David John - Flight from Berlin

Lehmann glanced only once at the strange package under Eleanor’s arm. She’d wrapped the filthy old dossier in sheets of tissue paper and tied the whole thing up with the only practical item to hand: a pink ribbon.

‘Poor Captain Lehmann,’ she said to Hannah in a low voice. ‘He’ll probably think these two crazy dames fear for the safety of their shopping…’

They reached a ladder at the foot of an air duct and began climbing.

‘This leads to the central axis corridor,’ he called down, ‘the spine that runs all the way from fins to nose.’ An occasional electric light, but otherwise the arduous ascent was in near darkness, with the temperature falling.

‘I can see my breath,’ Hannah said.

‘The southern tip of Greenland is down there,’ Lehmann shouted. His voice was indistinct, like a voice calling in a rock cavern.

Bracing wires creaked with the drone and movement of the ship, giving a sense of its surrounding vastness. Eventually they came to the horizontal axial corridor Lehmann had mentioned, and they followed him along it towards the stern.

Eleanor stopped and looked in amazement along the corridor’s length. Lit by widely spaced electric lights it seemed to reach into infinity, with far-distant stars twinkling on the aluminium struts.

On either side of them the towering gas cells vibrated. Eleanor put her hand on the trembling sac and felt a prickle of apprehension. She was surrounded by acres of hydrogen, in every direction. If there were some accident while she was standing here… She put the thought out of her head. Miss Mather’s nerves had spooked her.

‘Do they ever leak?’ she asked.

‘If they did, your nose would tell you,’ Lehmann said. ‘The gas is odorised with garlic to give it a distinct smell.’

A rigger coming from the fins passed them in the corridor, giving Lehmann a nod. It was Ralf, wearing a head-to-toe asbestos suit. An inhabitant of the hidden city.

Eventually Lehmann stopped at a small utility platform at the cross section with another vertical air duct. They were almost in the stern of the ship, near the great fins. The platform was surrounded by a rail, with gas cells to the left and right. Next to a stool for the duty rigger, a large metal chest was screwed to the floor. He opened it. Inside were yards of folded canvas covered in a silver doping agent.

‘This is spare sheathing. If we get a rip the sailmaker has to venture out and patch it,’ he said. ‘I promise you no one at all will look in here before we land. Those men whose faces you don’t like will never know…’

They lifted up several folds of the canvas and tucked the package with the dossier into one of them, then replaced the folds and closed the lid tight.

Passengers gathering for breakfast on the second day, some in their dressing gowns and pyjamas, were let down again by the weather. The ship had entered a bank of white fog off the Labrador Coast, and the view from the promenade windows was a swirling fug of cloud and vapour.

Denham had lain awake much of the night, thinking of Rex.

Why had he done it? Out of resentment? Maybe. It was the only explanation that made sense. Resentment towards an English establishment that had never much liked him or valued him, the bright, upstart grammar-school boy gnawed by a sense of his own inferiority.

He’d finally fallen asleep, telling himself he’d awake with a clear head and surer of everything, but the morning’s fog seemed an ill omen.

With America so close, Jakob, Ilse, and Hannah were in a buoyant mood at breakfast, though Denham took only coffee. The old man picked the shell off his hard-boiled egg with his fingertips, his movements neat and fastidious, humming to himself, as if his mind was settled and he was not going to let anything trouble him.

‘Here come Dr Frankenstein and Igor,’ said Eleanor, her mouth full of bread roll and jam. Haberstock and Koch were approaching, walking in single file among the tables.

Koch’s eyes were puffy with grey pouches, Denham noticed, and the fat lips were chapped.

‘Good morning,’ said Jakob.

Haberstock gave a small bow.

‘Could we talk somewhere?’ he asked.

‘We can talk here,’ said Jakob, without looking at them. Haberstock glanced uneasily at the eager audience around the table.

‘Berlin awaits your answer, Herr Liebermann. I trust you’ve considered the benefits of our offer.’ His tone was just a shade short of civil. ‘Do we have an agreement?’

Jakob did not invite the men to sit but buttered another piece of toast, taking his time as the art dealer stood waiting, and his colleague huffed, growing red in the face. Eventually Jakob said, ‘I fear my answer’s no, gentlemen. I hold the List Dossier legitimately, on trust for others, and I’ve no intention of disposing of it, whether by sale or exchange. The art collection, in any event, is not yours to bargain with.’

Haberstock’s lips quivered, as if he’d bitten on a piece of glass.

‘Kikes,’ muttered Koch in a thick voice. He’d clearly been drinking already.

‘Herr Liebermann, please be reasonable,’ said Haberstock. ‘That surely isn’t your last word on the matter?’

‘I’m afraid it is.’

‘In that case’-he cleared his throat-‘I am authorised by Berlin to offer you the sum of fifty thousand reichsmarks for the dossier.’

Friedl gave a low whistle.

‘Good day, gentlemen,’ said Jakob.

Throughout this exchange Jakob had not looked at the two men even once. Denham was struck by how neither he nor his wife and daughter even flinched at Koch’s abuse. It wasn’t that they were used to such a thing, he thought-who could be? — but that they were better people, and they knew it.

At around midday the city of Boston appeared through a gap in the fog. Not long after that the ghostly whiteness vanished altogether, and the Hindenburg glided down Long Island Sound in fine weather, with the passengers standing along the promenade windows, chatting loudly in English or German, pointing out people, landscape features, and buildings, and returning the universal waved greeting.

At 3:30 p.m. lower Manhattan came into sight, its towers glowing in a brief interval of afternoon sun. But beyond the tall buildings the clouds were black and anvil shaped; a thunderstorm was approaching the city from the southwest, and far up the Hudson River the horizon flashed with lightning. Denham slipped his arm around Eleanor, who had said little since they’d passed Newfoundland. She seemed preoccupied, unmoved by the skyscrapers, the welcoming flotillas, or the Statue of Liberty pointing up at them, as small as a jade figurine.

‘When I left New York I said I’d return in shame or glory,’ she said, looking straight ahead.

‘And which is it?’

She shrugged. ‘I left as a girl; I’ve returned as a woman.’

The ship slowed as it sailed over the shadowed chasms and high formations of Fifth Avenue, bristling with spires, gables, and masts. Over the Empire State Building they flew low enough to see the faces of the tourists taking photographs on the observation deck, of parents holding up small children.

An hour later, when they were over the flat scrub oaks and pinewoods of New Jersey, the passengers began returning to their cabins to pack. Denham stayed to watch the approach to landing and noticed the ragged, fast-moving clouds. He opened the window and put his head out. A fine drizzle brushed his face, and there was a sultry, electrical smell in the air.

‘Look,’ said Eleanor.

Haberstock was approaching Jakob, who listened to him with obvious impatience, then shook his head.

‘The man’s trying one more time,’ said Denham.