The Gemini Divergence (18 page)

Everyone that was waiting, even Volmer,
started picking up pieces and placing them into the trucks.

Gus picked up a newspaper that was flapping
in the breeze when he noticed something unusual about it. It looked
like it was in German.

He carried it over to Volmer and said, “Hey
Mr. Volmer, is this German? It sure looks like it is to me.”

Volmer started to read the front page and
said, “Very curious, it is indeed German but it was printed in
Buenos Aires, Argentina.” He paused as he read some more and added,
“The day before yesterday, Oh my, how did this get here?”

Volmer folded it up and carried it to his car
to figure out later.

He walked back to Gus, who was crossing off
his usual balloon retrieval check sheet, when Gus explained, “Mr.
Volmer, I know that you had already raised suspicions that some of
pieces of this mystery craft were missing, but I am about to expand
your mystery.”

“How so?” inquired Volmer.

Gus double checked his list and looked
around, then said, “Your secret listening device is missing.”

Volmer scratched his head in wonder.
Did
they know what it was, or did they pick it up by accident? Even if
the later were the case; would they figure out what we were using
it for?

Gus started to clean up in a different area.
As he was working behind an embankment that was not highly visible
to the rest of the crash sight, he suddenly yelled, “Mr. Volmer!
Come quick.”

When Volmer arrived to where Gus was
standing, he could see that the airmen had his foot on top of a
piece of debris that looked like part of the fuselage.

Gus quickly sent the others that responded
away until he was alone with Volmer.

“What is it Herr Danuser, what is the
excitement about?” asked Volmer.

When Gus could see that no one else was
looking, he pulled his foot from the piece and turned it over to
display a Luftwaffe Cross, about two feet across.

Volmer gasped and put one hand over his mouth
and the other over his heart, and looked as though he were going to
pass out.

He thought to himself that this surely has
proven his suspicions that some Nazis have escaped and are using
these secret craft to travel freely around the world.

Volmer now was certain that this would be
enough to finally convince Lemay of his theories.

Lemay was not in total disbelief, but he was
extremely reserved and skeptical. He wanted facts, and now Volmer
had finally found the smoking gun.

Gus asked, “Are you all right Mr. Volmer?” as
he turned the piece back over to hide the emblem.

Once again Gus suspected that Volmer was
keeping something from him.

“Please excuse me, Herr Danuser,” pleaded
Volmer, “I did not expect to ever see one of those again.”

Volmer looked around and then said, “We must
not let the others see this. Come quickly, help me stow this in my
trunk before somebody comes back this way.”

“What does this mean?”

Volmer didn’t want to hear uncomfortable
questions right at this moment. He grew insecure and slightly
agitated, “I don’t know, but we must show this to General Lemay in
Fort Worth without telling anyone else first. He will know what to
do.”

Then Volmer thought
, I hope
.

*~*

Gus and Jack had spread the debris out neatly
for inspection in orderly rows along a locked hanger’s floor.

Volmer and Gus had crated the piece of
fuselage with the Luftwaffe insignia and set it aside, so people of
less sensitive clearances would not ask questions about it.

The R.A.A.F base commander and XO, along with
assorted other top Air Force base level brass, were examining the
rest of the wreckage, wondering what it could be.

The base commander asked Volmer, who was
following in the general’s entourage, “What do you think this is
Dr. Volmer?”

“Well, obviously many of these parts are from
one of our Trinity observation balloons. But, there are other
unknown parts that I can not explain.”

“Do you think an airplane collided with your
balloon?”

“I really can’t say. There is no engine.
There are no controls or identifying markings. There is no way to
tell what it was other than it was probably man made, i.e. aluminum
and rivets.”

Suddenly, an aid walked up to the group and
announced, “Excuse me for interrupting gentlemen but General Lemay
is on the phone.”

The base commander automatically assumed that
the call was for him as he announced, “Will you excuse me
gentlemen, while I take this.”

The aid, then again, politely interrupted the
base commander, “I’m sorry sir, but the call is not for you. It is
for Mr. Volmer, and the general stated very … bluntly, that he
didn’t have all day.”

Volmer smiled as he started walking along
with the aid while saying, “I’m sure that General Lemay may have
worded that a little differently… Didn’t he?””

The aid just smiled and said, “Yes sir, the
general has a very unique and colorful way of using our language,”
as he guided Volmer to the phone.

Volmer picked up the receiver and waited for
the aid to walk away, then answered, “Volmer speaking.”

He could then here the unmistakable voice of
General Lemay, “Mr. Volmer, I need you and your crew to load that
debris onto your converted B-29 and zip it here to Fort Worth
Field, post haste. I don’t care what any of those other nosy bums
there think. Tell them to shut their mouths and call me if they
have a problem.”

“Yes Herr General,” answered Volmer, “I have
some disturbing discoveries to share with you.”

“Well I’ve got something pretty upsetting as
well,” interjected Lemay.

“Oh, what would that be?”

“I just got a call from Capt. Hanson at White
Sands. It appears that they had uninvited visitors last night and
you may be picking up the pieces of one of our unsolicited
guests.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Lemay smartly replied, “And they
found another paperclip scientist named Hein, dead in your
quarters. Do you have any explanation for why that may be, and why
there are footprints in a bee line from their landing zone to your
quarters?”

“I swear that I know nothing about … wait a
minute, Hein has been repeatedly asking me about some old drawings
and files of mine,” exclaimed Volmer in a sudden revelation.

“What drawings? What files?” demanded
Lemay.

“They are from when I worked on the secret
craft that I have been telling you about. You know … my theory,”
suggested Volmer, who then remembered the emblem, “I also must add
that I have some very intriguing evidence now that you must see to
back this up as well.”

“Damn,” exclaimed Lemay, “We may have to move
the project sooner than planned. I’ll have to get back with you on
that. I need to see that wreckage immediately. You can brief me on
your other findings as soon as you arrive, but before you leave,
tell the base commander there, that I said to release a second
press release that it was in fact, just a weather balloon. We’ll
also hold an official press conference from here at Fort Worth
Field as soon as you get here.”

Volmer could hear Lemay pause to take a puff
from his cigar and then speak again, “If they have any questions
about the press release, tell them to call General Ramey. He knows
about the crash… He just doesn’t know everything that we do. We’re
also going to have to come up with a line of shit to feed Captain
Ruppelt.”

“A line of what?” asked a surprised Volmer,
“Who is Captain Ruppelt?”

Lemay explained, “He’s the new upstart
Investigator that the Secretary of the Air Force has placed in
charge of a new project called Grudge, to find an explanation … for
lack of a better description, your theory, or little green men.
I’ll think of something to feed him. If he comes sniffing around,
don’t tell him anything except my phone number and the directions
to the nearest phone. Got it?”

“Yes, Herr General, I will be their as soon
as possible,” answered Volmer as he hung the phone back up on its
perch.

He stood their thinking for a moment, rubbing
his chin, and then he walked back into the main hanger and yelled,
“Gus?!”

~~~**^**~~~

The Cold War
/ Fort Worth Field (Carswell AFB)

In 1947 Forth Worth Field was the
headquarters for the newly organized Strategic Air Command as well
as the famed 8
^th
Air Force. Before
1947 was over, the Army Air Force would be reorganized into the
U.S. Air Force and Fort Worth Field would be renamed Carswell
AFB.

*~*

Volmer and Gus had just endured the
uncomfortable flight from White Sands to Fort Worth Army Field in
their small unit’s recently converted B-29.

Since the only installed seats were to
accommodate the normal crew, Gus and Volmer had to sit on their
duffle bags on the floor of the radio cabin for the entire duration
of the flight.

The plane had slowed to a crawl at the end of
the runway when a brightly checkered follow-me jeep pulled out in
front of them and led them onto a taxi way, exiting the runway.

As they taxied along Gus could see a massive
construction crew working on the new runway.

They were building a special runway capable
of supporting the weight of the new B-36s that were being built in
a monstrously large building just on the other side of airstrip
from the air base.

They followed the small vehicle to a hanger,
where the waiting “wing-walkers” took over, and guided the aircraft
right up to the entrance of the hanger.

The pilot and the engineer started to shut
down the engines but gave the order to remain seated.

Then a waiting tow tractor hooked onto the
forward wheel strut and pulled the plane into the hanger before the
crew was allowed to disembark.

All of the ground crew began to leave the
hanger as the captain finally allowed everyone out of their
seats.

Gus could hear the sound of the Ford truck
motors used to shut the hanger doors and knew that the doors were
closing before they had even opened the exit hatch of the
aircraft.

How unusual
, he thought.

Also unusual is what he saw after he climbed
out from under the plane, as it dripped condensation onto Gus and
the others like rain.

He was used to seeing ground crew already
starting their routines on the aircraft, but instead saw no one,
except the surprising and very ominous presence of General
Lemay.

Never in his career had Gus ever witnessed a
general waiting for a crew to de-plane.

He started to salute, but Lemay intervened
and said, “Don’t worry about that, son, I need to talk to you and
Mr. Volmer in private.”

The B-29 had been dramatically cooled from
the high altitude that it had been flying at, and was now
significantly cooling down the sweltering heat inside of the metal
hanger that was caused by the arid Texas summer day.

The plane’s crew was starting towards the
general, but he turned around and spoke to them, “Thank you
captain, you can take your crew to the flight debriefing now, I
need to talk to your passengers about your secret cargo.”

He then turned around to Volmer and Gus and
said, “For the most part, I want you to leave everything on the
plane for now, until we figure out what to do with it.”

Looking directly at Gus, he said, “We are
going to have a meeting of the minds in a conference room in a
separate building, so I want you to grab only the parts of the
wreckage that will be pertinent to the meeting. I have already had
a truck from the motor pool parked outside, and there is an airman
that knows where the meeting is waiting with it. He can help you
load the truck and then show you to the meeting.”

Gus responded, “Yes Sir, then walked away to
find the other airman.

Lemay turned to Volmer and said, “Mr. Volmer,
President Truman is waiting rather impatiently for a briefing about
this incident, so I am even more anxious than normal to find out
what you have found.”

Volmer reached into his duffle bag and pulled
out the newspaper that they had recovered from the wreckage and
handed it to Lemay. “We found this.”

“If you can’t read it, it’s a German language
paper from Buenos Aires that is dated just days before the crash. I
think that it is an indication that whoever was piloting this craft
speaks German and is frequenting Argentina.”

“This ‘is’ disturbing,” agreed Lemay as he
put his hand on his chin in thought.

Volmer continued, “Well Herr General, I have
some even more troubling evidence. We have also discovered a piece
of fuselage with German Luftwaffe markings on it.”

Lemay’s cigar almost fell out of his mouth as
he stepped back and placed his hand over his heart.