space exploration back, time and time again, until it was no longer important. Werner had tried, hard, to argue the military importance of control of space, yet … the government wanted missiles to strike London or Washington, or rocket planes capable of flying across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States, or …

Himmler needs something he can use to climb into Hitler’s place, when he is gone, Werner thought. It felt wrong to even consider a Reich without Adolf Hitler – and anyone who voiced the suggestion out loud would be on a short trip to the nearest concentration camp – but the Führer was dying. He hadn’t been seen in public for the last year, as far as Werner knew, and if he hadn’t had a private meeting with Hitler only two months ago, before the disaster, Werner would have wondered if the Führer was already dead. Himmler needs proof he can steer the ship of state.

He shivered, helplessly. Werner was a brave man – he had put himself in danger time and time again, just by being on site when prototype rockets were tested – and yet Himmler scared him. The Reichsführer-SS was cold and calm, a bureaucrat who was also a fanatic; a man who had no qualms about rounding up workers and forcing them to work until they dropped. Himmler had few emotions, if Werner was any judge, and no sense of human decency. He wasn’t an outright sadist, unlike some of the other Nazis Werner tried to forget existed, but that almost made him worse.  It was distressingly easy to convince himself that Himmler would calculate that a nuclear war was winnable as long as the Reich preserved a tiny fraction of its population and push the button to launch the missiles. And he had thousands upon thousands of loyalists who would set the world ablaze for him.

And if Himmler becomes the Führer, Werner asked himself, what happens then?

He took another sip, the alcohol burning through all the evasions and justifications he had used – over the last two decades – to convince himself he was doing the right thing. He had turned a blind eye to so much, in the name of science and simple self-preservation, but it was clear – now – that he had been cheated of the reward he had been promised when he sold his soul. His rockets would be used for war, not space exploration; atomic science would be used for war, not lighting and heating the Reich … even the half-baked plan one of his subordinates had devised, to use nukes to launch a spacecraft into orbit, would be better than Himmler’s plans for the future. He tried to tell himself that Hermann Göring or Albert Speer would win the coming struggle for power, but he could no longer convince himself of anything. Himmler had the edge, and even if he lost his bid for the title he would still have immense power. And that meant …

It was hard not to laugh, bitterly. Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?

You didn’t, his conscience answered. How many are dead, because of you? How many will die, because of you?

Werner stared at his glass, then forced himself to stand and walk to the window, looking over the vast complex. He was proud of the missile and rocketry site he’d designed and built over the years, proud enough to hide from the grim truth that it had been built by slave labour and turned into a vital part of the Reich’s war machine. The younger men didn’t see it – they’d been raised in the Reich, taught only what the government wanted them to know – but Werner could no longer hide from himself. His complex was producing weapons of war, from small antiaircraft rockets to much larger antishipping or even city-busting missiles, and once the latter were mated with atomic bombs … Werner wanted to believe atomic weapons were a dream, or a nightmare, but he knew better. The science was sound. All that was left was engineering, and – given time – there was no engineering problem that couldn’t be cracked. The Reich would have the bomb and throw the world into the fire.

He took a long breath, his mind spinning in circles. Retirement was not an option. He knew too much for Himmler to let him go. Suicide was a possibility, but it would be the coward’s way out. He knew better than to think he could damage or destroy the complex himself … and even if he did, the damage would be repairable. The Reich would rebuild and carry on and … he swallowed, hard. There was only one choice left, one that might let him make up for his foolishness, and for the horror he’d helped unleash on the world.

Werner Von Braun was going to defect.

Chapter One: Berlin, 1949

“And to think,” Sir Cuthbert Dudley said quietly, “this used to be a great city.”

Kathleen O’Brian said nothing as the ambassadorial car carried them through the streets of Berlin, their driver steering neatly between the rows of government and military vehicles that dominated the roads. Her mother had left Germany when she’d been a teenager, well before the Nazis had been anything more than a minor threat, but Kathleen had grown up hearing her stories about how peaceful and tolerant Berlin had been, before Hitler. Now ... she could feel a shadow in the air, a fear that was all the more dangerous for never being openly acknowledged. The Reich was feared by all, even the Germans themselves. Kathleen understood, all too well. To say the wrong thing in the wrong place was to sign your death warrant.

She sucked in her breath as the car drove past the towering new buildings, heavy gothic architecture making a statement to the world that the regime was here to stay. The bombing in the later years of the war had done immense damage, but the regime had taken advantage of the devastation to redesign the city to suit itself, giant new buildings overshadowing the remnants of an earlier age. Speer had an unlimited budget and unlimited manpower – guest workers from the east, slaves in all but name – and it showed. The towering grandiosity of the state was all too clear. There was nothing elegant in the design, nothing that showed a sense of historical awareness, just a plain blunt statement that chilled her to the bone. She’d seen the figures. She knew how many guest workers had died to build even one of the monstrous buildings. She wondered, numbly, just how many of the locals on the streets knew who’d done the work and why. Not many, if she was any judge. Far too many Germans preferred to look the other way, rather than risk drawing the gaze of the state. It was almost always lethal.

Her heart twisted, painfully, as she spotted a sign on the walls, ordering the Germans to watch for Jews, Communists, homosexuals and others the Nazi regime considered undesirable. Kathleen was all too aware that most of the undesirables in Berlin had already been slaughtered, if they hadn’t been smart or lucky enough to get out before it was too late, but the regime showed no sign of slowing down. They were still butchering their way across the eastern territories, what had once been the USSR, and poisoning the minds of the young. The only upside was that the propaganda was so bad the undesirables could probably remain unnoticed, as long as they kept their heads down. But even that wouldn’t be enough to save them if they were denounced...

“They’re still there,” Sir Cuthbert said, quietly.

Kathleen followed his gaze. A handful of women stood in front of the gates, bravely protesting the regime. They were about the only ones who dared, these days, and Kathleen suspected their cause was futile. The Nazis had had to make use of female labour in the later days of the war, when every able-bodied man was required to go east and fight, but the regime was steadily driving women out of the workforce and back into the home, turning them into second-class citizens at best and property of their menfolk at worst. Kathleen had seen the crude propaganda, ordering women to marry and produce children for the Reich, and she knew it masked a far darker reality. The regime might be unwilling to openly crush the female protesters – it might spark a riot – but that didn’t mean it was powerless. Their menfolk would already be under immense pressure to bring the women in line, or else. She couldn’t help feeling their protest was doomed.

She kept her thoughts to herself as they passed a handful of civilian trucks, carrying guest workers to their workplace. The men would be worked to death. The women would be assigned to Germanic households as slaves, handling the chores so their mistress could have as many children as she wished without needing to worry about housework or childcare. It was a horrific system, a nightmare given shape and form ... Kathleen thanked her lucky stars, every day, that her grandparents had been smart enough to get out of Germany before it was too late. She would be dead by now ... no, she wouldn’t exist at all. Her parents would never have met, let alone married. And she would never have been given her father’s name.

Her blood ran cold. She’d been in Occupied France. She’d been in Vichy France. Berlin was worse.

The driver stopped outside the Reichsaal, a towering monstrosity that was as ugly as the rest of the rebuilt city. A red and black flag flapped in the evening breeze, a grim reminder that the Nazis had left their mark everywhere; a set of SS guards stood outside, snapping to attention as the driver opened the door to allow Sir Cuthbert and Kathleen to leave the vehicle. Kathleen couldn’t help feeling a frisson of fear as the guards looked her up and down, then motioned for them to enter the hall. If they had known about her mother, they wouldn’t have been so welcome. But then, they couldn’t tell a Jew when they saw one. 

Sir Cuthbert offered her his arm as they walked through the inner doors and down the steps to the ballroom floor. It was as oversized as everything else in the city, bigger than a football stadium, but the floor was teeming with people.  The walls were decorated with red and black banners, a large portrait of Adolf Hitler positioned neatly against the far wall. Kathleen kept her face under tight control as she spotted the uniforms, feeling as though she was walking into a lion’s den. The rival power blocs were taking shape and form – the Luftwaffe, the Wehrmacht, the Kriegsmarine, the SS – all trying to position themselves to take advantage of the chaos that would inevitably follow Hitler’s death. Kathleen had wondered if Hitler was already dead – he hadn’t been seen in public for months – but their sources within the Reich’s government suggested he was still alive. Pity. She didn’t really believe the Reich would fall into civil war, upon his death, but she had hopes. There might be nothing else capable of stopping the Reich from taking over the world.

“Ah, Sir Cuthbert,” a man said. Kathleen silently placed him as a diplomat, probably working directly for Ribbentrop. The man was a fool, but beloved by the Fuhrer. “I must say ...”

Sir Cuthbert gave Kathleen a sharp glance, conveying a pre-planned message. Go mingle. Kathleen nodded and allowed herself to be swept away by the crowd, a handful of young officers – and others not so young – inviting her to dance. There weren’t many women in the room, apart from the serving girls, and they were under strict supervision. It said something about the sheer importance of the Reichsaal, she supposed, that the servants were all German girls, rather than guest workers. The young girls should be getting married and having children, according to the regime. But then, who knew who they would meet at the gathering?

And if half the stories about the elites are true, she thought coldly, the lucky girls will be the ones who go home without a mate.

She forced herself to listen as her dance partners swept her around the hall, silently picking up information that might be useful later. Men liked to brag, particularly when they thought their dance partner was too ignorant to understand what they said. One officer talked about a redeployment to the eastern front, chasing partisans, and another talked about being sent to the Iron Wall in Occupied France. Kathleen filed both pieces of information away in her mind for later, when she could discuss them with the analysts at the embassy. The Nazis might be having problems in the east – it wasn’t as if they’d ever given the partisans any reason to believe they would be allowed to live, let alone have any degree of freedom, if they gave up and went under the yoke – or they might be planning to invade England. It would be hellishly risky, and it would mean war with America as well as Britain, but it wasn’t 1940 any longer. The Kriegsmarine might be the junior service, as far as the Reich was concerned, yet it hadn’t wasted the six years of relative peace. They had – theoretically – the ability to land an invasion force on British soil. Would they try?

“My regiment is being rearmed with the latest Panzer X,” another officer said, bragging to his companion. Kathleen listened with interest, while doing her best not to show it. The latest tanks were supposed to incorporate all the lessons of the last war, with everything from better armour to heavier guns. “The latest guns are really something and ...”

“We came back heroes, and all the girls are married to the boys in black,” a third officer moaned. He wouldn’t have talked so freely if he hadn’t been well on the way to being drunk. “Doing their duty by their men ... pah!”

Kathleen memorised his face for later attention if he survived the night. They’d heard rumours of discontent between the Wehrmacht and the SS before, but the disputes had largely been kept under wraps. And who knew what would happen once Hitler died ... the SS received huge benefits from the regime, from increased living allowances to preferential treatment, and she wasn’t surprised it had sparked resentment. She’d even heard rumours that racially pure SS officers had been encouraged to take multiple wives, to increase their chances of siring a small army of blond, blue-eyed children. That had never been confirmed, but if it turned out to be true ... there would be trouble. The regime had promised its fighting men loving wives. If those promises weren’t kept ...

A fat man caught her arm and pulled her away from her current partner. Kathleen had to bite her lip to keep from kicking him in the groin, particularly as her former partner backed away without a fight. The newcomer was almost certainly much higher up the hierarchy. His uniform was laden with medals, half of which were only awarded to officers who had served on the front lines. This man ... Kathleen let her eyes roam up and down his body. She’d never seen a combat soldier quite so overweight before. 

“It is quite offensive that your government allowed the publication of Anne Frank’s book,” the officer said, instead of the sweet nothings mingled with titbits of useful information she’d heard from other partners. “The Reich protests in the strongest possible terms.”

Kathleen gave him her most gormless smile. Her cover story suggested she was nothing more than a pretty face with some typing skills. Sir Cuthbert might enjoy looking at her – they’d played that up, whenever they’d been in public – but the idea he’d take her seriously was unbelievable, as far as the regime was concerned. A flicker of paranoia ran through her ... if her cover had been blown, she was deep in the heart of Nazi Germany. Escape would be tricky ...

“I’m afraid I know nothing about such matters,” she said, lying through her teeth. She knew a great deal about the whole affair. Anne Frank’s diary had exposed the true horror of being a Jew under Nazi occupation, and its publication had kicked off a major diplomatic incident. The Nazis seemed to want to hide what they’d done, and yet – at the same time – they wanted to glory in it. “I can pass your concerns to the ambassador, if you wish.”

“Such lies cannot be allowed to stand,” the officer said. He pressed closer to her, trying to make her uncomfortable. She had been in worse places, and she’d dealt with worse men. “It is nothing more than a conspiracy against the Reich.”

Kathleen gave him another gormless smile as he whirled her around the dance floor, his eyes leaving trails of slime over her body. He wasn’t a good dancer, not even trying to let her enjoy herself as he monopolised her attention. His chatter was crude and rude and largely pointless ... she guessed, despite herself, that he was pointless too. It wasn’t uncommon in the modern day. The men who had built the Reich, or had served before the war, were being increasingly sidelined by the new elites. They weren’t taking it very well.

“You must make the ambassador understand that the Reich will not take this lying down,” the officer continued. Kathleen wasn’t sure if he was passing on a message, or merely venting. Either was possible. It wouldn’t be the first time a message was passed onwards in a thoroughly deniable manner, just in case it led to a diplomatic incident. “And there will be consequences ...”

“Excuse me,” a polite voice said, as the musicians paused. “Can I have this dance?”

The officer started to object, then went quiet. Kathleen looked up and saw ... Werner Von Braun. It couldn’t be anyone else. Ice prickled down her back as the officer let her go, allowing Von Braun to take her hand. He might be one of the most famous people in the Reich, his picture regularly displayed in newspapers and textbooks, but she had been told Von Braun rarely made public appearances. And he was here in front of her ... it was one hell of an opportunity if she could take advantage of it. She felt eyes lingering on them as they started to dance, her former partner heading off to harass the serving girls instead. Kathleen felt a stab of sympathy for them. The Bund Deutscher Mädel was supposed to protect the girls in its charge, even as it indoctrinated them with Nazi ideology, but she doubted any of the grim-faced matrons would dare stand in the way of a senior officer. The concentration camps took women too.

She found herself unsure what to say as they circled the dance floor. Von Braun was a surprisingly good dancer, but was incredibly tense ... Kathleen was good at reading people and Von Braun felt more like a teenage boy asking a girl to walk out with him than a middle-aged rocket scientist. She wondered why he was here, although ... she supposed the rocket forces would want to stake a claim to power in the post-Hitler world too. British Intelligence had worked hard, trying to figure out how the rocket forces were actually funded and organised, but there was a great deal they didn’t know. The man in front of her could answer all those questions, if he wished. Would he? Everything they’d heard about Von Braun suggested he was a loyal German. 

Her heart sank as she saw the eyes watching them. One man, so tall and blond and handsome he could have stepped off a recruiting poster; other men, wearing a number of different uniforms, eyeing them with calculating eyes. The first would be a minder, she was sure. The Nazis hadn’t taken power in Germany, and then kept it, through being overly trusting. Kathleen had heard rumours that senior officers, men who had risen before the Nazis and the war, were working against Hitler ... she suspected, rather sourly, that those rumours were nothing more than lies. If the officer corps hadn’t moved against their Fuhrer when he had been on the verge of launching a seemingly suicidal war, in 1939, they weren’t likely to do anything now after the regime had conquered much of Europe and Russia.

Von Braun leaned close as they whirled around another couple, his hands suddenly too close ... and dropping something into her pocket. It happened so quickly Kathleen had to fight to keep her expression under control. She leaned into him for a moment, her head spinning. It wasn’t the first time she’d been passed a secret message, but ...

The music came to an end. Kathleen stepped back as the dancers started heading for the washrooms, hastily emptying their bladders before the speeches started. Kathleen didn’t blame them. British politicians could be pompous windbags at times, but the Nazis had them beat. The speeches would go on for hours until the following day. And the locals had to pretend to pay attention to each and every one of them. Kathleen wondered, idly, if she could get away with hiding in the washroom.

She stepped into the washroom, silently relieved there weren’t many other women in the hall. The washroom was empty. The BDM girls would have their own washroom ... probably. Kathleen hoped they did, for their sake. Their uniforms were incredibly awkward, designed to be difficult to remove in a hurry, and they wouldn’t have much time before the speeches started. She glanced around, trying not to roll her eyes at the décor as she carefully checked for peepholes and cameras. The Gestapo had a reputation for having eyes and ears everywhere, and at least some of those eyes and ears were mechanical. SOE was all too aware they were in an arms race, trying to circumvent ever-improving surveillance even as the Germans developed newer and better ways to spy on people. There was little freedom in the Reich, even for pureblood Germans, but even that would be curtailed, she was sure, as the regime found new ways to spy on its citizens. 

The thought chilled her as she entered a stall, shut the door behind her, and checked her pocket. Von Braun had shoved a piece of folded paper into her pocket, folded time and time again ... she kept her mouth firmly closed as she unfolded it and scanned the paper. It was a missile diagram, something she wasn’t qualified to evaluate, and a note. 

Kathleen gasped, despite herself, as she read the handful of lines.

Werner Von Braun wanted to defect.

And he wanted to go quickly.

Chapter Two: Berlin, 1949

Sturmbannfuehrer Hans Schneider had to fight to keep his contempt from showing too openly.

If he had had a choice, he would never have allowed Werner Von Braun to visit the Reichsaal. There were just too many officers from the different services who might try to lure him away from the SS, to convince him to turn his attention to antiship or antiaircraft weapons rather than intercontinental ballistic missiles. Or even his planned manned spaceflight ... Hans knew, all too well, that Speer and Goring didn’t agree on much, but one of the few things they shared was an understanding that the Reich needed more spectaculars to excite the public and remind the neutral powers that the Reich could punish them if they refused to be neutral in the Reich’s favour. They would give up real power for the appearance of power, if they were given a chance, and it could not be allowed. Himmler himself had said as much. But he had also said to keep Von Braun happy.

Hans kept his face blank as he surveyed the dance floor, keeping a respectful distance from his charge. Von Braun might be seduced on the dance floor – his womanising was well known to his personal protective squad – but he wasn’t in any physical danger. The guests were a mixture of senior officers, bureaucrats and foreign representatives, the latter invited to remind them that the Reich was still strong and happy and there was nothing whatsoever wrong with the Führer’s health.  Hans doubted that was particularly convincing – Hitler hadn’t been seen in public for months – but the decision to invite foreigners was well above his pay grade. If he’d been making decisions, he’d have told the foreigners to get out and stay out – they shouldn’t be polluting sacred German soil with their filthy presence – but orders were orders. He’d put up with them until the war restarted and the Reich marched to inevitable victory. And then the foreigners would get precisely what they deserved.

His mood darkened as he studied the other Germans in the hall, feeling a twinge of contempt. They weren’t fighters, not really. The uniformed clowns, their jackets heavily laden with medals, probably hadn’t been within a hundred miles of the front. Hans would bet half his pay that most of them had spent the war safely in the rear, making life hard for the fighting men by day and living it up at night. The bureaucrats weren’t much better. There was no fire in them, no zeal to spread the ideals of the Third Reich, just endless quibbles over minor details like budgets and assigned resources. The rocket program would have achieved great strides – even greater strides – if the bureaucrats had done their job and made sure the scientists and engineers had everything they needed. Instead, even a man as honoured as Von Braun had to fight for the bare minimum. Hans’s lips twisted in disgust. If it had been up to him, the bureaucrats would have been put up against the nearest wall and shot. That would get them out of his way.

He kept his face under tight control as he spotted the English ambassador, exchanging polite nothings with his counterpart from the foreign ministry. The man was a bumbling fool, Hans had been told, and everything he saw only confirmed it. The Englishman looked like a particularly moronic aristocrat, the type of man who had tried to drag the Reich down before the Führer had started purging the old guard from the military and political ranks, so stupid he probably needed help to tie his shoelaces in the morning. He was old, easily old enough to be Hans’s father. The odds were good his thinking was still rooted in the pre-war world, when no one had feared the Reich and the French were the dominant power in Europe, rather than adapting to the New World Order. Everyone feared the Reich now, and the French did as they were told by their Germanic masters. His lips twitched in happy memory. It was astonishing what a Frenchwoman would do, in exchange for a handful of luxuries and favours from a German officer. Even a common soldier could offer one hell of a lot to a Frenchwomen willing to open her legs for him.

His eyes sharpened, just for a moment, as he saw Von Braun dancing with a young woman he didn’t recognise. She was pretty enough, with long brown hair and brown eyes ... maybe not the blonde blue-eyed girl he’d been promised, but still striking. Her dress was carefully tailored to cover her body, hinting at her curves rather than revealing anything below the neckline ... Hans approved, in a way. She was modest while still keeping an eye open for the main chance. She wouldn’t get what she wanted from Von Braun, he reflected wryly. The rocket scientist might be quite happy to sleep with women, but his only true love was rocketry. The women in his life were moved on before they got attached and often ... encouraged ... to go elsewhere. Hans felt a bit disgusted as the dance came to an end. The Reich’s greatest science-hero should not be womanising like a male whore. But what Von Braun wanted, Von Braun got.

The night wore on, with speech after speech that bored him to tears. Men who had never served, assuring the world of their bravery and their loyalty to the Führer. He saw a couple of Luftwaffe officers hunting a pair of BDM girls, chasing them into corners, and rolled his eyes. Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring was a sybarite, if rumours were to be believed, but Göring had been a genuine war hero. His subordinates might wear Luftwaffe uniforms, yet Hans would bet good money they’d never been in a cockpit, let alone flown the unfriendly skies. The girls wouldn’t know the difference, either. They were young and naive and would probably believe everything they’d been told. He was tempted to say something, but Himmler would not be pleased if he sparked off yet another bout of rivalry between the SS and one of the regular military organisations. Instead ...

He breathed a sigh of relief as Von Braun signalled it was time to leave and escorted the rocket scientist down to the main entrance. Their car was brought around within moments. Hans opened the door, checked to make sure the interior hadn’t been disturbed, and then helped Von Braun into the backseat before joining him. The driver – an SS officer of unimpeachable loyalty – put the car into gear, driving them back to the Reich’s Science Commission. Hans would have preferred to put Von Braun in a simple apartment, or even a government-run hotel, but the older man had insisted on the Science Commission. It was a chance to catch up with his peers, he’d said, and see if they’d developed anything new that could be incorporated into the rocket program. Hans had been assured Von Braun was right about that, but he still didn’t like it. The Science Commission – and the attached Reich University – was difficult, if not impossible, to secure. There were just too many people coming in and out of the complex at all times. They were lucky they could seal off the residential complex.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Von Braun said, as the driver parked outside the complex. “We have a lot of work to do.”

Hans nodded curtly, hiding his irritation. Von Braun had never been pleased about having a minder and had made that clear, more than once. He watched the rocket scientist get out of the car and make his way through the security checkpoint, then tapped on the window and ordered the driver to take him directly to the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the de facto headquarters for the entire SS. It was late at night, but Himmler’s orders were explicit. Hans was to report to him immediately after leaving Von Braun at the Science Commission, no matter the hour. Hans leaned back in the seat as the driver picked up speed, the car’s ID plates getting them waved past the checkpoints without delay. The hour was already late ... Himmler, thankfully, kept very long hours indeed. Hans had never seen or heard of the Reichsführer-SS taking a day off, let alone indulging in the manner of some of his peers. Hans approved, in his own way. A man with degenerate tastes would eventually become degenerate himself.

The guards at the gate searched him quickly and efficiently, then pointed him up the stairs. Hans felt his back prickle as he made his way towards the office, uneasily aware – suddenly – that he was stepping into the most feared place in the Reich. The Reichssicherheitshauptamt looked like an office block – the planned replacement had not yet been completed, despite the workers being literally worked to death – but it was the heart of a shadow empire, an organisation that was practically a second government. The SS had its own army, its own industries, its own intelligence service ... and it was completely loyal to Adolf Hitler. The other services might falter, Hans told himself, but the SS never would. He yearned for the day the SS took over the rest of the military, purged the disloyal and created a whole new world. The day could not be long delayed.

He felt another frisson of fear as he passed through an inner checkpoint and stepped into Himmler’s office. It was bland and boring, with no decoration other than a large portrait of Adolf Hitler, but it was the nerve centre of the SS. The man behind the desk looked like a bureaucrat or a doktor– thought it felt disloyal to even think such a thing – yet he was one of the most powerful men in the Reich. The Reichsführer-SS could make or break him, and millions of others, with a single order. He was cold and calculating, devoted to the Reich and its Führer, and rarely showed emotion, even as he hurled millions into the fire. Hans respected Himmler, and was loyal to him, but he also feared him. Hans was very far from alone.

It was hard not to shiver as Himmler looked up. Hans had joined the SS when it was a new and untested organisation, rising rapidly in the ranks as he switched to the Waffen-SS and then back again, and he’d worked directly for Himmler on several occasions, but he wasn’t fool enough to think the Reichsführer-SS liked him. Himmler might trust him as much as he trusted anyone, yet ... Hans was painfully aware that the Reichsführer-SS would not hesitate to dispose of him if he became a liability. If he made a mistake ...

“Herr Reichsführer,” he said, snapping a salute. “Heil Hitler!”

“Heil Hitler,” Himmler returned. “I trust your charge is wrapped up in bed?”

“He’s in the Science Commission,” Hans said. Von Braun had a habit of reading late into the night, sometimes calling his peers – when they were sleeping – and summoning them for meetings and discussions. “I believe he will get a good night’s sleep.”

Himmler didn’t smile at the weak joke. “And actual progress on the missile test, now the Untermenschen have been removed?”

Hans showed no trace of emotion. Recruiting Untermenschen had struck him as worse than useless, when he’d heard about the program, and he’d argued strongly against trusting any of the Russians. The Russian was either at your feet or your throat and if he was at your feet he was plotting against you. Hans had served in Russia. He knew their character. Relying on anything Russian was asking for trouble. Their tanks had been good, he conceded sourly, but they wouldn’t have been designed if the Russians hadn’t stolen technology from the Reich. No doubt their rocket program had been built from stolen technology too.

“The engineers are confident the next prototype will be ready to launch in a month,” Hans said. He would have been astonished if Himmler didn’t already know. The rocket program was riddled with spies, and not all reported to Hans. Himmler hadn’t become Reichsführer-SS though trusting his subordinates, even his loyalists. “They believe the design should meet the parameters.”

“Good.” Himmler met his eyes. Hans forced himself to hold his boss’s gaze. It wasn’t easy. “You understand the importance of this test?”

“Yes, Herr Reichsführer,” Hans said. The British and Americans could bomb nearly everywhere in the Reich, if they flew bombers out of Britain or Iran, and it wasn’t clear if the Luftwaffe could stop them. The Americans had practically razed Japan to the ground in 1944-45, killing much of the population. There was no reason to assume they wouldn’t do the same to the Reich, if war broke out again. “We will have the ability to strike targets within the continental United States.”

He tried not to grimace. Von Braun was cleared for almost everything and Hans, as his handler, saw most of what passed across the scientist’s desk. The Americans had looked weak and powerless, in 1941, but by 1945 they’d raised powerful armies and churned out enough war materiel to bury the Japanese in iron and steel. The Japanese had been Untermenschen, of course, yet ... Hans suspected, reading between the lines, that the Americans could outproduce the Reich too. There would be no stopping them if their factories remained on the far side of a giant ocean, churning out everything they needed to wage war, while the Reich’s factories were being bombed into rubble. Hans knew officers who argued the Reich should have declared war on America in 1941, after Pearl Harbour, but it would have been a dreadful mistake. The Führer’s decision not to join the American war with Japan had been wise. But then, the Führer was always right.

“That too,” Himmler said. “You are aware, of course, that the Führer is ailing.”

Hans tried not to flinch. It wasn’t a question. The rumours had spread all the way to the rocket complex, despite the best efforts of the security forces, and had probably travelled all the way to Kamchatka by now. Stalin, sitting in some dingy town on the far side of the Urals, trying to keep his rump state together, had probably heard the rumours ... Hans wondered, suddenly, if Stalin would try to take advantage in some way. The Red Army was no longer what it had been, but who could fathom the mind of a man like Stalin?

“It is vitally important that we take the lead in the government, after the Führer leaves us,” Himmler said. “Our control over the rocket forces, and certain other programs, will give us an edge, if the test succeeds. It must not fail. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Herr Reichsführer,” Hans said. “It will not fail.”

Himmler studied him for a long moment. Hans tried to hold his gaze. “And your charge?”

“The doktor has not changed his habits,” Hans said. He had no idea if Von Braun was indulging himself, or trying to annoy his minders, or simply asserting a little independence, or some combination of the three. If it was up to him, Von Braun would be chained to his desk until retirement. “Herr Reichsführer, if we could keep him sequestered ...”

“The other services would never stand for it,” Himmler said, bluntly. The irritation in his voice was all too clear. “They all want rocket technology.”

Hans nodded, submissively. The Luftwaffe wanted antiaircraft missiles, the Wehrmacht wanted antitank missiles and the Kriegsmarine wanted shipkiller missiles. The latter were particularly important, Hans had been told; the Royal Navy had fifteen aircraft carriers to the Kriegsmarine’s three, while the United States Navy had over fifty. The British couldn’t be pleased about that, Hans thought, but they could console themselves with the thought the Americans were their allies. The Kriegsmarine had no such luxury. It didn’t matter how tactically inept the Americans were, when they had such an advantage. They could trade five ships for one and still come out ahead. The Kriegsmarine needed an edge of its own and antiship missiles might provide it if they worked as advertised. No, there was no way to keep Von Braun away from the other services. Even trying might lead to the Luftwaffe, the Wehrmacht and the Kriegsmarine ganging up on the SS. And who knew where that would end?

“The test must succeed,” Himmler said. The sudden insistence in his voice was striking. “We don’t know how long we have.”

Hans took a breath, and took his life in his hands. “Herr Reichsführer, what do the doktors say?”

Himmler’s lips twisted in disgust. The Reichsführer-SS and the Reichsmarschall agreed on only one thing, if the rumours were accurate, and that was disapproval of Hitler’s personal doktor. Theodor Morell was a quack, plain and simple, and only the Führer’s patronage had saved him from a noodle – a bullet – in the back of his head. Morell had an excellent reason to keep the Führer alive, Hans reflected. No matter who won the struggle for power, Morell was going to lose. Even if Speer came out ahead – he was the third and final candidate – Morell would still be for the chop. The concentration camps were too good for him.

“I had an assessment carried out by a trustworthy doktor,” Himmler said. There was a hint of grief in his voice. Himmler was one of the few who considered Adolf Hitler a personal friend. “The Führer has less than six months to live. The test must be carried out before then. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Herr Reichsführer,” Hans said. They had a week in Berlin, followed by a return to the rocket complex. He could keep Von Braun under control that long. After the design was finalised and tested successfully, the rocket scientist would be a great deal less important. “I won’t let you down.”

Chapter Three: Berlin, 1949

It would have astonished most of the Germans, Kathleen was sure, to see how different Sir Cuthbert Dudley was when they were back in the embassy, safe from prying eyes and ears. The fatuous fool was gone, replaced by a sharp-witted man who had been carefully chosen for his ability to hide his intelligence while collecting as much information as possible. It helped, she supposed, that – no matter how Whitehall tried to hide it – Britain was a declining power in the world. The Americans were far more important, as far as Berlin was concerned, and they received much of the Reich’s attention. She didn’t mind, no matter how much it grated on the career diplomats. The less attention paid to her, the better.

She sat in her chair and studied the two men as they read Von Braun’s message. Sir Cuthbert looked astonished. Campion Holmes – British Intelligence’s man in Berlin, and her direct superior – seemed much more composed.   Kathleen wondered, idly, if his sources had picked up something of Von Braun’s dissatisfaction, if indeed it was. She hadn’t been briefed, if that were so. She didn’t take it personally – she had no illusions about what would happen to her if her cover was blown and she fell into enemy hands – but it was still a little irritating. It would help her assessment of the situation if she knew everything her superior knew about what was going on.

Her body ached, reminding her it was so late it was really the following morning. She had passed on the message, then sat down to write out her recollections while they were fresh in her mind, and then been ordered into the meeting. Her bed was calling to her, demanding her ... she gritted her teeth, reminding herself she was damn lucky to have a bed at all. She’d had some close scrapes in France, working with the French Resistance, and she knew what would have happened if she’d been captured. Hell, her superiors had asked her if she’d prefer to retire than be sent to Berlin. Kathleen didn’t blame them, but ... her war wasn’t over. She wanted –needed – to do whatever it took to avenge her dead relatives, murdered by the Reich and their ashes buried in unmarked graves. It was hard, almost impossible, to wrap her head around the sheer scale of the crime. In 1939, there had been millions of Jews in Europe; in 1949, there were almost none. And it hadn’t stopped there.

“I suppose we have to answer a simple question,” Campion Holmes said. “Is this a genuine message, or is it an attempt to lure us into a trap?”

Kathleen met his eyes. Holmes might look nothing like his detective namesake – really, he looked more like Mycroft than Sherlock Holmes – but he took her seriously, which made him one of the better station heads in the service. SOE had made use of women right from the start, as everything from covert spies to operatives, yet many old-timers had problems working with women. Holmes knew better. He didn’t look down on her for being female, or Jewish, or Irish, or anything.

“I don’t believe they would use Von Braun as bait,” she said. “He’s just too important.”

“Which would make him very good bait,” Holmes countered. “They know we couldn’t afford to pass this up.”

“Which answers the question, doesn’t it?” Sir Cuthbert spoke quietly, but firmly. “We have to take the bait.”

Holmes grimaced. “And whoever we send will be incredibly vulnerable.”

“Me,” Kathleen said. She had known it would be her, even before she’d read the instructions for the meeting. “I understand the dangers.”

“And you also understand we cannot get you out, if you are caught?” Sir Cuthbert met her eyes. “If this goes wrong, you will vanish.”

“If this goes wrong, I will die,” Kathleen said. Her tongue touched the cyanide capsule in her teeth. It went against everything she believed to commit suicide, but if she fell into enemy hands they would eventually make her talk. She dared not allow herself any illusions. The Reich had no qualms about torture, or rape, or anything else they could use to loosen someone’s lips. “I understand the risks.”

“It’s a little too good,” Holmes said. “A love hotel?”

Kathleen nodded, slowly. She supposed it made a certain kind of sense. The love hotel – one step above a brothel – was well known to be patronised by senior officers and bureaucrats, ones who wanted a quick tryst without their wives or superiors hearing about it. The SS would have problems monitoring the place without irritating a number of high-ranking personages, including some within the SS itself. It was ironic, she supposed, that a high-ranking official couldn’t do whatever the hell he liked, but the Nazi regime had always had a surprisingly puritan streak. They’d demoted officers who’d allowed their extra-marital affairs to become a little too public, or worse. Any man who showed interest in another man would be lucky if he went straight into the camps, instead of being simply murdered on the spot.

“I can pose as one of the girls,” she said. No one asked questions in love hotels. It was part of the attraction. “And ...”

Holmes shot her a concerned look. Kathleen hid her amusement with an effort. It would ruin her reputation if her family back home ever heard about it, but she found it hard to care. She had more important things to worry about, starting with the fact she was fighting a cold war that everyone expected to turn hot sooner rather than later. The peace treaty that had ended the war was nothing more than ink on paper, and the truce itself nothing more than a period of cheating between bouts of fighting, and everyone knew it. She would use every weapon she had to fight the war, and if that included her body ...

Her lips twitched. There had been few hopes of a good match, even before she’d gone into SOE. Now, there were none. An operative could not allow himself – or herself – to get too close to anyone, not when all hell could break loose at a moment’s notice. The mission came first. Always.

“If you believe it can be done, then we must try,” Sir Cuthbert said. “But why is he offering to leave now?”

“We’ll have to ask him, sir,” Kathleen said. “We simply don’t know.”

She sighed, inwardly. She’d made a point of reviewing the file on Von Braun – and the embassy’s collection of newspaper cuttings – but they hadn’t been very informative. Von Braun was, as far as anyone could tell, a loyal German, perhaps even a loyal Nazi. He certainly hadn’t fled the country after Hitler became Chancellor, unlike so many others, and he’d been heavily rewarded. There weren’t many others, outside the very highest levels, who enjoyed the perks he’d been granted, let alone the authority. And yet he wanted to defect ...?

The rocket program might be having problems, she thought. There was little hard data on just how far along the Germans were, as far as she knew. If Von Braun was failing to deliver, how long would it be before his enemies swooped in for the kill? And he might want out ...?

She bit her lip, reminding herself not to draw conclusions in the absence of solid data. Von Braun might have other motives, or ... it might be a trap. She had weighed the odds as best as she could, but ... if it was a trap, she was dead. Escape would be difficult, if not impossible. The embassy would deny all knowledge of her ... it would have no choice. She swallowed hard and composed herself. There was nothing to be gained through further speculation.

“I’ll attend the meeting,” she said. Getting out of the embassy wouldn’t be difficult. Losing her shadow, if indeed she had one, would be a little harder. “And report back to you afterwards.”

“And watch your back,” Sir Cuthbert said. He held up the message. “I’ll have to burn this.”

Kathleen nodded, and took one final look to make sure she’d memorised the details. The embassy was supposed to be inviolable, and the Nazis had been surprisingly respectful of such things back in 1939, but if the regime worked out what was going on they’d react harshly. The embassy was almost defenceless, protected more by international custom than British arms. The handful of British troops in the embassy would be unable to do more than fire a handful of shots, for the honour of the flag, before they were overwhelmed. The Reich might blame everything on a rogue officer and hold a handful of very public executions, afterwards, but it would be too late. She wanted to think the Germans wouldn’t take the risk of sparking a major diplomatic incident, yet the stakes were too high for them to do anything else.

Assuming it isn’t a trap, she reminded herself. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

“Get some rest,” Holmes advised. A flicker of teasing humour ran through his voice. “I’m sure Sir Cuthbert can spare you for a day or two.”

“I’m sure I will cope,” Sir Cuthbert agreed. “Ginny can do my tie tomorrow, if I have to leave the embassy.”

Kathleen allowed herself a smile, then stood and headed for the door. Sir Cuthbert had five secretaries, not including her, and two had been carefully chosen because they could pass for her, at least at a distance. Keeping the regime confused about who was who wasn’t easy – Holmes had cautioned her that his cover might already have been exposed years ago – but there was no other choice. The more the Nazis knew about who went in and out of the embassy, the more they’d be able to determine about their activities. It didn’t help that the embassy had to account for each and every person assigned to the station. The Germans had been surprisingly persistent about offering to provide servants for the embassy staff.

Or perhaps it isn’t surprising at all, she thought, as she stepped into her bedroom. A servant can be a very effective spy.

She put the thought aside as she locked the door, undressed quickly and slipped into bed. The bedroom was surprisingly large for a common secretary, if still much smaller than Sir Cuthbert’s suite, but it was the one perk of living in the heart of darkness. Being assigned to an embassy was a boost to one’s career, true, yet Berlin was a dangerous place even at the best of times. There were eyes and ears everywhere, watching and waiting. It wasn’t easy to cope.

It felt as if no time at all had passed, when she opened her eyes again. The clock insisted it was late morning. Kathleen showered, changed into a fresh outfit and hurried down to the canteen to get something to eat. The soldier on guard duty winked at her; she held up her hand to show a fake engagement ring, then hurried past him before he could say a word. She didn’t mind flirting normally, but she dared not allow herself many human connections in the embassy. She might have to go in a hurry, leaving them behind. And far too many of SOE’s horror stories started with someone getting attached to the wrong person.

Like the bitch who betrayed an entire cell of resistance fighters, Kathleen thought. She had taken great pleasure in cutting the woman’s throat, after escaping the SS. It was a shame there hadn’t been time for an interrogation. She would have liked to know why the woman had betrayed so many good men, be it money or threats or even ideology. The latter wasn’t impossible. There were too many people in Vichy France who believed that they would be rewarded for being more Nazi than the Nazis. Perhaps she felt sure she was doing the right thing.

She felt cold as she ate a basic breakfast and headed back upstairs to the office. There were a handful of messages in her box, mainly requests from the analysts for more data. Kathleen scowled – the analysts didn’t seem to realise she couldn’t ask her sources questions, for obvious reasons – and wrote back a sharp note, stating she’d already told them everything she could. There were some intelligence departments that were supposed to have sources – compromised sources – high in the regime, but she had little to do with them and knew better than to ask questions. She’d be lucky if she was merely sent home if she did. What she didn’t know she couldn’t tell.

Holmes joined her, at dinner time. “There haven’t been any further rumblings from the regime,” he said. “Or anything from him, for that matter.”

“Better not to show too much interest,” Kathleen said. The embassy did try to keep track of high officials, following the theory they’d be evacuated if the Reich intended to launch a surprise attack, but Von Braun wasn’t on the list and shadowing him would be tricky even if he was. “If the message is correct, he’ll be at the hotel tomorrow afternoon.”

“If,” Holmes said. “Take very good care of yourself.”

Kathleen nodded. “I will, sir,” she promised. “Do you have the field trip organised?”

Holmes smirked. “Apparently, I shall be pleasuring a lot of women tomorrow.”

“Right,” Kathleen said, trying not to roll her eyes. The joke hadn’t been funny the first time and she’d heard it more times than she could count. “I’ll see you at the party tomorrow.”

She finished reading the files, memorising as much as she could, and headed down to the firing range in the basement. The range officer flirted cheerfully, even as he watched her draw her gun and open fire time and time again. Kathleen knew she was a good shot, and the Germans made good pistols, but it wasn’t always easy to draw the gun from concealment in time to get off a few shots before she was grabbed. The Nazis disapproved of guns in private hands and she knew she’d be in trouble if they caught her, no matter what papers she was carrying. But then, if they caught her, she was dead. She just wanted to take a few of the black-clad bastards with her.

The thought amused her as she went back to her room to sleep, then changed into a simple outfit the following morning before joining the shopping trip. The embassy’s wives and secretaries were regularly allowed out to shop, visiting the fanciest stores the Germans could offer and purchasing a handful of goods to send home. Kathleen knew most of the goods were looted, or rationed when they hadn’t been stolen, but ... she told herself, as they were driven to the centre of Berlin, that it was a good cover. The party was so loud, with orders to keep moving around like a fighter pilot dodging an enemy on his tail, that she had no trouble slipping away and changing her outfit as soon as she was out of sight. She walked fast, careful to keep an eye out for shadows. The Nazis were good at sneaking around, and Berlin was their home turf. If they were careful, if they had spotted her right from the start, they could devote an entire team to watching her. She wouldn’t spot any repeated faces until it was far too late.

Her stomach clenched, then loosened as she kept walking, passing a school where the Hitler Youth boys were being drilled in military marches and the BDM girls were being trained to support them. A handful of boys were clearly in pain, having gotten something wrong; she shuddered, feeling a twinge of pity for the children who grew up in such an environment. They would hate, without knowing why they hated; they would fight, for a cause that cared nothing for them. And ... she swallowed, hard. The regime was tightening its grip, ensuring that everyone – no matter how lowly – was registered, and every small hint of independent thinking was noted and logged. The kids who messed up on the parade ground would have it following them for the rest of their careers, costing them opportunities; she shuddered to think what would happen to someone who didn’t mouth the right platitudes, or asked the wrong question at the wrong time.

And they’re digging into everyone’s ancestry now, she thought, numbly. If they discover a hint of Jewish blood in one of those students, they’ll be dead before they even know what’s wrong.

She forced herself to keep going, passing bigger houses for the elite and a handful of apartment blocks, before turning to make her way towards the love hotel. There were a couple of men standing nearby, making a show of paying no attention to the unmarked building. If you didn’t know what it was, Kathleen knew, you had no need to know. The men paid no attention to her, either, as she passed them and stepped into the building. The lobby was deserted. Kathleen wasn’t surprised. Anyone who entered would be hurried to a room as quickly as possible.

“I’m Maria von Quistorp,” she said, hoping to hell Von Braun had remembered to brief the staff. “I’m here for ...”

The secretary motioned to a maid, who led Kathleen up a flight of stairs and down a long and twisted corridor. It was hard not to notice the maid’s short skirt, revealing nearly everything she had, including a lack of underwear. Kathleen forced herself to look away. The walls were bare, clearly designed to make it harder for anyone to install listening devices without making it painfully obvious. There was no one in view, save for the maid, as she knocked on a door and pushed it open. Kathleen braced herself and stepped inside. If this was a trap, she was about to spring it ...

Von Braun was sitting on the bed, waiting for her.

Chapter Four: Berlin, 1949

Von Braun looked relieved, very relieved, to see her.

Kathleen relaxed, slightly. It hadn’t been a trap. She could imagine the Germans using Von Braun as bait, but they would never risk putting him in the middle of a firefight. And there would be a firefight. She knew better than to let herself be taken alive and the rest of her comrades, and everyone else who fought the Nazis openly or covertly, felt the same way. The Germans might honour the laws of war if they captured uniformed soldiers, but spies were fair game.  

She tapped her lips, then forced herself to inspect the suite. It was bigger than she’d expected, with a washroom – complete with a shower – and a small kitchen with a handful of bottles and tins waiting on the counter. She guessed there was room service too, as well as everything else. There was surprisingly little room to hide a listening device or two, although she suspected it was just a matter of time before the chambers were thoroughly bugged. The walls felt soundproof – she couldn’t hear anything on the far side – but it was hard to be sure. She felt dangerously exposed, despite the apparent safety. There was no way out if they had to run.

“I got your note,” she said, returning to sit beside him. The bed was soft and warm ... she checked around carefully before sitting down, just in case. “Are you serious?”

Von Braun met her eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Can you get me out of the Reich?”

Kathleen didn’t answer. Von Braun appeared honest, but the worst superior she’d ever had was a kind and decent man compared to the Nazis.  The Germans – and everyone else trapped under the Nazi shadow – mastered the art of lying convincingly in a manner that could never be matched by anyone born in a free country. Kathleen wasn’t blind to Britain’s flaws – or to America’s, either – but at least British leaders didn’t kill people for disagreeing with them. For all she knew, Von Braun was a practiced liar. He would almost certainly have to be.

She held his gaze, and asked the question that had bothered her ever since she’d gotten his first message. “Why?”

Von Braun said nothing for a long moment, then frowned. “I had a dream,” he said. “I was going to put the human race in space. To stay. It would be the dawn of a whole new era, of humans settling on the moon and other worlds ... perhaps even heading to other stars! The science was sound – myself and Goddard and Korolev had proved it long ago – but resources were lacking.”

Kathleen frowned, inwardly. His voice had hitched, when he’d mentioned Korolev. Kathleen had seen his name, mentioned as one of the early rocket pioneers, but the files hadn’t said what had happened to him after Moscow fell in 1941. British Intelligence assumed Stalin had taken him and the other Russian scientists east, when the Germans had forced the Russians to concede vast territories in exchange for a fragile and unreliable peace, but there had been no hard data. Very little came out of the rump USSR, beyond demands the British rejoin the war or the Americans provide enough war material for the Russians to rebuild their might and drive the Germans out of their country. Kathleen had heard rumours Hitler intended to finish Stalin off before his death. She had no idea if the rumours were true.

“I went to the government, cap in hand, to ask for funding,” Von Braun continued. “They looked at my proposals and laughed. The cost was too high, they said, and the reward too minimal. They thought I was dreaming! But then the Nazis began their rise and they were interested, very interested indeed. They promised me all the funding they could give me, as long as I produced results. And I did.”

He broke eye contact and stared down at his hands. “I should have listened to Dornberger. He was never so impressed with the Nazis. He thought they were” – he shook his head – “never mind. His doubts didn’t stop him from covering the rockets with swastikas and the rest of their symbols, just to keep them funding the program. We were making progress, great progress, even before the war. And ... we didn’t slow down, even as the panzers swept west and then east. They wanted missiles to strike London and ... and they told me that we’d get right back to the space program, as soon as the war was over. I built them their damned missiles.”

Kathleen winced. She hadn’t been in London, during the final blitz, but she’d heard the stories. The V-1s had been bad, but the V-2s had been worse. There was no warning, no hint of an incoming missile, just a sudden explosion. The files suggested the program hadn’t been worth the mountain of resources the Germans had poured into it, but it was hard to be sure. The rockets hadn’t carried heavy warheads – they couldn’t – yet the strikes had terrorised the population. She wondered, numbly, just what would have happened if the bombardment had continued. 

“They kept saying we’d get right back to space,” Von Braun said. “They flattered me. Gave me much of what I wanted. Even let me recruit Korolev and the rest of the Russian rocket experts, keep them nice and safe as long as they produced ... that’s over now. They blamed Korolev for the disaster and shot him. And ... we never got back to space.”

He looked up, meeting her eyes again. “They want me to build a very powerful missile, one that will reach all the way to New York or Washington. Accuracy is going to be shit, at least at first, but that won’t matter. They’re going to be mated with a new kind of bomb and ... missing by a mile will still ensure the destruction of most of the city. And space ... we’re never going to get back to space. I sold them my soul, and for what?”

Kathleen had no answer. She wasn’t sure if she believed him about the super-bomb. There had always been rumours of advanced German superweapons, from flying wings and saucers to concepts that came right out of pulp novels, but she had standing orders to report whatever she heard, no matter how fanciful, to her superiors. Von Braun might be lying or exaggerating ... she scowled inwardly, suspecting he was telling the truth. Or what he thought was the truth. It was quite possible someone had lied to him, although ...

She frowned. The cost-benefit analysis had been speculative, but ... she thought it was essentially accurate. The V-2 blitz hadn’t been worth the resources the Germans had ploughed into it. It had been distressing, sure, yet hardly fatal. The British had kept calm and carried on, by and large, and the war had come to a pause shortly afterwards. The Germans would be fools not to carry out an assessment of their own, after the truce, and they’d probably drawn the same conclusion. And if hitting London had been a waste of resources, hitting New York would be even worse ... unless they really did have a super-bomb. Or thought they could get one.

Von Braun kept talking, as if he were confessing his sins to a priest. “I turned a blind eye to the workers, the slaves,” he said. “I chose to ignore how they were treated, or how they were beaten for not being productive, or simply murdered when they could do no more. I didn’t ask how the experiments to determine how a human could survive in outer space, or under heavy acceleration, were conducted, or all the other horrors I tried to ignore for the sake of the dream. I just told myself it was worth it, but I can’t lie to myself any longer. I can’t ...”

He turned his pleading gaze on her. “Help me. Please.”

Kathleen took a moment to gather her thoughts. Von Braun was no ordinary German. He was a genius, a scientist-engineer without peer. The Germans bragged of him, and in truth they had reason. He was one of the smartest men alive, and yet he had allowed himself to be lured into a morass that had dragged him into hell. How many would have lived, she asked herself silently, if Von Braun had had the sense to flee Germany when the Nazis took power? How many widows would not have lost their husbands; how many cripples would not have been hurt, much less badly injured, if Von Braun had forced himself to take a good hard look at the demons he served before it was too late? The death of Korolev, one of the few men Von Braun had respected, might have opened his eyes, but it was already too late. Her fingers itched. Von Braun was an older man, and no fighter. She could drive her fingers into his throat and leave his body to rot as she slipped away. By the time the staff realised what had happened, it would be far too late.

But we need him, she thought. Von Braun’s mind was crammed with enemy secrets, from rockets to fanciful – hopefully fanciful – weapons. If we could get our hands on everything he knows ...

“We can get you out,” she said, with a confidence she didn’t feel. The task wouldn’t be easy. The embassies would be sealed off, the moment the Germans realised Von Braun was missing, and the railway stations and airports would be put on alert. A great many preparations would have to be made, before they could put the plan into action. Hell, they’d need to come up with a plan. “How long will you be in Berlin?”

“I’m due to leave for the rocket complex in five days,” Von Braun said. “Once we get there, escape will be impossible.”

Kathleen suspected he was right. The giant complex was practically a military town. The SS was in tight control, with no one allowed in or out without papers signed in triplicate. British Intelligence hadn’t managed to get a spy into the complex, or so she’d been told. Even if they had, getting Von Braun out would be impossible. She wasn’t even sure they could remain in contact with him. The landlines would be tapped, if she was any judge, and the censors would read each and every piece of mail before it was allowed to leave the complex. The latter was practically a given. She had heard a number of letters from the eastern front had mysteriously vanished in transit, and some of their senders had vanished too. She was sure she knew exactly what had happened to them. The true horrors of the eastern front were never discussed openly, not in the Reich. It might upset people.

“Very well,” she said. “It’ll take us two or three days to get everything in place. We’ll also have to fake your death.”

Von Braun smiled, rather dryly. “If we meet at the Science Commission, and I have taken women there before, we can use one of the bodies there to fake my death,” he said, after a moment. “If it works, they’ll have no reason to look for me.”

He paused. “We also need to set fire to the building,” he added. “That’ll slow the research and development program down a little.”

Kathleen nodded, slowly, then leaned forward as they discussed the plan. Von Braun’s original idea was a little too complex, and too much could go wrong, but it was easy enough to streamline the concept into something workable. The idea of pretending to be a streetwalker, or perhaps a honey trap sent by one of the other services to ensnare Von Braun was unpleasant, yet ... she’d been in worse places. She was tempted to suggest he just left the building again and came back to the love hotel, but he had a point. They needed to destroy as much as possible, as well as getting Von Braun out of the city. And if they could confuse the enemy about what had happened, so much the better.

“I’ll be there,” she said, softly. “And make sure you have everything you need. Once you leave, there’ll be no way home.”

“I’ve no one left here,” Von Braun told her. “I’m alone.”

Kathleen nodded, although she feared what would happen if he realised – emotionally – just what he was committing himself to doing. It was not easy – never easy – to abandon one’s homeland, no matter the crimes it was committing. A defector could never be wholly trusted, not ever, because he might realise he wanted to go home one day. Von Braun was old enough to be spared Nazi indoctrination – the Vaterland came first, always – but he might still be committed to his country. If he realised what he was planning to do, before it was too late, he might back off and leave her high and dry. Or worse. He might lure her into a trap, to prove his renewed loyalty to the Vaterland.

She stood. “I’ll meet you as planned, then,” she said. “If anything goes wrong before then, don’t give the lecture.”

“Understood.” Von Braun reached into his jacket pocket and held out a set of papers. “I think your superiors will find these interesting.”

Kathleen nodded, and concealed them within her skirts. They couldn’t be hidden from a full strip-search, but if the SS went that far the jig was already up. She looked at him for a moment, taking one last chance to gauge his sincerity, and then turned and headed out of the bedroom. Her back itched uncomfortably as she headed down the stairs, the staff pretending to ignore her as she left the building. A pair of passing women made a show of looking the other way. Kathleen hid her amusement with an effort as she started her meandering path back to the embassy. She’d wondered if the locals knew what the love hotel actually was. She had her answer now.

And to think some of their daughters have probably been in and out of the building too, she thought, with a flicker of dark amusement. Some have probably been sent there by their own mothers.

It wasn’t funny, she reminded herself, as she kept walking. The Reich was increasingly stripping women of their rights, in the name of protecting them. A friend in a high place might be all that stood between them and a very unpleasant fate, if the worst happened, and if that came at a cost ... better that than the grave. Kathleen had heard stories ... she shook her head as she turned into embassy row, keeping a careful eye out for prowling stormtroopers. If they grabbed her before she reached the embassy, the guards wouldn’t come to her aid. They couldn’t. She didn’t breathe freely again until she was inside the walls.

“He gave me these,” Kathleen said, as soon as she was back in Holmes’s office. “And we have a plan ...”

Holmes scanned the first paper, then muttered a word Kathleen had never heard him use before. Her mother would have washed her mouth out with soap if she’d even hinted at knowing the word. Holmes looked almost ... scared. He was no technical expert, but he would have received briefings that wouldn’t –couldn’t – have been shared with her and if the papers made sense to him ...

“The sooner we proceed, the better,” Holmes said, finally. “You intend to head to Switzerland?”

Kathleen shook her head. The Swiss border was heavily defended. The Swiss might be neutral, and they had enough military power to make even Hitler think twice about attacking them, but they were also landlocked. The Nazis could throw up an air blockade around the country, preventing anyone from travelling in or out until they surrendered and returned Von Braun ... hell, they might even try an invasion. The latest set of projections suggested it would take eighty to a hundred divisions to conquer Switzerland, but the Germans had a hundred divisions. More. Given what was at stake, they might not think twice.

“We’ll have the papers to get us into France,” she said. She had contacts there. They could arrange for a light aircraft to pick them up, or hire a boat to get them to Britain. There were a handful of other options, but going through France was the best. “You’ll make the arrangements for pick-up?”

“Of course,” Holmes said. There was a long pause. “You think he’s sincere?”

“I believe so,” Kathleen said. She knew she could have been tricked, but ... her boss had reacted, very strongly, to the papers she’d given him. If they really were highly classified secrets, what sort of moron would use them as bait? They’d get Kathleen out of it ... and little else. A minor diplomatic incident wouldn’t lead to war. Hell, the Nazis weren’t known for bothering with excuses, if they wanted a war. “Do we have a choice?”

“No.” Holmes stared at the papers for a long moment. “Did you look at these?”

“No, sir,” Kathleen said.  She understood the importance of not knowing too much all too well. Whatever the papers were, they were clearly important. “I just brought them to you.”

Holmes stared at her for a moment, as if he were trying to gauge her sincerity, then shrugged. “I have to brief Sir Cuthbert,” he said. “You start making preparations. If you’re truly willing to do this ...”

“I knew the job was dangerous when I took it,” Kathleen said. The Nazis would kill her if they caught her, after extracting everything she knew, but the prize was worth the risk. Her family would be avenged. She had the normal jitters, the same unease she felt before every mission, yet they’d go away once she got started. “I’ll do my duty.”

“I have no doubt of it, “Holmes said. “I just wish we had more time to prepare.”

“Me too, sir,” Kathleen said. “Me too.”

Chapter Five: Berlin, 1949

Hans didn't care to admit it, certainly not in front of his charge, but he was bored.

The last two days had been a headache, so much so that Hans was counting down the days until they returned to the rocket complex. Von Braun attended meetings and briefings, gave lectures and went to parties he wasn’t supposed to know existed, hosted by people Hans knew Himmler would prefer had nothing whatsoever to do with Von Braun. Hans had heard rumours about perverse, even deviant, sexual tastes at the very highest levels, but he hadn’t believed them until he’d seen the parties himself. Naked dancing girls were the very least of it, young girls mingled in with men old enough to be their grandfathers, a level of perversity that shocked even Hans. Himmler, at least, was free of such tastes. Hans gritted his teeth and told himself they wouldn’t last forever. The rats were only brave enough to indulge themselves when the Führer was ailing, and when Himmler became the second Führer they would be purged. They deserved no less. One could not build the New Order on such filth.

It was hard to keep himself from dragging Von Braun back to the Science Commission, after a meeting with Hermann Göring had turned into an orgy that would have disgusted the Romans. Göring’s reputation for overindulgence – if he could eat it, drink it, smoke it, or stick it where the sun didn’t shine, he'd done it – had been clearly understated, given what Hans had seen. Hans promised himself such a deviant would not become the next leader, no matter what it took. The odds were good Göring wouldn’t survive long enough to throw his hat in the ring. Hans had watched dispassionately as Untermenschen were drugged repeatedly, their bodies pushed to the limits to determine just how far the doktors could go, and they’d often died of overdoses. It was just a matter of time before Göring went the same way. He didn’t have a team of doktors carefully measuring each and every dose.

Hans kept his thoughts to himself, even when Von Braun returned home – two nights in a row – with a couple of young and impressionable female students and took them to bed. The silly girls thought their degrees would get them somewhere in life, particularly if they had the backing of someone like Von Braun, but they’d be lucky if they were allowed a certain degree of choice in who they married. The university was closely supervised by the SS as part of the Lebensborn Program, to ensure that Germanic girls of above average intelligence were bred with equally smart German men, and no matter how smart the girls were the regime would never consider them anything more than mothers for the next generation of German male scientists. It was ironic that Von Braun had never had any children, despite being a fervent womaniser. Perhaps one of his conquests had borne his child and passed it off as her husband’s. It wasn’t uncommon, although it was incredibly illegal. There was nothing more important than monitoring bloodlines and ensuring the purity of the Germanic Herrenvolk.

And quite a few men have come home to discover their wives had children without their input, Hans reminded himself. Those women went straight into the camps.

He was quietly relieved when Von Braun turned down an invitation to a gathering hosted by Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, even if it did mean attending another lecture. Ribbentrop wasn’t anything like as perverse as Göring and his faction, but he made up for it by being incredibly boring and wilfully misinformed, perhaps even ignorant. Hans had served in Russia and he knew Ribbentrop had been wrong about a great many things, when he’d bored his captive audience to tears by making a speech about Russia's future prospects as a German territory. Hans wouldn’t have trusted Ribbentrop to guess his weight, let alone provide reliable counsel on the Reich’s relationships with Britain, Turkey, and a handful of other countries. He’d heard that Ribbentrop’s influence was declining – and that he’d lose what little he’d kept when Hitler died – but it was hard to be sure. If the succession crisis ended in a truce, Ribbentrop might manage to keep his post – and even expand it. Who knew?

The lecture hall was packed with hundreds of students, a security nightmare even though the vast majority of attendees had been vetted already. A student could not enter the university – dodging military service at the same time – without a pure-perfect bloodline and an equally perfect record of political reliability. Hans rather thought that failing to report for military service was clear proof of the lack of any sort of reliability, let alone patriotism, but Himmler disagreed and Hans had to admit he had a point. Von Braun and his peers could be irritating at times, no doubt about it, yet they were also vitally important to the future of the Reich. A scientist or engineer who developed the next panzer tank, or jet aircraft, or rocket engine was worth a thousand infantry, no matter how loyal or fanatical. The Reich was locked into an arms race with Britain and America, a race it had to win. And if that meant putting up with students who might lack political reliability ...

He shrugged, mentally, and forced himself to sweep the hall as Von Braun talked. He could be inspiring, Hans supposed, but no man was a hero to his minder. His eyes roamed across young men who were keen to emulate Von Braun, and young women who dreamed of being the first female rocket scientists ... or, perhaps more likely, hoped to find a suitable partner amongst the brain trust. The handful of older men – returnees from the front, most crippled – paid close attention, Hans saluted them as he passed. Waffen-SS or Heer, they had seen the elephant. The Russians drew no distinction between the two, and neither did Hans. There was no room for such nonsense in combat.

The lecture finally came to an end. A handful of students hurried out – they’d probably been ordered to attend by their superiors, a practice Von Braun had tried to ban – but the remainder crowded around Von Braun. Hans hid his concern with an effort, hoping and praying none of the students were carrying knives. It wouldn’t be that hard to get a weapon into the university, despite the security precautions, and Von Braun was a target. Hans didn’t like the older man very much, but he had to admit Von Braun had few peers. His death would be a blow to the rocket program, as well as to Himmler’s ambitions.

He sighed, inwardly, as Von Braun finally disengaged, a woman dangling from his arm. Another poor bitch ... contraception was explicitly forbidden in the Reich, and if she got pregnant it would be a disaster. For her. How would she prove paternity? How would she convince her husband that the child was his? Who knew?

Hans shrugged. It wasn’t his problem.

We’ll be back at the complex soon, he thought, tiredly. And then we can put an end to all this nonsense.

***

Kathleen felt dangerously out of place as she slipped into the lecture hall and listened to Von Braun’s speech. It was surprisingly detailed, for such a highly classified subject as rocketry, but most of the high points were already common knowledge. The Reich had made no attempt to classify the original technical papers, she thought, and most of the students had been vetted already. She wondered, idly, how many of them would go on to join the rocketry program, combining science theory and engineering practicality into one. They’d all want to work with Von Braun, she was sure, but most would be disappointed even if Von Braun didn’t flee the Reich. The Nazis were expanding their rocket program, if intelligence was correct, and most of the newly graduated students would be assigned to the newer missile complexes. 

She gritted her teeth as she moved down towards the crowd of students surrounding Von Braun, trying not to respond to the handful of ‘accidental’ touches. It was an open secret that most of the female students were there to prove their intelligence, rather than go on to have careers of their own, and they got very little respect from their male peers. Kathleen had heard all sorts of horror stories, from students ordered to pair up by the administration to women being told to keep their rapist’s baby, and she had a nasty feeling the stories were – if anything – understated. The Nazis had no qualms about kidnapping children from their conquests, if they were sufficiently Germanic, and bringing them up as Germans. Kathleen knew their eugenics program was nonsense, dangerous nonsense, but the Nazis believed they could breed a master race. She was mildly surprised Von Braun hadn’t been ordered to sire hundreds of children. He really was as brilliant as the propagandists claimed.

Von Braun nodded to her, shortly, as she came up to him, and put a hand on her arm. Kathleen allowed herself to relax into his grip, even though she felt weirdly disgusted by the whole thing. A number of male students backed off quickly ... she grimaced inwardly, trying to hide her revulsion. It was just ... sick. Von Braun had claimed her, silently, and the younger men were surrendering to his claim. Kathleen couldn’t help feeling sorry for the female students, even the ones who were clearly ardent Nazis, as Von Braun tugged her away. Britain wasn’t perfect when it came to respecting women’s rights, and she had lost count of the number of times she’d been talked down to by men who didn’t have a tenth of her experience, but it was so far superior to the Third Reich that it simply wasn’t any contest.

Up close, Von Braun smelt of alcohol. Kathleen hoped to hell he’d splashed it on himself – an old trick – rather than actually drinking it. They’d need clear heads, if they were to put the plan into action. She leaned into him, keeping her eyes open without making it obvious, as he steered her through a maze of corridors. The Reich University was huge, clearly designed for far more students ... she winced, inwardly, at just how many young men were doing their military service, or being assigned to plots of land in Poland or Russia with orders to turn them into functioning farms. She had been told that going to university was regarded as vaguely dishonourable, perhaps even cowardly. She hoped it was true. The German reputation for engineering wouldn’t last long if all their best minds refused to go to university.

She leaned closer to Von Braun as they left the outer building, cold air slapping their faces, and stumbled towards the Science Commission. Her hands twitched, wanting to draw her pistol even though she knew it would be suicide. Von Braun had assured her the guards didn’t search the women he brought back to his apartment, every night, but if they were suspicious ... she stayed close to Von Braun, letting her hands roam over his body, as they passed through the gate. The look the guards shot her was envious, not suspicious. Kathleen didn’t show her relief as they entered the building and headed up the stairs. The interior was brightly lit, but it also felt deserted.

Sweat prickled down her back as she kept going. British Intelligence had never been able to get a spy into the Science Commission, and they had very little to go on beyond second-hand reports that might not be particularly trustworthy. The upper levels of the Third Reich were bewilderingly complex, without any sense of neatness or clear lines of authority; the Science Commission reported to the SS, she’d been told, but it wasn’t actually part of the SS. Or was it? The SS was a murderous nightmare, but it was also a bureaucracy and bureaucracies had a tendency to grow.

The corridor was lined with black-and-white photographs, each one showcasing the Reich’s scientific might. A propeller plane, a jet plane, a set of rockets – each one bigger than the last – and devices she didn’t recognise; other photos, seemingly darker, showed experiments carried out on humans and animals alike, the placards underneath praising the researchers for their success in developing medical treatments and prosthetic limbs, without mentioning how many concentration camp inmates had died before the scientists had finally figured out how to make them work. Their success was built on a pile of corpses ... she wondered, suddenly, just how many doctors had their own doubts about the program, just how many would consider defecting if they thought they could get away with it. Not many, she feared. The SS only allowed volunteers to work in such programs. Anyone who had doubts would have removed themselves long ago.

Von Braun opened a door and showed her into a suite. Kathleen looked around with interest. The Science Commission was supposed to have apartments for all the Reich’s top scientists, from what she’d heard, and it definitely had an apartment for Von Braun. It looked like a fancy hotel, complete with a bell to summon room service and – to her astonishment – a television. That was vanishingly rare. The Reich bragged that every house would have a television one day, so the children could watch regime-approved programs that promoted the right attitudes, but so far televisions had yet to enter mass-production. The video player below the television was even rarer. She suspected the only reason Von Braun had it was to watch recordings of rockets being fired from the launch sites in Occupied France. 

He bent over the television and slipped a video cassette into the player. The screen came to life, displaying a couple making love loudly and passionately. Kathleen flushed helplessly. Dirty postcards were one thing, but this ... her flush deepened as she realised the man on the screen was Von Braun himself, breathing heavily as he mounted the woman and slipped inside her ...

“We can talk now,” Von Braun said, so quietly she could barely hear him over the racket. She had to admit it was a nifty idea. If there were listening ears, all they’d hear was passionate sex. “Is everything ready?”

Kathleen nodded. “Are you?”

Von Braun inclined his head, indicating a simple suitcase. “I have everything packed,” he said. “We just need to get a body.”

“Yeah,” Kathleen said.

She studied him for a long moment. Von Braun looked ... fearful, but also determined. She allowed herself a moment of relief. It had been possible, all too possible, that Von Braun would change his mind, that he’d throw himself on the mercy of the SS or simply pretend nothing had ever happened. The paper he’d given her, on their last meeting, had clearly been important, but ... she knew her superiors would never approve admitting its existence, even if it was the only way to take him off the board. And if he had changed his mind ...

“It’s time,” she said. The clock was ticking. “Let’s go.”

***

Hans took off his jacket the moment he stepped into the Science Commission, then made his way to the Security Office. If he’d had his way, the entire complex would be wired for everything and the SS would have sole control over who came in and out, but the Science Commission worked hard to maintain a precarious independence from everyone else, balancing its commitments to the SS with commitments to the rest of the military, as well as the Organisation Todt. It had been hard enough to get the apartments wired, and even that was unreliable.

The duty officer looked up as he entered. “Not much to report, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer,” he said. “The doktor’s gotten busy.”

“I’m sure he has,” Hans said. He felt a sudden flicker of annoyance. He was a Germanic German with a perfect bloodline, and a record of service that was second to none, and yet he wasn’t married ... while Von Braun, a man who had never been at the front, had no trouble finding young women willing to bed him. Hans knew there were services that matched SS officers with young women, but asking to be matched felt almost like admitting defeat. “Anything from the perimeter?”

“No, Herr Sturmbannfuehrer,” the duty officer said. He wasn’t SS, but he knew better than to waste Hans’s time. “The big brains are in their suites, or in their labs. Some aren’t alone.”

Hans grimaced. It was so much easier at the missile complex. He could say no, when the scientists wanted to bring their latest conquests back to the complex. Here ...

They want the scientists to sire children, he reminded himself. And that means giving them a certain degree of latitude.

“Keep an eye on things,” he said. Going by his previous record, Von Braun would screw his latest paramour senseless and go straight to sleep, then screw her again in the morning before telling her to get lost. He didn’t have any appointments until the following afternoon ... a cunning ploy, Hans was sure, to make sure he had plenty of time for fun before getting back to work. “And alert me if there’s any trouble.”

He turned away and headed back to his room. The minders didn’t get to sleep next to their charges, not here, nor did they get to share the bedrooms ... something else he would change, if he could. Von Braun was important, too important. He couldn’t be allowed to indulge himself much longer, not when the Reich was facing a multitude of internal and external problems. If the succession crisis turned violent ...

No, he told himself, firmly. The Reichsführer-SS has the edge. The others will fall in behind him.

And he hoped to hell, as he climbed into bed, that that was true.

Chapter Six: Berlin, 1949

Kathleen, dressed in a lab coat that made her look like one of the female assistants, followed Von Braun as he led her through a maze of corridors, keeping her eyes carefully open for possible threats. Von Braun had assured her that the Science Commission was open at all hours of the day – genius rarely kept regular working hours – and that no one would think twice about her presence, but Kathleen couldn’t help feeling tense. The SS might give the scientists more freedom than the average Berliner, no matter how loyal he was, and raise no objections to them recruiting research assistants with bigger breasts than IQs, yet that didn’t mean they weren’t watching. The lower levels were lined with pieces of complex machinery, so far beyond her that she had no idea what they did; she couldn’t help wondering, grimly, if the tangled wires and pipes concealed listening devices and spy cameras. It was quite possible the labs themselves were under close inspection at all times, everything being recorded for posterity. If something went wrong, at least they’d have a record of it ...

She gritted her teeth as they walked into a cold grey lab, a cross between a butcher’s workshop and a classroom. The Nazis had no qualms about allowing their students to dissect actual bodies, and it would have been one of the less objectionable things they did if the students weren’t encouraged to kill the victims first. She suspected it was a particularly sadistic test, to determine who might have the willingness to take part in inhuman experiments, mass slaughter and outright genocide, before putting them in a place where they actually had to do it. She felt sick as she eyed the next lab, decorated with diagrams of the human body in various stages of dissection. There hadn’t been many escapees from the concentration camps, but the few that had made it to Britain had brought stories of unthinkable horrors. Forced sterilisation and abortion were the least of them. How many of her relatives had died on a butcher’s table, their body chopped apart without anaesthetic to see how they went together? She didn’t want to know. The Nazis were supposed to keep good records, but she had never been able to gain access. Even trying would be far too revealing.

Von Braun opened a drawer to reveal a dead body, completely naked. It wasn’t the first body Kathleen had seen – no one could work for SOE without seeing dead bodies – but there was something about the sight that bothered her. The cold air brushed against her nostrils, bringing with it the stench of decay. The body should have been kept in a proper freezer, rather than a simple cabinet ... she wondered, numbly, who the body had been and why he’d been murdered, before telling herself she’d never know. The Nazis had killed so many that even they had lost count, the numbers so high they were literally unimaginable. She supposed it was why the Reich had been so furious, when Anne Frank’s diary had been published, and why they’d gone to such lengths to discredit it. She’d put a human face on numbers so high no one could understand them, exposed the human cost of such monstrous crimes ...

She helped him pick up the body and close the drawer, leaving the lab behind and hurrying back to the suite. They had to move fast now. There might be excuses for showing her around, although the television was still blasting its pornographic movies, but not for carrying a body. She couldn’t hope to shoot her way out if they were caught, only to take as many of the bastards down with her as possible before she was captured and forced to take her poison pill. Von Braun moved with surprising speed for a man who had never seen the elephant ... perhaps, she told herself, it wasn’t that surprising. The Nazis insisted on everyone exercising constantly and it was rare to see a truly fat man in Berlin. Göring was the only major exception. He was a danger to shipping.

Her lips twitched as they returned to the suite and put the body on the bed, then dressed him in Von Braun’s nightclothes. The limbs were stiff, difficult to move; she glanced at the penis, noting to her relief the man was uncircumcised. It wasn’t absolute proof he hadn’t been a Jew – if there were any Jews left in Berlin, they weren’t circumcising their sons – but it was enough to convince her she wasn’t abusing one of her fellows. She liked to think the dead man would have approved, if he’d known what they were doing with his body. But it was also possible he’d been an ardent Nazi who’d offended the wrong person and found himself in the camps.

Von Braun splashed a little foul-smelling liquid on the body, then more on the floor and kitchenette. “The fire will spread rapidly,” he said, as he changed into a simple outfit that was common amongst bureaucrats on the streets of Berlin. No one would look twice at him, as long as he didn’t try to pass any checkpoints. “And the body will be badly scorched.”

Kathleen nodded. She didn’t expect the decoy body to fool the Nazis for long – an accident at the Science Commission would be suspicious under almost any circumstances – but a few days grace would give her enough time to get Von Braun all the way to France. How long would she have? She didn’t know, which meant she had to hurry. The planned pick-up could not be missed, unless she wanted to find another way to get him to Britain. That wouldn’t be easy. Occupied France was riddled with spies and traitors these days, as the French reluctantly conceded – at least in the privacy of their own hearts – that the Nazis weren’t going to be defeated in a hurry. Vichy France was even worse. They just could not be trusted.

She smiled, thinly, as Von Braun put the simple little firelighter together, taking the gas stove apart to extract the ignition switch, then working it into a timer so it would spark – once – ten minutes from now. The air was filling with gas, slowly and surely, and combined with the rocket fuel it would trigger an inferno. The body would be so badly burnt that it would take a long time, she thought, for them to work out it wasn’t his body. The only weak link was that they’d expect to find two bodies, but it wasn’t that risky. They might assume she’d left earlier. Hell, if they were really lucky, all the records of her entry would be lost too.

Von Braun started the timer, a grim look of satisfaction on his face as he straightened and hurried to the door. Kathleen pulled her lab coat tighter as they hurried outside and down the stairs, picking their way through another maze of corridors. A handful of labs were lit up, their staff carrying out experiments ... she did her best not to think about what those experiments might be as they hurried past. The Nazis had signed international treaties banning the use of chemical or biological weapons, at least at the front, but she feared they were quietly continuing research into such horrors. The idea of releasing a virus targeted on Slavs would be horrific to any sane or reasonable mind, yet to them ... it was just another day’s work. Kathleen had been assured that such a virus was impossible, but who knew? A hundred years ago, rockets would have been considered impossible too.

She braced herself as the last few seconds ticked down, all too aware the timer might be unreliable. Von Braun was a genius, but how long had it been since he’d done any engineering with his bare hands? She didn’t know. She hadn’t thought to ask. A single spark would be enough, but what if ...

The building shuddered. The alarms started clanging a second later, prompting a scramble. Doors slammed open, their occupants – in various stages of undress – fleeing into the corridors and hurrying down the stairs. Kathleen grinned, inwardly, as she spotted a number of lab assistants, one so desperate to get out that she hadn’t bothered to don any clothes. She’d provide a more than suitable distraction, Kathleen told herself, as they joined the throng, heading down to the exits. The guards were running too, some heading into the building and others screaming for help. There was no time to check any of the runaways as they flowed past the checkpoint and into the night. Kathleen grinned, again, and caught Von Braun’s arm. They kept walking, heading further away as more and more people flooded onto the streets. The chaos would take hours to sort out, even if the fire was put out quickly. More than enough time to get away ...

“Keep walking,” she hissed. The safe house wasn’t that far away, but she didn't want to be noticed by the neighbours. The regime had spent a great deal of time encouraging residents to report on their friends, if they were doing something the regime considered unpatriotic, as well as suggesting children should spy on their parents and other horrors that attacked the roots of civilised society. If someone saw them, and heard about the fire, they might put two and two together. “Don’t stop now.”

Grinning, she allowed the night to swallow them up.

***

Hans snapped awake, one hand grabbing for his pistol as alarms clanged through the massive complex. They were under attack ... he levelled the pistol at the door, half-convinced he was back in Russia, before remembering he was in Berlin and it was the fire alarm. Fire? He was out of bed in a second, silently relieved he hadn’t bothered to get undressed when he’d stumbled into his bedroom. There’d been no need. Von Braun wouldn’t be doing anything of importance before noon, given how much he'd stunk of alcohol. It was a minor miracle he’d been able to make love to the female student. He’d been so drunk ...

Von Braun!

Horror rushed through him as he holstered his pistol and charged outside. Von Braun had been drunk, as drunk as a lord ... if he was sleeping it off, he might not recover in time to escape the fire. If there was a fire ... he dodged a handful of fleeing scientists as he made his way to the security office, only to discover it was empty. The fools had abandoned their posts ... he made a mental note to have them shot, or sent to the camps, as he grabbed a fire extinguisher and made his way up the corridor. The air was growing warm, heavy with the stench of smoke. The fire was spreading rapidly. If Von Braun and his new conquest were asleep, they were dead. There was no point in expecting the girl to save him. Women were prone to panic and screaming when confronted with the unexpected, not thinking coldly and logically and doing what they could to save their lives. Hans ducked down as the air grew thicker, wishing he’d thought to grab a mask before hurrying up the stairs. A dull explosion shook the building, seemingly below him ...

Ice washed through his veins. The suites were equipped with gas stoves, linked by gas pipes to the city mains. How far could the fire spread, he asked himself, and how much else might catch fire if the internal gas network exploded? He didn’t know. The system was supposed to be safe, but that was relative. There were enough samples of harmful materials in the complex to guarantee the fire would be unstoppable, if it reached the lower levels. It might even spread into the neighbouring buildings or the university.

He forced himself to keep going. He wanted to believe Von Braun was already outside, but he didn’t believe it. The man had been drunk, and accompanied by a foolish woman. If Hans left him to die without at least trying to save him, despite the risk, Himmler would use him as a scapegoat for Von Braun’s death. He’d have no choice. Von Braun belonged to the entire Reich. And if that happened ... Hans swallowed, hard. Himmler would have him killed without a moment’s hesitation. Or regret.

The door ahead of him was locked, and dangerously warm. He ducked his head and slammed the fire extinguisher into the lock, shattering it effortlessly. The locks hadn’t been designed to keep people out, just to make it clear the occupant wanted privacy. The door crashed open, revealing a nightmarish blaze. Flames were crawling all over the room, daggers of fire reaching towards him like a living thing, an eldritch horror forcing its way into the human realm. The wave of heat was so staggering it drove him back ... he could feel his skin blistering, even as he opened the extinguisher and sprayed the bed with water. There was a body lying on the sheets, its garb already starting to catch fire. Hans sprayed the body too, then tossed the extinguisher aside, grabbed hold and dragged it out of the room. He couldn’t tell if Von Braun was alive or dead, couldn’t see any trace of the girl in the hazy room. The poor bitch was dead, if she was still there. He hoped she’d had the sense to leave, when Von Braun fell asleep. Perhaps she was counting her blessings even now ...

He dragged the body forward, eyes flickering from side to side. The gas stove was burning brightly, the television little more than flaming debris. He could see flames licking along the carpet, threatening to spread even further. He forced himself to keep going, even as he heard something crash in the distance. The air was growing heavier, his throat constricting painfully as he breathed in the smoke and fumes. There was probably something poisonous in the air, his mind noted as his thoughts started to spin out of control. If the flames had reached the lower levels, it was quite possible the samples of poison gas had already started to leak.

Damn you, he thought, unsure if he was mentally addressing Von Braun, or Himmler, or himself. The heat was pressing around him, his universe shrinking to the burning corridor and staircase leading down to the exit. His mind was too dazed to think of any other way out ... the fire brigade would be on the way, he was sure, but how long would it take for them to get organised? They had standing orders to do everything in their power to save the complex, yet ... what was in their power? He gritted his teeth. Get up and walk!

Von Braun didn’t move. Hans refused to consider, even for a moment, that the scientist might already be dead. He’d seen men escape burning tanks, their skin scorched and blackened, and go on to live their lives. Von Braun would be denied no medical care, from skin transplants to ... whatever else he needed. Hans felt a surge of naked hatred, telling himself that if they both survived there would be no more laxity, no more freedom. He’d make sure Von Braun got a proper Germanic woman and sired children with her, a woman with the right sort of mind to keep him in line. And he’d get a woman himself and have children of his own.

He staggered, nearly falling, only held upright by his iron willpower. He kept going, somehow, as dark shapes loomed up ahead of him. Panic shot through his very soul – if he’d gone the wrong way, it was unlikely he’d be able to correct himself before the heat or smoke killed him – before he realised they were firemen, garbed in masks. He tried not to collapse as strong hands gripped him, threw him over their shoulders and carried him the rest of the way. He tried to tell them to take Von Braun too, but it was hard to speak. His throat hurt, his skin hurt, everything hurt ...

“Sit still,” the doktor said. Hans blinked, realising his mind had wandered too far and he’d nearly fainted. “You’re badly burnt. Stay still!”

Hans shook his head, despite the bandages wrapped around his hands. His head felt thick, his thoughts slow and sluggish ... the doktor had shot him with morphine, he was sure, or something else to make the pain go away. He wanted to collapse into sleep, to let himself go completely, but he dared not. Von Braun had to be alive ...

“I brought someone out,” he managed. It hurt to speak, despite the drug. “Where is he?”

The doktor’s voice was cold, clinical. “He’s dead.”

Hans felt the ground shift beneath his feet. Von Braun could not be dead. He couldn’t be dead. Hans was dead too ... he forced himself to stand up, to channel all the authority of the SS into his voice. The doktor had wide authority, but nothing outranked the SS. Nothing.

“Show me the body,” he ordered. It was a wild hope, born of desperation, but ... what else could he do? “Now!”

The doktor said nothing for a long moment, then shrugged and helped him stagger towards a handful of bodies lying on the ground. Hans thought there should be more, but ... half the staff had either fled or been caught in the blaze, their bodies burnt to ash or lurking somewhere within the rubble. Or ... Von Braun was lying there, dead. His nightclothes were scorched and blackened, but still recognisable, marked with the rocket complex’s insignia. They were unique, in Berlin, and that meant .... Von Braun was dead, and Hans’s career was dead with him. And that meant ...

His heart skipped a beat as he looked closer, eyes lingering on the scarred face. It wasn’t Von Braun!

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