August 1943. Hammler was then at his peak. His lust for power had increased every year and he was then almost godlike. Yet that wasn’t enough for him. He wanted more and more. Most particularly, he wanted control of the V-2 rockets and all those who worked on them. He had tried for that and failed. Then Peenemünde was bombed. Himmler suggested to Hitler that Peenemünde had been betrayed, and that his SS should take control immediately. Hitler agreed to this. Himmler now had full control. He immediately moved mass production of the rockets to the caves near Nordhausen. General Kammler was put in charge. He became Himmler’s right-hand man. When that happened, I had to do something to protect my own project.
Those were dangerous years. The war was not going well. The Russian offensive was a disaster, Italy had fallen to the Allies, Hitler’s physical and mental health was collapsing, and the Reich was in ruins. My own position was no better. As it recall, it was precarious. I now doubted Himmler’s sanity and will, and this made me uneasy. The slaves were still being sent to Kiel. From there they were shipped to the frozen wilderness. The great caves were expanding under the ice, but they seemed far away. I wondered if I would ever get there. I no longer trusted Himmler. As disaster followed disaster for the Reich, I saw his brimming hysteria. I still wanted the wilderness. I knew I couldn’t depend on Himmler. His hysteria was making him indecisive and that meant he was dangerous. I still wanted the wilderness, I didn’t want Himmler there, and I met Kammler in 1943 and was drawn to his ruthlessness.
Kammler knew of my project. Himmler sent him to check it out. I was then at the BMW Platz near Prague, still working unceasingly. I knew the war would soon be lost. I was playing a double game. The game was highly dangerous, very tricky, and I had to be careful. I still badly needed Himmler. His facilities were essential. Yet I knew that he now lived in fear of being found out by Hitler. After all, it was betrayal. Himmler was building his private empire. If the Führer discovered his intentions he would have Himmler executed. Thus Himmler became frightened. In his mild eyes there was frenzy. He had promised to give der Führer great new weapons, and der Führer was restless. I didn’t dare complete my saucer. Not until I reached the wilderness. I was frightened that Himmler’s growing confusion might make him give it to Hitler. That would mean the end of everything. The Allies would take it over. As for myself, I would be classed as a war criminal, and probably hanged.
On top of this, there was Schriever. The Flugkapitän was ambitious. Yet another of Himmler’s scientific pets, he had the need to impress him. Schriever’s eyes devoured my saucer. He was in competition with me. I knew that if the saucer was completed, he would take all the credit. Already I had seen him do this. He had the slyness of a simple man. Himmler insisted that we share the whole project, and I knew what he meant. I was Himmler’s secret. The Flugkapitän was not. Once the project was completed I would simply disappear, and then Himmler could offer der Führer my saucer as a German achievement. So, Schriever was a threat. He wanted credit for my achievements. Because of this, I withheld a great deal and understated my progress. Schriever worked from doctored drawings. I gave him enough to make it credible. The Schriever saucer could rise and hover briefly, but it didn’t yet fly. I had to let it progress slowly. Not much, but enough. Meanwhile, in the BMW Platz, I quietly finished the real work.
My sole thought was for the wilderness. The hangars were multiplying beneath the snow. Sooner or later, I would have to escape and join the vast, hidden colony. I could not depend on Himmler. His rising panic had made him treacherous. I could see, in his fear and indecision, that he might never leave. I needed another ally. Another man of gross ambition. I met Kammler in the BMW Platz and knew that here was my man.
Kammler was an organizer. He was decisive and ruthless. More importantly, his ambition was boundless, his selfishness total. I worked on him slowly. It took months, but I was patient. Kammler’s one thought, at the time, was self-survival, and that’s what I played on. He already knew of the secret colony. He was startled and intrigued. I could see, as I unveiled further facts, that he was drawn to the notion. The Reich was crumbling all about him. There were plots and counterplots. The Nazis were devouring their own kind and survival was difficult. Then, of course, there were the Allies. Kammler knew the war was lost. He also knew that if the Allies took him prisoner they would certainly hang him. Kammler had to get out of Germany. He had to disappear completely. When I knew this, I told him of my plan and he said he would join me.
That same month he went to see Himmler and blatantly lied to him. He painted me in a black light. He praised Schriever to the skies. He claimed that my project was a mess, that I was stealing from Schriever. I was too old, he said. Flugkapitän Schriever was young and bright. He said that Schriever should be given his own project and encouraged much more. Himmler wasn’t too sure, but Kammler pressed home his point. He reminded Himmler that the Allied invasion had begun and that he should take precautions. Kummersdorft West should be evacuated. The American and Schriever should be separated. Kammler suggested that I be moved to the mountainous region of Thuringia, and that Schriever be moved to Mahren. It was better that way, he said. Schriever could then work unencumbered. Himmler, now dependent on Kammler, promptly gave his consent.
I was moved out shortly after. At last I was free of Schriever. In Kahla, in the mountains of Thuringia, I completed my major work. Himmler never knew about it. Kammler told him I was useless. Eventually, Himmler turned his attentions away from me and focused them all on young Schriever. That was just what we wanted. We were not concerned with Schriever. I had insured that Schriever’s flying saucer project would never succeed.
June 25, 1944. In my office in the research center at Kahla, I talked to Kammler and Nebe. I remember it well. SS General Artur Nebe. A man whose very name suggested terror and the screams from the basements. General Nebe was ice and fire. He had the cunning of a rat. He was a man who did not show his feelings, who worked quietly and ruthlessly. An exemplary record with the Gestapo. Extermination squads in Russia. With such work he had gutted his soul and embraced the unthinkable. Nebe knew how to survive. He was a master of intrigue. He had trampled on the bones of countless comrades to protect his own skin. A dangerous man, certainly. Also, a cold realist. And that day in my office in Kahla his eyes were wide open.
General Nebe was escaping. There had been an assassination attempt. The Führer had survived the explosion and was now seeking vengeance. The reprisals were terrible. Himmler’s men were butchering hundreds. A lot of officers were fleeing for their lives, disappearing forever. General Nebe was such a man. He had been forced to desert. Kammler had told him of what we were doing and he now wished to join us.
Nebe controlled the escape route. His most fanatical SS men joined him. Those men formed the chain that stretched from Kahla to the port in the Baltic. I often watched the trains pull out. The SS cracked their whips. The dogs snapped at the ankles of the children as they wept on the platform. Many came from the concentration camps. Others came from the Lebensborn. We stole children from all over Europe and marked them for slavery. The trains took them to Kiel. The ships and submarines transported them farther. They vanished off the face of the Earth and were not seen again.
Meanwhile, I continued working. My time was running out. The final components for the saucer were in production, but had not yet been tested. The Red Army was in Warsaw. Very soon it would reach the Oder. I had to complete the saucer and test it before the Russians arrived.
Kammler helped me all he could. His authority was considerable. What we didn’t have, he took from other scientists and less powerful research centers. Hitler was dreaming of secret weapons. He spared no expense in getting them. All over Germany, even as the bombs were falling, the scientists worked night and day. There was an Atomic Bomb project. There were electrical submarines. There were laser beams and infrared warheads and remote-control systems. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institut. The Forschungsinstitut of Lindau am Bodensee. From such places I stole what
might help to enhance my own project. The swirling energy of the Feuerball. A porous metal called Luftschwamm. In the laboratories of the Kreiselgerate, not far from Berlin Britz, I solved the problems of gyroscopic control and Prandtl’s infamous boundary layer. This latter proved to be the breakthrough. The boundary layer was the key. By the end of 1944 we had conquered it and started final construction.
The thought of Schriever amuses me. Perhaps it always will. I look out upon the gleaming ice caps and think of what that man lost. Schriever lived for fool’s gold. His saucer designs were all useless. While I finished the real work in Thuringia, he chased phantoms in Mahren. His flying disk was an abortion. All my guidelines had been false. Nevertheless, Schriever they would work, and that’s what I wanted. Himmler rarely asked about me. He kept visiting Schriever. The Schriever disk could hover just above the ground, but could do little else. No matter: it was impressive. Schriever thought he could make improvements. He told Himmler that it only needed time and the Reichsführer believed him. That was just what I wanted. It was exactly what I had planned. As Himmler focused all his attention on Schriever’s disk, I got on with the real one.
It was a miracle that I managed it. It was a desperate, frantic race. The skies overhead were filled with Allied aircraft, the horizon was smokey. The Ardennes offensive had failed. The Soviets had now crossed the Oder. The Allied armies were advancing in the south and our towns were in ruins. Hitler had moved into the Chancellery. He was preparing his Götterdämmerung. His Reichsführer, Heinrich Himmler, was in panic and had almost forgotten me. Himmler wanted a flying saucer. He wanted Schriever’s flying disk. Because of this, I was free to continue without interference. The war raged far away. The smoke thickened on the horizon. We stepped out of our caves to see this, and then we went back to work.
I remember it all vividly. The sounds of labor still reverberate. The great underground complex at Kahla represented my future. The caves were inside the mountain. From the air they were invisible. Inside them were thousands of slave workers and dedicated technicians. The bright lights stung our eyes. Walls of stone cast eerie shadows. Machines roared and plates of silvery porous metal dangled over our heads. The flying saucer was a skeleton, but it soon grew to fill the hangar. The technicians clambered under its steel ribs, their eyes covered in goggles. The searing white flames of the welders. The laborers sweating under the Perspex dome of the pilot’s cabin. The lights beamed down and flashed off the cabin and hazed the slave workers. The great caves dwarfed them all. They were cathedrals carved from stone. The sounds of riveting and welding and drilling reverberated throughout. The men looked very small. They were like ants in an ant-hill. They climbed ladders, crossed catwalks, stood on platforms and girders, now removed from the real world, isolated inside the mountain, working long hours and sleeping little, supervised by Nebe’s soldiers.
We kept working night and day. We heard the thunder of distant guns. Every night our trains snaked down the mountain and headed for Kiel. The flying saucer took shape. Its gleaming mass filled the hangar. The final plates were welded around the pilot’s cabin and the body was finished. The large saucer hung from chains. It was lowered onto the sturdy legs. The legs housed the four jet propulsion boosters that would aid its ascent. The disk locked onto the legs. The noise echoed throughout the caves. The slaves looked on in silence, their eyes dulled with exhaustion, while the technicians all cheered and applauded, their hands linked in triumph.
As historic day. I will never forget it. I stood beside Kammler and Nebe and felt as if I was dreaming. The enormous hangar doors opened. Light and cold air rushed in. The Kugelblitz, now supported on metal blocks, had its own kind of beauty. We wheeled it out of the hangar. The date was 14 February, 1945. The sun shone upon the base of the mountain, but was darkened by gray smoke. Then the rain and snow came. We had to cancel the test flight. Two days later, on 16 February, the piloted saucer soared to the heavens. It climbed vertically and gracefully, stopped abruptly and then shot south. It became a winking light above the battlefields, a bright star in the smokey haze.
The next week, we destroyed it. Chapter Twenty-One
The minute he saw the house the pain left, but the fear lingered on. Richard stood by the gate. The gravel path ran through the gardens. The moonlight fell over the flowers, over the Audi car in the driveway, over the Italian tiles that led up to the front door of the elegant Georgian house. Richard pressed his head again. He couldn’t believe that the pain had gone. The pain had pulled him from his bed, the voices whispering, urging, and sent him on the next train to Cornwall, determined to find her. Now he shivered with trepidation. The pain had gone, but the fear lingered on. He glanced up at the house in the moonlight and wondered how he had found it. In truth, it had not been easy. She had told him she was from St Nicholas. It was a very small village, he had discovered when he arrived here, and those he had spoken to knew the lady.
He had asked about her in the local pub, feeling dazed, the headache blinding him, and the men with the pints of beer and whiskies had all chattered at once. Aye, lad, they knew the lady, knew the expensive foreign car; the lady and her bloody great car were located just outside the village… And so he had walked here, still dazed, the headache killing him, and now stood by the wide, open iron gates, not believing he’d made it. The headache had gone, but the fear lingered on. Richard kicked the gravel nervously with one foot, then looked up at the large house.
What had he come? He didn’t know why he had come. Yes, he knew – because the headaches had defeated him and the voices had urged him. What voices? The voices. The voices? Was he mad? Sitting slumped in the train, his head throbbing, he had sensed his own lunacy. Not voices. Couldn’t be. He had gone to the bar carriage. The bar was crowded and the smoke stung his eyes and made his throbbing head worse. And the voices. I won’t listen! He drank a double Scotch. It burned down inside him, a thin flame, and made him feel better. Yet the headache grew worse. Forced back to his seat, he sat slumped again. Closing his eyes, he tried to block out the voices, but they refused to be silenced. What voices? I won’t listen! He wanted to scream with pain. The pain was killing him and the voices were whispering and making him dizzy. Five hours on the train. Shadows creeping across the hills. He had glanced once at the moors and closed his eyes and felt the fear breathing over him. What voices? I won’t listen! The train had pulled into Bodmin. He had disembarked and walked to the village like a man in a trance. Then the smokey pub, the noisy chatter and ringing glasses. He had asked about the lady with the Audi car and they had pointed the way. A short walk through the darkness. The night silent, stars glittering. He had arrived at the gate of the house… and then the headache had gone.
The fear lingered on. It was with him right now. He stood by the open gates and kicked the gravel and saw lights in the windows. The house looked white in the moonlight. It was a converted, eighteenth century manor: elegant, romantic, dreamlike, the stars glittering above it. Richard advanced through the gateway, stopped again and felt the fear. Why fear? There was nothing to fear, and yet he felt it, and shivered. Then he moved forward again, knowing he couldn’t turn back now. When he thought of turning back, his head hurt and the voices returned. He was imagining it, of course. He tried to turn back and his head hurt again and the voices returned. Licking his lips, he studied the house and then moved forward again.
Silence. A light breeze. The light breeze hissed through the silence. Richard walked along the broad, curving driveway toward the white Audi. It was definitely the same car. There could be no doubt about it. Richard looked at the car and felt a chill and remembered the white haze. No, he should not have come here. Yes, he had to go on. The voices whispering in his head confirmed the latter as he approached the car. He stopped, glanced above him, saw the black sky, the stars, felt fear and something else, a sense of wonder, then moved forward again.
He stopped at the car. His fear and wonder had increased. He shivered, felt the ice in the breeze, and reached out to th
e car. His ran his fingers along the hood. He had to confirm that it was real. Satisfied, he gazed up at the house, the tall windows in white walls. All the lights were on. The whole house was ablaze. He saw velvet drapes, a chandelier, a rich mahogany table. There were lanterns about the front door, a door made of polished wood. The door was open and he thought that was strange and it made him more frightened.
Fear. The inexplicable. He moved slowly around the car. The breeze hissed and chilled the sweat on his brow and made him shiver again. He advanced across the Italian tiles. The fear closed in and held him. He had the urge to turn around and run away, but he just couldn’t do it. Then he was on the porch. Italian tiles and potted plants. There were vines writhing along the balustrades then gleamed white in the moonlight. He stood there, uncertain, thinking of Jenny and the doctors; remembered them, forgot them, heard the voices, then walked up to the front door.
Why was the door open? He knew why: she was waiting for him. She had known he would come, somehow known that, and now she expected him.
Fear. The inexplicable. The need to know and the fear of knowing. He reached out and touched the door with his fingertips, lightly stroking it, testing it. The door was real enough. A bright light poured out from inside. He stepped forward and pushed the door farther back and then stepped into the house.
Silence. The hall was empty. Paintings hung from paneled walls. There was a chandelier glittering below the ceiling, illuminating the stairs. Rich carpets, shining glassware. Richard stood there, couched in fear. The stairs ran up to a balcony that was angled around the hall, closed doors concealing numerous other rooms and offering only more silence.
GENESIS (Projekt Saucer) Page 36