‘And how were things in Berlin?’ Himmler asked, as if he had not been there for months.
Ernst sighed and shrugged. ‘The same. There are air raids every day and night. Our courageous Führer insists on staying in the Chancellery bunker and refuses to give in.’
‘Most admirable,’ Himmler said.
‘Yes,’ Ernst replied. ‘Indeed.’ Not mentioning that Hitler’s bunker, deep beneath the Chancellery garden, had more than once been badly damaged by Allied bombs and was a most depressing sight, with air vents covered in cardboard, the rooms now barren of their former paintings, tapestries, and carpets, rubble on the floors, planks thrown across gaping holes filled with water from burst mains, and an almost daily breakdown of water and electricity. Hitler himself had appeared to be in a dreadful condition, with a limp left arm, an incapacitated right hand, a general lack of muscular coordination, obvious breathing problems, and an embarrassing tendency to absent-mindedness and outbursts of paranoid anger. Because of this, there were armed SS troops standing guard at every door, in every corridor. The bunker was rife with rumours about suspected plots, coups, and assassination attempts that, if nothing else, distracted everyone from the bombs raining down almost non-stop. In short, a nightmare.
‘Did you speak personally to the Führer?’
‘No, sir. I only saw him in the Chancellery air-raid shelter, when he was conversing with some of his officers.’
‘Did you hear my name mentioned?’ Himmler asked anxiously, twisting his snake ring around on his finger.
‘No, Reichsführer,’ Ernst lied.
‘You don’t think he's heard about...?’ But his voice trailed off into an uneasy silence, as if he couldn’t even mention the subject that was, even more than his recent rejection, gnawing away at him.
Ernst knew what his deeper anxiety was about.
The past couple of months had seen the disaster in the Ardennes, the terrible bombing of Dresden, the Soviet crossing of the Oder River, and the Allied advance to the bank of the Rhine, where they were, this very day, massing for their advance into Germany.
Not oblivious to this dreadful turning of the tide, and encouraged by his masseur, Felix Kersten – a dubious character and doctor without a medical degree – as well as by his chief of espionage, General Walter Schellenberg, Himmler had earlier in the month held a secret meeting right here with Count Folke Bernadotte of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, in an attempt to negotiate a separate peace. The attempt had failed, but now Himmler was terrified that the Führer would find out what he had been up to behind his back – even more so because his former personal adjutant and current SS chief in Italy, General Karl Wolff, had also been negotiating behind the Führer’s back, first with Allen Dulles, the OSS representative in Switzerland, then with two Allied generals in Ascona, Switzerland.
Himmler was convinced that if Hitler found out, he, Himmler, would be executed without further ado. No wonder he was a dramatically changed man, his pale face now sweaty.
‘No, Reichsführer,’ Ernst replied, keeping his face composed. ‘I don’t think he’s heard anything at all. In fact, I don’t think he hears much about anything except the war’s progress, which of course is disastrous.’
‘That's the talk of a traitor!’ Himmler snapped with a sudden, surprising burst of energy.
‘I apologize, Reichsführer,’ Ernst said quickly. ‘I meant no disrespect. I merely point out that even the Chancellery is being bombed every day and the enemy is closing in from east and west and will soon be entering Berlin.’
Visibly sagging again, Himmler looked down at the ring he was twisting neurotically on his finger, studied it for a moment, then looked up again with a hopeful gleam in his normally distant gaze. ‘We might still be able to stop them,’ he said, ‘with our new, secret weapons.’
‘I’m afraid most of the rocket launching sites have been captured,’ Ernst informed him. ‘So even if we produced more advanced rockets, we could not – ’
But Himmler waved his hand impatiently to cut him short.
‘I don’t mean the rockets,’ he said. ‘I know all about the rockets. I’m thinking, instead, of Flugkapitän Schriever’s flying saucer, which he insisted he would be testing soon. Have you been to see him in Prague?’
‘Yes, Reichsführer. I was there a week ago. Schriever is still confident that he can have the saucer flying before the Soviets get that far. I was certainly impressed with what I saw there, and I think he can do it.’
‘Good,’ Himmler said.
Nonsense, Ernst thought. He had indeed visited Schriever in his research complex outside Prague. Although his saucer might fly, it would be of little help. It was an obsolete model, using Wilson’s old gas-turbine rotors, not much more advanced than a helicopter, and without decent weapons. In truth, it was a joke, designed to keep Schriever engaged and Himmler’s mind off Wilson. Even if Schriever did get it flying before the Soviets got to him, it would hardly do much damage to the Soviet or Allied advance. In fact, it would probably be shot out of the sky as soon as it took off.
‘I knew I was right in depending upon Schriever,’ Himmler said. ‘He’s a German, after all. I only wish I’d had the sense to do it a lot sooner, rather than waste all that time on Wilson. How is the American?’
Ernst had been waiting for the question. Though prepared for it, he could not stop a tremor of fear from passing through him. He had rehearsed this many times, with Wilson, by himself, and though he knew it would probably work, the thought of failure was frightening. He was going to lie to his Reichsführer – a major lie, and a dangerous one – and when he recalled those high-ranking officers hanging from piano-wire nooses strung from meat hooks in that small room in Plotzensee Prison, he didn’t relish what would happen to him if he made a mistake.
‘I’m afraid you were right about Wilson,’ he said. ‘We put him to work in Nordhausen, helping the rocket engineers, but he was clearly too old and senile to be of much use to them. As for his so-called flying saucer, it was a poor imitation of Schriever’s. When test-flown, it hardly got off the ground before blowing up.’
It had indeed been blown up, but deliberately, by Wilson, after having performed superbly during its test flight. Wilson had done it with no flicker of emotion. He didn’t want to risk flying it until the war had ended (he didn’t want it to be observed) and, also, the components for many models had already been shipped to Antarctica. He himself would take the drawings for this final, successful prototype there, when they sailed out from Kiel.
Wilson, then, was still very much alive... but well hidden in Kahla.
‘Naturally that failure,’ Ernst continued, ‘combined with Wilson’s increasingly senile behaviour in the Nordhausen Central Works, encouraged us to do what you had suggested and we shot him. He was executed in one of the bunkers and his body then burned as part of the mass cremations at Buchenwald. Then all the papers regarding his Projekt Saucer were set to the torch.’
‘You did the correct thing,’ Himmler said. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish. We should have known that an American would not have served us well in the end. And now all of our resources can be directed toward the Schriever saucer, which must be successful.’
‘It will be, Reichsführer.’
Himmler nodded, scratched his nose beneath the pince-nez, then glanced down at his astrological chart and spoke to the desk. ‘Wernher von Braun and his five thousand technicians are now safely housed near Nordhausen?’
‘Yes, sir. The new research station has almost been completed in the Bleicherode mine. Von Braun and his technicians have been accommodated there and in other villages in the general vicinity of Nordhausen.’
‘They discovered nothing about Wilson and his Projekt Saucer?’
‘No, Reichsführer. After executing Wilson, we destroyed all evidence of his project. That was a few days before von Braun and his team arrived.’
‘Excellent,’ Himmler said. ‘The Allies and the Soviets will both want our scient
ists, so failing all else, we can use them as bartering points if it comes to surrender. Make sure they are kept under guard and be ready to move them at short notice.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Ernst said.
Himmler nodded thoughtfully, still gazing down at the astrological chart, which had, Ernst knew, been given to him by his ‘masseur,’ Felix Kersten.
How the mighty have fallen, Ernst thought. This pit has no bottom.
‘Nevertheless,’ Himmler said distractedly, ‘I have good reason to believe the tide will turn again and leave us victorious.’ He looked up at Ernst, smiled in a dreamy manner, and tapped the astrological chart with his knuckles. ‘My charts,’ he said. ‘I study them often. The charts tell me that we’ll be saved at the last minute with some secret weapon. Perhaps our new jets or the atom bomb project... But most likely Flugkapitän Schriever’s flying saucer... I place my faith in my stars.’
‘Yes, Reichsführer,’ Ernst said, too embarrassed to say anything else, but standing up and getting ready to take his leave. ‘I’m sure that’s the case.’
‘You are returning to Nordhausen now?’
Ernst nodded.
‘Good. When do you next plan to visit Schriever?’
‘When he calls me for the test-flight of his saucer, which should be within the month.’
‘According to my astrological charts, that should be enough.’
‘I hope so, Reichsführer.’
Himmler stood up, adjusted his jacket, then straightened his spine and gave the Nazi salute. He waited until Ernst had returned it, then said, ‘Thank you, Captain Stoll. These are trying times, but you’ve behaved commendably so far. I trust you won’t let me down in the future.’
‘No, Reichf
ü hrer, I won’t.’
‘Goodbye, Captain. Heil Hitler!’
‘Heil Hitler!’
The words had a hollow ring in the large, gloomy study, reminding Ernst of the life he had wasted for the dreams of such madmen. He walked out with relief, as if escaping from prison, and drove back to Berlin through the evening’s descending darkness, reaching Reinickendorf Airport as the bombs started falling.
He saw the fires all over Berlin as he climbed out of his car, heard the explosions growing louder as they came closer to the airport, and strapped himself into the seat in the plane as the darkness just beyond the airport became a hell of explosions. The plane took off through a brilliant web of languidly looping tracers, flew through exploding flak, and managed to make its escape without being damaged.
Ernst settled into his seat, feeling nothing, not even fear. He thought of how everywhere he went these days there was only destruction. Then the young navigator emerged from the pilot’s cabin, stopped in front of him, and handed him a written message.
Reading it, Ernst learned that earlier that morning Britain’s General Montgomery had launched his assault across the Rhine; that two airborne divisions, one British, the other American, had dropped on the German side of the river to support the infantrymen; and that 240 kilometres upriver, General Patton’s US 3rd Army had done exactly the same. Fully aware that the news signified the beginning of the end of the Thousand Year Reich, Ernst simply crumpled up the message and let it fall to the floor.
All he felt was relief.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Bradley was so tired, he thought he was dead. He was sitting behind another makeshift desk surrounded by rubble and four broken walls, with no roof, in the remains of what had once been an elegant house in what was now left of the city of Cologne, which had been bombshattered and torn by the dreadful fighting of the past few days.
The ruined building in which Bradley was sitting was being guarded by filthy, weary, armed soldiers from the 104th Infantry Divisions of General Omar Bradley’s US 1st Army, with whom Bradley had made the bitterly won advance from Aachen, on the Siegfried Line. When he glanced at them, which he could do with ease, because few of the building’s walls still stood completely, he was reminded of just how hard they had fought and how far they’d come.
Sitting at his makeshift desk , the ruined house’s kitchen table, and waiting to begin what he thought would be his most important interrogations on behalf of Project Paperclip, he could hear the continuing sounds of battle from beyond the battered city, as the Germans were pushed back to the Rhine. Nevertheless, irrespective of the constant noise, he still managed to fall in and out of a delirious half sleep, in which he thought of nothing but what he had experienced over the past couple of months.
‘The pilot’s on his way,’ his assistant, Sergeant Lew Ackerman of the US 3rd Armoured Division, whispered into his ear. ‘He’ll be here any second.’
‘Thanks,’ Bradley said. He had meant to open his eyes and smile, but instead drifted into another half sleep and recalled the Hürtgen forest, snow and mud erupting around him, the infantrymen moving forward through that hell of exploding shells, swirling smoke, chattering machine guns, and screaming wounded, their blood splashing on the muddied white of the snow, their bodies crumpling into it. Bradley had survived it (he had hugged the ground a lot), but then found himself farther south, advancing toward the heavily fortified village of Schmidt and the Roer reservoirs. The resistance was fierce and many men died in the mud, but the village was taken, followed by the west bank of the Roer. Then the Germans flooded the river by blowing up the dams and Bradley found himself helping to form a bridgehead in the early hours of the morning. The men of the US 1st and 9th forced a difficult crossing and assembled a temporary bridge for the others to follow. The moon was bright and many of them died, but Bradley survived again, soaking wet but not with blood, and helped drag some of his dead friends from the river before moving on.
It wasn’t excitement that stuck in his mind, just constant noise and permanent exhaustion, and Bradley remembered that sitting at his table in this ruined house in the ruined heart of the city of Cologne, now one great heap of rubble.
He remembered being deaf and cold, being exhausted and cold, and then recalled, more specifically, the march eastward to Duren, the city’s complete destruction, another river crossing (someone said it was the Erft) and finally, in a hell of noise and smoke, the outskirts of this city. Allied aircraft bombed it constantly, the big guns levelled what was left, then the US 1st Army moved in, taking the town street by street.
Bradley was right there, with the 104th Infantry divisions, clambering over the rubble, choking in dust and smoke, firing his M-1 rifle at those murky figures in the dust-wreathed ruins, throwing his hand grenades into rubble-filled basements, running forward and ducking and running forward again, and dragging dead, bloody bodies out of his way to start all over again.
He had played his small part in the capture of Cologne and couldn’t help feeling proud of himself. He was too old for this, after all, and was not obliged to do it. The function of the OSS was intelligence gathering – to follow the advancing armies and set up headquarters in their wake – but Bradley had wanted this last adventure, a final testing of his courage, and he had to confess that doing it had made him feel young again. It was confirmation of that awful truth – that men throve on risk-taking – and it helped him to understand what drove Wilson on his weird personal journey: the need to risk everything he had to create his own world.
What would be most frightening about Wilson, Bradley suspected, would be the world he was hoping to create: clearly one in which normal human feelings had little weight.
It helped to think about Wilson. It made Bradley feel more alert. He rubbed his eyes and yawned and stretched himself on the wooden chair. He was pleased to note that a jeep had just pulled up outside and his ALSOS assistant, Major Arnold Grieves, was leading a US Air Force pilot through the remains of the front doorway, past the armed guards, along the rubble-strewn passageways to his open-air office. A cold wind was whipping up the dust and forcing Bradley to shiver.
‘Hallelujah!’ he whispered as Sergeant Ackerman stepped over a broken wall, holding a tray containing what looked like four
mugs of steaming coffee.
‘I brought us all coffees,’ he confirmed, placing the tray on the table. ‘It’ll help keep you warm.’
‘You’re a treasure,’ Bradley said. ‘I will never forget this simple display of kindness. Look me up after the war and I’ll give you a kiss.'
‘No, thanks,’ Ackerman said, taking the chair beside Bradley and raising his steaming mug to his lips as Major Grieves, small and portly and reportedly brilliant, stopped in front of the table with the pilot beside him. The pilot was in his flying uniform, was roughly handsome and unshaven, and was actually puffing on a cigar, just like in Hollywood films.
‘Hi, Mike,’ Grieves said informally. ‘This is Lieutenant Edward Schlesinger of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron. Eddie, this is Colonel Mike Bradley of the OSS and his administrative assistant, Sergeant Lew Ackerman of the US 3rd Armored Division.’
‘Hi,’ Schlesinger said, exhaling a cloud of smoke and pulling up a chair without being asked. ‘Howya doin’?’
‘Fine,’ Bradley said, as Arnold pulled up the last chair. An enemy shell came screeching in toward them and fell in the ruins of a house in the adjacent, debris-strewn street. The explosion threw up more debris and a ballooning cloud of smoke, but neither Bradley nor anyone else at the table took any notice. Instead, Bradley glanced down at his notes and said, ‘You’re a pilot with the – ’
INCEPTION (Projekt Saucer, Book 1) Page 41
