Max Collins - The Hindenburg Murders

But Knoecher, from time to time, would try to shift onto the sort of political topic that seemed to Charteris designed to reveal any anti-Nazi tendencies among those at the table.

“Perhaps Captain Lehmann will disagree with me,” Knoecher said, “but I find this business of the Luftwaffe obliterating that little town in Spain… what’s it called?”

“Guernica,” Gertrude said, frowning, nodding.

“Thank you, my dear,” Knoecher said, nodding back. “I find this bombing attack most disturbing.”

Hilda seemed to be trembling, Charteris noticed; though she said nothing, he felt sure this line of conversation was bothering her. Her eyes seemed to be tearing up….

“Strafing civilians, blowing up buildings,” Adelt said, shaking his head, “it’s shameful.”

Spah was nodding. Between sips of wine, he put in his two cents: “The English say the Luftwaffe destroyed that town for practice. Barbarians!”

“I think the English should concentrate on their own problems,” Charteris said easily. “This bus and tram strike, for instance-the Lambeth Walk will be more than a dance step if they don’t settle it soon.”

“Shall we have dessert?” Captain Lehmann asked, rising. “The stewards have added some awfully sweet surprises to the buffet table, I notice.”

Lehmann traded the barest glance with Charteris; the Zeppelin Company director knew very well what Knoecher was up to, and seemed eager to conspire with Charteris to keep off any dangerous political course.

As the table was being cleared, the chief steward came through and loudly announced, in both German and English, that the smoking room was now open. Many of the men in the dining room practically bolted from their tables, and Charteris would have killed for a cigarette, himself.

Hilda seemed to sense this, saying, “I am afraid all of this food has made me sleepy. Leslie, would you walk me to my cabin?”

“Of course,” Charteris said.

Gertrude was making a similar request of her husband, and the men had soon agreed to meet up in the smoking room.

As they passed the promenade windows, the view froze Charteris and the lovely blonde, and around them other passengers were reacting the same way.

While they had dined and talked, the Hindenburg had turned in a wide northwesterly arc, flying over the canals of Holland, crossing the narrow waterway that was the Wester Schelde, loping over the sandbars and cold, rugged waters of the North Sea, into an electrical storm.

Out the observation-deck windows, black clouds swirled and swarmed, billowing like ink cast into water, alive with crackling lightning, the jagged veins of energy periodically lighting up this darkest of nights.

Hilda clutched his arm, alarmed, pressing herself up against him. It would almost have been worth it, if Charteris weren’t equally alarmed at the thought of what lightning might mean to the seven million cubic feet of hydrogen gas keeping this blimp afloat.

Captain Lehmann’s voice rang out: “No cause for alarm! You are as safe here as if you were walking down Unter den Linden in Berlin!”

Charteris hoped Lehmann didn’t mean as safe as a Jew walking down Unter den Linden in Berlin….

But the airship itself seemed unfazed by the storm; a steamship in this gale would be rolling, its framework groaning, screeching, creaking; but the Hindenburg was gliding through the black clouds, as smoothly as though this were a serene, starry night. The storm sounded like a gently rolling surf, as rain pelted the ship’s linen skin.

As Charteris walked his beautiful companion to her cabin, the stillness, the quiet, was remarkable. The only sound was a faint drone of diesel, providing a muted, soothing pulse.

“Difficult to believe the world out there is so torn apart,” Hilda said, as they paused at her cabin door.

Did she mean the storm, or something else?

“You were upset at dinner,” he said.

She frowned. A few other people were passing by in the narrow corridor.

“Come in a moment,” she said.

Within her cabin, she bid him sit on the lower bunk. She sat next to him, slumped a bit, hands folded.

“I did not realize you had noticed,” she said.

“You were trembling. I thought you might cry. Did you have friends in Guernica?”

“No… but I lost someone in the war in Spain.”

“A friend?”

“… A lover.”

“When?”

“Just this January past.”

“Hilda, I’m so very sorry.”

She squeezed his hand.

“But, my dear… I thought you weren’t political?”

She stared into nothing. “Losing him… That is why I have no time for politics. Do you understand?”

“I think I do.”

She gave him a small, tender kiss and sent him on his way.

As she was closing the door, Hilda bestowed him a smile, just a little one, and said, “Knock at nine-we will have breakfast.”

“Good night, Hilda.”

Heading to the stairs down to B deck and its renowned smoking room, Charteris noticed Knoecher and Spah standing at the promenade windows, the dark storm clouds swirling beyond them. The two men were chatting and it seemed friendly enough. Charteris wished he could warn Spah of the S.D. agent’s true intentions-at the first discreet opportunity, he would.

The smoking room, way aft on the starboard side, was entered through the cramped bar, an antechamber little bigger than a passenger cabin. Charteris turned down the bar steward’s suggestion of an LZ-129 Frosted Cocktail (gin with orange juice) and acquired a Scotch and water, double, Peter Dawson of course.

The bartender granted him admission through the one-customer-at-a-time revolving air-lock door into the pressurized compartment, which Charteris guessed measured at around twelve and a half by fifteen feet. The room seemed larger, though, thanks to the arrangement of black leather settees built into three walls, facing black-and-chrome tables and chairs. The fourth wall paralleled the side of the ship, and a railing allowed passengers to gaze down at a bank of Plexiglas windows set flush in the floor along the edge of the ship. Yellow pigskin leather covered the walls, which were illustrated with images of various hot-air balloons.

Hot air was apropos, with all the smoking and talking going on by the exclusively male populace of the room, who shared one lighter, housed in the wall on a draw cable. Advertising man Douglas and his little group sat chatting in a cloud of cigarette and cigar smoke-the room was well ventilated, but these were serious smokers. Leonhard Adelt was standing at the rail, a drink in hand, a cigarette drooping from his lips, as he studied the black clouds churning below.

Charteris was glad to catch the journalist by himself.

“Mr. Adelt,” the author said, very quietly, “I must advise you to watch what you say around this Knoecher character.”

Adelt’s handsome, intelligent features tightened, then loosened as he grinned. “Oh, he seems nice enough.”

Charteris shook his head. “Don’t ask me to say more, because I shouldn’t. Just don’t talk politics around him, no matter how he prompts you.”

Adelt frowned, and his face fell as he grasped the author’s meaning. “What a fool…”

“Pardon?”

“Not you, Mr. Charteris, no not you… I must have allowed myself to be seduced by the elegance and civility of this airship…. This is like another world, is it not? A better world than the one down there-suspicion, fear, jealousy, self-hatred, these are the cancers at the heart of the Reich.”

“I just thought you should know. But I never said this, understood?”

“Understood, Mr. Charteris. Easily understood by one who lives in a land of midnight knocks at the door… who exists in a country of rigid structure, rotting from within, morally bankrupt… Excuse me. I’m a little drunk.”