The Red Baron: A World War I Novel (15 page)

“Have you looked in the mirror? You need at least fifty,” Reinhard said. Schafer dipped his finger in the remains of mashed turnips on his plate and flicked the mush at Reinhard.

“Reinhard!” Udet announced.

Schafer smashed a fist against the table and cursed Udet’s timing.

Metzger left Udet to the sorting and carried a final letter to Manfred. The envelope was sealed in an old-fashioned manor, an imperial eagle pressed into the wax.

“Something official, sir,” Metzger said.

“Odd that they wouldn’t send a telegram,” Manfred said. He cut the envelope open, reluctant to break the seal. His eyes danced over the letter.

“What is it? A second Pour Le Merite?” Allmenroder asked.

“No.” Manfred handed him the letter. “I’ve been invited to the see the Kaiser.”

Manfred landed his plane, an old Aviatik used for administrative tasks and maneuver training, on the open field outside of the Hotel Oranienhof in Bad Kreuznach, far from the war. A German flag marked the entrance through the ring of trees surrounding the castle.

An officer fidgeted at the base of the flagpole, scowling at the golden pocket watch in his hand as the Aviatik rolled to a stop. Manfred killed the engine and climbed from his seat. Savage, his mechanic, followed suit from the rear seat.

“Lieutenant von Richthofen! You were supposed to be here three and a half hours ago,” the officer, a captain with a Pour Le Merite
,
said. He had an empty sleeve pinned to his shoulder, a monocle at one eye, the other covered by a patch.

Manfred leaned against the plane and held up a fur-clad boot. Savage grabbed the boot and wrenched it free with a grunt. “Sorry, sir. We had to fly around a thunderstorm at Bastogne, then land and refuel at Kaiserslautern.” Savage took the other boot off and went about unfastening latches on the back of Manfred’s overcoat. “We got a little mixed up over Arlon, as all the new rail lines aren’t on our maps and—”

“Yes, yes, yes.” The captain waved off Manfred’s explanation, the gold chain from his watch flashing in the sunlight. “I’m Captain Riegel. Good thing your audience isn’t for another hour anyway. Where is your luggage?”

Savage mumbled something about “hurry up and wait” as Manfred shrugged off his overcoat, revealing Manfred’s leather jacket and Pour Le Merite
at his neck.

“No luggage, sir, not in this crate,” Manfred said as he unbuttoned his jacket.

“Lieutenant, the Kaiser and the general staff for the entire front are about to see you. You can’t just waltz in there wearing leather,” Riegel said.

Manfred popped open his leather jacket, revealing his dress uniform and a chest full of medals.

Despite being the son of a minor noble, high society was something of a mystery to Manfred. He’d been in a cadet’s or officer’s uniform since he was eleven years old. His mother schooled him on the proper protocol of visiting with the rich and well-connected people around his hometown of Schweidnitz, but the attendees at Bad Kreuznach were leagues beyond his experience.

Manfred kept to the outer wall, a small plate of cookies and candied cherries at hand. The Pour Le Merite
at his neck wasn’t unique, as Manfred spotted the award on several officers milling about the ballroom. As one of the only lieutenants in the room, the average rank of the officers in the room seemed to be colonel and above, Manfred decided that discretion was the better part of valor when it came to socializing.

Not that his desires mattered. News of his arrival wasn’t a secret, and he was inundated with small talk and star-stuck eyes of those in attendance. The only other draw for the room was who lay on the other side of the gilded doors across the room.

Well-heeled civilian men, and their uniformly plump wives, gravitated toward a set of double doors at the opposite end of the ballroom. The Kaiser was on the other side of the door, and he had a long line of well-wishers waiting for him.

Laughter and animated conversations filled the air; waiters wandered from clique to clique, carrying trays of champagne and freshly squeezed juice. If Manfred hadn’t shot down a Sopwith triplane the day before, he could have sworn this was a peacetime gathering. The congenial atmosphere, hint of soap and cologne in the air, and lack of artillery thundering in the distance made Manfred feel out of place. He wanted to leave and get back to the war, what he knew, before this illusion of quietus could take hold.

Until then, he would enjoy the shortbread cookies with strawberry jam on his plate. He shoved an entire cookie into his mouth and savored that something so sweet and wonderful could still exist in the world.

“There’s Lieutenant von Richthofen,” said a voice from behind Manfred. Manfred dropped his plate on a table and spun around, wiping his hands on a napkin. He choked down the cookie and looked around for the speaker. Riegel squeezed past a pair of men crowding the macaroon croquembouche.

“Richthofen, the Kaiser would appreciate the pleasure of your company in a few minutes. Come with me,” he said.

Manfred dabbed crumbs from his mouth and followed the captain, who maneuvered around the throng of people with practiced ease.

“How goes the war?” Riegel asked.

“I thought you’d have a better idea than I would, given the company,” Manfred said. Riegel stopped aside the door leading to the Kaiser’s room.

“I don’t blame you for thinking that. All I know is what the dispatches say, and the great news that the intelligence and propaganda weasels can fabricate from those reports. You, on the other hand, are there. So how goes the war?” Riegel put his back to the wall and kept an eye on the baroque double doors a few yards away.

“We fly over the same territory over and over again. For every plane we send down it feels like they have two more in the air the next day,” Manfred said, his voice low enough so only Riegel could hear him.

“Your men?”

“The best. I could not fly with better men unless Boelcke was still with us,” Manfred said.

A tremendous crash broke through the din of the party, Manfred’s combat instincts sent him into a crouch and he almost dived under a table for cover. He looked down a side hallway and saw a plinth lying on its side, a bronze bust of some notable face down on the carpet. Two servants scrambled to right the plinth as a housemaster in a tailed suit gave fervent directions to the two men.

Manfred felt his heart thunder in his chest. He fought to keep his breathing steady as he righted himself. Riegel looked as stressed as Manfred felt; the crippled man seemed to hum with adrenaline.

As for the rest of the attendees, the crash managed to ruin the punch line to a few polite jokes. The sound held no more significance than the pop of a car backfiring.

“It never leaves. All these months up here, and it never leaves,” Riegel said.

“What doesn’t, sir?”

“The Front.” Riegel’s right shoulder shrugged, his left hand reaching for an old wound on his missing arm.

The doors to the Kaiser’s room opened, and a trio of generals walked out. Conversation died away as the crowd waited to see who would be summoned next. A colonel with a monocle over an eye beckoned to Riegel with a quick flip of his hand.

“When you see the Kaiser, remain upbeat and positive. You can show more candor with General Ludendorff when you see him,” Riegel said. Manfred swallowed hard and followed Riegel into the grand room beyond the doorway.

Sunlight poured through windows stretching from floor to ceiling. Map tables held the latest snapshot of each theater of war: the trench lines in France, the Austrian push into the Italian Alps, the Russian retreat from Poland, lines of sea mines in the north Atlantic around Jutland, the English push into Palestine. An officer on a ladder updated an enormous graph table mounted on the wall, showing the effective strength of armies and divisions fighting the war. Officers clustered around each map, heads bent in consultation with each other. The constant clattering of telegraphs and typewriters was a harmless echo of the machine guns engaged in war.

Standing in the center of the German war effort left Manfred feeling small. Despite all he might do in the air, he was just one man amid the struggle of millions.

As they walked through the room, a throaty cackle erupted from the group by the windows. The huddle opened as Manfred approached, revealing a short man in a general’s uniform, medals covering the left half his chest from his collarbone to his solar plexus. A flat mustache with upturned tips was unique to all of Germany, as this was Kaiser Wilhelm II, King of Prussia and Emperor of the German Empire.

“My boy, you’re here at last!” the Kaiser slapped Manfred on his left shoulder, then wrapped his arm around Manfred’s waist and pulled him toward the windows. Panic coursed through Manfred as he stutter-stepped alongside the Kaiser. Being manhandled by one of the most powerful men in Europe wasn’t how he thought this audience would play out.

“You’re the expert, so I need you to settle an argument for us. Look,” the Kaiser let Manfred go and pointed to an antiaircraft gun set between two long rows of roses and blue chamomiles. A neat stack of shells was at the ready, and a handful of soldiers—in their not-for-combat dress uniforms—meandered around the weapon. “They insist that one of those…things…sit in my garden. They’re
all
over the estate and are simply repulsive. I’m certain they’re useless and I know that it would be much better to just have you and your boys overhead. Don’t you agree?”

One of the luminaries surrounding the Kaiser cleared his throat loudly and with purpose. Manfred licked his lips as he considered his response.

“Kaiser, every pilot respects the danger from antiaircraft artillery. While the best weapon to use against an airplane is another airplane, my pilots and I must land to refuel. Those guns will never tire, they will not be stopped by fog or the fatigue of the crew,” Manfred said.

The Kaiser tugged at his lip and grunted. “Good points, lad, good points.” The Kaiser’s left arm slipped from its place at his hip and flopped at his side. The Kaiser grabbed the loose arm and resecured it to his waist. While watching the maneuver, Manfred noticed that the Kaiser’s left arm was a good deal shorter than his right, and the left hand was shrunken, as if it belonged to a child.

“Speaking of points, how many do you have now?” the Kaiser asked.

“Points, sir?”

“Yes, points. The very reason I gave you that medal around your neck and all those other pilots,” the Kaiser said.

“Fifty-eight, sir. I shot down two more just yesterday. We normally call them victories, or kills.”

“Kills? Nonsense, my soldiers don’t kill the enemy, they annihilate the opposition!” The Kaiser raised his voice so the entire room could hear his proclamation.

In that moment, Manfred wished he could take the Kaiser to the Front. To see the men suffering in the trenches, smell the bodies left to the rats in no-man’s-land, feel the fear that was every soldier’s constant companion. A single afternoon listening to shots fired in anger and having his breath stolen by the crush of a shell burst might change the Kaiser’s view on war.

“Too bad you won’t make it to sixty,” the Kaiser said. “We can’t afford to lose such a hero like you.” He pursed his lips then looked to an aide behind him. “I have forbidden him from flying, haven’t I?”

“High Command feels that Captain Richthofen’s experience is best used at the Front, Your Excellency,” a low voice said from beyond the huddle. Officers parted and Manfred snapped to attention as General Ludendorff approached. Ludendorff, the coleader of Germany’s military with Hindenburg, had stern, intelligent eyes that seemed to measure up everyone he saw in exact details within moments. By his word, millions of men fought and died. If this burdened his spirit, Manfred couldn’t see it in the man. Ludendorff held a pair of rank epaulettes in his hand.

“Captain?” the Kaiser asked.

“Yes, he’s earned it,” Ludendorff said.

The general unfastened the buttons atop Manfred’s shoulders and tossed his first lieutenant rank to the floor. He slid the new rank onto Manfred’s uniform and slammed the ball of his fists on Manfred’s shoulders to christen the rank.

“Plus, he’ll need it to lead the first fighter wing,” Ludendorff said. “Four squadrons under your command. Make a difference at the Front, Richthofen. Germany is counting on you.” Manfred’s mind swam at the sudden promotion and the implications of leading a fighter wing.

“May I borrow Captain Richthofen for a few minutes, Your Excellency?” Ludendorff said to the Kaiser. “He and I need to discuss a few things.”

“Not yet.” The Kaiser cast a sly glance at Manfred. “I understand your birthday is in a few days, correct?”

“Yes, Excellency, I’ll be twenty-five.”

“Well then you deserve a gift from me,” the Kaiser raised his good hand and snapped his fingers.

The two servants that had dropped something heavy in the hallway minutes earlier grunted as they carried that same something, hidden under a table cloth. They set it on a table and stepped away gingerly. The Kaiser grabbed the cloth and pulled it away with no small amount of theater. Beneath the cloth was a bronze bust of the Kaiser. It was at least half again the actual size of the Kaiser’s head and shoulders.

“Nice, isn’t it?” the Kaiser said.

“Magnificent, sir, my deepest thanks.” Manfred reached out to test the weight. There was no way he could fly it back to Douai, much less carry it back to the waiting plane.

“We’ll have it sent to your home in Schweidnitz,” Ludendorff said. “Kaiser, if you’ll excuse us.”

“Yes, go count your beans or whatever it is you need to do,” the Kaiser said. He looked to his aide. “Who’s next?”

Manfred and Riegel walked along a wooded path leading back to Manfred’s plane. Manfred carried a plate full of cookies and small cakes covered by a napkin in one hand, the plans and associated orders for his fighter wing in a folder in the other. The conversation with Ludendorff had been one sided, the Quartermaster General of the German armed forces and coleader of the same with Marshal Hindenburg, laying out his vision for the wing and explaining to Manfred how it would function under General von Hoeppner’s direction.