'Sir, first question; how do we know all of this? Secondly, where does the Sun of the Sleepless fit in, I mean, how is it that they have the vortex weapon if the Nazis managed to secure it in Argentina? What do we know about them?'
A grin creased Kappel's face.
'You ever heard of Operation Paperclip?'
It was Jackson who sat up in his chair.
'The US plan to take possession of Nazi Germany's technological innovations?'
'Absolutely correct!' barked the laptop speakers as the face on the screen nodded energetically.
'On May 8th, 1945, the victory over Nazi Germany was effectively complete and just like any other conquering army throughout all of history, we wanted our share of the spoils of war. Previously, with the end of the European conflict in sight, President Harry Truman had ordered the execution of 'Operation Overcast', later renamed as 'Paperclip' and a secret programme specifically aimed at recruiting the scientists of the Reich for employment in the US. Of course, we had been doing exactly that anyway for months and 'Paperclip' was just a formalisation of the recruitment we'd already started, nevertheless, the concepts of recruitment and employment probably do not reflect the reality of the terms and conditions that were imposed on the men and women we wanted.
'In most cases, the scientists we were after had a simple choice before them; work for us or wait for the Russians to come for them. You might call it a choice between coercion and compulsion, but, even remaining in Germany to rebuild the country was only ever a temporary option for most of the scientists; those who had not yet come to attention of the victors.'
Jolene remembered one of Jackson's previous presentations.
'We smashed and grabbed our way across Europe didn't we?'
'Well, that is a little unfair,' defended Kappel, pursing his lips. 'Although the German rocket programme was high on our agenda, we were interested in anything that represented advanced technology, especially in the aviation fields where the Germans had produced some prototype aircraft that were way beyond anything we could muster - they had the ideas but not the time, resources or backing of the personalities of the Reich to bring them to fruition.
'The problem was, the other allies were also interested in doing exactly the same thing - their share of the loot - and it was a case of 'grab what you can'! Anybody that was deemed significant was assessed in terms of their support for the previous regime, although admittedly, not so that we could make an ethical judgement on their suitability for employment but so that we knew how much effort to put into the de-Nazification process, at least on paper, however, it wasn't an ideological adjustment as such.'
'You mean that we turned a blind eye when they had something that we wanted?' Jolene added caustically.
Kappel ignored the comment and continued.
'There was an organisation - the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency - which, among other things, went to work falsifying political biographies and manufacturing fictitious employment records, anything to expunge the details of the Nazi past from the intellectual treasures we were amassing. The most well-known example of this was concerned with the German rocket programme, the so-called 'V' weapons. Although we already had the atomic bomb almost ready for deployment we were aware that dropping it out of a plane wasn't the ideal solution. It didn't take much for our military to realise that if we could take the development of the V2 missiles to the next level, then we could deliver atomic warheads via long range missiles. We grabbed over one hundred aerospace engineers with Dr Werner von Braun probably being the most famous personality. It was only later that minds turned to the use of rockets for space exploration, our primary objective always had a strategic military bias.'
Jackson squinted slightly, considering the intelligence that would have been available.
'- but the Bell? At that time we couldn't have known what had happened to it?'
'Indeed not,' agreed Kappel, nodding his head, 'we knew something of it from the intelligence that we had received and some gossip between our new recruits, some of which tallied with Hanna's reports. Bormann's deal had given us the location of numerous technological marvels and during his early negotiations he even hinted at the Silesian works although not detailing exactly what was there. In retrospect, that was an insurance policy - he didn't want us bombing the crap out of the place before he could evacuate the technology and he relied on us wanting it badly enough to refrain from targeting it.'
Kappel took another swig of water.
'It is historical fact that we directed an entire army under the command of Patton to spearhead toward what was then Czechoslovakia - obtaining the alleged
Wunderwaffen
along the way played no small part in our plans. As it was, Soviet pressure stopped us and although we liberated Pilsen and most of Western Bohemia we could go no further. We didn't get the Bell laboratories although we did later manage to round up some of the lower level technical staff.'
Jolene thought for a moment, considering the possibilities.
'So did we manage to build our own Bell? Did we build our own ray-guns?'
Kappel overlooked the slightly cynical tone and sighed, a hint of the exhaustion that he felt pervading his body.
'Not at all. Don't get me wrong, we tried, we tried damned hard for years and years but we could never get it to work. Our problem was that we attempted to use conventional physics to understand their unconventional breakthrough. Even when it was staring us in the face we couldn't accept that Aether physics was a reality. As far as we were concerned the secret was lost and no amount of investigation into the ex-Nazi community that sprang up in Argentina brought us any closer. I've mentioned Reagan's SDI programme before; we ended up going down the route of using conventional nuclear technology to create gamma blasts and thermonuclear beams, blunt hammers rather than surgical blades.'
He paused for a moment before drawing a deep breath.
'We never managed to recreate the vortex cannons that the Germans had planned, however, the Russians did manage to get something working, they were a little bit more imaginative in their science than us and their cache of technology and human resources from 1945 allowed them to actually build their own equivalent of the Bell! The concept had lived on!'
'What?' Jackson barked as Jolene wrinkled her nose in disbelief.
'It worked, in a fashion,' said Kappel, 'but initially they only ever managed to generate field effects and it took them another two decades to get anywhere near what the Germans had envisioned or even actually achieved. They tested it on a few occasions and we have evidence that it displayed all of the characteristics we had come to expect from the Nazi Bell, but, it all went horribly wrong and the project itself was not just cancelled but completely vaporised during one such field effect test.
'Rumour has it that the scientists working on the project had decided that the world was better off without the technology and in June 1966 they gave their lives to destroy the whole plant, instantaneously incinerating themselves and their entire research using a massive vortex to destroy their laboratory. Apparently, the phosphorescent orb of the explosion was even seen by the aircrews of a couple of airliners flying over Teheran, glowing on the horizon like nothing they had ever seen before. The programme was effectively closed down and never pursued on the same scale again - after all, anybody that knew anything about the theoretical or technological aspects of the project had been wiped off the face of the earth, not to mention the machine itself.'
The room was silent again before Jolene spoke.
'So what of the Sun of the Sleepless and the weapon that is being threatened now?'
Kappel cocked his head and blinked slowly.
'Simple really, during the war years the Sun of the Sleepless kept tabs on the programme supervised by the Nazis through the scientists recruited from the Society for Truth. Using the cover of the Vril Society, they were no doubt biding their time, waiting for the moment when they could reclaim their intellectual property rights. As it was, the events of 1945 overtook them and as the war came to a close the Bell was spirited away before they could get their hands on it.
'However, as with the best laid plans of mice and men, even Bormann's monumental smuggling achievements didn't save the Bell technology for the rise of the Fourth Reich. They had the components, the technology, but not the minds that understood how it all worked or the vision to see how it could work. They suffered the same problem as us in our attempts to recreate the physical effects - a complete lack of imagination.
'It was like the Native Americans getting hold of Winchester rifles back in the pioneer days - without the technology to manufacture bullets, the rifles soon became nothing more than fancy sticks. The work in Argentina fizzled out and basically went nowhere. Bormann's scientists managed to cook up some nice toys to keep the government that protected them happy, but basically, the Bell components were left to rot in the jungle laboratories for lack of development success.'
Kappel looked at Jackson and Jolene, understanding that he hadn't answered their question.
'Russia!' he exclaimed as if it were obvious.
'Russia?' queried Jackson.
'Neither the US or the Soviets managed to get hold of the original Bell scientists since most of them had been shot on the orders of Kammler during the Nazi evacuation. However, Cold War intelligence indicates that when the dust had settled after World War II, the Soviets had managed to engage some low-level technical staff from the original project. The reality was that although they had some knowledgeable hired hands, the theory and leaps of imagination required to drive the project forward was actually drip fed by a shadowy freelance espionage organisation based in one of the satellite republics of the USSR going by the initials 'KSN' for
Komitet Solntse Nespyashchikh
, which basically translates from the Russian to 'committee for the Sun of the Sleepless'.
'The KSN group fed information to the Russian team claiming that it had come from US sources, although of course, it couldn't be further from the truth. After the incident in 1966 that effectively shut-down the project, the assumption is that the KSN walked off into the sunset with all the information they needed to recreate the necessary technology for themselves. My guess is that they have spent the better part of half a century implementing their own organisational infrastructure to create a virtual manufacturing base, engaging legitimate companies and research labs to work in isolation and provide them with the components and materials necessary to build their very own vortex cannon. To build it, and then aim it at us!'
As she mused on what had been said, Jolene considered that it was not what Kappel had told them that bothered her so much but what he was still keeping to himself. The Sun of the Sleepless had threatened to use the supposed vortex cannon against the US and it appeared that the evidence supported their claims; however, it still did not clarify why Kappel had not told them all of this in the first place.
'Sir, this is all very well, but why didn't you tell us this at the beginning?' Jolene queried, her frown forming deep ridges above her nose. 'We have been wasting our time!'
Kappel had never been chastised by a subordinate before but he let the remark go, shrugging nonchalantly.
'I've said it before - plausible deniability.'
Her expression clearly conveyed the fact that she did not accept the statement.
'Jolene, everything I have told you is classified at the highest levels; this is buried so deep that even the President never gets to hear of it, even if bits and pieces are already in the public domain. Do you really think we want the world to know that we dealt with Martin Bormann, even if the conspiracy community suspects it anyway? In fact, the kooks out there help us to maintain the veil, providing more disinformation than we could ever hope to achieve. Even though I have been candid about a number of things, there are secrets connected to this that go way beyond what you need to know.
'As far as we were concerned the technology was the important thing, not the Sun of the Sleepless. Our interest in them fizzled out but we never forgot about the technology that was actually delivered and enticingly promised by the German scientists we had on the payroll. As an example, the Horten brothers' flying wing and Kenneth Arnold's sighting in 1947 is the least of the examples that I would share with you!'
Jackson instantly caught the reference to the birth of the modern day UFO myth.
'That sighting and the subsequent media coverage provided us with the best cover-up imaginable for the advanced technology we had obtained, way beyond our wildest dreams. Hell, what was seen that day weren't even disc shaped let alone from outer space. The world doesn't need to know that it was a group of modified Ho 229 flying wings that were sighted by Arnold or that they were even then still powered by jet engines developed by the Nazis, let alone letting the world know about the possibilities of vortex technology that had escaped us. You think it would have done us any good to reveal that Bormann had bought us off? Then or now?
'We had the best intentions when we made the deal, as long as his shipment was en route to us he was safe and he made sure that he used that time to escape. Once we had the uranium we fully intended to catch up with him but he was gone, he had disappeared. Later, we tracked him down but by then he had another insurance policy, international finance - the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of hidden Nazi funds that he had access to could have been used to destabilise the global post-war recovery, especially since he had invested so heavily into our own banking system. We couldn't risk that for the sake of bringing to justice a man that the world already thought was dead.'