PHOENIX: (Projekt Saucer series)

by W. A. Harbinson

  ‘But you had no proof of his death.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you’ve heard nothing about him since?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  Fuller gazed steadily at Miethe’s dark, wary eyes and wondered if he was telling

  the truth. Maybe, maybe not. Wilson was a shadowy figure, a teasing conundrum, but what Fuller had learnt about him so far had convinced him that the man was cunning and dangerous, with a long, deadly reach. Lots of people had reason to be scared of Wilson and Miethe might be one of them.

  ‘Your recent boss, Werner von Braun, was in charge of the Nordhausen Central Works about the same time Wilson was in Kahla. Did he and Wilson co-operate?’ ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I was with Schriever in Prague. However, I doubt

  that they had anything to do with one another. Indeed, I don’t believe von Braun even

  knew that Wilson was in Kahla. Ernst Stoll, who was in charge of Nordhausen and

  Kahla during Kammler’s many absences - Kammler was then overseeing the firing of

  V-1 rockets from The Hague - kept Wilson’s presence in Kahla a tight secret. No one

  got in or out of Kahla, other than Stoll and Kammler, so I doubt that von Braun knew

  they were there.’

  ‘What about the early days? You worked directly under Wilson in Kummersdorf,

  when von Braun was on the other side of the firing range. Did they co-operate then?’ ‘No. Von Braun knew about the American, but only through gossip. Though

  Wilson was compelled to pass on certain innovations to von Braun, this was not

  reciprocated and the two men never met. Then, of course, von Braun’s rocket team

  moved to Peenemünde, leaving Wilson with the whole of Kummersdorf.’ ‘So how did you end up in Fort Bliss with von Braun?’

  ‘When the Czechoslovak Partisans overran the BMW Plant in Prague, I managed to make my escape. Like Schriever, I just fled across the fields until I lost my pursuers. After that, like thousands of others, I made my way back to Germany, by foot and by begging lifts, until I was captured - luckily, by the Americans, not the

  Russians.’

  ‘Lucky indeed,’ Fuller said.

  ‘By that time,’ Miethe continued, ignoring the sarcasm, ‘Brigadier Hans Kammler

  had transferred von Braun and his men to an army barracks in Oberammergau in the

  Bavarian Alps. There, they were held behind barbed wire and under SS guard, until

  joined by General Dornberger, when they were allowed to move into the village of

  Oberjoch. The Americans had since transported me to the town of Reutte, in the

  Austrian Tyrol, for lengthy interrogation. Shortly after the Führer’s death, on the

  second of May, 1945, Dornberger and his men, including von Braun, surrendered to

  the American 44th Infantry Division in Reutte and I was placed in custody with them.

  By June, I was on my way to America with von Braun and many of his V-2

  specialists. Now...’ Miethe shrugged indifferently. ‘Here I am.’

  ‘You like America?’ Fuller asked him.

  ‘I like my work,’ Miethe replied, ‘and here I can do that.’

  Don’t do me any favours, Fuller thought, outraged that American generosity could

  be treated with such contemptuous indifference. ‘What about the beer?’ he asked,

  grinning. ‘You like American beer?’

  ‘I don’t drink,’ Miethe replied.

  Fuller lit one cigarette with the stub of the other, then sat back in his chair and blew

  smoke rings, watching them drift towards Miethe’s face before dissipating. ‘I’ve seen the drawings of Schriever’s saucer,’ he said. ‘It looks just like the real

  thing.’

  ‘The real thing?’

  ‘Yeah. The ones that have been causing such a stir over the past year or so. Do you

  think there’s any connection?’

  ‘Yes. I agree with Schriever on that. He’s been telling the West German press that

  the UFOs are man-made and based on our original German designs. I believe he’s

  correct.’

  ‘How good was Schriever’s saucer? The one you tested in Prague in 1945.’ Miethe offered a superior smile. ‘Not very good. It barely hovered above ground

  level, wobbling wildly, then it crashed back down.’

  ‘So what makes you agree with Schriever?’

  ‘Schriever was a pretender who always tried to get credit for ideas that he stole

  from the Americans. I don’t agree that the present UFO scare is caused by saucers

  constructed from Schriever’s designs, which in truth were incomplete; what I believe

  is that they’re saucers based on Wilson’s designs for a much better saucer known as

  the Kugelblitz. While even that saucer did not have the widely reported capabilities of

  the UFOs, it was highly advanced and could have been the prototype for the saucers

  now being sighted. Whether Wilson is alive or dead, it’s my belief that enough of his designs, if not the actual prototype, were captured by the Soviets or Americans - or both - to let them build more advanced models. It is my belief, then, that the UFOs

  are man-made saucers, constructed here or in Russia - maybe in both countries.’ Studying Miethe in silence for a moment, Fuller considered his options. One was

  to invite him for a drive into the desert, then slit his throat and bury him under the

  dunes. The other was to utilise his knowledge for the new saucer programme. Miethe

  knew too much already to be allowed to run loose, which meant that either he should

  be allowed to work for the US government or that he should be taken out totally -

  obliterated. Fuller had his own preference – a quick burial in the desert - but

  unfortunately he was hampered by his superiors and the country’s long-term needs. ‘What I’m going to tell you,’ he said, ‘will commit you for life. If you listen to

  what I tell you, I won’t be able to pretend you didn’t hear it. That means I’ll have to

  take strong action if you try going elsewhere. If you want to spend the rest of your

  days working on saucer projects, then you better listen to what I say; but if you’re

  frightened of making that kind of commitment, you better tell me to shut up. You

  understand, Miethe?’

  The German stared steadily, suspiciously at him, then nervously wiped his lips

  with his hand.

  ‘What if I don’t listen?’

  ‘You’ll be free to return to Germany,’ Fuller lied, thinking of that burial in the

  desert, ‘which may well be the only choice you’ll have, as you’ll find no work here.

  Either you work for the US government or not at all - at least not in this country. So

  what way do you want it?’

  Miethe was silent for a considerable time, but his pitch-black gaze was steady and

  intense, searching Fuller’s face for hidden meanings. Eventually, taking a deep breath

  and letting it out, he said, ‘You believe Wilson’s still alive, don’t you?’ ‘Yes,’ Fuller said.

  ‘And the saucers?’

  ‘We now have our own, but they’re not that advanced. We based them on designs

  found in Nazi Germany and have reason to believe they were done by Wilson. We

  think we can advance on what we’ve already got, but it’s gonna take a lot of time and

  money. In the meantime, we have the other saucers to contend with, and certainly

  they’re too advanced to be our own.’

  ‘The Russians?’

  ‘We know they got Habermohl and a lot of rocket scientists, but even if they were

  constructing their own saucers, they’d have the same problems as us: not enough time

  or money. In other words, if the Russ
ians have saucers, they’re not likely to be much

  more advanced than ours.’

  ‘Which leaves Wilson.’

  ‘Right.’

  Now Miethe looked frightened. ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘We think we know approximately where he is, but I can’t tell you where that is

  just yet.’

  ‘Because I haven’t committed myself.’

  ‘You committed yourself by asking about Wilson. Now you can’t back out,

  Miethe.’

  Shocked, Miethe straightened up in his chair, staring beyond Fuller’s head,

  doubtless recalling his early days in Kummersdorf with the Machiavellian American.

  Fuller saw that Miethe was now truly frightened and would want his protection. ‘If we’re right,’ he said, ‘Wilson is far away... but he has a long reach.’ ‘With his saucers.’

  ‘Correct.’

  Miethe nodded, rubbing his sweaty hands on his pants, then bit his lower lip. ‘So,’

  he said, sounding as if he was sighing. ‘I am in. I am yours. What do you want with

  me?’

  ‘You have a wife and children in Germany,’ Fuller said. ‘A boy and girl, twelve

  and ten years old respectively. Hans and Irena.’

  ‘Yes,’ Miethe said, looking even more concerned. ‘Why do you - ?’ ‘You’ll want them with you,’ Fuller said. ‘And you’ll want them out of reach. A

  new flying-saucer project, based on a combination of Schriever’s earlier designs and

  the more advanced designs found in Kahla, Thuringia - presumably Wilson’s work -

  is about to be financed jointly by the US and Canadian governments. The contract

  was won by the A.V. Roe Company and construction will take place at their plant in

  Malton, Ontario. That’s in Canada, not America, and we thought you might

  appreciate being there. Do you agree?’

  ‘Yes,’ Miethe said.

  ‘Good. I’ll make arrangements for your wife and kids to be flown out of Germany

  and you’ll all go to Canada shortly after. Any questions, Miethe?’

  ‘Not for now, Mr Fuller.’

  Fuller nodded, stood up, and shook the German’s hand. He wiped his hand on his

  pants as he walked from the room.

  Early that evening, Fuller phoned his wife from his temporary accommodation in the officers’s quarters of White Sands. The marriage between him and Belinda Wolfe had been a battlefield from the first day to the last and they had separated eighteen months ago, two years after the honeymoon. Belinda, the ravishing, brunette daughter of wealthy natives of Georgetown, Washington DC, had been unable to tolerate Fuller’s blatant promiscuity, distaste for domesticity, love of danger, gratuitous cruelty with enemies and friends alike, and horror at the very thought of having children. Fuller and Belinda hadn’t met since the acrimonious separation, though they had good reason to speak often by phone: the impending divorce. Now, when they spoke, Belinda told him that the divorce papers were coming through and she was thrilled to be rid of him.

  ‘Thanks a million, Belinda.’ An hour later, Fuller was celebrating at a dance in the Rocket Room of the Officer’s Club. High on a bellyful of lousy American beer, which he loved (those lousy, tasteless Krauts!), he enjoyed the live band, danced with a few ladies, then played the slot machines standing along the pine wall adorned with stag heads. Also playing was the wife of an Army Air Force captain who was on a two-week flying course at Nellis AFB, Las Vegas, Nevada. Fuller engaged her in conversation, bought her a few drinks, played Ping-Pong with her on the porch, then drove her out into the desert, where, under the dark-blue, star-filled sky, he fucked her brains out. When she recovered and was sobbing, filled with guilt and remorse, though displaying some confusion by saying she loved him, he dumped her well outside the base and told her to walk it off.

  Ten minutes later, having packed to leave the next day, he fell into his bed in his room in the officers’s quarters, went to sleep almost instantly, and dreamt about a V-2 rocket flying across the curved earth and being tailed by one of Wilson’s flying saucers. He awoke with an erection that resembled the V-2, but his headache didn't permit him any pleasure, so he rolled out of bed. Wondering about the elusive thread that led obliquely from the V-2s to the UFOs, or flying saucers, he showered, put on his clothes, and left White Sands for good, gratefully heading back to the real world and its infinite mysteries.

  Chapter Eight Even in the desert of the Southwest, just north of Albuquerque, New Mexico, it was freezing at night. Squatting in the sand beside the other members of his UFO tracking team, looking up at the moon and stars, but seeing no unidentifieds, Dwight was torn between his excitement over what he was doing and depression caused by being away from home again, leaving Beth hurt and angry. It had been his own idea to send special patrols out into the desert around Albuquerque in a determined bid to resolve the mystery of the recent plague of green fireball sightings. A good idea from the point of view of the ATIC, not so good for the marriage.

  The sightings had begun in November 1948, just three months ago, when a lot of folks around Albuquerque had reported seeing what seemed like green balls of fire flying across the skies. At first, because thousands of conscript GIs had recently been discharged from the army, taking souvenirs such as Very pistols, local Air Force Intelligence at Kirtland AFB had written the sightings off as flares. They were, however, forced to change their tune when, on the night of December 5, Air Force pilot Captain Goede and his co-pilot, flying a C-47 transport at 18,000 feet ten miles east of Albuquerque, observed a green fireball the size of a huge meteor flashing across the sky just ahead of them. Later, in their official report on the sighting, Goede and his co-pilot both insisted that it could not have been a meteor, as it had ascended from low altitude, near the slopes of the Sandia Mountains, then arched upward and levelled out, just like an airplane. A few minutes after that sighting, the captain of a Pioneer Airlines Flight also reported seeing a green ball of fire east of Las Vegas, New Mexico, when he was flying en route to Albuquerque. He, also, confirmed that the ascending flight of the green fireball proved that it could not have been a meteorite.

  After that, the fireballs appeared practically every night and most of the reports landed on Randall’s desk at the ATIC, in Wright-Patterson AFB. While analysing the reports with the help of Bob Jackson, Dwight arranged for Dr Lincoln La Paz, head of the University of Mexico’s Institute of Meteoritics, to look into the sightings. Subsequently, La Paz reported that he had personally witnessed the green fireballs both from the ground and from an aircraft, in the company of some distinguished scientists from the AEC Los Alamos Laboratory, and was of the opinion that the green fireballs were not meteorites. Their green colouring was too vivid, their trajectories were too flat, they were not accompanied by the sound and shock waves of natural meteorites, and, finally, they were simply too big.

  The worst row of Dwight’s marriage to date had erupted when, after ten more nights of green fireball sightings, he came under pressure to find out what was causing them. Not considering the time of year, he asked for permission to establish three cinetheodolite stations near Albuquerque, in hopes of ascertaining the altitude, speed and size of the UFOs. Unfortunately, permission came in the form of a formal, written order stating that the stations could only be set up and manned for a period of a fortnight, beginning in December and ending January - in other words, over the Christmas and New Year period.

  Cursing his own stupidity, Dwight was then cursed out by Beth when he told her that he wouldn’t be home for Christmas. Her Irish temper finally exploded and they had a dreadful row. Were this not torment enough, Beth then took Nichola to have Christmas with her folks in Dayton while Dwight and his three unhappy sighting teams set up their cinetheodolite stations in the desert around Albuquerque.

  To make matters even worse, nothing was spotted.

  In truth, Beth had never really forgiven him for
their lost Christmas and New Year

  - particularly since no green fireballs or other UFOs materialised and it all seemed a waste of time. Now, here he was again, a mere four weeks later, in February 1949, in the middle of what he hoped was the most foolproof plan yet devised for the study of UFOs.

  This time he had put together a dozen separate four-man sighting teams, with a radio operator, an instrument man, a timer, and a recorder. All the teams would be assigned a special radio frequency through which they could keep in touch with one another without being heard by outsiders. When a green fireball, or any kind of UFO, was spotted, the radio operator would immediately relay its presence to the other teams to enable them to track it simultaneously. While he was doing so, the instrument man would be measuring the UFO’s angles of elevation and azimuth, the timer would be calling out the time, and the recorder would be writing the details down. By then comparing the records of the many different teams, the speed, size, altitude and flight characteristics of the UFO could at last be accurately ascertained.

  Dwight was pleased with himself.

  Nevertheless, he was also cold and depressed. Cold because the desert, so hot during the day, was as chilly as Antarctica by night - or seemed to be so. Depressed because the stormy waters of his marriage had not been calmed by this latest trip and, even worse, because, yet again, they had been here four nights in a row and nothing had shown up.

  Dwight was even more depressed because he was head of Project Sign and yet had never seen a UFO in his life.

  Sensibly, once it became apparent to Dwight’s team that nothing was happening, they decided to take turns at guard to ensure that all of them would at least get some sleep, even if only for short periods. Now it was Dwight’s turn, it was four in the morning, and he had another two hours to go before he could waken one of the others.

  There they were scattered around him, three men in sleeping bags, looking as dead as the flat plain of the desert and the vast, starry cosmos. Dwight’s eyes felt like lead and he had to fight to keep them open, which he did by concentrating on the sky while praying for something odd or exciting to materialise.

  It could be an eerie experience. The nocturnal sky played many tricks. You looked up at the stars, already dead, in the past, and you couldn’t believe they weren’t there, they seemed so damned real. Then, of course, the sky kept changing. Things were constantly on the move. Even a trained observer could be fooled by shooting stars, comets, meteors, lenticular and noctilucent clouds, dust and ice crystals, temperature inversions, corona discharges, plasmoids, ball-lightning, parhelia and paraselenae, or mock suns and sundogs, mock moons and moondogs, and even the ever deceiving planet Venus. In ancient times such phenomenon had been viewed as mystical visions or visitations by the gods of the sea or sky. In modern times they were often mistaken for UFOs, even by trained observers.