'We're not going to Montezuma?' Bradley asked, confused.

'You've already been there,' Goldman reminded him, 'and found nothing worth seeing. Now do as I tell you.'

Bradley kept driving until Goldman told him to stop, halfway along a narrow track that ran between two fenced-in fields of tall, untended gra.s.s. That was unusual. Untended fields were rare around here. Then he looked across the field to the east and saw, in the distance, an enormous barn, probably once used for storing grain.

Goldman reached into his pocket, pulled out a bunch of keys, and held them up to him.

'Here,' he said. 'One of these is the key. Go take a look at what that son of a b.i.t.c.h was building when we thought he was only constructing airships. Have a good look, son.'

Bradley felt foolish and disbelieving, but he took the bunch of keys from the old man and started across the road. He parted the barbed wire, clambered awkwardly through the fence, then started the long walk across the field, through the waist-high, untended gra.s.s. The gra.s.s was like an endless sea, undulating in the breeze, whispering all around him, brushing at him, as if trying to suck him down. He felt nervous and unreal, adrift from himself, and was dazzled by the silvery-streaked azure sky, in which white clouds drifted.

Ahead of him, the immense barn loomed larger, isolated between land and sky, breaking up the horizon.

Beyond it was Illinois.

Bradley was breathing heavily and sweating by the time he reached the barn, and he stood there for a moment, getting his breath back. He glanced over his shoulder and saw his rented car sitting in the road beyond the fence, minute in that vast, undulating sea of gra.s.s. Shaking his head in wonderment, he turned again to the front and studied the barn.

It was certainly huge, obviously once used for storing grain, and the single, steel lock on the door had turned red with rust. Not quite so breathless, but still sweating too much, Bradley tried one key after the other until he found the correct one. He turned the key once, slipped the lock off the chain, pulled the chain through its steel rings, and let it fall to the ground. Then he took hold of the edge of the large door and pulled it toward him, walking backward as he did so, until it was more than halfway open, letting sunlight pour into the barn's darkness.

That sunlight shone on something metallic, making Bradley's heart leap.

Feeling as nervous as someone entering a haunted house, he walked into the barn.

He didn't get very far.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN The flying saucer prototype looked bigger than it really was where it rested, on a raised hydraulic platform, in the middle of the immense, cluttered hangar. Essentially a large ring plate with adjustable wing discs that rotated around its fixed, cupola-shaped c.o.c.kpit, it had a diameter of forty-two meters and a height from base to canopy of thirty-two meters. Made of silvery-gray metal that reflected the overhead lights, it looked like a giant spinning top, and it made Wilson smile.

It would soon fly but not much. The only saucer that would fly in any real sense was the one Wilson was secretly designing in miniature and would use when he needed it.

As long as he lived, he would not forget the awful devastation caused by the failure of the crude atomic propulsion system used in the otherwise surprisingly successful test flight of his first disc-shaped aircraft, which had actually managed to fly as far as Russia. However, since the catastrophe over the Tunguska region of Siberia in 1908, caused by the explosion of his pilotless aircraft, he had accepted that atomic propulsion was out of the question. Instead, he had concentrated all his efforts on conquering the boundary layer and trying to find less air-resistant material for his flying saucer's structure, so far using highly advanced but orthodox aircraft engines. He had not succeeded in America, though he was on the way to succeeding here, but he was carefully keeping his most important discoveries for his own use.

He fed Flugkapitn Schriever only a little at a time... never quite enough for his needs, but enough to make Schriever think he was making progress and to keep Himmler happy.

It was a delicate manoeuvre of the kind Wilson had practised previously with the US government, before they had withdrawn their support and made him quietly drop out of sight, to eventually end up here in n.a.z.i Germany.

He would always do what he had to do.

Tired from his week of relentless travelling all over Germany, he lowered his suitcase to the floor. Nevertheless he did not sit down but looked through the gla.s.s walls of his office at the men, some in coveralls, some in uniform, who were gathered by the hydraulic platform under the large flying saucer prototype. He recognized the lean and hungry Rudolph Schriever, who was dangerous, and his engineers, Habermohl and Miethe, who were not, as well as that fat Italian fool, Belluzzo, who would soon have to go.

The four of them were obviously discussing some aspect of the construction, while Schriever, who still believed that he ran Projekt Saucer, studied the technical drawings in his hands and barked like a dog.

What an a.s.s! Wilson thought.

Not that he had much time for any of them...

The two engineers, Klaus Habermohl and Otto Miethe, were uninspiringly efficient when merely turning nuts and bolts but embarra.s.singly inept when aspiring to the greater heights of design. So far, contrary to what Wilson had told Heinrich Himmler in Berchtesgaden, their so-called contributions to various parts of the flying saucer, including the outer steel casing, were relatively useless. As for the ambitious Flugkapitn Schriever, he was brighter than the others but remained, nonetheless, a mediocre engineer with pretensions to being a great aeronautical innovator. That was his machine out there, a crude saucer-shaped aircraft, and although he'd based much of his design on Wilson's innovations and then insinuated to Himmler that they were his own Wilson had given him only those innovations that already were obsolete. Schriever's saucer would fly in a crude manner eventually when Wilson wanted it to do so and until then, as Schriever was Himmler's spy, Wilson would give him just enough to keep him happy and full of himself.

Which just left that fat fool, Belluzzo, who, by his very lack of courage, was the most dangerous of all.

Wilson had to get rid of him.

Surprisingly, the aging Italian physicist, who had actually completed the first drawings for the saucer that Schriever was now claiming as his own, had turned out to be the biggest thorn in Wilson's side. A basically timid man, he had been cowed by the aggressive, manipulating Schriever and, as a consequence, had tried to curry favour with him by repeatedly implying that Wilson could not be trusted. Ever since then, according to Habermohl, who revered Wilson and kept him informed of such intrigues, Belluzzo had become Schriever's spy and was supporting him in his attempts to take the credit for Wilson's ideas when talking to Himmler.

A nest of vipers, Wilson thought. Nevertheless, since he wanted to be rid of them all eventually, he would start by getting rid of Belluzzo, while simultaneously making Schriever less suspicious of him.

He would do it today.

Knowing that Schriever would be coming to see him at any moment, Wilson opened his briefcase, removed a selection of the technical papers he had collected during his week of travelling, and, as they were of no great significance, spread them out on his desk.

He knew that when Schriever entered the office, he would try, in his idiotically surrept.i.tious manner, to see what they contained.

So he would actually give the fool these technical papers for innovations that were relatively useless.

This thought had just made Wilson smile when Schriever walked in.

'Ah, Wilson, you're back!' he exclaimed in his friendly, false manner.