The Hindenburg Murders

by Max Allan Collins

  “Why don’t you call me where I’m staying,” she said, “at the Sterling? I don’t know the phone number, but it is a well-known hotel.”

  “All right. Let me give you my number in Florida.”

  Leonhard loaned Charteris a fountain pen and the author jotted down his number on a napkin and gave it to Hilda. Then, in the time-honored tradition of travelers at the end of their journey, he traded similar information with the Adelts, who would still be in New York on business when Charteris returned to talk to publishers, everybody passing around scribbled-on napkins like business cards.

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Leonhard said, half a wry smile tugging his face. “You know what today is, don’t you?”

  Charteris sipped his tea. “No, what?”

  Hilda said, “Ascension Day.”

  “Is it forty days after Easter already?” Charteris toasted with his teacup. “Ah, yes, another holy day of obligation. Well, we’ve ascended, all right.”

  “Are you Catholic too, Leslie?” Gertrude asked.

  “Nominally. This is the day we celebrate Jesus telling the disciples to get off their duffs and spread the Good News.”

  Hilda blinked twice and smiled at him.

  “I’m impressed,” Leonhard said.

  “Well, don’t be,” Charteris said, buttering a biscuit. “You see, my brother is a priest. Which, considering the sort of life I lead, would seem to indicate some incredible form of family compensation.”

  That amused everyone, but soon Hilda was frowning again, drumming her fingers.

  “It’ll be fine, dear,” Charteris told her. “We’ve swung northward again. Look—they’re preparing the table for the customs and immigration men.”

  Which Kubis and another steward were in the process of doing, where the promenade emptied into the stairway.

  “Have you noticed that sad colonel anywhere?” Gertrude asked them.

  “Erdmann?” Charteris said, innocently, “No.”

  “It’s funny he’s nowhere to be seen.” The pretty blonde shook her head, her cap of curls shimmering, her big blue eyes wide with thought. “You’d think he’d be sitting here, waiting to be first off the ship.”

  “Why do you say that, darling?” her husband asked.

  “Well, when we… ascended, to use the word of the day, he seemed so reluctant to be leaving. Remember him sitting just over there, so melancholy? And his wife coming aboard to embrace him so warmly? You’d think they were never going to see each other again.”

  Before long the stewards were passing among them again, with sandwiches of cold cuts and cheeses piled on their silver trays. Carafes of Liebfrauenmilch were distributed, as well.

  A muffled sound—a steam whistle—caused everyone to turn and look.

  Leonhard Adelt said, “We will be landing soon—that was the call for the ship’s crew to landing stations.”

  Hilda sighed and smiled, relief dancing in her dark blue eyes.

  Charteris touched a napkin to his lips. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  “What is it, Leslie?” Hilda asked, reaching out for him, fingertips brushing his hand.

  “Little boys’ room. I’ll be back before too long. They won’t let any of us off without going through customs.”

  He went up to Kubis, who was supervising the other stewards in their sandwich-serving. “Can you get away for just a few moments?”

  “Well, sir, I…”

  “Can’t I wring one last imposition out of those marks I bequeathed you?”

  Kubis smiled a little. “Certainly, sir. Anything for the man who wrote Saint in New York.”

  “Take me to Colonel Erdmann’s quarters.”

  Now the steward frowned; he had been made aware of Erdmann’s house arrest of Spehl. “But, sir…”

  “No questions, Heinrich. This is an imposition, remember?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As he followed Kubis out of the lounge and along the starboard promenade, the slanting rain-flecked windows—cool air rushing in—revealed an early twilight had settled in, though as overcast as it now was, the difference between day and dusk was minimal. They’d be over Lakehurst again, shortly—he wondered if they would land or swing around for another sightseeing jaunt.

  As Kubis began down the stairs, Charteris—somewhat surprised by the chief steward’s route—asked, “Does Colonel Erdmann have one of the new rooms down on B deck?”

  “Yes—they’re larger, you know. With windows.”

  Though the bulk of the Hindenburg’s cabins were on A deck, where Charteris had been, a handful had been added to B deck since the ship’s successful first season, to increase passenger space. These cabins were aft, taking up space that had originally been tentlike crew quarters.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Kubis turned sharply to the left, where the floor itself was the retracted gangway, moving through a newly punched door giving access to the keel corridor. On the Hindenburg’s previous season of flights, the keel corridor was closed to passengers; but with the addition of this new wing of cabins, that was no longer the case.

  The steward turned to the right, down the narrow corridor, and stopped at a door marked B-1, looking to Charteris with a hesitant expression. “Should I knock, sir?” he whispered.

  “Please,” Charteris said.

  Kubis rapped his knuckles tentatively on the door.

  Nothing.

  The steward glanced at Charteris, who nodded, saying, “Again.”

  Kubis knocked again, louder. Then said, “Colonel Erdmann! Sorry to disturb you, sir! It’s Chief Steward Kubis, sir!”

  Nothing.

  “Use your passkey,” Charteris said.

  “But, sir… !”

  “Use it, Heinrich.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  And the steward did, but the cabin—which was in fact half again as large as the A-deck cabins, with a sloping window like the one in Lehmann’s quarters—was empty, stripped not only of bedclothes, but of Erdmann and Spehl.

  “Where are they, sir?” Kubis asked, looking all around, as if the two men might be stuffed under a bunk.

  “That would seem to be the question,” Charteris said. “Heinrich, one last imposition—that door at the end of the hall leads into the belly of the ship, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes it does, sir.”

  “Unlock that for me.”

  “Sir, I can’t….”

  “You can. And when you have, I want you to go to Captain Pruss and tell him that Colonel Erdmann and Spehl are missing.”

  Kubis seemed astounded by this proposition. “Captain Pruss is in the process of landing the airship, sir—he can’t be disturbed….”

  “There may be a bomb on this ship, Heinrich. Do you understand? This ship might not land at all.”

  Frowning, Kubis somehow managed to digest this notion quickly—but then the steward had been around the periphery of the various disappearances and inquiries afoot over the course of this trip; perhaps Charteris’s statement made it all make sense.

  At any rate, there was no further discussion: the steward used his passkey on the door at the end of the keel corridor, opening it for Charteris, nodding to the author in a fashion that said the message would be delivered to the captain, come hell or high water.

  Then Kubis was gone and Charteris, the door closing behind him, was like a small child in a vast, otherwise unattended and quite bizarre amusement park. He moved gingerly along the rubber-carpeted keel catwalk (no slippers this time, rather his Italian loafers), the diesel drone much louder back here, building to a roar as he approached one of the precarious, skimpily handrailed access gangways out to an engine gondola. The roar settled back to a drone as he moved aft, walking uphill, slightly, the ship heavy aft, the bow high, as he gazed up and around at the complex array of framework and rigging and netting and other catwalks, crisscrossing girders, struts, and rings, towering gas shafts and—nestled on either side, here and there—gas and water and fuel tanks, amid arches and ladders and wires,
and yet most of all so much empty space.

  Sun filtered through the translucent linen skin as he moved along, hazy illumination that gave the interior of the leviathan airship a warm yellowish cast, very different from the tour he’d taken Tuesday, when the day was overcast and the world back here was a grayish blue. That the western sky glowered black with the threat of a thunderstorm could not be discerned back here in this unreal mechanical wonderland. There was a strange stillness that might have been reassuring, even soothing, if the huge tan bladderlike gas cells looming left and right hadn’t been fluttering, quavering like flabby cheeks, as if the ship itself were nervous.

  That was definitely not reassuring.

  He saw no crewmen—all of them were at their crew stations, many of them way in the stern of the ship, where yaw lines would be dropped and mooring cable let down, or up at the bow, working the main winch line and nose-cone connections. This was a cavernous world of his own, though he felt dwarfed rather than powerful, and he was just starting to wonder if he knew what he was doing when he saw them.

  They climbed down a ladder and onto the narrow rubber-matted keel catwalk—a nondescript figure in a brown suit and a crew member in the standard gray jumpsuit: Colonel Erdmann, followed by Eric Spehl.

  Who for a man in custody seemed pretty much on his own. No handcuffs or leg irons, and the colonel seemed confident enough in his charge to keep his back to his captive.

  “Hello, boys,” Charteris said, working his voice up above the diesel drone. He was perhaps twenty feet from them.

  “Charteris,” Erdmann said, frowning, halting. “What are you doing back here? It’s dangerous—we’re about to land!”

  They could feel the ship slowing, even turning.

  Charteris strolled toward them. “I’d ask you and your, uh, prisoner the same thing, Fritz… if I didn’t already know the answer.”

  Behind Erdmann, who remained calm and collected in the face of this intrusion, Spehl was openly distressed, eyes wide, mouth hanging open, arms extended, hands splayed, as if caught in the lights of an oncoming truck.

  “Know what answer?” Erdmann asked calmly. But he did run a hand over his slicked-back blond hair, a nervous gesture of sorts.

  “Well, perhaps ‘know’ is a bit strong.” Charteris was facing the Luftwaffe colonel now, Spehl moving in closer behind Erdmann, peeking up over his shoulder, making a two-headed man of him. “My surmise is that you and young Eric are on your way back after tucking your bomb into place.”

  Neither man, crosshatched by the shadow of ladders and struts, found a response to this.

  So Charteris continued, casually: “If it had already been planted, you would need to reset the timer, because of the weather delays. Or, if you were planting it for the first time, now is of course the ideal time to do it… minutes before mooring, with the crew occupied and at their landing stations.”

  “This is quite the most absurd thing I ever heard,” Erdmann said, managing to put some quiet indignation into it.

  Behind him, Spehl was sweating, trembling, his face drained of blood.

  “I am assuming, of course,” Charteris said, “that you don’t wish to blow yourselves or for that matter any of the passengers to kingdom come. You’d like this great symbol of Nazi power to blow itself up when it’s at the mooring mast, and no one is aboard, and no one, or hardly anyone, is standing near enough to be harmed. Very humane, Fritz. Commendable thinking, for a saboteur.”

  Erdmann sighed. “All right. You are partially correct. Rigger Spehl is a member of the resistance—”

  “Ah, so there is a resistance. That’s nice to know.”

  “He admitted to me that he had planted a bomb, and we went to retrieve it.”

  “Well, let’s see it, then.”

  “All right,” Erdmann said, and reached in his pocket and withdrew a small black automatic, a Luger.

  “Fritz, Fritz… do you really want to fire that thing and blow all of us up?”

  “No. But I am hoping you will listen to reason.”

  “Ah! An offer to join the resistance? And I’m not even German! What an honor.”

  Erdmann chuckled dryly at that; the little black automatic in his fist was like a toy—reminding Charteris of the chief steward taking the Doehner boys’ tin toy into custody, for making sparks.

  “How in hell did you know?” Erdmann asked.

  “Well, I should have known much earlier. But all these delays gave me so much time to ponder. And another passenger made a stray remark about you, just now—Gertrude Adelt—reminding me of that touching scene the first night, when your wife bid you good-bye. You knew better than anyone that this ship had been thoroughly searched, and that every last stitch of baggage would be exhaustively inspected. But in your capacity, you could allow your wife to come aboard for a last-minute good-bye—she had to stand for no security procedure, at all, did she? And I’m sure she wasn’t pretending, when she embraced you on deck, I’m sure the tears were very real, because she knew the dangerous journey you were about to begin—that if things went awry, she might never see you again…. She passed it to you, didn’t she, Fritz? Your wife handed you the bomb, didn’t she?”

  Erdmann’s haggard smile and faint sigh said yes.

  “It must be a fairly small and simple device,” Charteris said.

  The colonel nodded. “Yes. You may have learned in your own… investigation… that Eric here, is something of a photography buff.”

  “Actually, it didn’t come up.”

  “I forgot—you’re not much of a detective.”

  “Enough for us to be standing here like this, Fritz. So Eric’s an amateur photographer—so what?”

  Erdmann shrugged. “One flashbulb added to a small dry-cell battery, with a pocket watch attached.”

  “Ingenious,” Charteris said, rather impressed. “A flashbulb is perfect—a tiny glass sphere filled with pure, dry oxygen, exploding into dazzling light by a split-second combustion of aluminum foil.”

  Another nod from Erdmann. “Enough to melt steel, let alone ignite hydrogen.”

  “A simple device, a modest investment, to destroy the Nazis’ greatest propaganda weapon.”

  “Will you join us?”

  “Why don’t you put that pistol away, Fritz, and we’ll talk about it.”

  With Kubis reporting to the captain, all Charteris had to do was stall—of course, if the captain was too busy, landing this beast, then…

  Erdmann said, “No. I’ll keep my weapon, thank you.”

  “You’re not reckless, Fritz. You won’t shoot.”

  “Don’t be too sure. A gunshot wouldn’t necessarily ignite the ship’s hydrogen, not unless there’s a leak we don’t know about.”

  The diesels were grinding as the airship slowed.

  “You see, Fritz, that’s my problem with you and your young protégé, here. You say you’re against the Nazis, but you kill just as ruthlessly as they do…. By the way, which of you threw Eric Knoecher overboard? I’m just curious.”

  “I did,” Erdmann said, unhesitatingly.

  “Funny, isn’t it? I took your word for it that there were no crew members on Knoecher’s list. It was you, Fritz, who gave us the names of his ‘subjects,’ our ‘suspects.’ You sent silly-ass me off on a half-dozen wild-goose chases, while withholding the one name on his list that mattered: Eric Spehl. The young crewman with Communist leanings and leftist associates. Was your name on his list, too, Fritz?”

  Erdmann said nothing.

  “Oh well, what does it matter?” Charteris said, stalling. “Eric Knoecher doesn’t bother me so much… the world will survive without his putrid presence. But what does bother me is poor Willy Scheef. He wasn’t part of your plot, was he?”

  Erdmann’s eyes narrowed and a weariness in the man’s expression told Charteris he was on the right track.

  Edging his voice up above the engine noise, Charteris said, “Poor Willy was what they call in the movies a day player. Eric here recruited hi
m to deliver me that warning by way of a beating… but Willy was just doing Eric a favor. He wasn’t part of the resistance, just a thickheaded, good-hearted drinking crony who would do anything for a friend.”

  Erdmann said, “Give me your decision, Mr. Charteris, or I’m afraid—”

  “You should be afraid. You have a partner, Fritz, who is very unreliable. Very emotional. Why don’t you tell him, Eric, why you really involved poor Willy? And why you killed Willy, to cover your tracks?”

  The wild-eyed Spehl spoke for the first time, and his voice was shrill. “I did not kill Willy! And neither did Colonel Erdmann. It was an accident.”

  “An accident,” Charteris said, almost tasting the word. “I believe I heard this song-and-dance before….”

  Insistently Spehl went on: “Willy was angry with me, for getting him in trouble, when he found out the Luftwaffe agents were investigating; he knew the wound on his leg would give him away. He was going to give himself up and tell them what I’d asked him to do and…”

  “You killed him.”

  “No! We… we did struggle. We were talking in his gondola, screaming at each other over the engine, and when he went out to that little gangway between the gondola and the ship, to go tell on me, we struggled and… he just slipped. I swear to God and all that’s holy, he slipped!”

  “I’m sorry, boys,” Charteris said, shaking his head. “I can’t come over to your side. You’re just too… untidy a bunch, much as I might sympathize with your goals. That jerry-rigged bomb of yours could go off while people are still on this ship, and you’re endangering untold numbers of American military and civilians at Lakehurst.”

  Spehl shook his head, violently. “No! It’s set for eight o’clock. Everyone will be off the ship. Casualties will be minimal.”

  “Don’t you think it’s rather bad taste,” Charteris said pointedly, “to fight a war on another country’s soil? German casualties are one thing: Americans are another.”

  “Then you’ve made your decision?” Erdmann asked, raising the Luger so that it was trained upon the author’s heart.

  “So what’s the plan, boys? Disappear into America? Wait… Eric, that’s your plan. But, you, Colonel, you want to go back to your pretty wife, in Germany, and continue fighting from within, don’t you? A noble enough goal… but Eric, here, kind of made a mess of it, with his extra killing, didn’t he?”