They crossed M Street, drawn forward by the traffic lights, turned left on the sidewalk and kept going, rarely looking at anything. Eventually they turned again. They both walked like blind men. The residential streets were empty and quiet, the snow gleaming in darkness.
‘Scaduto found nothing new in the files,’ Stanford said, ‘but by accident he finally struck gold. One of the members of the NICAP board of governors had managed to run down one of the CIA agents who’d been transferred after the Woman from Maine affair. This agent, who’d been transferred to London, England, before being eased out of the service, was naturally feeling embittered and was willing to talk as long as it was off the record. Consequently, Scaduto met him in a room in the Drake Hotel in New York, and what Scaduto was told knocked him out.’
Epstein shivered with cold, rubbed his eyes and coughed painfully, cursed softly, but kept listening to Stanford.
‘Apparently,’ Stanford said, ‘one of the agent’s assignments in the CIA was to undergo specialized training in Duke University’s parapsychology lab, the psychology department at McGill University in Canada, and a sensory-deprivation establishment at Princetown. The purpose of all this was to open his mind – a naturally responsive one – to mental telepathy, sightless vision and psychokinesis. The reason for this, it was explained to him, was that the US was about thirty years behind the Soviets in this field, and that the Russians were already employing such skills for espionage purposes.
‘After a year of training, the agent found that he could, like Ted Serios, cause photographs to appear on a film by merely focusing intently on the camera. A year after that, in 1959, he was working with US Naval Intelligence with the US Nautilus, the then renowned atomic submarine. And that same year, when the press exposed the Nautilus experiments, he was transferred back to Washington, DC, to work with the female psychic from Maine.
‘During his first session, in the presence of the psychic, the agent wasn’t able to make contact. However, at the second session, in the CIA office in DC, when the woman wasn’t present, he went into a trance and made contact with someone. Now, like the woman from Maine the agent was scribbling down, automatically, what it was he was hearing in his trance. He never actually found out what he wrote… because by the time he woke up one of the senior officers present had spirited the message out of the office.’
‘So they didn’t want him to know who he was talking to.’
‘Correct,’ Stanford said. ‘No matter: when he finally woke up he found everyone at the window, all excitedly scanning the sky where the UFO, apparently, had been. Intrigued – and annoyed because his notes had been stolen from him – the agent later had a clandestine meeting with one of his colleagues and asked him if the UFO had been real. His colleague, pretty drunk at the time, told him that it was real, that it was part of a top-secret government project, and that one of the crew on board had been ESP trained. The woman from Maine had picked up his thoughts by accident.’
They were nearing Epstein’s house, the streets were empty and quiet, and Epstein kept his head down, breathing harshly, coughing too much, his head filled with what Stanford was telling him, his heart pounding excitedly.
‘That wasn’t all,’ Stanford said, speaking almost in a monotone, his gaze fixed on the street straight ahead, on the tall, brownstone buildings. ‘According to the agent’s colleague, the UFOs reported to have landed at Cannon AFB, Deerwood Nike Base, Blaine AFB and, apparently, Holloman AFB, actually existed. Those saucers were the products of years of highly secret activity between the Canadian and United States governments – but in no way did they resemble the aborted projects that were leaked to the press. They were, in fact, highly advanced flying saucers of the most extraordinary capability – and there was a total of about twelve in existence.’
Now Epstein felt really excited. He ignored his aching stomach. He didn’t sense Stanford’s rage, had no thoughts of betrayal, felt nothing but an exalting vindication of all he had lived for. The UFOs existed. He had not pursued phantoms. He could die without dwelling on failure, and that made it all worth it.
‘Only twelve?’ he asked instinctively, still a researcher first and foremost, needing every detail to hand.
‘Yes,’ Stanford said. ‘According to the agent, his colleague had previously been seconded to the Royal Canadian Air Force Intelligence where he was given the task of implementing internal security on the flying saucer project. This project, he soon discovered, had been in existence since 1946, and was being run jointly by the Canadian government, the US Air Force and Navy, and a few high-ranking officers from the Pentagon. They had managed to maintain secrecy by locating the underground productions plants in the vast, deserted regions of southern Canada between British Columbia and Alberta; by ensuring that production of the numerous components for the saucers was distributed between hundreds of different, international companies, none of whom could have guessed what they were for; by undertaking the more specialized research in the super-secret installations of the White Sands Proving Ground and similar establishments all over Canada; and, finally, by deliberately confusing the media and public with a continuous stream of ambiguous leaks and misleading statements. In other words: those saucers are real and they’re hidden in Canada.’
Epstein stopped at the street corner, turned around to stare at Stanford, looking up, his eyes bright in the lamplight, flecks of snow on the gray beard.
‘You do realize,’ he said, ‘that this leaves a mere twelve saucers to account for all the sightings of the past thirty years?’
‘Yes,’ Stanford says, ‘I realize that. But it’s not what I’m saying.’
‘Oh? And just what are you saying?’
Stanford didn’t hesitate. ‘It transpires that the Allied Air Forces had been harassed by UFOs – mostly in the shape of balls of fire – from as far back as 1944. Then, shortly after the war, in the summer of 1946, the more familiar types of UFOs, mostly cigar-shaped, swarmed across Scandinavia, seemingly coming from the direction of the Soviet Union. The conclusion at the Pentagon was that German scientists, seized by the Russians at Peenemünde where the V-2 rockets had been developed, were constructing advanced weapons for the Soviets, and that the unidentified, so-called missiles, were being launched from the rocket test site of Peenemünde, which was then in the Russian-occupied zone of Germany. This suspicion became stronger when the British, who had also seized and taken back to Britain a wealth of Germany’s top-secret scientific and weapons research material, announced that the Germans had been working since 1941 on extraordinary aeronautical projects and on processes to release atomic energy. Included in the former was a “remotely controlled, pilotless aircraft” and a “device that could be controlled at a considerable distance by another aircraft.” So, faced with this, and thinking of the supposed Soviet missiles over Scandinavia, there was a sudden British-Canadian-United States alliance to beat the Soviets in the race to follow through the German designs and complete their remarkable aeronautical projects.’
They stood together at the corner, a cold wind beating at them. Stanford was totally humorless, his eyes unusually intense, and Epstein looked up at him in wonder, either dazed or still doubtful.
‘Listen!’ Stanford said. ‘As we’ve just been discussing, the actual concept of a flying saucer is not a new one. The US Navy and the British Navy have both been interested for a long time in the possibility of constructing either a vertical rising aircraft or a simpler air-cushion machine that would be particularly suitable for use at sea. Regarding this, the Navy Flounder and the Flying Flapjack were crude examples of the former, the normal Hovercraft a perfect example of the latter. However, what they were attempting to build in the underground plants in Canada was a machine with the extraordinary capabilities of the ones suggested in the incomplete German research material. They wouldn’t achieve this goal for another twenty years, but the first, extremely crude versions of their saucers were successfully tested over the Canadian border on June 21, 1947: a total
of five disk-shaped aircraft, two of them piloted and approximately fifty feet in diameter, the remaining three remote-controlled by the pilots flying nearby, these three a mere six feet in diameter. These particular flying saucers could reach an altitude of approximately seven thousand feet, could hover uncertainly in the air, and had a horizontal speed of about six hundred miles an hour.’
‘That test flight,’ Epstein said, ‘could account for the Harold Dahl sighting of that same day.’
‘Right,’ Stanford said. ‘However, it was what happened after that test flight that really got the ball rolling. On June 24, three days after the first successful test flight of the five Canadian-US saucers, a total of nine, highly sophisticated, unknown saucers flew down over the Canadian underground plants, hovered there for about twenty minutes, shot off toward the Cascades where they reportedly circled the test area, then returned, circled the plant for another twenty minutes, then shot off at incredible speed. And from that day on – the day, incidentally, of the famous Kenneth Arnold sightings – those UFOs, and others, returned again and again, eventually spreading out across the whole world.’
Epstein stepped back and covered his mouth with a hand, his eyes too large and very bright, his body visibly shaking. Stanford watched him, saying nothing, waiting for him to recover, finally saw him removing his hand from his mouth and shaking his head in confusion.
‘My God,’ Epstein said, ‘are they Russian?’
‘No,’ Stanford said. ‘The agent’s colleague, during his tenure at the flying saucer plant in Canada, never found out who those saucers belonged to. What he did find out was that some time during the Cold War the Pentagon received proof that the unknown saucers didn’t originate in Russia – and that the Russians had been harassed by the very same objects. He also found out that they were not from outer space, that the Pentagon probably knew where they came from, and that Canada and the United States were racing to build similar machines, because the unknown saucers, even as far back as the Fifties, had the sort of maneuvering capability that made them virtually invincible.’
Epstein turned around and walked away. Stanford followed him around the corner and saw him stopping again. He seemed to be frozen. He was staring across at his own house. Three men in dark suits were coming out of the house and walking toward a black limousine. Epstein offered a strangled cry. The three men all looked up. Epstein started running across the road toward them, his heavy overcoat flapping. Stanford cursed and ran after him. The men slipped into the car. The car’s headlights flashed on, forming a dazzling pool of light, and then the car roared and shot off down the street. Epstein stopped and stared at it. Stanford slid to a halt behind him. The car slowed down at the far end of the street, turned the corner and vanished.
Epstein cursed and lurched onward, almost slipping in the snow. He and Stanford reached the brownstone together and found the door open. They both hurried inside. The whole house had been ransacked. Epstein kept looking around him, his eyes dazed, uncomprehending, then he groaned and covered his face with his hands and dropped into a chair.
‘Bastards!’ Stanford hissed. ‘They’ve got us marked!’
He reached down and grabbed Epstein, pulled him up to his feet, shook him until his hands fell from his face and his eyes were wide open. He held Epstein by his shoulders, trying to keep his old friend steady, then he spoke in a low and urgent voice that gave Epstein his strength back.
‘Listen to me,’ Stanford said. ‘I didn’t stop at Scaduto. I conducted some investigations of my own and this is what I discovered.’
‘I discovered that the mysterious fireballs seen frequently over Nazi Germany disappeared for good when the Second World War ended. I discovered that the Russians, the British and the Americans divided the scientific spoils of Germany between them, and that some of those spoils were rumored to be related to the German fireballs. I also discovered that the British had received the major portion of this scientific booty, and that they had, in 1945, sent back secret German aeronautical equipment and papers to be distributed to their experimental research centers in Australia and Canada.
‘I discovered that by 1947 certain British aeronautical establishments were experimenting with such bizarre Germany concepts as a supersonic flying wing, a gyroscopically stabilized pilot’s cabin surrounded by a revolving turbine engine, and a suction airfoil shaped like a meniscus lens – or like a fucking great mushroom. And finally, I discovered that in 1946, with the encouragement of the British government, there had been a mass migration of aeronautical establishments and their workers from their original English production centers to the vast, uninhabited regions of southwest Canada.’
‘So,’ Epstein said. ‘What does it mean?’
‘What I believe,’ Stanford said, ‘is that the Canadian and American governments, quietly backed by the British, have been working jointly since the end of the Second World War on the development of supersonic flying saucers, that they now have a limited number of such machines hidden away in the wilds of Canada or in the White Sands Proving Ground, and that those saucers are based on aeronautical projects that originated in Nazi Germany, but aren’t related to the vast majority of UFO sightings. What I also believe is that the US government knows the origin of the more extraordinary saucers, that it’s frightened of what the capability of those saucers might represent in military and political terms, and that its building of its own saucers is a race against time and its secrecy a means of avoiding national panic. Finally, what I believe is that the government has to keep its secret, that it will murder to do so, and that the deaths of Jessup and Hardy, of Dr McDonald and Irving Jacobs, are examples of how far the government will go to keep the lid on the pan.
‘The Canadian government has flying saucers. The US government has flying saucers. But someone,
somewhere , has flying saucers so advanced we can’t touch them. Those saucers don’t come from space. They aren’t figments of imagination. They are real and they are right here on Earth and their source is a mystery.’
Epstein pushed himself away, spinning around, bumping into a chair, then he hurried across the wrecked room, past his pillaged belongings, and jerked the curtains away from the windows to look up at the stars. He stood there a long time, didn’t once rub his beard, and when he finally turned back to face the room, his eyes were glazed with an intense, haunted brilliance.
‘I’m going to Paris,’ he said.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I owe Kammler and Nebe. Without them, I would not be here. That I killed them was not a sign of malice but of simple expediency. I think of it often. What I did, I had to do. The deaths of Kammler and Nebe were necessary for the good of the colony. They were both becoming greedy. They wanted power for themselves. They were more concerned with politics than science, and I knew what that meant. Plots and counterplots. The introduction of intrigue. A dissension that would interfere with work and thus hinder our progress. Such a possibility could not be tolerated. We had come too far for that. For that reason I had them gassed as they slept, then I took over the colony.
Yet I recognize my debt. Without them, I would not be here. I never liked them, but they did what was required and made good our escape. We left Germany behind us. We embraced the world of ice. Beneath the ice, in the immense, towering caves, thousands slaved to support us. The colony grew quickly. Without dissension there was progress. Our medical and scientific experiments led to wondrous achievements.
I was racing against time. I was sixty-six years old. What I did in the laboratories in the ice was a necessary evil. What I did, I had to do. If I died before my work was completed, the colony would flounder. I had to make it self-sustaining. The workers had to be controlled. Sooner or later, even the guards with the whips would have negative thoughts. This could not be allowed to happen. The control had to be automatic. I was obsessed with the mysteries of the brain and biological mutation.
What I did, I had to do. The slaves writhed beneath my knife. The gray matter
of their brains was explored; lungs and hearts were examined. Their blood was my life’s blood. What they suffered was necessary. Vivisection on animals is useful, but has grave limitations. So, I operated. The experiments were not pleasant. Many died and many more became crippled and had to be terminated. Nonetheless, I progressed quickly. Without law there are no boundaries. The mystery of human life was unraveled as it writhed on the tables.
I was aging every day. I felt the fluttering of my heart. My skin was tightening across the cheekbones of my face and my stomach was addled. This frustration was energizing. I spent months in the laboratories. The experiments in the camps of Nazi Germany now bore splendid fruit. Hearts and lungs were transplanted. Prosthetic arms and legs flourished. Many died on the tables, those maimed were terminated, but our gains soon overcame the cost and encouraged us further. Gerontology was a priority. My own aging was the spur. We experimented with various drugs and surgical aids and had dramatic results. Naturally we made mistakes. There was paralysis, palsied limbs. Nevertheless, with application and will, we eventually met with success. At first it was modest. Vitamin pills and various stimulants. They, however, were just a beginning and soon led to much better things. I myself was thus saved. The first injections renewed my vigor. Within a year, with my heart at full strength, I could receive the pacemaker. A tentative first step. The artificial stomach followed. Years later would bring the plastic surgery and the minor prosthetics.
The means of control were urgent. This goal obsessed me next. I was aware that even the most fanatical guards would eventually yearn for the outer world. Human nature is a curse. It is weak and quite irrational. What I wanted was a method of control that would make the guards obsolete.
I exposed the human brain. Once exposed, it is a blancmange. No mystery: just tissue and fibers, blood and acid and water. I experimented with the brain. I specialized in living subjects. I discovered that by tampering with certain cerebral areas, the mental processes of the brain could be altered in any manner required. I inserted microscopic electrodes. I had them activated by computer. Thus, at the press of a button, I could introduce pain or pleasure, craven fear or brute aggression, numb acceptance or insatiable curiosity, heightened intelligence or idiocy. This discovery was invaluable. It was promptly utilized. Within months, implantation of the workers was well underway.
GENESIS (Projekt Saucer) Page 42