INCEPTION (Projekt Saucer, Book 1)

by W. A. Harbinson

  Which just left that fat fool, Belluzzo, who, by his very lack of courage, was the most dangerous of all.

  Wilson had to get rid of him.

  Surprisingly, the aging Italian physicist, who had actually completed the first drawings for the saucer that Schriever was now claiming as his own, had turned out to be the biggest thorn in Wilson’s side. A basically timid man, he had been cowed by the aggressive, manipulating Schriever and, as a consequence, had tried to curry favour with him by repeatedly implying that Wilson could not be trusted. Ever since then, according to Habermohl, who revered Wilson and kept him informed of such intrigues, Belluzzo had become Schriever’s spy and was supporting him in his attempts to take the credit for Wilson’s ideas when talking to Himmler.

  A nest of vipers, Wilson thought. Nevertheless, since he wanted to be rid of them all eventually, he would start by getting rid of Belluzzo, while simultaneously making Schriever less suspicious of him.

  He would do it today.

  Knowing that Schriever would be coming to see him at any moment, Wilson opened his briefcase, removed a selection of the technical papers he had collected during his week of travelling, and, as they were of no great significance, spread them out on his desk.

  He knew that when Schriever entered the office, he would try, in his idiotically surreptitious manner, to see what they contained.

  So he would actually give the fool these technical papers for innovations that were relatively useless.

  This thought had just made Wilson smile when Schriever walked in.

  ‘Ah, Wilson, you’re back!’ he exclaimed in his friendly, false manner.

  ‘Yes,’ Wilson replied.

  ‘You had a profitable trip?’ Schriever asked, looking dashing in his Flugkapitän’s uniform, his forced smile slightly illuminating his lean, darkly handsome features.

  ‘Very profitable,’ Wilson said.

  Schriever took the chair at the other side of Wilson’s desk and offered his fullest attention.

  ‘What did you find?’ he asked breathlessly. ‘Anything exciting or useful to us?’

  Wilson had travelled far, talked to many, and learned a great deal. In factories hidden in the densely forested areas of the Schwarzwald he had been shown an experiment with a liquid gas that would, when blown with considerable force over an aircraft, catch fire from the exhaust and cause the aircraft to explode. In the R-Laboratory in Volkenrode he had been involved in heated discussions about electrostatic fields and gyroscopic controls and also discovered that by mixing a certain percentage of myrol with air, internal combustion engines would immediately begin to detonate irregularly or, depending on the mixture, stop completely. In the Henschel aircraft company he had examined a television component that would enable pilots to control bombs and rocket bombs after they had been launched, as well as a micro-television camera that would be installed in the nose of an anti-aircraft rocket and guide it precisely to its target. In the Luftwaffe experimental centre at Oberammergau, in Bavaria, he had been given a demonstration of an apparatus capable of short-circuiting the ignition system of another aircraft engine from a great distance by producing an intense electrical field... and he had also learned about the development of radio-controlled interceptor weapons and planes, electromagnetic, electroacoustical, and photoelectric fuses, and even more advanced warheads that were sensitive to the natural electrostatic fields that surround aircraft in flight. In the experimental centre at Gottingen, he had been privileged to observe the test flight of a light-winged aircraft that had a slot running along the entire length of its wing span and an extra propellor in the fuselage to suck in the boundary layer and increase the lift of the original airfoil by eight times. And finally, most important, at Berlin-Britz he had been shown a Kreiselgerat, the prototype of a new mechanism that had so far managed to reduce the oscillations of a violently shaking body to under one-tenth of a degree, thus paving the way for the conquest of the boundary layer.

  He did not tell Schriever any of this.

  Nor did he tell him that upon seeing the results of the oscillation tests in Gottengen, which had proved beyond doubt that the boundary layer could be conquered, he had suggested to Professors Ackeret and Betz that they concentrate on a revolutionary new structural design that would be devoid of all obstructing protuberances, such as wings and rudders, devoid even of the normal air intakes, and powered by a more advanced turbine engine. In other words, a more advanced version of the Horten brothers’ tailless aircraft, or ‘flying wing,’ that would offer the least possible air resistance, suck in the dead air of the boundary layer, and then use that same air, expelling it at great force, to increase its momentum.

  The eminent professors had agreed to do just this... though Wilson didn’t tell Schriever that.

  ‘Naturally,’ he said instead, ‘the first thing I did was examine the Horten II, D-11-167, prior to its test flight in Rangsdorf, which turned out to be highly unsatisfactory. This so-called tailless aircraft possesses great static-longitudinal stability and complete safety in relation to the spin, but its control surfaces are so heavy that measurements of manoeuvring stability couldn’t be carried out. The unsatisfactory arrangement of its undercarriage necessitates too long a takeoff, the relation between its longitudinal, lateral, and directional controls is unsatisfactory, its turning flight and manoeuvrability are both fraught with difficulty, and side-slipping can’t be carried out. With regard, then, to what we’re doing here, the Horten brothers are valueless.’

  Wilson threw the drawings and technical summaries of the Horten brothers’ flying wing across the desk as if they were dirt. Schriever picked them up as if he agreed... but then, as Wilson noted, let them rest on his lap and placed his hands protectively on top of them, no doubt to be hopefully used later in his saucer designs.

  ‘Anything else?’ he asked.

  Wilson nodded and tried to feign excitement. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Some exciting innovations. The kind that could make your flying saucer even more powerful.’

  ‘What?’ Schriever asked. ‘What?’

  Knowing that Himmler’s sole interest in a flying saucer was its potential as a weapon of war, Wilson told his devoted disciple, Rudolph Schriever, about such oddities as the proposed Windkanone – a cannon that shot gas instead of shells – and the Wirbelringkanone, or whirlwind annular vortex cannon, which was designed to shoot and then ignite a gas ring that would spin rapidly on its own axis and form a fierce ball of fire. Whether such weapons would work in practice was an issue of great doubt, but because Schriever wanted only news of weapons that would sound magical to his beloved Reichführer, he lapped up what Wilson was telling him and snapped the relevant research papers from Wilson’s hand as if wanting to eat them. Then, when Wilson offered him no more, he stood up to leave.

  ‘One moment, Flugkapitän,’ Wilson said.

  ‘Yes?’ Schriever responded impatiently, now wanting to leave. 'What is it now?’

  ‘I feel I should warn you,’ Wilson said as Schriever turned back to face him, ‘that certain people are plotting against you.’

  As most men in the Third Reich were already frightened of being plotted against or being reported for some damning misdemeanour, Schriever looked suitably shaken and sat down again.

  ‘Plotting against me?’ he said. ‘Who would do that?’

  ‘Belluzzo,’ Wilson said without hesitation.

  Schriever looked stunned. ‘Belluzzo?’ he repeated. ‘But he’s my most trusted colleague, Herr Wilson!’ he blurted out, thus inadvertently confirming what Wilson had suspected.

  Wilson sighed, as if saddened. ‘I’m afraid your trust has been misplaced,’ he said, leaning his elbows on his desk, resting his chin in his hands, and staring with concerned intensity at the clearly shocked Schriever. ‘I have it on good authority – one of Himmler’s aides, in fact – that Dr Belluzzo has been trying surreptitiously to steal credit for the great contributions you’ve so far made to Projekt Saucer and has even, in some of the reports,
credited certain innovations to himself. He’s doing this, I know, because he’s so clearly jealous of your authority over the project, but I’m afraid he’s being taken seriously by those around Himmler, which means that if he isn’t stopped soon, those lies will soon reach Himmler himself and you’ll have to defend yourself.’

  Now flushed and fearful, Schriever gazed through the glass wall at the flying saucer in the middle of the vast hangar, stared disbelieving at Dr Belluzzo, who was plump and gray-haired and wearing an oilsmeared white smock, then returned his stricken gaze to the front.

  ‘What will I do?’ Schriever asked, sounding frightened.

  ‘You have to stop him,’ Wilson said dryly.

  ‘And how do I do that?’

  ‘Get rid of him, Flugkapitän.’

  ‘And how do I do that?’ Schriever asked.

  Because Schriever didn’t know that Wilson was sixty-six years old, because Wilson looked about fifteen years younger, Wilson didn’t believe he was in any way endangering himself when he said, ‘Belluzzo is nearly seventy and beginning to show it, so why not put in an official report about his physical and mental condition, describing him as senile and progressively distracted and therefore an increasing threat to Projekt Saucer? Recommend that he be removed from the project and treated for his own good.’

  ‘Treated?’

  Wilson shrugged and sat back in his chair. ‘Let’s be honest,’ he said. ‘If you put in such a report, Belluzzo will be classified as mentally ill and incarcerated in a concentration camp as an undesirable. If there was another course of action I would certainly recommend it, but there isn’t, and given the circumstances...’

  He deliberately didn’t finish his sentence, but merely raised and lowered his hands as if the matter was in the lap of the gods. Schriever, released from moral responsibility, nodded his gratitude and stood up.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course. It’s the only thing to do. And thank you, Herr Wilson.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ Wilson said.

  When Schriever had left, Wilson gathered the remaining technical notes together, placed them back in his already stuffed suitcase, then phoned through for his driver to come and collect him. When the uniformed SS driver arrived, he picked up Wilson’s suitcase and walked ahead of him, merely glancing at the large flying saucer on the raised ramp, and led him out to the waiting car.

  Wilson looked toward the firing range. He was on the proper side of it now. Wernher von Braun and his rocket teams had moved to Peenemünde on the island of Usedom, off the Baltic Coast, and Projekt Saucer had been moved to this side of the firing range, into the bigger, better-equipped hangars. As Wilson had felt increasing resentment at having regularly to pass on certain of his innovations to von Braun’s A-2 and A3 rocket projects, he had been relieved in more ways than one when they finally left.

  He slipped into the car, sank into the rear seat, and relaxed during the fifteen-mile journey, through the cloudy, gray afternoon, to his new apartment in the Kürhessen district of Berlin. His former nurse, Greta, who’d been warned of his arrival, had prepared dinner for him.

  Assigned to look after only him when he had been recuperating from the second of what he knew would be many operations designed to aid his longevity, Greta had also been instrumental in satisfying his old man’s odd sexual whims, mostly of an oral and masturbatory nature. Then, when he had been awarded this spacious apartment by a satisfied Heinrich Himmler, Greta, obviously attracted by his authority and high position in the Nazi hierarchy, had agreed to move in with him as his nurse, housekeeper, and mistress, with her duties in the latter category few and far between, as Wilson now noted without rancour.

  Sexually abused as a child by her father, twice married, now widowed and a professional nurse, she was well-proportioned and auburn-haired, with an attractive, worldly face, cold hazel eyes, and a great deal of knowledge about the sexual needs of men, which was all Wilson needed. Greta had few illusions, was not blinded by emotionalism, and was probably even relieved to be receiving so much for doing so little. She kept a clean apartment, cooked only for herself since Wilson never ate cooked foods, helped him produce the semen he needed for his continuing experiments, and had her occasional affairs on the side, about which he did not complain.

  Sometimes she even gave him advice, as she now did over dinner.

  ‘Did you visit the factory before you came home?’ she asked, as she tucked into her Wiener schnitzel and he nibbled his dried vegetables and biscuits.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Everything was in order.’

  ‘Did you see Rudolph Schriever?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Why?’

  ‘He came here yesterday,’ Greta said, ‘and feigned surprise when he didn’t find you here. When I said you weren’t returning until today, he made a great play of smacking his forehead with his hand and telling me what an idiot he was, that he’d simply forgotten.’

  ‘You thought his visit was deliberate?’

  ‘Yes,’ Greta said, wise in the ways of men. ‘In fact, I’m convinced of it. I think he just wanted an excuse to see how we lived – perhaps even to look around.’

  ‘Which you didn’t let him do.’

  ‘Of course not!’

  Wilson smiled. ‘I hope you invited him in for some tea, at least.’

  ‘Yes, I did – and his eyes wandered all over the place. I could see he wanted to check out the other rooms, but I kept him pinned to his chair.’

  ‘Not physically, I hope.’

  ‘No, he’s not my type. I merely pinned him to the chair with my gaze and eventually let him go.’

  ‘I hope the poor man at least enjoyed his tea.’

  Greta didn’t return his smile. ‘Don’t trust him,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Good. You can’t trust anyone these days. But that kind, they’re the worst.'

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘The kind who are weak but have ambitions. They’re always the worst.’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ Wilson said.

  A few hours later, when he’d had a bath and was preparing for bed, he asked her to masturbate him and ensure that his semen wasn’t lost. She did it with practised ease, making him come into a small dish, and when he saw it, he was reminded of his adolescence in Iowa, when he would hold his fresh semen in his hand and try to sniff out its properties. He had been a scientist even then, always detached, investigating, and now, these many years later, nothing had changed. He was experimenting with himself, trying to find the secret of life, so this form of masturbation, while offering relief from his waning sexual agitation, was also serving a scientific purpose.

  Greta transferred his semen from the small dish to a glass phial and put the latter into the refrigerator, to keep it cool until tomorrow, when she would deliver it to the experimental laboratory of the hospital where she worked. There the technicians, following Wilson’s written instructions, would experiment with it. He was searching for a way to extend his life before his time ran out.

  He slept soundly that night.

  Three days later, two Gestapo agents wearing black greatcoats arrived at Kummersdorf to take Dr Belluzzo away. The old man was shattered, not knowing why it was happening, and he protested in vain and collapsed into panic, and was staring entreatingly at Schriever and Wilson even as he was dragged away.

  He was not seen again. He disappeared into the camps. A few months later Wilson heard that he had died of a heart attack, reportedly induced by increasing ill health, though more likely caused by maltreatment.

  His original, unworkable designs for a flying saucer were locked up in Schriever’s safe.

  Clearly, Schriever thought he might find some use for them.

  The thought of this amused Wilson who, no longer bothered by the old Italian physicist, was able to get on with his secret work with no spy looking over his shoulder and his conscience as clear as it always had been.

  His

  Feuerball was taking shape.

/>   CHAPTER SIXTEEN Ingrid’s mother answered the door, stared at Ernst in surprise, then looked embarrassed and tried to hide it by crying out, ‘Ernst! You’re back at last!’ She took him into her arms to give him a hug, then stepped back and waved him inside. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘The children will be so pleased to see you. They’ve missed you so much.’

  Noting that she hadn’t mentioned Ingrid and still looked embarrassed, Ernst picked up his suitcase and stepped into the apartment he had not seen for three months. It was late in the morning and both his children were in the living room, four-year-old Ula setting up coloured blocks for baby Alfred, now fourteen months old. Alfred knocked the blocks down and giggled delightedly while Ula glanced sideways and saw Ernst, studied him with slowly dawning recognition, then shyly stood up to greet him.

  ‘It’s your father!’ Ingrid’s mother exclaimed, as if Ernst had been gone for three years instead of four months.

  Realizing that he must seem like a stranger to his own daughter, Ernst set his suitcase down, fell to his knees, and swept both children into his arms, hugging them passionately.

  ‘Don’t be embarrassed,’ he said, stroking Ula’s flushed cheek and golden locks. ‘I know I’ve been gone a long time and must seem like a stranger to you. But you’ll get used to me again, my darling, before very long. And how pretty and grown-up you look. And Alfred!’ He grasped the gurgling baby under the arms and held him up in the air. ‘What a fine boy he is! Do you look after him, Ula?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ula replied, smiling.

  ‘Good,’ Ernst said. ‘Very good!’ He stood up and glanced around the room. ‘Ingrid isn’t here?’ he asked, wondering why his mother-inlaw was looking after the children.

  ‘No,’ his mother-in-law said too quickly, blushing again. ‘She went to visit some friends.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied, avoiding his gaze. ‘She told me, but I can't remember the name. I mean, she didn’t know you were coming back today, so...’