Himmler's world of fire and ice: the flying saucer and the Antarctic. The flying saucer was the machine of the future ... and that future was here and now.

Ernst was awed by the concept.

On the final day of the expedition, just before the fleet turned back, Ernst, as instructed by Himmler, took the rear seat in a seaplane and had the pilot fly him to the Antarctic and land on an ice-free area of Queen Maud Land. It was not a long flight, but it seemed almost magical, transporting him abruptly from sunlit s.p.a.ce to snow-filled wilderness, black shadow, blinding light, a great silence, the gleaming Nothing, and when the skis of his aircraft slid along the ice cap, he felt that he was on another planet, vast and desolate... dead.

The Antarctic, spread out all around him, looked boundless and unreal.

Another world for the taking.

Telling the pilot to remain in the c.o.c.kpit, he clambered down alone, glanced around that alien landscape of icefalls and glaciers and s...o...b..nks and polar plateaus all frighteningly empty and hauntingly silent then solemnly unravelled a larger swastika from its frozen steel pole. He hammered it into the ice-free soil, working awkwardly with his gloved hands; then, exhaling steam, he stepped back to give the n.a.z.i salute.

'I now claim this land for the Third Reich and name it Neuschwabenland.'

His embarra.s.sed, whispered words were still echoing eerily around him when he climbed back up into the seaplane and let the pilot fly him away from what could be his future home.

That thought chilled his soul.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN Bradley was relieved to step out of the sweltering June weather of the town of Des Moines, Iowa, and into the airconditioned coolness of the immaculately clean, modern nursing home. When he told the whiteuniformed receptionist behind the desk that he had an appointment with a resident, Abe Goldman, she smiled pleasantly, checked her register, said, 'Yep!' and hit the b.u.t.ton of the bell on the desk with the palm of her hand. 'I'm calling someone to take you in there,' she explained. Then, when she saw him fingering his sweaty collar, she asked, 'Are you from out of state, Mr Bradley?'

'Yep,' he replied, amused by her air of amus.e.m.e.nt.

'Can't stand the humidity, eh?'

'No, not really. It can get pretty hot in Connecticut, but it's never

this humid.'

'You know New York?'

'Yep.'

'I've only seen it in the movies.'

'It looks just like it does in the movies.'

'Gee, I'd just love to go there.' She was middle-aged and attractive

and reminded him of Gladys Kinder, so he was glad when a male attendant arrived and said, 'Someone for Abe?' 'This nice gentleman from New York,' the receptionist said. 'The one sweating too much.'

'Can't stand the humidity, eh?' the male attendant said with a broad grin.

Bradley just shook his head.

'You'll soon cool down in here,' the attendant said. 'Okay, sir, follow me.'

Bradley was already cooling down in the air-conditioning when the attendant led him away from the lobby, along a well-carpeted corridor, through an expansive community room filled with old people, many wearing dressing gowns, and out onto a patio overlooking a smooth green lawn.

'You a relative of Abe's?' the attendant asked, leading Bradley along the patio.

'No,' Bradley replied.

'He's one of our favourite residents,' the attendant said. 'A real old-time character though not originally from hereabouts.'

'No, he was originally from New York.'

'That's right,' the attendant said, stopping when they reached the shaded end of the patio, where an old man was sitting in a wheelchair. He had lively, pugnacious, Jewish features and a mop of surprisingly thick gray hair. He was dressed in a vivid, sky-blue dressing gown and smoking a cigar.

'Abe,' the attendant said, 'here's your visitor. Mr '

'Bradley. Mike Bradley.'

Abe Goldman removed the cigar from his pursed lips and squinted up through a cloud of smoke. 'The guy from Wall Street, eh?' he asked rhetorically, raising his hand.

'That's right,' Bradley said, shaking the old man's hand and surprised by the strength of his grip. 'It's good of you to see me.'

'Not at all,' Goldman replied, waving Bradley into the chair facing him. 'It's not often you meet a stranger in this asylum, so I'm happy to see you.'