‘Wilson was working at Kummersdorf when von Braun’s rocket project was also located there. I’m not saying the rockets are all his. What I’m saying is that he doubtless contributed to them – and God knows what he’s working on right now. If Goebbels is hinting about other secret weapons, we should take him seriously.’
‘Dr Goebbels is a genius at propaganda.’
‘But I don’t think he’s lying in this instance. The V-1s are a sign of that. We also know that they wouldn’t keep Wilson on at Kummersdorf if he wasn’t working on something valuable. And if the V-1 rockets are going to be followed by something worse, it could come from him.’
Wentworth-King pulled his feet off the desk and began to tap his perfect teeth with a pencil while smiling knowingly at Bradley.
‘I know what you’re going for,’ he said. ‘You’re going to use the flying bombs as leverage to force me to let you parachute into Germany.’
‘Right. Even you’ll have to accept that the flying bombs are a sign that our time may be running out. If they use those bombs, or something even worse, against our troops, the tide could be turned against us.’
‘If we survived the Blitz, we can survive the buzz bombs, I’m sure.’
‘But what if they follow them up with something worse?’
Wentworth-King simply shrugged. ‘We’ll take our chances,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile, since the invasion is still in its early stages, I’d rather not let you, or anyone else, parachute into Germany.’
‘Then let me go to France now, to at least follow the troops into Germany.’
‘No, I can’t do that either. I don’t have the authorization. My only brief, regarding my own organization as well as OSS, is to wait until Germany is almost captured before moving over there.’
‘Shit,’ Bradley said.
‘Orders, dear boy,’ Wentworth-King responded. ‘And unless you can come up with someone higher than me, I’m afraid you’re doomed to remain here.’
‘So what about the OSS project to track down the German scientists?’
‘That also has to wait until the ground forces get there first. I’m afraid I can’t budge on this, old son.’
‘You’re just keeping it all for your goddamned British Secret Intelligence Service buddies. You want it all for yourself, bud.’
‘You said it yourself, Bradley: we’re more experienced. So please let us handle it.’
‘I’m going to get around you somehow,’ Bradley said, standing up and not hiding his frustration.
But Wentworth-King just sighed. ‘Unless you get someone with more authority than I have, I’m afraid you’ll be staying here.’
‘You goddamned Brits!’ Bradley exclaimed in disgust, then turned away and stormed out.
He heard Wentworth-King laughing.
‘That son of a bitch,’ he said to Gladys in the Lyons Corner House by Piccadilly Circus, where it was business as usual. ‘He’s gonna make sure his SOE buddies get all the glory and leave us out in the cold. So much for the OSS pursuit of the Nazi scientists – Wentworth-King has that tied up.’
Gladys lit a cigarette, inhaled, and blew a cloud of smoke. ‘Why the hell should you care?’ she said. ‘You only want Wilson.’ ‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘that’s true enough; but I think Wilson’s more
important than the rocket scientists, if only because we don’t know what he’s up to.’
‘And what do you think he’s up to?
‘You know I can’t tell you that, Gladys,’ he said, thinking of the extraordinary, saucer-shaped machine he had found in that hangar near Mount Pleasant, Iowa.
Gladys grinned laconically. ‘No, of course not. All the officers say the same when I ask what’s going on, though I often know more than they do.’
‘How?’
‘They all talk when they’re drunk.’
‘Or in bed?’
‘Yes,’ she said, blowing a cloud of smoke in his face and staring steadily at him. ‘There as well, Mike.’
‘Recently?’
He was shocked to hear himself say it, as he certainly hadn’t planned to, but she responded with the same steady gaze and slight, mocking smile.
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Maybe not. Why? Would it bother you?’
‘Yes,’ he said, taken aback by his sudden, fierce jealousy, and thinking of her life in war-torn London with a resentment he had not felt before. She had led a good life here, he knew, ever since she left New Mexico, first writing a European column for her old newspaper in Roswell, then becoming more well known when her work became syndicated nationwide. Her list of contacts, mostly high-ranking officers of the armed forces, had grown with her reputation, and she had certainly not been short of male company throughout the frantic, sexually liberated war years. She had told him all about it and he had previously enjoyed the stories, but today, for no reason at all, he felt quite the opposite.
‘It didn’t bother you before,’ she reminded him.
‘Maybe I just didn’t show it. And besides, I had no reason to lay claims upon you.’
‘You still don’t,’ she said. ‘We’re just good friends, after all, as we constantly remind ourselves.’
He recalled his first air raid, when she had told him she loved him. He’d been too shaken to reply and hadn’t reminded her of it since, but he knew that what he was feeling was more than friendship, though he was frightened of saying so.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we’re just good friends.’
She smiled and blew some smoke rings. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘you know it’s more than that. Why don’t you admit it?’
He shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure of what I feel. I feel foolish even talking like this, because I’m practically fifty.’
‘That’s not old.’
‘It’s not young.’
‘It’s young enough for an adult relationship.’
Amused by that, he replied, ‘Adult relationships can often be childish, and I don’t trust myself that way.’
‘You don’t trust what you feel?’
‘No – at least not always. I’ve spent a lot of years thinking about us
– about your letters – and while I always enjoyed getting them and kept them and reread them, I felt guilty about the situation – before Joan’s death and after – and also felt that we couldn’t possibly be in love after only two meetings. In other words, I sometimes felt that I was kidding myself; that maybe both of us were romancing. And having thought of myself as a mature man, that made me feel foolish. I know how I feel about you, Gladys. I’m just not sure why.’
Gladys propped an elbow up on the table, cupped her chin in her hand, blew a smoke ring in his direction, then shook her head ruefully.
‘God, I love you,’ she said. ‘I’ve never doubted it for a second. And I knew it when we first met, inside about ten minutes. I knew I was in love with that wonderful combination of maturity, common sense, and inhibition. I knew it when I sensed that you were startled by what you were thinking.’ She chuckled and shook her head again. ‘And what were you thinking, Mike? You were thinking I was attractive and attracted to you – oh, yeah, you saw that! – and you were excited and scared all at once, as well as hopelessly guilty. A real married man, right? And one with morals and principles. Yeah, that’s what I saw inside minutes when we first met, and I loved it and it made me love you… and I did… and I do. Now what do you say, Mike?’
He glanced around the crowded tea room, at all the women in their wide-brimmed hats, the men in drab suits and hats, the waitresses hurrying to and fro in their black skirts and white aprons. He studied them too intently. It was something to do. His heart was racing and he was blushing like a kid, and that rendered him speechless. Then he looked out the window, at the statue of Eros, and had to smile. He lowered his gaze to the traffic crawling around the central island. There the bobby was blowing his whistle and waving his arms as the citizens of this beleaguered, majestic, defiant city went about their daily business in a perfectly
normal manner.
‘The goddamned Brits,’ he said, turning back to Gladys. ‘You’ve really got to admire them.’
She raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Is that your answer, Mike?’
‘Dammit, Gladys, you know damned well I love you. I just can’t say these things.’
‘You’ve just said it.’
‘Have I?’
‘Yep. You’ve just said it. I’ve certainly heard more passionate declarations of love, but I’ve never felt happier.’ She reached across for his hand, kissed the back of his wrist, squeezed his fingers, and refused to let go. There were tears in her eyes. ‘You’re going to leave me, aren't you?’
‘I have to go, Gladys. I have to stop that son of a bitch Wilson before he goes too far.’
‘What do you think he wants?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me.’
‘I will,’ she said, drying the tears from her eyes and gazing down at the table. ‘I don't believe he was after power. At least not for personal gain. I believe he’d made science his god and worshipped it blindly. He didn’t care about human beings and despised their most common feelings; he was convinced that our only purpose on earth is to serve evolution. Not mere procreation – no! even the animals can do that – but to form a bridge between our irrational past and a perfectly rational future. He hated irrationality and mistrusted all emotions. For him, what divides man from the beast is intelligence – not emotion, not feelings. He believed only the mind, the application of logic, the quest for absolute knowledge, which he seriously confused with truth.’
‘I’m not sure I understand.’
‘That’s why you’re frightened of loving me – which you do, God bless you. Because love is an emotion that flies in the face of logic, yet it endures while one scientific absolute after another is disproven and replaced with something new. Wilson didn’t understand that. Not the Wilson I knew. He was convinced that what we value, our dreams and feelings, belong to the caves. He doesn’t believe in human beings. He only believes in science. And because science is the sole road to truth, it’s all that concerns him. What he wants, then, isn’t power – at least not as we know it – but freedom to do what he wants without normal restrictions.’
‘The son of a bitch is working for the Nazis,’ Bradley said.
‘Yes,’ Gladys replied, unconcerned by his flash of anger. ‘But not because he’s a Nazi or believes in the Third Reich. Probably because they were the only ones willing to finance his work, whatever that is. He’ll use them – just as he used me and everyone else – and in the end he may go down with them. But whatever it is he’s doing with the Nazis, he’s not doing it for them.’
‘How could you be his mistress?’ Bradley asked, before he could stop himself. ‘If he's that bad, if he’s really as cold as ice, how could you sleep with him?’
‘Does that thought hurt you?’
‘Yes, dammit, it does!’
‘Then you really do love me!’ she exclaimed.
‘That isn’t an answer.’
She picked his hand up again, stroked his fingers, kissed his wrist. ‘Because I was wounded,’ she explained. ‘Because I’d recently lost my husband. Because I didn’t want emotional entanglements and he was perfect that way. He wanted only my body and I wanted only to lose myself, so we literally climbed into bed together and had few disappointments. To be truthful, it was perfect – we both got what we needed – but in the end, like most women, I confused satisfaction with love, and was mortally wounded when he left me without looking back. That’s in the nature of woman – it’s in the nature of human beings – but it’s nothing that Wilson would understand, which in the end made me loathe him more.’ She kissed his hand again, stroked his fingers, and stared steadily at him. ‘And now you loathe me, don’t you? For confessing my sins. You loathe me for sleeping with the man who’s taken over your life.’
‘No,’ he said without a moment’s hesitation. ‘I just love you more. But that Wilson…Goddammit, he’s like a man without a centre. And he’s brilliant and totally mysterious and I have to look in his eyes. Do you understand that?’
‘Yes, I think so... And so you’re going to Europe.’
Which brought Bradley back to the real world and plunged him into gloom. ‘Not according to Lieutenant Colonel Wentworth-King. As far as he’s concerned, I’m here for the duration, probably until the war ends.’
‘Go around him,’ Gladys said.
‘I can’t. That’s not allowed.’
‘What if someone with more authority approaches you?’
‘That’s allowed, but unlikely.’
‘Do you love me?’
‘Dammit, yes.’
‘Without doubts?’
‘You know that now.’
‘I don’t know why I’m doing this. I really don’t. I don’t want to lose you.’
‘What the hell are you talking about, Gladys?’
‘I’m going to get you to Europe.’ She stubbed her cigarette out, waved at the waitress, then said, ‘Okay, you pick up the check. It’s the least you can do.’ When he had done so, she led him out of the café and headed toward Leicester Square. ‘Can you meet me in the bar in the Savoy this evening?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Sure.’
‘About…?’
The question hung in the air, because at that moment they both heard an awful roaring, buzzing sound, a nerve-jangling sibilance that passed overhead and suddenly cut out, leaving an abrupt, unnatural, chilling silence.
Bradley saw everyone in the street looking up at the sky, as if frozen where they stood, then, in that fifteen seconds of eerie silence, they threw themselves to the ground.
The V-1 rocket, the buzz bomb, the doodle-bug, exploded in the next street just as Gladys pulled Bradley to the ground. He felt the ground shake, heard the explosion, and rolled into Gladys. He clung to her as more rockets buzzed overhead and lay there as they went silent – the sound everyone already dreaded – then exploded fifteen seconds later, some nearby, some faraway. The attack didn’t last long, but it seemed to take forever, and when it ended, Bradley helped Gladys up and then glanced about him.
A pall of black smoke was rising above the rooftops. When Bradley heard the sirens of the fire brigade, he knew that more fires were burning and more people dying.
‘About nine this evening?’ Gladys asked him, as if nothing had happened.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there.’
Gladys kissed him fully on the lips and gave him a hug. ‘Right,’ she said, then waved good-bye and hurried off, heading straight for the ominous pall of smoke that now hung over Soho, to remind him, as so many things did these days, that Wilson was still somewhere out there, being far too creative.
The buzz bombs continued to rain down all day on the southern parts of England and were still falling on London that evening when Bradley made his way to the Savoy Hotel. As he walked along the Strand, he saw a pall of black smoke hanging over St Paul’s Cathedral and the rooftops of the city, and even as he turned into the hotel, more bombs exploded.
Though most of the servicemen were now fighting in France, the party in the American Bar was in full swing and packed with army, navy, and air force personnel from Britain, America, Canada, France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and even Poland. Most of them were either working in operation centres in London or preparing to join the advance through France. The men and women, most in uniform, were spilling out of the bar and into the lobby in a haze of cigar and cigarette smoke, red-faced and in good cheer, while a large group near the bar, obviously drunk, was singing in ragged chorus, ‘We’re gonna hang out our washing on the Siegfried Line...’
Gladys was seated near the entrance, well away from the noisy singers, beside a US army major-general, and she waved Bradley over as soon as she saw him. Bradley wasn’t going to kiss her in front of the unknown officer, but she jumped up and embraced him and kissed him full on the lips.
‘You didn’t get a doodle-bug on yo
ur head, then?’ she asked jokingly, though with visible relief. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘They’re falling mostly over the City, so I was okay.’
‘Here, pull up a chair,’ Gladys said, then, when he had done so, continued, ‘This is a dear friend, Major General Ryan McArthur, who’s about to take off for France and could be of help to you. Ryan, this is the guy I told you about, my fine man, OSS Colonel Mike Bradley.’
Bradley and the silver-haired, sophisticated McArthur shook hands.
‘No relation, I take it,’ Bradley said with a grin, ‘to General... ?’
‘No,’ McArthur replied, anticipating the question. ‘No relation at all. Can I get you a drink, Mike?’
‘Scotch on the rocks.’
‘Right.’
When McArthur was at the crowded bar, Gladys, who was sitting beside Bradley, took hold of his hand. ‘Still love me after all these hours?’
‘Damned right,’ he said.
'’Okay, Mike. If you truly love me, I’ll put your mind at ease. While it’s true that I’ve had a good time in London, I haven’t been involved with another man since you turned up. I’ve been faithful and living on hope – and you’re my only man now.’
A lump came to his throat and he covered her hand with his own, then squeezed her fingers.
‘You didn’t have to tell me that,’ he said.
‘Yes, I did, Mike. As for McArthur, he’s just an old friend – and I do mean a friend. No more and no less.’
‘Okay, Gladys. Thanks.’
‘Do you love me just a little bit more for that?’
‘I can’t possibly love you more than I do.’
She grinned and winked. ‘That’s my man.’
Bradley released her hand when McArthur returned to the table, carrying three glasses of Scotch between his two hands. When they had taken their drinks from him, he sat down, sipped some Scotch, grinned at Bradley.
‘So,’ he said, ‘you’re with OSS.’
‘Right.’
‘You’re working here with the British Secret Intelligence Service?’
‘I wouldn’t exactly call it working. I’m supposed to be trying to track down a renegade American scientist – ’
INCEPTION (Projekt Saucer, Book 1) Page 32