The airship had entered a cold front over the mid-Atlantic, disappointing the passengers, who’d wanted to enjoy the view from the promenade windows. Outside was a world of white, an empty dimension with no sensation of forwards movement. The ship seemed frozen in time over an invisible ocean.
With nothing to see, most of the passengers returned to their cabins, and only the little party of stowaways was breakfasting in the dining room at nine o’clock. Refreshed and rested, Friedl and Hannah chattered eagerly of their coming life in America. Jakob was telling them how Pola Negri had once fainted in his arms in the elevator at the Park Avenue Hotel, when Ilse tugged his sleeve. Marching towards them among the dining room chairs was a man of about fifty wearing brass buttons and three sleeve stripes. The white peaked cap, hostile stare, and wide, grimly set mouth gave the impression of a police commissioner. He was followed by two junior officers.
‘Oh,’ Jakob said, dapping his mouth with a napkin. ‘This must be Captain Pruss.’
‘Well now.’ The man stopped at the table and leaned towards them, his hands on the back of a chair. Looking at each of them in turn he said, ‘Whoever you are, be in no doubt of the seriousness of the offence you have committed.’ Hannah blushed scarlet and kept her eyes on her plate. ‘Whoever aided you will be discovered and dealt with. The company’s rules on stowaways require that the quartermaster confines you in a restricted area until we land.’ Ilse glanced warily at Jakob. ‘However…’ Pruss straightened up and exhaled, his displeasure giving way to an odd expression, a type of pained graciousness. ‘The response I’ve received from Dr Eckener orders me to treat you as paying passengers until the matter can be fully investigated… your names will go on the passenger list…’
Having left them in no doubt of what he thought of the order, and after Jakob had assured him he would pay the fares in full, he withdrew.
‘Oh boy,’ Friedl said, starting to laugh. ‘He was not happy.’
‘By now Heydrich will know where we are…,’ Denham said thoughtfully, looking at the white sky.
‘Oh, so what.’ Eleanor poured herself more coffee. ‘It’s too late to turn around. We’ll be in New York this time tomorrow morning.’
I n the reading room after breakfast Eleanor befriended a lady who introduced herself as Miss Mather, an elegant New Yorker in her late fifties who’d booked the passage because she abhorred ocean liners and had no sea legs. She had a delicate, Old World manner.
‘I’m a dedicated fan of air travel,’ Miss Mather said. ‘But… I simply can’t explain it. I felt a reluctance to board the Hindenburg. It was really quite overwhelming…’
‘You’ll be fine when you find your air legs,’ Eleanor assured her, but she noticed how the woman kept crossing and uncrossing her thin ankles. She seemed even less at ease when Lehmann passed and told them that the ship was battling strong headwinds. They would be twelve hours late arriving in Lakehurst.
T owards late afternoon the fog and low clouds began to lift, and cresting grey waves could be seen below, marbling the surface of the ocean.
As they were changing for dinner in their cabins the sun finally broke through, and by the time the six of them climbed the stairs to A deck and entered the hundred-foot-long promenade in time to join the other passengers for cocktails, the setting sun shone horizontally through the windows, burnishing the lounge with a reddish golden light.
The single gown Eleanor had packed was of green satin organza with a low, square neckline, set off by her pearl necklace. Hannah had borrowed earrings from Ilse and wore her fine hair swirled and piled up. The men wore the dinner jackets Eckener had placed in their cabins.
Once they’d been served martinis they gathered along the window. The ocean had calmed, and its dark surface sparkled with gold. A cargo ship whose wake they’d followed for miles sounded its horn and its crew waved from the deck as the leviathan droned overhead.
Jakob was in good spirits. Probably never in his life had he been beholden to the mercies of strangers, Eleanor thought, as he raised his glass.
They raised theirs in return.
The old man was about to speak. But then his smile wavered and began to fade, first in his eyes, and then around his jowls and lips.
He was staring into the gathering of passengers.
‘What’s the matter Jaku, dear?’ said Ilse.
They turned to look at what Jakob was seeing. Several knots of people chatting with drinks. But among them were two men together, in black tie, glaring at them. One with a white moustache twisted into two pins, a pince-nez, and hair swept back like a professor’s; the other tall and potbellied, with fleshy lips and a mane of thick, grey hair. He wore a Party pin in his lapel. His eyes landed on Eleanor: they were the grey-beige colour of dishwater. And that’s when she recognised him.
‘Father,’ Hannah said, ‘aren’t those the men…’
‘Yes,’ said Jakob.
‘The men who were leaving the morning we visited your home…,’ said Eleanor. ‘The ones who took your art collection.’
The tall man turned away from them, a look of repugnance on his face, as though he’d dressed for a society wedding only to find that the street drinkers had been invited. He leaned down to whisper to his colleague. Then they both turned and walked quickly out of the promenade deck.
‘They’re probably going to complain to Pruss,’ said Jakob. ‘Ah well. I take comfort from knowing that I’ve spoilt their dinner as much as they’ve spoilt mine.’ He gave a mirthless smile. ‘If our collection turns up for sale in New York they know I can kick up a stink… which raises an intriguing possibility…’
Jakob met his wife’s eyes, and they seemed to be reading each other’s minds.
The hors d’oeuvre was an Indian swallow nest soup served with a superb Piesporter ’34. When the sun fell behind the horizon trailing ragged scraps of glory, the dining room’s lights came on.
Lehmann approached their table and leaned over to whisper into Jakob’s ear. He left without greeting the others.
‘Our friend tells me those men are in the radio room talking to Berlin…’
Denham said, ‘We should move the dossier from the cabin and hide it elsewhere in the ship.’
After coffee, Denham and Jakob went down to the smoking room on B deck, which was deserted but for the barman.
Jakob ordered two glasses of Delamain cognac and two cigars.
‘San Cristobal de la Habana,’ Denham said with appreciation, running his nose along the leaf.
The old man leaned back, and for a few minutes they savoured the taste of the cigars, at peace with the world. The hum of the engines was quieter in this aft section of the ship.
The door from the pressurised air lock into the smoking room opened with a sharp suck, and the art dealer and his Nazi colleague entered. Without waiting for an invitation they seated themselves opposite Denham and Jakob. The barman came to attend to them, but the tall man with the dishwater eyes waved him away.
‘We want to talk,’ he said.
‘Yes, I thought you might,’ Jakob said. ‘Two more, please, barman.’
‘We don’t want a drink.’
‘They’re not for you,’ Jakob said with a chuckle.
‘And you can show some courtesy here,’ Denham said. ‘You’re not in a Bierkeller now.’
The man turned to Denham for the first time, and exposed a set of khaki-coloured teeth.
‘Your face is familiar,’ he said.
‘My name’s Denham, I’m a reporter. Who are you?’
The man pulled an impatient face. ‘I am Lothar Koch,’ he said with emphasis. ‘I am the Director of the Reich Chamber of the Visual Arts.’
‘Permit me…,’ said the other man, the art dealer with the twirled white moustache, in a manner more civil than his colleague’s. He was offering his card. Denham remembered seeing it on the table that morning they visited the Liebermanns.
‘Ah yes. “Gallerie Haberstock- German Dealership.”’
‘I am Karl Haberstock…,’ he said, ‘and our business is with Herr Liebermann.’ He gave a small, sour smile. His sagging cheeks drew up to the corners of his mouth like old theatre curtains.
‘I know the collection is on board,’ Jakob said. ‘And I have to tell you that I’m claiming it back in New York.’
‘That might be difficult,’ said Haberstock without blinking. ‘There’s the matter of the assignment of title to us, which you willingly entered into.’
Jakob said, ‘The assignment is a contract I was compelled to make with the National Socialist government. I’m certain any New York district judge would consider it void.’
Koch uncrossed his legs suddenly so that his potbelly rolled over his belt. ‘Listen to me, you kike, you can have your hideous collection-’
‘Ah, what Reichsleiter Koch wishes to say, Herr Liebermann,’ said Haberstock placing his hand on Koch’s shoulder, ‘is that there may be an arrangement we could make that would resolve the situation to everyone’s satisfaction.’
‘Really,’ said Jakob.
Denham folded his arms. Here it comes.
‘You have in your possession something which is of no value outside Germany. We’ve been authorised by Berlin to offer you a simple swap… If you give it to us, your art collection will be restored to you forthwith without the inconvenience of lawyers and proceedings. I hope you’ll agree that’s a fair offer.’
Jakob knocked back his second glass of cognac and stood up. ‘Gentlemen. Thank you for your proposal. I assure you I’ll give it my fullest consideration.’
‘We need an answer right now,’ said Koch.
‘I’m not given to making snap decisions in business. You may have my answer over breakfast. Good night,’ he said, smiling at them both, and left the smoking room.
Koch’s neck and face began to blotch with shades of mushroom and puce.
‘I’m curious,’ Denham said to them. ‘Did Berlin tell you anything of the nature of this item we have in our possession? I mean, its content…?’
H annah explained again to Captain Lehmann why they didn’t trust those two men. She told him she believed they would use force to recover some valuables from her, which they insisted should have remained in Germany.
‘Do you mean they’ll break into your cabin?’ Lehmann said, taken aback.
‘If they’ve got orders from Berlin, yes,’ said Eleanor.
He nodded, his lips pursed.
‘Does it need to be hidden now?’ he asked. He looked weary after a long day on the bridge.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Hannah, gently taking his elbow, ‘would you mind very much?’
The captain blushed slightly.
‘Very well,’ he said to them. ‘I know the perfect place. But you’ll need warm coats.’
The air was biting cold in the long keel corridor that led to the cargo area.
Lehmann glanced only once at the strange package under Eleanor’s arm. She’d wrapped the filthy old dossier in sheets of tissue paper and tied the whole thing up with the only practical item to hand: a pink ribbon.
‘Poor Captain Lehmann,’ she said to Hannah in a low voice. ‘He’ll probably think these two crazy dames fear for the safety of their shopping…’
They reached a ladder at the foot of an air duct and began climbing.
‘This leads to the central axis corridor,’ he called down, ‘the spine that runs all the way from fins to nose.’ An occasional electric light, but otherwise the arduous ascent was in near darkness, with the temperature falling.
‘I can see my breath,’ Hannah said.
‘The southern tip of Greenland is down there,’ Lehmann shouted. His voice was indistinct, like a voice calling in a rock cavern.
Bracing wires creaked with the drone and movement of the ship, giving a sense of its surrounding vastness. Eventually they came to the horizontal axial corridor Lehmann had mentioned, and they followed him along it towards the stern.
Eleanor stopped and looked in amazement along the corridor’s length. Lit by widely spaced electric lights it seemed to reach into infinity, with far-distant stars twinkling on the aluminium struts.
On either side of them the towering gas cells vibrated. Eleanor put her hand on the trembling sac and felt a prickle of apprehension. She was surrounded by acres of hydrogen, in every direction. If there were some accident while she was standing here… She put the thought out of her head. Miss Mather’s nerves had spooked her.
‘Do they ever leak?’ she asked.
‘If they did, your nose would tell you,’ Lehmann said. ‘The gas is odorised with garlic to give it a distinct smell.’
A rigger coming from the fins passed them in the corridor, giving Lehmann a nod. It was Ralf, wearing a head-to-toe asbestos suit. An inhabitant of the hidden city.
Eventually Lehmann stopped at a small utility platform at the cross section with another vertical air duct. They were almost in the stern of the ship, near the great fins. The platform was surrounded by a rail, with gas cells to the left and right. Next to a stool for the duty rigger, a large metal chest was screwed to the floor. He opened it. Inside were yards of folded canvas covered in a silver doping agent.
‘This is spare sheathing. If we get a rip the sailmaker has to venture out and patch it,’ he said. ‘I promise you no one at all will look in here before we land. Those men whose faces you don’t like will never know…’
They lifted up several folds of the canvas and tucked the package with the dossier into one of them, then replaced the folds and closed the lid tight.