‘That letter could have come from a hoaxer,’ Orville Wright pointed out with a jab of his finger, ‘after he’d read the original story mentioning the unknown Akers.’
‘Finally,’ Bradley read, deliberately ignoring the famous, and famously testy, old man, ‘early in the evening of April 30, in Deadwood, Texas, a farmer named H. C. Lagrone heard his horses bucking as if in stampede. Going outside, he saw a bright white light circling around the fields nearby and illuminating the entire area before descending and landing in one of the fields. Walking to the landing spot, Lagrone found a crew of five men, three of whom engaged him in conversation while the others collected water in rubber bags. The men informed Lagrone that their airship was one of five that had been flying around the country recently; that theirs was in fact the same one that had landed in Beaumont a few days before; that all the airships had been constructed in an interior town in Illinois – which, please note, borders Iowa – and that they were reluctant to say anything else because they hadn’t yet taken out any patents. By May that same year, the wave of sightings ended… and the mysterious Mr Wilson wasn’t heard from again.’
As Bradley gathered his notes and clippings together, there was a bewildered, or disbelieving, silence from those sitting around the table, either smoking or drinking water or beer. Eventually, when the silence became too obvious, Lindbergh propped his elbows up on the table, rested his chin on his clasped hands, and said, ‘So what’s being suggested here is that the mysterious Wilson of the so-called Great Airship Scare of 1896-97, who made frequent remarks about having constructed the airships, either five or six, in a small town in Iowa, is the same Wilson who worked for Robert Goddard and now works for the Nazis.’
Bradley shrugged and again raised his hands in a questioning manner.
‘We’re talking about a sixty-six-year-old man,’ Lindbergh pointed out in softly spoken disbelief.
Unable to refute that point, Bradley said, ‘I’m not saying it’s definite, but it’s certainly worth investigating. We do have proof that a John Wilson was born and raised in Montezuma, Iowa, and that when he left Cornell University, he was placed on the payroll of the New York financiers Cohn and Goldman, who owned an aeronautical research factory located in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. I should therefore remind you, gentlemen, that Mount Pleasant, while in Iowa, is practically on the border of Illinois – the other location given by Wilson for the construction of his airships – and that it’s close to the town of Montezuma, where Wilson was born and raised. These could be coincidences, of course, but I seriously doubt it.’
There was another uncomfortable silence until Orville Wright, who did not smoke or drink, broke it with a fit of coughing, waved his neighbour’s cigar smoke away from him, and said, ‘So assuming that both Wilsons are one and the same, do we know what he’s up to in Nazi Germany?’
‘Yes,’ General Taylor said, looking relieved to be on home ground. ‘According to British intelligence, there are reports that an American scientist – identity unknown, but believed to be John Wilson, who disappeared in Germany in 1931 – is presently working in a secret research establishment at Kummersdorf West, about fifteen miles from Berlin.’
There was silence around the table for a moment, while they all took this in.
‘Are there any known results of this collusion?’ Orville Wright asked.
‘We have an unverified report,’ General Taylor replied, ‘from a source who worked in the Rocket Research Institute at the other side of the army firing range dividing it from the secret hangar in Kummersdorf West, that although even Wernher von Braun didn’t know what was going on in that hangar, the American scientist, presumably Wilson, would visit him once a week to pass on to him any technical innovations he’d discovered that might help in the development of what we believe to be the A-2 rocket program.’
‘Rockets?’ Orville Wright asked.
‘Yes, Orville, rockets.’
Wright wrinkled his brow and looked almost shocked, then asked plaintively, ‘But do we have to be concerned with such developments? Are they not simply pipe dreams, like those of Goddard?’
‘Goddard’s rockets are no longer pipe dreams,’ Lindbergh said angrily.
‘Well,’ Taylor said in his quietly remorseless manner, ‘we can’t be too sure of just how much Wilson’s innovations have contributed to this, but we do know from British intelligence that as early as December 1934 – about a year after Wilson is believed to have started working at Kummersdorf – two highly advanced A-2 rockets, constructed at Kummersdorf, gyroscopically controlled, and powered by oxygen-and-alcohol-fuelled motors, were launched from the island of Borkum in the North Sea and reached an altitude of one and a half miles. And I should make it clear, unpalatable as it may seem, that those stabilized, liquid-fuelled rockets are the only known, serious challengers to the rockets of Wilson’s old work mate, Robert H. Goddard.’
‘I find this unbelievable,’ Orville Wright said, looking unusually flushed.
‘Believe it,’ General Taylor replied. ‘In fact, just a few weeks ago, shortly after Hitler’s infamous advance across the Hohenzollern Bridge, Captain Walter Dornberger, the head of the Rocket Research Institute, his assistant, Wernher von Braun, and their team of one hundred and fifty technicians demonstrated some more rockets at Kummersdorf, including one with an unprecedented three thousand five hundred pounds of thrust. And while it was widely believed that the brilliant von Braun was responsible for this great achievement, he resolutely refused to take credit for it, insisting that others, whom he claimed he could not name, deserved most of the credit.’
‘And you think von Braun was referring to those on the other side of the firing range?’ Lindbergh asked.
‘Yes,’ Taylor replied. ‘To those on the other side of the firing range in general, but maybe to Wilson in particular, since the most revolutionary advances have been made since his arrival at Kummersdorf.’
There was another awkward silence, which was certainly not the norm, and Bradley glanced at Lindbergh, who was gazing distractedly at the table, remembered the widely publicized kidnapping and disappearance of his child, and felt stricken with sympathy and shame.
He knew what the shame was and could certainly not disown it He had promised Joan that he would never again let work come between him and her, let alone him and the children; but he knew that in the past year, even against his better judgment, he had let Wilson become an obsession that was keeping him away from his family more than he’d planned. It was causing problems at home, as his obsession with legal work had done before, deeply wounding Joan and thus angering Mark and Miriam; and so, when he looked at Lindbergh, at that courageous and haunted face, he was filled with shame because he knew he was ignoring what Lindbergh had lost – the precious gift of a family.
As if reading his mind, Lindbergh looked up, stared directly at him, then, breathing deeply, almost wearily, returned Bradley’s thoughts to the matter at hand by asking: ‘Can we take it that this Wilson is still at Kummersdorf?’
‘Yes,’ General Taylor said. ‘According to British intelligence – ’
‘What would we do without them?’ a muted voice asked sarcastically.
‘According to British intelligence,’ Taylor repeated, smiling knowingly at Bradley, ‘the recent demonstration at Kummersdorf so impressed the German commander-in-chief, General Fritsch, that permission has since been given for Dornberger and von Braun to build an independent rocket establishment in a suitably remote part of Germany, where research and test firings can be carried out in the strictest secrecy. It’s believed that the chosen site is near the village of Peenemünde, on the island of Usedom, off the Baltic Coast. It’s also believed that the unknown American, whom we believe to be John Wilson, will
not be going with the rocket team but will be left where he is, with the other members of his team, to do only God knows what in Kummersdorf West.’
The final silence was far too long, filled with too much tension, and forced even Br
adley, schooled in law and psychology, to try escaping it by gazing out the window at the cloud-streaked, iridescent blue sky over the green fields of Langley.
‘So,’ Lindbergh said, offering him a reprieve, ‘we can take it that John Wilson exists and is working in Germany. However, we’re not at war with Germany and Germany isn’t at war with Europe – at least not yet – so what’s the point of this meeting?’
He was staring directly at Bradley, his gaze concerned, not accusing; but Bradley, who could think only of Joan and his children – of the blessings he was abusing as he faced this tragic figure – was incapable of making a coherent answer. He thought of Lindbergh’s murdered child, of all he had owned and lost, and realized that even understanding that, he, Mike Bradley, blessed with a loving wife and children, was letting his obsession with John Wilson threaten all he loved most.
He felt shame and a terrible helplessness, because he knew damned well that he wouldn't stop until this mystery was solved.
He would risk all for that.
‘Let me put it another way, Mr Bradley,’ Lindbergh said. ‘Since you’ve investigated this case and called this meeting to discuss it, what is it you’re trying to tell us?’
‘If we get into a war,’ Bradley said, ‘we might have to stop that man.’
‘Stop him?’ Orville Wright asked hoarsely.
'Yes,' Bradley said without thinking. ‘Stop him dead in his tracks.
CHAPTER ELEVEN Ernst was unhappy as he hurried through the jostling shoppers in the Friedrichstrasse, late for his lunch appointment with Ingrid. In fact, he was slightly hung over, as he was so often these days, and was reminded, by the stout, red-cheeked housewives all around him, that the Berlin he now knew so well by night was very different from the more respectable city that the sun shone upon.
When the sun set on Berlin in this troubled year of 1937, powdered and rouged young men solicited in the yellow lamplight of the Kurfürstendamm, government officials and men of commerce rubbed cheeks with sailors and soldiers in dimly lit bars on the Motzstrasse, hundreds of men dressed as women and women dressed as men danced in the riotous ballrooms of the West End, the novel, the bizarre, and the perverse were nightly paraded before the noisy crowds in the Scala or the amusement palaces of the Wintergarten, the nightclubs, cabarets, revues, vaudeville shows, and erotic Tanzbars were packed with male and female prostitutes, pimps, transvestites, fetishists, homosexuals, and drug addicts. In general, while the National Socialists called for a new moral order, the spirit of decadent pleasure prevailed to a background cacophony of jazz, dancing feet, exploding champagne corks, screams, laughter, and tears.
A very different world, indeed – and one that Ernst had, in the company of his fellow SS officers, become increasingly familiar with in recent months.
He thought of this with a certain amount of shame when he saw Ingrid sitting, in a fur-collared winter coat and broad-brimmed hat, at a table by the window of the Kranzler Café. Haunted by vague snatches of memory from the previous evening’s debauch... Hot dogs and beer at the Scala with Willi Brandt and Franck Ritter, then naked girls at the Schauspielhaus, then Ritter embracing a drunken sailor by the toilet in a Tanzbar, then an opium dream of sensual perversity with the endlessly inventive, amoral Brigette... Yes, haunted and guilty, he uneasily composed himself as he entered the café and joined Ingrid at her favourite table by the window.
‘My dear,’ he murmured, brushing her rouged cheek with his lips and then sitting facing her. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
‘You’re always late,’ she accused him.
‘I can’t always guarantee getting away on time. My superior
officers don’t think that way. What are you drinking?’
‘White wine.’
‘Already? At lunchtime?’
Ingrid shrugged in an indifferent manner. ‘It helps pass the time,’
she said. Not wanting her to drink alone, and feeling thirsty anyway, Ernst ordered a beer for himself.
‘Shall I order lunch now?’
‘I’m not really hungry,’ Ingrid replied. ‘But get yourself something.’
Ernst shook his head. ‘I’m not hungry either,’ he said, still feeling ill from the previous evening and yearning only to slake his thirst with the beer. ‘Still, I think you should eat. You don’t eat enough these days.’
‘I’m just dieting, Ernst.’
‘For me?’
‘For you.’
‘That’s nice,’ he said.
Knowing she didn’t mean it, he was also discomfited by her steady gaze. Though still as green as jade, her gaze was not as bright as it had been. Sitting in this particular café reminded him of the day he had proposed to her, the day Hitler became chancellor, and filled him with remorse and incomprehension at how they had both changed. They had been young and in love then, but now, four years on, they were saddened adults who seemed to have lost each other along the way. Ingrid was still pretty, but in a less sensual, more matronly way, and the darkness in her eyes came from disillusionment, caused mainly by him. He knew it and was wounded by it, but could do little about it, since he too had changed beyond repair – and not for the better.
Best not to dwell on that...
‘So,’ he said instead, ‘how are the children?’
‘They’re fine,’ she replied. ‘They haven't changed much since last week. Ula complains that you only come home at weekends, but Alfred is still too young to miss you, so you needn’t feel too bad.’
‘You’re being mean to me.’
‘I’m not.’
‘It’s not my fault that I can only come home weekends. We’re compelled to live in the barracks during the week, and that’s all there is to it. I know it’s not particularly nice for the children, but we’ll just have to live with it.’
‘You like being away from home. You can barely wait to get back to your SS friends. When you’re home, you have little patience with me or with the children. You’re not nice at all, Ernst.’
‘That’s not true,’ he replied.
Yet as he took his first sip of the beer the waitress had brought, he had to acknowledge that Ingrid was right. His daughter Ula was now three years old and beautiful, his son Alfred was a mere two months old and lively, but he saw them so rarely these days, he hardly knew them at all. He felt guilty over that but could not ignore Ingrid’s charge that deep down he preferred not being home.
In truth, he now felt suffocated by Ingrid’s presence – something that had begun after that dreadful weekend now remembered as the Night of the Long Knives. Ashamed of himself at the time, he now accepted the necessity of that bloody purge and could not tolerate the fact that Ingrid despised him for taking part in it.
For weeks after the purge, she had not let him touch her, meanwhile pouring scorn upon him; but later, after reluctantly surrendering to him and becoming pregnant with Alfred, she had rejected him with more finality than before.
‘You have blood on your hands,’ she had told him, ‘so keep them off me. I don’t want to be contaminated by you or what you represent. You’ve arrested and killed innocent people, once reluctantly, now willingly, and I can’t bear the thought that my children will learn about what you do. Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me again. Take your pleasures elsewhere.’
Which is exactly what he had done. Which in turn was why he spent so much time with his comrades – not just in the barracks, as he insisted on pretending with Ingrid, but in the drunken, decadent pleasures of a Berlin unrestrained by moral values, in the nightclubs and cafes and erotic Tanzbars of the night; and, most irresistible of all, in Brigette's snake-like embrace...
Just thinking about Brigette made him feel sick with lust and shame, though he tried not to show that to Ingrid. After drinking some more beer, he placed the mug back on the table, wiped his lips, and smiled more casually than he felt.
‘So, who have you arrested this week?’ Ingrid asked him.
The remark wiped the smile from his face and filled
him with anger.
‘No one,’ he said. ‘As you know, I’m now based at Kummersdorf West, in charge of technical intelligence. My duties involve the gathering of information relating to foreign and domestic scientific research. I don’t arrest anyone.’
‘But you spy on the scientists you deal with. You keep your eyes and ears open.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Naturally.’
‘You think it’s natural to spy on people?’
‘Not natural,’ he said with a weary sigh. ‘A necessity, Ingrid. Someone has to do it – and I take pride in doing it well.’
‘But why do you have to keep your eye on our own scientists and engineers? Can no one be trusted these days?’
‘It’s not that bad, Ingrid,’ he lied, knowing that in these troubled times no one could be trusted, that the enemy within was always a danger, and that the importance of the work being done at Kummersdorf West called for even more vigilance. It would be more than his life was worth to tell Ingrid about Projekt Saucer and the strange American, Wilson, working there under a German alias, but when he thought about it, he did so with a mixture of awe and resentment.
He was in awe of Wilson's genius, about which he had no doubts, and resented the fact that those who worked with him – Schriever, Habermohl, and Miethe – were doing the work that he, Ernst Stoll, was better equipped to do.
‘You wanted so much to be a rocket engineer,’ Ingrid said, as if reading his mind, ‘and instead you’ve become someone who reports on the achievements of others. That must really hurt, Ernst.’
The mockery, which rolled off her tongue with relish, was even more hurtful.
‘I only hurt to give you pleasure,’ he replied. ‘I hope you’re suitably grateful.’
‘Don’t be bitter, Ernst.’
‘I can’t help it,’ he replied. You complain because I don’t come home much and that I’ve little patience when I do come home – yet you do nothing but pour your scorn upon me. What makes you so superior?’
‘I don’t feel superior. I just despise you for the way you’ve accepted what the Nazis are doing.’
INCEPTION (Projekt Saucer, Book 1) Page 12