‘How did Wilson respond to that?’
‘He blandly denied our charges. He also denied the existence of his secret hangar, or barn, so we closed down his plant in Illinois, confiscated everything we could find – which naturally didn’t include anything we hadn’t already known about - and told Wilson that if he wanted to continue working on research projects, he’d have to do it under our supervision, in our own research establishments. Wilson said he would think about it... A few weeks later, we found that empty superstructure in a hangar a few miles from his plant in Illinois. We never found anything else... and then, before we could interrogate Wilson about it, he fled Illinois and went underground. I never saw him again.’
He lit a cigarette, blew another cloud of smoke, then raised the glass to his twisted lips and drank it. Bradley stood up.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘And look after yourself, Dwight.’
‘There’s nothing left to look after,’ his friend replied. ‘It’s just a matter of time now. A real glamorous business, being a pilot, right? We don’t believe this can happen.’
‘Right,’ Bradley said.
He placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder, squeezed it affectionately, then turned away and walked from that dark place without glancing back.
The sunshine was wonderful.
In the train back to Connecticut, he opened the latest letter from Gladys Kinder, this one dated October 5, 1938.
Dear Mike, This morning the Germans marched into Czechoslovakia to ecstatic cheers, the pealing of bells, and the pronouncement by Adolf Hitler that this was the latest step in his glorious march into the great German future. God help Europe, I say.
Did you miss my letters, Mike? I hope so. Apart from my telegrammed communiques to the Roswell Daily Record, my letters to you, to your office high above Manhattan, are my only real contact with America. The reason for writing is important – it’s my hold on where I came from – but I have to confess that I also write them out of girlish compulsion.
You were so charming, Mike.
Ah, ha! you’re thinking. She’s making fun of me again! Well, maybe so... But I hope you missed my letter, missed the letters, missed me. Not that you’d admit it if you did, you lamentably decent married man, who found me too bold by far. I think that’s what I loved in you.
I also love the odd formality of your letters – written secretly, doubtless – God, yes, I enjoy that thought! Bradley scribbling in secret, his cheeks flushed, above the towers of Manhattan.
Your letters, which are filled with a lawyer’s reticence, somehow manage to make me feel like a scarlet woman. That’s quite an achievement, bud. You make me feel that I’m wallowing in iniquity without its actual pleasures – and that’s another achievement.
Enough! Let’s be serious...
I haven’t written for the past eighteen months because I’ve been travelling. Spain, of course, with the International Brigade, meeting Orwell and Hemingway and all the other, less celebrated intellectuals who idealistically swopped their pens for rifles and often died for the privilege. I didn’t carry a rifle – my pen and notebook were too heavy
– but I was in the market of Guernica, buying some groceries, when the German air force bombed it with high explosives, set it alight with incendiary bombs, then strafed the men, women, and children with machine-gun fire. What I saw there is best not described, but it left its mark on me. It was all I could take.
I returned to London in time to describe, for the loyal readers of the Roswell Daily Record, how King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were crowned, with magnificent pomp and splendour, in Westminster Abbey. I loved it all, I do confess – it was like a Hollywood musical: the golden coach drawn by eight grays, with four postilions and six footmen, plus eight grooms and four yeomen of the Guard walking beside it. What with that and the royal outfits of deep red and snowwhite ermine, not to mention the thousands thronging the Mall and Trafalgar Square, I doubt that Cecil B. De Mille could have done it better – and certainly, after Spain and some weeks in Nazi Germany, it all seemed so civilized.
I was reminded of you when, a week before the Coronation, the great German airship, the Hindenburg, exploded in New Jersey, after crossing the Atlantic from Frankfurt. Then jean Harlow died and was followed by George Gershwin and I started to think of passing time and my age – and of the fact that the last time I saw you, which was only the second time, was almost five years ago. I was going to write to you, but I was packed off to Germany by my good friends in Roswell.
The first thing I reported from Germany was the reorganization of the concentration camps, most notably the new establishment opened at Buchenwald, in Thuringia, to house more enemies of the state, and the changes of administration in the camps at Dachau, Sachenshausen, and Lichtenburg, all of which are democratic enough to take women prisoners as well as other automatic enemies of the glorious Third Reich, including Jews and Communists, though gypsies, the mentally ill, and other so-called undesirables are certainly in line for consideration.
God help Europe, indeed!
Here in London, they’re already building air-raid shelters and providing local authorities with millions of sandbags. What can this mean, we ask? ‘Peace for our time,’ says Neville Chamberlain. Pull the other one, Neville...
And so I think of you. I think of you when I think of America, which I did when Harlow and Gershwin died and my age started telling. And I thought of you and my age when the Hindenburg exploded and I was reminded of airships and aeronautics in general and my former lover, John Wilson, in particular, because through him I met you.
Can you believe that we first met nearly eight years ago? Can you believe, also, that we’ve actually only met twice and that the last time was nearly five years ago? We met through John Wilson, are haunted by him, and are helplessly tied to one another by his ghost.
Three up for John Wilson.
You keep writing and asking me questions about Wilson and it makes me feel worthless. I’ve been married and divorced and I’ve known lots of men, but you, Mike Bradley, solid citizen and moral man, are only interested in what I knew about Wilson. I feel as if I’m invisible.
Okay, down to business...
I asked a pragmatic friend in the British Defence Department to check their report on the Tunguska explosion in Siberia and tell me what their assessment of it was. Frankly, given normal British scepticism, their assessment was almost weird in its conviction that something odd had occurred and that it had not been caused by a meteor or other extraterrestrial source. In fact, according to British intelligence: (I) Nothing crashed into the Tunguska forest; (2) The angle of the trees bent by the blast proved that the explosion had occurred above them, not within them; (3) Pieces of an unknown metallic compound were found at the scene of the devastation; and (4) Just before the explosion, a lot of those living in the area reported seeing what appeared to be a small, fiery ball sweeping across the sky above the forest. Then it went down and – whammo!
A small fiery ball with a dark core, possibly metallic...
The public stance in Britain was that the explosion had been caused by a meteorite – but the private stance, at least that of the Department of Defence and British intelligence, was that it had been caused by some kind of man-made object that did not – repeat: did not
– come from Russia, but from outside its borders. Also, the reported sightings seemed to suggest that the object, whatever it was, had not come down from the stratosphere, but had been completing a descending trajectory at the end of a flight from west to east. In other words, it could have come from Europe, the Atlantic Ocean, North America, Canada, Alaska, or even farther... Unless it originally left Russia, circled the globe and returned to its source, which seems too ridiculous. The Brits, then, decided that ‘if’ a terrestrial object had been involved – and they certainly weren’t too sure of that – then it probably emanated from Europe, possibly Germany.
So what do you think, bub?
I know what you think. Y
ou think it came from Wilson, from Iowa or Illinois, and that it flew from North America, across the Atlantic Ocean, across Europe, then on to Russia ... And having known Wilson, I believe you might be right.
Is Wilson still in Germany? Yes, I think so – but I still can’t confirm it. Asking questions there, I quickly found out, can be pretty dangerous. Nevertheless, I’m going back there, for the humble Roswell Daily Record, and if I find out anything at all, I’ll certainly let you know.
I really enjoy writing these letters. It’s like having a drink with you. I never loved John Wilson – he was too cold and remote for that – and when I met you, though you’ve never laid a hand on me, I understood why. I can write about Wilson now because he’s everything you’re not: a man whose lack of feeling reminds me of all the feelings you hide.
You wanted me so much, Bradley – you couldn’t hide it and I couldn’t resist it. But what I loved you for (yes, I did and still do) was the knowledge that no matter how much you wanted me, you also loved your wife and kids too much to let me be a threat to them.
Which just made me love you more.
I can say that now, can’t I, Mr Bradley? Because being at the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, I’m no longer a threat to you.
That’s why I’m bold with you.
I’ll write again when I get back from Germany. Adios, mi amigo.
Yours from too great a distance,
Gladys
Hiding his emotions, as Gladys had known that he would, Bradley folded the letter neatly, placed it back in his billfold, and gratefully climbed off the train when it arrived in Bridgeport. Given the guilt he was feeling over what he had not done, though had certainly contemplated, he was glad that Joan hadn’t known when he was coming back and so wasn’t at the station to meet him. Instead, he caught a bus, which he had not done for years, and simply by doing that for a change, felt that he had stepped back in time and was returning from high school.
That journey home, through the greenery of Connecticut, certainly made him feel young again, if only for a short time. And feeling young, he thought of Gladys, who also made him feel young, and recalled all the letters she had sent him over the years, ever since leaving the United States to work in England and Europe. The letters were like the woman, at once laconic and suggestive, and as they had only met twice and hadn’t seen one another for almost five years, Bradley couldn’t quite work out just how sincere they were, let alone what his reaction to them was or should be.
He had certainly found her very attractive and, in truth, still did, but he found the addiction more disturbing because he couldn’t fully believe in it. He thought of her too much, even had erotic dreams about her, and could only explain this lasting attraction as part and parcel of his growing obsession with the mysterious John Wilson.
If not for Wilson, whom ironically he had never laid eyes upon, he would not have met Gladys Kinder in the first place.
Two obsessions in one.
Stepping down from the bus as the sun sank beyond the trees, he walked up the garden path of his ranch-style house, thinking guiltily of Gladys Kinder, whom he had loved only in dreams, and of her former lover, now his quarry, John Wilson, whose genius, being ruthless and amoral, was increasingly frightening.
God knows what Wilson was creating in Hitler’s Third Reich.
Maybe only God knew.
The first thing Bradley saw when he entered the house was the partially eaten birthday cake on the table. He briefly froze where he stood, on the threshold of the living room, burning up with guilt when he saw Joan, standing by the table in the brightly lit room, turning to face him, her lovely smile absent.
‘Welcome home,’ she said quietly, venomously. ‘You missed the party, unfortunately.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Bradley said. ‘Damn it, I forgot. I got involved with – ’
‘A man called Wilson. Yes, Mike, I guessed. You promised you wouldn't let him become an obsession. Dammit, you promised!’
‘I’m sorry. Where’s Miriam?’
‘Here, Dad.’ He glanced to the left and saw her sitting on the couch beside her fiancée, Ralph Beaker. ‘Don’t worry about being so late. I’m not bothered. Honest.’
‘I’m bothered,’ her mother retorted, raising her lips from a glass of sherry and looking pretty with her angrily flushed cheeks. ‘He never remembers anything anymore. He hardly remembers that he lives here.’
‘He’s not that bad,’ Miriam said with an encouraging smile that made Bradley feel worse. ‘And he’s still my one and only dad – the best in the house.’
She was twenty-two today, taller than Bradley, slim and shapely and darkly attractive like her mother, and he could scarcely believe she was that age and engaged to be married. No more than he could believe that his son, Mark, was now twenty-three, married, with a pleasant, pregnant wife, and living in New Jersey, from where he commuted to Manhattan to help in the law office now that Bradley was otherwise engaged with his informal intelligence gathering.
‘Dammit,’ he said, shocked that time was passing so quickly and therefore feeling even more guilty, ‘I really am sorry, Miriam. It’s just this job. I just – ’
‘Come and give me a kiss, Dad, and then have some cake. It’s only my birthday, for God’s sake!’
‘Now if you forget to turn up on our wedding day,’ Ralph said with a laconic grin, ‘she just might – ’
‘Believe me, I won’t forget.’ Grinning brighter than he felt and ignoring Joan’s angry glance, Bradley walked across the room, shook Ralph’s hand, then leaned down to kiss his daughter on the cheek. ‘Can I join you all in a drink at least?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ Miriam said. ‘Why not?’
After that, the evening progressed smoothly enough, with liquor easing the tension for everyone except Joan. Though she tried hard to be pleasant, she let Bradley know with every glance that his increasing neglect of his family, caused by his obsession with John Wilson, would not be quickly forgiven. Bradley anaesthetized himself with liquor, getting drunk without showing it, and when he spoke to his daughter’s fianc
é e later that evening, he knew that at least the younger folk were unconcerned.
Not that it helped him much.
In bed, Joan lay as stiff as a plank and stared at the ceiling. When he reached out to her, she rolled away from him, onto her side, and whispered, ‘No! Not tonight! Don’t think that being drunk will make it better. I’m not that easily swayed.’
‘Dammit, Joan, I just forgot!’
‘You forget too much too often these days. Our marriage nearly broke up before when you became obsessed with your legal work; now that you’re becoming obsessed with intelligence gathering, we’re going through the same thing. You’re just a boy at heart, Mike, easily bored, wanting adventure; and when that particular itch gets a hold of you, God help us all. You even forgot your daughter’s goddamned birthday! Go to hell, Mike. Just let me sleep.’
He felt cut to the quick, flayed by the brutal truth, yet as he lay there beside her, his eyes closed, trying to sleep, his guilt gave way to fantasy, to visions based on speculations, some of which involved Gladys Kinder, whose face he knew so well, and others involving a man called Wilson, whose face was a blank wall.
His twin obsessions formed the roots of a tree whose branches spread out through his sleep, drooping over a dark abyss.
A ball of fire with a spherical, silvery core arched through that vast, disturbing darkness and drew him into oblivion.
He slept the sleep of the haunted.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN ‘It will work,’ Wilson said emphatically, buttoning up his greatcoat and glancing at the relatively small, disc-shaped metal object that was resting on the raised platform in the work bay of the second most secret area of Kummersdorf. ‘We still have a lot of work to complete, but I believe it will work.’
The dark, lean-faced Rudolph Schriever, wearing oil-smeared coveralls, smiled with scarcely concealed excitement. The Feuerball was about three feet in d
iameter, had the general shape of two plates placed one upon the other, and had no visible air intakes or other obstructing protuberances, such as wings and rudders. Thus it had a smooth, seamless appearance. It was, in fact, the first flying wing that Wilson had attempted to construct since his disaster over Tunguska, and he was using it as a prototype for the larger, piloted craft being constructed laboriously in the main hangar.
‘What we have here, gentlemen,’ he continued as Habermohl and Miethe began draping a protective canvas sheet over the saucershaped, metallic object, ‘is a circular flying wing that will offer the least possible air resistance, suck in the dead air of the boundary layer, and then use that same air, expelling it at great force, to increase its momentum even more. However,’ he added deliberately, looking directly at the excited Schriever, ‘even with this design, the boundary layer, though dramatically reduced, will still be present – and until we find a means of defeating it, the capabilities of our Feuerball and larger saucer will be severely limited. This, gentlemen, is the problem we still face. Good night to you all.’
He turned away and walked out as the canvas sheet fell over the Feuerball and Schriever’s expression turned to one of frustration. Leaving the workshop and stepping into the freezing November winds that howled across the nearby firing range into the lamplit parking lot, Wilson glanced at the main hangar, its walls being swept by searchlights, then smiled to think of Schriever’s frustration. Given his own car at last, he climbed into it, drove out through gates guarded by SS troops, and headed back to Berlin.
He was amused by Schriever’s frustration. Knowing that the ambitious young Flugkapitän was nominally in charge of Projekt Saucer and reporting directly to Himmler, usually with exaggerated declarations of his own contributions to the work in progress, Wilson had continued to massage his ego by helping him to believe in his own importance. But occasionally, as he had just done, he could not resist slapping him down with another, seemingly insurmountable problem.
INCEPTION (Projekt Saucer, Book 1) Page 20
