The Hindenburg Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,9

Charteris watched. As an author, he had trained himself to observe and this farewell was both touching and unusual. Erdmann’s wife was grasping her husband so tightly her knuckles had whitened; and when they finally drew away, her face was streaked with tears. He withdrew a handkerchief from his suit coat pocket, dried her face with it, then pressed it into her hand. They kissed, briefly, and he walked her toward the stairs, both of them disappearing from view.

Charteris caught Miss Mather’s gaze, down the promenade; the spinster was frowning as her eyes sent him a question: Had Erdmann, too, had a premonition?

“What do you make of such an emotional auf wiedersehen?” Hilda asked.

Charteris shrugged. “That gentleman is involved with ship security. He may know something we don’t.”

“I cannot say I like the sound of that.”

“I can’t say you’re alone.”

Then a voice blared over the loudspeaker, first German, then English: “Schiff hoch! Up ship!”

The band began to play again, a reprise of the national anthem; figures were scurrying below, loosening mooring lines, unhooking the nose cone at the bow, searchlights on the field fanning the great ship as if at a motion-picture premiere. Diesel engines sputtered to life, but on the observation deck, the sound seemed muffled, even remote.

Down on the runway, Mrs. Erdmann had not rejoined the crowd—she stood closer to the ship than anyone else, staring up at the windows, waving with the handkerchief her husband had given her to dry her tears. And indeed Erdmann stood at the promenade windows, now, staring down at his wife, his hand raised in a frozen wave that uncomfortably resembled a Nazi salute.

Then Mrs. Erdmann and everyone else on the airfield grew smaller.

THREE

HOW THE HINDENBURG FLOATED INTO THE NIGHT, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS SHARED A CABIN

AT 8:15 P.M. THE HINDENBURG, on a northwesterly course, making for the Rhine River at Cobenz, sailed into an overcast-cloaked twilight. Below, the Hitler youth belied their adult uniforms and became the children they were, running after the silver airship as it rose, as if pursuing a balloon whose string had slipped through their fingers. Nazi caps flew from their heads as they raced after the shrinking ship, until the airfield fence at the pinewoods brought a sudden stop to their carefree chase. The hatless boys gazed up at the great ship, an airfield searchlight holding its circular beam on the tail fin where rode their beloved swastika; then the spotlight switched off, ship and symbol disappearing into the gathering darkness.

In the well-lit world of A deck on the Hindenburg, Charteris and his new friend, Hilda Friederich, were standing at the windows now, the author catching the young woman, when she seemed to lose her balance.

“I am sorry,” she said, breaking from the brief embrace. “I’m afraid I am a trifle dizzy….”

“It will quickly pass,” Charteris said, knowing this reaction was typical of dirigible departure, a momentary disorientation caused by the sight of the ground swiftly receding and the people below growing smaller and smaller, combined with the absence of any sense of motion, of any awareness of being airborne.

He himself did not experience this sensation, however; to Charteris, there was only a feeling of buoyancy, a lightness, as if gravity had suddenly lessened. The start of a journey by any other mechanical means—airplane, railway, motorcar, tramway—could not compare with the smoothness, the effortlessness, of a zeppelin casting off.

For a few minutes Charteris and Hilda stood at the windows, watching the darkened forests and farmlands of southern Germany glide by, stroked by the airship’s single spotlight, like a prison searchlight seeking an escaped felon. The lights of farmhouses and an occasional ancestral castle would flicker through the darkness, and now and then a speeding train would reveal itself, throwing sparks from its smokestack, bidding the zep hello by way of its long mournful whistle. The drone of wind stirred by the airship’s cruising speed of eighty knots drowned out any engine sound, adding to the surreal effect of sightseeing by night.

A familiar voice just behind him caught Charteris’s attention: Ed Douglas, the advertising man, had flagged down a white-jacketed steward.

“Where’s this fabled smoking room, anyway?” Douglas demanded. “And can a man get a drink there?”

Charteris could see Douglas’s companions—Colonel Morris and Burt Dolan—seated in the lounge, waiting and watching with anticipation as their emissary went forward.

The steward, a narrow-faced youth of perhaps twenty-two, said, “The smoking lounge is below us, on B deck, sir—and, yes, there’s a fully outfitted bar.”

“Good! Where exactly?”

“Starboard side, all the way back,