Once, when Max was a child, his family toured the ruins of Flossenbürg Castle while on vacation in Bavaria. They arrived early in the morning to find the crumbling stone walls shrouded in a fog so dense Max felt as though he could poke it with a stick. They moved slowly through the ruins, holding hands and trying to restrain the terrified laughter that pressed against their lungs—the irrational, frantic hilarity brought on by the sense of looming disaster. Max loved the foreboding that prickled the back of his neck as they picked their way amongst the rubble. Here and there a dark corner stood in sharp relief against the spectral mist, or a stately pine rose up from the gloom sprawled across the castle grounds, but apart from those occasional landmarks he and his family wandered blindly through the vestiges of a great fortress split asunder during the Thirty Years’ War. He sensed as though he was present in some bend in time and if he just took the right turn he might be able to step backwards and witness history with his own eyes. A siege. A slaughter. He was transported. Suspended. Sometime later, when the light began to shift and the sun turned warm enough to burn through the gloom, he felt a gnawing disappointment. By midmorning the air was crisp and clean and the magic had dissipated.
That day, however, was the beginning of Max Zabel’s love affair with fog. It is the reason that he wakes early and often volunteers for the first shift in any rotation. Max has been known to pray for fog the way some men pray for deliverance. So it is a great irony that today, of all days, should be the one when the airship flies into a swamp-like bank of mist off the coast of Newfoundland. Max has not seen the like since that day at Flossenbürg Castle. They have been drifting through heavy cloud cover since dawn. But this is different. He can feel the shift in air pressure as they pass through sparse clouds and into the wall of coastal fog. The air around him becomes solid. The roar of engines grows muffled, as though someone has stuffed them with cotton. Everything dulls. Max notes the change in atmosphere and the time on his flight log—force of habit—but no one else in the control car pays the transformation any mind. This is a normal part of flying. It just happens to be his favorite way to fly. Half-blind and mute. Max does not pretend this is rational or ideal. It’s rather dangerous, in fact—if one wants to take it at face value—but thrilling nonetheless.
Pity he can’t enjoy it. The remnants of his spectacular hangover are still present, like ball bearings rolling around his skull. If he moves his head too quickly they clang against one another, making him dizzy, making his eyes water and his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth. It’s little more than sixty degrees in the control car, but Max is sweating along his lower back, beneath his arms, and across his upper lip as his body works to expel the last traces of alcohol. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Dries his hand on his trousers.
Max is thirsty. But there’s little that can be done about that now. It isn’t time for his break. He will stay fixed at his station if it kills him. He will not flinch. He will not complain. He will not acknowledge his mistake last night or let it affect his ability to perform his duties today. The other officers must feel the static charge of his determination, for they do not speak to him unless necessary. They avoid eye contact. The gloom outside has permeated the control car and subdued every man on duty.
From where he’s standing at his chart table, Max cannot see the rudder wheel at the front of the bridge, though he knows that Helmut Lau is on duty at the moment. He can hear the intermittent calls between Lau, Commander Pruss, and Kurt Bauer, the elevator man, but they recede into background chatter as he watches the instruments on the panel before him. He makes adjustments for altitude and headwinds. Max slips carefully and purposefully into his private zone. This is a world of numbers and precision, a world where you do one thing and there is a specific, predictable outcome. And it is in this moment of deep concentration that he is struck by a thought: it is a pity that he cannot chart the human heart. Were it possible, he would spread Emilie’s heart out on the table before him. Smooth out the creases. Measure its latitude and longitude. And then, when he could see the unbroken whole, he would place himself directly in the center. He would draw himself there in red ink. Permanent. That might have been possible before he inadvertently betrayed her trust. But now her papers are confiscated and she is a breath away from being lost to him for good.
Max is broken from this trance by the panicked voice of Kurt Bauer.