‘After you,’ Wilson said.
Vale made his way up the ramp and stepped onto the deck, the dwarf reaching out and touching his wrist and then shuffling away again. Now on the platform, Vale leaned on the railing and glanced back over his shoulder. He saw Wilson coming up the ramp, stepping onto the platform, then hurrying across the rectangular entrance to the vast working space. In there, the light glinted off the modules, off the ladders and catwalks, then fused and became a white haze that spread across the machinery. Vale thought it was beautiful. He didn’t really want to leave. Turning around, he saw Fallaci, still dressed in his white suit, leaning casually against a white-painted bulwark while talking to Wilson.
Someone tugged at Vale’s trousers. He glanced down and saw the dwarf. The pitiful creature was grinning at him, head bobbing, hands waving.
‘You feel good?’ the dwarf asked. ‘You feel better? No fear for your future?’
‘No fear,’ Vale said.
Wilson came up to him. ‘We’re going up now,’ he said. ‘You won’t feel anything until we reach the surface, then the boat may rock slightly. Hold on to the railing.’
Vale did as he was told. It seemed a natural thing to do. He felt a slight vibration, heard a muffled droning noise, then the steel platform under the boat began to rise, moving up toward the domed roof. Vale glanced around him, saw the ladders and catwalks, felt a sudden, immeasurable loss as it all fell away from him. The steel platform kept rising, the boat rocking imperceptibly. Vale glanced below, at the workshops and modules, and wished that he could stay here forever to explore all these wonders.
‘Hold on now,’ Wilson said.
The platform stopped rising, its silence broken by muffled rumbling. The noise came from the encircling wall of the great dome, reverberating like distant drums. Vale knew it was the sea. The dome was nearing the surface. He had a final look around him, saw that technological marvel, then put his head back and stared above him at the shadow-streaked metal dome.
There was a sudden roaring sound, an insane hammering and hissing, as the sea exploded around the surfacing dome and rushed down its curved outer wall. Vale held on to the railing. The boat rocked from side to side. The dome seemed to sway above him, then it steadied, reverberating with hollow sounds.
Vale kept looking up, the roof of the dome still high above him, and saw thin lines of light, becoming brighter, growing longer, spreading out like the ribs of a giant umbrella to expose the vivid sky. Vale was enthralled. He stared up in deepening wonder. The dome was splitting into its separate parts, becoming four huge triangles, then the triangles themselves split in two and moved away from each other.
A shocking brightness poured into the open dome. The light was like an exploding nova. The striations blazed down around the boat and swept out through the gloom. Vale felt the burning sun, saw the vast arch of the sky. The immense, sun-reflecting, triangular walls were sinking all around him. Then he saw the hazed horizon, the shimmering sheet of the sky above. The sea boiled around the circle of sinking steel fins, then it swallowed them totally, poured across the broad steel deck, and soon the deck was nothing more than a black mass below the turbulent waves. There was a brief, hollow ringing, the boat rocked and steadied, then the black mass sank deeper, grew smaller, disappeared, and then the boat was drifting lazily in the sea, which rippled gently on all sides.
Professor Vale stared around him. The sea was calm and sunlit. Green waves rolled away to the horizon and a thin wedge of land. It was the coastline of Miami. The boat was heading straight toward it. The crewmen were moving back and forth, working silently at their tasks, the late afternoon sun beating down, flashing off steel and brass.
Vale leaned against the railing and saw Fallaci near the cabin. The dwarf had disappeared somewhere inside, but Mr Wilson was still there. Vale felt good about that. He was very fond of Wilson. Smiling, Vale leaned on the railing and took in the fresh air.
Wilson finally approached him. There was a waiter by his side. Wilson smiled thinly and nodded while the waiter bowed low.
‘What would you like to drink?’ Wilson asked.
‘Rum and coke,’ Vale said.
Chapter Twelve
The dream of the Thousand Year Reich had all the grandeur of lunacy. Nothing was impossible. They firmly believed that. They had their Volkish socialism, their lust for an Aryan Utopia, and with the passion of all mad visionaries they stepped forth to create it. Mysticism? Yes. The Reich was born from mysticism: the Cosmic Circle of Munich, the Anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner, the Theosophy and Rosicrucianism of Vienna and Prague, the ancient myths of Atlantis and Lemuria, of the undefiled German. Mysticism and racism: the ‘pure’ blood decreed by Schuler. The Third Reich sprang out of a vision of a Utopia devoid of Jews and subhumans.
Such dreams have no limits. Ordinary logic cannot contain them. In such dreams the Third Reich saw the light over limitless vistas – and ignored the impossible. The whole world would be changed. Cities and nations would be erased. The Earth would be cleansed of Jews and subhumans and other vermin; and in isolated colonies, in new cities of stone and glass, a chosen hierarchy of masters and slaves would create the New Order.
No doubt they were madmen. Their strongest leaders were demented. They were men who lived their dreams, who were divorced from reality, who like children felt that all things were possible and that nothing could stop them.
Science is logic. Mysticism is the opposite. I despised the mysticism of the Nazis, but could see its potential. My own dreams were grandiose. No democracy could afford them. I needed money and equipment and labour on a staggering scale. No democracy would sanction it. Only lunatics would. And the lunatics, all those mad visionaries, were the Reich’s leading lights.
I knew this when I met Himmler. It was in 1935. Behind his glasses his eyes had the mildness of a priest or a fool. We were in his office in Berlin. I spread my drawings out on his desk. He glanced at them and stroked his thinning dark hair and touched his nose with one finger. He had once been a chicken farmer. Now he headed the SS. A mild and modest killer, puritanical, quietly spoken, he was seeking to resurrect Atlantis through a Reich filled with supermen. I had checked him out beforehand. What I learnt was enough for me. He believed in mesmerizm, in reincarnation and clairvoyance, in Horbinger’s cosmic world of ice and fire, in gods and godmen. His SS was a religious order. His men were bound by blood and oath. Himmler wanted to isolate them, to brainwash them and remold them, to mate them with the purest German women and produce blond perfection. He had once processed chickens; now he wanted to process people: he had a dream of a disciplined Order of masters and slaves. I wanted a similar Order
– but one devoted to science. And when Himmler raised his eyes from my drawings I knew I could have it.
Himmler checked me out thoroughly. He couldn’t believe what I was there for. He first thought me an eccentric American who ought to be shot. I was held prisoner in Berlin. They interrogated me for months. In the Gestapo prison, in the Prinz Albrechtstrasse, I heard the screams of the tortured. My own interrogations were more casual. My cell was quite comfortable. They fed me and supplied me with books and let me work on my notes. The interrogations were conversational. The less fortunate continued screaming. For two months I kept repeating my history as they jotted down details. The prison was always busy. Bleeding unfortunates were dragged down corridors. I told my questioners of the project in Iowa and of how I had sabotaged it. The Americans don’t know, I said. They believe the project was a disaster. My questioners tapped their pencils on the table and smiled at each other. Quite often I heard gunfire. It always came from the basement. I saw soldiers carrying bodies wrapped in shrouds and putting them into trucks. Such scenes did not disturb me. My hopes lived on undiminished. After two months, they concentrated on my drawings, still unsure of their value. I don’t know who first studied them. I think the Italian, Belluzzo. Nevertheless, I was released shortly after and taken back to see Himmler.
No poin
t in even dwelling on the blood that had stained Himmler’s hands. Such a quiet man he was. His good manners were impressive. A modest face with round glasses, his hair thinning and neatly parted, he sat behind his desk like a minor clerk offering assistance. He asked me what I wanted. I explained my requirements. He nodded in a slow, thoughtful manner, sometimes stroking his nose. We are very impressed, he said. Indeed, he added, we are astonished. He then told me that some technical advisors had thought my drawings miraculous.
I asked who these men were. He mentioned Belluzzo and Schriever. He said Belluzzo was getting too old, but that Schriever was brilliant. They wished to work on my project. Himmler thought it a good idea. I realized that he wanted to have me watched, but I nodded agreement. You are committed, he said. You must now bend to our will. You will never return to your own country; if you try, we will kill you. I reassured him immediately. I would report directly to him. My beloved project would be wrapped in strict secrecy and controlled by the SS.
I will never forget that day. My dream came alive then. Even now, the pain biting, my poor liver in disarray, I gaze out upon the glinting ice caps and remember it vividly.
I was driven to Kummersdorft West, sixty miles south of Berlin. We both sat in the rear of the car and looked out at the city. Himmler obviously loved Berlin. The sunlight flashed off his glasses. He stroked his nose and pointed out the sights with a clear, quiet excitement. The city was indeed majestic. The streets were filled with contented people. The walls were decorated with swastikas and flags and obscene propaganda. The word ‘Juden’ was prominent. I saw few on the pavements. Soldiers sauntered up and down and laughed heartily, in love with themselves. The very air seemed to smile. It was the triumph of the will. In its own perverted way it was the proof of Man’s awesome potential.
Perverted? Most certainly. With that truth I could live. Behind those walls were the high priests of a demoniac Order: Hermann Goering, Josef Goebbels, Rudollp Hess, Martin Bormann – alcoholics, drug addicts, occultists and degenerates – the very epitome of that gross irrationalism that I so much abhorred. There, too, the Gestapo butchers, the drilled ranks of the SS, and all the torture and murder that went on every day in the basements.
Yet I had to accept it. Science cannot moralize. Those irrational brutes were no more than the means to achieving my ends. Progress needs its trampled bones. Death gives way to more life. Evolution knows neither right nor wrong and transcends transient matters. So, I would work with them. In doing so, I could use them. And looking out upon Berlin, glancing sideways at Himmler, I felt nothing but hope for the future, the glow of fulfilment.
We drove out of the city. Aircraft roared overhead. Sitting beside me, very stiff and upright, Himmler started to talk. He was suddenly like a child. His eyes gleamed behind the glasses. The words poured out and splashed upon my ears as if they couldn’t be stopped. He said the rocket teams had left. They had been moved to Peenemünde. The research center of Kummersdorft was empty and now it was mine. We passed troops on the road. The tanks growled through billowing dust. Himmler talked of Aryan blood and German might, of the world of the future. We will cleanse the Earth, he said. We will purify the blood. We will exterminate the Jews and the infirm and maladjusted, use the lesser races as slaves to the Reich, create a race of pure Nordics. There was no need to reply. Right or wrong did not concern me. When Himmler talked of his New Order, of his masters and slaves, I had the feeling that it just might succeed and that I could utilize it.
Unlimited labor was what I needed. No democracy could supply it. But here, in this country where all freedom had been suppressed, where the will of the people was one will – the Volk – and where discipline and slavery went hand in hand – here, at the dawn of the new era, I could do the impossible. Yes, I grabbed at it. I was in my late fifties. I thought then, before I knew what could be done, that my time was too short. Thus, I didn’t moralize. Not then and not now. I looked out at the aircraft, at the tanks and machine-gun carriers, at the troops who were numbered in their thousands, and accepted it gladly.
History will exonerate me. What I did, I did for progress. I sit now in my mountain lair, the frozen wilderness below me, and I know with the certainty of faith that my life has meant something. I am changing the course of history. I am aiding evolution. When I die, as I now know I must, my achievements will live on.
I knew this at the time. The sight of the proving range convinced me. The experimental station was between two artillery ranges, safely isolated from the surrounding towns and villages, all the hangars in good shape. Here Wernher von Braun had worked. And Walter Dornberger and Klaus Riedel. Those names, and those of Grottrup and Becker, made me smile condescendingly. The A-3 and A-5 rockets. So highly praised… so primitive. And the V-1 and V-2 would be feared when I thought them mere toys. Nevertheless, those men had gone. They had been moved to Peenemünde. They would not be here to observe what I was doing, would not know I existed. In this I agreed with Himmler. Even the Führer would not know. Himmler had his own plans for the future and did not want them mentioned.
Himmler showed me around the hangars. He introduced me to the workers. I met the Italian, Belluzzo, who was old and gray-haired, and the younger Flugkapitän Rudolph Schriever, who struck me as being dangerously ambitious. The old Italian was a physicist. Rudolph Schriever was an engineer. Both men were engaged in aeronautical research, both were keen on my drawings. I didn’t really want those men. They had been around too long. I was distressed by their knowledge of my work, and by their closeness to Himmler. They obviously wanted to impress him: bowed and scraped in his presence. I knew immediately that they would try to pick my brains and then usurp my authority.
I could not allow that. What I required was total secrecy. After my experience in Iowa, learning that no one could be trusted, I had already planned to strengthen my position by becoming invaluable. I would hide the most vital facts. I would doctor all the drawings. I would split the work up, spread it widely among the work force, and thus ensure that no single individual could duplicate my success. In this way I would protect myself. I would become indispensable. And so, as I shook hands, as I talked to Belluzzo and Schriever, I decided not to let them get too close to whatever was workable.
Yes, I was ruthless. I had to protect myself. I was aware of my dependence upon the Nazis and of how weak that made me. Sooner or later they might disown me – the war might drain their resources – and if that happened, I had to be ready to make good my escape. I would take my secrets with me. I would leave them only useless toys. But by then, if I made good use of my time, I would have what I wanted.
Such thoughts were not expressed. Himmler smiled and led me out. We returned to his car and climbed in and headed back to Berlin. There was paperwork to be completed. Requisition forms and orders: more manufacturers, more instruments, more pyrotechnicists, more welding experts and laborers. I did not think it was possible. The required numbers were outrageous. I wondered if even Himmler, with his frightening, godlike powers, could requisition workers in such numbers for a clandestine project. Himmler smiled at my obvious doubts. He blinked repeatedly and stroked his nose. He said that I had no need to worry, that he had something to show me.
The fields of Germany were green. I heard aircraft overhead. We passed columns of troops and growling tanks, but the peace soon returned. This memory remains vivid. The sun shone from a blue sky. It was difficult to believe that war would come and devastate all of Europe. Then we passed barbed wire fences. Beyond the wire were smoking chimneys. We drove through guarded gates, beneath watchtowers and guns, kept driving toward the long wooden buildings, passed a series of gallows. The wind made the ropes dance. Ragged prisoners were digging ditches. We drove on and reached the center of the camp and saw the Reich’s hidden nightmare.
Himmler made the driver stop. A nervous soldier saluted us. We stood together in the mud of the compound, surrounded by prisoners. Himmler smiled and rubbed his nose. I saw the guards with the bullwhips. The
hundreds of men, women and children were filthy and silent. Nearly all had shaved heads. Their bones showed through their flesh. Their large eyes were filled with anguish and despair and a hopeless submission. I heard the crack of the whips. Dogs snarled and someone screamed. Himmler blinked and rubbed his nose, smiled with unstated pride, and then waved one hand languidly in the air to take in all the misery.
‘Your workers,’ he said. Chapter Thirteen
‘You don’t go too close to UFOs. It’s a dangerous thing to do. If you go too close to UFOs you get burned and you rarely recover. Just look at me, Stanford. I run this flea-pit in Albuquerque. I was a World War Two pilot, decorations up the ass; I fought in the Pacific and Europe and returned home a hero. What the hell am I doing here? You must have asked yourself that question. I ask the same question every night and I just wake up sweating.’
Gardner was leaning across the table, his right hand waving wildly, his left holding a glass of neat bourbon, the bottle in front of him.
‘Well, I tell you,’ he continued, ‘I’m not the only one like me. There are a lot of us hiding out, lying low, running scared, and we’re doing it because we haven’t a choice, because the doors have been closed to us. So you don’t talk about UFOs. If you do, strange things happen. You can never pin down just what it is, but things start going haywire.’
He raised his glass and drank more bourbon, slopping some down his shirt front, then he put his glass back on the table and looked around the bar. The place was crowded and noisy, a real home grown honkytonk, with a jukebox blaring out of one corner, the lights mercifully dim. Stanford picked up the bottle, refilled Gardner’s glass, glanced casually at the women along the bar to see if one was worth having.
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