THE NAVIGATOR

“Cologne?” Emilie tilts her chin to the side, curious. Her eyes are warm and brown and curious, so light they are almost the color of rust.

“Trust me.” Max takes her hand, laces his fingers through hers, and leads her brazenly down the keel corridor in full view of anyone who cares to watch. The corridor is empty, of course, it always is this time of night, but Emilie whips her head around anyway.

“No need to look so guilty, Fräulein Imhof.”

She lifts their entwined hands. “This is against the rules.”

“Which is exactly why it’s fun.”

They are getting perilously close to the door that leads into the officers’ quarters when Max stops short at the mailroom door. He frees her hand to unlatch the key ring at his belt. The lock sticks and he has to jiggle the key several times before the tumblers catch and align.

“Für’n Arsch!” Bloody useless!

The room is dark and musty. He fumbles for the light switch. Everything should be just the way he left it, yet it seems wrong somehow. The smell and the shadows and the mailbags piled against the wall all seem out of place.

“What’s that?” Emilie asks. She points at the lockbox.

“A protective case.”

“For the mail?”

“For certified letters. Legal documents, mostly. Stuff that’s more valuable than a postcard to your cousin back home. Correspondence that people have paid extra to keep safe.”

The mailroom is quiet. Still. There’s no sound except for the distant, faint hum of the exterior engines. This room, like most aboard the airship, is not heated or cooled, and there isn’t even the gentle whoosh of moving air. Emilie turns in a small circle in the middle of the room. “Safe from what?”

“Prying eyes. No one is allowed in here but me.” And Kurt Schönherr of course. He has the other set of keys. But Kurt won’t interfere unless Max falls down on the job. And that won’t happen unless Emilie becomes an insurmountable distraction.

She smiles at him as though able to read his mind. “Do your eyes pry, Max?”

He likes it when she’s coy. “Depends on the company.”

“Present company excluded?”

“Afraid not.”

“Good.” The smile she offers is filled with encouragement. Max considers it a wild leap forward on her part. “I’m breaking the rules, being here. Right?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“You’re a bad influence, Herr Zabel.”

“I do my best.”

“Don’t get me wrong. This is all very interesting, but it doesn’t look like Cologne to me.”

“It wouldn’t. Not in here.” Max lifts a bag from the hook by the door and points at the label. The word is printed in white block letters on the green canvas bag. “Cologne is below us. We’re flying over it right now.”

Max slides one arm through the strap and hoists the bag off the hook so that he can swing it around his shoulder. He scans the room once more, then leads Emilie back out into the corridor. The lock is even less cooperative this time, and he curses again, testing the knob several times before he’s sufficiently convinced that the door won’t swing back open. Max nods at the radio room door across the corridor. “Would you open that for me?”

“They aren’t exactly fond of me in there, you know.”

“You don’t mean to tell me that you’re intimidated by Willy Speck?”

“I am intimidated by Commander Pruss who—”

“Is currently in the lounge nursing his second gin and orange juice. I think the bartender calls it the LZ 129 or something equally pretentious. The glasses are frosted, and so is the drinker after downing a few.” Max gives her a gentle thump with the mailbag. “After you. I’d still like to show you the city.”

He follows close behind as Emilie steps into the radio room. Willy Speck and Herbert Dowe take one look at her and turn back to their instruments without a word. Max drops the mail bag through the opening into the utility room below and then descends the ladder so he can help Emilie down.

“Mail drop,” he announces to the skeleton crew in the control car. The car is crowded with officers and observers during the day but is almost vacant at this time of night, manned by those with the least seniority.

No one seems to care that Max has brought Emilie with him, or if they do they’ll save their questions and complaints for later. She is still an anomaly on board, an ill omen. The leftover prejudice of old mariners who believe women to be bad luck on the open seas. No matter that they’ll be sailing over them, not in them. Superstitions die hard.

Perhaps Emilie is ignoring the other officers, or maybe she really is enthralled by the sight below. Regardless, she stands at the portside windows, her palms and the tip of her nose pressed against the cool glass. A tiny cloud of fog gathers near her mouth each time she exhales and then fades away as she draws another breath. The baroque silhouette of Cologne’s cathedral is clearly visible beneath them, its two great spires reaching up to embrace the airship.

Emilie’s mouth is round with wonder. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The Hindenburg usually flies at an altitude of six hundred feet, but they have made a slow descent and now hover a mere two hundred feet above the city. The buildings and streets take on a different dimension from above. Boxed out and rimmed with pale light from streetlamps, they look like aerial drawings done in pen and ink. It is well into the evening and the respectable citizens of Cologne have gone to sleep. Only hardy souls wander these streets tonight, and they can be seen furtively drifting in and out of the pooled light. These are the ones who make their living by darkness. An occasional face turns upward as the mechanical roar of the airship passes overhead, but most move farther into the shadows.

“How does it work?” Emilie nods at the mailbag that now rests on the floor at her feet. “The drop?”

“Watch,” Max says.

“Airfield ahead,” Christian Nielsen calls. He has replaced Max in the navigation room for third shift and already looks weary an hour into the job.

Max opens the mailbag and pulls out what appears to be a checkered silk parachute from an inside pocket. He attaches it to the canvas with a series of elaborate knots, then secures it with two carabiners just to be sure.

Max can feel the Hindenburg turn slightly starboard. It is amazing to him how this is the only place on ship where directional changes can be felt. Or perhaps he has become attuned to them over time. The Cologne airfield comes into view and is significantly better lit than most of the city itself. They begin a lazy circle toward the middle of the airfield.

Once they approach the massive, illuminated X on the tarmac, he asks, “Would you do the honors?”

“Of?”

“Opening the window.”

It takes her a few seconds to figure out the latch and to slide the heavy plate of glass to the side, but as soon as she has it open, cool air rushes into the control car and blows her hair away from her face, revealing the high angles of her cheekbones and the length of her neck. He’s grateful that her attention is on the ground below and that she does not notice him stare.

“Will it catch?” Emilie lifts the edge of the silk parachute.

“It usually does.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“I saw a mailbag split open on the tarmac once. The impact sent letters flying in a hundred different directions. I imagine it was a hassle to collect them all again, but other than a bit of wasted time and dirty paper, no harm done.”

“Well, then.” Emilie grins. “Let’s see if this little bird can fly.”

He knew this would delight her. Emilie has always seemed the sort of woman who is fascinated by new things. And, as it turns out, the bird does fly. It’s all in the technique, of course. Max drops the bag just right, allowing the parachute to catch and fill almost immediately. It floats to the ground and lands well within the perimeter of the X long before they have finished their orbit of the airfield and changed course. He and Emilie lean out the window together, shoulders pressed together for warmth, wind in their faces, as a military jeep drives out to collect the package.

“No wonder you volunteered for this job,” she says as they finally pull back.

He slides the window shut and turns to lean against it.

“I knew you’d want to see this.”

A wicked look crosses her face and she lifts one shoulder in an impish shrug. “Well, it doesn’t compare to seeing your Schwanz, but it’s a close second.”

Emilie leaves Max in the control car, his fellow officers staring at him in astonishment, as she ascends the ladder back into the radio room.