'Just one, I hope,' she said without thinking.

'Yes, Ingrid,' he replied automatically. 'Just one, then I'm leaving.'

She leaned down to kiss him frigidly on the cheek, then waved good-bye and walked out.

How pretty she still is, Ernst thought helplessly, as he watched her departing through the dense crowds, looking elegant in her furcollared, belted coat and broad-brimmed hat. How very attractive!

Then, with a grief that lacerated him, he ordered another beer.

The day became confused after that. Feeling cold after his second beer, he decided to have a cognac and drank it while brooding about Ingrid and life's disappointments. Ingrid was disappointed with him and he felt the same about life in general, and when he thought about that, after having another brandy, he could only think of the American, Wilson, in the hangar at k.u.mmersdorf, creating the kind of aircraft that he, Ernst, had once dreamed about as a student at the Inst.i.tute of Technology, when he and Ingrid were still in love.

He thought a lot about Wilson. The American fascinated him. He was an old man, a very old man, kept alive by his faith.

Yes: faith what Ernst had once possessed but lost and because of that, the American was working miracles while Ernst could simply observe him. He felt sick just to think of it.

He not only feared the odd American, but also what he was building.

A miraculous, saucer-shaped aircraft.

A terrible weapon.

Filled with an awe and resentment exaggerated by drunkenness, Ernst, who had been given the afternoon off, had too many brandies, then went to meet his SS comrades in a Tanzbar recommended by Franck Ritter. Coloured lights bled through smoke, a cabaret band was playing, and two almost naked girls were performing an erotic dance with umbrellas. Sitting at a table near the wall at the back of the room, Willi Brandt was drinking a stein of beer and gloomily watching the dancing girls while Franck Ritter, resplendent in his SS uniform, was fondling the gaudily dressed transvest.i.te sitting beside him. Ernst joined them at the table, had another few drinks, compared notes with Brandt on the various erotic acts on the stage, then left in disgust when the insatiable Ritter led the giggling transvest.i.te into the toilets.

'The elite of the New Order!' Ernst exclaimed histrionically. 'Is this what we've come to?'

He and Brandt embarked on a tour of familiar haunts, but ended up, as usual, in the White Mouse in the Franzsischestra.s.se in time for Brigette's evening performance. The revue bar was packed with uniformed officers of the Reichswehr and SS, plus fat-bellied businessmen and their wh.o.r.es, and they roared their approval and gave the n.a.z.i salute when Brigette came on stage, naked except for a steelstudded, black-leather halter and gleaming jackboots, with a peaked military cap slanted rakishly over red hair and her tongue licking brightly painted, pouting lips.

She was grinding her hips lasciviously and cracking a bullwhip over the naked spine of the man who was crawling across the stage on hands and knees. Brigette sat on his back, riding him like a horse, and she kept cracking the bullwhip and gyrating upon him until, when he was prostrate beneath her, she slowly, seductively removed her steelstudded, leather halter and let him reach up to her...

It was a crude, erotic performance, arousing the audience to feverpitch, and though Ernst was disgusted and drank far too much brandy, he too was aroused by what he saw and could not wait to have her.

He had her soon enough, an hour later, in her apartment, when she teased and tormented him, whispering 'My pretty boy! My sweet lieutenant!' and sent him into spasms of relief and bottomless shame. With her diabolical artistry, her finely controlled sense of debauchery, she helped him forget Ingrid, the loss of his career, the frustration and fear that he always felt at k.u.mmersdorf when he saw Wilson working. He took Brigette like a savage, was in turn devoured by her, felt exultation and grief as he shuddered and spent himself, then rolled off her and thought of the Antarctic with unbridled longing.

He could hide from himself there.

CHAPTER TWELVE 'Good afternoon, Herr Wilson,' Himmler said in his frostily polite manner. 'I'm sorry to have had to bring you all this way, but I have good reason for doing so.'

'Naturally, Reichsf hrer,' Wilson said, taking the wooden chair at the other side of Himmler's desk in his room in the Pension Moritz and glancing out at the soaring, snow-covered Austrian Alps. He had been dragged out of bed that morning, flown from Berlin to Munich, put on a train to Salzburg, then brought here, to the picturesque village of Berchtesgaden, in a jeep driven by a blond SS moron. Himmler enjoyed pulling such surprises, but Wilson was not amused.

'Can I order you some herbal tea, Herr Wilson?' 'Thank you for considering my tastes, Reichsf hrer, but I've already had my morning tea and I don't drink after breakfast.'

Himmler seemed mildly amused. 'I know that you're careful about what you eat and drink,' he said. 'This may explain why, for a sixtysix-year-old man, you look remarkably youthful. In fact, you still only look about fifty, which is truly amazing.'

'Coming from you, Reichsfhrer, I take that as a compliment. It's true that I'm careful about what I eat and drink. I also believe that most people do too much of both, so I'm frugal even with what I permit myself.'

'Do you take vitamins?' Himmler asked with sombre interest.

'Yes. I've done so all my life. I eat and drink the minimum, take vitamins every day, and meditate whenever I get the chance. In this way I've managed to hold off the aging process, though it must come eventually.'

'And then?'

'I'm sure that with your continued backing of the SS medical experiments, we'll soon find surgical remedies for the aging process and when we do, I'll be one of the first to make use of them.'

'That would be a great gamble, Herr Wilson.'

'Not at my age,' Wilson replied.

Himmler smiled, then clasped his hands under his chin and said, 'You believe in the Superman, Herr Wilson?'

Wilson knew just whom he was dealing with an insane visionary

but he also knew what he personally wanted, and when he saw the priestly madness in Himmler's eyes, he was convinced he could have it.

'I believe that man's destiny is to evolve into the Superman,' he said truthfully, though not without regard for Himmler's ego, 'but that we humans, if not constrained by wasteful emotions, can hasten that process.'

Himmler nodded approvingly. 'Good,' he said. 'I believe in this also. We cannot let sentiment stand in the way of progress. We must eradicate man's imperfections and, if necessary, create the New Man from the bones of the old. We must cleanse the earth by purifying the blood. We must exterminate the Jews and the infirm and maladjusted, use the lesser races as slaves to the Reich, creating a race of pure Nordics. History will exonerate us. What we do, we do for progress. We are changing the course of history and aiding evolution and when we die, as surely we must, our achievements will live on. You and I understand this.'

'Yes, Reichsfhrer,' Wilson said, not interested in the Aryan race, but willing to use Himmler and his ilk to create his world of pure science, which is all he now lived for.