Chapter One Thousand Three Hundred Thirty-Three
3rd July 1959
Peenemünde
Sigi was sitting in the command bunker following the countdown and feeling a bit useless. She had made the mistake of going home while on leave and had ended up getting in an argument with her mother over the identity of her father. Once again, Sigi had listened to her make a comment about that man’s identity and had confronted her directly over the matter. All Sigi’s mother said was that he was dead and that Sigi was better for it. This had been a constant source of aggravation for Sigi, her mother seemed to delight in saying things about her father but seemed to be intending to take that information to her grave.
The noise that thousands of residents of the Pomeranian Coast woke up to was shattering as the rocket sled shot down the track breaking the speed of sound. It was the third attempt to get the bird to fly after two previous attempts had failed rather spectacularly. It was whispered that the program had been getting funded so that Eugen Sänger and Irene Bredt wouldn’t be tempted to take the technology elsewhere. There was also the chance that Silbervogel might just work and even if it didn’t the odds that useful technology would emerge from the project was too great to get rid of it entirely. Either way, they needed a successful test flight or else the project was finally going to get the axe.
Sigi was here today as the observer from the Raumfahrer Program, apparently everyone else senior to her had better things to do. At the same time, Albrecht had briefed her on the sensitive political nature of the project. It had emerged from a theoretical exercise in Wunsdorf-Zosen regarding the possibility of another war with the United States during the Soviet War. It was a worst-case scenario that had needed to be explored because of the Navy operating in close proximity to US held islands in the Pacific.
The result was that the Luftwaffe had issued an order for a bomber that could hit targets within the Continental United States. The atmosphere of suspicion that had prevailed in the years since had seen to it that the “Antipodal” Bomber projects had never really gone away, the term Amerika Bomber was never to be said by anyone, ever. Oddly, it was Silbervogel, long regarded as the greatest longshot of the entire program that was now regarded as having the greatest chance of achieving the original order’s aims. Among other things, any bomber capable of reaching the United States didn’t need to carry a large bombload. It just needed to carry one bomb and deliver it with enough accuracy to hit a city, that would be more than enough. If they could get it work, that is.
“We have successful separation” Sigi hear one of the technicians call out, all she could see was the cloud of steam on the western horizon where the rocket sled had run out of track.
Now came the wait over the next few minutes as they waited to see if the latest version of the Silbervogel disintegrated like the previous two attempts or skipped off the top of the atmosphere like Sänger and Bredt had calculated it would.
Breslau, Silesia
With her family moving to Berlin, Helene knew that she would once again be splitting her time between Breslau and Berlin, or at least far more than she had been doing. The announcement of the move had raised a few eyebrows. It seemed like everyone in Silesia had memories of the people who had been sent to Berlin, in theory to represent them, only to become creatures of the capital and unresponsive to their constituents needs. It was obviously a worry that Helene might do that despite whatever promises she made.
That was what drove her meet with as many from her constituents as she could while she was in her office. One of them had been a Polish farm family who lived near Kattowitz, recently their eldest daughter had failed to come home from school. They didn’t think that the local police were taking the matter seriously enough and were hoping that Helene could do something about it. All they had been told was that the fifteen-year-old had probably run off and if they figured out who she was shacked up, then with they would find her.
Apparently, she wasn’t that kind of girl. They never were, Helene thought to herself remembering what she had been like at that age. And the mother was certain that something awful must have befallen her daughter. Again, that was something that parents always tended to think.
Helene almost dismissed them until she remembered the conversation that she’d had with Kat a few days earlier. Some American Journalist had written her biography and had done exhaustive research into her life. It was hardly a surprise that it had been someone from across the Atlantic who had done that. No one who was within Kat’s easy reach would have dared.
Normally, Helene wasn’t inclined to gainsay the local police, they tended to know their local communities and they were probably correct about where the girl had run off to. However, Kat had been wallowing in self-pity the way she always did whenever things were not going her way. Perhaps an excuse to leave the city was exactly what she needed. Kat spends a couple days in Silesia, clearing her head in the process. She then tracks down the girl, preferably before her parents became grandparents. She would probably rip the rake who had lured the girl off a new asshole, but then everyone knew that Kat only happened to people who deserved it. Justice would be done. Helene would look good because she had brought the Emperor’s own personal investigator, who happened to be Helene’s sister-in-law, to settle the matter quickly. It was perfect.
