David John - Flight from Berlin

The shot sounded like Dan!

Sparks cascaded, and a whooshing, whip-crack made the women duck and cover their heads. The bullet had nicked one of the thin bracing wires, snapping it and sending it singing through the air as its tension released. It quivered for a second like a kraken’s tentacle, then tore into the nearest gas cell, making a long gash high up in the fabric.

Hannah rushed to help Friedl, stamped her heel on Koch’s wrist, and pulled the gun away, sliding it back towards Eleanor.

But Eleanor was looking up, transfixed by the tear high up on the gas cell, near the very top of the ship.

Hydrogen was flowing freely from the gash, mixing with oxygen, causing rippling waves in the fabric of the cell, like a hot-water bottle emptying. The escaping flow pushed against the ship’s outer sheathing, making it flutter.

An unmistakable smell filled her nostrils. ‘Garlic,’ she whispered.

T he first officer turned to Pruss. ‘That’s odd,’ he said, pointing at the instruments. ‘We’re losing altitude in the stern. We’re about a thousand kilograms heavy.’

‘Release water ballast,’ said Pruss.

A ballast toggle was pulled, then another.

‘Still tail heavy,’ the first officer said, and picked up the telephone to order the crew members on duty in the lower tail fin to walk to the bow in order to correct the trim.

The ship was now about three hundred feet from the ground, hovering, and close enough for Pruss to wave to the commander of the Naval Air Station sitting in his jeep at the corner of the field.

‘Release starboard and port handling lines,’ he said.

From the bow hatch window the heavy mooring ropes fell and splattered on the ground where the mooring crew picked them up and tied them to a capstan. At that moment the evening sun came out, filling the control car with light, even as a light rain was falling from the weather front gathering from the southwest.

Denham turned to Lehmann. ‘Won’t that wet rope ground us? I mean, couldn’t it cause a spark?’ He could feel the static on his fingertips when he touched the sill, and in his hair.

‘There’s no danger,’ Lehmann said, clapping Denham’s shoulder. He nodded at the light board. ‘All cells are normal, and we have five experienced officers in here, including me.’

‘Cut engines,’ said Pruss. The four propeller engines died, and with that the great ship floated in silence, as if it were holding its breath.

‘W e’ve got to warn the bridge,’ Eleanor shouted. She forgot the dossier; she forgot the gun. They abandoned Koch on the narrow axial corridor, groaning and clutching his wrist. The package containing the dossier lay about ten feet away from him. Hannah ran back and snatched it from the floor.

In the distance along the endless axial corridor they saw the duty riggers moving.

They clambered down the long air duct ladder that led back to the keel. For three long minutes they descended, their feet slipping on the rungs. They reached the cargo hold and were about to reenter the passenger quarters when Eleanor, who was in the rear, heard a muffled detonation far above her, like the sound of someone lighting a gas stove.

‘D id you feel that?’ the first officer said, turning to Pruss.

‘A rope must have snapped.’

Denham stepped to the window and saw immediately that something was wrong. The hangar building was illuminated with a rose-coloured light and the ground crew were running away, abandoning the ropes. He opened the window and leaned out as far as he could, looking towards the stern, and saw a carnation of bright flames blossoming beneath the fins. He pulled himself in faster than the colour could drain from his face.

‘The ship’s on fire.’

The officer on the rudder wheel let out an animal moan, and before Pruss could give another order the control car tilted steeply backwards to the sound of straining metal.

A s most of the passengers were on the starboard side facing the crowd come to welcome them, the lounge and reading room were almost deserted when Friedl, Hannah, and Eleanor got there.

Eleanor saw Miss Mather sitting alone at a banquette, reading a book. Before she could say a word to the woman the floor fell away and threw them violently onto their fronts. Tongues of dark red flame blew in through the rear bulkheads, caressing the ceiling.

From above came a roar like a giant blowtorch, as one gas cell ignited the next in a string of explosions. She heard the screams of people on the starboard side, and the thump, thump of bodies falling one over the other as the ship pitched steeply to stern, tipping with it a metal mangle of tables and chairs.

‘Get up,’ Eleanor shouted. Intense heat was scorching her hands and her head. ‘We have to jump.’

The earth was rising towards them. She knelt up and grabbed the sill. The window was jammed.

‘Help me, Friedl.’

Now the ship was quickly righting itself as it approached the ground. She saw Friedl’s jacket on fire, orange flames across his back. They each pushed, and the second time pushed together, and it opened. Hannah got Miss Mather to her feet. The woman was leaning against the bulkhead, trying to shield her face with an upturned coat collar.

‘Let’s go,’ Hannah shouted. The woman’s face was contorted, stiff with shock.

‘Lady, come on,’ Eleanor shouted, but Miss Mather was in a trance.

The ship smashed to the ground, its back broken, and almost pitched them headfirst through the windows.

‘C’mon outta there!’ a voice shouted.

A sailor in a white cap appeared in the window, his arms extended desperately. With Hannah’s help Eleanor lifted Miss Mather and shoved her through. Then Hannah jumped, and Eleanor was following when a rolling wall of black smoke engulfed her, choking her, coating her skin and hair.

The next thing she knew she was on her hands and knees on wet soil, coughing violently while the blaze raged above her.

‘Lady, run!’ said the sailor.

Behind her came the cries of people being burned alive. Everywhere, glowing balls of molten metal were hitting the ground. She got up and had a sense that Friedl was just ahead of her; then she saw him rolling on his back like a dog. When he turned over, his jacket was scorched through; glistening burns and mud covered his bare back.

‘Take my arm,’ she said to him.

She pulled him up and they ran together, feeling the heat become less intense behind them, the roar of the blaze breathing less fiercely. A light drizzle was falling. People were running out to meet her and the other survivors. One man’s clothes were completely burned away and his skin hung off him in drapes. A woman’s face and arms were charred black. She collapsed to her knees and fell forwards. Chunks of burned flesh lay in the sand, black and dark red. Two little boys, covered in blood and burns, walked hand in hand with their mother in complete silence.

‘Who’s got it?’ said Friedl.

‘What?’

‘The dossier. Who’s got the dossier?’

‘Hannah has it,’ Eleanor said, not at all sure that she did.

When they reached Hannah and Miss Mather a few feet ahead of them, safe in the arms of rescuers, there was nothing under Hannah’s arm.

‘Forget it,’ Hannah said. ‘It’s gone.’ Eleanor marvelled that there was scarcely a scratch on her.

‘No,’ said Friedl, and he turned and ran back towards the inferno.

‘Has anyone seen Mother and Father?’ Hannah said, starting to cry.

‘Friedl!’ Eleanor screamed. She started after him, but the sailor held her back. Much later she would remember that moment keenly. It seemed to happen in slow motion, his silhouette running into the glare of the fires, and she had failed to prevent him.

The Hindenburg, a blazing wreck of white-hot girders, looked like the fragments of a dragon’s egg. Smoke braided with flames belched out of its engines, strangely beautiful in the gathering darkness. The marvellous machine, Dr Eckener’s greatest achievement, had been destroyed in seconds. Incredible that she’d survived; that anyone had survived. She looked down at her filthy dress. She had a nasty burn down one arm, and her hair and eyebrows had been singed away in places, but she was otherwise all right.