‘The Great Airship Scare of 1897.’
The old man shook again with silent mirth. ‘Right,’ he said, when he had managed to control himself. ‘Those test flights were made about three years before Zeppelin flew his first model and over six years before the first heavier-than-air flight of the Wright brothers – but they were undertaken in as much secrecy as was possible under the circumstances. Wilson nearly always took the airships up at night, but he often had to land to ask for water for his airship’s engine – and in doing that he scared a helluva lot of people. Of course, some of his crewmen really enjoyed the whole thing – you know, reading about themselves as possible invaders from Mars and so on. It was all a bit of a joke to them.’
‘Not a joke to the nation,’ Bradley observed, remembering what he had read about the scare.
‘Right,’ Goldman replied. ‘Someone even managed to get some photographs when one of Wilson’s airships flew over Rogers Park in Illinois. Those photographs were reproduced in a couple of newspapers
– the Chicago Times-Herald and The New York Times, as I remember
– and that really turned the airships into a sensation.’
‘Yet they weren’t seen after 1897. Why?’
‘Wilson destroyed them.’
‘Pardon?’ ‘You heard me. That mad bastard destroyed his own creations. He was utterly ruthless.’
Bradley was just starting to wonder if Goldman was insane when the old man glanced furtively left and right, then leaned forward with a sly grin on his face.
‘You don’t believe me, uh?’
‘I’m beginning to believe this Wilson was capable of anything... but that seems a bit too much.’
‘You want me to show you something really special, Mr Bradley?’
‘Show me?’
‘Yeah, show you. I could do with a day away from here – and it’s still only morning. If you’re willing to drive eighty miles and back I’ll show you what he was up to.’
‘Where would we be going?’
‘To Mount Pleasant, of course, where my construction plant was located.’
‘I’ve already checked it out,’ Bradley said, ‘and didn’t find a damned thing. Your plant’s long gone, Mr Goldman. Every last sign of it.’
Goldman grinned again and winked, then shook his head from side to side. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not there. You looked in the wrong place. Wilson had this other hangar, his secret place, that even I didn’t know about until he was long gone. You want to see what Wilson was doing behind our backs? Then let’s head for Mount Pleasant. I could do with a day out.’
‘It’s a deal,’ Bradley said.
They had a pleasant drive, out of Des Moines and along a seemingly endless straight road, past the rambling farmsteads that dotted the green and brown hills, toward where an azure, white-clouded sky met a silvery horizon. Abe Goldman loved it, beamed with pleasure beside Bradley, and kept leaning sideways, to put his weathered face near the rolled-down window, all the better to receive the rushing wind, fresh air, and hot, burning sun.
‘This is what I left New York for,’ he explained, breathing deeply and gratefully. Though Bradley was burning with impatience, he didn’t press the old man to talk anymore about Wilson and his airship project, but instead let him engage in routine conversation about the weather, the changes in the country in general and New York in particular, and anything else that took the voluble Abe Goldman’s fancy. They were on the highway to Iowa City, which made an easy drive, but turned off an hour later and took a road that ran as straight as an arrow between golden fields of wheat and corn, to Montezuma, where Wilson had been born.
As Abe Goldman now wanted lunch, Bradley stopped at a diner on the edge of town.
Helping Abe out of the car, Bradley recalled his visit to this town a few years back, when he had gone to the farm that had once belonged to Wilson’s parents and found it still operating, its clapboard house recently repainted and gleaming white in the sunlight.
‘The man now running the Wilson farm,’ he explained to Abe as they entered the diner, ‘is the son of the people who bought it from Wilson’s father shortly after his wife, Wilson’s mother, died and he decided to move to Worcester, Massachusetts, where he’d been born.’
‘A lot of people need their roots,’ Goldman replied.
‘Not Wilson,’ Bradley said.
‘Even Wilson,’ Goldman insisted. ‘He may not have returned to his hometown, but he came back to the state. That’s close enough, partner.’
Faced with the possibility that Wilson might, after all, have had some sentimental leanings, Bradley felt more confused when he entered the diner and sat down to lunch with Abe Goldman. They both had hamburgers and french fries, with lots of relish and salad on the side. For such a fragile old man, Abe had a surprisingly healthy appetite, enjoying his food.
‘So are you going to tell me why Wilson destroyed his own airships?’ Bradley finally asked him.
‘Sure,’ Abe said. ‘Seems unbelievable, right? But that son of a bitch was the most ruthless guy I ever met.’ Abe munched on his burger, washed it down with Coca-Cola. ‘The reason the airships spotted in 1897 weren’t seen again is that the designs Wilson gave me and Jack Cohn to patent were for unworkable airships. He patented the real designs under a couple of pseudonyms. Of course, we didn’t know about this. Nor did we know that the son of a bitch was selling his genuine designs to some industrialist in Germany, almost certainly with an agreement to ensure that our airships were destroyed. We only figured this out later. First, the engines of our airships were blown up by an unknown demolition expert, obviously Wilson. Second, Wilson disappeared, leaving only his ingeniously faked drawings, from which we couldn’t reconstruct his particular internal combustion engines and structural designs. Third: A couple of years later the first German airships took to the sky and were clearly based on Wilson’s designs.’ Abe grinned and shook his head in helpless admiration. ‘By that time,’ he continued, ‘since we’d nothing to sell, Jack and me had gone bust and were too busy making our money back in other fields to pursue the son of a bitch through the courts.’
‘But you knew what he was up to during that time?’
‘Sure. He used the money from the sale of his patents to open his own research establishment across the state line, in Illinois. We could never verify what he was up to there, but there were certainly some odd rumours over the next few years, most notably that by 1903, just before the Wright brothers made their first successful flight at Kitty Hawk, Wilson had secretly produced even more advanced aircraft, reportedly turboprop biplanes, that had actually managed to cross the Atlantic Ocean.’
‘He couldn’t have done that without US government help.’
‘Well,’ Abe said, obviously enjoying his startling revelations, ‘everything was wide open then – it was early days for aviation, with not too much legislation – so he could have done it with clandestine government aid. Then, of course, he went that little bit too far and it led to his downfall.’
‘A little bit too far?’ Bradley was amused by the triumphant glint in old Abe’s eyes, but he was also intrigued. He had never heard anything like this in his life, and it made Wilson seem almost diabolically ruthless and even, in a chilling way, awesome.
Having finished his large lunch, Goldman sat back, lit a cigar, and puffed a cloud of foul smoke.
‘There were rumours,’ he said, ‘about highly advanced experiments with the problem of the boundary layer – and even dangerous experiments with atomic propulsion. Regarding this, there’s one year I haven't forgotten and won’t ever forget.’
‘Yes?’ Bradley enquired, his amusement tinged with growing impatience at the old man's teasing.
‘In 1908,’ Goldman said, ‘shortly after the world celebrated Louis Bleriot’s widely publicized flight across the English Channel, from Calais to Dover, there was a great explosion in the Tunguska region of Siberia – an explosion so big that some believed it had been caused by a crashing meteor
or alien spacecraft. The reason for that mysterious explosion has never been found, but I can confirm that there were whispers in aeronautical and related circles that it’d been caused by the failure of one of Wilson’s more dangerous experiments: when his mostly highly advanced experimental aircraft, reportedly powered by some primitive, faulty form of atomic propulsion, malfunctioned – possibly in conjunction with damage caused by the uncontrollable vibrations of the boundary layer – in an otherwise astonishingly successful flight from these here United States to goddamned Russia.’
Feeling chilled to the bone while hot sunlight poured in through the window, Bradley was just about to express his disbelief when Goldman, finishing off his Coca-Cola, wiped his lips with the back of his hand and said, ‘While that could either be the true explanation for the Tunguska explosion or pure science fiction, what is for sure is that shortly after the so-called most frightening, inexplicable phenomenon of the twentieth century, Wilson’s plant in Illinois was closed down by the US government, all of his designs – or at least those they found – were either classified as top secret or destroyed, and Wilson was offered work with the US government.’
‘Which he didn’t take.’
‘No,’ Goldman confirmed without hesitation. ‘Apparently deeply embittered – can you imagine how we felt? – and with the Great War underway, he left Illinois for good and, according to occasional reports, spent the next decade drifting from one small aeronautical company to another, keeping his light under a bushel, but making a good living by selling his smaller, less important innovations to commercial airline companies and construction plants, and finally going to work for six months with another pioneering genius, Robert H. Goddard.’
‘Which is where I came in.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Nothing,’ Bradley said. He was beginning to feel a bit unreal. Glancing at his wristwatch, he noted that his time was running out. ‘Are you finished, Abe? I think we’ll have to get going.’
‘No sweat,’ Goldman said.
Once back in the car, they drove for another hour, arrived at Sigourney, which seemed sleepy in the afternoon light, then passed the road signs for Washington and Wapeelo and eventually headed along an empty road that cut through a quilt-work of green and gold, lawns of finely mowed grass, more fields of corn and wheat beyond which, Bradley knew from his previous visits, lay the rolling green fields of Mount Pleasant.
Thinking of that place, of the airships constructed and destroyed there, Bradley suddenly realized that he might be on a wild goose chase, led by a senile old man.
‘If Wilson destroyed his airships,’ he said, expressing his doubts, 'what can you possibly show me now, Abe?’
Goldman was unfazed. ‘Remember me telling you about the rumours that Wilson had constructed a highly developed aircraft that actually managed to fly as far as Russia?’
‘Yes,’ Bradley said. ‘The one with some primitive form of atomic propulsion.’
‘Right,’ Goldman said, pleased. ‘Well, that aircraft certainly wasn’t any kind of goddamned airship.’
‘Naturally not,’ Bradley said. ‘Probably some kind of advanced airplane.’
‘Exactly,’ Goldman replied. ‘When that son of a bitch was making airships for us, he’d already superseded them and was secretly experimenting with his own project in another hangar, well away from our establishment at Mount Pleasant. It’s my belief that that project was for the construction of an aircraft designed solely to conquer the boundary layer and be powered by some form of atomic propulsion. I think that a miniature version of such a craft, remote-controlled, was tried out in 1908, flew as far as Siberia, then malfunctioned and blew up over the Tunguska forest.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Bradley whispered without thinking.
‘You’re impressed?’ Goldman asked.
‘Yep.’
‘Then stop being impatient and keep driving. You want proof, I’ll
give you proof!’
Shortly after they passed the sign indicating Mount Pleasant, Goldman coughed more cigar smoke from his lungs, hammered his chest with his fist, then jabbed a finger at a narrow side road and said, ‘Turn up there, son.’
‘We’re not going to Montezuma?’ Bradley asked, confused.
‘You’ve already been there,’ Goldman reminded him, ‘and found nothing worth seeing. Now do as I tell you.’
Bradley kept driving until Goldman told him to stop, halfway along a narrow track that ran between two fenced-in fields of tall, untended grass. That was unusual. Untended fields were rare around here. Then he looked across the field to the east and saw, in the distance, an enormous barn, probably once used for storing grain.
Goldman reached into his pocket, pulled out a bunch of keys, and held them up to him.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘One of these is the key. Go take a look at what that son of a bitch was building when we thought he was only constructing airships. Have a good look, son.’
Bradley felt foolish and disbelieving, but he took the bunch of keys from the old man and started across the road. He parted the barbed wire, clambered awkwardly through the fence, then started the long walk across the field, through the waist-high, untended grass. The grass was like an endless sea, undulating in the breeze, whispering all around him, brushing at him, as if trying to suck him down. He felt nervous and unreal, adrift from himself, and was dazzled by the silvery-streaked azure sky, in which white clouds drifted.
Ahead of him, the immense barn loomed larger, isolated between land and sky, breaking up the horizon.
Beyond it was Illinois.
Bradley was breathing heavily and sweating by the time he reached the barn, and he stood there for a moment, getting his breath back. He glanced over his shoulder and saw his rented car sitting in the road beyond the fence, minute in that vast, undulating sea of grass. Shaking his head in wonderment, he turned again to the front and studied the barn.
It was certainly huge, obviously once used for storing grain, and the single, steel lock on the door had turned red with rust. Not quite so breathless, but still sweating too much, Bradley tried one key after the other until he found the correct one. He turned the key once, slipped the lock off the chain, pulled the chain through its steel rings, and let it fall to the ground. Then he took hold of the edge of the large door and pulled it toward him, walking backward as he did so, until it was more than halfway open, letting sunlight pour into the barn’s darkness.
That sunlight shone on something metallic, making Bradley’s heart leap.
Feeling as nervous as someone entering a haunted house, he walked into the barn.
He didn’t get very far.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN The flying saucer prototype looked bigger than it really was where it rested, on a raised hydraulic platform, in the middle of the immense, cluttered hangar. Essentially a large ring plate with adjustable wing discs that rotated around its fixed, cupola-shaped cockpit, it had a diameter of forty-two meters and a height from base to canopy of thirty-two meters. Made of silvery-gray metal that reflected the overhead lights, it looked like a giant spinning top, and it made Wilson smile.
It would soon fly – but not much. The only saucer that would fly in any real sense was the one Wilson was secretly designing in miniature and would use when he needed it.
As long as he lived, he would not forget the awful devastation caused by the failure of the crude atomic propulsion system used in the otherwise surprisingly successful test flight of his first disc-shaped aircraft, which had actually managed to fly as far as Russia. However, since the catastrophe over the Tunguska region of Siberia in 1908, caused by the explosion of his pilotless aircraft, he had accepted that atomic propulsion was out of the question. Instead, he had concentrated all his efforts on conquering the boundary layer and trying to find less air-resistant material for his flying saucer’s structure, so far using highly advanced but orthodox aircraft engines. He had not succeeded in America, though he was on the way to succeeding here, but he was carefully
keeping his most important discoveries for his own use.
He fed Flugkapitän Schriever only a little at a time... never quite enough for his needs, but enough to make Schriever think he was making progress and to keep Himmler happy.
It was a delicate manoeuvre of the kind Wilson had practised previously – with the US government, before they had withdrawn their support and made him quietly drop out of sight, to eventually end up here in Nazi Germany.
He would always do what he had to do.
Tired from his week of relentless travelling all over Germany, he lowered his suitcase to the floor. Nevertheless he did not sit down but looked through the glass walls of his office at the men, some in coveralls, some in uniform, who were gathered by the hydraulic platform under the large flying saucer prototype. He recognized the lean and hungry Rudolph Schriever, who was dangerous, and his engineers, Habermohl and Miethe, who were not, as well as that fat Italian fool, Belluzzo, who would soon have to go.
The four of them were obviously discussing some aspect of the construction, while Schriever, who still believed that he ran Projekt Saucer, studied the technical drawings in his hands and barked like a dog.
What an ass! Wilson thought.
Not that he had much time for any of them...
The two engineers, Klaus Habermohl and Otto Miethe, were uninspiringly efficient when merely turning nuts and bolts but embarrassingly inept when aspiring to the greater heights of design. So far, contrary to what Wilson had told Heinrich Himmler in Berchtesgaden, their so-called contributions to various parts of the flying saucer, including the outer steel casing, were relatively useless. As for the ambitious Flugkapitän Schriever, he was brighter than the others but remained, nonetheless, a mediocre engineer with pretensions to being a great aeronautical innovator. That was his machine out there, a crude saucer-shaped aircraft, and although he’d based much of his design on Wilson’s innovations – and then insinuated to Himmler that they were his own – Wilson had given him only those innovations that already were obsolete. Schriever’s saucer would fly in a crude manner eventually – when Wilson wanted it to do so – and until then, as Schriever was Himmler’s spy, Wilson would give him just enough to keep him happy and full of himself.
INCEPTION (Projekt Saucer, Book 1) Page 16
