When the noise of the aircraft had pa.s.sed, Pialowicz said, 'To

return to Kryzystina... According to what she tells me in 1940, this

German who becomes her lover, this SS Captain Ernst Stoll, is a

former rocket engineer, deeply embittered at being denied membership

of the VfR, or German Amateur Rocket Society and, later, General

Dornberger's rocket program, which is placed under the command of

Wernher von Braun, one of Stoll's old school chums, while Stoll is

turned into a mere technical administrator. Disgusted, Stoll lets himself

be persuaded to join SS intelligence, which at least gives him the

opportunity to supervise certain secret weapons research programs at

k.u.mmersdorf, south of Berlin and it is there that he becomes

involved with the American, Wilson.'

'He actually worked with Wilson?'

'Yes. Wilson does not actually work with von Braun's rocket

teams, but with a much smaller group at the other side of an old firing

range at k.u.mmersdorf West. However, according to what Stoll tells

Kryzystina, while Wilson is to work on secret weapons other than

remote-controlled rockets, many of his remarkable innovations are

pa.s.sed on to the rocket team, which certainly hastens the development

of the rockets.'

Now Bradley was feeling really excited. At last Wilson's

continuing existence had been confirmed. At last he'd been given

shape, even if he still was faceless.

'Did Kryzystina find out what Wilson's project actually was?' 'Yes. One night when Stoll is drunk and particularly bitter, he lets

slip that the program is called Projekt Saucer and involves the

construction of a saucer-shaped, vertical-rising aircraft. How far it has

progressed, he doesn't say, but he does also let slip that the project is

highly secret, that it is Heinrich Himmler's personal pa.s.sion, and that

even Hitler is unaware of its existence.'

'What was this Wilson like?' Bradley asked, desperate to put a

human face on his faceless quarry.

'Apparently a lot older than he looks,' Pialowicz replied. 'About

sixty-five years old.'