Sam Eastland - Berlin Red

There was no doubt in Hagemann’s mind that the future, not only of his country but of all future warfare, depended upon the Diamond Stream project, so named because, in controlled laboratory experiments, the rocket, when functioning perfectly, would emit an exhaust stream of glittering particles which resembled a river of diamonds.

Even as fully armed V-2s were unleashed upon their targets in the west, other rockets, carrying tubes of sand instead of explosives, roared out into the night sky, destined to fall harmlessly into the waters of the Baltic. These were the project’s sacrificial lambs. By regulating the mix of liquid oxygen, alcohol and hydrogen peroxide in the fuel system – calculations which sometimes depended on millilitres of adjustment – Hagemann was seeking the perfection of his art.

This evening’s offering had been fitted with a mechanism originally intended for steering anti-aircraft missiles. The system, which was much too primitive for use in the V-2, had required so many adjustments before it could be used that Hagemann felt certain this would prove to be another failure.

Sergeant Behr handed over a clipboard. ‘Here are this evening’s specifics,’ he said. Then, he produced a penlight, which he used to illuminate the page, while the general examined the dizzying array of numbers. ‘None of these are within the usual parameters.’ He clicked his tongue and sighed. After all the years of engineering, he thought to himself, and the thousands upon thousands of experiments, and even with all we have accomplished, there always comes a point when we must stumble out blind into the dark. As he had almost done so many times before, Hagemann reminded himself not to lose faith.

‘It’s true about the parameters,’ Behr replied. ‘Some are above the normal range, and some are below. Perhaps they will even each other out.’

Hagemann snuffled out a laugh. He patted Behr on the back. ‘If only it were so simple, my friend.’

‘Shall I tell them to delay the launch?’ asked Behr. ‘If you need more time to rearrange the numbers.’

‘No.’ Hagemann slapped the clipboard gently against Behr’s chest. ‘Tell them they are clear to go.’

‘You are coming back to the ignition area?’

‘I’ll stay and watch the launch from here,’ answered Hagemann. He was afraid that his subordinates would see the lack of confidence etched upon his face. Some days he could hide it better than others.

‘ Zu Befehl! ’ Behr clicked his heels. He walked back down the road. Just before the darkness swallowed him up, he stopped and turned, ‘Good luck, Herr General.’

‘What?’ asked Hagemann. ‘What did you say?’

‘I was wishing you good luck,’ said the voice out in the night.

‘Yes,’ Hagemann replied brusquely. ‘That’s something we all need.’

He felt a sudden pang of guilt that he had done so little to keep up the morale of his technicians; not even a bottle of brandy to fend off the cold as these men returned to their flimsy, hastily constructed barracks in the village of Karlshagen, on the southern end of the island. Their original accommodations, which boasted not only hot water but a first-class mess hall and even a cinema, had all been destroyed in a massive air raid back in August of 1943. Even though some parts of the sprawling research compound had been rebuilt, the bulk of it remained a heap of ruins, and Soviet advances had recently forced the evacuation of most of the remaining staff to the Harz mountains, far to the south.

At that moment, he heard the familiar hissing roar of the V-2’s ignition engine. He could almost feel the rocket rising off the launch pad, as if the great assembly of wiring and steel were a part of his own body. A second later, he caught sight of the poppy-red flame of the V-2’s exhaust as the rocket tore away through the night sky.

Almost immediately, the misty air swallowed it up.

Hagemann turned and set off towards the launch trailer, a specially built vehicle known as a Meillerwagen.

There was nothing to do now but wait for the report from the observation ship to confirm where the rocket had come down.

He could see the tiny suns of cigarettes as the launch crew moved about, dismantling the V-2’s aiming platform so that, by daylight, nothing would remain for Allied reconnaissance planes to photograph. Even the tell-tale disc of charred earth where the ignition flames had scorched the soil would have been carefully swept away by men with wooden rakes, as solemnly as Buddhist monks tending to the sand of a Zen garden.

As Hagemann approached them, he straightened his back and fixed a look of cheerful confidence upon his face. He knew that they would look to him for confirmation that all of their sacrifices had been worthwhile.

Far out in the freezing waters of the Baltic, a wooden-hulled trawler named the Gullmaren wallowed in a freshening breeze. Spring had been late in coming and, from time to time, stray clumps of ice bumped up against her hull, triggering loud curses from the helmsman.

Below deck in the ice room, where a boat’s cargo of fish was normally stored in large pens, the rest of the three-man crew had gathered around a large radio transmitter.

The radio had been bolted on to a table, to prevent it from sliding with the motion of the waves. In front of this radio sat an Enigma coding machine. It bore a vague resemblance to a typewriter except where the rolling-pin-shaped platen would have been there was instead a set of four metal rotors. Teeth notched into these rotors corresponded to the letters of the alphabet, and they could be placed in any order, allowing the sender and receiver to adjust the configuration of the messages. When typed into the machine, the message would then be scrambled by a series of electrical circuits so that each individual letter was separately encrypted. This system allowed for hundreds of thousands of mutations for every message sent.

Stooped over the radio, with a set of headphones pressed against his ear, was the radio man. Against the damp and cold, he wore a waist-length, black collarless leather jacket of the type normally worn by German U-boat engineers.

Beside him stood Oskar Hildebrand, captain of the Gullmaren , his body swaying slightly and unconsciously as the trawler wallowed in the swells.

But Hildebrand was no fisherman, even though he might have looked like one in his dirty white turtleneck sweater and black wool knitted cap.

In fact, Hildebrand held the rank of Kapitan-Leutnant in the German Navy, and for over a year he had served as liaison officer with V-2 Research Facility back on shore.

‘Anything?’ Hildebrand asked the radio man.

‘Nothing yet, Herr Ka-Leu.’ But almost as soon as the words had left his mouth, the radio man flinched, as if a slight electric current had passed through his body. At that same instant, miniature lights fitted into the Enigma’s keyboard began to flash. ‘They have launched,’ he said.

From that moment, Hildebrand knew that he had about six minutes before the V-2 reached the target area. His task then would be to note down the point of impact and radio the details back to General Hagemann.

Hildebrand had been in this role of observer for almost a year now, shuttling back and forth across the sea and watching very expensive pieces of machinery smash themselves to pieces as they plunged into the waters of the Baltic. Originally stationed on the coast of France and in command of an S-boat – a fast, low-profiled torpedo cruiser – Hildebrand had, at first, found this new assignment so insultingly beneath him that, even if he could have told people about it, he would have kept silent. It was small consolation that they had allowed him to keep his original radio operator, Obermaat Grimm, and also his helmsman, Steuermann Barth, who, after years of having almost 3,000 horsepower at his fingertips, thanks to the S-boat’s three Daimler-Benz motors, became despondent now that all he had to work with was the trawler’s clunky, temperamental diesel.