Page 70 of Flight of Dreams

“The bomb threats. He believes they are legitimate, that someone might attempt to destroy the Hindenburg on this flight.” Gertrud leans forward a bit, imploring. “So you see, it’s not just that I’m putting my nose where it doesn’t belong or that I’m overly curious. I’d get off this damned ship right now if I could. But that’s not a choice I can make. So all I’m left with is figuring out what the hell is going on before someone blows us out of the sky.” She lifts one trembling hand to illustrate her sincerity.

It’s the closest Gertrud will come to begging, and still it takes several long, quiet seconds before Emilie finally speaks.

“There’s a poker game,” she says. “It takes place in the crew’s mess every night after dinner. There are usually only four or five men who play, but Ludwig Knorr is always one of them.”

One corner of Gertrud’s mouth curls upward in a devious smile. “Are passengers allowed to join?”

“No. Not officially. But in the end, it’s poker. The only thing that really matters is what you bring to the table.”

This morsel of information settles in Gertrud’s mind. Takes root. She knows it is important, can feel it the way she does every good lead, but she does not yet know why. It will come to her. It always does. She stands, ready to usher Emilie out. “Are you satisfied with our exchange of information?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Good,” Gertrud says. “I wouldn’t exactly say it’s been a pleasure, but I am grateful that you came to me. I hope we’ve formed something of an alliance.”

Emilie rises from the chair and wipes her hands across her skirt, as though dusting them off. “You’re dismissing me?”

“I prefer to think of it as freeing up your time. You are on the clock after all.”

“I can’t leave yet.”

“You have something left to say?”

“As far as anyone outside this room is concerned, I came here to perform my duties as a stewardess, not the least of which is assisting with the needs of my female passengers.”

“And you’re under the impression that I need your assistance?” Gertrud turns to the mirror over the sink. The reflection that greets her is alarming.

“I mean no offense, Frau Adelt, but if you leave this room in your current state my reputation will be ruined.”

“Fine, then.”

Gertrud lowers herself into the chair before the dressing table and submits herself to Emilie’s ministrations. Her clothes are selected with care, as are her cosmetics, perfume, and hygiene products. Before long she is dressed and primped. All that’s left is to find some way of taming her hair. And, to give Emilie credit, she does try. But the curls and the static are too much even for her considerable skill. After several frustrating attempts to arrange Gertrud’s hair into finger waves, Emilie steps back and plants her fists firmly at her waist.

“Do you have a hat?”

THE NAVIGATOR

Once, when Max was a child, his family toured the ruins of Flossenbürg Castle while on vacation in Bavaria. They arrived early in the morning to find the crumbling stone walls shrouded in a fog so dense Max felt as though he could poke it with a stick. They moved slowly through the ruins, holding hands and trying to restrain the terrified laughter that pressed against their lungs—the irrational, frantic hilarity brought on by the sense of looming disaster. Max loved the foreboding that prickled the back of his neck as they picked their way amongst the rubble. Here and there a dark corner stood in sharp relief against the spectral mist, or a stately pine rose up from the gloom sprawled across the castle grounds, but apart from those occasional landmarks he and his family wandered blindly through the vestiges of a great fortress split asunder during the Thirty Years’ War. He sensed as though he was present in some bend in time and if he just took the right turn he might be able to step backwards and witness history with his own eyes. A siege. A slaughter. He was transported. Suspended. Sometime later, when the light began to shift and the sun turned warm enough to burn through the gloom, he felt a gnawing disappointment. By midmorning the air was crisp and clean and the magic had dissipated.

That day, however, was the beginning of Max Zabel’s love affair with fog. It is the reason that he wakes early and often volunteers for the first shift in any rotation. Max has been known to pray for fog the way some men pray for deliverance. So it is a great irony that today, of all days, should be the one when the airship flies into a swamp-like bank of mist off the coast of Newfoundland. Max has not seen the like since that day at Flossenbürg Castle. They have been drifting through heavy cloud cover since dawn. But this is different. He can feel the shift in air pressure as they pass through sparse clouds and into the wall of coastal fog. The air around him becomes solid. The roar of engines grows muffled, as though someone has stuffed them with cotton. Everything dulls. Max notes the change in atmosphere and the time on his flight log—force of habit—but no one else in the control car pays the transformation any mind. This is a normal part of flying. It just happens to be his favorite way to fly. Half-blind and mute. Max does not pretend this is rational or ideal. It’s rather dangerous, in fact—if one wants to take it at face value—but thrilling nonetheless.

Pity he can’t enjoy it. The remnants of his spectacular hangover are still present, like ball bearings rolling around his skull. If he moves his head too quickly they clang against one another, making him dizzy, making his eyes water and his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth. It’s little more than sixty degrees in the control car, but Max is sweating along his lower back, beneath his arms, and across his upper lip as his body works to expel the last traces of alcohol. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Dries his hand on his trousers.

Max is thirsty. But there’s little that can be done about that now. It isn’t time for his break. He will stay fixed at his station if it kills him. He will not flinch. He will not complain. He will not acknowledge his mistake last night or let it affect his ability to perform his duties today. The other officers must feel the static charge of his determination, for they do not speak to him unless necessary. They avoid eye contact. The gloom outside has permeated the control car and subdued every man on duty.

From where he’s standing at his chart table, Max cannot see the rudder wheel at the front of the bridge, though he knows that Helmut Lau is on duty at the moment. He can hear the intermittent calls between Lau, Commander Pruss, and Kurt Bauer, the elevator man, but they recede into background chatter as he watches the instruments on the panel before him. He makes adjustments for altitude and headwinds. Max slips carefully and purposefully into his private zone. This is a world of numbers and precision, a world where you do one thing and there is a specific, predictable outcome. And it is in this moment of deep concentration that he is struck by a thought: it is a pity that he cannot chart the human heart. Were it possible, he would spread Emilie’s heart out on the table before him. Smooth out the creases. Measure its latitude and longitude. And then, when he could see the unbroken whole, he would place himself directly in the center. He would draw himself there in red ink. Permanent. That might have been possible before he inadvertently betrayed her trust. But now her papers are confiscated and she is a breath away from being lost to him for good.

Max is broken from this trance by the panicked voice of Kurt Bauer.

“We are only a few kilometers from Cape Race.”

“No,” Max says, “that’s not possible. That would put us…” he turns to his chart and flips the pages three at a time. It is one long moment of suspended animation in which Max realizes what has happened. What he has done. And then the Hindenburg’s newly installed sonic altimeter begins to beep—two bright chirps with a five-second gap between them—indicating that the ground is rising fast.

“On the cliffs,” Bauer finishes for him.

There is a pause in the control car, no more than four seconds, as every man in the room looks at one another and then at the instruments in front of them. Denial. Shock. Fear. These emotions are evident on their faces, tumbling over one another like falling dominoes. When the next chirp sounds they all fly into action. But now the time between alarms is only three seconds.

The device is new and state-of-the-art and has been on board for less than a year. It measures the distance between the control car and the ground, much like the sounding line on a boat, but with the added benefit of an audible warning system that alerts crew when the distance begins to recede quickly.