Desperate to avoid the daily whippings, public hangings, and shots to the back of the head in the bunkers of Nordhausen, all designed to keep the V-1 and V-2 a.s.sembly lines rolling, he spent most of his time in the underground factory at Kahla, pretending to supervise Wilson, whom he knew had seen through his pretence and was quietly amused by it.

'You always seem so tense,' he said to Ernst. 'You must learn to relax.'

Ernst was fascinated by Wilson, fearing and admiring his old man's wisdom, but mostly drawn to his air of icy invincibility and fascinated by his plans and theories, which admitted to no human doubts. He was completing his Feuerball, the remote-controlled anti-radar device that looked like a flying saucer but was only three feet wide and was, so he said, a flawless prototype for the larger, pilot-controlled saucer still on the drawing board.

'If the Feuerball flies,' Wilson said, 'and responds to its commands, then the Kugelblitz will also fly when we have the time to complete it. In the meantime, every test that needs to be done can be done with the Feuerball. Very soon now I'll try it against the Allied planes and see how it performs. I don't doubt that it will work admirably.'

Humiliated by Brigette, deprived of Ingrid and his children, rarely able to forget that he had once been an engineer and now was merely observing the great achievements of Wernher von Braun and Wilson, Ernst leaned toward the latter, was ensnared in his web, and began to see his only hope for redemption in the dream of Antarctica.

'Not with Himmler,' Wilson confided. 'We can't trust him anymore. Personally, I never did for a second, but now I know I was right. Kammler and Nebe are talking. They see Himmler a lot. They say he hasn't been the same since the first great defeat in Russia, and like Hitler, he's losing control and falling back upon fantasy. Astrologers and occultists, quack doctors and mesmerists Himmler and Hitler, soulmates, will eventually go down the same way.'

'I could have you shot for saying that.'

'But you won't,' Wilson said, 'because you too have witnessed Himmler's changing moods and know what he's like.'

Which was true enough, after all. Ernst thought Himmler was going mad. The more the Allies advanced, the more distracted and crazy Himmler became, albeit in his quiet way. The Reichsfhrer, the bureaucrat, the chicken farmer, was quietly falling to pieces. He had forgotten Neuschwabenland, had lost confidence in Wilson, and now pinned all his hopes on Rudolph Schriever's abortion of a flying saucer, on other obscure 'secret' weapons, and on his own demented plans for making a 'private' peace with the advancing Allies.

He was not the awesomely remote Reichsfhrer of the past, but a pitiful creature.

Not a man to trust.

'Yet I steal from him,' Wilson said. 'I steal the gold from his mind of mud. I don't believe in his mysticism, in his blond young G.o.ds of war, in his anthroposophy and theosophy and Rosicrucianism, in his bizarre dreams of Atlantis and Lemuria and the undefiled Aryan. These are the dreams of madmen, the visions of the demented; yet they do hold a kernel of truth: the transformation of man. I too believe in this, though not in the same sad way. I believe in man's evolutionary drive toward the Superman. And I believe in biological mutation and mental enhancement.'

They sometimes walked out of the tunnels, into the day's clear light, and gazed over the forested hills of Thuringia to the summer's horizon. There were no whippings there. No hangings. No beatings. But somewhere out there, beyond the horizon, the world was at war.

'Forget Himmler,' Wilson told Ernst. 'He's just another n.a.z.i lunatic. He's raised muddled philosophy and primitive dreaming from the slime to the tortured blood and bone of an insane ideology. Blood and bone are acceptable we're here, after all, only to feed evolution but his philosophy of ice and fire, his pitiful dependence upon Hrbiger, is enough to show us that he doesn't belong to the real world. We will go to Antarctica, but not to further an idiotic SS elite. We will go to further what you once had and lost: the belief in science as an absolute, the one hope for mankind. You can recapture that dream, Ernst, but only through me. Forget Himmler. Betray him yes, you must! and regain your faith where it matters: in a colony devoted to science and unimpeded by ephemeral, earthly concerns. It has already begun, Ernst. The factories and accommodations under the ice have been completed and already a few hundred people have been shipped there, to prepare for our coming. Cast off your past, come with me, and get back what you lost. All the rest is lost anyway.'

Which Ernst knew was the truth, because the truth was undeniable: the Allied advance through France, the Soviets forming a pincer movement, Berlin crumbling in flame and smoke, his wife and family endangered; even his mistress, his wh.o.r.e, defeating him and laughing at his retreat. Yes, everything now defeating him and mocking his youthful dreams. And so Wilson, who had once seemed so distant, now seemed very close to him.

'We need an escape route,' Wilson said, back in his workshop, over the Feuerball, his steady gray gaze focused on the three-foot disc gleaming beneath him. 'We need to get from here to Kiel in the Baltic, and from there to our friends in Argentina, then from there to Antarctica. Nebe can help us in this. He's a vulture, but reliable. But to do it, he has to disappear, and that makes things difficult. You must do this for us, Ernst. You must help him disappear. When he disappears, when no one is looking for him, he can lead us to freedom. Do you understand, Ernst?'

'Yes,' Ernst said. 'I understand.'

'Arrange that and you can travel with me to Antarctica and become an even better engineer no, a scientist! than you'd ever imagined you could be. Do that and... you're free!'

Ernst left Wilson in Kahla and returned to Nordhausen where, in the great tunnels, while the conveyor belts rolled, the SS guards cracked their whips, spines snapped at the end of ropes, gunshots ricocheted in the bunkers, and the German genius for organization was completely perverted. He had chosen this life at some point he had decided and so he swallowed his remaining guilt, cast shame aside for all time, and travelled back to Berlin by train and car for another meeting with Kammler.

He returned to a nightmare.

'There's been an attempt on the Fhrer's life,' Kammler told him in his office in SS headquarters. 'Lieutenant Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, the chief of staff to the commander of the General Army Office in Berlin, planted a bomb in a briefcase during a meeting in Fhrer Headquarters in Wolfsschanze. Miraculously, the Fhrer escaped with minor burns, but now all h.e.l.l has broken loose. A planned military revolt in the city by Stauffenberg's co-conspirators has already been put down, Stauffenberg, generals Beck and Olbricht, and their two adjutants have been executed by firing squad in the courtyard of the Bendlerstra.s.se, other conspirators have committed suicide, and Himmler has already set up the machinery for an investigation of the uprising and is drawing up a death list containing hundreds of names.'

'They were all involved in the attempted coup?'

'Highly unlikely,' Kammler replied. 'But in situations such as this, guilt or innocence is often a matter of luck. Hundreds of men are going to die, Captain Stoll, and General Nebe may be one of them.'

'Nebe?'

'Yes, He has no alibi. At the time of the a.s.sa.s.sination attempt, you were in Nordhausen and I was in the Pas de Calais, supervising the rocket launchings but Nebe was right here in Berlin, and since Himmler has never trusted him, he's gone down on the death list.'

'Does he know this yet?'

'No. I caught a glimpse of the list in Himmler's office only an hour ago. He was still filling in names.'

'What do we do now?' Ernst asked, feeling nauseous with fear.

'It's the perfect excuse for Nebe to disappear,' Kammler said with a self-satisfied air. 'In order to plan our escape route from Kahla to Kiel and collect troops trustworthy enough, and willing, to be our armed escorts during the journey, Nebe was always going to have to go underground. Our problem before was that his disappearance would have raised too large a question mark. However, now, if he disappears, it'll be a.s.sumed that he simply fled in fear of his life, as so many will. So now he'll disappear. He'll go underground in Thuringia. We'll protect him there until all this fuss has died down if necessary, I can confirm that he was executed by my men and then, when the dust has settled, he can surface with new papers and quietly start organizing what we need for our escape before the Soviets or Allies reach us.'

'Excellent,' Ernst murmured, his thoughts clogged with dread. 'But who will... ?'

'I personally will arrange it,' Kammler said. 'I have the required freedom of movement. Meanwhile, you'll report directly to Himmler and become his right hand, thus ensuring that you remain above suspicion.'

Still haunted by the memory of the infamous Night of the Long Knives, and aware that a similar nightmare was about to be put into motion, Ernst, feeling sick to his stomach, said, 'I really would rather not '

But Kammler stepped up to him and stared icily at him. 'You will do it, Captain Stoll. You will do whatever he asks of you. You will be his right hand, his loyal subject, no matter what is asked of you. Do you understand, Captain?'

'Yes, sir,' Ernst said.