lengthy report that the country must prepare itself for inevitable
involvement in another world war.
While his report had not been taken seriously by the White House,
since then General Taylor had used him as an unofficial agent between
Taylor's army air force intelligence branch and British intelligence, as
well as a legal adviser, general administrator, and headhunter for the
soon-to-be formed National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics –
which is why Bradley had made his recent, unsuccessful trip to Robert
H. Goddard in Roswell, New Mexico.
‘But why would our air force be interested in a bunch of amateurs?’
General Taylor asked, after a thoughtful pause.
‘Because they’re not amateurs,’ Bradley told him. ‘The Verein fur Raumschiffart was founded in 1927 and soon included most of the rocket experts of the day: Hermann Oberth, Max Valier, Rudolf Nebel,
Willy Ley, and Klaus Riedel.’
The general gave a low whistle of respect. ‘That’s some bunch of
scientists,’ he said. ‘What were they up to?’
‘We know that a number of small liquid-fuelled rockets were fired
from their testing ground in the Berlin suburb of Reinickerdorf. Then,
in April 1930, Captain Walter Dornberger was appointed to the
Ordnance Branch of the German Army’s Ballistics and Weapons
Office, headed by one General Becker. Dornberger was to work on
rocket development at the army's Kummersdorf firing range,
approximately fifteen miles south of Berlin. Two years later the VfR
demonstrated one of their liquid-fueled rockets to Dornberger and
other officers at Kummersdorf.’
‘I’m surprised I haven’t heard of this,’ Taylor said, sounding
slightly aggrieved.
‘Maybe that’s because recently, with Hitler’s support, the Gestapo
moved in and overnight the VfR ceased to exist as a civilian
organization.’
‘But it’s now being used by the army.’
‘Right. A lot of its members, including the reportedly up-andcoming Wernher von Braun, were taken under Dornberger’s wing and
began working at Kummersdorf in strict secrecy.’
‘Ah,’ the general said softly, ‘so that's why our air force is
concerned!’
‘Damned right,’ Bradley said. ‘And if they knew what I recently
learned in Roswell, they’d be even more concerned.’
‘And what was that, Mike?’
‘Since Goddard was so damned suspicious and frosty over the
phone,’ Bradley explained, thinking again of Gladys Kinder and
feeling distinctly guilty, ‘I visited Roswell in order to interview those
who’d known him there – his engineers, the local townsfolk, and so
forth. Anyway, over the week I spent there, I became increasingly
concerned with the fact that Goddard, with so little assistance either
financially or from fellow scientists, had managed to make such
extraordinary advances in rocket research. Then, shortly after the final
launch, I was introduced to a woman – ’
‘I won’t tell your wife that,’ the general interjected.
Bradley grinned, as if appreciating the joke, but inwardly burned
with the guilt he’d been trying to keep at bay ever since his single
meeting with Gladys Kinder.
The proprietor of the Roswell Daily Record had put him in touch
with her. They’d met in the bar of Bradley’s hotel, and he’d been
instantly intrigued by her air of worldly cynicism. In the course of a
conversation about Goddard’s rocket team, he’d become
uncomfortably attracted to her. Clearly realizing what was happening
Gladys had passed a few mischievous remarks to that effect and
actually managed to make him blush.
She was tall and lean and had a head of short-cropped brown hair,
which made her seem slightly mannish, and gray eyes that were
disconcertingly steady over a full-lipped, sardonic smile. She had been
wearing a long, belted dress, with high-heeled boots and a Stetson hat.
starting to show it (though thankfully he still had his hair) had felt soft
and pampered in her attractively laconic presence.
You didn’t meet women like that in New York – and besides, he
just liked her.
Now, when he recalled Gladys Kinder and also thought of his
attractive, good-humoured wife, Joan, who lovingly looked after their
home and children in Connecticut, he felt as guilty as if he’d had an
affair, which he certainly had not done. He had simply been tempted,
that’s all... So why should he feel guilty?
‘The woman, Gladys Kinder,’ he continued uneasily, ‘is a journalist
for one of the local papers, the Rosewell Daily Record. When I told her
I’d spent the past week checking up on Goddard and his old launching
grounds in Eden Valley, she told me that two years ago she’d had an
affair with another physicist who’d stayed with Goddard for six
months, spent most of that time working and sleeping in Goddard’s
machine shop, and was considered by most of Goddard’s men to have
been very influential on Goddard’s work. Those facts were later
confirmed in my discussions with some of the rocket team.’ Even now, as he spoke to the general, Bradley thought it odd that
the mention of Gladys Kinder as Wilson’s mistress should make him
feel slightly resentful and, perhaps, even jealous. It was too ridiculous
for words, but he couldn’t deny the feeling; and when he recalled her
sly smile in the hotel’s gloomy bar, her droll mockery of his obvious
confusion in her presence, he was irresistibly seduced by her image and
wanted to see her again.
Crazy. Just crazy...
‘What was this woman’s name?’ the general asked, picking up his pen and staring with what Bradley, in the guilty panic of his thoughts,
imagined was accusing intensity.
‘Kinder,’ Bradley replied, feeling a helpless stab of desire and its
bed partner, guilt. ‘Gladys Kinder.’
‘Kinder,’ the general murmured, writing the name down. ‘Gladys
Kinder,’ he emphasized, as if deliberately tormenting Bradley.
‘Mmmm...’ he murmured, studying the name thoughtfully before
putting his pen back down, looking up again, and saying ‘So, what
about him?’
‘Pardon?’
‘The physicist that the Kinder woman told you about.’
‘Ah, yes...’ Bradley gathered his thoughts together. ‘Miss Kinder
told me that when the physicist left for good after the rocket launching
of December 31, 1930, Goddard confessed to her that his mysterious,
temporary assistant was a, quote, genius, who’d helped him develop
many of his more notable innovations, including liquid-fuelled, selfcooled motors, gyroscopes for guidance and control, lightweight fuel
pumps, and reflector vanes to help stabilize and steer the rockets. The
guy’s name was John Wilson.’
‘Interesting,’ General Taylor said, writing that name down also,
then popping some gum into his mouth and starting to chew, ‘but I
can’t see what relevance all this has to Adolf Hitler’s Germany.’ ‘Well, I can’t be too sure of this,’ Bradley replied, ‘but I d
o have
my worries there.’
‘Don’t tease me, Mike.’
‘Well, for a start this John Wilson’s a complete mystery. No one at
Roswell knew where he came from, Wilson wasn’t about to tell them,
and even Goddard swore he didn’t know anything about him, other
than the fact that he was extraordinarily knowledgeable about physics
and aeronautics, just turned up at the ranch one day, showed Goddard
some of his own drawings, and then asked if he could help him with
the rocket project. As for Wilson's journalist friend, Gladys Kinder – ’
He couldn’t avoid the name, and it brought back all his guilt. ‘ – even
though she was his mistress during that six months, she learned only
that he had an engineering background and loathed the US government
for reasons that he never explained. She also learned, just before
Wilson’s abrupt departure, that he intended leaving the United States
for good and going to a country where people like him and Goddard
would be appreciated, instead of being treated as cranks.’ There was
more loud hammering from outside and General Taylor, after wincing,
said, ‘I can’t stand this goddamned noise, Mike. Do you fancy a walk?’ ‘Sure,’ Bradley said, feeling trapped with his recollections of
Gladys and glad to escape. ‘Why not?’
Leaving the office, they strolled outside where the noise of the
workers was even louder and the sun shone over the flat green fields.
Relieved to feel the fresh air, Bradley followed the general away from
the skeletal buildings and their many workers, down toward the banks
of the Potomac River.
‘So where do you think your mysterious genius, this Mr Wilson,
went?’ General Taylor asked, striding across the grass and glancing
keenly around him.
‘A lot of the German engineers,’ Bradley said, ‘including Wernher
von Braun, revere Goddard and are known to have based their work on
his ideas. Our mysterious John Wilson would certainly have known
that – and would also have known that while here, in the United States,
Goddard’s theories were being treated with contempt, Germany was
spending fortunes on rocket research that was, by and large, based on
his work.’
‘So you think this Wilson went to Germany?’
‘I don’t think it – I know it. I checked yesterday with the
Immigration Department and learned that one John Wilson left this
country on January 20, 1931, that he stayed in London for a few weeks
in early March of that year, and that he applied for a German visa that
same month. According to British immigration records, a US citizen
called John Wilson left England by a boat sailing for Bremen,
Germany, on April 5, 1931. There's no other record of his movements.’ ‘You mean, you think he’s still there, in Germany.’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you checked with the German authorities?’
‘They deny all knowledge of him.’
‘But you think they’re lying.’
‘Yes. I think he’s still there – and if he is, and if he’s working on
rocket research, we should be concerned.’
Stopping by the edge of the river, they looked across to the far
bank. The fields that stretched out on all sides were flat, densely
forested, and sun-splattered. Birds flew overhead.
‘You’re my best man for intelligence gathering,’ General Taylor
reminded him, ‘so perhaps you can track him down.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ Bradley said, feeling the itch of frustration.
‘We're talking about Hitler’s Third Reich. One man on his own can’t do much with this kind of problem. That's why we need a central intelligence-gathering organization,’ he continued, warming to his favourite theme. ‘The Brits have an intelligence system that puts us to shame. The last thing we had that remotely resembled an intelligence agency was Herbert Yardley’s Black Chamber – which was only a codebreaking unit – and since that was closed down in 1929 we haven’t had a damned thing to replace it. Which is doubtless why Yardley wrote his best-selling book exposing our so-called secrets – and why New York federal marshals, the damned idiots, have just raided the offices of a perfectly respectable publisher to impound Yardley’s second book.’ The general laughed heartily at that one, then said, ‘The way you pronounce the word “idiots”, Mike, reminds me
that you’re an Irish-American.’
‘Ha ha,’ Bradley responded, but warmly, without malice. He was
proud of his background and not ashamed of what he’d become,
despite not being what he should have been. Although his uneducated
grandparents had emigrated from Ireland and he’d been raised as a
Roman Catholic, Bradley had gone against convention by becoming a
staunch member of the Republican party, instead of a Democrat, which
most of the Irish were. He had also, after winning numerous awards for
distinguished service in the battlefields of France in the Great War,
become a successful lawyer, with his own law firm on Wall Street. So,
yes, he was proud of his background and achievements – and knew that
General Taylor, his close friend, truly respected him.
‘Anyway,’ the general said, wincing when the hammering on the
distant buildings started again, ‘you were starting to talk a blue streak,
so don’t let me stop you.’
‘This guy, Wilson,’ Bradley continued, ‘who is possibly an
aeronautical genius, has gone off to sell his talents to a country whose
whole interest in science is geared to its aggressive potential – in other
words, Hitler’s Third Reich.’
‘So?’ Taylor said.
‘So, since the Third Reich is devoted to war, we should be keeping
tabs on Wilson – but we can’t do it because we don’t have the
necessary intelligence-gathering organization.’
‘But we do have that.’
‘No,’ Bradley insisted, ‘we don’t. What we have is an
uncoordinated collection of different intelligence agencies. Army
Intelligence, or G2; the Office of Naval Intelligence; the FBI; the
Secret Service; the State Department; the Customs and Immigration services; the Federal Communications System Service; and the Treasury's Foreign Funds Control Unit – not one of which deals with
the others, let alone recognizing them.’
‘So?’
‘So what we need is a centralized, coordinated intelligence, like the
British Secret Intelligence Service.’
‘A sort of Central Intelligence Agency,’ Taylor said.
‘Right, General. You got it’
‘Ah!’ the general exclaimed softly. ‘So
that’s why you came all the
way from New York to see me, instead of using the phone. You want
to ride your favourite hobbyhorse again and persuade me to include
you in the formation of a proper, coordinated intelligence-gathering
agency. Have I got it right, Mike?’
‘Yes, General, you have. I’m a highly successful, thirty-eight-yearold lawyer with a plush office in Manhattan, but the best time I ever
had in my life was during the war.’
‘So I gathered,’ the general said. ‘The Distinguished Service Cross,
the Distinguished Service Medal, and the Medal of Honor...’ ‘Right,’ Bradley interjected. ‘Which proves I’m a survivor – and
that I’m willing
to hang in when the chips are down.’
‘No argument there,’ the general murmured. ‘Come on, let’ s head
back.’
They turned away from the river, heading back to where the men
with the saws and hammers and nails were swarming like flies over the
frames of buildings that would soon house a branch of army air force
intelligence and the new National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics. When Bradley thought of aeronautics, he thought of John Wilson;
and when he thought of that mysterious genius, he also thought, with
guilty, helpless longing, of Wilson’s mistress: the middle-age, laconic,
and undeniably attractive Gladys Kinder.
He just couldn't help himself.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘my kids are growing up, they’re both now
away at college, and although I still have Joan, I’m bored with my legal
work. I’m also, as you know, deeply convinced that America will,
sooner or later, have to become involved with the outside world. I
accepted your offer of unofficial intelligence gathering in Europe
because I hoped that it would lead to stronger ties with the intelligence
services already existing over there. And having been there, I’m
convinced more than ever that we need a central intelligence-gathering
agency – and I happen to know that you believe that also and have
even discussed it.’
‘You know more than you should,’ General Taylor said, 'which is,
of course, why we should take you on, on a more permanent basis.’ They skirted around the building site and stopped by Bradley's car,
parked just outside the general’s office, gleaming in sunlight. ‘Are you in the process of forming such an agency?’ Bradley asked
as he slipped into his car.
‘Early stages yet,’ the general replied, ‘but the short answer is yes.’ ‘And can I be part of it?’
‘Yes – when the time comes. In the meantime, you’d better get on
the trail of this John Wilson. If we can’t yet find out what he’s doing in
Germany, you might at least find out where he came from and just who
he is.’
‘I will,’ Bradley said.
When the general had entered his office, Bradley drove away,
feeling a lot better, disturbed only when he thought of Gladys Kinder
and her relationship with the enigmatic, possibly dangerous, Wilson. 'Goddammit!' he whispered.