Two obsessions in one.

Stepping down from the bus as the sun sank beyond the trees, he walked up the garden path of his ranch-style house, thinking guiltily of Gladys Kinder, whom he had loved only in dreams, and of her former lover, now his quarry, John Wilson, whose genius, being ruthless and amoral, was increasingly frightening.

G.o.d knows what Wilson was creating in Hitler's Third Reich.

Maybe only G.o.d knew.

The first thing Bradley saw when he entered the house was the partially eaten birthday cake on the table. He briefly froze where he stood, on the threshold of the living room, burning up with guilt when he saw Joan, standing by the table in the brightly lit room, turning to face him, her lovely smile absent.

'Welcome home,' she said quietly, venomously. 'You missed the party, unfortunately.'

'I'm sorry,' Bradley said. 'd.a.m.n it, I forgot. I got involved with '

'A man called Wilson. Yes, Mike, I guessed. You promised you wouldn't let him become an obsession. Dammit, you promised!'

'I'm sorry. Where's Miriam?'

'Here, Dad.' He glanced to the left and saw her sitting on the couch beside her fiancee, Ralph Beaker. 'Don't worry about being so late. I'm not bothered. Honest.'

'I'm bothered,' her mother retorted, raising her lips from a gla.s.s of sherry and looking pretty with her angrily flushed cheeks. 'He never remembers anything anymore. He hardly remembers that he lives here.'

'He's not that bad,' Miriam said with an encouraging smile that made Bradley feel worse. 'And he's still my one and only dad the best in the house.'

She was twenty-two today, taller than Bradley, slim and shapely and darkly attractive like her mother, and he could scarcely believe she was that age and engaged to be married. No more than he could believe that his son, Mark, was now twenty-three, married, with a pleasant, pregnant wife, and living in New Jersey, from where he commuted to Manhattan to help in the law office now that Bradley was otherwise engaged with his informal intelligence gathering.

'Dammit,' he said, shocked that time was pa.s.sing so quickly and therefore feeling even more guilty, 'I really am sorry, Miriam. It's just this job. I just '

'Come and give me a kiss, Dad, and then have some cake. It's only my birthday, for G.o.d's sake!'

'Now if you forget to turn up on our wedding day,' Ralph said with a laconic grin, 'she just might '

'Believe me, I won't forget.' Grinning brighter than he felt and ignoring Joan's angry glance, Bradley walked across the room, shook Ralph's hand, then leaned down to kiss his daughter on the cheek. 'Can I join you all in a drink at least?' he asked.

'Sure,' Miriam said. 'Why not?'

After that, the evening progressed smoothly enough, with liquor easing the tension for everyone except Joan. Though she tried hard to be pleasant, she let Bradley know with every glance that his increasing neglect of his family, caused by his obsession with John Wilson, would not be quickly forgiven. Bradley anaesthetized himself with liquor, getting drunk without showing it, and when he spoke to his daughter's fiancee later that evening, he knew that at least the younger folk were unconcerned.

Not that it helped him much.

In bed, Joan lay as stiff as a plank and stared at the ceiling. When he reached out to her, she rolled away from him, onto her side, and whispered, 'No! Not tonight! Don't think that being drunk will make it better. I'm not that easily swayed.'

'Dammit, Joan, I just forgot!'

'You forget too much too often these days. Our marriage nearly broke up before when you became obsessed with your legal work; now that you're becoming obsessed with intelligence gathering, we're going through the same thing. You're just a boy at heart, Mike, easily bored, wanting adventure; and when that particular itch gets a hold of you, G.o.d help us all. You even forgot your daughter's G.o.dd.a.m.ned birthday! Go to h.e.l.l, Mike. Just let me sleep.'

He felt cut to the quick, flayed by the brutal truth, yet as he lay there beside her, his eyes closed, trying to sleep, his guilt gave way to fantasy, to visions based on speculations, some of which involved Gladys Kinder, whose face he knew so well, and others involving a man called Wilson, whose face was a blank wall.

His twin obsessions formed the roots of a tree whose branches spread out through his sleep, drooping over a dark abyss.

A ball of fire with a spherical, silvery core arched through that vast, disturbing darkness and drew him into oblivion.

He slept the sleep of the haunted.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 'It will work,' Wilson said emphatically, b.u.t.toning up his greatcoat and glancing at the relatively small, disc-shaped metal object that was resting on the raised platform in the work bay of the second most secret area of k.u.mmersdorf. 'We still have a lot of work to complete, but I believe it will work.'

The dark, lean-faced Rudolph Schriever, wearing oil-smeared coveralls, smiled with scarcely concealed excitement. The Feuerball was about three feet in diameter, had the general shape of two plates placed one upon the other, and had no visible air intakes or other obstructing protuberances, such as wings and rudders. Thus it had a smooth, seamless appearance. It was, in fact, the first flying wing that Wilson had attempted to construct since his disaster over Tunguska, and he was using it as a prototype for the larger, piloted craft being constructed laboriously in the main hangar.

'What we have here, gentlemen,' he continued as Habermohl and Miethe began draping a protective canvas sheet over the saucershaped, metallic object, 'is a circular flying wing that will offer the least possible air resistance, suck in the dead air of the boundary layer, and then use that same air, expelling it at great force, to increase its momentum even more. However,' he added deliberately, looking directly at the excited Schriever, 'even with this design, the boundary layer, though dramatically reduced, will still be present and until we find a means of defeating it, the capabilities of our Feuerball and larger saucer will be severely limited. This, gentlemen, is the problem we still face. Good night to you all.'

He turned away and walked out as the canvas sheet fell over the Feuerball and Schriever's expression turned to one of frustration. Leaving the workshop and stepping into the freezing November winds that howled across the nearby firing range into the lamplit parking lot, Wilson glanced at the main hangar, its walls being swept by searchlights, then smiled to think of Schriever's frustration. Given his own car at last, he climbed into it, drove out through gates guarded by SS troops, and headed back to Berlin.

He was amused by Schriever's frustration. Knowing that the ambitious young Flugkapitn was nominally in charge of Projekt Saucer and reporting directly to Himmler, usually with exaggerated declarations of his own contributions to the work in progress, Wilson had continued to ma.s.sage his ego by helping him to believe in his own importance. But occasionally, as he had just done, he could not resist slapping him down with another, seemingly insurmountable problem.

What he had not told Schriever, and was not about to, was that he knew how to solve the problem of the boundary layer: by using a kind of porous metal similar to that which he had created so many years ago. Undeterred by the previous disaster and now with vast technical and human resources he had not had before, he knew that he would soon meet with success. Tentatively named Luftschwamm, or aero-sponge, and essentially a combination of magnesium and aluminium, his unique metal was being created under his personal guidance in the research plants of distant Gottingen and Volkenrode. When completed, it would be used only for the flying saucer that he intended to construct without Schriever's knowledge. As for Schriever's Feuerball and flying saucer, they would fly well enough to keep him and Himmler happy but that's all they would do.

Approaching the outskirts of Berlin, he looked into the evening darkness and was surprised to see a red glow in the sky above the rooftops of different areas of the city. The glowing pulsated and shifted, here and there obscured by smoke, became a deepening, eerie crimson as he came closer to it. The city's in flames, he thought, rolling his window down, smelling smoke. As he drove on toward home, he realized that it was the Krhessen district, where he now lived, that was aflame.

He heard the breaking of gla.s.s, screams and shouts, then more gla.s.s breaking and raining upon stone, obviously the pavements.

Shop windows were being smashed.

Instantly alert, he drove into the Krhessen district and was surprised, at this late hour, to see the streets packed with people. A nearby synagogue was on fire, and the crimson and yellow light of the flames illuminated a nightmare. Fashionable, middle-cla.s.s people were clapping and cheering as roaming gangs of youths beat Jews senseless with lead piping, smashed the windows of their shops, and strewed their possessions along the gutters, while Storm Troopers looked on smiling, when not actually joining in. Broken gla.s.s was everywhere, glittering in moonlight and crimson glare, splashed with the deeper crimson of human blood, spreading over the road. Another Jew screamed and was beaten down by swinging lead pipes as more women applauded.

Wilson kept driving.