‘Remarkable!’ Richter had said with a sneer during their first conversation, over dinner, in his cramped, smoky cabin. ‘The Bavarian window cleaner has finally returned home, driving back into Vienna in his Storm Trooper uniform, giving the fascist salute, welcomed by pealing church bells and hysterically cheering crowds who appear to be delighted that he’s made their country a mere province of Germany... But since, four days later, their beloved Führer announced the so-called spring-cleaning of Austrian Jews, I think we can assume that their cheering has tailed off into silence.’
Though shocked at such disrespect for the Führer he so admired, Ernst offered no protest, instead letting Richter break the monotony by rambling on about the madness of the Third Reich and those who controlled it.
‘Drug addicts, sexual degenerates, occultists and mystics – the lunatics have taken over the asylum and called it the Third Reich. And who’s in charge of the lunatics? Another two lunatics! Hitler and Himmler – two mild souls possessed by demons – one wanting to be God of a pure Aryan Earth, the other hoping to create the Super Race with a bunch of blond morons. These are leaders of men?’
If Richter despised the Third Reich and all it aspired to, he was particularly venomous about the man who had dreamed up this Antarctic expedition, namely the Reichsführer, Heinrich Himmler.
‘A madman!’ Richter rasped. ‘He belongs in an insane asylum! Unlike you, I don’t know him personally, but I know what I’ve heard. He’s a bureaucrat of demonology, an administrator of inane dreams, a superficially cool customer who thrives on demented enthusiasms – mesmerism, reincarnation, clairvoyance, runes, the Thousand Year Reich, the possibility of turning mortal men into immortals, the search for Hörbiger's world of ice and fire – and this lunatic shares his dreams with Hitler, who is equally mad!’
At first Ernst was outraged, as if hearing blasphemy, and he turned away, hiding his flushed cheeks, and looked out to sea. An immature albatross had been circling out there for hours, always close to the surface, supported by the updraughts of air produced by the whitecapped swells. It made Ernst remember the wonders of aerodynamics and the work going on in the hangars of Kummersdorf with the American genius, Wilson, the German egomaniac, Schriever, the ailing Italian physicist, Belluzzo, and their engineering assistants, Habermohl and Miethe, and this knowledge filled him with a healthy flush of resentment at what Himmler had done to him.
Instead of working as an engineer with Projekt Saucer at Kummersdorf, he was supervising the dropping of flagged poles into the Antarctic wilderness.
It wasn’t even a joke.,
‘A world of ice and fire?’ he asked Richter to distract himself. ‘Is that why we’re here?’
Richter laughed sardonically. ‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘Has he not told you what he believes in? His mad dream of the Super Race?’
‘No,’ Ernst replied honestly, ‘he hasn’t. He only gives me my orders.’
So Richter told him about Himmler, about his bizarre faiths and ambitions, pointing out that his SS was essentially a religious order, that his men were bound by blood and oath, and that he wanted to isolate them, to brainwash then and remould them, to mate them with the purest German women and produce blond perfection, then forge those already perfect men in the strengthening flames of eternal war.
‘He used to process chickens,’ Richter said with a sneer, ‘and now he wants to process people. He has a dream of a disciplined order of masters and slaves – the masters like human gods, the slaves to do their bidding – and he wants them in a world of ice and fire, which is where we are right now. The fire is the endless war that Himmler hopes to wage – he believes, after all, that war keeps a nation strong - and the ice is right here in the Antarctic, which he views as the natural home of Nordic man.’
They were now on the open deck, looking across the ice-filled sea. Richter waved his hand to indicate the distant, snow-capped peaks and glaciers, obscured in a white haze.
‘That’s why he wants this place as the secret base for his New Order. He wants to finish here what he began in the Wewelsburg Castle: his secret society, a Black Jesuit order, with its Death’s Head insignia, reversed swastika and occult rites, dedicated to the re-creation of the Germanen Order, which he views as the Super Race. The man is mad – and unstoppable.’
Ernst cast his gaze southward, looking beyond the Antarctic Convergence, where dark clouds hovered over an oasis of light and frozen mountain peaks and ice falls, which, being but dimly perceived, looked like part of a mirage. He tried to visualize that vast wasteland, the brown earth between ice and snow; then he pondered the possibility of the finest of his SS comrades being imprisoned and trained there, set free only when called upon by their leader, the Reichsführer, Heinrich Himmler, to set a torch to the world of normal men and turn history to ashes.
Himmler... and Wilson... and Projekt Saucer... in a world of Eternal Ice.
‘Areas free of ice,’ he whispered to Richter, though really addressing himself. ‘He specifically asked us to find areas free of ice. Places where we could land.’
‘Of course!’ Richter exclaimed. ‘Why do you think he’s claiming that land for the Third Reich? Photographing it? Having it mapped out?’
‘I’m not sure. I – ’
‘Lebensraum – space! – German conquest and expansionism. That madman wants to come here, to bring his Death’s Head SS here. He wants to isolate them from the world as completely as possible – well beyond the reach of normal men – and what could be more removed and isolated than that hellhole of snow and ice? He’ll create his new order there, beyond the influence of the human world, and those who are raised there will know nothing but what they’ve been taught. They’ll be raised and trained for war, and nothing but war, the eternal conflict that Himmler believes is necessary to an order of Supermen.’ Richter rubbed his frozen nose. ‘Do you understand, Stoll? It’s H
ö rbiger’s so-called cosmic world of ice and fire – and Himmler hopes to create it out there, in that frozen world, underground. That’s why we’re stealing Queen Maud Land.’
Ernst finally understood and was struck dumb with the knowledge, simultaneously overwhelmed by the grandeur of the concept and deeply shocked that he had learned about it only through this old naval captain, whose contempt was appalling.
Avoiding Richter after that, he stayed alone as much as possible, thinking of Wilson’s flying saucer, potentially the world’s most powerful aircraft, and relating it to this Antarctic expedition and the search for ice-free land.
Himmler’s world of fire and ice: the flying saucer and the Antarctic. The flying saucer was the machine of the future ... and that future was here and now.
Ernst was awed by the concept.
On the final day of the expedition, just before the fleet turned back, Ernst, as instructed by Himmler, took the rear seat in a seaplane and had the pilot fly him to the Antarctic and land on an ice-free area of Queen Maud Land. It was not a long flight, but it seemed almost magical, transporting him abruptly from sunlit space to snow-filled wilderness, black shadow, blinding light, a great silence, the gleaming Nothing, and when the skis of his aircraft slid along the ice cap, he felt that he was on another planet, vast and desolate... dead.
The Antarctic, spread out all around him, looked boundless and unreal.
Another world for the taking.
Telling the pilot to remain in the cockpit, he clambered down alone, glanced around that alien landscape of icefalls and glaciers and snowbanks and polar plateaus – all frighteningly empty and hauntingly silent – then solemnly unravelled a larger swastika from its frozen steel pole. He hammered it into the ice-free soil, working awkwardly with his gloved hands; then, exhaling steam, he stepped back to give the Nazi salute.
‘I now claim this land for the Third Reich and name it Neuschwabenland.’
His embarrassed, whispered words were still echoing eerily around him when he climbed back up into the seaplane and let the pilot fly him away from
what could be his future home.
That thought chilled his soul.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Bradley was relieved to step out of the sweltering June weather of the town of Des Moines, Iowa, and into the airconditioned coolness of the immaculately clean, modern nursing home. When he told the whiteuniformed receptionist behind the desk that he had an appointment with a resident, Abe Goldman, she smiled pleasantly, checked her register, said, ‘Yep!’ and hit the button of the bell on the desk with the palm of her hand. ‘I’m calling someone to take you in there,’ she explained. Then, when she saw him fingering his sweaty collar, she asked, ‘Are you from out of state, Mr Bradley?’
‘Yep,’ he replied, amused by her air of amusement.
‘Can’t stand the humidity, eh?’
‘No, not really. It can get pretty hot in Connecticut, but it’s never
this humid.’
‘You know New York?’
‘Yep.’
‘I’ve only seen it in the movies.’
‘It looks just like it does in the movies.’
‘Gee, I’d just love to go there.’ She was middle-aged and attractive
and reminded him of Gladys Kinder, so he was glad when a male attendant arrived and said, ‘Someone for Abe?’ ‘This nice gentleman from New York,’ the receptionist said. ‘The one sweating too much.’
‘Can’t stand the humidity, eh?’ the male attendant said with a broad grin.
Bradley just shook his head.
‘You’ll soon cool down in here,’ the attendant said. ‘Okay, sir, follow me.’
Bradley was already cooling down in the air-conditioning when the attendant led him away from the lobby, along a well-carpeted corridor, through an expansive community room filled with old people, many wearing dressing gowns, and out onto a patio overlooking a smooth green lawn.
‘You a relative of Abe’s?’ the attendant asked, leading Bradley along the patio.
‘No,’ Bradley replied.
‘He’s one of our favourite residents,’ the attendant said. ‘A real old-time character – though not originally from hereabouts.’
‘No, he was originally from New York.’
‘That’s right,’ the attendant said, stopping when they reached the shaded end of the patio, where an old man was sitting in a wheelchair. He had lively, pugnacious, Jewish features and a mop of surprisingly thick gray hair. He was dressed in a vivid, sky-blue dressing gown and smoking a cigar.
‘Abe,’ the attendant said, ‘here’s your visitor. Mr – ’
‘Bradley. Mike Bradley.’
Abe Goldman removed the cigar from his pursed lips and squinted up through a cloud of smoke. ‘The guy from Wall Street, eh?’ he asked rhetorically, raising his hand.
‘That’s right,’ Bradley said, shaking the old man’s hand and surprised by the strength of his grip. ‘It’s good of you to see me.’
‘Not at all,’ Goldman replied, waving Bradley into the chair facing him. ‘It’s not often you meet a stranger in this asylum, so I’m happy to see you.’
‘It’s not an asylum,’ the attendant corrected him.
‘No,’ Abe said, 'it's a nursing home. Only the people who run it are crazy; we’re just old and decrepit.’
He quivered with soundless mirth as the attendant grinned at Bradley, shook his head in a rueful manner, then said, ‘Enjoy!’ and walked away. Bradley settled into his chair facing the grinning old man, whose thick-lashed brown eyes were still bright.
‘So,’ Goldman said, ‘you said on the phone you wanted to talk about my old company.’
‘That’s right. Goldman and Cohn. Based and registered in New York, back in the nineties. A finance company, I gather.’
‘Yep.’ Goldman shook his head emphatically. ‘Old Jack and me, we made a goddamned fortune and retired at an early age. Of course, Jack,’ he said, blowing a cloud of smoke, ‘kicked off a few years back. He didn’t smoke or drink, that was his problem. Living clean isn’t good for you.’
‘I’ll try to remember that,’ Bradley said.
‘You do that, son. Pearls of wisdom from the ancients. Now what did you want to know?’
‘Is it true that your company was involved in the financing of airship designs?’
‘It sure is, son. And it’s what made us rich. There was a lot of loot in airship designs if you knew which hands to shake.’
‘You built a secret research centre here, in Iowa, didn't you?’
‘Yep. That’s why I’m retired here. Jack Cohn and I, we both came out here in the nineties, to supervise the research center – then, when we had to close it down, we decided to stay on. Our wives and kids loved it here.’
‘I want to ask you about that – about why you closed the plant down – but first I want to know if your chief aeronautical engineer was a guy named John Wilson.’
‘I do believe it was. I’m not good at remembering names, but I’m good at the faces and I’d never forget that engineer. He was a weird one, I tell you.’
‘Weird?’
‘He surely was – though he was also the most brilliant designer we’d ever come across. Miles ahead of the others.’
‘What do you mean by weird?’
Goldman inhaled and puffed, looking thoughtful. ‘Not too sure,’ he said. ‘Such a long time ago. At my age, memory plays some awful tricks. Not reliable, son.’
‘I don’t mind,’ Bradley said.
Goldman puffed out his cheeks and blew more smoke; he had a lot of it in there. ‘Brilliant,’ he reiterated. ‘But cold. Cold as ice. Something almost inhuman about him there. Always well mannered and pleasant, but not really concerned. He saw people – he watched them like a hawk – but he never seemed to feel anything.’
‘Obsessed with his work?’
‘Christ, yes. It was bread and water to him. He had nothing except his work. I remember once asking him about his childhood – you know, I thought he might have been mistreated as a child or something
– and he said, no, that his parents had been fine, he just hadn’t been interested, that’s all. Life, he said, was too precious to waste on small things, on the ordinary, and his parents, while decent, had been ordinary, so he lost interest in them. He thought that people wasted their lives, that most of them were too emotional, and that the mind and what it could achieve were all that really mattered in life. Any human activity that didn’t have a specific, evolutionary purpose was to him a complete waste of time, maybe even degenerate. You know – sports, games, romantic love, kids, reading just for pleasure – you name it – if it wasn’t somehow advancing science or evolution, it was pretty despicable.’
‘Yet he was well mannered and polite.’
‘Right. You couldn’t even prod him to anger. I do remember him telling me that any emotion that blurred objective thought was an unhealthy emotion. He didn’t involve himself with people – he worked with them or studied them – and although he had some women in his life, I think they were just there for the sex: a way of scratching at the one distracting itch he couldn't get rid of.’
‘He wasn’t married?’
‘No – and never had been.’
‘A real loner.’
‘More like a recluse. I don’t think we socialized once – we only met to discuss work – and even then, it was always at the research centre.’
‘How did you find him?’
‘Me and my partner – Jack Cohn, God rest his soul – were looking for someone, preferably young, bright, and willing to work cheap, to design passenger-carrying airships, which we were convinced would revolutionize transport. So, we placed an ad’ in various newspapers, asking for aeronautical engineers, and Wilson called and we fixed up a meeting. He’d just graduated from Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, which was convenient, since that’s where we were based. Anyway, we met him and he impressed the hell out of us – he was so obviously brilliant – so we had no hesitation in putting him in charge of our airship development project.’
‘Why did you
move it all the way from the East Coast to here?’
‘Wilson’s idea. In those days, you know, there was an awful lot of experimentation going on – patents flying all over the place – and so all of us were obsessive about protecting what we were doing. Lots of secrecy, right? So we wanted our project to be kept under wraps and preferably located well away from the prying eyes of our competitors. Jack, I think, suggested California, but then Wilson said he knew of this great place near where he'd come from – in the wilds of Iowa, near the Illinois border – and when he also informed us that land and property there were cheap, we bought the idea. We sent Wilson out here to find us what we needed, and he came up with the plant in Mount Pleasant. We not only built the plant there, but took all our workers from the area, which meant there was no gossip back in New York.’
‘When was that?’
‘About 1896. Thereabouts. My memory’s not all that good, you know. It’s as flimsy as I am.’
Bradley grinned. ‘And did you actually design some workable airships?’
The man inhaled more smoke, nearly choked and coughed vigorously, stubbed the butt of the cigar out in an ashtray, then wiped his watery eyes with shaky fingers.
‘He sure did,’ he confirmed, nodding emphatically. ‘Five in all, with one uncompleted by the time the project closed down.’
That figured, Bradley thought. All the reports about Wilson during the Great Airship Scare had reported him as saying that five or six airships had been constructed in Iowa, near the Illinois border. So five had been completed, one left unfinished, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa.
‘What were they like?’ he asked.
‘Dirigibles,’ Goldman replied. ‘The most advanced of their time. The hot-air balloon was contained inside a cigar-shaped aluminium structure and powered by Wilson’s internal combustion engine and propellers, all of which were fixed ingeniously to the gondola. The five completed models were secretly test-flown throughout the second year of the project – I think, 1897 – but of course we couldn’t keep ‘em invisible, so they caused quite a stir.’
INCEPTION (Projekt Saucer, Book 1) Page 15
