Max Collins - The Hindenburg Murders

Knoecher frowned in thought. “Well, perhaps we could complain.”

“I don’t mind the company, Eric, if you don’t. Besides which, I’m endeavoring to make the point moot by getting into the good graces of a lady passenger I recently met. She doesn’t have a roommate-yet.”

“Ah! A shipboard conquest, so early?”

Charteris smiled, shook his head; like Ed Douglas, he was craving a smoke. “Early stages, and I don’t like to think of it as a ‘conquest’-that’s so ungentlemanly. Rather a… new friend that I hope to make.”

This remark was not lost on the German, who grinned; his English was good enough to grasp the double entendre.

A sharp knock interrupted their conversation. Charteris rose and opened the door to find a familiar figure-Chief Steward Heinrich Kubis, whom the writer had become well acquainted with on the ship’s maiden voyage.

“Welcome, Mr. Charteris,” the chief steward said. His German-accented English was impeccable.

“Heinrich! I rather hoped you’d be aboard.” Charteris put one hand on his friend’s shoulder and extended the other for a warm clasp.

Looking past Charteris to his cabin mate, the steward said, “I hope I am not intruding, gentlemen.”

“You’re a welcome sight,” Charteris said.

In his late forties, about five-foot-nine, dark blond hair brushed back, bright blue eyes perpetually a twinkle, Kubis was a cheerful, suave veteran of such fashionable hotels as the Carlton in London and the Ritz in Paris. He had also been the first steward ever to serve aboard an airship.

Charteris introduced Knoecher to the chief steward, and after some polite small talk, Kubis said, “Captain Lehmann would be honored to welcome you aboard, personally, Mr. Charteris. If you would come with me, sir…”

In the narrow hallway, the chief steward said, “I just finished your book.”

“Really? Which one?”

“ The Saint in New York. Exciting, if a bit bloodthirsty.”

They walked single file in the cramped corridor, the steward leading the way, glancing back as they conversed. Charteris was amused by Kubis, who catered to famous passengers, keeping up on all the society columns.

“I appreciate the business, Heinrich. Did you read it in German or English?”

“German. Very good translation, sir.”

“Yes, I’ve taken a look at the German versions-the fellow they’re using isn’t bad. Is it true Captain Lehmann is merely observing on this flight?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How many captains do you need on one trip?”

“Well, this time we have five, sir.”

“Five!”

“There are more airship captains available, at present, than airships-but we hope, with this new American sister fleet imminent, that may all change.”

Charteris had supposed they were headed to the control gondola, but Captain Lehmann was instead waiting in the chief steward’s office on B deck, starboard, near the tiny bar and the much-yearned-for, still off-limits smoking room.

The office also served as Kubis’s quarters, which were about twice the size of a passenger cabin, but nonetheless hardly spacious, with both a cot and a desk, flush against opposite walls. After ushering Charteris into the cubbyhole, Chief Steward Kubis departed, both as a practical matter of space, and out of respect to these two men.

Captain Lehmann rose from the desk to greet the author with a smile and a handshake. The captain looked smaller in civilian clothes-a gray three-piece suit and darker gray bow tie. Suddenly Charteris realized the fiftyish Lehmann was an unprepossessing figure out of his usual snappy midnight-blue captain’s uniform-short, stocky, his thin dark graying hair combed back, Lehmann seemed an unlikely candidate for war hero or principal director of the Zeppelin Company, both of which he was.

Lehmann had struck Charteris, on the ship’s maiden voyage, as a kindly, soft-spoken father figure, with a surprising wellspring of good humor, as demonstrated by entertaining the passengers with his accomplished piano and accordion playing. Around his eyes and mouth were lines etched by a lifetime of smiles; but in the pale blue eyes in the egg-shaped face, a new melancholy seemed to have settled.

Charteris knew, at once, something was wrong.

“Please sit down, Mr. Charteris,” the captain said in German, and the conversation that followed was in that tongue. Lehmann gestured to the cot, adding, “Forgive the limited seating.”

Charteris sat. “I’m delighted to see you again, Captain-though I’m disappointed you’re not at the helm, this trip.”

“That’s a luxury an executive like myself can rarely, if ever, indulge in,” Lehmann said. “You’ll meet Captain Max Pruss, and you’ll like him-no nonsense, confident… I trained him myself. Former Graf Zeppelin captain.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Do you think I would willingly trade hands-on airship command for overseeing passenger operations and crew recruitment?”

“No. But I rather supposed Dr. Eckener enjoyed that kind of thing-has he retired?”

Lehmann shook his head, wearily. “It’s very sad, Mr. Charteris. Very sad indeed-we worked as comrades for almost thirty years, but politics has ruined all that.”

“Dr. Eckener alienated himself with the brownshirt boys, I take it.”

“Yes. And he assumes, wrongly, that I am one of them-he calls me a Nazi, and many others in the company, loyal zeppelin men, he condemns as ‘collaborators.’”

“Eckener is a wonderful man, but blunt, not to say irascible.”

“He is indeed all of those things. I assure you I am not a Nazi, Mr. Charteris, not a party member-I seek only to keep our ships flying in troubled skies.”

“The atmosphere has changed, since my previous voyage,” Charteris said, and briefly filled Lehmann in on the indignities of the customs process.

Lehmann shook his head forlornly at this report. “I do so regret that. I remember fondly the good times we had on the maiden voyage, you and your lovely wife…. I am sorry to hear that you and Pauline have parted.”

“On friendly terms.” He adjusted his monocle. “She abided my wandering eye longer than most women would. The fault was mine, entirely.”

“Forgive me for prying into personal matters.”

“Not at all, Captain. May I do the same?”

“Certainly.”

“Your boy was ailing, when last we spoke. An inner-ear infection, I believe. Is he well?”

Lehmann smiled tightly; there was no mirth in it. “Marie and I lost Luv, Easter Sunday last.”

“No! Oh my God, Ernst. I am so very sorry.”

As a father himself, dealing daily with mere separation from a beloved child, Charteris knew how deeply such a tragedy could wound.

And now the author understood the sadness in this gentle soldier’s eyes-how a warrior who had won the Iron Cross, twice, could become that most pathetic of figures, a heartbroken parent.

“We suffer our sorrows,” Lehmann said, “and yet we go on-you write, I fly. There is escape in work.”

“There is indeed.”

The captain shifted in the hardwood chair. “I invited you here for more than social reasons, Mr. Charteris-much as I enjoy your company. As you know, we have an increased security presence on this ship.”

“Yes-I met Colonel Erdmann.”

Lehmann nodded. “Colonel Erdmann mentioned to me-in a friendly way, I might add-that you expressed to him some concerns… specifically, about the possibility of a bomb scare.”

“The precautions being taken suggested as much.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, because loutish security men, causing a commotion about possible sabotage, can be as damaging to the Zeppelin Company as the discovery of a bona fide bomb.”