The Hindenburg Murders d-2

by Max Allan Collins

  “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 sma
ll 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 protege, 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 him 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?”

  “Be quiet,” Erdmann said. “This is your last chance.”

  “Eric,” Charteris said, “what do you want to bet that that automatic in the colonel’s pocket wasn’t meant for me? After all, Fritz didn’t know I was going to show up, did he?”

  “Quiet,” Erdmann said, teeth clenched.

  “Why was he packing the rod, do you suppose? Hmmm, Eric? Do you think he was planning to shoot up random crew members-or maybe he had just one in mind… maybe a prisoner who had fled his custody, who could die and with his death seem to answer many, many questions… allowing the good colonel to go back to the fatherland, to his wife and his mission.”

  Spehl’s hand clasped onto Erdmann’s shoulder. “What were you doing with that Luger in your pocket?”

  Erdmann’s eyes and nostrils flared as the boy reached around. “Eric!”

  “Give it here!”

  And Spehl spun Erdmann to him, grabbing for the gun, trying to wrest it from the colonel’s fingers, the two men tottering on the narrow catwalk. The automatic in hand was high over Erdmann’s head now, as if he were trying to keep a toy from a child; and as Spehl wrestled Erdmann for it, Charteris made a hasty exit, running down the rubberized gangway toward the passenger quarters.

  He was halfway to the doorway when he heard the gunshot.

  FIFTEEN

  HOW THE HINDENBURG ALIGHTED AT LAKEHURST, AND LESLIE CHARTERIS DEBARKED

  Charteris had a fraction-of-a-second glimpse of the two men, as they stood frozen, like dance partners startled when the music stopped, the tiny black gun in Erdmann’s hand still held high as Spehl clutched the colonel’s arm and wrist, the gun up, angled toward the back of the ship, where the weapon had dispensed a wild bullet.

  The sound of the gunshot had been a small pop-almost like a cap pistol-harmless sounding; but Erdmann’s bullet, a small silver pellet whose shape was not unlike the airship’s, had traveled down the hollow body of the dirigible and into a billowing hydrogen-filled gas cell, the center of which flared brilliantly, red and yellow and blue spreading out beneath the fabric like colorful spilled liquid, before the gas cell dissolved in crackling flame.

  Then the whoom of detonation announced blossoms of orange fireballs that rolled inexorably, hungrily, down the length of the zeppelin, expanding as they came, scattering scraps of white-hot aluminum and raining down scorched fragments of fabric along the way.

  Somewhere a voice screamed, “Stay down!” in German, and Spehl abandoned his dance partner, scrambling along the catwalk away from the oncoming conflagration, leaping for the nearest engine-gondola gangway, trying to shimmy out of the path of the surging fire.

  Flushed with heat, as if some mammoth oven door had dropped open, Charteris ran, looking back as he did, not wanting to, but-like Lot’s wife-unable not to. And the last thing he saw, in the burning belly of the beast, was Erdmann consumed by the typhoon of flames, t
he sizzling saboteur turning black and orange, but the colonel did not scream, rather stood and stoically received the fiery fate he’d conceived.

  Then the author bolted through the door, running pell-mell down the keel corridor, toward the stairs, knowing damn good and well that the flames, and time running out, were nipping at his heels.

  In thirty-seven seconds, the Hindenburg would be, for all intents and purposes, as dead as Colonel Fritz Erdmann.

  Moments before the first blast, Leonhard and Gertrude Adelt were standing with Hilda Friederich, leaning out over the slanting windows on the starboard promenade deck, by the lounge. It was drizzling again, flecks of rain glistening on the windows like tiny jewels. The airship had just swung sharply into the wind, and they were watching with no little interest from their balcony perch the show below: the ground crew-one hundred and fifty feet down-scurrying toward and beneath the ship, a mixture of American civilians and navy men, the latter easy to pick out in their white sailor caps and navy-blue coats. A pair of ropes that had been dropped from the bow and stern were latched onto by two columns of these men, who were tugging the ship toward the mooring mast.

  Leonhard noted a remarkable stillness had settled over the deck-no motor drone could be detected, no one spoke, not a command, no cry or call, as if the collective ship were holding its breath.

  And the ground crew had suddenly stopped scurrying, were instead looking up with wide eyes and open mouths. Some of them were pointing up-Leonhard could not know it, but the members of the ground crew had spotted the small mushroom-shaped puff of flame, high toward the back of the ship, forward of the upper vertical fin, where a tiny unseen bullet had burst through, disappearing into the mist.

  Then a muffled, dull detonation broke the silence, seeming to Leonhard no louder than popping the cap of a beer bottle.

  “What was that?” Gertrude asked him, clutching his arm.

  Hilda’s hands came up and covered her mouth, eyes wide, trembling all over. She was looking out and down.

  Leonhard followed her gaze. The crew on the ground were suffused in a rosy glow, as if the sun were rising; the sandy ground itself was basking in the eerie twilight sunrise, spreading from the bow of the ship, banishing its usual blue shadow. And then the men down there were scurrying again-but in a different direction.