General Kammler appeared on deck, accompanied by the commander of the submarine, Captain Heinz Schaeffer, whom Wilson had previously met in the Harz Mountains when Schaeffer was inspecting the new XXI electric submarines. Both men climbed up the ladder to the quay and approached General Nebe.
Kammler talked in a low voice, glancing repeatedly along the docks. His shadow trailed out along the wet stones and touched Wilson’s feet. Nebe turned away and murmured something to his sergeant. Kammler took a torch from his pocket and flashed it three times.
Wilson glanced along the dock, where another truck was approaching. The truck shuddered as it started to slow down. Kammler walked up to Wilson and introduced him to Schaeffer. They shook hands as the truck driver changed gears and turned in toward them.
The SS troops remained silent: a line of men along the warehouse, all of them with their weapons in their hands slanted over their chests. They were as still as they were silent. Their discipline was remarkable. The sergeant stepped back and bellowed an order, and the troops performed a precise about-turn and froze facing the wall. Wilson heard their guns rattling. Their snapping boot heels left an echo. The truck stopped, overlooking the harbour, and its ramp was thrown down.
A shocking noise split the silence, almost deafening Wilson. The soldiers lined up along the warehouse wall were suddenly jerking and screaming. Wilson glanced up at the truck and saw a barrel spitting flame. The machine gun was roaring and rattling as the men died and fell. When Wilson blinked, there was silence. A gray smoke drifted lazily. The high wall of the warehouse was filled with holes and splashed with fresh blood.
All the men lay on the ground, sprawled across one another, their pupils reflecting the lamps beaming down on their faces.
Schaeffer turned away, but Kammler looked almost bored. Nebe took his pistol from its holster and then cocked its hammer. He nodded to his sergeant and they both approached the pile of bodies. Nebe fired the first shot. His sergeant fired the second. They took turns, bending over the bodies, the gunshots reverberating eerily while the morning light brightened. The coup de grace seemed to take a long time, though it didn’t take long at all. When it was finished, Nebe turned away and gently waved his free hand.
Some men jumped out of the truck. The machine-gun barrel clanged. Nebe returned his pistol to its holster and walked away from the bodies. There was no sweat on his brow. His dark eyes were unrevealing. He simply nodded at Kammler and Schaeffer, and they walked along to the submarine.
Wilson waited until Ernst Stoll had returned, wanting to check his reaction. Stoll glanced at the pile of bodies, at the blood on the walls and ground, then said, unemotionally, ‘Now there are no witnesses to the number of the submarine. We’ve also wired the road leading onto the quay. I think we should go now.’
‘We are going,’ Wilson said, ‘but you have to destroy the evidence. The submarine’s leaving now, since the light will show us up, but we’re going to wait just outside the harbour until you get to us. Will you do that?’
‘Yes,’ Stoll said.
Wilson, who knew a disciple when he saw one, just nodded and turned away, then climbed down the ladder to the submarine. * * *
Having landed in one piece, Bradley marched for an hour with the 82nd Airborne Division and arrived at the camouflaged SS bunker as sunlight bled through the mist. He ran across a windblown field, crouched low, a survivor – then all hell broke loose. German machine guns and bazookas opened up, and he found himself right in the thick of it.
It was a brief but bloody battle, because the Krauts refused to give in, but eventually the paratroopers succeeded by sheer dint of numbers to take control of the bunkers.
Bradley was still with them, greatly relieved to be alive, but he didn’t forget what he had come for and asked to question the prisoners. There weren’t all that many – the fields and bunkers were strewn with corpses – but that simply made it easier to find out what he wanted to know.
‘I don’t know what we were guarding,’ the first SS prisoner said. ‘I can only state that I was disgusted to be asked to risk my life to protect an American scientist. I felt that was too much.’
‘And where did the American scientist go?’ Bradley asked.
‘With all the others,’ the SS sergeant said in disgust. ‘With all the runaway generals and traitors – to the harbour of Kiel. To the submarine dock.’
‘When?’
‘Half an hour ago.’
‘Oh, my God!’ Bradley exclaimed, then turned to the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division. ‘We have to get down there right away. That son of a bitch is escaping.’
‘My orders were to capture and hold this bunker,’ the commander told him. ‘I haven’t been authorized to go to Kiel. Sorry, Bradley. Can’t help you.’
‘I could go out there and steal a goddamned jeep.’
‘I’m not looking, Colonel.’
Bradley hurried outside, feeling as if he was going mad, impelled by the need to fit a face to the man who had haunted him. It had been nearly fifteen years: so long that he’d turned gray and lost his wife and found Gladys... and fought a war that he was too old to fight, and become an obsessed man.
Yes, obsessed, just like his quarry, though in a different way. As he climbed into the jeep and turned the ignition on, he was convinced that he’d go out of his mind if he didn’t get to the end of this.
He had to fit a face to the man whose dreams had made him inhuman.
A genius.
A mutant.
Bradley still could not accept it. As Gladys had said, he was a moral man. He believed that man was both good and evil, a creature of moral choice, and he had to know if someone like Wilson could be as natural as air.
He had to know if Wilson’s lack of humanity had been formed in the womb, perhaps by his intelligence; if Wilson’s inhumanity, his extraordinary lack of feeling, was as innocent as sunlight or rain, as helpless as a child being born, as alien as Mars.
He had to know if Wilson mirrored his own darker side.
‘Goddamn you!’ he said aloud as he drove away from the bunkers. ‘I won’t let you stay invisible any longer. I’m gonna make you real.’
Then he drove down to Kiel, down that steep, narrow road, seeing the boats out at sea, the water geysering up around them, the bombs falling from the fat-bellied planes flying out of the clearing mist. It was the same everywhere – the whole world was at war – and the beautiful Earth, its clean air, was being ruined for all time. Death and destruction, smouldering ruins and flame and smoke: Man’s genius, his creativity, his science, had sowed what was now being reaped. Not Man, but men, individuals, those like Wilson, and the rubble of Europe, the conflagration of this mighty conflict, was the product of scientific genius used without moral constraints or commonplace feelings.
This was Wilson’s inheritance.
Bradley had to see his face, to know if evil was innocent, and so he drove like a lunatic into the docks.
He only saw the wire stretched across the road when it was too late to stop.
The wire snapped and flew past him on a sheet of scorching flame as the distant Baltic Sea turned upside-down and his body exploded. He saw whirlpools of light, heard his heartbeat in silence, returned through a sibilance, a ringing, and saw the world turning over. The sea, which had been the sky, became the Baltic Sea again, and he saw the wrecked ships, the other debris of the many air raids, then rolled onto his belly and felt the pain devouring his skin.
‘Oh, God.’ he groaned. ‘Jesus.’
He was hurt pretty badly, but refused to give up. Black and blistered, burning hot and cold, in anguish, almost crying, he crawled away from his upturned jeep, from the fierce, scorching heat, toward the water glittering blackly in morning light. The smoke billowed around him, stung his eyes, choked his lungs, and each time he coughed, he was whiplashed by a spasm of pain. He was hurting so bad he wanted to die, but he just couldn’t stop. He simply had to see what he had come for and that kept him going.
‘Goddammit!’ he gasped, keeping himself aware, fighting the urge for oblivion. ‘Think of Wilson! Remember!’
So he managed to crawl forward, along the quay, by the docks, the stones covered in expelled shells and reeking of cordite – and wet, as he suddenly realized, not with rain, but with blood.
Whose blood?
What the hell...?
He shuddered and gasped and put his head down, trying to think, listening to the bombers rumbling overhead, the gunfire in the distance. The war was still raging, coming closer to its bloody end, and he couldn't believe how far he had travelled to arrive at this nightmare.
The stones beneath him were wet with blood.
Whose blood?
‘Goddammit,’ Bradley whispered to the wet stones. ‘Gimme a break here!’
The pain whipped him again and he sobbed and then gritted his teeth. When he raised his head, he turned slightly to the side and looked out to sea.
There was a submarine out there.
At first he thought he was imagining it, but then he saw it more clearly, still on the surface, just outside the harbour, obviously preparing to go to sea but not yet submerged. Bradley knew who was on it.
He sobbed with frustration, clenched his fist, and hammered the wet stones.
Then, when he heard approaching footsteps, he looked up again.
An SS officer was coming toward him, holding a pistol in his right hand, his shadow stretched obliquely across the quay in the morning’s pale light. He stopped by Bradley’s head, looked down at him, then knelt beside him and took hold of his hair to jerk his head up.
He placed the barrel of his Luger pistol against Bradley’s temple.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘Mike Bradley. An American.’
‘It’s an American uniform, I grant you, but your German is excellent.’
‘I’m an American. Believe me. I’m a member of the OSS.’
‘The Americans haven't reached this far yet, so what are you doing here?’
Bradley started to reply, almost blacked out with pain, recovered and pointed weakly at the distant submarine. ‘Is he out there?’
‘Who?’
‘You know who. That son of a bitch, Wilson.’
‘Your compatriot.’
‘No!’
‘Your friend. Your national hero. The man we Germans now revere. You want Wilson. You’ve come here alone for him? You must want him a lot.’
‘I do.’
‘Tell me why.’
Bradley didn’t know what to say. There was no way to explain it. Besides, this handsome, civilized SS officer was going to blow his brains out.
‘He’s a traitor,’ Bradley tried.
‘Not enough,’ the German replied. ‘You have the look of someone obsessed, so tell me why you want Wilson.’
Bradley, who thought he was dying, needed to confess.
‘I have to see his face,’ he said. ‘I’ve wanted to see it for years. I have to fit a face to the man to know what he’s about. It’s as simple as that.’
He thought he heard the German sighing. He looked up and saw him smiling. The German removed the pistol from Bradley’s temple and aimed it at the warehouse.
‘You want to know what Wilson’s about?’ he said. ‘Then look in there, my friend.’
Bradley managed to raise his head. He looked into the warehouse. At first he couldn't see – it was pretty dark in there – but then his eyes adjusted to the gloom beyond the doors, and he saw an open-topped German truck, piled high with rubbish.
No, not rubbish. Piled high with the bullet-riddled, bloody corpses of uniformed SS troops.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Bradley whispered.
He shuddered with revulsion and a touch of disbelief, then the German jerked his head up again and waved the Luger in front of him.
‘Bradley?’ he asked, confirming the name. ‘Mike Bradley of the OSS?’
‘Yeah,’ Bradley said. ‘Right.’
‘And you’ve been pursuing Wilson for a long time?’
‘Nearly fifteen years,’ Bradley said.
The German gave a low whistle. ‘That’s a long time, Mr Bradley. And although you’re in a very bad way, you still look determined.’
‘I am,’ Bradley told him. ‘I won’t give up on this, believe me.’
‘We’ll remember that, Bradley.’
‘Goddammit,’ Bradley said. ‘I’ve got to see that bastard. Take me out there, then throw me overboard. I want to see him that bad.’
‘Your tenacity is admirable, Bradley. You will not be forgotten.’
The German holstered his pistol, released Bradley's head, then stood up and walked away a few feet and knelt down again. He took a cigarette lighter out of his tunic pocket, lit something on the ground, and when he stood up, Bradley saw the fuse cable running back to the warehouse. Set alight, it spluttered and sparkled as it started its journey.
‘Oh, my God.’ Bradley groaned.
The German walked back, knelt beside him, and smiled at him. He looked handsome in his SS uniform, but his smile was a dead thing.
‘I have to go now, Mr Bradley. Herr Wilson awaits me. My name is Ernst Stoll – Captain Stoll, of the SS – and if you manage to survive the explosion, I hope you’ll remember me. Naturally, I’ll tell Wilson about you... and he has a long memory.
Auf Wiedersehen. ’
Captain Ernst Stoll stood up and walked casually across the quay, where four other SS officers, all lieutenants, had been waiting for him. They let him climb down the ladder, obviously to a boat below, then they followed him down, one by one, leaving Bradley alone.
He glanced at the burning fuse. It was racing toward the warehouse. He looked back at the harbour, saw the submarine in the distance, then noticed a rubber dinghy heading toward it, carrying five men.
Obviously Stoll and his officers.
Bradley almost wept with frustration. He was so close, yet so far. He thought of Wilson and cursed, thought of Gladys and nearly smiled, then turned his head to look at the burning fuse. It reached the warehouse, then the truck piled with corpses.
My last memory on earth, Bradley thought. Wilson’s truckful of corpses.
He held his breath and prayed silently.
Wilson stood with Nebe and Kammler on the deck of the submarine and thoughtfully watched the men on the distant quay. Apart from Stoll, there were only four men. They worked long and very hard. They piled the bodies of their comrades onto the back of the truck and then drove the truck into the warehouse. The docks seemed very quiet. The lamps beamed down through the mist. There was an explosion near the road at the end of the docks, and a man who was most likely Stoll walked along there to check. He knelt down for some time, stood up, walked back and forth. Allied planes rumbled overhead as Stoll’s four men emerged again.
They were not in the truck, because they had left it inside the warehouse. Stoll joined them and they clambered down the ladder and dropped into the dinghy. The oars splashed in the water. The distant lamps showed desolation. After what seemed like a very long time, the men arrived at the submarine. They were all helped aboard. Stoll seemed steady as a rock. Wilson stared across the water at the docks and saw the clouds of mist thinning. The explosion was catastrophic. The whole warehouse disintegrated. The flames shot up in jagged yellow lines that made the thin mist look silvery. The noise was demonic. A black smoke billowed up. The flames swirled and turned into crimson tendrils that embraced one another. Then the smoke drifted sideways, revealing great piles of rubble. The flames leapt across the charred, broken beams and stained the quay with great shadows.
The flames burned a long time. The harsh wind made them dance. They were still burning brightly when Stoll nodded at Wilson and they went below decks. The hatch above them was closed and the submarine, with much moaning and groaning, submerged in the Baltic Sea.
The real journey began.
EPILOGUE Roswell, New Mexico July 2, 1947
‘The space ag
e is beginning,’ Bradley told Gladys. ‘It began when we shipped the first captured German V-2s to New Mexico in 1945 and when, in March the following year, the first US V-2 launches began at the White Sands Proving Ground under the direction of our old friend, Wernher von Braun, now under contract to the United States. Since then, about fifty V-2s have been launched, most of them successfully. Meanwhile, the Soviets, who got Peenemünde and to whom we kindly handed over Nordhausen shortly after capturing it, have started a similar rocket development program and are preparing to launch their first V-2 from a range near Volgagrad, better known to us as Stalingrad. And apparently, back here in the good old US of A, improved rocket motors, using liquid self-igniting fuels and based on the V-2 research, are about to go into production with civilian aviation organizations given USAF contracts... And all that in two years!’
‘Give it a rest, Mike,’ Gladys said. ‘Let me fill up your glass.’ ‘A man’s gotta have a hobby,’ Bradley replied. He handed Gladys his glass and glanced out of the window at the desert, flat under a starlit sky. They were living not far from the late Robert H. Goddard’s Mescalero Ranch and his old rocket launching site, Eden Valley. Bradley often felt inspired by the location, given what he was doing.
They’d moved here when they were married, shortly after Bradley’s release from the hospital, and now, when he was not involved in the drafting of contracts between the many US Air Force and civilian aeronautical establishments in the area, he was conducting his own investigations into Wilson’s whereabouts and his possible connections with the recent spate of sightings of so-called UFOs, or flying saucers.
It kept him busy. It helped him forget the pain. As they had told him in the hospital, he would have to live with the pain for a long time. He owed Wilson that as well.
Gladys handed him the refilled glass, kissed his forehead, then took the chair facing him. Her hair was turning more gray every day, but her smile was still radiant. He loved her and loved being married to her; he’d gained that much, at least.
INCEPTION (Projekt Saucer, Book 1) Page 47