Page 11 of Flight of Dreams

Their relationship seems to be an established fact for everyone but Emilie herself. Max can hear her then, asking Commander Pruss to have someone paged. He pushes past the radiomen and slides down the ladder as quickly as he can. Finding Emilie in the control car like this feels a bit like finding her in his bed. It’s not unwelcome, just startling, as though she has made herself familiar with his things. The way a lover would. And, as he would most certainly feel in that situation, Max does not know what to do next. She hasn’t ventured into the navigation room but stands patiently in the utility area waiting for Commander Pruss’s decision.

She’s good at this, he notes. Emilie does not push. She doesn’t demand answers. And in the end Pruss asks him to call for Dorothea Erdmann. But Emilie does not escape the control car before revealing her own fascination with Max’s domain. She watches him for an unguarded moment and is then dismissed by Commander Pruss. But Max does not watch her go. They will give him hell if he does.

“Ruhe, bitte!” Max warns, a slight growl in his voice, when he turns from the window, bullhorn in hand.

Pruss is standing in the doorway to the chart room, his cap so low on his forehead that Max can’t tell whether he looks stern or amused. “Where were you?”

“Mail,” he answers.

“Not chatting up the female employee again?”

Max snorts. No secrets indeed. He casts a derisive glance at the ladder as an answer. How could he be chatting her up, the look says, when she was here with you?

Pruss simply turns and without preamble gives the order to begin preparations for casting off. Max takes his position in the chart room amid his maps and logbook, his charts and his direction-finding instruments.

Commander Pruss may be in charge of the airship on this trip, but it is Captain Ernst Lehmann who usually flies it, and this is a privilege he considers sacred. To be at the helm is almost an act of worship for the director of flight operations. He’s in the control car for castoff despite technically being an observer on this flight—a symbolic role while en route to America to prepare for a book tour promoting his biography, Zeppelin. His co-author—a journalist of some repute—is on board as well, though Max hasn’t met him yet.

While Pruss prepares for liftoff, Lehmann stands with hands clasped behind his back, restraining himself from giving orders. He watches as they methodically go through the pre-flight checklist, as they check gauges and ballasts, wheels, rudders, and elevator lines. When all seems to be in order, Pruss takes the bullhorn from Max’s table and leans out the open window. “Zeppelin marsch!”

Pruss’s voice is strong and authoritative. Loud. Max hears the metallic clang of the gangway ladders being slammed into place, and there is an immediate, subtle shift beneath them. The passengers on B- and A-decks likely don’t feel it at all. But the control car, only a few feet off the ground, vibrates with the movement.

The Hindenburg’s forward landing wheel is located directly beneath the chart room where Max stands. The wheel is accessed by a panel under his feet and is one of three points on which the airship can rest when on the ground, the other two being the gangway stairs and the rear landing wheel. Like the blade on an ice skate, each wheel is simply a point of contact on which the ship balances when moored to the ground. Operating this small but vital piece of machinery is Max’s job during every takeoff and landing, regardless of time or day, regardless of shift. And while the mechanics of it are easy enough—he raises and lowers the wheel using a valve to direct the flow of compressed air and a detachable control to keep the wheel and its housing turned into the wind—it is, in actuality, a tricky task requiring a steady hand and no small amount of concentration.

Max slides the floor panel aside so he can raise the wheel. It lifts into the ship smoothly, without shudder or noise. He pulls the retractable control gears from the floor slot so the wheel can’t drop again. Max checks the locking mechanism to make sure the wheel is secure within its casing, and the rest is a matter of waiting.

“Well done, Max,” Pruss says.

He nods in response, pleased with himself, and stands aside to watch the ground crew take over below. Peering out the portside window in the control car, he watches the yaw ropes being held tightly in the hands of the ground crew. First one rope, then the other, stretches to its full length. Max can feel the portside ropes tighten with a subtle shift of the wind, and the Hindenburg is pushed starboard in response. The airship is held to the earth by little more than these ropes and the determination of a few men on the tarmac.

The Hindenburg shudders to life. Each of the four engines—separated from the main body of the airship by steel girders and a narrow catwalk—rumbles, then smoothes into a steady purr. Some of the ground crew grip the yaw lines and lean away from the ship’s mass at exaggerated angles. They disconnect the ropes from the heavy anchors driven into the tarmac but keep the lines taut, straining against the wind. Other crewmen are lined beneath the engine gondolas, gripping the rails. Together they walk the Hindenburg away from the hangar, and she glides forward as though weightless, as if her great mass were nothing more than a breath.

The air horn, much louder now that Max is in the control car, gives a long and strident blast. The muscles in his neck and jaw seize in response. He makes a mental note to research alternative notification devices once they are back in Germany. The ground crew stops in unison, the muscles in their forearms straining to keep the airship under control. Pruss is still at the window, and he waits for a count of three before shouting, “Schiff hoch!” into the bullhorn. Up ship.

Max notes their departure time as 8:18 p.m. in his logbook.

The great web of handling lines are drawn into the ship at Pruss’s command, and the crewmen beneath the gondolas give a heaving, upward push. There is a lift and a pull, and she hovers twenty feet off the ground for a moment as the crew cheers. Then Pruss gives the order for two tons of water to be released from ballasts on either side of the ship, and like a balloon no longer tethered to the hand of an impatient child, the great silver zeppelin rises into the rose-colored Frankfurt sky.

THE AMERICAN

The American has made himself presentable and is sitting alone at the far end of the narrow dining room. He picked this seat so that he could see the entire area, could monitor the comings and goings of everyone else. The American likes the sense of control this gives him. He’s early, the other guests having gone back to their rooms to change before the late dinner. The only other passengers in sight are a teenage girl patiently watching her two younger brothers. They lean over the observation windows, their noses pressed against the glass as the airship floats over the darkened countryside. He watches the children with a growing sense of unease. They are wild and loud, and one of the small boys pounds his fist against the glass. The American fears the little cuss will discover the windows can be opened and that he’ll tumble out and drop to his death below.

He balls his fists in his lap. Clamps his lips tight to restrain himself from scolding the child. What happens to the boy is no concern of his. He shouldn’t care one way or another. But he does. The American had a brother of his own, and he remembers those moments when they played with abandon, unfettered by fear or consequence. But that was a long time ago. Long before the First World War stripped away the vestiges of their youthful innocence. He knows how the world works now. And that young boy stands no chance.

The child grows foolish now, showing off for his siblings as he tries to scramble up onto the windows themselves. His sister, tall and blond and rail thin, rises smoothly from her seat and cuffs his ear. The movement is so quick, so graceful that the boy does not see it coming.

“Nein,” she says.

“You’re not my mother,” he howls. “You can’t do that!”

“Go on, then. Tell Mama. See if she doesn’t cuff you again. And for impudence this time.”

The two boys rush off, intent on telling their version of events first, and the girl follows slowly behind, head high, back straight, secure in her position as eldest child. The boys can say what they like; their parents will believe her. She knows this and leaves the dining room without looking the least bit perturbed. The American is certain that she will not embellish what the child did. She will simply deliver the facts, perhaps with leniency even, and let them decide.

A-deck is made up almost entirely of passenger cabins. The staterooms below, on B-deck, are new, added early this year to help accommodate the growing demand for passage on the Hindenburg. But the primary quarters are up here. Twenty-five cabins with two berths each, a dining room and promenade on the port side, and on the starboard side, the lounge, reading room, and a second promenade. The only area on A-deck that is not accessible to passengers is a small serving pantry beside the dining room. No bigger than one of the cabins, it has two long counters with overhead cabinets filled with extra utensils, glassware, and linens. Along one wall is a dumbwaiter used to lift food from the kitchen below. It is too small to hold a grown man—a young child perhaps, but that does the American no good—and he has already ruled it out as a possible means of escape should he need to get out of sight quickly.

All of this he discovered when he entered the dining room ten minutes ago. He took a quick glance inside the pantry and then muttered an apology. Wilhelm Balla was inside folding napkins, and it was easy enough to convince the steward he was lost. More than anything Balla appeared relieved that he didn’t have to come collect the drunkard. The American decided to let the sour-faced steward’s opinion of him remain exactly as it stands. He wants to be dismissed. To be underestimated. At least for now.

Slowly the American is getting his bearings inside the airship. There isn’t much territory to cover in the public areas—he will get to the off-limits sections later—but there are a number of players within those areas, and he has yet to put them into the appropriate slots. Ally. Threat. Hindrance. Unnecessary. There are so many options. This evening’s dinner should help quite a bit with that. Or it will help with sorting out the passengers, at least. Nothing reveals a man’s true character like the way he behaves when being served a meal. And the vantage point he has chosen will make this task easy enough. His seat, in the back corner, faces outward, and he can see not only every other table but the passing skyscape as well. At the moment there is nothing but the inky darkness of a spring evening outside the windows. The occasional star or wispy passing cloud. The moon is out, but it’s hidden on the starboard side. Below them, the Hindenburg’s searchlight slides over small towns and villages, pastures, and here and there the glassy surface of a lake, briefly illuminating the microcosm of rural life.