Ghosts of Engines Past

by McMullen, Sean

  “It seems I was lucky to be given even one hour of your time,” he said, resting his elbows on the table and rubbing his face in his hands. He glanced at his watch. “Well then, I had better put the remaining fifty-five minutes to good use. We have had intelligence reports that Germany is developing a very large missile. I ordered photo recognizance of the Baltic Coast, where the test flights were taking place. These photographs are the result.”

  He handed me an envelope. The photographs were dated the twelfth and twenty-third of June, 1943, and upon both were circles drawn in black ink. I looked carefully at the blurred but sleek images within the circles.

  “These are indeed rockets,” I said. “How big are they?”

  “About forty feet long, and they are sitting on thirty ton trailers.”

  I blinked in surprise. For me, the dimensions were astonishingly familiar.

  “Then they can carry a ton of explosives about two hundred miles,” I replied at once.

  The colonel gasped and stared at me with his mouth open. I smiled and nodded. He scribbled down my estimates.

  “I was warned that your abilities with mental calculations are quite astonishing.”

  “I calculated nothing.”

  “Then how can you be so sure of the range and payload?”

  “Because I have seen a similar rocket.”

  “What? You're joking! These photographs were taken at Peenemunde, one of Germany's most secret research stations.”

  “The rocket I saw was in Yorkshire in 1899.”

  Now the colonel smiled with relief and leaned back in his chair.

  “So you really are joking,” he said.

  “I was never more serious, Colonel. The rockets in these photographs are proven technology, and are very, very dangerous. You must bomb Peenemunde at once.”

  His smile vanished, and he sat forward again.

  “Peenemunde is six hundred miles across enemy territory, so we would have to use the whole of Bomber Command and destroy the place in a single surprise attack.”

  “I know. Your losses could be enormous.”

  “The evidence would have to be very convincing before I would recommend that.”

  “I can give you detailed calculations and figures.”

  “I have to convince the War Cabinet, Professor Clermont, so I'll need something simpler. You said such a rocket was built in Yorkshire, in 1899. Is there any evidence, like documents, plans, or equipment?”

  “All of that is gone, Colonel, but I can tell you a story. My story should convince you, but it is highly personal. If you ever repeat it, I shall refuse to do any more work at Bletchley Park until you are put up against a wall and shot. My work here is valued very highly, especially by that nice Mr Churchill, so think carefully before answering. Have I made my terms clear?”

  There was a very awkward silence during which we locked eyes. When it became evident that I was absolutely serious, he glanced down at his watch.

  “I have fifty-two minutes left, Professor, and you have my pledge of absolute secrecy. Please begin.”

  I am actually from Silesia, in Poland. My father was a socialist revolutionary, and believed in blowing up public monuments to make political statements to the German occupiers. The day that he managed to blow himself up with a shoddy bomb timer, I fled before the police came to investigate. I am very good at running away. After a few months of wandering through Europe I came to Britain, and forged myself some papers. I am also good with languages and accents, so I was quite convincing as Jane Smith, an unemployed schoolteacher.

  For a time I worked in Oxford, privately tutoring boys with small brains and rich fathers, and I even dreamed of gaining a teaching position. Then I received a letter inviting me to a meeting at the local offices of Cripps and Costigan, a legal firm. At first I was frightened. Had the police tracked me down at last? Was I to be arrested as a dangerous revolutionary or illegal migrant? I had indeed been tracked down, but not by the police. The solicitors had been told to find a woman with a scientific background and a suspicious past. They found me. Then, as now, I was left alone with a strange man in a private room. He introduced himself as Lord Raslin, the owner of a railway engineering company, then he took a pistol from his pocket and placed it on the desk between us.

  “Do not be alarmed Jane Smith, Marie Dobrinsky, or whoever else you call yourself,” he said calmly. “The gun will only be used if you ever repeat what I am about to tell you.”

  “I understand threats and I am very good at keeping secrets,” I replied, and that was certainly true.

  “Then down to business. My son Walter and I are not on the best of terms. He was in love with a beautiful commoner named Elizabeth, but I wanted him to marry a woman of our own class. He was very stubborn, but then it was discovered that Elizabeth was a thief. She had used her charms to get into our London house and steal jewelry. She was sent to prison, but she was a delicate little thing and she died there after a few months. Walter was devastated, but he agreed to marry Caroline, the girl I had chosen for him. All went well until the night of wedding reception. When his turn came to give a speech, he produced a letter from a solicitor and read it out. It contained proof that Elizabeth had been framed. A burglar had been shot and killed some days earlier. Jewelry stolen from my wife was found in his lodgings.”

  “I can imagine the scene,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic.

  “Whatever you can imagine, it was worse. Walter became quite hysterical, shouting his absolute and undying love for Elizabeth, and calling curses down upon those who had jailed her. Three of those at the reception were among the first dozen in line for the British throne, and the combined wealth of the rest could have bought Yorkshire. My family's reputation was now at stake, so once Walter had been restrained I stood up and used money to repair the damage to the dead girl's reputation, and impress everyone with my sorrow. I pledged to buy a country estate for her parents and siblings, had her reburied in our family mausoleum after a service in Westminster, and paid for full page obituaries in all the major newspapers.”

  “Money always impresses me,” I said, “but then I have never had very much.”

  “It did not impress Walter. He began to change for the worse, it was like watching that Stevenson novel about Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde come to life. From being a dreamy but brilliant scholar, Walter became violent, abrupt and very reckless. When he demanded the use of my steam engine factory in Yorkshire, I agreed, thinking that he wanted to distract himself with hard work. My condition was that he just do what was necessary to preserve the family name.”

  “As in father a child?”

  “That is putting indelicately, but yes. Walter is my only child, and my only chance for grandchildren. Instead he has embarked on some project to build a new type of steam train, and is working in absolute secrecy. It is costing vast amounts of money, and there has been a series of explosions that has taken five lives. I want you to find out what my son is doing. Is he just wasting my money, or is he building something real?”

  At last I knew what I was wanted for, and I was somewhat pleased. Spies could make good money, even though the work was dangerous. Danger was nothing new for me, and money would be very welcome.

  “Is he a difficult person to approach?” I asked.

  “He is. I have sent several agents to Wallsford Downs disguised as workmen, but they were all unmasked, beaten, and put on the next train back to London. Now one of the housemaids has resigned, and you will be sent as her replacement. How familiar are you with steam engines?”

  “The basic principle of most has not changed much in a hundred years. They still use pistons that are driven by steam pressure to turn wheels. A man named Parsons developed a steam turbine engine two years ago, and it is said to be vastly more efficient.”

  “So, you are an even better choice than I thought. Walter has some scheme to mount a steam turbine in a locomotive. He claims it will deliver unbelievable power and efficiency, by burning paraffin with liquid
air. Do you know of liquid air?”

  “It is a popular term for liquid oxygen.”

  “Walter has bought a factory in Doncaster with my money and is producing it there. He has split the production of his engine between the two factories, so that nobody can get an overview of what he is doing. Your task is to get that overview.”

  “Nothing has been said about my payment,” I pointed out. “In my experience, a woman such as myself is often used for free then cast aside.”

  Lord Raslin rang a bell, and one of the legal clerks came in with a green steel box. Within it were documents for an identity named Louise Clermont, a woman who I could have only been in my dreams. She was the daughter of a French schoolteacher, had won a series of scholarships, and had a degree from the Sorbonne. Some of the papers had been artificially aged, and had a grubby, dog-eared look. The stamps on them appeared to be real.

  “You can be this woman,” said Lord Raslin.

  “These papers, they are amazing.”

  “You are the only woman who meets all my requirements, so I am willing to be generous. If you are foolish enough to be greedy, I shall destroy you.”

  “You will also destroy me if I do not agree, I presume.”

  Lord Raslin said nothing.

  “Very well,” I sighed. “When do I start?”

  “You leave for Wallsford Downs today. Have you ever worked as a cleaner?”

  “Many times.”

  “Good, so you know what to do and how to behave. I shall pay a visit to Wallsford Downs in a month, and you will tell me of what you have learned.”

  “When can I have these papers?”

  “When you have earned them.”

  I arrived at Doncaster by train, but had to walk to Wallsford Downs. There was no regular train service, for the line to the manor and factory was private. The road followed the railway, and the line was as straight as a beam of light. I counted the sleepers as I walked, and found that it was precisely five miles from the Doncaster Liquid Air Works to the manor house. I was later told that the railway track continued for another ten miles, but went nowhere. Fifteen miles of absolutely straight, private track suggested that something very fast was being developed.

  Walking to Wallsford Downs allowed me to get an impression of the place slowly. The manor house was Georgian Gothic Revival in style, and judging by the weathering it was about a century old. There was a scatter of cottages and a hostel for the workers beside the nearby factory, but I was given a small room in the manor house.

  I arrived in mid-afternoon and began work straight away. After clearing out the accumulated rubbish of several days past from the manor itself, I moved on to the offices, which were in a shed beside the factory. The drafting room looked like any other, and the draftsmen had gone by the time I reached it in the evening. I confined myself to sweeping the floor, dusting here and there, cleaning the windows, emptying the wastebaskets, and cleaning the soot from the lamp glasses and polishing the reflectors.

  As I worked I examined the drawings and measurements that the draftsmen had been working on. There were several projects involving turbine pumps, and even on that first day I could see that this was no ordinary factory. Much of the work concerned a new steam turbine, powered by liquid oxygen and paraffin. I memorised the relevant figures. A small boiler was being developed that produced steam at an unbelievably high pressure. A scribbled note said that it was to pump fuel out of the main tank, but what manner of engine needed its fuel delivered at twenty atmospheres? A separate project involved what was called the steam chamber for the main turbine. It operated at a pressure of fourteen atmospheres, and even this had the force of a continuous boiler explosion. I was tempted to dismiss it as fanciful, but forced myself to keep an open mind. I took all the torn and crumpled papers from the wastebaskets to my room and examined them, then fed them into a stove while chatting to the cooks and scullions.

  On the second day I again entered the drafting room at dusk. I was confronted by Walter Shelton himself. He was an alarming man to look upon. His clothes were all black, and the lenses of his spectacles were darkened, so that one could not see where his eyes were directed. His top hat had a death's head embroidered into it, and beneath this his hair reached down to his shoulders. Tiny silver tools were glued to his fingernails, such as screwdrivers, spanners, knives and even a magnifier. My first instinct was to turn and run, but I managed to not even scream.

  “Can you read, wench?” he asked, without even a greeting.

  “No, sir.”

  “Read this.”

  He handed me a newspaper. I feigned to look puzzled.

  “I can't read it, sir. Will I be dismissed?”

  “No, but you would have been if you had read anything. The secrets of this room must remain secrets. Scrub, polish, dust and sweep, but read nothing.”

  “I cannot read at all, sir.”

  “I wonder. You had orders to feed all the waste paper into the office fireplace and burn it there. Nothing is to leave here except dirty water. Were you told that?”

  “Yes sir.”

  He seized me by the arm and dragged me across to the fireplace. Forcing me to my knees, he took me by the neck and thrust my face down to the grate.

  “What is this?” he demanded.

  “A—a fireplace, sir,” I stammered, genuinely terrified.

  “A hair, you damned spy scullion! One of my hairs. A hair that I left in the grate yesterday. It means no fire has been made here since then. What did you do with the crumpled papers and drawings?”

  “It seemed wrong to waste paper, sir, so I fed them into the stove in the kitchen. You can ask the cook—”

  “You mailed them to my father!”

  “Please sir, I never mailed nothing, I can't write—”

  He flung me aside, and as I got to my feet he took a revolver from his coat. It was plated with silver, and the barrel had been reworked into the shape of a dragon's head with ruby eyes. The open mouth was pointed directly at me as he thumbed back the hammer. With his other hand he pointed at the newspaper on the floor.

  “Pick it up!” he shouted. “Read!”

  “Please sir, I can't read.”

  “Won't, not can't! Read, and be dismissed. Don't read, and die.”

  “I can't read, sir. Please!”

  I had bound my hair into a topknot, and it was this that his bullet passed through. It must have been deliberate, because had he meant to kill me he could not have missed at that range. I screamed, turned and fled. Walter ran after me, firing his gun again and again. As I ran out into the cobbled yard, I collided with a young workman. He took hold of me, then Walter burst through the doorway, waving his pistol.

  “Get away from her, Tom Parker!” he shouted. “She's a spy.”

  “Put the gun away, sir,” said Parker, pushing me behind him.

  “I caught her red-handed.”

  “Last month you shot a pigeon for looking through the office window, and before that you shot a dog for wandering into the workshop. Put the gun away, go inside and calm yourself. Have a drink.”

  “She said she can't read. She lied.”

  “You thought the pigeon could read too, sir. Put the gun down.”

  “I'll not have spies in Wallsford Downs!”

  “Put the gun down, sir.”

  Walter fired a shot between his legs, and the bullet passed through the folds of my skirt. My defender did not move. I heard the hammer of the pistol click back again.

  “Put the gun away, sir.”

  “You're fired! You're a spy too.”

  “Very well sir, but remember that I can write as well as read. I'll be sure to write to his lordship about all this unless you go inside and calm yourself.”

  “Damn you. Damn you both.”

  With that Walter turned away and strode back into the office. At that moment I was ready flee back to Oxford and go into hiding. I did not realise that I had just made a friend.

  Tom Parker took me to the factory, ex
plaining that the nurse had a room there. The factory was precisely what I most wanted to enter, but I tried not to seem eager. As we walked, I saw that it contained a small foundry and four work areas, but it was not laid out for the mass production of anything. I am a mathematician so I did not recognise everything that I saw, but some machinery matched up with what was in the drafting office drawings. There was a steam turbine being tested when I entered, and from the smell on the air it seemed to be fueled by paraffin.

  A rail track had been laid all the way into the factory, and upon this was a very odd contraption called the long wagon. It was indeed long and narrow, in fact it was two tankers and a flatbed wagon bolted together. It looks temporary, I thought, in fact it looks like the tanks have been loaded aboard to disguise it. It could carry something very long. At the middle a death's head had been painted, along with the word HELLFIRE. The rest of it was painted black, from the bogies to the tanks. Something long is to be transported at night, I concluded.

  The nurse checked both Tommy and myself, but apart from some torn hair and a bullet hole through my skirts, neither of us had been harmed.

  “Does this mean I'll lose me job?” I asked as the nurse examined my scalp.

  “I wouldn't worry luv, the daft young lordship shoots at people all the time. He likes to look fierce to frighten off the spies his father sends.”

  “I'm no spy. I might've got shot if that nice Mr Parker had not seen him off.”

  “Young Tommy? He's a good boy, and brave. Already an engine driver, an' I reckon he'll be foreman afore he's thirty.”

  I paused to look about as I left the nurse's office. A large, wedge-shaped thing the size of my room was being riveted together in the closest work area, and it trailed pipes and cables. It had a single window, and looked like the battle helmet of some giant cyclops. Tommy was waiting nearby, and he now walked over.

  “What's your name then, lass?”

  “I'm Jane, sir.”

  “I'm Tommy, and there's no sir when talking to me. All this must seem like a big puzzle to you.”

  “Oh, I'm used to not understandin' things above me station.”