The Empire of Night: A Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller (49 page)

Dettmer looked at me.

I tried to read his face.

I kept mine blank, inhabiting, in my actor’s brain, my character’s power, his independence, his arrogance.

Dettmer’s face was blank as well. Rare for him, with me. But surely natural to him with others. He had his own power here. He was the commander of this ship. He was respectful of me, of the people I represented. Fearful even. Perhaps. But the self-possession and the exercise of power and independence that I was portraying to him were, in a real sense, conferred by him. Especially now that we were in the air. The captain of a ship on the sea was God. The commander of a ship in the air was no different.

I tried to see suspicion in Dettmer.

I could not.

But this look between us went on for a longer moment than was comfortable.

“With your permission,” I said, and I lowered my head to him ever so slightly.

He said, “We each have our mission, Colonel.”

I said, “My mission tonight is based on a surpassing respect for yours.”

He smiled. Quickly, warmly.

How ardently this soldier, this commander, this master of a German warship craved personal reassurance. Craved approval.

How sad this all was.

“My ship is yours,” he said.

I brought my right hand up sharply to my right temple. He straightened with a silent gasp. He was touched by my initiating this salute. He brought his own hand up and we held this for a moment, those few beats of amplified respect between two officers.

But through this whole exchange I could not look him in the eyes.

59

I turned to cross the gondola, and as if the cabin knew my haste it grabbed my chest and pushed at the backs of my knees and propelled me toward the ladder. The airship was climbing, of course, and I was rushing downhill.

Manageable still. The angle was maybe ten degrees. But I was very glad the ladder would let me face aft.

I put my hand to the ladder and the executive officer said, “Careful, sir.”

I nodded without looking at him.

I climbed through the roof and out into the open air.

I let the angle press me tightly against the rungs, but almost at once I was dragged to my right. I grasped hard at the left side rail and held on tight. I stopped climbing. For now it was sufficient not to be slung into the air.

We were coming round a bit, perhaps adjusting to the head wind, perhaps taking a heading. But the outward pull eased now and I climbed hard and fast and I was inside the keel.

I had to get this done long before we were at our final cruising altitude. This angle would be a constant challenge.

The hull was still dark.

I held tight to the handrail along the walkway and shined my flashlight forward and I moved as quickly as I dared let myself, with this constant tugging in my chest threatening to fling me headlong into the darkness.

I passed over the gondola engine. Along this stretch of the walkway the sound of the forward Maybach, which was straining to help lift us, jackhammered in my head. It was a bit of a struggle to think in the midst of this but I knew at once I needed to do my work close to this place. The sound of my Luger plugging a gas cell would be masked here.

I pushed on aft for now. I needed to do two things before I could get to the matter of making fire.

There was no light up ahead. The forward hatch—my hatch—was, of course, closed. When I desperately needed for this to be open, I would not have time to open it. So I pressed on, pushing my center of balance downward, down into my legs, into my knees, pressing hard at each footstep, leaning my torso backward, holding tight to the handrail, my flashlight beam bouncing before me, lifting as far out on the path as I could throw it.

And then I saw in my beam the walkway turn up ahead, where it skirted the hatch.

I arrived.

I braced myself against the starboard turning of the railing and I flashed the beam to the closed hatch and then, beyond it, to its portside. I was looking for a lever or a handle or a wheel, some way to open this thing. It wasn’t there. I scanned the beam and I found it, at the forward end of the hatch, a wheel with protruding handles set in the bulkhead.

I moved toward it.

The rail along the walkway ended and I angled my body hard to my right—the ship’s upward incline seemed greater now by a few degrees—and my target, clear in my flashlight, was another rail along the bulkhead.

I lunged for it.

I had it.

I made my way along to the wheel, and with my left hand I grabbed one of its handles and then, needing the wheel to both open the hatch and hold myself steady, I grasped a second handle with my right hand.

The dispatch case lifted off me. My chest clamped in panic even as the shoulder strap grabbed at my neck.

It was okay. The strap held. The bag and the tin box were safe. The angle backward was a good fifteen degrees. Perhaps more. It felt like fifty. Two powerful hands pulled at my shoulders.

I strained at the wheel. It turned, bit by bit, bearing my clinging weight with each torque of the gears of the hatch. Light was dilating into the keel behind me.

And then the wheel would turn no more.

I looked. The hatch was fully open.

I let go of the wheel, one hand at a time, quickly grabbing downward and reattaching at the handrail. And now I had both hands secure there and I dragged myself along the bulkhead and approached the corner going forward.

I stopped.

I clung hard. The pull on me was strong, trying to fling me aft. I knew the danger. The light was all around. I sensed the hatch gaping behind me. The maw of a bright-faced beast. If I let go I would tumble directly out of the Zepp.

I turned my head. I looked.

We were running over rooftops and now over a paved road, and now a dense stand of trees was passing and passing. Had we circled back over Spich? A public relations move upon takeoff?

I looked away.

We were up a good three hundred, four hundred feet. I remembered newsreel clips of parachutes being tested off the London Bridge and the Eiffel Tower, so I figured I needed about six hundred feet minimum to jump.

I inched along. And I turned the corner into the walkway.

I climbed, the spill of the light of the hatch fading behind me. I switched on the flashlight, and up ahead I saw the silver flank of the nearest fuel tank. I approached and flashed the beam into the deepest shadows beyond.

The parachute was there. I would carry it forward with me. The ticking would really begin after the fire was lit. I’d need to have this thing attached to me when I struck the match.

I needed an extra hand. I extinguished the flashlight.

I bent to the parachute, drew it out. I wrapped my right arm around it and held the rail with my other hand. The next milepost was based on sound anyway.

I climbed onward.

The hammering approached, the piston roar of the Maybach. I moved into the very center of it.

The walkway was elevated a foot or so from the aluminum skin of the keel, and the fuel tanks were welded to the keel and set about the same distance off the walkway edge. I lifted the parachute over the railing and wedged it between two tanks for now, and I moved forward one fuel tank.

I turned and faced aft and sat down on the walkway, bracing myself with a foot against the near edge of the next tank.

The engines were hammering through me not just as sound but as a bone-deep vibration, from where I sat, from where the bottom of my foot pressed against the side of the fuel tank.

But I was thinking just fine. I was thinking clearly.

If the army played a few minutes to the locals before heading out to do its business—and the German imperial propaganda machine was already as well oiled and powerful as the Maybach engine I was sitting over—then perhaps we’d level off soon and give the people a good look at the new Zepp in flight and feed their war fervor. This was the newest model, after all. Lately delivered.

I had to make a tough choice. Sit and see if my guess about our location and heading was right and risk a more remote blast if I was wrong or work in this tilt-floored Coney Island Pavilion ride and risk fumbling the tin box and letting it tumble down the walkway.

I drew the box from my case.

I opened the lid but kept the box in my lap for now, my flexed legs holding it more or less level.

I found my matches and pulled them from my pocket. I laid them on the cotton wool.

Where would I set the box so that it wouldn’t slide while the cotton burned?

And what about the parachute? Trying to put the harness on and carry the chute rucksack down this incline and hook it properly for a launch would be a terrible challenge at this angle.

I had to roll the dice.

I had to wait.

And I did.

I sat for a few moments and a few moments more and I thought that the angle was softening a little, but then perhaps not.

And then yes.

And we began to turn again.

Another portside turn.

If we’d passed over Spich, as I’d thought, and then over the Alten Forst
,
we’d now be turning north again, finding our bearing toward England, and in lovely, level flight we’d pass once more over the good citizens of Spich, who’d been alerted by our first passage and now were crowded into the streets to wave and cheer and throw their hats in the air.
Gott strafe England.

I had no intention of blowing up the LZ 78 and its payload directly over Spich.

But it was a small town.

We’d cross it quickly.

And the upward angle was declining.

I felt I was right.

I waited.

We were leveling.

I waited.

And now we were level.

I rose up. I placed the tin box on the walkway and I stepped aft to the parachute and unwedged and withdrew it from its place against the fuel tank.

I turned back and flashed my beam to the box sitting open there on the walkway, matches on top of cotton wool. I approached it, the parachute cradled in my right arm.

And the lights came on.

60

It came from above and from below. The light was muted—the bulbs and their fixtures double-contained in glass—but the hull was illuminated clear enough. Plenty clear enough for me to look far ahead along the walkway and see a figure coming this way.

I glanced back aft to see if I’d soon be surrounded.

No one in that direction.

Back to this figure, advancing rapidly now.

Lieutenant Schmidt. My canny rube.

I dropped the parachute to my side.

He was smiling. He was preparing to salute.

And then he wasn’t. He was looking at the parachute as he approached and he was recognizing it and then he was looking at the box in front of me.

He was maybe thirty feet away now.

He slowed.

It would have been impossible for him to figure out anything close to my plan. But he knew something odd was going on.

He was ten feet from me and he stopped.

I lifted up to full height to stand before him as a far superior officer.

He wavered.

I could have found these things here myself. However odd they were, if their presence in the middle of the walkway was sinister, then surely his first impulse would be that it had nothing to do with me. I was a very high ranking officer in the
Deutsches Heer
. I had found these suspicious things myself.

The Maybach pounded loudly on.

There was no need to speak to him anyway. I was righteous in my rank, in my place here on the LZ 78.

I motioned him closer.

I pointed at these things. The parachute. The box. The matches.

I cried above the engine roar, “See what I’ve found, Lieutenant. What do you make of it?”

He looked more closely at the box.

He began to bend toward it.

“Close enough!” I commanded.

He stopped himself. Stood upright.

My rank was prevailing.

He saluted. He waited.

I had no time for this.

The engines roared around us both.

There was nothing more to say anyway.

He could not be allowed to walk off now. He would, of course, speak of this to the executive officer or the commander. Even if he was not suspicious of Colonel Wolfinger, even if they were not either, even if, instead, they thought I’d shrewdly uncovered a plot, perhaps a further plot of the Englishman, they’d still send somebody up here to me.

I could not let that happen.

Lieutenant Schmidt would be dead in a few minutes anyway.