For the Children by David Laws

Author:David Laws [Laws, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloodhound Books

Chapter Thirty-Three

It was the ideal day for it: damp, drizzly and misty. They began by winding around their shoes strips of old rags taken from clothing discarded by the forest fugitives – filthy, ragged material that Helen regarded with distaste and flinched when it touched her.

The Bull caught her reaction and said: ‘Tread lightly; these are your ballet shoes.’

They set off, pulses leaping, following the big man’s instructions, being tutored in the art of stealth, following a zigzag pattern through elusive footpaths they would never again be able to recognise or negotiate without guidance. They went Indian file: the big man first, then Helen with Beck bringing up the rear.

Droplets of rain brushed her face, damp briars snatched at her clothing and despite earnest attempts at a silent routine the noise of their progress through grass and undergrowth seemed to pose an affront to the silence of the forest. Every hundred yards or so they would stop for the Bull to listen, happily to hear only the sounds of nature.

At one brief stop she turned to smile encouragement at the engineer. She needed to keep his spirits up. She’d been hammering away at the Bull and finally he had agreed to this expedition, with Beck allowed access to the barn. She urgently needed to get her prime asset into the secret workshop so he could assess the progress the Polish scientists were making in uncovering the inner workings of the rocket.

It was no small distance and her legs began to ache with all the deliberate plodding care until she became aware of another presence. An indistinct figure was conversing with the Bull. She reproached herself for having been taken by surprise. It emphasised their status as amateurs of the forest.

They were being beckoned forward, the shadowy figure evidently a silent sentinel who had given the all-clear. A low building came into view, creepers entwined around blackened windows, moss covering the roof, the whole edifice abandoned and derelict. A door which looked never to have been opened in a hundred years suddenly gaped wide enough for them to enter single file.

Helen had no preconception of what she might find but once inside she stumbled and almost fell, plunged as she was into semi-darkness. Gradually, however, eyes that had been accustomed to daylight were adjusted to the gloom. Flickering candle flames were the only source of light. A massive metal object the length of a line of three double-decker buses lay prone in the straw and the dirt, its innards laid bare and disassembled like the autopsy of some mammoth crime victim. Spectral shadows were cast into dark corners, hinting at mysterious things in recesses not reached by the candlelight.

She took a deep breath and held it. Her first view of the monster. Here at last was the V-2, being systematically gutted like some giant body in a mechanical post-mortem.

She turned to urge Beck forward but he was already kneeling to examine the entrails of his own creation. Muffled sounds of metal

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