THE AMERICAN

“I thought I would find you here.” The American pulls out a chair at the corner table in the smoking room where Gertrud Adelt and her husband are seated.

She stiffens. Peers at him suspiciously beneath the brim of her red felt hat. The color brings out the natural scarlet tint of her lips, makes her look as though she’s bloodthirsty. “I didn’t realize you were looking for me.”

“You couldn’t have.”

“Then perhaps I am a bit dismayed at being so easily found.”

Leonhard lays a hand on hers in warning. She smiles tightly. Takes a sip of her cocktail.

“It’s a small ship. There are only so many places one can go.” The American shrugs out of his jacket and hangs it on the back of his chair. He doesn’t ask permission to join them. He simply settles into his place and looks at Gertrud expectantly. Leonhard glowers beside her. Protective. Territorial. Angry at not having been greeted or addressed.

“By all means,” Leonhard says, “join us.”

Schulze arrives, as is his habit, only a moment after the American has settled into his seat. “Can I get you something to drink, Herr Douglas?”

The American looks at Gertrud’s champagne glass and the mimosa that is already half drained. And then at the wine balanced in Leonhard’s right hand. Sauvignon blanc, if he had to guess. He doesn’t seem the type to go for Riesling.

Leonhard sees the question in his gaze and lifts the glass a few inches. “Gewürztraminer, in case you’re wondering. It’s quite good.”

The American waits a beat, then looks at the bar steward. “Nothing for me, thanks. It’s a bit early to be hitting the bottle. I just thought I’d visit with my friends for a few moments.”

Schulze tactfully ignores the tension that spikes the air around the table. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

“I am curious,” Leonhard says once the steward has retreated through the air lock, “what would prompt you to use the word friend in describing our new acquaintanceship? I have seen you a handful of times and spoken with you never.”

“Oh. I beg your pardon. I was referring to your wife.”

“My wife is your friend?”

“I assumed so. Given that she has something that belongs to me. That’s a really friendly liberty. Wouldn’t you say?”

There are any number of ways to gain the advantage in a situation, but the American has his favorites: a surprise attack or an unexpected silence. Given that he wants the Adelts to be startled into revealing what they know, silence isn’t the optimal choice. This first salvo has the desired effect. Both Leonhard and his wife are disconcerted, instantly on the defensive.

Leonhard sets down his glass.

Gertrud picks hers up. Sips. Swallows. Arranges her face—as women are wont to do—for battle.

So predictable, the American thinks, so easily baited.

Leonhard is as still as a statue.

Gertrud is practically quivering with the suppressed desire to lunge across the table and throttle him.

“I’m certain I don’t know what you mean,” she finally says.

“I’m certain you do.”

“I hope you are able to explain your presumption, Herr Douglas. I confess that I’m not currently in a good humor, and this game—or whatever it is—is doing little to improve my mood,” Leonhard says, draping an arm across Gertrud’s back. He cups the ball of her shoulder with his palm. The move is not protective. It’s proactive. His fingers spread wide, and the tips press lightly into the thin fabric of her dress. He is restraining her.

Gertrud has rallied from the surprise. Her grin is sly. “I have nothing that belongs to you.”

He dismisses this argument with a wave of his hand. “Semantics. Let’s not be juvenile. You have an item that was recently in my care.”

“I’d question how well you were caring for this item if you’ve lost it.”

Again, the American thinks the best tactic here would be aggression, not caution. He settles into his chair as though settling into a foxhole.

“I have lost many things in my thirty-eight years. I lost my first tooth in the driveway of my parents’ house. Bloody mess that was too. My brother knocked it out. I lost my first library book three months later when I fell off a rotten log and into a pond. Again, my brother’s fault. He pushed me in while I was reading The Wind in the Willows. I lost my first school race to that same brother, the dirty cheater. He was six years older and thought it his moral obligation to teach me humility. A number of years later I lost my virginity in a brothel in France. My brother thought it a sad fate for a man to die never having been with a woman, and since he had no control over whether I’d get cut to pieces by machine gun fire he did what he could and ensured that I had a bit of worldly experience before I stepped on the battlefield. I don’t remember the girl’s name, but I do remember my brother laughing until he pissed himself when I stumbled around the next morning in a drunken haze fretting over whether or not I’d just acquired syphilis. I didn’t, in case you’re wondering. The whores in France were uncharacteristically hygienic that year. But the worst loss of my life thus far has been the death of my brother. He was lying in a hospital in Coventry at the end of the Great War, recovering from shrapnel wounds, when a German zeppelin flew overhead and dropped a handful of artillery shells. That’s the kind of loss that stays with a man. Not an idiotic dog tag. But that tag is the answer to an eighteen-year search for the man who dropped those artillery shells. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to have it back. I would like to find that man and forgive him so I can lay to rest this god-awful burden I’ve carried for almost two decades.”

There are many things that the American is not good at. The list could stretch for miles. And at the very tattered end would be a single word: forgiveness. But people want to believe good of others. They long for things like hope and reconciliation and redemption. They tout those virtues. Write about them. Press them on their children. But it’s hard for a man to stay alive as long as the American has if he’s prone to such sympathetic notions. He will forgive the man who killed his brother only after he has put a bullet in his skull.

The American can see Gertrud sorting through a variety of possible responses. It’s as though they are laid out on a flat space in her mind and she’s shuffling through them, looking for something appropriate. He can detect a glimmer of doubt. She wants to believe him. But she knows better. And though his story is true she has no way of being certain. In the end she picks a response that is relatively benign.

“You don’t know his name?”

No condolences. No indication of belief. Simply a question. A salvo.

The American grins. “The note of surprise in your voice leads me to believe that you do.”

“Yes.” Gertrud looks at Leonhard and they engage in that most mystifying of communications, an entire conversation spoken entirely with body language. A lifted eyebrow. A pursed lip. Unbroken eye contact. A slight nod of the head. There is no way for him to know how they reach the conclusion they do. But after several seconds of intense, silent argument, Gertrud turns to him and says, “The dog tag was issued to a man named Ludwig Knorr.”

“And you know this how?”

A smug grin. “I never reveal a source.”

Her message is clear. She knows who the American is looking for. She can warn him if she likes. And she has spoken about this issue with at least one other person. Clever girl. She’s creating a safety net. But there is little way of knowing whether the name she has given him is accurate. No matter, he will find out soon enough from Captain Lehmann.

Now that the majority of passengers are growing bored, the smoking room begins to fill. Schulze opens the air lock to admit Colonel Erdmann and the American heiress, Margaret Mather. They come immediately to the Adelts’ table.

“I was just telling Fräulein Mather,” Erdmann says to Gertrud, “that she would do well to meet you.” He has the wild, desperate look of a man eager to rid himself of chatty female company. “You have so much in common.”

Ovaries at most, the American thinks. And possibly not even that much. Gertrud Adelt may be of the gentler sex, but she has bigger brass balls than most men he knows. He can’t think of two women who have less in common.

Gertrud extends a slender hand in greeting. “Do join us…”

“Margaret.”

“Wonderful to meet you, Margaret. We were just having a fascinating conversation with your countryman here.” Her voice turns to syrup. “He’s quite a passionate man.” A vicious pause. “And single, I might add.”

Leonhard chokes back a laugh. Clears his throat. Takes a hearty sip of his Gewürztraminer, then settles into the banquette to watch his wife at work.

Colonel Erdmann is no fool. He mumbles an apology and makes a hasty retreat from the bar. For her part Margaret Mather turns curious, hungry eyes on the American. He knows better than to underestimate the appetites of a wealthy spinster. For the first time since entering the bar, he finds himself on the defensive. Margaret stands there expectantly, and it occurs to him several seconds too late that he ought to pull out her chair. He rises to his feet and does so reluctantly.

“I had dinner with this gentleman on our first night, but I’m afraid I still don’t know his name.”

“Most people don’t,” Gertrud says. “He’s very secretive about it.”

“I can’t imagine why. A name’s a name, after all.”

This is why he hates women. They’re just too damn coy. Enough of this. “It has been lovely chatting.” He pushes his chair against the table. “And though I wish I could stay I’m afraid that I cannot.”

“Is your gout acting up again?” Gertrud looks at Margaret and adds, “He has terrible gout,” with such convincing concern that he is almost tempted to believe he suffers from the condition.

Margaret Mather looks at him with a combination of pity and disgust, her interest waning immediately. Gout is, apparently, a plebeian affliction for which she has little sympathy.

“Yes.” He clears his throat. “It is, in fact. I think I’ll go lie down for a bit before lunch.”

“Rest up,” Leonhard says. “I’d be most interested in continuing our conversation later.”

Retreat is a painful thing. The American gathers his coat, straightens his tie, and leaves the bar without a backward glance. Gertrud Adelt is no doubt perched at her table with an expression of triumph, but he doesn’t care to give her another small victory by acknowledging it.

The American steps into the corridor. Captain Lehmann is five paces away and barreling toward him like a freight train. He pulls up just in time to avoid a collision.

“Ah,” Lehmann says, “I’ve been looking for you.”

“You have the name?”

The captain looks over his shoulder and then down the corridor. “I do.”

“And?”

“Wouldn’t you rather discuss this over a drink? Or in privacy, if nothing else?”

“No. I would like the thing I came for. And then I would like to retire to my cabin. I’ve had all the company I can tolerate this morning.”

Be blunt, his commanding officer used to tell him; it’s the best way of disarming a threat.

Captain Lehmann looks relieved rather than offended. “Very well, then. The man you’re looking for is Heinrich Kubis, my chief steward. Whatever business you have with him will need to wait until we land. He stays busy and I don’t need him distracted.”

“Of course. Thank you for the information.”

And then Lehmann is gone, back to the control car and his observation duties, but the American stays where he is, unmoving in the corridor. His mind spins, countermoves and contingencies crashing against one another, fighting for dominance. He is confused. Frustrated. The American is trying to find a course of action when Joseph Späh rounds the corner with Hermann Doehner. What he really wants is to take the acrobat into the belly of the ship and see if he can, in fact, climb anything. But he doesn’t. Instead, he drops to one knee and pretends to tie his shoes. He gives the men a cordial greeting as they pass and lets them walk away. That part of his plan will have to wait.

Heinrich Kubis. Ludwig Knorr. The chief steward. The chief rigger. He has just been lied to—either by Captain Lehmann or by Gertrud Adelt, but he can’t be sure which. Perhaps both. That would be worse. That would make him angry. And when the American gets angry, people tend to suffer as a result.