Projekt Saucer: Inception Part 124

'Anytime. No sweat.'

Grieves stood up with him. 'Are you going to that hospital right now?'

'Yes,' Bradley replied. 'I want to catch up with the 1st Army. I can't hang around too long.'

'Any messages for HQ in Paris?'

'Not yet,' Bradley said.

'Okay, Colonel, I'll see you in Berlin.'

'I sure as h.e.l.l hope so.'

Grieves grinned at him and left, taking the pilot with him. Bradley stood up and stretched, then said to Sergeant Ackerman, 'I'll take the jeep and be back in an hour or so. Can you hold the fort?'

'I'm not expecting many visitors,' Ackerman replied laconically, his gaze taking in the ruined walls and missing roof of the house.

'I'll bring you back a hot blonde,' Bradley said.

'You do that, Colonel.'

Bradley left the ruined building, pa.s.sing the armed guards, then climbed into his jeep and drove through Cologne, or what was left of it. The devastation was appalling. No street was untouched. He drove past skeletal buildings, imposing hillocks of rubble, the blackened remains of exploded tanks, overturned trucks, and mangled half-tracks. People still lived in the ruins, their pitiful possessions grouped around them, and children kicked up clouds of dust as they clambered over charred wooden beams and jumped off the remains of walls. Occasionally shots rang out the army was cleaning out German snipers and Frenchmen with FFI armbands and women armed to the teeth were kicking collaborators, the men bruised, the women with shaved heads, along the streets and into bas.e.m.e.nts and rubble-strewn rooms to mete out rough justice.

Bradley tried not to see that, because although he strongly disapproved, he could do little to stop it. He was therefore undeniably relieved to arrive at the hospital. Though it was still standing, it had also been severely damaged and was surrounded by rubble.

He parked as some Flying Fortresses growled overhead, heading for the Rhine and the German cities beyond it, and thought of the b.a.l.l.s of fire, the so-called Foo fighters, that had been hara.s.sing and sometimes destroying Allied bombers for months now.

Saucer-shaped objects, he thought. It could only be Wilson.

And he had to admire Wilson, while also feeling a touch of dread. Bradley was more determined than ever to find him as he entered the hospital.

There was a jagged hole in the roof just above the reception desk and the floor below it was covered in broken plaster and a dirty white powder. Uniformed MPs were on guard, checking for malingerers, but they snapped to attention and saluted when Bradley stopped at the desk. He asked for Major General Saunders, the OSS officer who had called him there. When Saunders arrived, he forgot to salute, but offered his hand instead.

'Major General McArthur told me about you,' Saunders said with a casual, relaxing smile. 'He told me what you were after. This woman, we think she knew the man you want, and she's eager to talk. No love lost there, I think. Come on, Colonel, this way.'

'How is she?' Bradley asked as Saunders led him through the nearest door and into a corridor.

'Not too good,' Saunders replied. 'She copped a bomb in this very hospital. She was working here as a nurse for the Germans when we bombed it to h.e.l.l. She was buried in rubble, broke a lot of bones, and will possibly be paralysed for life. But she can talk. She's coherent. She came here from Berlin, where she'd lived in the Krhessen district with an SS engineer named Helmut Kruger. According to her records, which we found in the hospital files, she came here to work under the auspices of the SS and was otherwise being favoured with all the privileges of an SS dependant or wife. Since, according to those same records, she and Kruger had not been married, we wondered why this was so and decided to ask her about it. We were surprised, then, when she told us with some bitterness that the name "Kruger" was a pseudonym for an American engineer, John Wilson, who'd worked at the rocket research centre at k.u.mmersdorf, just fifteen miles south of Berlin. I conveyed this information to Major General McArthur and he told me to contact you. Your special baby, he said.'

He led Bradley along some more corridors, few of which were undamaged, then into a ward where the beds were crammed tightly together and the roof, which had collapsed, was temporarily covered with canvas sheeting. Most of the windows were also covered in canvas, and the wind drummed against it.

Saunders led Bradley to the bed of a woman whose steady, fearless gray gaze emerged from a swathe of bandages that covered her head and hid most of her features. Her arms and legs, protruding from a white sheet, were in plaster casts.

'Mrs Bernecker,' Saunders said, 'this is Colonel Bradley, from the American intelligence service, OSS. Mike, this is Mrs Greta Bernecker.'

'Hi,' Bradley said, feeling awkward because of the woman's injuries.

'h.e.l.lo,' the woman replied in good English. 'You wish to know about Wilson?'

Taken aback to hear Wilson mentioned so casually, like a living person, Bradley took a deep breath and said, 'Yes.'

'So... ask your questions.'

Bradley took another deep breath, surprised by his nervousness. He glanced at Saunders, who smiled back and said, 'I don't think you'll need me anymore, but if you do, you can find me through our temporary office right here in Cologne and you know where that is. Okay?'

'Okay,' Bradley said. He watched Saunders take his leave, pa.s.sing the other beds, sometimes nodding and waving at the patients he knew' When the OSS officer had gone, he turned back to Greta Bernecker.

'You were living with Wilson in Berlin, is that right?'

'Yes.'

'He was called "Kruger" at the time?'

'No. He was only listed officially as Kruger. The SS confiscated his American doc.u.ments and gave him those of a dead German named Kruger. I gather it was because they didn't want uninformed government clerks and administrators learning that an American, Wilson, was working for, and being supported by, the Third Reich. Officially, then, he existed as Kruger, but those who knew him, or worked with him, called him Wilson.'

'He was working at k.u.mmersdorf at that time?'

'Yes. He was actually working at k.u.mmersdorf West, at the other side of the old firing range, well away from the real rocket research centre.'