frowned, and his face fell as he grasped the author’s meaning. “What a fool…”
“Pardon?”
“Not you, Mr. Charteris, no not you… I must have allowed myself to be seduced by the elegance and civility of this airship…. This is like another world, is it not? A better world than the one down there—suspicion, fear, jealousy, self-hatred, these are the cancers at the heart of the Reich.”
“I just thought you should know. But I never said this, understood?”
“Understood, Mr. Charteris. Easily understood by one who lives in a land of midnight knocks at the door… who exists in a country of rigid structure, rotting from within, morally bankrupt… Excuse me. I’m a little drunk.”
“You’re articulate, nonetheless.”
“I only hope…”
“Yes?”
Adelt’s eyes were tight with concern. “Did we say too much at the table tonight? I know we spoke of our friend Stefan Zweig….”
“I can’t judge that. I don’t have to swim in those waters.”
“Someday you may, Mr. Charteris. Someday you may…. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll join my wife in our cabin.”
Charteris finished his own drink and headed up to A deck. In the hallway, shoes had been placed outside most doors, for elves to polish in the night. No shoes outside Charteris’s cabin, though.
No sign at all of his cabin mate.
Shrugging, Charteris undressed, hung up his tuxedo, set his Italian loafers in the hall, slipped into silk pajamas, and slid between fine linen sheets and light woolen blankets, falling quickly, soundly asleep, lulled by the murmur of distant engines.
Blissfully unaware of the storm outside, or that his cabin mate, one Eric Knoecher, would not be joining him on this—or any—night.
DAY TWO:
TUESDAY, MAY 4, 1937
FIVE
HOW THE HINDENBURG MISPLACED A PASSENGER, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS WALKED THE PLANK
BY DAWN OF WHAT WOULD be the airship’s first full day of travel, sailing along at 2,100 feet on a course designed to outmaneuver the churning storm system, the Hindenburg cruised above the English Channel, past the Scilly Islands. The swastika-tailed silver ship flew somewhat south of Ireland and the familiar landmark that was the Old Head of Kinsale, heading toward the endless lonely gray-blue expanse of the Atlantic. Aboard were ninety-six people (passengers and crew), as well as a considerable cargo including mail, fancy goods, airplane parts, tobacco, films, partridge eggs, and Joseph Spah’s dog. As the time for breakfast neared—serving began at eight A.M.—the airship gradually lowered to the accustomed altitude of one thousand feet.
Surprised and vaguely concerned when—upon awaking—he discovered himself alone in the cabin, Charteris shaved and washed up at the tilt-down basin, frowning all the while.
An innocent reason for Knoecher’s absence might present itself. Perhaps the undercover S.D. agent had followed his cabin mate’s suggestion and requested one of the numerous unoccupied berths on the airship.
But Charteris knew that was unlikely: the S.D. man had been placed in the author’s quarters specifically to keep tabs on a potential troublemaker.
The other obvious possibility—that Eric Knoecher had gotten lucky with a female passenger, spending the night in another cabin—seemed equally unlikely. The only two unattached females aboard were Margaret Mather and Hilda Friederich. Charteris felt Miss Mather made an improbable paramour for the handsome bounder, and besides which, if the spinster had spent the night with anyone, it would have been that college boy who’d been plying her (and himself, in loin-girding preparation) with white wine.
As for Hilda, Charteris was confident that he was the only man in her shipboard life.
A remaining prospect was that Knoecher had stayed up all night, either in conference with Erdmann and the other two Luftwaffe “observers,” or perhaps sat up talking, maybe falling asleep, in a seat in the lounge or on one of the observation decks (the bar closed at three A.M., so that was not a possibility).
Charteris slipped into comfortable, sporty attire—a single-breasted gray herringbone sport jacket with white shirt, plaid tie, darker gray slacks, gray-and-white loafers—and followed the seductive scent of coffee to the portside dining room, like a cobra heeding a snake charmer’s flute.
He was able to collect a cup of steaming aromatic coffee from a steward (taking it black), but breakfast proper wasn’t to be served for another forty-five minutes. A number of passengers were already seated having coffee and rolls, and others were seated on the two-seater benches jutting from the wall of windows, enjoying light conversation or writing a letter or postcard. They were mostly ignoring the view, which wasn’t much: a gloomy overcast sky, when the ship wasn’t caught within a gray cloud.
Knoecher wasn’t among them.
Sipping at his coffee, the