'Even Wilson,' Goldman insisted. 'He may not have returned to his hometown, but he came back to the state. That's close enough, partner.'

Faced with the possibility that Wilson might, after all, have had some sentimental leanings, Bradley felt more confused when he entered the diner and sat down to lunch with Abe Goldman. They both had hamburgers and french fries, with lots of relish and salad on the side. For such a fragile old man, Abe had a surprisingly healthy appet.i.te, enjoying his food.

'So are you going to tell me why Wilson destroyed his own airships?' Bradley finally asked him.

'Sure,' Abe said. 'Seems unbelievable, right? But that son of a b.i.t.c.h was the most ruthless guy I ever met.' Abe munched on his burger, washed it down with Coca-Cola. 'The reason the airships spotted in 1897 weren't seen again is that the designs Wilson gave me and Jack Cohn to patent were for unworkable airships. He patented the real designs under a couple of pseudonyms. Of course, we didn't know about this. Nor did we know that the son of a b.i.t.c.h was selling his genuine designs to some industrialist in Germany, almost certainly with an agreement to ensure that our airships were destroyed. We only figured this out later. First, the engines of our airships were blown up by an unknown demolition expert, obviously Wilson. Second, Wilson disappeared, leaving only his ingeniously faked drawings, from which we couldn't reconstruct his particular internal combustion engines and structural designs. Third: A couple of years later the first German airships took to the sky and were clearly based on Wilson's designs.' Abe grinned and shook his head in helpless admiration. 'By that time,' he continued, 'since we'd nothing to sell, Jack and me had gone bust and were too busy making our money back in other fields to pursue the son of a b.i.t.c.h through the courts.'

'But you knew what he was up to during that time?'

'Sure. He used the money from the sale of his patents to open his own research establishment across the state line, in Illinois. We could never verify what he was up to there, but there were certainly some odd rumours over the next few years, most notably that by 1903, just before the Wright brothers made their first successful flight at Kitty Hawk, Wilson had secretly produced even more advanced aircraft, reportedly turboprop biplanes, that had actually managed to cross the Atlantic Ocean.'

'He couldn't have done that without US government help.'

'Well,' Abe said, obviously enjoying his startling revelations, 'everything was wide open then it was early days for aviation, with not too much legislation so he could have done it with clandestine government aid. Then, of course, he went that little bit too far and it led to his downfall.'

'A little bit too far?' Bradley was amused by the triumphant glint in old Abe's eyes, but he was also intrigued. He had never heard anything like this in his life, and it made Wilson seem almost diabolically ruthless and even, in a chilling way, awesome.

Having finished his large lunch, Goldman sat back, lit a cigar, and puffed a cloud of foul smoke.

'There were rumours,' he said, 'about highly advanced experiments with the problem of the boundary layer and even dangerous experiments with atomic propulsion. Regarding this, there's one year I haven't forgotten and won't ever forget.'

'Yes?' Bradley enquired, his amus.e.m.e.nt tinged with growing impatience at the old man's teasing.

'In 1908,' Goldman said, 'shortly after the world celebrated Louis Bleriot's widely publicized flight across the English Channel, from Calais to Dover, there was a great explosion in the Tunguska region of Siberia an explosion so big that some believed it had been caused by a crashing meteor or alien s.p.a.cecraft. The reason for that mysterious explosion has never been found, but I can confirm that there were whispers in aeronautical and related circles that it'd been caused by the failure of one of Wilson's more dangerous experiments: when his mostly highly advanced experimental aircraft, reportedly powered by some primitive, faulty form of atomic propulsion, malfunctioned possibly in conjunction with damage caused by the uncontrollable vibrations of the boundary layer in an otherwise astonishingly successful flight from these here United States to G.o.dd.a.m.ned Russia.'

Feeling chilled to the bone while hot sunlight poured in through the window, Bradley was just about to express his disbelief when Goldman, finishing off his Coca-Cola, wiped his lips with the back of his hand and said, 'While that could either be the true explanation for the Tunguska explosion or pure science fiction, what is for sure is that shortly after the so-called most frightening, inexplicable phenomenon of the twentieth century, Wilson's plant in Illinois was closed down by the US government, all of his designs or at least those they found were either cla.s.sified as top secret or destroyed, and Wilson was offered work with the US government.'

'Which he didn't take.'

'No,' Goldman confirmed without hesitation. 'Apparently deeply embittered can you imagine how we felt? and with the Great War underway, he left Illinois for good and, according to occasional reports, spent the next decade drifting from one small aeronautical company to another, keeping his light under a bushel, but making a good living by selling his smaller, less important innovations to commercial airline companies and construction plants, and finally going to work for six months with another pioneering genius, Robert H. G.o.ddard.'

'Which is where I came in.'

'Pardon?'

'Nothing,' Bradley said. He was beginning to feel a bit unreal. Glancing at his wrist.w.a.tch, he noted that his time was running out. 'Are you finished, Abe? I think we'll have to get going.'

'No sweat,' Goldman said.

Once back in the car, they drove for another hour, arrived at Sigourney, which seemed sleepy in the afternoon light, then pa.s.sed the road signs for Washington and Wapeelo and eventually headed along an empty road that cut through a quilt-work of green and gold, lawns of finely mowed gra.s.s, more fields of corn and wheat beyond which, Bradley knew from his previous visits, lay the rolling green fields of Mount Pleasant.

Thinking of that place, of the airships constructed and destroyed there, Bradley suddenly realized that he might be on a wild goose chase, led by a senile old man.

'If Wilson destroyed his airships,' he said, expressing his doubts, 'what can you possibly show me now, Abe?'

Goldman was unfazed. 'Remember me telling you about the rumours that Wilson had constructed a highly developed aircraft that actually managed to fly as far as Russia?'

'Yes,' Bradley said. 'The one with some primitive form of atomic propulsion.'

'Right,' Goldman said, pleased. 'Well, that aircraft certainly wasn't any kind of G.o.dd.a.m.ned airship.'

'Naturally not,' Bradley said. 'Probably some kind of advanced airplane.'

'Exactly,' Goldman replied. 'When that son of a b.i.t.c.h was making airships for us, he'd already superseded them and was secretly experimenting with his own project in another hangar, well away from our establishment at Mount Pleasant. It's my belief that that project was for the construction of an aircraft designed solely to conquer the boundary layer and be powered by some form of atomic propulsion. I think that a miniature version of such a craft, remote-controlled, was tried out in 1908, flew as far as Siberia, then malfunctioned and blew up over the Tunguska forest.'

'Jesus Christ,' Bradley whispered without thinking.

'You're impressed?' Goldman asked.

'Yep.'

'Then stop being impatient and keep driving. You want proof, I'll give you proof!'

Shortly after they pa.s.sed the sign indicating Mount Pleasant, Goldman coughed more cigar smoke from his lungs, hammered his chest with his fist, then jabbed a finger at a narrow side road and said, 'Turn up there, son.'