The journey in the dark, last night, to the stern of the ship where Spah’s dog was in its wicker basket, had not prepared Charteris for this staggering sight. On the maiden voyage he and Pauline had not taken the tour, as his wife suffered from vertigo. So he was as much a virgin as the rest of the group.
They were tiny worshipers in a vast cathedral of wires and arches and rings and girders and struts and yawning open space. Awestruck, they wended their way, surrounded by catwalks, rubber-treaded ladders, crisscrossings of bracing wires, steel-and-wire netting, and-strangest of all-the huge billowing gas cells that were the lungs of the ship. Light filtered in through the ship’s linen skin, providing an eerie grayish illumination that created a sense of unreality.
Dr. Ruediger pointed out fuel and water tanks bordering the gangway, saying, “We start with 137,500 pounds of diesel fuel for our four Daimler-Benz V-8 engines. As the fuel is consumed, the ship becomes lighter…. In fact, as you consume and use food for energy, the ship loses weight, and the captain compensates by valving off hydrogen.”
His voice echoing, the doctor rattled off more facts and figures, about maintaining the ship’s trim, the collecting and discarding of water ballast, and other matters. But the passengers weren’t really paying much attention-they were Jonahs wandering through a whale, and were busy being awestruck.
The postponing of the morning tour had, quite obviously (Charteris knew), been to allow a search for the absent Knoecher. But despite its cavernlike interior, and the plentiful pleats and crevices and overlaps of fabric, as well as the shafts designed to allow leaking gas to escape, and the network of girders and ladders and the framework skeleton itself, the Hindenburg provided few if any hiding places for a human.
On the other hand, concealing a small bomb would be child’s play.
As they traveled the narrow walkway to the stern, the engines-so barely noticeable on the passenger decks-built to a roar; other sounds fought for attention, including the whir of ventilation units. Now and then a gray-coveralled crew member would be spied on a ladder or perched above them, attending to a valve or other controls.
For the most part, these crew members ignored the intruders threading through their domain. But one of them-a tall, pale, baby-faced young man-was staring down. Charteris couldn’t shake the feeling that the young crew member was staring down at him, in particular.
“There’s Ulla!” Spah cried, pointing. He was just in front of Charteris.
“Who’s Ulla?” Hilda asked Charteris; she was following his lead.
“His dog.”
“Doctor,” Spah was saying, “I want to stop and say hello!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Spah, but our group needs to stay together. Those are my instructions.”
“Well, that’s fine-then we can all visit my Ulla. But do keep in mind she’s young and excitable.”
“Joe,” Charteris said, “your Ulla almost knocked you into the ocean last night. Let’s just move on, shall we?”
“Leslie! Don’t tell me you don’t like my dog!”
“I have nothing against dogs except that they are dirty, parasitic, and only too happy to lick any hand that feeds them.”
Spah grinned back. “Oh, Saint-you’re joking again!”
Actually, he wasn’t.
The group was stopped on the gangway, now.
With a strained smile, the doctor said, “Mr. Spah, you can come back later with a steward as your escort. We’re on a strict schedule, so that I may take another group out at three o’clock. Please come along, sir.”
But Spah was breaking off to climb a ladder up to the freight platform, saying, “Then go on ahead without me-I’ll catch up.”
“Mr. Spah, I can’t allow-”
Spah paused on the ladder and sneered over at the young doctor. “So the Germans are even running their zeppelins like concentration camps these days, huh?”
The young doctor looked stricken. Then he said, “All right, Mr. Spah. Please be careful.”
The group pressed on, descending two flights of stairs into the tail, where Ruediger-his voice weary-explained the emergency steering controls under the massive rudders. From here they could look out the tail fin’s windows at the Atlantic, eight hundred feet below, milky white in the afternoon mist.
By the time the doctor had led them back up the stairs, Joe Spah was waiting. The acrobat fell back into line, in front of Charteris, to whom he said, “I’m going to report that doctor for cruelty to animals.”
Ruediger either didn’t hear that or chose to ignore it as he led the group up a ladder to a higher gangway, where they headed back, walking single file through a jungle of lines and wires, the immense tan gas cells billowing like loose, sagging flesh. Shortly they came to a lateral crosswalk that led out to an engine gondola.
“Would anyone like to visit gondola number three?” the doctor asked over considerable engine noise. “Mr. Spah, perhaps?”
A gangway with a thin guide rail stretched over the sea to the small gondola, where a single mechanic tended one of the ship’s diesel engines.
“No thank you. I am an acrobat but not a fool.”
The doctor paused, as if tempted to disagree.
Margaret Mather, clasping her hands like a schoolgirl, said, “How I wish I had the temerity to try.”
Brightly, Gertrude Adelt said, “I’d like to give it a go!”
“Dear, are you sure?” her husband asked.
And indeed it was a treacherous proposition-Charteris was rather surprised the doctor had suggested it. The wind had to be barreling by at something like eighty knots.
Gertrude unpinned her leghorn hat and handed it to her husband; then she scrambled across the gangway, whipped by wind, and was gathered inside at the gondola’s door by a gray-uniformed mechanic.
Hilda said, “She is braver than I.”
“Or maybe just more foolish,” Charteris said.
Perhaps a minute later, Gertrude made her way quickly back, taking her husband’s hand, clearly shaken, saying, “The view was spectacular, but the noise! The noise was like the hammers of hell!”
As they resumed their Indian file way down the gangway, someone was moving up toward them: Chief Steward Kubis.
“Sorry to interrupt,” the steward said, “but Captains Pruss and Lehmann have requested Mr. Charteris’s presence.”
“You stay with the group,” Charteris told Hilda, touching her arm. “And I’ll see you at supper.”
She nodded, but looked less than thrilled at being left behind.
Then Charteris went with the steward while the tour headed toward the bow, for a look at the control gondola, which the author had, after all, already visited earlier this morning, when he had met with the two captains to tell them of their missing passenger.
And somehow Charteris didn’t think the captains were summoning him now to inform him Eric Knoecher had been found.
SEVEN
The Chief steward delivered Charteris to the officers’ mess, forward on portside B deck. The cozy room, decorated by a few framed nautical prints, was divided into two oversized booths, and Captain Pruss, Captain Lehmann, and Luftwaffe undercover man Fritz Erdmann were seated in the slightly smaller of these, by the wall of slanting windows (a continuation of the promenade deck), through which the gray overcast day filtered in. The other booth was empty.
Charteris took the single chair at the round table the L of the booth encompassed. By the window sat the crisply uniformed if blandly handsome Captain Pruss, his cap on the table before him, crown down, like a soup bowl waiting to be filled. Next to him (and directly across from the author) was the Hindenburg’s previous captain, stocky and unprepossessing in his rumpled brown suit; beside him slumped the glum Erdmann, graying blond hair slicked back, an unconvincing tourist in his tan sport jacket over a yellow sweater with a gold-and-yellow tie.