Max Collins - The Hindenburg Murders

“It’s the Saint!” Joe Spah called out in English. “Come sit with us, Saint.”

Embarrassed, Charteris guided Hilda to the table, not necessarily eager to join Spah’s party, but wanting to quiet the little man down.

“Please, you and your lovely friend, please sit, sit, sit!” Spah said as if to his dog. He was on his feet, waving his arms. He’d been drinking, just a bit.

“Do please join us,” Lehmann said, standing, with all the dignity Spah lacked.

“Yes, by all means,” the dark-haired gent said in a heavily German-accented but eminently understandable English-half rising to show his respect. “Both my wife and I are avid readers of your stories, Mr. Charteris. We would be honored.”

“My pleasure, sir,” Charteris said to him, pulling out a chair for Hilda. “We gratefully accept your invitation, particularly since these are about the only seats left…”

Chuckles and smiles blossomed around the table.

“… but, Joe, let’s strike a bargain: I won’t call you Ben Dova, and you won’t call me the Saint.”

Spah laughed at that, rather raucously-about twice the reaction Charteris figured the remark was worth-and lifted his glass of Liebfrauenmilch in casual toast. “Agreed, my friend! Anyone who helps me feed my dog is jake with me.”

“Jake?” a puzzled Hilda asked Charteris in a whisper.

He whispered back, “Never mind.”

The couple introduced themselves as Leonhard and Gertrude Adelt, from Dresden.

Spah chimed in, “You should take their compliments seriously, Leslie-they’re both writers, too!”

The genial director of the Zeppelin Company gestured toward Adelt, saying, “Leonhard here has been collaborating with me on my autobiography.”

“We have publishers in London and Cologne,” Adelt said, “and in a few days we’ll be meeting with prospective houses in New York…. It will be called Zeppelin. ”

“Short, sweet, and to the point,” Charteris said, with an approving nod. “And you’re a writer, too, Mrs. Adelt?”

“‘Gertrude,’ please,” she said.

She had enormous blue eyes; all these damn Germans had blue eyes, but she had the best and biggest on the ship, with the possible exception of Hilda’s.

Gertrude was saying, “I’m working on a film script about zeppelins.”

“I’m advising,” Lehmann said with a smile.

She continued: “I have a first draft I hope to show to certain Hollywood people, while we’re in America.”

“They should admire the subject matter,” Charteris said, testing his own glass of white wine. “Most Hollywood people I know are giant bags of gas.”

That roused some general laughter, and a male voice behind Charteris said, “I wonder if I might join you? Mr. Charteris here is my cabin mate, after all.”

Charteris glanced back, where angular Eric Knoecher stood in his tan suit and orange tie with a big friendly smile on his narrow face.

“More the merrier,” Charteris said. “This is Eric Knoecher-importer, from… where is it?”

“Zeulenroda,” Knoecher said.

“Ah,” Gertrude said, “we have family there. Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Knoecher.”

Knoecher made his way around the table, shaking hands, taking names… the latter a process at which he was no doubt skilled.

Charteris resisted the temptation to let his fellow diners know that the affable Mr. Knoecher was an undercover S.D. agent. He glanced at Lehmann, the man who’d given him this information, but the Reederei director-who was at the moment shaking Knoecher’s hand, as if they’d never met-betrayed nothing in his expression.

“Shall I sit down,” Knoecher asked, “or shall we all fill our plates first?”

As the little group made their way to and through the buffet line, Charteris continued chatting with the Adelts, and learned that both husband and wife were journalists, or at least they had been. Leonhard had covered the Austrian front during the Great War, and went on to work for several well-known newspapers and magazines in Germany. Gertrude had been an arts editor for the Dresden paper. All of this was couched in the past tense.

“What made you move into books and film scripts?” Charteris asked them, as they all settled back into their chairs with their plates of cold meat and salads before them. “It sounds as though you had very successful careers in journalism.”

Surprisingly, it was Knoecher who responded. “You must forgive my cabin mate-he is naive in the ways of the New Order.”

“I am?”

Knoecher nodded. “These are two very fine journalists. Mr. Adelt, I followed your work as Munich correspondent for Tageblatt, and your aviation column in the Deutsche Allgemeine. ”

“Thank you, sir,” Adelt said, nodding, applying butter to a fresh-baked biscuit, unaware he himself was being buttered up.

Nibbling at a piece of Swiss cheese, Knoecher said, “Several years ago, Mr. Charteris, the press in Germany was declared a public institution. Journalists like the Adelts were ruled to be government officials-answerable to the state, not their publishers.”

Gertrude Adelt paused between bites of salad to say, “Dr. Goebbels, our esteemed propaganda minister, has a list of subjects that are to be kept out of the press-because they might weaken the Reich at home or abroad.”

“What exactly is on the list?” Hilda asked.

“Let us just say it’s ever-expanding,” Adelt said.

“The contents of the list aren’t public knowledge,” Knoecher said. “And any reporter who reveals anything on the list is considered to have committed treason. And the penalty for treason… well, not while we’re eating.”

“Beheading,” Gertrude said.

“Fortunately you both seem to have retained your heads,” Charteris said. “In your case, Gertrude, quite a lovely one.”

“Thank you, Leslie. I have my head, but not my press card. Like my husband’s, it was lifted.”

“I lost mine because I’m a Catholic,” Adelt said.

“I lost mine,” his wife said, “because I had the bad form to point out to my editor that banning mentions of the ‘Jew’ George M. Cohan was nonsensical, due to ‘Cohan’ being an Irish name.”

The silliness of that made them all laugh-but just a little; it was the kind of laughter that caught in the throat.

Smiling, Knoecher asked the Adelts, “Aren’t you friends with Stefan Zweig?”

“Close friends,” Adelt said. “Brilliant writer.”

“Brilliant writer,” Knoecher echoed.

“The universities threw his books on the fire,” Gertrude said. “He’s a Jew, so his words must be burned.”

Charteris was quietly burning, too. This fellow Knoecher was as smooth as he was sinister-getting into the good graces of the Adelts, and prying from them admissions of continuing contact with a banned, Jewish writer.

“These biscuits are delicious,” Charteris said, nibbling one, changing the subject innocuously.

“I understand they’re a specialite de la maison, ” Gertrude said, spreading grape jam on another.

“I think you’ll find the cuisine on this ship,” Lehmann said, quietly proud, “comparable to that of any first-class hotel or restaurant.”

“Well, nevertheless, I do have a complaint,” Charteris said, lifting one of the numerous cups, goblets, and glasses provided for coffee, wine, cola, and what have you.

“Yes?” Lehmann asked.

“Can’t we rid ourselves of a few of these glasses? What is in this one, anyway-water? What are you trying to do, Captain, poison us?”

Light laughter followed, and Charteris then did his best to steer the little group away from overtly political topics, at least not dangerously political ones-the upcoming wedding of the Duke of Windsor and Mrs. Wallis Simpson, and the coronation of King George VI, seemed a safe subject. Captain Lehmann mentioned that the Hindenburg ’s return trip was fully booked, many of the passengers prominent Americans who would be guests at the coronation.