Robert Butler: The Empire of Night

I pitched my airship underwear behind a fuel tank.

I thought simply to stay here in the keel for the takeoff and on through my incendiary improvisation. But Dettmer expected me. He could conceivably do something officious if I didn’t show up for the launch, could send someone to see if I’d found my way all right in the dark.

The walkway suddenly shifted a little beneath my feet. The airship trembled, and I felt a twinge of uplift in my chest.

I knew we’d thrown off our hangar ballast and had lifted from our bumper blocks and outside we were surrounded by two hundred ground crewmen holding hard at the handling lines, letting us hover but reining us in, keeping us centered in the hangar doorway.

I went forward and down the ladder and onto the bridge.

Dettmer was at the front window of the gondola, his back to me, framed alone against the sky beyond the hangar door. The sky was off white, as if it were packed with cotton wool.

He scanned outward and downward, from far left across to far right. And he commanded, “Airship march!”

The executive officer, leaning from a side window, cried, “Airship march!” and the order was taken up outside to port, to bow, to starboard.

At once, almost imperceptibly, we began to move.

Major Dettmer looked over his shoulder.

He saw me. I was where he’d hoped I’d be.

“Colonel,” he said. “Please join me.”

I stepped forward, stood beside him on his right.

Dettmer kept his eyes ahead.

Two wide-set guiding rails led from the hangar mouth out three hundred yards into the maneuvering field. Arrayed ahead were eight handling lines stretched forward by a hundred bent and straining feldgrau backs.

And the movement was clearly perceptible now.

We were floating into the daylight.

And from all around us — front and sides — a sound rose up. Men’s voices — two hundred men’s voices — rising as one. They sang. They sang of thunderbolts and clashing swords and crashing waves. They sang loud even though they strained hard to drag this vast machine of war into the oncoming night.

And when they began to sing the chorus, the men around me, Dettmer and the executive officer and all the others, joined in. Lieb Vaterland, magst ruhig sein! Dear Fatherland put your mind at rest. Fest steht und treu die Wacht, die Wacht am Rhein! Firm and true stands the watch, the watch on the Rhine.

Colonel Wolfinger sang as well. He sang louder than them all. Indeed, I have a pretty good tenor and so Wolfinger even drew an admiring turn of the head from the commandant of the LZ 78. Major Dettmer smiled at this powerful officer who had graced them with his presence. And I nodded my head to Dettmer, even as I lifted my voice with all these good Germans and entreated the dear Fatherland not to worry about a thing.

When the chorus was done, the men outside went on for another verse, though the officers on the bridge stopped singing and focused on their tasks.

Wolfinger was ready just to keep a stoic, watchful silence. He’d been warmer to Dettmer and his men than he’d been to anyone in perhaps his whole career. And his clamming up now suited Christopher Cobb just fine. Because I wanted simply to get through the next twenty minutes and on to my business.

Dettmer was going on and on to the colonel — to me — about guiding cars and a winch and wind headings and cloud cover and the moon and we were moving inexorably forward, and even as he spoke, I took my watch from my pocket to check the time.

It was a Waltham.

An American watch.

I put it away as quickly as I could without drawing attention to it, glancing at Dettmer, who was speaking to me at that moment but looking forward. I cursed myself for all the details I had not anticipated. This one I had failed to consider long before things got tough. Though why shouldn’t a high-ranking officer in the Foreign Office have a fine American watch? It was a privilege that could readily accrue to his position. But I’d overlooked it. And that made me worry about what else I’d overlooked.

Perhaps Dettmer had seen me in his periphery as I read my watch. Perhaps he’d finally realized I was not responding to him. Maybe he’d finally said all that he could possibly think of to say to keep his Foreign Office observer informed and impressed. Whatever the reason, he did stop talking to me.

And then finally we were well free of the hangar.

And the airship was set against the wind.

And the water ballast was released and the watch officer returned and the engines began to pound and the lines were cast off and I stood through all this simply waiting, hearing the orders but not listening to them, feeling the bustle increase around me but not moving, holding even more still, waiting now to do what I had to do.

The floor was quaking beneath my feet.

The engines vibrated into my legs and into my jaw and into my brain.

Dettmer commanded engine revs and elevation angles and we were moving, we were rising, the distant tree line was beginning to sink below us, slowly. There was no necessary race forward as in an aeroplane. We crept upward.

“Major,” I said. “I will leave you now.”

Dettmer looked at me.

I tried to read his face.

I kept mine blank, inhabiting, in my actor’s brain, my character’s power, his independence, his arrogance.

Dettmer’s face was blank as well. Rare for him, with me. But surely natural to him with others. He had his own power here. He was the commander of this ship. He was respectful of me, of the people I represented. Fearful even. Perhaps. But the self-possession and the exercise of power and independence that I was portraying to him were, in a real sense, conferred by him. Especially now that we were in the air. The captain of a ship on the sea was God. The commander of a ship in the air was no different.

I tried to see suspicion in Dettmer.

I could not.

But this look between us went on for a longer moment than was comfortable.

“With your permission,” I said, and I lowered my head to him ever so slightly.

He said, “We each have our mission, Colonel.”

I said, “My mission tonight is based on a surpassing respect for yours.”

He smiled. Quickly, warmly.

How ardently this soldier, this commander, this master of a German warship craved personal reassurance. Craved approval.

How sad this all was.

“My ship is yours,” he said.

I brought my right hand up sharply to my right temple. He straightened with a silent gasp. He was touched by my initiating this salute. He brought his own hand up and we held this for a moment, those few beats of amplified respect between two officers.

But through this whole exchange I could not look him in the eyes.

I turned to cross the gondola, and as if the cabin knew my haste it grabbed my chest and pushed at the backs of my knees and propelled me toward the ladder. The airship was climbing, of course, and I was rushing downhill.

Manageable still. The angle was maybe ten degrees. But I was very glad the ladder would let me face aft.

I put my hand to the ladder and the executive officer said, “Careful, sir.”

I nodded without looking at him.

I climbed through the roof and out into the open air.

I let the angle press me tightly against the rungs, but almost at once I was dragged to my right. I grasped hard at the left side rail and held on tight. I stopped climbing. For now it was sufficient not to be slung into the air.

We were coming round a bit, perhaps adjusting to the head wind, perhaps taking a heading. But the outward pull eased now and I climbed hard and fast and I was inside the keel.

I had to get this done long before we were at our final cruising altitude. This angle would be a constant challenge.