When the noise of the aircraft had pa.s.sed, Pialowicz said, "To
return to Kryzystina... According to what she tells me in 1940, this
German who becomes her lover, this SS Captain Ernst Stoll, is a
former rocket engineer, deeply embittered at being denied membership
of the VfR, or German Amateur Rocket Society and, later, General
Dornberger"s rocket program, which is placed under the command of
Wernher von Braun, one of Stoll"s old school chums, while Stoll is
turned into a mere technical administrator. Disgusted, Stoll lets himself
be persuaded to join SS intelligence, which at least gives him the
opportunity to supervise certain secret weapons research programs at
k.u.mmersdorf, south of Berlin and it is there that he becomes
involved with the American, Wilson."
"He actually worked with Wilson?"
"Yes. Wilson does not actually work with von Braun"s rocket
teams, but with a much smaller group at the other side of an old firing
range at k.u.mmersdorf West. However, according to what Stoll tells
Kryzystina, while Wilson is to work on secret weapons other than
remote-controlled rockets, many of his remarkable innovations are
pa.s.sed on to the rocket team, which certainly hastens the development
of the rockets."
Now Bradley was feeling really excited. At last Wilson"s
continuing existence had been confirmed. At last he"d been given
shape, even if he still was faceless.
"Did Kryzystina find out what Wilson"s project actually was?" "Yes. One night when Stoll is drunk and particularly bitter, he lets
slip that the program is called Projekt Saucer and involves the
construction of a saucer-shaped, vertical-rising aircraft. How far it has
progressed, he doesn"t say, but he does also let slip that the project is
highly secret, that it is Heinrich Himmler"s personal pa.s.sion, and that
even Hitler is unaware of its existence."
"What was this Wilson like?" Bradley asked, desperate to put a
human face on his faceless quarry.
"Apparently a lot older than he looks," Pialowicz replied. "About
sixty-five years old."