by Jack Treby
I gazed up at the craft in bewilderment. I couldn’t for the life of me see what all the fuss was about. It was just a machine, a way of getting people from A to B. I could admire the engineering involved – the scale of the Zeppelin was certainly impressive – but when all was said and done it was just a giant balloon; a children’s toy writ large. And considerably less safe, as a means of transport, than an ocean liner or even an aeroplane.
I confess, the fact that it was German built was also of some concern to me. I did not need or want a reminder of the Kraut’s aerial prowess or their industrial efficiency. I hadn’t witnessed the bombing raids over London during the war – I had spent most of the conflict in the United States – but I had heard accounts of the devastation and part of me still associated Zeppelins with death in the sky. The fact that this particular airship had been christened the “Richthofen” was hardly reassuring. Manfred Von Richthofen was a war hero and, by all accounts, a man of some integrity; but he was still a German. The so-called “Red Baron” had been the scourge of the Royal Flying Corps during the Great War and had brought down dozens of British planes. Hardly an appropriate poster boy for a civilian aircraft. The gutter press in America had already started referring to the ship as “The Red Zeppelin” in his honour, much to the annoyance of the Germans. Nowadays, the word “red” had more sinister connotations in Europe.
I heard the click of a camera to my right. A tall, sprightly fellow in a casual suit was capturing the moment for posterity. He dropped the camera – a Leica if I wasn’t much mistaken – and quickly wound on the film. The man was clean shaven and had an elegant bearing, a cut above the local rabble. Quite a handsome fellow, I thought, with hazel eyes and short cropped hair. Perhaps he was a journalist too. There seemed to be a lot of them about.
The man caught my eye and raised a hand amiably. ‘Quite impressive, don’t you think?’ He nodded his head towards the airship.
I disagreed politely. ‘You wouldn’t catch me up in one of those things. They’re absolutely lethal.’ I pulled out a cigarette and fumbled for my lighter.
‘Probably best not to light that just now,’ the man observed.
I stared back at him in surprise. Who the devil did he think he was, telling me what to do? But then I caught his meaning and the colour drained from my face. I dropped the cigarette to the ground and pocketed the lighter without another word.
We were both standing a short distance away from several million cubic feet of hydrogen.
‘It probably wouldn’t do any harm,’ the fellow reassured me, ‘but it’s as well to be careful.’ He extended a hand. ‘Thomas McGilton.’
‘Reginald Bland.’ I shook his hand firmly, keen not to dwell on the proximity of the hydrogen. ‘You’re...Irish, are you?’ There was the hint of an accent, but it was well disguised. If this Mr McGilton was an Irishman, he was a well educated one.
‘Belfast, yes. I guessed you were English. The hat gave it away.’ He grinned good naturedly. The man was being altogether too familiar for my liking but, as we had now been formally introduced, I decided not to take offence.
‘So you know a bit about these airships do you?’ I enquired.
He nodded happily. ‘I saw her sister ship, the Graf Zeppelin, fly over southern England last year. I thought to myself then, I’d like to have a go in one of those.’
‘Rather you than me. These things are a death trap.’
‘Not if they’re handled right.’
I snorted. ‘Tell that to the crew of the R101.’ The British airship had crashed in northern France the previous October with the loss of forty-eight lives. The Court of Enquiry had only just reported back. ‘It wasn’t the crash that killed them, you know. It was the ignition of the hydrogen. The poor fellows were burnt alive.’
McGilton nodded sadly. ‘They overloaded it, that was the problem. No disrespect to the English, but the Germans have been building airships since the turn of the century. They’ve had time to perfect the technology. They know what they’re doing.’
‘If you say so.’
We looked back up at the Zeppelin, which was now being fastened to the mooring post. My indifference towards the craft had turned in the space of a few minutes to apprehension.
‘I hope so, anyway,’ McGilton said. ‘Since my ticket carries me all the way to New Haven.’
‘Good lord!’ I stared at the Irishman. ‘You’re going on board that thing?’ I regarded him in astonishment.
‘I am indeed! Leaving first thing tomorrow morning. But I wanted to come out here today and watch it land.’
My mouth opened and closed but I couldn’t think of anything to say. The fellow was mad. There could be no other explanation.
‘They’re going to move onto helium with the next ship, the LZ129. Much safer than hydrogen. But in the meantime, they’ll take every precaution.’
‘I wish I shared your confidence.’
McGilton laughed. ‘What’s life without a little risk?’
‘A pleasant experience?’
He shook his head. ‘Planes crash every day, Mr Bland. Trains are derailed...’
‘Yes, but...’
He waved his hands enthusiastically. ‘And just the elegance of the thing. An ocean liner of the sky. How could you resist?’
I had the answer to that. ‘Very easily, I assure you. Well, I...I wish you the best of luck, Mr McGilton.’ It didn’t seem right to harp on about the dangers, if this man really was planning to travel on board the airship.
‘Luck has nothing to do with it,’ he insisted. ‘It looks like the passengers are preparing to disembark. I might wander over and say hello. Good day to you, Mr Bland.’
And with that he took his leave. I stared after him as he moved forward through the crowd. He was either a very brave man or a complete idiot. Probably both, in point of fact.
I had more important things to concern myself with. The passengers were indeed making their way down a short set of metal steps and onto the waiting platform. I didn’t know how many people the Richthofen was equipped to carry, but there seemed to be less than a dozen passengers emerging from the ship. That couldn’t be a full load. Not everybody, it seemed, was as brave – or foolhardy – as Mr McGilton. For all the enthusiasm of the crowd, the destruction of the R101 had given everybody pause for thought.
A couple of female passengers were disembarking alongside the men. The last person to emerge, however, was Gerhard Schulz. He was thinner and shorter than his photograph suggested but the beard and the pinched expression left me in no doubt as to his identity. I hung back in the crowd to make sure he didn’t see me.
The travellers were lining up to be filmed by the man from the newsreel company but, after a few moments of waving and enthusiastic shouts, they moved along the platform, down the steps and onto the sun bleached grass. The courtesy vehicle was waiting to drive them away. I watched as Schulz had a quick conversation with the driver. I was too far away to hear what was being said, but I guessed the gist of it: Schulz wasn’t going to the Alfonso, but the driver had offered to give him a lift anyway. Schulz declined the offer. He had a large brown suitcase clutched tightly to his chest. That was the cargo we were after, I supposed. The driver indicated another vehicle. A couple of taxis were on hand, ready to ferry the airship’s senior crew into town, once they had completed mooring operations, and Schulz hurried across to purloin one of the vehicles.
Mr McGilton, I saw with some distaste, had already struck up a conversation with one of the two women preparing to board the courtesy coach. The younger of the two, in fact. ‘He doesn’t waste much time,’ I muttered, as I turned and hurried back to Maurice.
Gerhard Schulz was making his way rapidly through the entrance to an unprepossessing stone tower. I had already followed him from the airstrip to his hotel, the Doña Sofia. Once he had checked in there he had been straight out again and – for reasons best known to himself – was paying his respects to Our Lord in the cathedral on the opposite side of the squar
e. It was a Sunday, I supposed, but he didn’t stay long and neither did he meet up with anybody inside.
Afterwards, he made his way on foot towards the river.
Now he had arrived at the Torre del Oro – a lonely phallic construction, seventy feet tall, squatting in splendid isolation on the river front. Despite the name, the tower was not made of gold, but it did have a formidable spiral staircase running through the centre of it. I stopped just short of the entrance and peered up the length of the building. There was no sign of Charles Lazenby or Walter Kendall anywhere near the top, but perhaps they were out of view. There were certainly several people milling about on the battlements up there. Rather them than me, I thought. I had never had much of a head for heights.
When I was a girl, I had once been forced to climb to the top of a lighthouse. It had been a cold day in late June, a few months after the death of Queen Victoria. My father had been trying to instil a few manly virtues in his only begotten “son”, but when I reached the top and gazed nervously through the windows at the muddy brown sea, I decided that the quality of the view was not sufficient to merit the energy expended in getting there. My father had given me a sound thrashing for my insolence.
But I had similar feelings now.
If Maurice had been with me, I would have ordered him up in my stead. But the valet had sensibly remained with the car on the other side of the cathedral. He didn’t like to get too involved in my secret service work. I growled and stepped reluctantly across the threshold of the Torre del Oro.
Why the place was even open to the public on a Sunday, I had no idea. The Sabbath was meant to be a day of rest. Some people had no respect.
Having expended so much energy following the Austrian across town in the heat of the afternoon, I felt every step inside that tower as if it were a blow to my stomach. After half a minute of huffing and puffing up the stairs my heart felt like it was about to explode. I was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe. I had to keep my mouth wide open just to draw in enough oxygen to keep my brain from overheating.
An attractive young woman was descending the staircase in the opposite direction and I flattened myself against the wall to let her pass. She smiled at me, mistaking my pause for gallantry, and then disappeared around a curve in the wall. I took another huge gulp of air and steeled myself for the final ascent. This must be how Mallory felt, I reflected, when he began his final, ill-fated assault on the summit of Mount Everest.
I had not seen Mr Schulz since I had entered the building and, as I emerged into the sunlight, stepping onto the cobbled stones, I could not see him now. I did a quick circuit of the battlements to ascertain if he was hiding somewhere, but there was no sign of him. He was not at the top of the tower. I had come all the way up here for nothing. I cursed the man under my breath, causing a hefty Spanish matron to regard me with some alarm as I passed her by.
I approached the edge of the battlements and peered tentatively over the sides. My stomach lurched at the sight of the ground, such a long way below me, but I struggled manfully to maintain my composure. My hands gripped tightly to the top of the crenellated wall.
The streets below, along the water front, were typically busy and it was several minutes before Gerhard Schulz emerged from the bottom steps of the tower. He had removed his hat briefly, to use as a fan, and I could see his bald head and the rather thick beard beneath it. How could I have missed him?
There was a room encircling the staircase halfway up the tower. Maybe he had stepped in there, while I had been climbing up, and then doubled back a few minutes later.
Now, he was crossing the road, moving away from me. He avoided a passing tram and disappeared into a side street, heading back in the direction of the cathedral and his hotel.
I stepped back from the battlements in dismay. I had the horrible feeling the Austrian had met somebody halfway up the Torre del Oro and passed on his secrets. But I had not been there to see it.
‘We’ve both been led a merry dance,’ Charles Lazenby admitted ruefully. It was eight o’clock in the evening and we had reunited at the Gran Café on the Plaza de Andalucía. The square was throbbing with activity around the elaborate central fountain, the excitement and euphoria of the day overwhelming any sense of decorum. It was hard to believe it was a Sunday evening. In England, on the Sabbath, everything is shut up and it was usually the same in Spain. But nothing today was going to dampen the mood of celebration. Rumours were flying that the republicans had performed much better than expected in the elections. Some were claiming they might even be heading for victory and the cerveza was flowing like water.
I, for one, did not feel like celebrating. ‘So Kendall gave you the slip as well, did he?’ I enquired. Lazenby had been nowhere near the Torre del Oro and, so far as I knew, neither had Walter Kendall.
‘That’s the queer thing,’ the Englishman replied. ‘I never lost sight of him. He left the hotel at four o’clock and headed straight for the park. The Maria Luisa. Spent an hour and a half wandering around the gardens like a tourist. He even took a short boat trip on the canal around the Plaza de España. Then he headed back to his hotel and, so far as I’m aware, he hasn’t budged since.’ Lazenby took a sip of wine and sighed.
‘So they were both behaving like tourists,’ I observed. Between the two of us we had been given the grand tour of the city. ‘It makes no sense.’ I stared down at the plate in front of me. It was some disgusting fish and pasta concoction, which did not look fit for a dog, but I had had such a long and tiring day that I was prepared to shovel pretty much anything down my gullet. I swallowed a mouthful of the lukewarm sludge and looked across at Lazenby. ‘So you don’t think the exchange has been made?’
‘It must have been. I can only think Kendall sent somebody else in his stead. He must have got wind someone was following him. Are you sure you didn’t see anyone acting suspiciously at the Torre? Or in the cathedral?’
I shook my head. ‘No one at all.’ A waiter was hovering to our left, waiting for the right moment to interrupt us. ‘What is it?’ I snapped.
‘Señor, discúlpeme.’ The Spaniard addressed my companion. ‘Teléfono.’
Lazenby nodded. He pushed back his plate, rose to his feet and followed the waiter into the crowded café.
I took another mouthful of fish and reflected mournfully on what I could have been eating had I ignored that damned telegram and remained in Gibraltar. The restaurants on the Rock were a mixed bunch and there weren’t that many of them, but on a Sunday afternoon, for all that, you would never be more than a hundred yards away from a plate of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Such were the benefits of Empire.
Five or six minutes passed before Lazenby returned to his seat. He leaned forward confidentially. ‘That was the receptionist at the Doña Sofia. Schulz has just been enquiring about train times to Madrid. He’s asked the receptionist to book him a ticket for tomorrow morning. Paid cash up front. American dollars.’
‘So that confirms it,’ I said. Walter Kendall had run rings around London’s finest, had sent an accomplice to pay the Austrian and collect the file, and was now in possession of whatever scandalous documents Gerhard Schulz had passed along to him. ‘What are we going to do?’
Lazenby sat back in his chair. ‘I’ll get a couple of men in Madrid to meet the train tomorrow, just to be on the safe side. But you’re right. We must assume that Kendall now has a copy of our file. A complete photographic record. And the worst of it is, he’s booked a ticket on that airship tomorrow morning.’
My eyes widened. ‘He’s going on the Richthofen?’
‘Back to America.’ Lazenby nodded. ‘Booked his place a couple of days ago, as a matter of fact. I checked the passenger list.’
‘You never told me that.’
He shrugged. ‘Didn’t think it was relevant. I had hoped we’d have the photographs in our possession by now.’
Damn the man. Why did he have to keep things back all the time? ‘So somehow or other we have to
get hold of them tonight.’ I thought for a minute. ‘He’ll be down for supper by now. We could always break into his hotel room and have a look around.’
Lazenby considered that for a moment. ‘It’s an idea, certainly. But I don’t think Kendall’s daft enough to leave the negatives unattended in his bedroom.’ Lazenby was of the opinion that the photographs had not yet been developed; and a roll of film could be hidden anywhere. ‘And we can’t burst into the dining hall, all guns blazing.’
‘What other option do we have?’ I growled, trying to think of an alternative. ‘I suppose we could intercept him tomorrow morning, on the way to the airstrip.’
Lazenby shook his head. ‘He’ll be in the courtesy vehicle with all the other passengers.’
‘But surely one of us could bump into him somewhere. Pick his pocket or something.’
‘He’ll be on his guard against that. Probably bury the film in the bottom of his luggage. No, it pains me to admit it, but I don’t think we’re going to be able to touch him before he boards that airship.’
‘You can’t give up, man!’ I exclaimed. ‘You said this was a matter of national security.’
‘It is.’ Lazenby leaned forward across the table. ‘There is one other option, of course.’ There was a half smile on his lips that I didn’t much care for.
‘What option?’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘We could always slip a man on board the Richthofen ourselves.’
Chapter Three
A smiling steward in a white jacket greeted me at the base of the metal stairs. He was young and smartly turned out. ‘Good morning, sir. May I see your passport and ticket?’ He spoke with a thick German accent, but his words were clear and precise. I reached into my jacket pocket and produced the documents. My hands were shaking as I handed them across. Most of the other passengers had already boarded the airship. It was only the new arrivals who required special treatment. The steward checked through the documents briefly. Maurice had already handed the suitcases to another fellow, who had whisked them away before we had known what was happening. ‘Are you carrying any matches or lighters?’ the steward asked us. I hesitated for a moment, unsure whether he was trying to cadge a cigarette off me. But no, it was just another security procedure. I handed him my lighter. ‘Thank you, Mr Bland. There is a smoking room on board, but we ask that you do not try to smoke anywhere else on the aircraft.’