“If there’s nothing to this, Colonel, what’s the harm of me staying around, and seeking out some more tall tales?”
Blanchard rose slowly, placed his pipe in an ashtray, and quite dramatically rested both his palms on the desk and leaned across, almost whispering, “You have a distinguished war record, Mr. Heller. You served your country faithfully and well. I’m asking you, as one patriot to another, to leave this be. To pack your bag and leave the Roswell area.”
I shook my head, grinned at him-not as winning a grin as his, I’m sure, but it was all I had. “First of all, Colonel, my war record isn’t all that distinguished-not unless you consider a Section Eight something worth framing and putting on the wall. Second, I get real nervous when people talk patriotism. It’s like when somebody says they expect you to do the ‘Christian’ thing.”
Blanchard stood erect. “That was not a threat, Mr. Heller. This was an embarrassing incident, and we’d prefer not to have it dredged up again.”
“Even if you could have another good laugh over it?”
He sighed, shook his head, wearily. “I had hoped you’d cooperate.”
“You mean, go home, and quash this story?”
“Yes.” He pointed at me with the pipe stem, emphasizing certain words. “Let me say off the record … hypothetically … that if the Air Force were presenting a story to the public that did not represent the true facts, in this or any instance, there would be a good reason for it. Having to do with security considerations, and the public good. And I would hope a loyal American would respect the wishes of his government. Loose lips, as we used to say, sink ships.”
“Including flying saucers?”
“Mr. Heller, you disappoint me.”
I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms. “Say, Butch-did they ever find that pilot who crashed that plane loaded down with whiskey?”
Blanchard blanched. “How did you …”
“I pride myself on my intelligence, too, Colonel.” I stood. “Can you have somebody give me a lift back to Roswell? Or maybe have your men take me out in the desert and shoot me?”
“I don’t find you very amusing, Mr. Heller.”
“Sorry-I’m fresh out of weather balloons.”
Blanchard picked a receiver off one of his phones, said, “Send Kaufmann over here.” Then he hung up, and said, “No MPs, Mr. Heller-a civilian will take you back to town. Now, would you mind stepping out of my office? Step outside the building, in fact. I think I’ve seen quite enough of you.”
The colonel kept his word: no MPs waited to accompany me off the base. My driver was a rather grizzled- looking, brown-haired, square-headed, broad-shouldered civilian in his thirties, in a short-sleeved plaid shirt and chinos. He’d already been behind the wheel, waiting outside, when I’d climbed in the front seat; and we were outside the gate and tooling toward town before he took one blunt-fingered hand off the wheel to offer it in a handshake.
“Frank Kaufmann,” he said, in a low-pitched, slightly graveled voice.
His handshake was firm. My straw fedora was at my feet; traveling in the open-air jeep was making my hair stand up, if what I’d been hearing today hadn’t already done that.
“Nate Heller,” I said, adjusting my sunglasses.
Kaufmann glanced over at me, raising eyebrows that were as brown and wild as the brush streaking by us; his eyes were a light, clear brown and he had a sly smile going.
“Jesse Marcel’s friend,” he said.
“Now how do you know that?”
There seemed to be a twinkle in those amber eyes. “Maybe it’s ’cause I’m in charge of security out at the base.”
“A civilian in charge of security?”
He shrugged, still smiling, a private smile. “Well, I wasn’t always a civilian. Used to be a master sergeant. During the war I was the NCOIC under General Scanlon.”
Noncommissioned officer in charge.
“You must’ve had a pretty high clearance,” I said, “considering the 509th was the only air squadron flying atomic bombs.”
“I knew what I was doin’. When I left the service in ’45, I was offered my old duties at RAAF, in a civilian capacity, this time. It’s delicate, maintaining friendly relations with a nearby community, like Roswell, when you’ve got top-secret stuff goin’ on. The press makes requests, the mayor wants to take dignitaries on tours, and sometimes you gotta say no. Me bein’ out of uniform helped smooth that kinda thing over.”
“Did it.” This guy was striking me as a blowhard and a bore.
Kaufmann chuckled, then lifted a hand from the wheel to gesture toward the desolation around us. “You know, looking out at all this tranquillity, you’d never guess such earth-shakin’ events could take place out in these wide open spaces…. First atom bomb went off not far from here, at the Trinity test site. Manhattan Project, that was over at Los Alamos. Did you know that when they set that bomb off, a bunch of the scientists thought there was a real chance it’d spark a chain reaction that’d lead to the end of the world?”
“No.” I was listening closer now.
“Well, they thought that, all right, and went ahead and set it off, anyway. What does that tell you about scientists? Not to mention ol’ Uncle Sam.”
“It is a sobering thought,” I said, and wasn’t kidding.
Kaufmann glanced at me and his eyes had turned as sly as his smile. “You know what they’re doin’ over at White Sands?”
“No.”
“You remember the V-2s, don’t you? Them big firecrackers that leveled London?”
The V-2-the fabled buzz bomb-was a rocket, the world’s first large-scale one, at that.
“Well,” Kaufmann was saying, “over at White Sands, the Air Force is playin’ with captured V-2s, and you know who’s helping them? You know who’s in charge?”
“No.”
“Bunch of goddamn Nazis.”
“Nazis. Are running the White Sands Proving Ground.”
He nodded emphatically. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Smooth son of a bitch named von Braun is runnin’ things-he’s a ‘technical adviser.’ He’s not the only one, either-more Nazi scientists runnin’ around over there than you can shake a stick at. Gettin’ kowtowed to, when they oughta be lined up and shot, or maybe hung with piano wire.”
My first impulse was to laugh at this nonsense, but then Teddy Kollek’s words flashed through my brain:
“They’re launching rockets over there,” Kaufmann was saying. “Real Flash Gordon stuff. Revamped V-2s. Trying to see how high they can shoot the sumbitches, trying to be more accurate, go further, carry a bigger payload of explosives. Sometimes, instead of TNT, they’re loadin’ up the noses with photographic equipment, and X-ray, and mice, and even monkeys.”
“What for?”
“The Nazis say we’re goin’ to the moon, someday. Outer space. They talk about it like it’s their goddamn religion.”
This guy was clearly insane-yet another candidate for the suite next to Forrestal’s; I was starting to wish Blanchard had sent me with the MPs, instead. Roswell was looming up ahead, and I was relieved.
And yet I was curious enough to ask: “Why are you telling me this, Frank? This sounds like classified material, to me….”
Kaufmann shrugged, and one eye under one wild eyebrow winked at me. “Some of it is. What the hell, one civilian to another … one
