'It's only ten in the morning.'

Nicholson simply shrugged, sipped some whiskey, inhaled and exhaled more smoke, which made Bradley feel bad.

In 1918, when Bradley had just about turned twenty, he'd been a naval aviator under Nicholson's command, flying the old wood, wire, and canvas biplanes from their primitive carriers out at sea to the b.l.o.o.d.y battlefields of the western front. After the war, when Bradley went into law, Nicholson had returned to the intelligence work he'd been doing previously for the Army Air Force. Then his wife, at fiftyeight, had died from a brain haemorrhage, and after that the spirit had gone right out of him. Still with the Army Air Force's technical intelligence branch, he'd developed a drinking problem, then ulcers, and had then been retired prematurely, looking like an old man. About a year ago, he had bought himself an old de Havilland two-seat Tiger Moth biplane and started to give flying lessons. Under the influence of alcohol, he'd crashed the plane, killing his pa.s.senger and seriously burning himself. Now his face was hideous, his skin livid and scarred, his lips practically burned off, along with his hair and eyelids, and he lived here alone, in this too-large house in McLean, Virginia, smoking and drinking most of the day and going out only rarely.

It was frightening to visit him.

'What Goldman told you was substantially correct,' he said in an unnatural tone of voice. 'I don't think I have to tell you that after the Great Airship Scare of 1896 to 1897, the Army Air Force began taking a particular interest in anything new or novel in the aeronautical field.'

'That figures,' Bradley said.

'Well, since most of the major reports mentioned a man named Wilson and since most of them also named either Iowa or Illinois as the origin of the mystery airships and their equally mysterious crew members it wasn't too difficult to discover that a certain John Wilson, exceptional graduate of MIT and Cornell, was designing and constructing airships for the Cohn and Goldman Company in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Since this was a perfectly legal occupation, we did nothing but surrept.i.tiously keep our eye on his progress. We only became concerned when shortly after the end of the scare, we received a pretty startling report, stating that Cohn and Goldman's five airships had been destroyed by an unknown demolition expert, thus breaking the company, and that while no evidence could be found to prove that the deed had been done by Wilson, it had been ascertained that he'd mysteriously made a small fortune at approximately the same time and, shortly after, opened his own research establishment in Illinois. It was believed, but could not be proven, that he had made that money by illegally selling his airship designs to a German aircraft company, possibly Zeppelin and according to Cohn and Goldman, the designs he had let them patent were actually worthless. So, while Cohn and Goldman went bust, Wilson was opening his own research plant in Illinois...'

'And?'

'We paid him a visit in Illinois. We informed him of our suspicions, which he naturally denied, and when we asked him what his intentions were, he said he was moving on from airships to heavier-than-air manned flight but was being hampered by his limited financial resources. Clearly the money paid by the Germans wouldn't last forever.'

'What did you think of him personally?' Bradley asked, still trying to fit a face to his mysterious quarry.

'I'll never forget him,' Nicholson replied without hesitation. 'He wasn't even thirty, but he seemed a lot older, though what burned itself into my memory was his coldness. A really strange kind of coldness. He wasn't arrogant, rude, unfriendly, or antagonistic no, none of those things. He was just remarkably detached, inhumanly pragmatic, almost machine-like in the way he listened and responded... He lacked normal emotions.'

Nicholson shivered, as if brushed by a cold breeze, then stubbed his cigarette out and slumped back in his soft chair.

'Did the air force get involved with him?' Bradley asked.

'Yes,' Nicholson said. 'Nervous about what he might do, but with no legal right to stop him, we decided to get some jurisdiction over him by offering the money he would need for his more ambitious projects. He accepted on the condition that we didn't attempt to supervise him and contented ourselves with monthly reports and regular inspection visits to his plant. Believing that would be enough for us, we agreed but naturally, given Wilson's nature, it wasn't enough.'

'So you were involved with the saucer-shaped aircraft?'

'No. We didn't know a d.a.m.ned thing about them. Wilson conned us, just like he'd conned his previous financiers. What we got in our reports, and what we viewed in our many inspection visits to his plant in Illinois, was the prototype for a highly advanced turboprop biplane, and frankly, we were more than impressed. Clearly, we were dealing here with a genius. And by 1903, even before the Wright brothers had made their first, widely publicized flight at Kitty Hawk, I was privileged to witness the secret test flight of Wilson's completed aircraft. That flight was more than successful it was absolutely astonishing and that's when we got scared.'

'Why?'

Nicholson reached for the bottle of whiskey, filled his gla.s.s up to the brim, drank almost half of it, topped the gla.s.s up again.

'After the notorious Cohn and Goldman affair,' he said, his voice emanating from the semi-darkness in a quavering, ghostlike manner, 'we knew that Wilson couldn't be trusted. For that reason, I'd planted one of my own engineers in his team, with orders to keep his eyes and ears open for anything not mentioned in Wilson's reports or viewed by us during our visits. While this man never got too close to Wilson, he did pick up enough whispers to convince him that Wilson just as he'd done with Cohn and Goldman was showing us only the tip of his particular iceberg; that even though his turboprop biplane was more advanced than anything else we knew about, he was reportedly working on some other project, involving the boundary layer and some unknown form of propulsion, in another hangar, located a mile or two from his main plant. Knowing how advanced the biplane was, we were naturally scared s.h.i.tless at the very thought of boundary-layer experiments and an unknown propulsion system then, when in 1908 our man reported whispers about the flight of a small, pilotless object that had actually managed to reach Russia, we naturally became very concerned indeed... And we were preparing to take over Wilson's plant and demand the location of his secret hangar when that dreadful explosion occurred over Tungusta, in Russia. It occurred over Tunguska, you understand, and we knew what that meant.'

'Something exploded in the air.'

'Right.'

'And whatever it was, you don't think it was piloted.'

'No, we didn't then and I still don't. Bear in mind that Wilson's secret work was being conducted in what was no more than a converted barn near the main plant. Given this, I think it's safe to a.s.sume that he wasn't designing something nearly as big as an airship or aircraft. In fact, our spy had heard from other engineers stories about a small, disc-shaped object, no more than a foot in diameter, that when test-flown looked like a fiery ball. It's my belief that that small, probably remote-controlled object was what exploded over Tunguska and that the large, saucer-shaped superstructures since found were just that: empty superstructures for the larger, piloted craft that Wilson intended to construct along the same lines as the smaller object. Then, of course, when the smaller object exploded over Tunguska, we had to put a stop to it.'

'How did Wilson respond to that?'

'He blandly denied our charges. He also denied the existence of his secret hangar, or barn, so we closed down his plant in Illinois, confiscated everything we could find which naturally didn't include anything we hadn't already known about - and told Wilson that if he wanted to continue working on research projects, he'd have to do it under our supervision, in our own research establishments. Wilson said he would think about it... A few weeks later, we found that empty superstructure in a hangar a few miles from his plant in Illinois. We never found anything else... and then, before we could interrogate Wilson about it, he fled Illinois and went underground. I never saw him again.'

He lit a cigarette, blew another cloud of smoke, then raised the gla.s.s to his twisted lips and drank it. Bradley stood up.

'Thanks,' he said. 'And look after yourself, Dwight.'

'There's nothing left to look after,' his friend replied. 'It's just a matter of time now. A real glamorous business, being a pilot, right? We don't believe this can happen.'

'Right,' Bradley said.

He placed his hand on his friend's shoulder, squeezed it affectionately, then turned away and walked from that dark place without glancing back.

The sunshine was wonderful.

In the train back to Connecticut, he opened the latest letter from Gladys Kinder, this one dated October 5, 1938.

Dear Mike, This morning the Germans marched into Czechoslovakia to ecstatic cheers, the pealing of bells, and the p.r.o.nouncement by Adolf Hitler that this was the latest step in his glorious march into the great German future. G.o.d help Europe, I say.

Did you miss my letters, Mike? I hope so. Apart from my telegrammed communiques to the Roswell Daily Record, my letters to you, to your office high above Manhattan, are my only real contact with America. The reason for writing is important it's my hold on where I came from but I have to confess that I also write them out of girlish compulsion.