Gladys handed him the refilled gla.s.s, kissed his forehead, then took the chair facing him. Her hair was turning more gray every day, but her smile was still radiant. He loved her and loved being married to her; he'd gained that much, at least.

'Feeling okay?' she asked him.

'Sure.'

'When are we going to New York to see your kids? I sure like those visits.'

Bradley shrugged, then winced. Even shrugging could hurt like h.e.l.l. 'Christmas,' he said, remembering the submarine in the harbour of Kiel, the icily sardonic SS captain, the fuse spluttering toward the truck piled with corpses, then the stupendous explosion... 'We'll go see them at Christmas. They're looking forward to seeing you again. We'll have a real family holiday.' He'd awakened hours later, pulled back to life by pain, and found himself half buried under rubble with a lot of bones broken. He'd been rescued, of course the Allies and Soviets had met in Kiel but he'd spent the next six months in a US Army hospital in Frankfurt, then been shipped home, to New York, for a long and painful convalescence.

All that, and he still hadn't seen Wilson, didn't know what he looked like. It was hard to take.

'What are all those notes?' Gladys asked him, indicating the pile of papers on his desk.

Bradley had a sip of whiskey. 'I'm just finishing off my research on the members of Projekt Saucer... on what happened to them.'

'Anything interesting?'

'So so. It's known that Rudolph Schriever and his team were trying to construct a flying saucer in the BMW plant near Prague, were hoping to test it in 1945, but had to destroy it in the face of the Soviet advance. When the Soviets took Prague, the saucer team all went their separate ways. As far as I can gather, Habermohl was captured and has disappeared into the Soviet Union; Miethe surrendered to the Allies and now works for the A. V. Roe Aeronautical Company in Malton, Ontario; and Schriever managed to make his way back home and has recently, from the safety of his home at Hokerstra.s.se 28 in Bremerhaven-Lehe, been telling the press that the flying saucers now being seen all over the place are based on his original Projekt Saucer designs.'

'Schriever doesn't mention Wilson?'

'Nope. Not a word.'

'And the others have vanished from the face of the earth?'

'More or less,' Bradley said. 'My only clue is that d.a.m.ned German submarine, U-977, which docked at Mar Del Plata, Argentina, on August 17, 1945. According to its commander, Captain Heinz Schaeffer, it had put out from Kiel harbour in late April 1945 and arrived in Argentina after an epic voyage of nearly four months. According to the Argentine authorities, their inspection of the submarine had revealed nothing unusual. However, given Peron's fondness for n.a.z.is, we have to treat what they say with some scepticism. Captain Schaeffer was later handed over to an AngloAmerican commission for intensive interrogations, during which he was asked if anyone of, quote, political importance, unquote, had been aboard his submarine during its final voyage. Naturally he denied all knowledge of everything.'

'But you have your doubts.'

'Well, we certainly know that an awful lot of fanatical n.a.z.is have been given sanctuary in Argentina and Paraguay. So if Wilson was on that submarine which he certainly was, if it was the same submarine that I saw leaving Kiel harbor it's possible that he disembarked at Mar Del Plata and went on to his final destination, wherever that might be, under the protective cloak of the Argentine government. And certainly there are rumours that a former n.a.z.i named Ernst Stoll is currently living in seclusion in Paraguay.'

He glanced out the window again, at that flat, dark desert stretched out under a starlit sky, and thought of G.o.ddard's first rocket tests all those years ago, not too far from there. He shook his head, mystified by his own questions, then drank some more bourbon.

'You know,' he said, 'it sometimes really scares me. In April 1945 Wilson disappears with his designs for a highly advanced saucershaped aircraft; then, on June 24 this year, a part-time pilot, Kenneth Arnold, reports seeing nine saucer-shaped objects flying over Mount Rainier in Washington State. Since then, similar UFOs have been observed all over the place, but mostly over New Mexico, right here where we live. Why?'

Gladys gave that familiar, laconic grin. 'One theory is that they're of Soviet origin,' she said.

'Well, the Soviets did capture the Peenemnde facility and a lot of its doc.u.mentation and products and they did ship more than six thousand German technical specialists of all kinds to various research centres throughout the Soviet Union so we certainly know that they're working with the V-2 rockets and other advanced German secret projects.'

'So the theory,' Gladys continued, 'is that the flying saucers originate in the USSR and have been sent here to spy on our top-secret installations.'

'Which theoretically explains the preponderance of UFO sightings in New Mexico.'

'Exactly,' Gladys said. 'Right now New Mexico contains more of our postwar defence installations than any other part of the United States, including atomic research, aircraft, missile and rocket development, and a lot of highly advanced radar-electronics and stratospheric flight experimentation. The top-secret Manhattan atom bomb project is in Los Alamos. The White Sands Missile Range and Proving Range at Alamogordo is the most important of its kind in the United States. And we even have the only combat-trained atom bomb group in the world at this time: the 509th Bomb Group of the US Army Air Force Base, right here in Roswell, where G.o.ddard flew his first real rockets. So, yes, if those flying saucers are spying on us, they'd certainly want to come here.'

'The Soviets or Wilson's group,' Bradley said dreamily. 'It sure as h.e.l.l makes you think...'

He was just about to have another sip of his whiskey when the telephone rang. He picked it up and gave his name.

'Bradley,' a familiar voice said tersely, 'you'd better get your a.s.s over here.'

Bradley immediately recognized the voice as that of First Lieutenant William B. Harris, Flight Intelligence Officer of the Roswell Army Air Base.

'What's up?' he asked, glancing automatically at Gladys.

'We've just been informed that a saucer-shaped aircraft crashed on the plains of San Augustin, between Magdalena and Socorro, New Mexico, about forty minutes ago.'

Bradley glanced at his wrist.w.a.tch. It was just going on 10.30 p.m.

'It's probably just a Rawin weather balloon.'

'No,' Harris said firmly. 'There are none up tonight. Besides, we tracked this thing on radar until it went down and it was certainly no weather balloon. Also, the flight controller at the private airfield at Carrizozo, about thirty-five miles southwest of the crash site, called a few minutes before the crash to inform us that a saucer-shaped aircraft had flown over at an alt.i.tude of approximately four to six thousand feet, at a speed of about four hundred miles per hour. Some G.o.dd.a.m.ned farmer's already been out there and called from his home to say that what crashed is some sort of metallic, saucer-shaped object about twenty-five or thirty feet in diameter. He also said that there are dead bodies in the wreckage.'

'Jesus Christ!' Bradley whispered.