The American closes the door to the cargo hold and tries to ignore the plaintive whimpering within. He turns away with a whispered oath and begins the trek back to the passenger area. It’s a straight shot, though dimly lit, and he can see the security door at the distant end of the keel catwalk, the light above it shining like a beacon. The next shift change won’t happen for another thirty minutes, so there’s a good chance he can get back to the passenger quarters without running into any of the midshipmen. But when he reaches the bank of crew quarters near the stern, he sees two figures maneuvering down the catwalk toward him. Dark shapes moving with purpose. One is clearly an officer—he can tell by the cap and the jacket and the confident stride—and the other is significantly shorter. Leaner. Gangly. A child maybe? No. That wouldn’t be logical. He filters all the possible options until his mind settles on the cabin boy. Yes. What is his name? Werner something. Franz. Werner Franz. Fourteen years old. A toothy boy with the look of perpetual curiosity about him.
The American has two options. Continue forward and face the difficult task of explaining why he has been wandering around prohibited areas of the ship, or duck into one of the crew quarters and run the risk that it is occupied. He has stopped and is reaching his hand slowly toward the door of a cabin when the officer and cabin boy turn onto an access walkway and disappear behind a series of duralumin girders. He makes a quick decision and creeps forward along the catwalk. Closer now, he can see them approach a small exit hatch in the side of the ship. He recognizes the navigator, locates the name in his encyclopedic mind. Max Zabel.
Surely not.
Zabel pushes the lever upward, then pulls the door in. The air immediately shifts and grows colder. The American can hear the whistle of air and the roar of an engine. Slowly, steadily he creeps closer until he can almost hear their conversation, until he can see the look of poorly disguised terror on the cabin boy’s face. Then Zabel steps outside the airship, followed hesitantly a few moments later by Werner. The American glimpses a minuscule patch of cloud when he finally comes level to the access walkway. He’s fairly certain where the two have gone, though he can’t imagine what would have necessitated a trip to an outboard engine.
His curiosity is too strong to let this chance pass. The American treads quickly down the walkway, then sticks his head out the open hatch. The engine gondola lies ten feet below. The access hatch into the gondola is shut. Zabel and Werner are somewhere within, doing God knows what inside the gondola. The American backs away from the hatch; even he is not bold enough to explore outside the ship.
No one sees him as he slips back through the security door and into the passenger area. He makes a quick pass through the lounge to make sure the chief steward is tending passengers and is not in his stateroom. Sometimes fate cooperates in his machinations, and being placed in a cabin next to Heinrich Kubis is fortunate indeed. Not that he has to act drunk and confused when he picks the lock and sneaks into the room—there’s no one around to see him—but that is something he can fall back on should he be discovered.
The steward’s cabin is identical to his with one exception: a small antechamber used to store shoes and polish. Beyond that there is a meticulously made bed and the usual accouterments of someone in the service profession: first-aid box, sewing kit, miscellaneous grooming paraphernalia. The American cares nothing about these things. He has come for the shipping manifest, and he finds it on the top shelf of Heinrich Kubis’s closet. The information he wants is hidden deep within the book, and his body is strained tight as he searches for it. If Kubis returns he will have to hide beneath the bed. And if he is discovered there? Well. That’s a choice he’d rather not make this early in the flight.
The dog’s name is not shown on the manifest, only its owner’s: Edward Douglas. He reads it several times and curses so vehemently he has to wipe spittle from the page. The name is written in black ink, along with everything else, and it takes a bit of creative penmanship for the American to alter this record.
THE NAVIGATOR
It is freezing outside the airship. Not quite dawn. And the elevation, combined with the speed at which the Hindenburg travels, has turned the scattered clouds into little specks of ice that pelt against his cheeks. Max braces himself against the brisk rush of Atlantic air. It smells of ocean and frost and the oily hint of engine exhaust. The slipstream moves visibly along the structure like silver ribbons in the pre-dawn light. The sky is a perfect soft pewter gray, and the water beneath them matches as though one is reflecting the other—bands of stratus above, calm sea underneath. The ship glides elegantly between the two, its shadow a charcoal smudge on the gentle waves below.
The barrage of sound coming from the engines is enough to split Max’s head wide open. His senses are at war with one another, sight and sound registering two different things: beauty and turbulence. To his left is the propeller, twenty feet long and spinning like a flywheel. One slip, one wrong move, and death will come in the most gruesome way.
Perhaps Werner will think twice before dabbling in blackmail again. His face is strained with the effort not to look juvenile or afraid. And yet he pulls away from the hatch.
“Too late for that now,” Max yells into the wind. “This was your idea. So come along. But mind your step. I’m the one who will have to write your mother if you go tumbling off. We’re six hundred feet up. So the fall will kill you. But we can’t turn back for your body. Understand?”