Wilson's deception was necessary. There was no one he could trust. The Third Reich was filled with ambitious, frightened men who wished to make an impression. Wilson did not trust Rudolph Schriever. He saw the madness in Himmler's eyes. He remembered his troubles in America, the heavily guarded hangars in Iowa and Illinois, the businessmen and politicians and generals who had ruthlessly stolen his life's work. The same thing could happen again, because the war's end was beginning: When the battle for Russia commenced, the Third Reich would start to bleed. How long would Himmler last then? And how long could Wilson then keep his secret? He wanted to make real his secret masterplan, but what guarantee did he have that he could do it? The n.a.z.is devoured their own kind, so they might devour even Himmler; either that or the Reichsfuhrer would turn on Wilson, destroying all he had gained.

Heinrich Himmler: the Reichsfhrer. Wilson was not deceived by his mild gaze. His neat fingernails were polished with blood and his smile hid hysteria. No, Wilson didn't trust him, and so he gave Himmler only a little the prototype for a flying saucer that was merely a crude airplane while explaining repeatedly that his problems were many and he needed more time.

It was a delicate manoeuvre. A great cunning was required. The flying saucer had to fool Schriever and the other engineers; it had to be a considerable achievement by their standards, though still lacking something. Thus Wilson had used obsolete technologies with slightly advanced ideas, letting Schriever and his engineers take pride in what they imagined was their great achievement: a saucer-shaped aircraft. Gas turbines and liquid-fuelled rockets were still the basis of their technology, but Wilson had already surpa.s.sed that. The real achievement was his other, secret Feuerball, and most of that was in his head... So he gave a little and took a great deal and listened always to Himmler.

'Your health is good?' he was asking.

'Yes,' Wilson replied.

'The recent operation was a success?'

'Completely, Reichsfhrer.'

'To experiment on yourself shows great courage or, perhaps, faith. I have to admire that.'

'I'm nearly seventy, Reichsfhrer. My time's running out. I'm old and my body begins to fail me, and I have to prevent that if I'm to continue my life's work. Since the choices are otherwise nonexistent, it's certainly worth the risk; and while so far we've only managed to repair my stomach and do some minor skin grafts, given time, if we continue medical experiments in the camps, I'm convinced that we'll eventually reach the stage where we can make flawless skin grafts, replace faulty hearts, develop mechanical limbs, and maybe even make great advances in human longevity... The possibilities are limitless.'

Himmler scratched his nose, adjusted his pince-nez, nodded solemnly. 'I agree,' he said softly. 'We need that and more than that. Let us sum up what we've achieved so far and see what we have...'

His voice trailed off as he stared at Schriever's saucer. The doors of the hangar were being opened and sunlight was pouring in.

'We have our underground factories,' Himmler said. 'We have the location for our New Order. We have our masters, the SS, and our slave labour and your own crystal genius.'

'We have everything,' Stoll said.

Himmler smiled but shook his head. 'No, we still don't have enough. We need more than normal men. What we need is a biological mutation that will lead to true greatness. We must learn to control our work force. Not with whips and not with guns. What we need is automatic control of their bodies and minds. The human brain must be examined, the body's secrets must be explored. We must try to steal their will and their physical strength and leave them just what we need. The so-called democracies cannot do this their regressive morals would forbid it but here, at the dawn of the new era, there is nothing to hinder us.'

He smiled at the listening Ernst Stoll, as if giving approval.

'We must use the Ahnenerbe, hand in hand with the Lebensborn, in order to study racial characteristics and breed only the finest. That will solve the first problem and only in that way, will we be able to create the Superman. Nevertheless, that leaves the problems of the work force, and we must solve those also. Control of body and mind. We must find a brand-new method. I think of medical and psychological experiments of the most extreme kind. The camps are ours to command. The sc.u.m there is our base material. The New Order needs a wealth of mindless muscle and your genius must find it.'

Wilson did not reply, as there was nothing for him to say. What Himmler wanted, he also wanted, but for very different reasons; what Himmler wanted was an insane dream that he totally rejected. Yet he listened, because Himmler had the power, and he still needed that.

'Do you understand?' Himmler said. 'My New Order will come to be. It will be broken into colonies, each individual, each with its work, all divided into masters and slaves, existing just to support us. There's no problem in the Antarctic. It's just another Nordhausen. You ship the subhumans in to build your underground complex, you control them with brain implants and our Death's Head SS, and then you move in your scientists and technicians and administrators, and you bind them all together with fear of their all-seeing masters. And once there, where can they go? There is no way in or out. They will live underground, seduced by power or cowed by fear, the masters bound by their blood oaths, by their religious conviction, the subhumans by torture and the threat of death and their singular lack of a way out. Yes, American, it is possible. We are halfway there already. You must work, you must complete this great project, before we settle the matter. Now let us see this test flight.'

The hangar doors had been opened fully. The flying saucer was being wheeled out on the broad platform, its steel body now silvery. Wilson followed Himmler and Stoll, out of the office, across the sunny hangar, then into the summery afternoon. The collapsible legs let the platform be lowered to the ground, where the wheels were removed, and the platform became a glittering launching pad with the saucer resting upon it.

Flugkapitn Rudolph Schriever was standing in his flying suit directly in front of the saucer, his helmet under his arm. He stepped forward to give the n.a.z.i salute, looking uncommonly nervous.

'Good luck,' were the only words spoken by Himmler.

'Thank you, Reichsfhrer!' Schriever responded, visibly swelling with pride, then saluted again and turned away, to climb the stepladder that led up the gleaming, sloping body to the saucer's centralized c.o.c.kpit.

The Perspex canopy had been removed. The saucer reflected the sunlight. After Schriever climbed carefully into the dome-shaped pilot's cabin, the canopy was replaced and locked into position. The engineers retreated and shielded their eyes. Himmler and Stoll hurried behind the sandbags with Wilson, then Himmler scratched nervously at his nose and adjusted his pince-nez. The saucer resembled a metallic mushroom or, perhaps, a giant spider. Its four legs, which housed the gas turbine rotors, thrust down obliquely. There was a roar as the hollow legs spewed flames and filled the air with black, oily smoke. The saucer shuddered and shrieked. Yellow flames spat at the platform. The roaring changed and became a deafening sibilance as the machine started rising. Himmler covered his ears. His body appeared to be shrinking. The saucer shuddered and roared, lifted tentatively off the ground, hovered briefly and swayed unevenly from side to side and was obscured by the swirling smoke. Himmler turned and stared at Wilson. His mild eyes were like the sun. The saucer roared and hovered just above the ground as Himmler gripped Wilson's wrist.

'A new eral' Himmler exclaimed as the ground shook beneath them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

Bradley and Joan made love that afternoon more tenderly and satisfyingly than they had done in months. They had flown to the island of Oahu, Hawaii, for a vacation in the hope of repairing the damage done by Bradley's increasing obsession with John Wilson's unheralded, innovative work on rocket research and what he might be creating in n.a.z.i Germany. That obsession had grown dangerously over the years, encouraging Bradley to be more distracted, keeping him away from home too much on his many investigatory trips, and making him increasingly thoughtless when it came to his family. Consequently, the gulf between him and Joan had widened. She had even threatened divorce. Bradley, though desperate to be part of a proper intelligence agency, such as the British Secret Intelligence Service, and use its greater resources to track down Wilson and put a stop to his activities, had begun to see the error of his ways.

Well, not quite...

While he had continued to use his powerful Wall Street law firm and influential clients as his personal link to Washington, DC, and General Taylor's Army Air Force intelligence unit, he had become increasingly frustrated by the lack of progress regarding his proposals for a centralized intelligence-gathering organization. Earlier in the year he had been informed by Taylor that the beginnings of just such an organization had been made: an Offlce of the Coordinator of Information, or COI, with its headquarters established in the State, War, Navy Building next to the White House. When another unofficial agent, William Donovan, had been appointed above Taylor as coordinator of information, Bradley had been crushed by disappointment and decided to turn his back completely on his intelligence ambitions.

A few months later he had suggested this vacation in Hawaii as a sort of second honeymoon, designed to bring him and Joan closer together and let them start all over again.

It appeared to have worked. Admiral Jeffrey Paris, an old friend of Bradley's buddy, General Taylor, and captain of one of the battleships anch.o.r.ed off Ford Island, had found them an attractive villa on the green hills overlooking Honolulu. Bradley and Joan had settled in with pleasantly surprising ease, gradually unwound, talked through their differences, and finally came together in bed like much younger lovers.

That afternoon Bradley had woken up from the nap they had taken to prepare them for the Sat.u.r.day evening dance in the Pearl Harbour Naval Officer's Club, to which they had been invited by Admiral Paris, and found himself luxuriating in Joan's warmth as well as in his newfound peace of mind.

He felt younger than he had in years. Swelling with love when he thought of how close he had come to losing Joan, he reached out to her, ran his fingers lightly over her, stroked her raised hip and waist, then rolled into her spine, slid his hand around to her soft breast, and let his pa.s.sion awaken her. She turned into him, almost purring, her smile sleepily radiant, and they pressed their naked bodies together and became one again.

'G.o.d, I love youl' he whispered.

Later, bathed and dressed Bradley in a white dinner jacket and black bow tie; Joan in an elegant, off-the-shoulder evening dress they had an aperitif out on the walled patio overlooking Honolulu. Bradley gazed through palm trees, palmettoes, and hibiscus toward the US Pacific Fleet, anch.o.r.ed in the vast bay. There were destroyers and minesweepers, oilers, tenders and submarines; and off Ford Island the battleships formed two lines, not far from the airfield where dozens of planes stood side by side. The battleships looked magnificent, glinting gray in the brilliant sunlight. Beyond them, far away, where green sea met blue sky, were the flapping white sails and gleaming bra.s.s railings of private yachts and expensive motor cruisers.