As she expected, there was no sound of any gas moving.
She looked through the pressure markings, and tried to calculate exactly how much helium would be necessary to cause her to become airborne once again. She understood that the tanks that made up part of the hold in the pilot gondola were trivial in comparison to the amount of helium which would have been necessary to fill up the main airship canopy.
Aliana ran her hands along the rest of the controls inside the pilot gondola. There weren’t many of them, and for the most part, they were merely monitoring devices: altimeters, pressure gauges, and engine pressure readers.
The Magdalena was a very simple machine compared to modern day standards of air travel.
Looking at the skeletons of the two pilots, she couldn’t help but wonder, what went wrong with your beautiful airship?
Before leaving the gondola, however, she noticed a locker marked “maintenance tools.” These airships were designed to be maintained by those onboard, come what may during their travels, in a time long before the existence of ground technicians and engineers, who nowadays could advise a pilot on his or her best choice of action with a simple radio message or computer signal.
Inside the locker, she found a number of tools, but only picked up a small metal box which contained a number of wrenches, and screwdrivers — just in case.
She then made her way along the airway, which linked the pilot gondola with the luxury passenger carrier, and then through that compartment to the one containing the engine. The engines were completely sealed in a protective casing. It appeared that the engine gondola had never been submerged into the water.
Much more basic than modern-day engines, the Magdalena’s forward propulsion system consisted of four Daimler-Benz 32HP diesel engines. Unlike their modern counterparts, these engines relied on hand power to crank. They were primitive, but simple and reliable to operate and maintain.
I wonder if you could be coaxed into working again.
Sam had inspected them earlier, and had said that given enough time, he’d get them working again. She assumed, at that time, that he’d meant to repair them in a workshop or something similar. In reality, someone would probably just replace all four of them with brand new replicas, if the Magdalena ever made it out of here.
Her mind returned to the problem at hand — that’s if I ever make it out of here, for that matter.
Aliana didn’t allow herself to dwell on the thought. Instead, she decided to find the manhole, and climb into the giant canopy. From the outside, it looked entirely intact. But who knew what that meant in terms of the structural stability of its aluminum. Few things are designed to survive 75 years in a cold, wet environment.
She climbed up the aluminum ladder, unscrewed the manhole cover, and entered the canopy.
As far as she could tell, it seemed to be intact.
Exploring the canopy took longer than the rest of the airship, but again, as far as she could tell, the canopy, if filled with helium or another lighter-than-air gas, could, in theory, fly again.
She climbed back down and entered the main gondola, where the skeleton of Fritz Ribbentrop stared back at her. Its metal suitcase still securely chained to his wrist.
What were you doing here Fritz? And what are we going to do with your virus?
Something didn’t seem to make sense to Tom as he banked the helicopter to the right in an attempt to get away from the strong reflection of the sun glistening off the waters of Lake Solitude.
He started to again descend off the mountain, but about two minutes later, he understood what was wrong. The powerful reflection he’d been trying to avoid, was moving in an up and downward direction! While that might mean very little to the casual observer, to a helicopter pilot, who had spent years flying over oceans and lakes, he knew that the up and downward flicker of the sun’s reflection was only normally seen in the ocean or large lakes which had swells or ripples, whereas the waters of Lake Solitude lay perfectly still in the morning sunlight.
It must be a signal from Sam!
He knew it as intrinsically as his body knew how to maneuver the complex controls of the helicopter to return for a second fly-over. There, in front of him, sprawled over a rocky outcrop on the edge of the lake, like a lizard absorbing the sun’s warmth, lay Sam.
At first glance, he looked as though he might be dead.
But, then he saw his friend sit up, smile at him, and raise the thumb of his left hand as if trying to hitch a ride from a passing motorist.
Tom carefully lowered the helicopter until he stopped its descent, hovering just above the rocky outcrop, mindful of the tall pines that lined the mountain to the east.
To his left, Tom watched as Sam opened the cockpit door, climbed inside and sat next to him in the front passenger seat.
“So, what took you so long?”
Tom immediately took off as soon as the door was closed.
“Okay, so what’s our next step?” he asked.
“Can we get back to the Tyrol crow’s nest?”
“No, not from what I hear. Your ‘friends’ know that you’re here, and they're pretty pissed off about it. I’m sure they have some of their goons on hand, just waiting for your return.”
“Okay, in that case, let’s go to Lugano. There’s a commercial dive shop there, and we’re going to need to get some heavy supplies to rescue Aliana.”
“Okay, you’re the boss,” Tom replied, as he started to input the details into his flight GPS.
Along the way, he waited patiently for Sam to tell him everything that had happened, including the discovery of the Magdalena, and about how Aliana was still trapped in the cavern below.
“We’ll have to return with enough equipment to rescue Aliana,” Sam said, through his chattering teeth. He looked dangerously cold. “We’re going to need to get some dynamite too. At the moment, there’s several hundred tons of rubble blocking our way.”
“Gotcha.”
When Sam stopped speaking, Tom said, “There’s just one problem.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that?”
“There’s an army on its way to Lake Solitude.” Tom looked over at Sam’s serious face as he continued, knowing that Sam wasn’t going to like the next part, “They’ve discovered that it’s the final resting place of the Magdalena.”
“How the hell did they figure that out?”
Tom then told him about the man who had contacted him while he was in Paris, and also how the man had told him that he was unable to stop what was now proceeding in full motion — a race to retrieve the priceless cargo aboard the Magdalena.
Next to him, Sam Reilly’s face displayed his incredulity at this piece of news.
“Well, that explains how they’ve managed to keep finding me.”
“Now what are we going to do about it?” Tom asked him.
“Simple, we’ll just have to make sure that she’s no longer there by the time they arrive…”
Chapter Twenty Five
John Wolfgang heard the sound of falling rubble.
It might have been a massive cave-in, for all the sound that it made. A moment later, Brent came through the tunnel and reassured him that they’d finally broken through.
John checked his watch.
It was 0100. Just as Brent had advised him, it had taken 48 hours to accomplish. “Very good. Did you find their bodies?”
“No, but it’s definitely where they went.”
“How can you be so certain?”
Brent handed him a climbing bag, and said, “We found this at the bottom. Looks like one of them must have lost it when they came down the tunnel.”