PHOENIX: (Projekt Saucer series)

by W. A. Harbinson

  ‘You won’t be for long.’

  Wilson nodded at Artur Nebe, who removed his pistol from its holster and

  indicated the nearest doorway with it. Dr King licked his lips, then walked out,

  followed closely by Nebe. Wilson sighed, then stepped into another lift and ascended

  to the level directly above - the highest level so far, though others were planned. Emerging from the lift, he entered a sunlit, dome-shaped room, its white-metal

  walls gleaming, enormous windows running around the walls, framing the dazzling

  sky and snow-capped mountain peaks of the Antarctic wilderness. Between the

  windows were doors, steel-plated, all closed, computer consoles jutting out just above

  them, their lights flashing on and off. The room was fifty feet wide. There was a desk

  in the middle. On the desk was an intercom, a microfilm viewer, a pile of books,

  notepaper, pens and pencils, a panel of switches. There were chairs in front of the

  desk, all leather, deep and comfortable; there was no other furniture in the room. The

  floor was laid with plain tiles which, in combination with the steel-plated walls, made

  the room cold and sterile.

  Wilson walked across the floor, his footsteps reverberating, passing the desk and

  stopping at the window, to look out over his kingdom of snow and ice, the impossibly

  blue sky. He only turned away from that view when the door opened and Ernst Stoll

  entered. Stoll stopped by the chairs at the desk, but he didn’t sit down. ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’ Wilson remained at the window, gazing steadily at Stoll, aware that he

  wouldn’t like what he was about to hear. Stoll was in his middle thirties, but looked

  older, no longer handsome, ravaged by the loss of his family and idealism during the

  war. Now loathing the outer world, having nothing to return to, he was devoted to

  Wilson and his work with this Antarctic colony. He would not want to leave. ‘The colony is expanding rapidly and requires more workers,’ Wilson said. ‘The

  original labour force is dying off and for that reason, also, we need more workers. We

  also need human specimens for our laboratory experiments. Finally, we need smaller

  people for use in the saucers, either in human form or, given time, as cyborgs. We can

  find a plentiful, constant supply of the small Ache Indians of Paraguay. That country

  remains sympathetic to the Nazis and will welcome your overtures.’

  ‘I’m to go to Paraguay?’

  ‘More than that, Ernst. Not for a mere trip. You must give up direct participation in

  the running of this colony and instead take up residence in Paraguay. There you will

  cultivate a close relationship with General Stroessner, organise the purchase,

  collection and shipment of the Ache Indians, and keep constantly vigilant for signs of

  betrayal by Stroessner or his government. In other words, you will leave here for

  good and settle in Paraguay.’

  Stoll was dismayed. ‘I don’t want to leave here, sir, and I certainly don’t want to

  settle in Paraguay. While it’s true that the country has become a haven for Nazi

  refugees, most of them live in protected enclosures in the jungle and go mad with

  boredom.’

  ‘You won’t be bored, Ernst. I promise you that. You’ll be busy rounding up Ache

  Indians and liasing between the Paraguayans and me. You’ll be in frequent contact

  with us here; and will receive regular visits from myself and others. You’ll also be

  our main contact with the rest of the world, which will include a lot of travelling and

  meetings. So I’m certain that you’ll find it far from dull and might even enjoy it. This

  work is important, Ernst.’

  ‘I’d rather stay here, but if you insist...’

  ‘I insist. I don’t trust anyone else, Ernst. Kammler and Nebe are men who like

  intrigues and live by betrayal. I want them here, where I can keep my eyes on them.

  You’re the only one I’d trust outside the colony, so it has to be you.’

  ‘I’m honoured,’ Ernst said, as stupid about Wilson as he had been with Himmler

  during the war. ‘When do I leave?’

  ‘Not immediately. Right now, that country is in the middle of a minor revolt, which

  I believe will be defeated by President Morínigo. While this is going on, and causing

  great confusion, we’re having long and frustrating negotiations with that corrupt army

  general, Alfredo Stroessner. We don’t expect to have matters resolved too soon. I’d

  think in six or seven months from now. Say early next year. Is that satisfactory?’ ‘Yes, of course.’

  Wilson smiled thinly and shook his hand. ‘Good, Ernst. I’m pleased.’ Ernst nodded solemnly and left the office, having foolishly believed everything

  Wilson had told him.

  Yet what Wilson had told him was essentially correct - at least regarding the work

  required. Where he had misled Ernst was in telling him that life in the jungles of

  Paraguay would not be dull. In fact, it would be hell, which is why Wilson had

  chosen Ernst. Kammler and Nebe would both have refused to go. Ernst, then, with his

  perverted idealism, was the natural choice.

  Pleased with himself, Wilson took the lift from his office back down to the third

  level. Once there, he made his way to the steel-plated laboratory with the ceiling of

  chiselled rock and gruesome collection of human heads, artificially pumping hearts,

  floating brains, intestines, and all kinds of prosthetics. Passing the men and women in

  white smocks, he entered the operating theatre, where the unfortunate Marlon Clarke,

  now almost mindless with terror, even though slightly sedated, was strapped by his

  legs, arms and forehead to a surgical bed and surrounded by silent, white-smocked

  surgeons.

  ‘Oh, please,’ Clarke whimpered tearfully. ‘Please!’

  Wilson leaned over him, to smile coldly at him. ‘We wish to remove your head

  while you’re still fully aware, in order to check if we can preserve it in its conscious

  state. Your neck has been anaesthetised, so you shouldn’t feel a thing, though you’ll

  be aware until the very last moment of exactly what’s happening. Treat it as an

  experience.’

  He then stepped back to observe as the leading surgeon switched on the electric

  guillotine and moved it on its pulley into place over the throat of the pop-eyed,

  sweating, violently shaking Marlon Clarke. As the surgeon proceeded to surgically

  remove Clarke’s head, Wilson calmly looked on, curious to see how the unfortunate

  man would react before death blotted out his mind.

  Chapter Four This place is the pits, Fuller decided as he parked his jalopy in front of the hospital annex in Fort Bliss, New Mexico, which was now being used to house the German rocket scientists under contract to the US Air Force. Fuller was an urban man who hated the country, and having driven the eighty miles from the White Sands Proving Ground, located between Alamogordo and the site of the first atomic explosion, across eighty miles of desert relieved only by endless sagebrush, he was convinced that he had passed through a world inhabited only by mountain lions, coyotes, wildcats, and rattlesnakes. He was therefore relieved to be in Fort Bliss, El Paso, within sight of the Organ Mountains (which, he had been informed, reminded the German scientists of the Bavarian Alps), though was not thrilled to step out of his car into more dust and scorching heat.

  How he longed to be back in Langley, Virginia, with his CIA pals.

  As he walk
ed up to the door of Count Werner von Braun’s rooms in the woodframe building, an Army Stinson L-5, a small liaison plane, flew overhead, reminding him that this was a military base and that the Kraut scientists housed here, including von Braun, were reportedly conducting, in collaboration with the Americans, a highly secret research project for the government.

  Things sure change quickly, he thought with unsullied cynicism.

  Ringing the doorbell located beside the mesh-wire screen, he reminded himself that the man he was about to meet was not an American, but a former Nazi scientist who had created the V-2 rocket that had devastated London and Antwerp during the war. Now classed as a civilian with civilian staff, von Braun remained in charge of 117 of his own German scientists, engineers and technicians, albeit under the supervision of US Army Major James P. Hammill, a physicist and German-speaking Fordham graduate. The Germans had come into America in 1945 as so-called Wards of the Army, thus requiring no entry permits, all signing one-year contracts with the Army. These were soon changed to five-year contracts, and now the Krauts, while still quartered in this hospital annex, were acquiring automobiles, wearing sombreros and cowboy boots, going to movies and night-clubs, and sending their kids to schools in El Paso.

  A better life than we’re having, Fuller thought as the front door opened and a wellfleshed, handsome face appeared behind the mesh-wire screen. Defeat has its rewards.

  ‘Yes?’ Count Werner von Braun asked.

  ‘Sam Fuller, from Langley, Virginia.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the CIA. You’re expected. Come in.’

  He opened the mesh-wire door to let Fuller enter. Inside, the house, or conversion, was neat, if rather spartan and obviously not meant to last. Soon, as Fuller knew, von Braun would be moving to Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama, as director of research-and-development projects of the Army Ordnance Guided Missile Centre.

  Another reward, Fuller thought as he and the imposing German shook hands.

  ‘Please,’ von Braun said, indicating a soft chair in the living room. ‘Be seated.’ Fuller sat. ‘I’m afraid my wife isn’t here at present. A drink. Some tea? Lemonade?’

  ‘Beer?’

  ‘This I have,’ von Braun said, his great bulk looming large over Fuller, casting its shadow upon him. ‘One moment, please.’ When the German disappeared into the kitchen, Fuller had a good look around. No TV set yet, but the radio was on: Benny Goodman’s orchestra and a lady singing the swinging ‘Bei Mir Bist du Schön’, which made Fuller want to snap his fingers and dance. A copy of Forever Amber was on the table, in the shadow of a vase of fresh flowers. Clearly someone was perfecting his or her English with popular music and fiction. Von Braun soon returned with a tall glass filled with beer, which he gave to Fuller, and a bottle of Pepsi Cola for himself. ‘I am sorry it’s not German,’ he said. ‘American beer is not good, no?’

  ‘No,’ Fuller said. He sipped his lousy American beer. Von Braun sat in the sofa directly facing him, his thick legs outspread. He had the build of a wrestler and the ease that came with huge egos. He would not be pushed easily.

  ‘Nice place,’ Fuller said.

  ‘You know that’s not true. It is adequate, but better than we deserve - and, of course, temporary. I look forward to moving on.’

  ‘You like it in America? Apart from the beer, I mean?’

  ‘At first I was lonely. A lot of us, we were lonely. But recently we were joined by our parents, wives and children. Three hundred in all. Included in these were my parents, the Baron and Baroness Magnus von Braun - whose ancestral estate in Silesia has been confiscated by the Russians - and I have also been joined by my bride. I was given leave to marry her in Landshut and bring her back here. The Americans are generous.’

  Damn right, Fuller thought. And an eighteen-year-old bride, a second cousin, at that. ‘We’re not so generous with our own citizens,’ he said without the trace of a smile.

  Von Braun smiled for him, though his gaze remained cool. ‘No, I suppose not.’

  ‘Where’s your wife now?’ Fuller asked.

  ‘I thought our conversation would bore her,’ von Braun said, ‘so I sent her out for a walk.’

  Which means she can’t say the wrong thing, Fuller thought. Some fat pumpkin we have here.

  He sipped some more beer. His throat felt dry in this dusty hole. ‘What do you most like about America, Count von Braun?’

  ‘American sport. Joe DeMaggio and Rocky Graziano.’ Von Braun shrugged. ‘Apart from that, I only like my work. Now what do you want to know, Mr Fuller?’ Fuller smiled, admiring von Braun’s bluntness. A 28-year old hard case from Brooklyn, New York, Fuller was the child of moderately wealthy, uncaring parents, a clear-eyed product of Harvard, and a veteran of many relationships and one failed, childless marriage. Not a man for finer feelings, he admired those who were nimble on their feet and ruthless in pursuit of what they wanted. This von Braun, though built like a wrestler, clearly had those attributes.

  ‘I’ve come to enquire about your rocket construction programme. The V-1 and V2.’

  Von Braun sighed. ‘I’ve been over this so many times. There is nothing secret about it anymore. It is all in the files.’

  ‘It’s easier for me to talk to you than try to get at the classified files. I have clearance for this, but not for your records. That’s why I’m here.’

  Von Braun sighed again, sipped some Pepsi Cola, then rested the dripping bottle on his lap. ‘So what do you want to know?’

  ‘You were, I believe, one of the founder members of the German amateur rocket society, also known as the Spaceship Travel Club.’

  ‘Yes. The Verein für Raumschiffart, or VfR. It came into being in 1927 when a group of space-travel enthusiasts took over an abandoned three-hundred-acre arsenal, which they called their Raketenflugplatz, or Rocket Flight Place, in the Berlin suburb of Reindickerdorf. From there they actually shot some crude, liquid-fuelled rockets skywards.’

  ‘When did you join it?’

  ‘About 1930, as I recall. By then the VfR included most of the rocket experts of the day, including Rudolf Nebel, Hermann Oberth, Willy Ley, Max Valier, and Klaus Riedel. I was very proud to gain admittance to that august company.’

  ‘How did you end up in the German army?’

  ‘I know what you’re implying, but it’s not true,’ von Braun said with no sign of anger. ‘I was never a Nazi. In April 1930, the Ordnance Branch of the German Army’s Ballistics and Weapons Office, headed by General Becker, appointed Captain Walter Dornberger to work on rocket development at the army’s Kummersdorf firing range, approximately fifteen miles south of Berlin. Two years later, after many experiments to find the most promising method of propulsion and the most stable means of flight, the VfR demonstrated one of their liquid-fuelled rockets to Dornberger and other officers at Kummersdorf. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, the VfR was taken over by the Nazis and become part of the Kummersdorf programme. Many of the German engineers, including myself, were therefore conscripted in a very real sense. We were, and remain, scientists - not soldiers.’

  ‘You ended up in Peenemünde, working on the V-1 rocket programme.’

  ‘Yes, but the prototype was known as the A-2.’

  ‘Is it true that much of the German rocket research was based on the work of the American rocket scientist, Robert H.Goddard?’

  ‘A genius shamefully ignored by his own country. Yes, it’s true. We all revered Goddard and based our work on his brilliant theories. While in the United States those theories were being received with indifference and even contempt, we in Hitler’s Germany was spending fortunes on rocket research that was, by and large, based on Goddard’s work. As early as December, 1934, two highly advanced A-2 rockets, constructed at Kummersdorf, gyroscopically controlled, and powered by oxygen-and-alcohol fuelled motors, were launched from the island of Borkum in the North Sea and reached an altitude of one-and-a-half miles. Those stabilised, liquidfuelled rockets were, at the time, the only known, serious challengers to
the rockets of Robert H.Goddard.’

  ‘But the work didn’t end there.’

  ‘No. In March 1936 we demonstrated some more motors at Kummersdorf, including one with an unprecedented 3,500 pounds of thrust. Those demonstrations so impressed the German Commander-in-Chief, General Fritsch, that permission was given for us to build an independent rocket establishment in a suitably remote part of Germany, where research and test firings could be carried out in the strictest secrecy. The chosen site was near the village of Peenemünde, on the island of Usedom, off the Baltic coast. The rest is now history.’

  ‘According to an Operation Paperclip report, when the V-2 rockets were inspected by Allied scientists in the captured Nordhausen Central Works at the close of the war, they were found to be remarkably similar to the rockets of Robert H.Goddard.’

  ‘Of course. The most notable features of the propulsion unit were the shutter-type valves in the fixed grill, the fuel injection orifices incorporated in the same grill, the combustion chamber, spark plugs and nozzle. We stole those from a Robert H. Goddard patent that was reproduced in the German aviation magazine, Flugsport - in January 1939, as I recall.’

  ‘In 1944 many Allied pilots were being harassed by what appeared to be balls of fire which were under some kind of remote control. The pilots called them “Foo Fighters”. Were they connected in any way with your work or Goddard’s early experiments?’

  ‘No, I don’t believe so. I had heard that they were some new kind of German secret weapon, radio-controlled from the ground, and designed either to foul the ignition systems of the bombers or act as pyschological weapons, to confuse and unnerve Allied pilots. Certainly they were not designed or constructed at Peenemünde. However, given that they might have utilised some of our technical innovations, it’s possible they were created by rocket engineers other than my own.’

  ‘Such as?’

  Von Braun shrugged. ‘We were scattered far and wide.’

  ‘What about Kummersdorf or Peenemünde?’

  ‘Not at the latter; possibly at the former. There were actually two rocket research centres at Kummersdorf, separated by an old firing range. We were transferred from the original site to the new site at the other side of the firing range, then another development team took over our old site.’