Ernst hurried out through clouds of dust, felt waves of heat, saw fire and smoke, then was struck by a dreadful premonition that could not be cast off. He thought of Ingrid and the children, of that old house in Wannsee, and sensed, even as he visualized it, that something had happened.
It was there and would not budge – the conviction that they were dead – and he commandeered an SS car and drove out of the barracks and raced through the blazing, erupting city, heading for Wannsee. This time he found no respite – the pattern of bombing was widening – and a cloud of smoke and dust covered the river and the houses around it. Ernst glanced up at the sky, saw the criss-crossing searchlights, the Allied bombers as thick as flies in the paler light of the full moon and stars. It was a lovely August night – only mankind had made it hellish
– and as he drove through the gateway of the house in Wannsee, he knew that he had been part of it.
He squealed to a halt in a cloud of smoke, climbed out into scorching heat, and rushed toward the flames that licked up from the rubble. It had been a direct hit – most of the house had collapsed – and he was beaten back by the heat. He fell to his knees in hot ash and looked up at the flames licking over the exposed beams and beating at the broken walls. Then he screamed like an animal, out of the deep well of his old self, as another wall collapsed, causing more geysering sparks and smoke, and then he covered his face with his hands and shed the last of his tears.
Ingrid and his children were dead.
Now he had only Wilson.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO A V-1 rocket had been found intact. It lay near an enormous bomb crater in a field not twenty yards from the southern wall of the immense main building of the launching site in the Pas de Calais in liberated northern France.
‘It’s nearly twenty-six feet long,’ explained US Army Major General Ryan McArthur, ‘has a wingspan of about seventeen point five feet, a body diameter of approximately two point five feet, and a launch weight of four thousand eight hundred and sixty pounds. Its warhead weighs eighteen hundred and seventy pounds and its fuel, twelve hundred pounds. She’s some baby, right?’
‘Right,’ Bradley said, suitably impressed. He had not seen McArthur since being introduced to him by Gladys Kinder in London, three months ago. Now, as he followed the major general across the bomb-cratered field near the launch site and its silos, he couldn’t stop thinking of her.
‘And this,’ McArthur said, stopping where an even bigger rocket, approximately twice the size of the V-1, was being hoisted into the air by a British-controlled Straho crane, ‘is, we think, one of the enormous sons of bitches that devastated parts of Chiswick and Epping a few days back.’
‘The V-2,’ Bradley said.
‘Yeah, we think so. And this mother is nearly fifty feet long, has a body diameter of five point five feet, a weight, empty, of seven thousand-odd pounds, and a fuel weight of twenty thousand one hundred and fifty pounds, compared to the V-1’s meagre twelve hundred. How’d you like that on your head?’
‘A homburg hat will do fine, thanks.’
McArthur laughed and slapped Bradley on the shoulder. They stood side by side on the cold, windswept field, watching the enormous rocket being hoisted up off the ground by the crane, prior to be taken somewhere safer for a thorough examination by a team of Allied scientists. Bradley had driven here from Caen, after the recent capture of Antwerp. Major General McArthur’s invitation had surprised him.
In fact, while Bradley had been interrogating people in Caen, McArthur’s ALSOS agents had been swarming all over the liberated areas of France, particularly the Pas de Calais and the Cherbourg peninsula, where, it had been discovered, most of the V-1 and V-2 rocket launch sites were located. Over the past two days, then, since Bradley’s arrival, McArthur had been taking him on a tour of the major captured rocket sites, which were, in their sheer size and design, something more than impressive. This particular site was located on the edge of the forest of Eperlecques, three miles north of the village of Watten, on the canal network between the sea and the Belgian border.
‘It’s our belief,’ McArthur now said as he walked Bradley away from the V-2 rocket and back toward the site’s huge main building, ‘that this was intended to be one of the largest rocket sites of all. Mercifully it was put out of action by the repeated bombing raids of the B-17 Fortresses of the Eighth Air Force of the good old US of A.’ He stopped a good distance from the towering, concrete-bunker-styled building in front of them. ‘Just look at it,’ he said. ‘That was the reception building for V-2 trains arriving from Germany. It contained offices and staff accommodations. Over there,’ he said, waving his right hand, ‘is the railway station, with the lines two feet below floor level and the roof five feet thick – though it has been penetrated by one of our bombs that didn’t explode. Over there,’ he continued, pointing past the damaged wall of the enormous bunker to a tower rising out of the windblown grass, ‘is the launch control, approximately sixty-three feet by seventy-three feet and fifteen feet high – no small silo, believe me – and the launch silo, which is thirty by fifty, though now filled with water.’
He led Bradley into the enormous main building. Constructed from reinforced concrete, it was three hundred feet long, one hundred and thirty-eight feet wide, and had work levels going two hundred and sixty feet below ground.
‘We believe it was their intention,’ McArthur said, ‘to construct a building that could be demolished only by a bomb so large that it’d be impossible for an airplane to carry it. That’s why the ceiling above you,’ he said, pointing up to the eighty-foot-high roof, ‘is made from reinforced concrete twenty-three feet thick. Theoretically speaking, to pierce it you’d need a bomb weighing about twelve tons and striking the ceiling at Mach One, the speed of sound – but we don't have that yet.’
Bradley looked up. Above the northern entrance, at the junction between the ceiling and the north wall, an explosion had blown off a large piece of concrete and forced out a mess of steel reinforcing bars. A second explosion, near the centre of the roof, had detached another large piece of concrete and caused a fine web of cracks.
‘Something obviously damaged it,’ he observed.
But McArthur shook his head. ‘Not our normal bombing raids,’ he said. ‘In fact, what you’re looking at is minor damage, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Well, it wasn’t caused by our beloved Flying Fortresses during the course of normal operations. In fact, to test the strength of the structure, after we’d captured it, we deliberately tried to destroy it with a couple of twenty-two thousand-pound Grandslam bombs – and this is all the damage we managed to inflict. This goddamned place is damned near impregnable – and so are most of the others.’
‘How was it constructed?’ Bradley asked him as they walked around the enormous, empty, silent building, looking up at its towering walls and high ceiling.
‘Forty-nine-thousand tons of steel were needed to build that roof alone,’ McArthur said. ‘According to intelligence reports, based on the interrogation of locals, hundreds of jacks were used to raise the roof slowly, inches at a time, with the walls being built up beneath it, as it was raised. The enormous amounts of steel, cement, sand, and gravel needed were brought in from Watten on that standard-gauge railway track you saw outside. So far we’ve estimated that the site took six months to construct and used about thirty-five-thousand slave workers, who came from the two prison camps located about a mile and a half from here. At any one time there were always three to four thousand men at work, which went on around the clock on twelve-hour shifts. The slave labour, or Sklavenarbeiter, was controlled by armed members of the black-shirted SS Totenkopfverbande, who didn’t hesitate to execute anyone too ill or exhausted to work. This place, then, is an extraordinary achievement... but the price... Jesus Christ! You don’t want to think about it! Come on, let’s get out of here.’
They went outside again, into the shadow of the towering wall, and were whipped by the wind howling across the
bleak, bomb-blasted fields, where once livestock had roamed. Now the fields were covered with soldiers, British, French, Canadian, and American, as well as concrete silos and the usual debris of war: armoured half-tracks, overturned trucks, the blackened remains of burned-out tanks, melted tires, and scorched earth.
‘I have to think about it,’ Bradley said as McArthur led him toward his parked jeep. ‘I have to fix firmly in my head just what they were capable of.’
‘The Nazis?’
‘Right. When you hear the stories you can’t believe it. They’re too incredible to be true – vast underground factories hidden deep in the mountains; the assembly lines run night and day with slave labour – and then you see places like that, the sheer enormity, the work behind it, and you have to accept that they could do it and that he must be part of it.’
‘Wilson?’
‘Yeah. He’s always been a man to hide things. He hid his own past, hid his work in Iowa, hid his hangars in the wilds of Illinois, then went to hide himself in Nazi Germany, to create God knows what. We saw those rockets, right? We know how advanced they are. And even though that’s frightening enough, they’re just the tip of the iceberg. Wilson’s in the Harz Mountains. We don’t know exactly where. We only hear about vast underground factories and the use of slave labour. Was it possible? I didn’t think so. Not until I came here. Now, having seen what you’ve shown me, I know that it is... The Harz Mountains... Factories hidden inside the mountains... Yes, they could do it... And that bastard is using it.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know... and that’s exactly what frightens me.’
McArthur smiled gently, patted him on the shoulder, then climbed into the driver’s seat in the jeep and cocked a finger invitingly. When Bradley had climbed in beside him, he turned on the ignition, drove carefully around the bomb craters, and said, ‘Thank God Paris has been liberated. A few days there will do you good.’
‘I don’t want to go there,’ Bradley replied. ‘I don’t have the time.’
‘I think you’ll make the time,’ McArthur said with a lopsided grin, ‘because Gladys Kinder is there. Now, do we go there or not?’
‘Faster!’ Bradley said. ‘Faster!’
Almost convulsed with laughter, McArthur manoeuvred around the last of the bomb craters, bounced off the high verge, then drove along the straight, tree-lined road that would take them to Paris.
The bar in the Ritz Hotel in the place Vendome was packed with British Tommies, American GIs, young men and women wearing armbands of the French Forces of the Interior – FFI – or Red Cross, and more than a few journalists, including the famous, and famously loud, bearded American novelist who, five days before Paris was freed, had entered Rambouillet where he had, according to what he was now loudly stating to those crowded around his bottle-strewn table, acted as an unofficial liaison offlcer between the 5th Infantry Division and the French partisan patrols. The roar of the conversation that came out of the swirling cigar and cigarette smoke was punctuated by the tinkle of glasses, the popping of champagne corks, the metallic clatter of M-1 army rifles, tommy guns, joggling hand grenades, and other weapons; and Gladys Kinder, looking flushed, was leaning sideways in her chair to take hold of Bradley’s hand and tell him, ‘It’d be a lot cheaper in the correspondents’ mess in the Scribe Hotel, but this is, after all, a oncein-a-lifetime event and the Ritz is the only place to experience it.’
In this atmosphere of celebration, Bradley was almost sorry to have missed the previous day’s victory march from the Arc de Triomphe and along the ChampsÉlysées and on to Notre Dame, but being here so unexpectedly with Gladys was doing his heart good.
‘I’ll never forget yesterday as long as I live,’ Gladys continued while stroking Bradley's sweaty palm. She wasn’t embarrassed by the presence of Major General Ryan McArthur, who in any case was looking around the crowded bar with a broad grin on his face. ‘There were thousands of people lining the ChampsÉlysées all the way up to the etoile. General Leclerc’s division, including elements of the US 82nd Division, marched between the cheering thousands, to repeated shouts of ‘Viva la France!’ De Gaulle, on the reviewing stand in the place de la Concorde, surrounded by other dignitaries and a couple of US generals, was stiff as a board and proud as punch. And after that, when the parade disbanded, it was hugs and kisses all afternoon, with God knows how many glasses of Calvados and champagne and wine – and I’m still not hung over!’
‘It’s the excitement,’ Bradley said. ‘You’ll probably be as high as a kite for days, then come down with a bang.’
‘We’ll all come down with a bang when this war ends. That’s a terrible truth.'
‘It sure has its excitements,’ Bradley replied with no great deal of pride, thinking of the death and destruction he had witnessed on the march through France, yet unable to deny that he had never felt more alive than he had felt these past few weeks. ‘I can’t deny that. But right now, the most exciting thing in the world is seeing you again, Gladys.’
‘Aw, shucks,’ she said, beaming, then kissed him on the cheek. ‘You sure know how to please a gal!’
McArthur turned back to them, raised his glass of Calvados, and said solemnly, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, lovebirds, a toast to the liberation of Paris.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ Bradley said, raising his glass.
‘And so will I,’ Gladys said, touching his glass with hers.
‘You’ve been drinking to it for two days solid,’ McArthur reminded her, ‘but you’re looking good on it. So, let’s drink!’
They all emptied their glasses. As McArthur was refilling them from the bottle on the table, a drunken young member of the FFI kicked his chair back, stood up, and raised his glass above his flushed face. ‘Vivent les Americains!’ he declared in a ringing tone. He tossed down his champagne in one long gulp while the others at his table cheered and various British, Canadian, and Dutch troops booed and catcalled. The young FFI man, with a broad, sweaty grin, bowed theatrically to the packed room and fell back into his chair.
‘Victory is sweet,’ McArthur said, ‘but can lead to more fighting.’
‘Let’s hope not,’ Gladys said. ‘So what have you two been up to since we last saw each other? Still in pursuit of rocket-bombs and mad American scientists?’
‘We’re not allowed to discuss it,’ McArthur said, ‘particularly to journalists.’
‘This journalist has a personal interest in the case. Besides, this conversation’s off the record. I just wanna know, kids.’
Bradley grinned. ‘McArthur here’s been showing me the V-1 and V-2 rocket launch sites, which have already been photographed for the newspaper. So no big secrets there.’
‘And what did you think?’
‘I think the Krauts are more advanced than we’d imagined – and in more ways than one. I think that no matter how big the project, they’d know how to hide it.’
‘Such as Wilson’s project, for instance.’
‘You got it, Gladys. Bright girl. If Wilson’s trying to build a new kind of aircraft, we’re talking about a big project, but no matter how big it is, I now think the Krauts could keep it well hidden.’
‘Where?’
Bradley glanced at McArthur, who simply smiled and nodded. ‘Underground,’ Bradley said, turning his gaze back on Gladys. ‘In great tunnels and factories hacked out of the interior of mountains. I think that’s where our man is.’
‘Where?’
‘You’ve already asked that.’
‘I mean, precisely.’
Bradley shrugged. ‘We don’t know exactly, but we think it’s somewhere in the Harz Mountains, probably south, in the area of Thuringia.’
‘And is that where you plan to go, Mike?’
‘Yes,’ Bradley replied.
‘You’re going to follow the advance?’
‘Yep. As far as I can go.’
‘With the fighting troops?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t want you ge
tting yourself killed.’
‘I’ll try not to,’ Bradley said.
Gladys stared steadily at him, her face showing concern. He was touched and wanted to kiss her lips, but was too shy to do so, because McArthur, filling up their glasses again, was grinning broadly at both of them.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘let’s drink up and fall down!’
They touched glasses and drank as a combo started playing a Cole Porter medley. The American novelist, all belly and beard and drunken bellowing, stood up and lurched out of the bar, trailed by his admirers. A French woman crossed the room, giving address cards to the men. She stopped in front of Bradley, glanced at Gladys and McArthur, smiled and gave McArthur a card and said, ‘Call anytime,’ then gracefully passed on. McArthur studied the card thoughtfully, slipped it into his shirt pocket, and said, ‘A night of love in Paris at a price. To the victor the spoils.’ Gladys chuckled and McArthur grinned, his eyes scanning the noisy room, then he raised his eyebrows and said, ‘Well, well! We have an unexpected visitor!’
Bradley looked up in surprise as his urbane, friendly adversary, Lieutenant Colonel Wentworth-King of the SOE, London, emerged from the crowd around the bar, carrying a glass in his right hand, a swagger stick under his left arm, looking dashing in his British army uniform and peaked cap. He stopped at their table, grinned, and said sardonically, ‘I thought I recognized you, Bradley! What on earth are you doing here?’
‘Just celebrating the liberation of Paris. Nothing more, nothing less.’
‘I’m sure... And in the presence of Major General Ryan McArthur, of the Manhattan atomic bomb project. Accidentally, no doubt.’ He smiled guilelessly at McArthur and said, ‘Good to see you again, sir. Mind if I join you?’
‘Pull up a chair,’ McArthur said. ‘It’s party time in the Ritz.’
INCEPTION (Projekt Saucer, Book 1) Page 38