Page 91 of Flight of Dreams

“That confident, are you?” This sounds like Heinrich Kubis.

The American. “My wife had a thick neck. That never looked good on her anyway.”

So a necklace, then. The American is betting jewelry. No wonder they let him in the game. Werner tried to get in a game once, but all he had to bet was the five marks he’d earned as a tip the day before, and the men had sent him scuttling out the door. He suspects they wouldn’t let him play because the entire crew knows he works to help support his family and none of them wants to be responsible for any damage his brother and parents would suffer because of a loss. Most of them are rough and dirty men, but they are honorable. And many of them have wives and children of their own at home. They know what it’s like to come up short for the month, and how bitter it is when their own stupidity is at fault.

Around the table they go, betting, raising, folding. Two players leave the game in disgust. Eventually the American calls. Cards slap the table. Someone curses. The American has kept his necklace and everything else along with it. Werner does his best to remember these details so he can report them to Gertrud Adelt.

More money goes in the pot. Cards are dealt again. The men swap war stories. And the American wins again. Only now Werner isn’t paying attention. He is fascinated. He rarely hears of battlefields and brothels when they know he is within earshot, so he misses the signal that the American is calling it quits for the night. He hears the footsteps but doesn’t have time to scramble away. Before he can get to his feet, Werner is knocked backward by the door. He doesn’t grunt or call out when he lands hard on his tailbone, so his presence goes undetected by the crew in the other room. They hover over the table, looking at new cards, trying to recover their losses. As the door swings shut, the American bends low over Werner’s crouched form, murder in his eyes.

DAY FOUR

THURSDAY, MAY 6, 1937—5:35 A.M., EASTERN STANDARD TIME

THE EASTERN COAST OF THE UNITED STATES NEAR PORTLAND, MAINE

13 HOURS AND 50 MINUTES UNTIL THE EXPLOSION

I rated the Zeppelin much lower as a weapon of war than almost anyone else. I believed that this enormous bladder of combustible and explosive gas would prove to be easily destructible.

—Winston S. Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty

THE JOURNALIST

“Do you think he believed you?” Gertrud asks. Their stateroom is dark—nothing more than a suggestion of light coming from the westward-facing windows—and filled with pre-dawn quiet. Her voice sounds like an intrusion. But she knows Leonhard is awake, has been for at least an hour, because he’s tracing tiny circles around the knobs of her spine. Slowly. Methodically. From her tailbone to the base of her skull, he does not miss one vertebra.

She can feel his answer from where she lies across his chest—a shake of the head. “No, Liebchen,” he says. “I do not.”

There’s no need to explain her question. He knows well enough what she means. And he’s angry with himself for falling into such a neatly laid trap. Of course there’s no way the two of them could have figured out the owner of the dog tag on their own. And Leonhard’s nonchalant explanation about the deductive skills of journalists did nothing to convince Captain Lehmann last night in the bar. He knows that Leonhard lied to him, and that leaves them at a disadvantage. They talked for over an hour and, when pressed, Leonhard had been forced to tell Lehmann their suspicions regarding the American and his interest in Ludwig Knorr. He had, thankfully, left out Emilie’s part in their discovery.

Gertrud burrows deeper into the warmth of Leonhard’s bare arm. “Thank you for protecting her.”

“Never give up a source, right?” He murmurs it against her hair.

“She’s a friend,” Gertrud says, and then amends her comment, “for my part, at least.”

“I didn’t think you made friends.”

“End of days.”

He laughs at this and rolls her over so she’s lying on her back, pinned to the mattress by the weight of his body. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Take me home.”

It’s the closest she will come to begging, and he flinches at the desperate note in her voice. “I’m trying.”

“We seem to be going in the opposite direction.”

“No way out but through, Liebchen. You want to go home to Egon? Home is through Lakehurst and then New York, and then this godforsaken book tour. We miss a single one of those steps and we won’t have a son to go home to.”

Leonhard has never said the words so plainly, though she has known the truth of them for some time.

“Is that what Goebbels told you?”

“That and more.”

The breath catches in her throat. “I’m so sorry. I caused this trouble.”

“No. You were just a handy excuse. I have co-written a book about German aviation and the Nazis’ recent grasp for power. I have become a public figure now that the book will be published internationally. I have put this target on our backs.”