Read Online The Rocket Man by Maggie Hamand - Free Book Online Page B

team which had liberated the concentration camp at Nordhausen, where rocket parts were fabricated by Polish slave labour. This man had spoken movingly of the mounds of corpses, the starving and beaten prisoners, and the small children, conceived by raped camp workers, running round hungry and ill-clothed. Nihal believed that at least twenty thousand workers had died making the rockets. He recalled that this scientist had also been present at the interrogation of some of the scientists, including Wernher von Braun, he had a list somewhere of their names, and wondered if Weiland had been among them. At this time Nihal had also visited the massive bunker at Eperleques in the Pas de Calais, a huge German wartime factory for the assembly and launch of the V2 rocket. As he had trudged in the cold March rain round this grim, abandoned place, in which thousands of half-Jewish Germans, together with Polish, Belgian and Russian prisoners of war, had slaved and perished, his spirit had quailed. He had indeed felt it to be, as the monument at the entrance proclaimed, ‘One of the sacred places of human suffering.’
    Weiland would now be in his eighties. Like von Braun, he had been a card carrying member of the Nazi party. For years, again like von Braun, he had worked with NASA and achieved acclaim. His presidency gave a certain prestige to RASAG, even if he played no active part, but it also linked it to this unsavoury past. But Nihal was puzzled. Under the UN Space Treaty, no private organisation could put a rocket into space. There was also the Missile Technology Control regime, by which Germany was bound. In fact, the whole thing was distinctly odd. The very idea of a private company selling cheap rocket technology to whoever wanted it was horrifying. If no-one knew about it yet, he thought, they certainly ought to.

    Katie lay in bed with Bob. She tossed and turned, and couldn’t sleep. Her conscience tormented her, she had lied and wanted to confess to him, but she couldn’t. Anyway, what would be the point? It would simply hurt him, and there was no reason why he should know anything. She had resolved to end her relationship with Dmitry at once.
    But how could she give this up? Why was sex so good with him, so much better than it had ever been with Bob? She didn’t understand it. She rolled over again, pulling the covers off Bob, and he grabbed them, impatiently.
    â€˜What the hell is the matter with you? Can’t you let me sleep?’
    She said, ‘No. I want sex.’
    She had never said anything like this to him so simply and directly. He half sat up on one elbow, astonished.
    â€˜Are you feeling okay?’
    â€˜Don’t you want to?’
    â€˜Well, of course, I always want to.’ He put his hand on her thigh, stroking her. She rolled onto her back, put his hands where she wanted them. He, obviously excited by this initiative, was already erect, getting ready to penetrate her. She pushed him back.
    â€˜No, not yet… carry on like that.’
    â€˜Like this?’
    â€˜No, not exactly… here.’
    It was impossible. He didn’t seem to understand what she wanted and it humiliated her to have to ask. She realised that she often pretended more pleasure than she felt in order not to hurt his feelings and that in the long run this hadn’t been good for them. Yet it hadn’t always been like this; she had sometimes wondered whether Bob was simply bored with her. She imagined, for a moment, being with Dmitry. Even thinking about him excited her.
    Bob was inside her now, and she slipped her own hand down between them and made herself come. Once was not enough for her now; she went on, and he went on, and then in the end she came once again, with him; he lay still, on top of her, his arm vaguely stroking her arm, obviously puzzled.
    After a while he rolled off her. He lay on his back, his eyes open.
    Katie, feeling desperate, sat up, took his face in both her hands and