'The police have found the culprits already. Luckily, a gendarmerie car happened to be parked just up the road and the gendarmes in it saw the whole incident. A stolen car being driven by teenagers wearing FFI armbands, mindlessly drunk having been celebrating the liberation of Paris and forgetting who the real enemy was. They saw your uniform and, being high on drink and freedom, threw two stolen hand grenades. One exploded as it fell into the Seine; the other exploded on the pavement right beside you. Truth is, you're both lucky to be still alive.'

Bradley almost wept with relief, then was filled with exultation. He bent over to kiss Gladys on the forehead, on the b.l.o.o.d.y bandage, then held her hand in his lap and smiled like a happy fool. Gladys, quickly regaining her colour, smiled broadly and winked at him.

'You two are married?' the young medic asked.

'Yeah,' Bradley said. 'Right.'

He stayed with Gladys all the way to the hospital, all the way to her bed, ensured that she was tucked in like a baby, then kissed her goodbye.

'I love you,' he said. 'It's as simple as that, Gladys. If I don't see you in Berlin, I'll catch you in London. I still have your address,'

'You take care,' she told him.

He nodded and kissed her again, then walked out of the ward, treading lightly and not looking back because his tears would embarra.s.s her.

'Hallelujah!' he whispered.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE Wilson awakened at dawn as he had planned, immediately switched on the light, then looked around his spartan room. Apart from clothing and technical books, it contained no personal items. Like the rest of the complex, his room was located underground, but it had at least been built into the breast of a hill and therefore offered a magnificent view of the forested valley. Wilson lay on for a brief while, letting himself feel slightly excited, then swung his legs off the bed, worked his bare feet into his slippers, and walked across to the desk.

A red circle had been drawn around today's date: February 16, 1945. Wilson picked up a pen and scored through the date, then dropped the pen and went to the window to look over the valley. At the other side of the valley was the old walled town of Kahla, but Wilson's modest research complex, really an underground launching site, was well hidden in this hill, within its sheltering pine trees. Here, today, he would supervise the first test flight of the Kugelblitz, which had progressed much quicker than expected.

He did not feel nervous, because he had nothing to fear. The Kugelblitz was merely an enlarged version of the anti-radar Feuerball and the latter had been tested last year, to everyone's satisfaction.

From August to December, Wilson had sent the three-foot wide, saucer-shaped, remote-controlled Feuerb.a.l.l.s hurtling skyward from this underground launching site near Kahla, to hara.s.s the Allied aircraft, cause their engines to malfunction, and fly out of range before they could be attacked. Some of the Feuerb.a.l.l.s had blown up in flight, others had malfunctioned in various ways, but each failure had been examined as minutely as possible and its causes corrected in the following prototype. Eventually, by November, Wilson had conducted nightly launches for a month without any failures. Then, confident that his design was foolproof, he had cancelled further launches, ordered the destruction, by high explosives, of the remainder of the prototypes, and begun applying the same principles and designs to his nearly completed, pilot-controlled larger model, the Kugelblitz.

But now his time was running out.

According to what Ernst Stoll had told him, news of the relentless Allied advances on all fronts had even reached the ears of the inmates of the concentration camps that were supplying Nordhausen Central Works and Kahla with forced labour. Now sabotage by the prisoners was a very real threat. Indeed, only three months earlier, in November, a large number of prisoners from the Nordhausen underground camp had been arrested, shut up in the bunkers, and forced by torture to confess to sabotage. A group of those who had confessed had even made a failed bid to escape, which only hastened their deaths. All in all, according to Stoll, about three hundred prisoners had been executed: some hanged in the roll-call ground, some in the factory corridors, and some shot in the back of the head while still in the bunkers.

A foul business, Wilson thought, and one not likely to encourage the prisoners to be merciful when the Allies came to their rescue.

Thinking of that possibility only reminded him again that his time was running out. Even more pleased, then, that the Kugelblitz was to be tested this morning, he pressed the bell to call his breakfast and went for his shower in the adjoining bathroom. He returned to find his meal on the table, placed there by his servant who, like all the rest of the workers, came from one of the camps. It was his usual frugal breakfast of cereal and fruit juice, and when he had finished it, he left his room and went down to the hangar.

Ernst Stoll, who now had the eyes of the walking dead but otherwise looked handsome in his SS uniform, was already waiting for him in his gla.s.s-walled office, looking out at the hangar.

'You've come straight from Berlin?' Wilson asked, surprised. 'You must have travelled all night!'

'No, Herr Wilson, I didn't. I arrived here yesterday evening with General Kammler, but spent the night in the Nordhausen Central Works.'

'Kammler's still at Nordhausen?'

'Yes. He's just checking things out. He'll be here on time.'

'I haven't been to the Central Works since Christmas. How are things there?'

'Busy,' Ernst said. 'There are now about forty thousand political prisoners and civilians working there. And Camp Dora and the many other subcamps in the area are expanding tremendously. Production of the rockets proceeds at full speed, the underground pa.s.sages are being enlarged, as requested by Himmler, and four new factories are being undertaken: one as a refinery, another for liquid oxygen, and two for Junkers jet engines.'

'So much ambition at the end of the road!'

'It keeps Himmler happy. Bear in mind that the original plans were drawn up in much better days, and if we don't stick to them now, we'll arouse suspicion. Besides, it's good experience for where we're going. For instance, in the town of Bleicherode, about twenty kilometres from the Kohnstein Mountain, there's an old pota.s.sium mine where we'd already begun to bore new tunnels, galleries, and accommodations at a depth of seven hundred meters, with the idea of reaching sixteen hundred metres. The plan was to tunnel through to another pota.s.sium mine nearby, in Neubleicherode, and there install more factories for work on the V-2 and smaller anti-aircraft rockets. Not far away, in a cliff face near the town of Lehestein, a tunnel is still being bored, intended to end in a large cave in which we were going to install a liquid oxygen plant and quarters for rocket crews... and so forth. Naturally we no longer have use for these places, but they keep the work force busy, allay the suspicions of Himmler's Nordhausen spies, and incidentally prove that what we're planning for Neuschwabenland can actually be accomplished.'

'And today, after testing the Kugelblitz, we'll start preparing to leave. How much time do we have left?'

'Not much,' Ernst replied, gazing out of Wilson's gla.s.s-walled office at the large, pilot-controlled flying saucer that was resting on a hydraulic steel platform in the centre of Kahla's biggest underground hangar.

The saucer looked exactly like the Schriever saucer, except for the smaller, less visible, but infinitely more powerful, adjustable jets around its rim, as well as its more seamless surface. This was made from Luftschwamm, porous metal, thus allowing the saucer to fly at least as fast as the much smaller Feuerball, and probably faster. The saucer's top body rose up to the central pilot's dome, made of unbreakable Perspex.

'The war is being lost and a lot of our leaders are breaking down,' Ernst continued. 'The Fhrer's permanently on drugs supplied by his quack, Dr Morell, and is also rumoured to be suffering from syphilis and going insane. Himmler spends most of his time in his sanatorium in Hohenlychen, a hundred and twenty kilometres north of Berlin, where he talks to his astrologer and discusses the possibility of arranging a private surrender to the Allies. I myself was visiting the rebuilt Peenemnde in October when Marshall Goring was shown a successful launching of a V-2 rocket. Goring's eyes were tired and his face was very puffy. During the rocket launching, he swallowed a lot of pills; then he pulled his pistol from his holster and kept tossing it in the air and catching it, as if in a trance, until his aide-de-camp gently took it away from him.'

Never before had Wilson heard Stoll talk with such weary contempt about his masters. Now he knew that he could finally get the SS Kapitn to do whatever he wanted.

Wilson was pleased. Disillusioned romantics always made the most fanatical converts.

'And how goes the war?' he asked.

'Most of France and Belgium are liberated. Soviet divisions have taken Warsaw. Italy is virtually lost. Most of Germany is in ruins. Our air force has no fuel. Our industry has been wiped out by Allied bombs. Our rocket attacks came too late.'