At first, Wolfrum claimed to know nothing about the contents of the crates aboard his trucks, but the unexpectedly civilised treatment he received put him off balance. He soon began to give up details about the convoy that showed that he was not only aware of the significance of these engine parts, but that he had been part of the team which designed them. It emerged that Wolfrum had been sent by General Hagemann himself, head of the Peenemunde programme, to the factory in Sovetsk, on the Lithuanian border, which had manufactured the engine parts and to remove them to safety before the arrival of the Red Army. In addition to this, Wolfrum had been ordered to blow up the factory before he left, a task for which he used so much dynamite that he not only obliterated the factory but shattered half the windows in the town.
Now Kirov studied Wolfrum’s appearance. The colonel’s tunic, although badly damaged during the days he had spent on the run, was made of high-quality grey gaberdine, with a contrasting dark green collar. All of his insignia had been removed by the camp authorities, leaving shadows on the cloth where his collar tabs and shoulder boards had been, as well as the eagle above his left chest pocket.
Wolfrum himself, although solidly built, looked frightened and as worn-out as his clothes. The skin sagged beneath his eyes and his bloodless lips were chapped. Kirov did not need to be told that it was not the present which terrified this officer, but the future. Wolfrum had already been in captivity for several months and was well aware that he would soon arrive at the limits of his usefulness. Whatever promises had been made by his captors, regarding his treatment in the weeks, or months or even years ahead, had only served to scour every wrinkle of his brain for information they could use. Any day now, the illusion of dignity would be set aside. Whether they put him up against a wall and shot him or else dispatched him to Siberia was all out of his hands now. In the meantime, Wolfrum answered their questions. He didn’t care what they were. The oaths of loyalty which he had taken long ago were to a country on the edge of extinction. Besides, there was nothing he knew that was still worth keeping secret. ‘You’re new,’ remarked Wolfrum when he caught sight of the major. ‘Are all the others tired out?’ Then he sipped at his tea, waiting for the interrogation to begin. They always gave him tea before these sessions and he was almost afraid to tell them how much he had come to value this miniature gesture of kindness.
‘I just have one question,’ said Kirov, ‘and I’ve been told that you might have the answer.’
Wolfrum sighed. ‘I have already explained everything. About everything. But why should that matter?’ Placing the mug on the table, he held open his hands, palms rosy from the heat. ‘Ask away, Comrade. I have all the time in the world.’
Kirov sat down in a chair on the opposite side of the table.
‘What do you know about “Diamond Stream”?’ asked Kirov.
Wolfrum paused before he spoke. ‘Well now,’ he said at last, ‘perhaps there is something you don’t know about me, after all.’
‘And what might that be?’ asked Kirov.
‘That I worked on the Diamond Stream project.’
‘What did the project involve?’ he asked the colonel.
Wolfrum paused. Each time he gave up a new fragment of information, it seemed to him he took another step towards a line beyond which there could be no going back. But he had lately come to realise that the line had been crossed long ago. ‘Diamond Stream is the code name for a guidance system for the V-2 rocket. If it had succeeded, we could have dropped one down a chimney on the other side of Europe.’
‘If?’
‘That’s right,’ said Wolfrum. ‘It was a wonderful idea, but that’s all it ever was. I don’t know how many test shots we fired in the months before I was captured, but I can tell you that every single one of them failed. The mechanisms we designed were too fragile to withstand the vibrations of the rocket in flight.’
‘Do you think it could have worked,’ asked Kirov, ‘even if only in theory?’
Wolfrum smiled. ‘Our theories always worked, Comrade Major. It’s why we gave them such beautiful names. But that’s all it is, just a theory, and likely all that it will ever be.’
A few days later, a truck pulled up before the gates of the British Propulsion Laboratory, located near King’s Dock in Swansea in the south of Wales.
The town had once been a thriving port, but German air raids, which took place mostly at night during the summer of 1940, had reduced much of the docklands to rubble.
The propulsion laboratory, which dealt primarily in steam-driven turbines for powering the engines of battleships, had been one of the few businesses to survive the bombing. This was by virtue of the fact that its large roof, whose dew-soaked slates gleamed in the moonlight, had served as a homing beacon for the attacking squadrons of Heinkels and Dornier bombers. The pilots of these planes had been given strict orders not to damage the roof, and the laboratory had remained intact.
Soldiers of the Army Transport Corps unloaded a crate from the back of the truck. The heavy box was placed upon a handcart and brought inside the red-brick building. The soldiers were joined by two men in civilian clothing, who had accompanied the crate from the moment it had arrived in the English port city of Harwich two days before.
One of these men wore a trilby hat and a brown wool gaberdine coat. He was tall and wiry and sported a pencil-thin moustache. The man made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was carrying a revolver in a shoulder holster.
The other man, who sported a three-piece Harris tweed suit, had a small chin, curly hair gone grey and had not shaved in several days, leaving a stippling of white stubble on his cheeks.
The man with the pencil moustache stood in the middle of the laboratory floor and, in a loud and nasal voice, informed the dozen technicians who were working on the main floor of the laboratory that they had been dismissed for the remainder of the day.
No one argued. No one even asked why. The sight of the gun wedged under the man’s armpit were all the credentials he needed.
Only one person was kept behind: a small, bald man with fleshy lips and cheerful eyes. Instead of the faded blue lab coats worn by the other technicians, this man had put on a chef’s apron, with a large kangaroo pocket at the front which sagged with pencils, handkerchiefs and scraps of notepaper on which mysterious equations had been written.
‘Professor Greenidge?’ asked the man with the pencil moustache.
‘Yes?’
‘My name is Warsop,’ said the man. ‘I’m with the Home Office.’ And, as he spoke, he removed a folded piece of paper from his coat. ‘I’d like you to sign this, please.’
‘What is it?’ asked Professor Greenidge.
It was the man in the tweed suit who answered. ‘Official Secrets Act,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘As soon as you’ve done that, we can show you what we’ve got in here.’ He gave the crate a jab with his toe. ‘I think you’ll find it worth your time.’ Then he held out his hand to the professor. ‘My name is Rufford. I’m a member of Crossbow.’
Greenidge had heard of the Crossbow organisation although, until now, he had never met anyone who was a part of it. The organisation had been put together to study German rocket technology. It was all top-secret stuff, far beyond his own level of clearance.
‘What’s this got to do with me?’ he asked. ‘I’m a steam technician. I don’t build rockets.’
‘We pulled your name out of a hat,’ muttered Warsop. ‘Now are you going to sign the document or not?’
‘I do suggest you sign it, old man,’ said Rufford.
‘Very well,’ said Greenidge, suspecting that he had no choice. With a few swipes of his Parker pen, the professor did as he was told.
‘In any of your work,’ asked Rufford, ‘have you ever come across the mention of a project known as “Diamond Stream”?’