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Robert managed to look abashed. “As a matter of fact, yes, I am interested in discussing that too.”
“Then why do you not come out and say so? Sit down.”
“Thank you.” Robert took a seat on the couch.
Beckerman said, “I am sorry I cannot offer you a drink, but we do not keep schnapps in the house anymore.” He tapped his stomach. “Ulcers. The doctors cannot even give me drugs to relieve the pain. I am allergic to all of them.” He sat down opposite Robert. “But you did not come here to talk about my health, eh? What is it you wish to know?”
“I want to talk to you about the passengers who were on your bus Sunday when you stopped near Uetendorf at the site of the weather-balloon crash.”
Hans Beckerman was staring at him. “Weather balloon? What weather balloon? What are you talking about?”
“The balloon that—”
“You mean the spaceship.”
It was Robert's turn to stare. “The … spaceship?”
“Ja, the flying saucer.”
It took a moment for the words to sink in. Robert felt a sudden chill. “Are you telling me that you saw a flying saucer?”
“Ja. With dead bodies in it.”
“Yesterday, in the Swiss Alps, a NATO weather balloon crashed. There were some experimental military objects aboard the balloon that are highly secret.”
Robert tried hard to sound calm. “Mr. Beckerman, are you certain that what you saw was a flying saucer?”
“Of course. What they call a UFO.”
“And there were dead people inside?”
“Not people, no. Creatures. It is hard to describe them.” He gave a little shiver. “They were very small with big, strange eyes. They were dressed in suits of a silver metallic color. It was very frightening.”
Robert listened, his mind in a turmoil. “Did your passengers see this?”
“Oh, ja. We all saw it. I stopped there for maybe fifteen minutes. They wanted me to stay longer, but the company is very strict about schedules.”
Robert knew the question was futile before he even asked it. “Mr. Beckerman, would you happen to know the names of any of your passengers?”
“Mister, I drive a bus. The passengers buy a ticket in Zurich, and we take a tour southwest to Interlaken and then northwest to Bern. They can either get off at Bern or return to Zurich. Nobody gives their names.”
Robert said desperately, “There's no way you can identify any of them?”
The bus driver thought for a moment. “Well, I can tell you there were no children on that trip. Just men.”
“Only men?”
Beckerman thought for a moment. “No. That's not right. There was one woman too.”
Terrific. That really narrows it down, Robert thought. Next question: Why the hell did I ever agree to this assignment? “What you're saying, Mr. Beckerman, is that a group of tourists boarded your bus at Zurich, and then when the tour was over, they simply scattered?”
“That's right, Mr. Smith.”
So there's not even a haystack. “Do you remember anything at all about the passengers? Anything they said or did?”
Beckerman shook his head. “Mister, you get so you don't pay no attention to them. Unless they cause some trouble. Like that German.”
Robert sat very still. He asked softly, “What German?”
“Affenarsch! All the other passengers were excited about seeing the UFO and those dead creatures in it, but this old man kept complaining about how we had to hurry up to get to Bern because he had to prepare some lecture for the university in the morning …”
A beginning. “Do you remember anything else about him?”
“No.”
“Nothing at all?”
“He was wearing a black overcoat.”
Great. “Mr. Beckerman, I want to ask you for a favor. Would you mind driving out with me to Uetendorf?”
“It's my day off. I am busy with—”
“I'll be glad to pay you.”
“Ja?”
“Two hundred marks.”
“I don't—”
“I'll make it four hundred marks.”
Beckerman thought for a moment. “Why not? It's a nice day for a drive, nicht?”
They headed south, past Luzern and the picturesque villages of Immensee and Meggen. The scenery was breathtakingly beautiful, but Robert had other things on his mind.
They passed through Engelberg, with its ancient Benedictine monastery, and Brünig, the pass leading to Interlaken. They sped past Leissigen and Faulensee, with its lovely blue lake dotted with white sailboats.
“How much farther is it?” Robert asked.
“Soon,” Hans Beckerman promised.
They had been driving for almost an hour when they came to Spiez. Hans Beckerman said, “It is not far now. Just past Thun.”
Robert felt his heart beginning to beat faster. He was about to witness something that was far beyond imagination, alien visitors from the stars. They drove through the little village of Thun, and a few minutes later, as they neared a grove of trees across the highway, Hans Beckerman pointed and said, “There!”
Robert braked to a stop and pulled over to the side of the road.
“Across the highway. Behind those trees.”
Robert felt a growing sense of excitement. “Right. Let's have a look.”
A truck was speeding by. When it had passed, Robert and Hans Beckerman crossed the road. Robert followed the bus driver up a small incline into the stand of trees.
The highway was completely hidden from sight. As they stepped into a clearing, Beckerman announced, “It is right there.”
Lying on the ground in front of them were the torn remains of a weather balloon.
Chapter Eight (#ulink_59ba42ea-9a54-5e58-8901-63720a65c9cd)
I’m getting too old for this, Robert thought wearily. I was really beginning to fall for his flying-saucer fairy tale.
Hans Beckerman was staring at the object on the ground, a confused expression on his face. “Verfalschen! That is not it.”
Robert sighed. “No, it isn't, is it?”
Beckerman shook his head. “It was here yesterday.”
“Your little green men probably flew it away.”
Beckerman was stubborn, “No, no. They were both tot—dead.”
Tot—dead. That sums up my mission pretty well. My only lead is a crazy old man who sees spaceships.
Robert walked over to the balloon to examine it more closely. It was a large aluminum envelope, fourteen feet in diameter, with serrated edges where it had ripped open when it crashed to earth. All the instruments had been removed, just as General Hilliard had told him. “I can't stress enough the importance of what was in that balloon.”
Robert circled the deflated balloon, his shoes squishing in the wet grass, looking for anything that might give him the slightest clue. Nothing. It was identical to a dozen other weather balloons he had seen over the years.
The old man still would not give up, filled with Germanic stubbornness. “Those alien things … They made it look like this. They can do anything, you know.”
There's nothing more to be done here, Robert decided. His socks had gotten wet walking through the tall grass. He started to turn away, then hesitated, struck by a thought. He walked back to the balloon. “Lift up a corner of this, will you?”
Beckerman looked at him a moment, surprised. “You wish me to raise it up?”
“Bitte.”
Beckerman shrugged. He picked up a corner of the lightweight material and lifted it while Robert raised another corner. Robert held the piece of aluminum over his head while he walked underneath the balloon toward the center. His feet sank into the grass. “It's wet under here,” Robert called out.
“Of course.” The Dummkopf was left unsaid. “It rained all yesterday. The whole ground is wet.”
Robert crawled out from under the balloon. “It should be dry.” “Crazy weather,” the pilot said. “Sunny here Sunday.” The day the balloon crashed. “Rainy all day today and clearing tonight. You don't need a watch here. What you really need is a barometer.”
“What?”
“What was the weather like when you saw the UFO?”
Beckerman thought for a moment. “It was a nice afternoon.”
“Sunny?”
“Ja. Sunny.”
“But it rained all day yesterday?”
Beckerman was looking at him, puzzled. “So?”
“So if the balloon was here all night, the ground under it should be dry—or damp, at the most, through osmosis. But it's soaking wet, like the rest of this area.”
Beckerman was staring. “I don't understand. What does that mean?”
“It could mean,” Robert said carefully, “that someone placed this balloon here yesterday after the rain started and took away what you saw.” Or was there some saner explanation he had not thought of?
“Who would do such a crazy thing?”
Not so crazy, Robert thought. The Swiss government could have planted this to deceive any curious visitors. The first stratagem of a cover-up is disinformation. Robert walked through the wet grass scanning the ground, cursing himself for being a gullible idiot.
Hans Beckerman was watching Robert suspiciously. “What magazine did you say you write for, mister?”
“Travel and Leisure.”
Hans Beckerman brightened. “Oh. Then I suppose you will want to take a picture of me, like the other fellow did.”
“What?”
“That photographer who took pictures of us.”
Robert froze. “Who are you talking about?”
“That photographer fellow. The one who took pictures of us at the wreck. He said he would send us each a print. Some of the passengers had cameras, too.”
Robert said slowly, “Just a moment. Are you saying that someone took a picture of the passengers here in front of the UFO?”
“That's what I am trying to tell you.”
“And he promised to send you each a print?”
“That's right.”
“Then he must have taken your names and addresses.”
“Well, sure. Otherwise, how would he know where to send them?”
Robert stood still, a feeling of euphoria sweeping over him. Serendipity, Robert, you lucky sonofabitch! An impossible mission had suddenly become a piece of cake. He was no longer looking for seven unknown passengers. All he had to do was find one photographer. “Why didn't you mention him before, Mr. Beckerman?”
“You asked me about passengers.”
“You mean he wasn't a passenger?”
