He thought he heard the German sighing. He looked up and saw him smiling. The German removed the pistol from Bradley"s temple and aimed it at the warehouse.
"You want to know what Wilson"s about?" he said. "Then look in there, my friend."
Bradley managed to raise his head. He looked into the warehouse. At first he couldn"t see it was pretty dark in there but then his eyes adjusted to the gloom beyond the doors, and he saw an open-topped German truck, piled high with rubbish.
No, not rubbish. Piled high with the bullet-riddled, b.l.o.o.d.y corpses of uniformed SS troops.
"Jesus Christ!" Bradley whispered.
He shuddered with revulsion and a touch of disbelief, then the German jerked his head up again and waved the Luger in front of him.
"Bradley?" he asked, confirming the name. "Mike Bradley of the OSS?"
"Yeah," Bradley said. "Right."
"And you"ve been pursuing Wilson for a long time?"
"Nearly fifteen years," Bradley said.
The German gave a low whistle. "That"s a long time, Mr Bradley. And although you"re in a very bad way, you still look determined."
"I am," Bradley told him. "I won"t give up on this, believe me."
"We"ll remember that, Bradley."
"G.o.ddammit," Bradley said. "I"ve got to see that b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Take me out there, then throw me overboard. I want to see him that bad."
"Your tenacity is admirable, Bradley. You will not be forgotten."
The German holstered his pistol, released Bradley"s head, then stood up and walked away a few feet and knelt down again. He took a cigarette lighter out of his tunic pocket, lit something on the ground, and when he stood up, Bradley saw the fuse cable running back to the warehouse. Set alight, it spluttered and sparkled as it started its journey.
"Oh, my G.o.d." Bradley groaned.
The German walked back, knelt beside him, and smiled at him. He looked handsome in his SS uniform, but his smile was a dead thing.
"I have to go now, Mr Bradley. Herr Wilson awaits me. My name is Ernst Stoll Captain Stoll, of the SS and if you manage to survive the explosion, I hope you"ll remember me. Naturally, I"ll tell Wilson about you... and he has a long memory. Auf Wiedersehen."
Captain Ernst Stoll stood up and walked casually across the quay, where four other SS officers, all lieutenants, had been waiting for him. They let him climb down the ladder, obviously to a boat below, then they followed him down, one by one, leaving Bradley alone.
He glanced at the burning fuse. It was racing toward the warehouse. He looked back at the harbour, saw the submarine in the distance, then noticed a rubber dinghy heading toward it, carrying five men.
Obviously Stoll and his officers.
Bradley almost wept with frustration. He was so close, yet so far. He thought of Wilson and cursed, thought of Gladys and nearly smiled, then turned his head to look at the burning fuse. It reached the warehouse, then the truck piled with corpses.
My last memory on earth, Bradley thought. Wilson"s truckful of corpses.
He held his breath and prayed silently.
Wilson stood with Nebe and Kammler on the deck of the submarine and thoughtfully watched the men on the distant quay. Apart from Stoll, there were only four men. They worked long and very hard. They piled the bodies of their comrades onto the back of the truck and then drove the truck into the warehouse. The docks seemed very quiet. The lamps beamed down through the mist. There was an explosion near the road at the end of the docks, and a man who was most likely Stoll walked along there to check. He knelt down for some time, stood up, walked back and forth. Allied planes rumbled overhead as Stoll"s four men emerged again.
They were not in the truck, because they had left it inside the warehouse. Stoll joined them and they clambered down the ladder and dropped into the dinghy. The oars splashed in the water. The distant lamps showed desolation. After what seemed like a very long time, the men arrived at the submarine. They were all helped aboard. Stoll seemed steady as a rock. Wilson stared across the water at the docks and saw the clouds of mist thinning. The explosion was catastrophic. The whole warehouse disintegrated. The flames shot up in jagged yellow lines that made the thin mist look silvery. The noise was demonic. A black smoke billowed up. The flames swirled and turned into crimson tendrils that embraced one another. Then the smoke drifted sideways, revealing great piles of rubble. The flames leapt across the charred, broken beams and stained the quay with great shadows.
The flames burned a long time. The harsh wind made them dance. They were still burning brightly when Stoll nodded at Wilson and they went below decks. The hatch above them was closed and the submarine, with much moaning and groaning, submerged in the Baltic Sea.
The real journey began.
EPILOGUE Roswell, New Mexico July 2, 1947
"The s.p.a.ce age is beginning," Bradley told Gladys. "It began when we shipped the first captured German V-2s to New Mexico in 1945 and when, in March the following year, the first US V-2 launches began at the White Sands Proving Ground under the direction of our old friend, Wernher von Braun, now under contract to the United States. Since then, about fifty V-2s have been launched, most of them successfully. Meanwhile, the Soviets, who got Peenemnde and to whom we kindly handed over Nordhausen shortly after capturing it, have started a similar rocket development program and are preparing to launch their first V-2 from a range near Volgagrad, better known to us as Stalingrad. And apparently, back here in the good old US of A, improved rocket motors, using liquid self-igniting fuels and based on the V-2 research, are about to go into production with civilian aviation organizations given USAF contracts... And all that in two years!"
"Give it a rest, Mike," Gladys said. "Let me fill up your gla.s.s." "A man"s gotta have a hobby," Bradley replied. He handed Gladys his gla.s.s and glanced out of the window at the desert, flat under a starlit sky. They were living not far from the late Robert H. G.o.ddard"s Mescalero Ranch and his old rocket launching site, Eden Valley. Bradley often felt inspired by the location, given what he was doing.
They"d moved here when they were married, shortly after Bradley"s release from the hospital, and now, when he was not involved in the drafting of contracts between the many US Air Force and civilian aeronautical establishments in the area, he was conducting his own investigations into Wilson"s whereabouts and his possible connections with the recent spate of sightings of so-called UFOs, or flying saucers.
It kept him busy. It helped him forget the pain. As they had told him in the hospital, he would have to live with the pain for a long time. He owed Wilson that as well.