They are greeted at the base of the gangway by the chief steward. His name tag reads HEINRICH KUBIS—neat, square little letters as neat and square as the man himself. He takes their paperwork, scrutinizes it, then runs the stubby end of one finger along his clipboard. “Ah. You are in one of the staterooms on B-deck,” he says. “Cabin nine, just aft of the smoking room. Your bags will be taken up, and you are free to board. If you follow these stairs all the way to the top you will have a lovely view of takeoff from the portside dining salon on A-deck.”
“May I take your bag, Frau Adelt?” Gertrud hears the voice, recognizes it as female, but does not acknowledge it. She stares instead at the rectangle of light at the top of the gangway stairs.
“Frau Adelt?” Again that voice. She ignores it.
Leonhard pulls the satchel from her hands. “Yes. Please. My wife would like that very much.”
“It will be with your things.”
Leonhard leads his wife up the steps, but it is as though she’s an automaton, stiff and leaden. “You were quite awful to that woman just now.”
His voice registers. “What?”
“The stewardess. The one who took your bag. You didn’t even look at her. You will have to watch that, Liebchen.”
Gertrud looks over her shoulder and sees the back of a tall, slender woman dressed in uniform. Her hair is dark and wavy and falls neatly to her shoulders. One of the ship’s officers approaches her, his hands tucked shyly in his pockets, and she laughs at something he says. The stewardess has the charming, musical sort of laugh that Gertrud has always envied in other women. She sniffs, irritated.
The gaze she levels at her husband borders on panic. “My mind is on other things right now. Yours should be as well.”
THE NAVIGATOR
“You’re staring at her again.”
Max turns to find a slow, amused smile disrupting the sharp angles of Wilhelm Balla’s usually stoic face. It looks ill-fitting on the steward, as though he has borrowed another man’s coat.
“Wouldn’t you?”
“I would go talk to her, not stand there like a pubescent boy with a secret crush.”
“It’s hardly a secret.”
“Get on with it, then.”
“Emilie is greeting passengers. And we’ve already said hello.”
For a man with such a blunt personality, Wilhelm Balla has razor-sharp insight. “Can’t have been much of a greeting. You didn’t kiss her.”
“How—”
The steward cuts him off by holding up his manifest—right between their faces—and reading from it. “It appears as though Frau Imhof is greeting the last of her passengers now. Journalists from Frankfurt. She will likely have a few scarce moments before boarding herself.”
Max can’t hear what Emilie says to the dismissive young woman, but she has to repeat herself. The journalist still doesn’t respond, and her husband finally tugs a satchel from her hands and passes it to Emilie with an apologetic shrug. Emilie looks slightly embarrassed, and Max takes a strong and immediate dislike to the journalists.
“Did she tell you I didn’t kiss her?” He clears his throat. “Did she want me to—”
“Go.”
The steward gives Max one hard shove. He stumbles forward and tucks his hands in his pockets because he doesn’t know what else to do with them. Emilie stands near the portside gangway holding the satchel and scowling at the couple as they whisper intently on their way up.
“Pay them no mind,” he mutters low, over her shoulder, so that his breath tickles her ear. “People go crazy when they fly. I’ve seen decorated soldiers lose their Schie?e.”
She laughs, loudly at first, and then lower, a gentle shaking of her shoulders. God, he loves her laugh.
“Are you going to commandeer every conversation I have over the next three days?”
“Are you going to kiss everyone but me?”
“I didn’t kiss either of them.”
“You kissed the cook.”
“Chef. And you sound petty. I can kiss who I like.”
He loves this about Emilie. How brassy and direct she is. They are well matched in spirit, if not height. Emilie is but an inch or two shorter than Max, and he constantly finds himself in the unusual position of facing her eye to eye depending on her footwear. He is tall; so is she, for a woman.
“Kiss whoever you like. As long as I’m the one you like the most.” He lowers his voice. “You did promise me an answer on this flight. Have you forgotten?”
Emilie is about to respond when they are interrupted by screeching tires.
Max grabs Emilie by the arm and pulls her back a step as the careening taxi lurches to a stop beside the airship. A small, wiry man leaps from the backseat, followed by a dog so alarmingly white that Emilie gasps. The new arrival surveys the curious onlookers as though he has come onstage for an encore. Max half expects him to bow. Instead, the dog barks and things disintegrate into bedlam. Three security guards, two customs officials, and the chief steward all descend on the strange little man as though he’s holding a detonator. But he fans his ticket and travel papers in front of his face without the least bit of concern.