He stopped to study some prisoners who were laying down the steel rails for the trains that would soon run through the tunnels, bringing in more workers, equipment, and, possibly, food. Ernst noticed, once more, that these particular workers were half starved, and understood that they would be worked to death and then casually replaced. A society of masters and slaves hidden under the earth... He was moved by the grandeur of the concept and suddenly saw its potential.
When a bullwhip cracked behind them and someone screamed, Himmler twitched and walked on.
‘The slaves destined to work here,’ he explained as they continued advancing on that expanding circle of light from the outside world, ‘will come from a separate camp located in a hidden mountain valley, less than a kilometre from the entrance to this tunnel. And a new underground complex, to be linked to this one by another network of tunnels, is already being constructed sixteen kilometres under the ground around the town of Bleicherode, only twenty kilometres from Nordhausen. Between them, Nordhausen and Bleicherode will constitute the first of my SS underground factories – virtually living towns. And what we are doing here, Lieutenant, under the earth, we can also do under the ice of the Antarctic.’
At that moment, they stepped into the sunlight that was pouring into the end of the vast tunnel. Glancing down, Ernst saw a strip of ragged, blood-soaked cloth in the mud, but he put it out of his mind as, still walking beside Himmler, whose respect he had gained, he raised his face to let the sunlight warm it, then left the tunnel behind him.
The peaks and valleys of the densely forested mountains of Thuringia were spread out all around and below him in the sunlight of spring.
He breathed deeply of fresh air.
Himmler, also breathing the fresh air, again waved his hand, this time to take in the peaks and valleys spread out below and around them, under a radiant blue sky streaked with fat, snow-white clouds.
‘This whole area,’ he said in his quietly grandiose manner, ‘from the Harz Mountains to Thuringia, south of Prague and across to Mahren, is already littered with other tunnels and underground factories similar to this one. And soon they will be totally insular colonies, worked by masters and slaves, and unrestricted by commonplace, so-called moral thinking. And since the masters are the élite of my most trusted SS troops, the existence of these places is unknown to those who are not my most valued initiates. Unknown,’ he added, lowering his voice even more and staring steadily at Ernst through his glittering pince-nez, ‘even to those closest to our beloved Führer. Do you understand what Im saying?’
‘Yes, Reichsführer,’ Ernst said.
Himmler nodded solemnly. ‘And what we can do here,’ he then repeated in his softly insistent manner, ‘we can also do in the land you have claimed for us in the Antarctic. Yes, Lieutenant,’ he said, nodding again, ‘you have found the place for us.’
Ernst swelled up with the pride he had almost lost through Ingrid.
‘The German genius,’ Himmler continued, ‘has rendered the impossible commonplace – and there, though invisible to the naked eye, my first colonies are taking shape underground.’ He nodded, as if bowing to that sacred earth, then glanced sideways at Ernst. ‘It is my belief, Lieutenant, that these underground colonies, if created in the Antarctic, can, with the aid of the American’s flying saucer, ensure the success of our forthcoming conquest of the whole Western world. By the time that’s been completed – as surely it must – we will have moved the first of our men to the Antarctic to begin the Hörbiger Projekt: the creation of a society under the ice and the first steps toward the supremacy of Nordic man, who will, given time and our ever advancing technology, evolve into the Superman.’
Aware that he had been selected and shaken by the honour, Ernst wanted Himmler to take hold of his shoulders and gently shake him like a beloved son; but he understood that his Reichsführer, a true soldier, even a genius, could not stoop to the display of such emotions in front of his men. Understanding this, he tried to control his own emotions and instead siinply nodded agreement.
‘Now that we have laid claim to Neuschwabenland in the Antarctic,’ Himmler said, his pince-nez magnifying his mild eyes, ‘it is my intention to ship specially trained SS troops, scientists, slave workers, and equipment there, to first construct, then live in, an underground research establishment and its attendant accommodations. This will in time become a self-contained, living colony under the ice. And from there, with the aid of the products of Projekt Saucer, we will spread the rule of the Third Reich across the whole world. We will do this, Lieutenant!’
Ernst was taken aback by the sudden intensity of Himmler’s words, then swept away on a wave of exultation by his Reichsführer’s unprecedented display of emotion. He had to look away from him, to find the freedom of sky and light, but was drawn back when Himmler actually touched him, tugging the sleeve of his uniform.
Ernst looked down and saw the eyes behind the pince-nez as prisms reflecting light.
‘You have done a wonderful thing,’ Himmler said. ‘You have planted our swastikas in the ice. I am now placing you in charge of this great operation: to create Hörbiger’s world of ice and fire under the Antarctic ice and, at the same time, keep a check on the vital progress of Projekt Saucer. This, Lieutenant Stoll, is your great mission on behalf of the Fatherland. Do not disappoint me.’
‘No, Reichsf
ü hrer,’ Ernst replied, realizing in a flood of exhilarating emotion that he would be going back to Kummersdorf West and the world he belonged to. ‘I will not disappoint you.’
Then he looked over the forested hills and valleys with the pride he had almost lost.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN ‘I didn't get very far,’ Bradley said, describing what he had seen in the immense barn in that desolate field near Mount Pleasant, Iowa. ‘In fact, I’d barely walked past the door when the rim of that goddamned thing was in front of me.’
Recalling that eerie experience with vivid clarity, he wasn’t comforted by the fact that the man to whom he was talking, retired US Army Air Force Wing Commander Dwight Nicholson, had insisted that they hold this conversation in a darkened room and was breathing like a man at death’s door.
‘It was shaped like a great steel saucer with a Perspex dome on top, taking up half the floor space of the barn and starting to rust. At first, I couldn’t grasp what I was seeing, but it gradually dawned on me. It was the superstructure for some kind of flying machine: one shaped like a saucer.’
‘A piloted machine,’ Nicholson said, his voice sounding ghostlike. ‘Yes. The Perspex dome turned out to be a circular cockpit, located at the centre of the disc. The cockpit was fixed and the disc, in two parts, like one saucer placed upside-down on another, would have revolved around it.’
‘And of course it was only a shell. There was no engine inside.’
‘Right,’ Bradley said. ‘Even the goddamned control panel had been smashed to hell. He left nothing to chance.’
‘Wrong. He left the prototype. He could have blown it up. Why didn’t he?’
‘He didn’t want to draw the attention of the neighbouring farmers.’
‘Or he wanted something to be found... to leave his mark.’
Nicholson smiled, inhaled on his cigarette, and blew a couple of smoke rings toward the window overlooking the garden of his home in McLean, Virginia. The sun, shining brightly outside, was filtering through the drawn blinds and forming webs of light in the darkness around him, illuminating his dreadful face.
‘Just what we found,’ he said, his twisted smile displaying admiration. ‘The superstructure for a saucer-shaped aircraft, but with nothing inside. Either that bastard had gutted his own machine, taking everything of value, or there'd been nothing inside it in the first place.’
‘Which means?’
‘We all believed then, and I believe now, that the craft that exploded over Tunguska, Siberia, wasn’t piloted – it was some kind of missile – and that the superstructure we found later was a prototype for the first of
his piloted craft. That’s what we found – and what you found. Some smart cookie, that Wilson.’ Nicholson shook his head from side to side, as if he couldn’t believe his own words. ‘We didn’t know he’d left another one, that’s for sure. In a barn in… Iowa?’
‘Right. Up near the border of Illinois. Not far from Mount Pleasant, where Cohn and Goldman had their research establishment. Apparently Wilson had been working in secret on the flying saucer in that barn while ostensibly producing airships for Cohn and Goldman.’
‘In other words, he took them to the cleaners. They were financing his saucer project without knowing it.’
‘Right,’ Bradley said. ‘It was Goldman’s belief that Wilson had secretly been trying to solve the problem of the boundary layer and also working on a crude atomic propulsion system. This suggests that the propulsion system managed at a later date to fly some kind of object – as you say, some kind of missile – as far as Russia, before it malfunctioned, blew up, devastated the forests of Tunguska, and led to the US government closing down Wilson’s research establishment in Illinois and either classifying or destroying what they could find of his work.’
‘Which is why you came to me?’
‘Yes. After finding the remains of that saucer, I checked out what Abe had told me and learned that it was essentially correct: that after Cohn and Goldman had gone bust, the US Army Air Force opened a file on a similar company located just across the state line, in Illinois. Unfortunately, in those records, the names of those involved were erased. But then I saw, in other records in Washington, that you’d been in charge of that operation just before you retired. And since you’re an old friend and all...’
Nicholson smiled. ‘Yeah, Mike, I understand. Can I take it that this is all off the record?’
‘You are retired, Dwight.’
‘I still want it to be off the record. I don’t want my name mentioned.’
‘You have my word on it.’
Nicholson nodded and grinned laconically. You could actually see the twisted grin in the semi-darkness, but it didn’t look real.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘This is all based purely on recollection; I don’t have any backup.’
‘I’ll take what I can get, Dwight.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want a drink?’
‘It’s only ten in the morning.’
Nicholson simply shrugged, sipped some whiskey, inhaled and exhaled more smoke, which made Bradley feel bad.
In 1918, when Bradley had just about turned twenty, he’d been a naval aviator under Nicholson’s command, flying the old wood, wire, and canvas biplanes from their primitive carriers out at sea to the bloody battlefields of the western front. After the war, when Bradley went into law, Nicholson had returned to the intelligence work he’d been doing previously for the Army Air Force. Then his wife, at fiftyeight, had died from a brain haemorrhage, and after that the spirit had gone right out of him. Still with the Army Air Force’s technical intelligence branch, he’d developed a drinking problem, then ulcers, and had then been retired prematurely, looking like an old man. About a year ago, he had bought himself an old de Havilland two-seat Tiger Moth biplane and started to give flying lessons. Under the influence of alcohol, he’d crashed the plane, killing his passenger and seriously burning himself. Now his face was hideous, his skin livid and scarred, his lips practically burned off, along with his hair and eyelids, and he lived here alone, in this too-large house in McLean, Virginia, smoking and drinking most of the day and going out only rarely.
It was frightening to visit him.
‘What Goldman told you was substantially correct,’ he said in an unnatural tone of voice. ‘I don’t think I have to tell you that after the Great Airship Scare of 1896 to 1897, the Army Air Force began taking a particular interest in anything new or novel in the aeronautical field.’
‘That figures,’ Bradley said.
‘Well, since most of the major reports mentioned a man named Wilson – and since most of them also named either Iowa or Illinois as the origin of the mystery airships and their equally mysterious crew members – it wasn’t too difficult to discover that a certain John Wilson, exceptional graduate of MIT and Cornell, was designing and constructing airships for the Cohn and Goldman Company in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Since this was a perfectly legal occupation, we did nothing but surreptitiously keep our eye on his progress. We only became concerned when shortly after the end of the scare, we received a pretty startling report, stating that Cohn and Goldman’s five airships had been destroyed by an unknown demolition expert, thus breaking the company, and that while no evidence could be found to prove that the deed had been done by Wilson, it had been ascertained that he’d mysteriously made a small fortune at approximately the same time and, shortly after, opened his own research establishment in Illinois. It was believed, but could not be proven, that he had made that money by illegally selling his airship designs to a German aircraft company, possibly Zeppelin – and according to Cohn and Goldman, the designs he had let them patent were actually worthless. So, while Cohn and Goldman went bust, Wilson was opening his own research plant in Illinois...’
‘And?’
‘We paid him a visit in Illinois. We informed him of our suspicions, which he naturally denied, and when we asked him what his intentions were, he said he was moving on from airships to heavier-than-air manned flight but was being hampered by his limited financial resources. Clearly the money paid by the Germans wouldn’t last forever.’
‘What did you think of him personally?’ Bradley asked, still trying to fit a face to his mysterious quarry.
‘I’ll never forget him,’ Nicholson replied without hesitation. ‘He wasn’t even thirty, but he seemed a lot older, though what burned itself into my memory was his coldness. A really strange kind of coldness. He wasn't arrogant, rude, unfriendly, or antagonistic – no, none of those things. He was just remarkably detached, inhumanly pragmatic, almost machine-like in the way he listened and responded... He lacked normal emotions.’
Nicholson shivered, as if brushed by a cold breeze, then stubbed his cigarette out and slumped back in his soft chair.
‘Did the air force get involved with him?’ Bradley asked.
‘Yes,’ Nicholson said. ‘Nervous about what he might do, but with no legal right to stop him, we decided to get some jurisdiction over him by offering the money he would need for his more ambitious projects. He accepted on the condition that we didn’t attempt to supervise him and contented ourselves with monthly reports and regular inspection visits to his plant. Believing that would be enough for us, we agreed – but naturally, given Wilson’s nature, it wasn’t enough.’
‘So you were involved with the saucer-shaped aircraft?’
‘No. We didn’t know a damned thing about them. Wilson conned us, just like he’d conned his previous financiers. What we got in our reports, and what we viewed in our many inspection visits to his plant in Illinois, was the prototype for a highly advanced turboprop biplane, and frankly, we were more than impressed. Clearly, we were dealing here with a genius. And by 1903, even before the Wright brothers had made their first, widely publicized flight at Kitty Hawk, I was privileged to witness the secret test flight of Wilson’s completed aircraft. That flight was more than successful – it was absolutely astonishing – and that's when we got scared.’
‘Why?’
Nicholson reached for the bottle of whiskey, filled his glass up to the brim, drank almost half of it, topped the glass up again.
‘After the notorious Cohn and Goldman affair,’ he said, his voice emanating from the semi-darkness in a quavering, ghostlike manner, ‘we knew that Wilson couldn’t be trusted. For that reason, I’d planted one of my own engineers in his team, with orders to keep his eyes and ears open for anything not mentioned in Wilson’s reports or viewed by us during our visits. While this man never got too close to Wilson, he did pick up enough whispers to convince him that Wilson – just as he’d done with Cohn and Goldman – was showi
ng us only the tip of his particular iceberg; that even though his turboprop biplane was more advanced than anything else we knew about, he was reportedly working on some other project, involving the boundary layer and some unknown form of propulsion, in another hangar, located a mile or two from his main plant. Knowing how advanced the biplane was, we were naturally scared shitless at the very thought of boundary-layer experiments and an unknown propulsion system – then, when in 1908 our man reported whispers about the flight of a small, pilotless object that had actually managed to reach Russia, we naturally became very concerned indeed... And we were preparing to take over Wilson’s plant and demand the location of his secret hangar when that dreadful explosion occurred over Tungusta, in Russia. It occurred over Tunguska, you understand, and we knew what that meant.’
‘Something exploded in the air.’
‘Right.’
‘And whatever it was, you don’t think it was piloted.’
‘No, we didn’t then and I still don’t. Bear in mind that Wilson’s secret work was being conducted in what was no more than a converted barn near the main plant. Given this, I think it’s safe to assume that he wasn’t designing something nearly as big as an airship or aircraft. In fact, our spy had heard from other engineers stories about a small, disc-shaped object, no more than a foot in diameter, that when test-flown looked like a fiery ball. It’s my belief that that small, probably remote-controlled object was what exploded over Tunguska – and that the large, saucer-shaped superstructures since found were just that: empty superstructures for the larger, piloted craft that Wilson intended to construct along the same lines as the smaller object. Then, of course, when the smaller object exploded over Tunguska, we had to put a stop to it.’
INCEPTION (Projekt Saucer, Book 1) Page 19