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Q: What got you interested in writing about rockets and the German scientists behind the American space programme?

NS: Having covered a few commercial rocket launches down in South America I knew that as machines they represented the limits of human engineering ingenuity – and, if you’ve ever felt the shockwave of the massive controlled explosion that is a rocket launch, you’ll also know they have a truly visceral power to them.

In researching articles about the launches I came across Wernher von Braun, who was routinely portrayed as the ‘Good German’, the father of modern rocket science, and a blameless war time pawn of the Nazi regime. It was actually my mother-in-law who first pointed out this wasn’t the whole story; she’d been a girl in London in the Blitz and remembered well the later terror of the V2, the silent reaper of destruction that would explode out of nowhere after plunging from space when its carefully measured fuel ran out. Suddenly, those lines from the Tom Lehrer song: “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department, says Wernher von Braun,” had new resonance.

Q: So why did you decide to write a docudrama or historical novel, rather than non-fiction?

NS: Like all journalists I’ve spent a fair chunk of my working life regurgitating facts, I wanted doing this to be fun and, again like all journalists, I thought I had a book in me and decided to defy the advice that that is where it should stay.

Q: So what about the shape of the story, where did that come from?

NS: I had this thing about von Braun and rockets in my head and I also had this family story about my maternal grandfather who was an industrial scientist who was seconded into the RAF at the end of WWII to take part in the intellectual reparations mission.

I remember one day in the late 90s I was sitting in a Los Angeles hotel lobby waiting for a car to the airport, and I had the idea of someone in the reparations programme finding the plans to a new rocket, or V3, and using the plans as leverage to get themselves into America and the rocket programme. By the time I got back to London I had the whole story sketched out with this character becoming von Braun’s sidekick and revealing the whole story of his amazing life – engineer, public hero after ‘closing the Cold War missile gap’, celebrity scientist designing Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland and decorated national icon after the moon landings.

But, as soon as I got properly started – some years later, businesses and children have a way of intervening – I realised this was too much of a saga, covering over thirty years and, anyway, it became apparent most of the material on von Braun was hagiography at best or, as it turned out, officially sanctioned invention at worst.

There was clearly a darker story behind the scenes and it had its origins beneath the mountains where the Nazis built their V2 rocket factory. I wanted to tell the story of what happened there, and of how the people who brought the scientists to America at first ignored their part in the war crimes carried out in that factory and the slave labour camps that supplied it, and then systematically covered it up. To do this I needed a shorter, tighter, narrative and a character who was responsible for real outrages and who was, eventually, brought to book. Arthur Rudolph, close friend and colleague of von Braun, production manager of the rocket factory in the Harz Mountains and, twenty years later, NASA production manager of the Saturn V that took Neil Armstrong to the moon, was that character.

Q: Was von Braun also a war criminal?

NS: Nobody knows. He died in 1977 and one of the most incredible parts of this story is that no one in America took much notice of the fact all these Nazis had been ‘imported’ until 1980 when a special unit of the Department of Justice was set up to investigate. Von Braun definitely visited the rocket factory several times but there’s no direct evidence he took part in, or ordered, any specific incident that could be construed a war crime; he was, as his entire career attested, a very smart and savvy political operator.

What we do know is that, contrary to what he said about himself and contrary to what the US government said about him, he was not only a member of the Nazi Party, he was also a member of the SS, in which held the rank of Major.

Q: Do you think this kind of expediency – using dubious personnel and covering up their backgrounds – could happen today?

NS: No, but not for want of trying. It’s the age-old argument; do the ends justify the means? The people who brought Nazis to America and then covered it up thought their help in defeating Communism justified their actions. I don’t think such a large scale (there were hundreds of these people) operation could happen now, let alone be kept secret for decades. The Internet means not much can be hidden for long – at least not in the West. Also, these days, would the hundreds of politicians and officials who knew not leak? And even if they didn’t, what price a disaffected relative going to the press to tell all?

But, sadly, being found out more quickly is the only difference. In the novel Jim Black asks an American officer what was the point of winning the war against the Nazis if they were going to turn a blind eye to the worst excesses of that regime, whatever the reason? The same question has been asked about the ‘war against terror’ and rendition, torture, detainment without trial, etc. At what point do the means employed do more to undermine your own society than the enemy?

Q: What about your Hero, Jim Black?

NS: He’s very much a hero and anti-hero. The kernel of the idea was my grandfather’s post war experience in reparations, but there the similarity ends. Black’s a vain guy who wants to be known and respected as a scientist, but he has no idea how to achieve this; he’s a kind of prototype celebrity wannabe. He sees his chance when he comes across the scientists and chooses to achieve his goal by committing what he sees as a victimless betrayal - a re-engineering of the actuality, as he might put it.  But, when he is brought face to face with the crimes of his colleagues in the most horrifying way, he is faced with another choice, one that he knows could have dire consequences for him, and this time chooses the harder road.