Beneath Gray Skies (40 page)

He could feel the wrist slipping through his fingers, and hear a desperate wail, and then—nothing.

G
oering stood behind Hugo Eckener and a little to his left.

“I must congratulate you, Herr Doktor, on a most successful and enjoyable flight. I must confess to you that as a former airplane pilot, my sympathies were not always with the gasbags, but as a passenger, I vastly prefer the comfort of an airship to the noise and vibration of an airplane.”

“Good of you to say so, Herr Minister.” In honor of the flight, Goering had persuaded Hitler to name him head of the new Air Ministry. He had spent much of the flight in his present position in the control car, keeping, thought Eckener to himself, mercifully quiet, and watching the flight operations with keen interest. Most of his questions had been intelligent ones, and showed that he understood the basic principles of the Zeppelin and its operation. The same standards of behavior could not be said to hold good as far as the other Nazi passengers were concerned. In fact, Eckener had been compelled to ask Ernst Röhm to leave the control car one day, on account of his raucous behavior during an official tour of the workings of the airship. Eckener also suspected Röhm of attempting to seduce the elevator helmsman on duty that day, but he had no proof, as the boy blushingly denied any such thing.

“My only complaint,” smiled Goering, “is regarding the diet we have been compelled to adopt.” As well as being a near-teetotaler, Hitler was vegetarian, and permitted no meat to be served at his table. Accordingly, all the Nazis had subsisted on spicy vegetable soups and salads, with the Führer’s favorite cream cakes as dessert. The crew, eating separately, were under no such restrictions.

“Not that I mind too much as far as my not eating meat is concerned,” Goering went on, “but such a diet makes some of us fart like pigs. My berth is next to that of Hess, and I swear to you, Herr Doktor, I had hardly closed my eyes when he started up and never stopped until morning.” Goering laughed. “Can we not turn this human gas factory to good use inside a Zeppelin, Dr. Eckener?”

Eckener laughed sympathetically. Goering, when he chose to show it, was capable of exercising great charm and it was easy to like the man, while hating his politics.

The speaking-tube from the radio room whistled. “Dr. Eckener,” came the voice from the other end. “Please come to the radio room immediately.”

“Excuse me,” Eckener said to Goering. “Leutnant Müller, you have the conn.”

“Aye, aye, sir. I have the conn,” as Müller stepped into Eckener’s vacated position.

Eckener hauled himself up the ladder into the main hull of the airship, and made his way aft along the catwalk between the gasbags, gripping the guide ropes on both sides.
Bismarck
rolled slightly in the thermals coming up from the ground below. It was an easy, comforting motion, and most people seemed to enjoy the dirigible’s unique flying characteristics. On this trip, Eckener had yet to hear of any of his passengers complain of airsickness.

The radio car was located close to the forward engine nacelle pair, shortening the length of the electrical wiring from the generators and reducing the risk of electrical sparks from the radio apparatus igniting the airship’s hydrogen. The ladder connecting the radio car to the hull was surrounded by hoops to prevent Eckener from falling away from the ladder, but his heart still raced unnaturally fast as he clambered down the ladder, 2000 feet up in the air, with the airship speeding at 50 knots and the slipstream tearing at his clothes. I’m getting too old for this, he thought to himself.

Once he was safely through the hatch and his feet on the floor of the radio car, the signalman saluted and handed him a message form. “I don’t know what to make of this that’s just come in from Cordele, sir,” he said with a puzzled frown. “It came through using the Wehrmacht cipher on the Cordele Army frequency we’re monitoring. I didn’t want to read it over the tube to you, because I didn’t know who was in there with you.”

“Very good, Letz,” replied Eckener, reading the message form.

To Dr. Hugo Eckener, commanding airship Bismarck.
Following embarkation of Confederate dignitaries at Cordele, on signal from ground, special cargo to be jettisoned, and crew to evacuate using all available parachutes. Passengers are not, repeat not, to evacuate.
Major G. Weisstal, Commander, German forces, Cordele.

“Thank you, Letz,” said Eckener. “You did well not to yell this down the tube. Major Weisstal seems to have a strange sense of humor.” Eckener had met Weisstal a number of times, and had a high regard for his abilities and character, but he had never expected him to send a message like this. “Encode in the same cipher, and reply to Cordele: ‘Request confirmation and reasoning for your last message’.” This was swiftly done, and the Morse key was soon tapping away. In a few minutes, the reply came through, and the other radioman, Dorfmann, decoded it, passing the message form to Eckener.

Do not ask further questions. This is for the good of Germany and for the world. Jettison cargo and evacuate airship following embarkation at Cordele. On no account allow any passengers to leave Bismarck.

Dorfmann, who had just decoded the signal, blurted out, “It’s a plot against the Führer’s life!”

“It certainly seems to be something like that,” replied Eckener calmly. He had selected all his crew carefully with a view to their lack of Nazi sympathies, and he was positive that they all felt the same way as he in matters of politics, so he was completely unprepared for Dorfmann’s sudden rush for the ladder.

“I must warn the Führer and save his life!” cried Dorfmann, as he shouldered Eckener aside, climbed the first few rungs and grappled with the sliding roof hatch. “For Führer and Fatherland!”

Incredible, thought Eckener, did people really think and speak like that?

-o-

W
ithout really understanding why he was doing all this, he followed Dorfmann up the ladder through the hatch, and grabbed hold of Dorfmann’s foot. The shoe came off in Eckener’s hands, and he quickly dropped it, but Dorfmann was now off-balance, with only one hand and one foot on the ladder. Eckener swiftly struck sideways at the single ankle supporting Dorfmann’s weight, and the foot came off the ladder.

Now Dorfmann was hanging only by one hand. Half-in and half-out of the radio car, Eckener wrapped his arms round both of Dorfmann’s legs and pulled down. Despite briefly regaining his grip on the ladder with the other hand, Dorfmann was forced to let go of the ladder. He collapsed against Eckener, and crashed, dazed, onto the roof. His glasses fell from his face, and were immediately caught by the slipstream and whisked over the edge of the car. Dorfmann’s fall had taken him away from the ladder, towards the enclosing guard hoops, and his body crashed against them. His fall knocked the older man down a few rungs to collapse on the floor inside the radio cabin, from which position Eckener immediately sprang up and rushed for the ladder again.

As Eckener re-climbed the ladder from the radio cabin and his head emerged from the roof hatch, he saw Dorfmann’s lower body hit the hoop once more, causing a couple of rivets to spring from the joint holding the hoop to the ladder, and immediately afterwards, the airship rolled a little more than usual, throwing Dorfmann against the hoop yet again, with renewed force. Two more rivets popped, and now Eckener could see a gap between the ladder and the hoop. Eckener took two more steps up the ladder so that he was now once more halfway out of the radio car. The slipstream tore at his face.

Dorfmann’s eyes, which had been closed, now opened, and focused on Eckener’s. His hands reached towards Eckener and grabbed his lapels with a white-knuckle grip. Once again, the airship rolled, and Dorfmann’s legs and lower body were slammed against the hoop, which broke free of its mounting. Dorfmann’s legs slid through the newly opened gap.

With the powerful slipstream pulling at his legs, sucking him out of the safety of the enclosed ladder, Dorfmann tightened his grip on Eckener’s coat, and attempted to scramble his way back to the hatch, but it was a losing battle. The wind caught at his prone body and forced it away from the ladder onto the exposed roof of the radio car from which he would undoubtedly be swept to his death almost instantly. Worse, from Eckener’s point of view, he still maintained a vice-like grip on Eckener’s lapels, which was pulling Eckener himself out of the hatch to share Dorfmann’s fate. Eckener did not dare relinquish his grip on the ladder to loosen the grip on his jacket, for fear that he would lose all control and be pulled by the wind, together with Dorfmann, to his death.

“Letz!” he shouted below into the radio car. “Grab my legs and pull down, damn you!”

Almost immediately he felt himself being torn painfully in two, as Letz hastened to obey, but he could feel his slow ascent out of the hatch slowing down, and then stopping. He released his hands from the ladder and attempted to break Dorfmann’s grip on his jacket, hammering at the other man’s knuckles. As one hand eventually relaxed its grip, Eckener grabbed the wrist. Almost immediately, Dorfmann released the other hand, and Eckener attempted to grab that wrist, but it slipped from his grasp. Eckener looked into Dorfmann’s wild and terrified eyes, only an arm’s length away, and tried to pull Dorfmann towards him, straining his shoulder muscles and sending a sharp pain shooting down his entire back.

“Pull harder, damn you!” he shouted down to Letz, despite the fact that he felt as though his spine was already about to snap in two. He could feel Dorfmann’s wrist slipping through his fingers, and hear his desperate wail, and then—nothing.

Dorfmann was gone, and Eckener found himself sitting, winded, on the floor of the radio car, where Letz had pulled him.

“My God!” said Eckener when he got his breath back. “He’s gone.” He climbed the ladder and looked. There was, as he expected, no sign of the recent struggle, except the gap where the guard hoop had been. “Thank you, Letz. You saved my life.” He took mental stock of his body. His back and spine felt as though they’d been dipped in boiling oil, and he felt exhausted, mentally and emotionally, as well as physically.

“I think you’d better sit down, sir,” said Letz, as if reading his mind, and pushing Dorfmann’s chair towards him.

“Thank you, Letz.” He forced his mind to think as he sat. The struggle had driven recent events from his mind. Suddenly he remembered the messages and why he was in the radio car in the first place.

He turned to Letz. “Well, man, what do you make of these messages?”

“Well, sir, it sounds to me like someone wants to leave our passengers floating around in midair. And my guess is that none of them would know enough to get themselves down again. They could be up here for days, it seems to me. Especially if we set a course back to the coast before we all jumped out.” Letz grinned. He seemed to be enjoying the idea.

“Is that what you’re suggesting we should do, then?” Inside himself, Eckener was sure what he wanted to do, but he regarded Letz as being a representative of the crew’s feelings. If the crew wouldn’t follow his lead, there was no point in his acting.

“I don’t like those Nazi bastards. My brother-in-law’s Jewish, and he lost a good job for no reason at all because of those people. Just give us the word to jump, and we’ll all do it, sir, and leave them lot floating all alone around up here.”

“You’re sure the rest will follow? There aren’t any more secret Nazis? What on earth made Dorfmann behave like that anyway?”

“I think he only became a Nazi recently, just before this trip, sir. I’d never heard anything political from him before, and then suddenly he couldn’t talk about anything else.”

“Why on earth?”

“I think it was meeting the Führer, sir, at the reception for the crew before the flight. I know that after that, he became all excited and emotional when he never used to be, sir. I’m certain he’s the only one, though, sir. Of course, I’m only speaking for the men, not the officers, sir.”

“Yes, well, Hitler can be a most impressive personality, face-to-face. But whoever would have thought that anyone could become so fanatical after such a brief encounter with him?” Eckener made his decision quickly. “Letz, you’ll have to do the ciphering on this one as well as the transmission. Send ‘Understand your request. Will comply’ to Cordele. Sign my name at the bottom. I take full responsibility for all of this. If anyone ever asks you anything—and I am pretty sure that they won’t—then you were simply following my orders. Understand?”

“Aye, aye, sir. Very good, sir. Sir, about Dorfmann…?”

“Yes?”

Who relieves your watch?”

“Becker and Oltrich, sir.”

“I’ll get Becker in to you. Can I leave the three of you to re-arrange the duty roster until we land? Or whenever,” he added significantly.