Читать книгу World War 2 Thriller Collection: Winter, The Eagle Has Flown, South by Java Head - Jack Higgins, Justin Richards - Страница 24

The elderly American and his son were sitting in the library of the Travellers Club in London, drinking whiskey. They had the whole room to themselves. The club was quiet, as it always was at this time of the evening. Those members who had dined in were taking coffee downstairs, and the few theatregoers who dropped in for a nightcap had not arrived. Nowadays the risk of zeppelin raids persuaded most people to go home early. London – despite the presence of hordes of noisy, free-spending young officers – was not the town it had been before the war.

‘It sounds damned dangerous,’ said Cyrus G. Rensselaer. He was sixty-five years old but he looked younger. His hair was a little thinner and grey at the side, but the pale-blue eyes were clear and his waistline was trim. He felt as fit as ever. It was only looking at his thirty-six-year-old son that made him feel his age.

Glenn Rensselaer looked tired. ‘Sometimes it is dangerous,’ he agreed. ‘Most of them are only kids straight from school.’ For a year he’d been working as a civilian flying instructor for the Royal Flying Corps and lately he had been training pilots for night flying. It was a new skill and the casualty rate was alarming. ‘But the zeps come at night, so that’s when the British have to fly.’

‘Haven’t they got anti-aircraft guns?’

‘Not enough of them, and the Huns seem to know where the guns are. But the zeps are slow and planes can chase them. They are damned big and sometimes you can spot them better from up there.’ He looked at his father and saw that behind the sprightliness the old man was tired. ‘When did you get back from Switzerland, Dad?’

‘Yesterday afternoon. The train from Paris was packed with British officers, wounded mostly. Poor devils. Not many of them will fight again. I went to bed right away and slept the clock around.’

‘You’re in a hotel?’

‘The Savoy. It wasn’t worth opening the house for just a few nights. To tell you the truth, I’m thinking of selling it. If the war hadn’t brought property prices so low, I would have let it go last year, when you said you didn’t want to use it.’

‘The war must end soon, Dad. You’ll need a place in London.’ He wasn’t sure whether his father would still be young enough for the rigours of transatlantic crossing by the time these remorseless Europeans had fought themselves to a standstill, but he felt it was his duty always to encourage his hopes and plans. Cy Rensselaer’s wife, Mary, had died unexpectedly the previous year, and he didn’t want his father to go into what people called a decline.

But Glenn needn’t have worried about that. ‘Well, as a matter of fact I was going to have a word with you about family matters, son.’

‘Sure, Dad. What is it?’

‘Would you think I’m crazy if I told you I’m going to get hitched again?’

‘Hitched?’ For a moment he didn’t understand. ‘Hitched’ was not the sort of word that his father used. That he used it now was a measure of Cy Rensselaer’s embarrassment. ‘Married, you mean?’

‘Yes. Remarried. Is it too soon? I know you loved Mom.’

‘Whatever is best for you, Dad. You know that.’

‘Do you remember Dot Turner? Bob Turner’s widow.’

‘Turner Loans, Savings and Realty?’

‘She’s got three boys. A nice woman. I met her at a dinner party last Christmas and we get along just fine. Do I sound like an old fool, Glenn?’

‘No, Dad, of course not.’

‘I get lonely sometimes. I miss your mother. She did everything for me …It’s just the companionship.’

‘I know, Dad. I know.’

‘She wouldn’t take the place of your mother. No one could do that….’

‘It’s a great idea, Dad,’ said Glenn, still trying to get used to the prospect of having a new mother.

‘She’s too old to have a family or anything. It’s just companionship. She’s got all the money she needs, and her boys wouldn’t take the Rensselaer name. It wouldn’t make a jot of difference to you or Veronica.’

‘Sure, Dad, sure.’ He looked at his father and smiled. The old man leaned out and touched his son’s arm. He was happier now he’d got it off his chest.

‘And if you want the house here in London, I’ll turn it over to you.’

‘I live on the airfield. It’s comfortable enough out there. The Royal Flying Corps have even given me a servant – “batmen”, they call them. And I enjoy being with the youngsters. They are full of life and they talk nothing but flying. But tell me about Switzerland.’

‘I wanted to take the train and go right through to Berlin, and see dear Veronica,’ said the old man, ‘but the ambassador was so strongly against it.’

‘You must be careful, Dad. A lot of people would misunderstand a trip to meet a German partner.’

‘What do you mean, Glenn?’

‘Harald Winter is your partner, and he’s making aeroplanes and airships for the Germans. The British are in the middle of a desperate war. Your trip to meet Winter could be construed as a betrayal by your British friends.’

‘I wish to God I’d never loaned the money to him.’

‘But it’s been a good investment for you?’

His father’s voice was hoarse and hesitant. ‘He’s doing okay. He got into aviation at the very beginning, and he’s been very shrewd. He builds only under licence from other manufacturers so he doesn’t have all the worries about designing new ships and selling new ideas to the military.’

‘And Winter had no difficulties about meeting you in Switzerland? The British say that Germany is virtually under martial law.’

‘The Zeppelin company is in Friedrichshafen on the Bodensee. From there he had only a short trip on the ferryboat to Romanshorn. And Winter has become an important factor to the wartime economy; he’s a big shot now.’

‘I can imagine how he struts around.’

‘You never liked him, did you?’ said the old man. ‘I was always against him, too, but this time…’ He shrugged. ‘He looks really. worn out. I might have passed him on the street without recognizing him. And he’s really concerned about Veronica. I never realized how much she meant to him.’

‘Is he still running around with other women?’

‘How can I know that?’ said his father.

‘I wish she’d come home.’

‘We all wish she’d come home, Glenn. But it’s her life. We can’t live her life for her. And now that she’s ill, I have to say that Harald has done everything for her. She’s seen specialists in Berlin and Vienna, and she has a nurse night and day.’

‘I’ve never understood exactly what’s wrong with her.’

‘No one seems to know. The war came as a shock to her and now that Peter is serving with the Airship Division, she’s obviously worried about him. But it’s more complicated than that. Harald says she seems to have lost the will to live. It happens to some women, of course. Their children grow up and they find themselves beyond the age of childbearing. Somehow they feel useless.’

‘Especially if their husband spends all his spare time with his mistresses.’

‘We can’t be sure about that, Glenn.’

‘Men like him don’t change.’

‘We all change, Glenn. Some more than others, but we all change. Women have to feel needed, but maybe men have to feel needed, too. Maybe that’s why we all have this compulsion to go on working even when we have enough money to live in style.’

‘Poor Veronica.’

‘It’s pointless for her to worry about Peter. But that boy has a mind of his own. I remember how he went for me because I let slip a few home truths about Kaiser Bill. Even though he was just a child, he let fly at me. I was mad at him at the time, but when I thought about it I had to admire the little demon. It takes guts to challenge your grandfather in such circumstances. He’s a plucky kid. No surprise to me that he upped and joined the navy airships.’

‘The boy has a better chance than he’d have with an infantry regiment on the Western Front. Did you see the casualties the British have suffered on the Somme in July? Column after column after column of names in the newspapers. Neither side can keep on like this. Two years ago, right here on the streets of London, I saw crowds cheering the prospect of fighting the Germans, but there are not many cheers left anywhere now. Even the fliers I teach make grim jokes about how long they expect to last.’

‘Winter gave me photos of his two boys. I should have brought them. Peter is big. In his naval officer’s uniform he is a handsome young man. He’s tall and dark, with eyes just like Veronica. Peter is the solemn one – dedicated and scholarly. He’s a German through and through, but he’s like the best sort of Germans I knew before the war: solid, honest and reliable. Harry is so proud of them.’

‘I saw Peter in Berlin the summer the war started. Veronica took me to see a friend of hers, Frau Wisliceny. Did you ever meet the Wislicenys?’

‘I met the professor here in London one time.’

‘Frau Wisliceny got Peter to study music. He played the piano for us. It sounded kind of good to me, but I don’t understand any of that classical music. It seemed to me that Peter was more interested in the three daughters. The youngest one – Lisl, I think her name was – was obviously crazy about him. Yeah, he’s a nice kid.’

‘Mathematics and music. Harry said that Peter was interested in nothing else.’

‘Fathers don’t always know what sons are interested in,’ said Glenn.

‘I wish like hell you’d get interested in some lovely daughters,’ said his father.

‘I’m interested in all kinds of daughters, Dad. But I don’t want to marry any of them right now.’

‘Those two boys of Harry Winter’s are the only grandchildren I’ve got, Glenn. You tell me that maybe I shouldn’t cosy up to him on account of the war, and maybe you’re right. But I’m getting old, Glenn, and there’s no sign of you providing me with heirs. Those two boys are all I’ve got.’

‘I didn’t realize how much that kind of thing meant to you, Dad.’

‘At one time it didn’t mean a thing. But you get to being sixty-five and you look at the work you’ve done and you look at the money you’ve stacked away and you start wondering what it’s all for.’

‘I just don’t know enough about business….’

‘It wasn’t intended as any kind of reproach, my boy. You’ve lived your own kind of life and I respect it. You seldom ask me for anything…. To tell you the truth, I wish you asked for more, and asked more often. A man wants to feel his son needs him now and again….’

‘I always…’

‘Let me finish. I’m just trying to explain to you why I didn’t go over there and sell out my holding in Winter’s factories and tell him to go to hell.’

‘I didn’t criticize you.’

‘I know you didn’t, but over the recent months you’ve made it clear that you would have handled Harry differently. I wanted you to understand why I go along with the bastard.’

‘I understand, Dad.’ Glenn wondered whether marrying Dot Turner was his father’s excuse for taking over the Turner kids. This sudden interest in young people was something to do with growing old.

For a few moments Cyrus was silent. When he spoke again it was in a quieter voice. ‘The younger boy, Pauli, is an unmistakable Rensselaer with that big Rensselaer jawline and wide flat head. He’s never done well at school – he just scrapes by each term, Harald tells me – but he’s such a character. A regular Yankee Doodle; I’ve always said he was a real little Yankee. And what a charmer. Always laughing, takes nothing seriously, not the Kaiser, not military school, not the war, not Harry. He adores Veronica, of course, and she dotes on little Pauli. He’s coming up to his final year at military school. Soon he’ll be at the front. Harry worries about both boys. He hated it when Peter went into the Airship Division, but Pauli has always been the baby of the family. You should hear Harry’s stories about little Pauli. He adores him. The thought of him leading a platoon of infantry in a bayonet charge is not easy to face. And, like you say, everyone knows what kind of casualties there are among young infantry lieutenants. The thought of it – plus his worries about Veronica – is wearing Harry down.’

At that moment a servant entered the library. After unhurriedly adjusting the edges of the curtains, he said to the older man, ‘The secretary’s compliments, Mr Rensselaer, and I am to inform you that there is an air-raid warning.’

‘Thank you,’ said Rensselaer calmly. He drank a little whiskey before asking his son, ‘What exactly does that mean, Glenn? Aren’t you supposed to be the expert on zeppelin raids?’

‘The German zeppelins take off from their bases after lunch. One, two, anything up to a dozen airships fly out over the North Sea and then they hover there, just over the horizon, where the British can’t see them, and well out of range of any aeroplane. They sit out there for hour after hour waiting for the light to fade. When it gets dark, they sail in and bomb their chosen targets.’

‘Sounds kind of spooky.’

‘Maybe. Hurry and wait: that’s the way the military always do things. But the Royal Navy has learned to take advantage of that ritual. They have listening posts along the eastern coast, and they pick up the radio messages that the zeppelins send to each other while they are waiting out there. Sometimes they are even able to discover what the target is going to be.’

‘And tonight London is the target.’

‘Nowadays London is always a target, and usually the main one.’

‘And what are we supposed to do now?’

‘There are probably shelters down in the cellar. Some clubs even have sleeping arrangements. But I usually go up to the roof and watch the fireworks.’

‘Then what are we waiting for?’

‘The nights are beginning to get chilly now, Dad. I think we’ll need our overcoats, and maybe a bottle of Scotch.’

Sitting on the chimney parapet that night in 1916, with his son beside him and a bottle of whiskey to hand, was something Cyrus Rensselaer remembered vividly for the rest of his days. The strange life the old man had led, the travelling and the hard work, had prevented him from seeing his son grow up in the way that other, luckier men did, watching their sons and helping them as they faltered into adulthood. But to some extent this night compensated for that lost relationship. Tonight the two men drew together, not as proud father and dutiful son, but as two friends with common interests and values who enjoyed each other’s company.

Glenn, too, remembered this night for as long as he lived not just for the events they witnessed but because it was the high point of his relationship with his father.

‘My boys will be excited,’ said Glenn.

‘Will they be in the air?’

‘Not yet. They’ll probably be sitting on their butts waiting for a sighting.’

‘Then?’

‘Then they have to take off in the dark and climb like hell. The zeps can get damned high nowadays. An aeroplane pilot has to be darned nifty to get in among them before they bomb and climb away. But they’ll try. They’ll chase after those zeps until their gas tanks run dry. Then comes the bit they all dread, landing in the dark – it’s a bitch. We’ve lost too many good boys in accidents; sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ said the elder man, although he could not repress a shudder. If landing in the dark was the most dangerous part of the mission, what were the chances that Glenn would survive the job of teaching these boys how to do it?

‘Maybe we should let them come in and bomb. Now that Londoners have learned how to darken the town, central London has become more difficult to find on a dark night, and that’s the only kind of night the zeps come. And even when they bomb, they seldom hit anything of military value or kill more than half a dozen people.’

‘Sounds mighty callous, Glenn.’

‘The British lost fifty thousand infantry before lunch on the Somme a few weeks back.’

The old man sighed. ‘Well, maybe you are right. But it would rile me to think of those Germans cruising overhead unchallenged.’

‘It’s politics, Dad. The politicians wouldn’t dare leave London undefended, even if it was the right thing to do. The voters would never stand for it. My boys wouldn’t stand for it, either….’ He drank. ‘Especially now that we have rich civilians offering rewards for anyone who downs a zep.’

‘I was reading about that.’

‘Three thousand five hundred pounds sterling for any pilot who gets himself an airship, and any time at all someone is likely to chip in another bagful of gold. That’s enough to set one of my boys up for life.’

‘Are you still flying with your buddy Piper, the Englishman you met on the boat?’

‘The one that went for Veronica.’

‘Veronica?’

It was the whiskey of course. Glenn could have bitten his tongue off. ‘It’s a long time ago.’

‘Veronica. My Veronica?’

‘You remember how I went to stay at old Frau Winter’s house that summer when they were all on vacation there. It was long before the war … 1910, I think. I was starting that tour around Germany that I did with “Boy” Piper. I’d just met him, and we spent a week with the Winters.’

‘Never mind the goddamned filibuster,’ said his father. ‘What happened?’

‘Hell, nothing happened, Dad. But Boy wanted Veronica to marry him. He was crazy about her. He still is. He never got married, and once, when he left his wallet and stuff in my locker – Royal Flying Corps pilots are not allowed to carry personal effects when they’re in the air – a photo of Veronica fell out. He made some silly joke about it being a photo of his sister, but I recognized Veronica all right. Then, after that, he always carried it with him, like a lucky piece.’

‘Jesus! How did Harry react to all this?’

‘I told you, Dad, there was nothing to react to. Boy just fell head over heels in love with Veronica. I think she went for him too, but she figured she had to stay with Harald because of the boys.’

‘You mean you even discussed this with Veronica?’ His father was incredulous. ‘She knew Piper was in love with her? It sounds like a damned funny business.’

‘We were in a hotel in Kiel. Veronica told me that Boy had asked her to go away with him. She had to tell someone, and she couldn’t tell Harald. She was in love with Boy, there was no doubt about that. I could see it in her face.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I wish I’d told her to go with Boy. He’s a great guy; she would have been happy with him. And Harald is a louse.’

‘Well, I’m glad you told me about this,’ said Cyrus bitterly. ‘I’m relieved that your mother never found out.’

‘No one will find out. I never even discussed it with Boy.’

‘And is your friend Piper still working with you?’

‘The lucky dog got command of a squadron on the Western Front. Can you imagine that? He’s over forty years old. And he didn’t even learn to fly until the war began. How the devil he fixed it I’ll never know. Not fighters of course, but even so…’

‘What’s that across there?’

‘Searchlights. That will be a zeppelin; they always come in that way from the northeast. Some of them mistake the river Lea for the Thames and drop their bombs there, which can be bad luck if you live out that way.’

‘More searchlights.’

‘I think they’ve got him. See the little sparks – bluish-white flickers. That’s the anti-aircraft shells exploding. Maybe you can hear them.’

‘Well below him.’

‘We haven’t got enough long-range high-velocity guns.’

Glenn’s father noticed that ‘we’ hadn’t got the guns. Although Rensselaer senior was an unreserved Anglophile, he was, above all, an American, and determined to stay out of this European quarrel. He was tempted to lecture his son on the subject, but he wisely decided that this was not the time or place. ‘There must be a dozen searchlights there.’

‘The defences concentrate there because that’s the way the Germans come.’

‘What kind of dopes are they to keep coming that way?’

‘No, they are smart to come that way. The Thames estuary is wide. The zeps come over the water and they can get very close to London before making a landfall.’

‘More searchlights.’ There were much louder explosions from the other direction, somewhere south of the river – Southwark, probably – but the bombs were small ones and the sound was muffled. In the street below a policeman cycled past, blowing blasts on a whistle.

‘There’s another zep there … maybe three or four. The searchlights are trying to find them all. They come in like that sometimes – three or four together – one zep is detected but the others slip past.’

‘They’re coming this way.’

‘It’s central London they are looking for. Look at the gunfire now.’

‘The searchlights have got him!’ Despite the elder man’s determination to stay neutral, the atavistic excitement of the hunt now brought him to his feet. Glenn steadied his father on the slippery moss that grew in the guttering. Now the silver fabric of the airship was gleaming as the stiletto-thin beams stabbed into it. There were half a dozen lights and, at the point of the pyramid, the fishlike airship. ‘He’s hit!’ For a moment the airship disappeared behind a cloud of white smoke. As it cleared, the fish was tilted at a crazy upward angle. ‘He’s hit!’

‘No. That’s not smoke. He’s dropping water ballast…’

Boom, boom, boom. Like distant thunder came the sound of high explosive, much lower and more vibratory than the crack of the guns. The building shook.

‘…and his bomb load, too. Now he’s lightened, he’ll climb for dear life.’

‘What’s that?’ Coloured flares lit the sky bright red.

‘They’re Very pistol lights. One of my boys telling the guns to stop firing while the airplanes try. Look at that zep go!’ Without bombs and water ballast, the zeppelin rose at an astonishing speed, so that the searchlights slid away and the airship disappeared into the dark night.

‘Has he escaped?’

‘Maybe. Somewhere up there two of them are playing a game of hide and seek. There’s a little scattered cloud to the north. If I was the zep captain I’d be making for it.’

‘And if you were the airplane pilot you’d be heading that way, too.’

They continued to stare towards the northeast. ‘It’s damned cold tonight,’ said Rensselaer senior. He shuddered.

Suddenly there was a red glow in the sky. Small at first; then, like a Chinese paper lantern, the great airship became a short red tube that lengthened as the flaming hydrogen burst from one gas cell to the next until the whole shape of the airship was depicted in dull red. Then at one place the flames ate through the fabric and were revealed as bright orange. Only then, as the aluminium melted, did the zeppelin cease its graceful forward motion. Halted, it became a cloud of burning gas around a tangle of almost white-hot metal, and then, slowly but with gathering speed, the great airship fell from the sky.

‘Oh my God!’ cried Rensselaer senior. No hatred now for friend or foe. He turned away and covered his face with his hands. ‘It’s horrible, horrible!’ Glen Rensselaer put his arms round his father’s shoulders and embraced him in the way that his father had so often comforted him as a child.

‘You’re a good, reliable officer’

On the wall of the office there was a calendar advertising ‘the margarine Germans enjoy’. It was there because some thoughtful printer had provided for each day a small diagram of the phases of the moon. The week before and the week after the new moon were marked in red ink. For the zeppelin service, knowing which nights were to be dark and moonless was a matter of life and death.

Lieutenant Peter Winter sat at the desk under the calendar. He wore the dark-blue uniform of the Imperial Navy complete with stiff wing collar that dug into his neck as he bent over his work. From this window, on those very rare moments when he looked up from his task, he could see the hard morning sunlight shining on the zeppelin sheds, the hydrogen plant and the flat landscape of the sort that he’d known as a child at Travemünde, not so far away.

‘Can I get the twelve-noon train, Peter?’ Hans-Jürgen, a fellow Berliner was today taking the despatch case to the ministry. If he caught the early train, he’d have a chance to see his girl.

‘Fifteen minutes, no more,’ promised Peter without looking up from his labour. When he’d volunteered for the Navy Airship Division, he’d never guessed how much of his time he’d spend at a desk, filling out forms and signing long reports about things he only half understood. Compared with this drudgery, working for his father would have been stimulating. On the other hand, working for his father would not have provided him with the naval officer’s uniform, of which he was secretly so proud, or the bombing trips over England, which he found both daunting and stimulating. Stimulating because he was at the period of physical and mental development when humans suddenly discover who and what they are. And Peter had discovered that he was courageous. The flights did not frighten him in the way that some of his comrades were frightened.

He signed the form and slapped it into the box while grabbing the next pile of paperwork. It seemed absurd that each zeppelin commander had to file seven copies of each flight log. Then came the route charts and endless lists showing the precise time that ballast was jettisoned and the exact amount of it. The weather forecast was compared with the actual weather conditions; the name, rank, number and age of each crew member had to be entered each time, and their behaviour throughout the mission noted. The times of take off, changes of course, bombing and landing were all here. Attached, on separate sheets submitted by the navigating officers, there were observations of enemy targets, and descriptions of any shipping seen en route. These had all been signed and then verified and countersigned by the commanders. All of it would soon be filed away and forgotten in some dusty Berlin office. Sometimes he felt like screaming and shovelling the whole pile of it into the wastepaper basket. But he plodded steadily on – with glances at the clock so as to have it all ready in time for his friend to catch the Berlin train.

There was no opportunity for Peter Winter to get to Berlin and see his girl, Lisl, the youngest of the Wisliceny girls – for tonight, according to the margarine calendar, was to be dark. And Peter was due to take off at 1:30 p.m. There would be no time for lunch.

And yet he must get to Berlin soon. Inge Wisliceny seemed to have some idea that she was his girl. He liked Inge, but only as a friend. It was her sister Lisl that he was seriously attracted to and this would have to be explained to Inge. Inge would be hurt; he knew that. Losing Peter to her young sister would be especially wounding, for Inge was rather haughty about her sisters. He didn’t look forward to it, but it would have to be done.

Inge was too serious, too conventional, and too intense. In some ways she was too much like Peter, though he’d never admit that. Lisl was young – childlike sometimes – irreverent, impudent and quite outrageous. But Lisl made him laugh. Lisl was someone he wanted to be with on his precious brief trips to Berlin.

The paperwork was only just completed in time for Peter to change into his heavy leather flying clothes, which came complete with long underwear. When he arrived at the airship, hot and sweaty, the engines were already being run up. Within the confines of the iron shed the noise was deafening. Their shed companion, an old zeppelin that dated from the first weeks of the war – her crew called her ‘the Dragon’ – was already out on the field.

‘Achtung! Stand clear of propellers!’ the duty officer in charge of the ground crew shouted. The engineers let in the clutches and engaged the gears. One by one the big Maybach engines took the weight of the four-bladed wooden props and the engines modulated to a lower note. A cloud of dust was kicked up from the floor of the shed.

Peter swung aboard and almost collided with men loading the bombs: four thousand pounds of high explosive and incendiaries. As he stepped aboard, the airship swayed and one of the handling party unhooked a sack of ballast from the side of the airship. Its weight approximated that of Peter so that the airship continued in its state of equilibrium within the shed.

He climbed into the control gondola, a tiny glass-sided room two yards wide and three yards long. The others were already in position, and there was little space to spare. Above the roar of the engines came the constant jingle of the engine room telegraph and the buzz of the telephones. The noise lessened as the engineers throttled back until the engines were just ticking over. Then they were switched off and it became unnaturally quiet.

The captain – a thirty-three-year-old Kapitänleutnant – nodded in response to Peter’s salute, but the rudder man and the man at the elevator did not look up. Hildmann, the observation officer – a veteran with goatee beard – immediately said, ‘Winter, go and take another look at the windsock. This damned wind is changing all the time…. No, it’s all right. Carl is doing it.’ And then, to the captain, he said, ‘All clear for leaving the shed.’ The observation officer then climbed down from the gondola in order to supervise the tricky task of walking the airship out of the shed.

There was the sound of whistles, and the command ‘Airship march!’ as the ground handling party tugged at the ropes and heaved at the handles on the fore and aft gondolas to run the airship out through the narrow shed door. Peter leaned out of the gondola and watched anxiously. The previous month, in just such a situation, the airship had brushed the doorway and suffered enough damage to be kept grounded. For that mistake their leave had been cancelled, and leave these days was precious to everyone. When the stern came out of the shed there was a murmur of relief.

‘Slip astern!’ The rearmost ropes were cast off, and she began to swing round so rapidly that the men of the handling party had to run to keep up with her. Then, with all the ground crew tugging at her, the airship stopped. Hildmann climbed back aboard and, with a quick look round, the captain gave the order to restart engines. In response to the ringing of the telegraphs, one after another the warmed engines roared into life. ‘Up!’ The handling party let go of the leading gondola and she reared up at an angle.

‘Stern engines full speed ahead!’

Now the handling party holding the handles along the rear gondola could not have held on to it without being pulled aloft. Suddenly the ship was airborne and every man aboard felt the deck swing free underfoot, and the airship wallowed in the warm afternoon air. It would be many hours before they’d feel solid ground underfoot.

The engineer officer saluted the captain before climbing the ladder from the control room up to the keel. His fur-lined boots disappeared through the dark rectangle in the ceiling. He was off to his position at the rear-engine gondola. He would spend the rest of the flight with his engines. The other men moved to take advantage of the extra space.

Now that the airship was well clear of the roofs of the sheds, the motors were revved up to full speed. There was no real hurry to reach the rendezvous spot in the cold air of the North Sea, but when so many zeppelins were flying together, it always became something of a race.

There were twenty-three in the crew. They knew one another very well by now. Apart from two of the engine mechanics and the sailmaker – whose job it was to repair leaks in the gas bags or outer envelope – they’d all trained and served together for some ten months. They’d flown out of Leipzig learning their airmanship on the old passenger zeppelins, including the famous Viktoria-Luise. They were happy days. But that was a long time ago. Now the war seemed to be a grim contest of endurance.

Oberleutnant Hildmann, the observation officer – who was also second in command – was a martinet who’d served many years with the Baltic Fleet. It was he who had assigned Peter to navigation. Actually this was the steersman’s job, but Peter’s effortless mental arithmetic gave him a great advantage when it came to working out endless triangles of velocity. It was a skill worth having when Headquarters radioed so many different wind speeds, and in the black night they tried to estimate their position over the darkened enemy landscape.

Peter had been given a sheltered corner of the chilly, windswept control gondola in which to spread his navigation charts. Now he scribbled the airship’s course and her estimated speed on a piece of paper, and tried to catch glimpses of the North German coast. Upon the map he would then draw a triangle, and from this get an idea of what winds the night would bring.

There was cumulus cloud to the north and a scattering of cirrus. The forecast said that there would be scattered clouds over eastern England by evening. That was good news: cloud provided a place to hide.

When they reached Norderney – a small island in the North Sea used as a navigation pinpoint – Peter spotted several other zeppelins. The sun shone brightly on their silver fabric. One of them, well to the rear, was easily recognized as the Dragon: her engines were worn out with so many war flights over these waters, so that her mechanics had to nurse the noisy machinery all the way. Nearer was the L23, with another naval airship moving through the mist beyond. It was a big raid today. Rumours said that there were a dozen naval airships engaged, and three or four army airships, too. Perhaps this would be the raid that would convince the British to seek peace terms. The newspapers all said that the British were reeling under the air raids on London, and the foolhardy British offensive along the river Somme in July had been a bloodletting for them.

For Peter, London was just a dim memory. It seemed a long time ago since he had last visited his grandparents in the big house there. He remembered his grandfather and the big English fruitcakes that were served at four o’clock each day. He remembered the busy streets in the City, where Grandfather had an office, and the quiet gardens and the street musicians to whom Grandfather always gave money. Especially vividly he recalled the piper, a Highlander in kilt and full Scots costume. He seemed too haughty to ask for money, but he stooped to pick up the coins thrown from the nursery window. The piper always came by about teatime, and the little German band came soon after. The bandleader was a big fellow with a red face and furious arm movements. He was astonished when Pauli responded to their music with rough and rude Berlin slang.

Peter’s memories of London had no meaning for him now. His boyhood desire to become an explorer was almost forgotten. The war had changed him. He’d lost too many comrades to relish these bombing missions. He was proud of his active, dangerous role, but when victory came he’d be content to spend the rest of his life in Berlin.

The whistle on the speaking tube sounded. Peter took the whistle from the tube, which he then put to his ear: ‘Hello?’ It was the lookout reporting the sighting of a ship: a German destroyer heading for Bremen. Peter noted it in the log and went back to his charts. They were at the rendezvous. Now commenced the worst part of the mission. Here at the rendezvous there would be hours of waiting, the engines ticking over just enough to hold position in the air. A skeleton crew on duty and anything up to a dozen men in hammocks slung along the gangways. No one would sleep; no one ever slept. You just stretched out and wondered what the night would bring. You remembered the stories about the airships that had broken up in mid-air or burst into flames. You wondered if the British had improved upon their anti-aircraft gunfire or perfected the incendiary bullets that the fighter planes fired.

The whitecapped sea would soon darken. But the days were long up here in the sky. Although the sun sank lower and lower, the waiting airships remained bathed in its light, glowing with that golden luminosity that is so like flame.

‘Winter. Leave whatever you’re doing and go to the number-two gun position: the telephone is not working.’

The observation officer was not a bad fellow, but he, too, succumbed to the nervousness of these waiting periods. Peter knew that there was nothing wrong with the telephone. The gunners were down inside the hull, out of the cold airstream, trying to keep warm. Once you got cold there was no way to get warm again: there was no such thing as a warm place on a naval airship. And who could blame the gun crew? There was no chance of enemy aircraft out here, so far from the English coast.

‘Ja, Herr Oberleutnant. Right away,’ Peter saluted him. Saluting was not insisted on in such circumstances, but Hildmann, like most regular officers of the old navy, didn’t like the ‘sloppy informality’ of the Airship Division.

Peter climbed the short ladder that connected the control gondola to the keel. To get to the upper gun position took Peter right through the airship’s hull. As he walked along the narrow gangway, he looked down through the gaps in the flapping outer cover and could see the ocean, almost three thousand feet below. The water was grey and spumy, speckled with the last low rays of sunlight coming through the broken cloud. Peter didn’t look down except when he had to. The ocean was a threatening sight. He had never enjoyed sailing since that day when he’d nearly drowned, and the prospect of serving on a surface vessel filled him with horror.

Some light was reflected from below, but the inside of the airship was dark. Above him the huge gas cells moved constantly. All around him there were noises: it was like being in the bowels of some huge monster. Besides the rustling of the gas cells there was the creaking of the aluminium framework along which he walked and the musical cries of thousands of steel bracing wires.

It was a fearsomely long vertical ladder that took him up between the gas cells to the very top of the envelope. Finally he emerged into the daylight on the top of the zeppelin. Suddenly it was very sunny, but the air was bitterly cold and he had to hold tight to the safety rail. What a curious place it was up here on the upper side of the hull. The silver fabric sloped away to each side, and the great length of the airship was emphasized. What an amazing achievement it was for man to build a flying machine as big as a cathedral.

Peter stood there staring for a moment or two. To the port-side he could see two other zeppelins. They were higher, by several hundred feet. Ahead was a flicker of light reflected off another airship’s fabric. That would be the old Dragon fighting to gain height. She’d caught up with the armada. It was good to see her so close; Peter had friends aboard her. They were not alone here in the upper air.

It was late afternoon. Still the airships glowed with sunlight. Soon, as the sun sank lower, the airships would darken one by one, darken like lights being extinguished. Then, when even the highest one went dark, they would move off towards England. Peter shivered; it was cold up here, very cold.

‘Hennig!’ called Peter loudly. He knew where the fellow would be hiding: all the gunners took shelter, but Hennig was the laziest.

‘What’s wrong, Herr Leutnant?’ He emerged blinking into the light and behind him came the loader, a diminutive youth named Stein, who followed the gunner everywhere. Stein was a Bolshevik agitator, though so far he’d been too sly to be caught spreading sedition amongst the seamen. Still, his cunning hadn’t saved him from several nasty beatings from fellow sailors who opposed his political views. Hennig was not thought to be a Bolshevik, but the two men were individualistic to the point of eccentricity, and neither would be welcomed into other gun teams. So they had formed an alliance, a pact of mutual assistance. Erich Hennig pushed his assistant gently aside. It was a gesture that said that if there was any blame to be taken he would take it. ‘What’s wrong, Leutnant?’ he said again. Hennig was a slim, pale youth of about Peter’s age. His dark eyes were heavy-lidded, his lips thin and bloodless.

‘You should be at the gun, Hennig.’

‘Ja, Herr Leutnant.’ Hennig smiled. It was a provocative and superior smile, the smile a man gave to show himself and others that he was not subject to authority. It was a smile for Peter Winter alone: the two men knew each other well. Winter had known Hennig since long before both men volunteered for the navy. Erich Hennig lived in Wedding; his father was a skilled cooper who worked in the docks mending damaged barrels. The apartment in which he grew up, with half a dozen brothers and sisters, was cramped and gloomy. At school Hennig proved below average at lessons, but he earned money by playing the piano in Bierwirtschaften – stand-up bars – and seedy clubs. It was a club owner who brought Erich Hennig’s talent to the attention of the amazing Frau Wisliceny. And through her efforts Hennig spent three years studying composition and theory at the conservatoire. By the time war broke out, Erich Hennig was being spoken of as a talent to watch. In April 1914 he’d given a series of recitals – mostly Chopin and Brahms – at a small concert hall near the Eden Hotel. There was even a paragraph about it in the newspaper: ‘promising,’ said the music critic.

Peter had met Hennig frequently at Frau Wisliceny’s house. Once they’d even played duets, but no friendship ever developed between them. Hennig was fiercely competitive. He saw the privileged Peter Winter as a spoiled dilettante who lacked the passionate love for music that Hennig knew. He’d actually heard Peter Winter discussing with the Wisliceny daughters whether he should pursue a career in music, study higher mathematics, or just prepare himself for a job alongside his father. This enraged Hennig. For Hennig it was a betrayal of talent. How could any talented musician – and even Erich Hennig admitted to himself, if not to others, that Peter Winter was no less talented than himself – speak of any other career?

‘When the telephone rings, you make sure you answer it,’ said Peter.

‘I do, Herr Leutnant.’ He continued leaning against the gun.

‘You should be standing to attention, Hennig.’

‘I’m manning the gun, Herr Leutnant.’

The wretch always had an answer ready. And Peter well knew that any complaint about Hennig would not be welcome. Hennig played piano in the officers’ mess. He could be an engaging young man when he tried, and he had a lot of supporters amongst the senior ranks. When the beer and wine were flowing and the old songs were sung until the small hours of the morning, Hennig became a sort of unofficial member of the officers’ club. It would be a foolish young officer who punished him for what might sound like no reason but jealousy. For Peter would never be able to play the sort of music that got a party going. In this respect he admired Hennig’s talent and envied those years that Hennig had spent strumming untuned pianos for drunken clubgoers. Hennig always found under his fingertips the right melodies for the right moments. And he remembered them. He knew the tune the Kapitänleutnant had danced to the night he met his wife. He knew those bits of Strauss that the observation officer could hum. He knew when the captain might be induced to sing his inimitable tuneless version of ‘I’m Going to Maxim’s’ and changed key to help him; and he knew the hymn tunes for which there were words that could be sung only after the captain departed.

Peter Winter’s musical talent was the talent of the mathematician, and, as was the case with most mathematicians, Bach was his first musical choice. Peter’s love for Bach was a reflection of his upbringing, his social class, and the time and place in which he lived. There was a measured orderliness and formality to Bach’s music: a promise of permanence that most Europeans took for granted. Playing Bach, Peter displayed a skill and devotion that Hennig could never equal. But Hennig never played Bach. And Peter never played the piano in the officers’ mess, where Bach was not revered.

Peter went to the telephone, swung the handle round until the control gondola answered. ‘Upper gun position. Testing,’ said Peter.

‘Your voice is loud and clear, Herr Leutnant,’ said the petty-officer signalman.

Peter replaced the earpiece. ‘Carry on, Hennig,’ he said.

‘I will, Herr Leutnant,’ said Hennig. And as Peter started on the long and treacherous vertical ladder, he heard the loader titter. He decided it was better not to hear it.

As he picked his way back down the ladder to the keel, he thought about his exchange with Hennig. He knew he’d come out of it badly. He always came out of such exchanges badly. He didn’t have the right temperament to deal with the Hennigs of this world. He had tried, God knows he’d tried. Early in their first training flights, on one of the old Hansa passenger zeppelins, he’d talked to Hennig and suggested he apply for officer training. Hennig had taken it as some subtle sort of insult and had rejected the idea with contempt.

But in the forefront of Peter’s mind was the fact that Hennig had lately become more than friendly with Lisl Wisliceny, whom Peter considered his girl. Particularly hurtful was the latest letter from Lisl. Until now she’d been pressing Peter to become engaged to her. Peter, reluctant to face the sort of scene that his father would make in such circumstances, had found excuses. But in her latest letter Lisl had written that she now agreed with Peter, that they were both too young to think of marriage, and that she should see more people while Peter was away. And by ‘people’ she meant Erich Hennig. That much Peter was certain about. Only after Peter had taken Lisl to the opera did young Hennig suddenly begin to show his interest in this, the youngest of the Wisliceny daughters. And Hennig got far more opportunities to go to Berlin than Peter got. For the other ranks there were two weekend passes a month if they were not listed on the combat-ready sheet or assigned to guard duties. But officers were in short supply at the airship base. And, as any young officer knows, that meant that the junior commissioned ranks worked hard enough to prevent the shortage of officers, bringing extra work to those with three or more gold rings on their sleeve.

Damn Hennig! Well, Peter would show him. Little did Hennig realize it, but his insolence, and his pursuit of Peter’s girl, would be just what was needed to make Peter into the international-class pianist that Frau Wisliceny said he could become. From now on he would practise three hours a day. It would mean getting up at four in the morning, but that would not be difficult for him. There was a piano in the storage shed. Though it was old and out of tune, that would be no great difficulty. Peter could tune a piano, and there was a carpenter on the Dragon who would help him get it into proper working order, a decent old petty officer named Becker. He’d worked as an apprentice in a piano factory and knew everything about them.

For the next half-hour Peter was kept busy with his charts. Having missed his lunch, he became hungry enough to dip into his ration bag. The food supplied for these trips was not very appetizing. There were hardboiled eggs and cold potatoes, some very hard pieces of sausage and a thick slice of black rye bread. There was also a bar of chocolate, but for the time being he saved the chocolate. If they went high, where even the black bread turned to slabs of ice that had to be shattered with a hammer, the chocolate was the only substance that didn’t freeze solid. He took a hardboiled egg and nibbled at it. If he could get down to the rear-engine car, there might be a chance of some hot pea soup or coffee. The engineering officer let the mechanics warm it on the engine exhaust pipes. In some of the zeppelins there was constant hot coffee from an electric hot plate in the control gondola, but on this airship the captain wouldn’t allow such devices to be used because of the fire risk.

When his calculations were complete, Peter turned to watch the men in the control gondola. At the front was a seaman at the helm. He steered while another crewman beside him, at the same sort of wheel, adjusted the elevators to keep the airship level. This was said to be the most difficult job in the control room, although Peter had never tried his hand at it. A good elevator man was able to anticipate each lurch and wallow and turn the wheel to meet each gust of wind. The control gondola was like a little greenhouse into which machinery had been packed. The largest box, a sort of cupboard, was the radio, for keeping in touch with base and with the other airships. There was the master compass with an arc to measure the angle to the horizon, a variometer for measuring descent or climb, an electric thermometer to measure the temperature of the gas in the envelope, and there were the vitally important ballast controls. At the front, where the captain stood alongside the helmsman, was the bomb-release switchboard and a battery of lamps for signalling and for landing.

Tonight’s plan was simple: the main body of airships would attack London, approaching from over the Norfolk coast while two army airships were sent north to fool the defences by making a feint attack along the river Humber. The plan itself was good enough, although its lack of originality meant that the British would not be fooled.

And the attack started too early. Even the captain, a man whose formal naval training prevented him from criticizing the High Command or his senior colleagues, said it was a bit early when the first of the airships moved forward from the place at which they’d hovered for three hours. The whole idea of waiting was so that the sky would be totally dark when the airships crossed the English coastline. But it wasn’t dark. Even the English countryside, some six thousand feet below them, was not quite darkened. Peter had no trouble following the map. He could see the rivers, and many of the villages were brightly lit. And that meant that the British could see them. The alarms would go off, London would be made dim, and civilians would go to the bomb shelters. Worse, the pilots would stand by their planes and the gunners would load the guns; their reception would be a hot one.

All the time he watched the horizon; there was always some sort of glow from London, no matter how stringently the inhabitants doused their lights. Then he spotted it, and as they came nearer to London Peter could see the looping shape of the river Thames. There was no way that could be hidden. Suddenly the guns started. Flickers of light at first as the gunners tried to get the range, but then the flashes came closer. Staring down, Peter spotted the Houses of Parliament on the riverbank. And then the shape of London – well known to him more because of his study of target maps than because of any memories that the sight evoked – was recognizable.

‘Prepare for action! Open bomb doors!’ He noted the exact time: 2304 hours. At first he was going to advise dropping bombs on the Houses of Parliament, but the briefing clearly said railway stations. There were two right below: Waterloo and Charing Cross. Peter signalled and the captain ordered the first lot of bombs released. There was a series of flashes as they hit, and though Peter could imagine the terror and destruction they had brought, he had no deep feeling of remorse or regret. The British had had every chance to stay out of the war, but they had decided to interfere, and now they must face the consequences.

Crash! The second lot of bombs were striking somewhere south of the river. It was mostly just workers’ housing on that side of the water. The captain should have awaited Peter’s signal, but everyone got excited. There were more explosions, though without any corresponding lights on the ground. He suddenly realized that it was the sound of the British anti-aircraft guns. They were very close, and for the first time on such a war flight Peter felt a little afraid.

At least there were no searchlights here in the very heart of town. The British had concentrated their searchlights to the northeast and along the approaches. They could be seen there now, steadily moving in search of the zeppelins that were behind them. Wait: they were clustering together. They’d caught someone. Two more anti-aircraft shells exploded very close. In the gondola Peter heard the captain order the firing of a red Very pistol light. It was a trick – pretending to be a British fighter plane ordering the guns silent – but the ‘colour of the night’ was changed sometimes hour by hour, and the gunners were not often tricked. The light went arcing out into the darkness, a red firework sinking slowly.

‘Drop water ballast forward!’ murmured the captain, and immediately the orders were given. Peter hung on tight, knowing that the airship would tilt upwards to an alarming angle as she began to rise. There was the whoosh of water rushing through the traps. There she went! The gunfire explosions dropped away below them like the repeated sparking of a cigarette lighter that would not ignite. They continued to rise. Here in the upper air it was dark and cold.

By now a dozen searchlights had fastened on the airship behind them to the north. ‘The Dragon!’ said a whispered voice in the gondola. How could it be the Dragon? She’d been ahead of them. Of course, she was always very slow. Those old engines of hers were the subject of endless grim jokes. They’d been promised new engines again and again, but all the new engines were needed for new airships.

The telephone rang and was answered by Hildmann. ‘Number-two gun position report enemy aircraft,’ he said.

‘Switch off engines!’

The silence came as a sudden shock after so many hours with the throbbing sound of the engines. Everyone throughout the airship remained as quiet as possible and listened.

It was Peter, staring down to the townscape below who spotted him, a large biplane climbing in a wide circle trying to get into position for an attack. The fighters liked to rake the airships from stern to nose, using the new explosive and incendiary bullets. ‘Fighter!’ He pointed.

The captain bit his lip and turned his head to see the instruments. The airship was still at the slightly nose-up angle that provided extra dynamic lift.

Suddenly all was grey: the sky, the ground and all the windows. The zeppelin had passed up into a patch of cloud. Now, with all speed, the airship was ‘weighed off’. The upward movement ended and the airship stopped, engines off and completely silent, shrouded in the grey wet cloud. The mist around them brightened as the searchlight beams raked the cloud’s underside and made the water vapour glow.

They could hear the aeroplane now. It had followed them into the cloud and passed near on the starboard side, its engine faltering as the dampness of the cloud affected the carburettor. It circled once, as if the fighter pilot knew where they were hiding, and then, after another, wider circle, the sound of the plane’s engine grew fainter.

‘Restart engines!’ The clutches were engaged till the props were just turning, treading the air so that the airship scarcely moved. They waited five minutes or more before dropping more water ballast and recommencing their upward movement. Suddenly they were out of the cloud and the stars were overhead. They were very high now and could see a long way. Over northern London clusters of searchlights were still moving slowly across the sky, searching for the airships heading back that way.

Peter provided a course to steer, and slowly – the engines weakened on this thinner air – they headed for home. Everyone was watching the horizon, where the English defences were concentrated. Every few minutes there was a flicker of gunfire, like fireflies on a summer’s evening. That was the gauntlet that they must also run.

‘Look there!’

One by one the searchlights swung over to one point in the sky, forming a pyramid with a silvery shape at its tip. Then the silvery shape went red. At first the red glow was scarcely brighter than the searchlight beams below it. Then it went to a much lighter red, as a cigar tip brightens at a sudden intake of breath.

‘My God!’ Even the captain was moved to cry out aloud. Everyone stared. Flight discipline, rank, was for a moment forgotten. All stared at the terrible sight. None of them had seen such a thing before, except in their nightmares. The stricken airship flared white like a torch, so bright that it blinded them, and they were unable properly to see the dull-red sun into which it changed before dropping earthwards. Then the fiery tangle vanished into a cloud, and the cloud turned pink and boiled like a great furnace.

It was in the silence that followed that the telephone rang. The observation officer – Hildmann – answered tersely. He looked round the control gondola and stared at Peter. If there was a job, then Peter was the one likely to be spared from duties here in the car. The course home was set, and the charts were already folded away, the pencils in their leather case in the rack over the plotting table.

So it was Peter who was sent to speak with the sailmaker. The gas bags were holed; the captain must know how badly. Was it the small punctures that the scout’s machine guns made, or the far more serious jagged tears from shell fragments? Were the leaks low down, or were they in the upper sections of the bags, where a leak meant the loss of all the gas it held? Peter looked around to find an extra scarf and the sheepskin gloves that he’d removed to use the pencils. It would be cold back there inside the envelope, even colder than it was here in the drafty control gondola. He’d found only one glove by the time Hildmann shouted to him again. No matter: he’d keep his hand in his pocket.

He went up the ladder again. It was dark and dangerous picking his way along the keel between the lines of gas bags. It was like walking down the aisle of some echoing cathedral, except that hug silky balloons floated inside and filled the whole nave, from floor to vaulting.

Some of the giant bags were hanging soft and empty. It was here that the sailmaker was already at work, patching the leaks. He called down from the darkness: ‘Herr Leutnant.’ The sailmaker was clinging to the girders high above him. Peter climbed with difficulty. The lack of oxygen made him feel dizzy.

It was while Peter was inspecting the damaged gas bags that the anti-aircraft battery scored its hit. There was a loud bang that echoed in the framework. The airship careened, remained for a moment on its side, so that everything tilted and the half-emptied bags enveloped the two men. Peter fought the silky fabric aside as the airship rolled slowly back and then steadied again. ‘What the devil was that?’ said the sailmaker. Peter didn’t reply, but he knew they were hit and hit badly. It was a miracle that there was no fire. ‘Stay here,’ said Peter. ‘I’ll find out what’s happened.’

When he got back to the control gondola, it was in ruins. The rear portion of the car was gone completely, and a large section of the thin metal floor was missing, so that, still standing on the short communication ladder to the keel, Peter could see the landscape thousands of feet below them. The helmsman and rudder man were nowhere to be seen: the explosion had blown them out into the thin air.

There was broken window celluloid everywhere, and the aluminium girders were bent into curious shapes, like the tendrils of some exotic vine. The body of the captain – hatless to reveal an almost bald head – was sprawled on the floor in the corner, his head slumped on his chest. The observation officer had survived, of course: Hildmann was a tough old bird, the sort of man who always survived. He had somehow scrambled across the two remaining girders and got to the front of the car. He was manning the elevator wheel. When he saw Peter coming down through the hatch, he pointed to the wheel that controlled the rudders and then went back to his task.

‘How bad?’ Hildmann asked him after Peter had swung himself across the gaping hole to take his place at the wheel and steer for home.

‘The gas bags? Two of them are bad, and some of the holes are high. But the sailmaker is a good man, and his assistant is at work, too.’

The observation officer grunted. ‘We can let it go lower, much lower.’ His voice was strained as he gasped for breath. Hildmann was no longer young. At this height the lack of oxygen caused dizziness and headaches and every little exertion seemed exhausting. Peter’s clamber down into the car had made his ears ring, and his pulse was beating at almost twice its normal rate. In the engine cars, and up on the gun positions, men would be suffering nausea and vomiting. It was worth going high to avoid the defences, but today they hadn’t avoided them. ‘A lucky shot,’ said Hildmann, as if reading Peter’s mind.

‘There will be more guns along the coast,’ warned Peter.

‘We must risk that. The gas will be escaping fast at this height; soon we’ll lose altitude whether we want to or not. And the engines will give us more power lower down.’

Peter didn’t answer. Hildmann was deluding himself. The pressure inside the bags would make little difference. Whatever they decided, the airship was continuing to sink, due to the lost hydrogen from the punctured gas cells. Peter was having great difficulty at the helm of the great ship. He had never touched the wheel before; the seamen given this job were carefully chosen and specially trained. Holding the brute, as it wilfully tried to fly its own course through the open sky, was a far harder task than he ever would have believed. He had new respect for the men he’d watched doing it so calmly and effortlessly. And as the thought came to him, he realized that now he would never be able to tell them so: both men had long since hit the ground at terminal velocity, which meant enough force to indent themselves deep into the earth.

‘Is he patching the holes?’ said Hildmann.

‘The sailmaker and his assistant,’ affirmed Peter. ‘They can’t work miracles, though.’

In other circumstances Hildmann might have considered Peter’s reply insubordinate, but now he seemed not to notice the apparent disrespect.

‘We’re sinking still,’ said Hildmann, at last facing the reality of their danger. ‘They’d better work fast.’ The airship dropped lower and lower until the altimeter – an unreliable device worked by barometric pressure – warned them they were as low as they dared go in darkness. Then it became a battle to stay in the air. In other parts of the airship, crewmen, on their own initiative, began to throw overboard everything that could be spared. Desperately men dumped the reserve fuel, ammunition boxes, then ammunition; finally, as they crossed the coast near Yarmouth, the guns went, too.

‘Can you work the radio?’ asked Hildmann.

‘I can try, Herr Oberleutnant.’ The radio looked to be in bad shape, the glass dials shattered and a fresh bright-silver gash across its metal case. There was little or no chance that it would still be working. The clock over it had stopped, a mute record of the exact moment the shell burst struck.

‘We’ll probably come down in the sea. We need to know the position of the nearest ship.’

And find it, thought Peter. He had only the haziest idea of their present position, and finding such a dot in the North Sea would need a navigational skill far beyond his own crude vectors and sums. But for a moment he was spared such tests; there was no question of his leaving the helm until a relief could be summoned, and the telephone link was severed.

‘Better not look down,’ said Hildmann in a voice that was almost avuncular.

Had the old man just discovered that, thought Peter. The void beyond the gap in the car’s floor was the most terrifying sight he’d ever seen. After that first shock he’d kept his eyes away from the jagged hole.

‘Jawohl, Herr Oberleutnant!’

‘You’re a good, reliable officer, Winter.’

‘Thank you, Herr Oberleutnant,’ said Peter but he wished the observation officer hadn’t said it. It was too much like an epitaph. He had the feeling that Hildmann had said it only because their chances of survival were so slim. It would be just like him to be writing their final report in his head before going to meet his Maker.

‘Request the Oberleutnant’s permission to change course five degrees southwards.’

‘Why?’ asked Hildmann.

‘The compass must be wrong. Dawn is coming up.’

The observation officer stared at where the horizon would be if the night had not been so very dark. Then he saw what Peter had been looking at for five minutes: a dull-red cotton thread on the silky blackness of the night. Hildmann looked at his watch to see whether the sun was on schedule. ‘Yes, change course,’ he said, having decided that it was.

The dawn came quickly, changing the sky to orange and then a sulphurous yellow before lighting the grey sea beneath them. Crosslit, the choppy water was not a reassuring sight.

‘Is that the coast ahead?’

‘Yes, Herr Oberleutnant.’

‘Won’t need the radio now.’

‘No, Herr Oberleutnant.’

‘Just as well. I don’t think it’s working.’

‘I don’t think it is, Herr Oberleutnant.’

‘Do you think we’ll be able to get it down in the right place?’

‘I think we can, Herr Oberleutnant.’ Hildmann would have been outraged by any other response, but he smiled grimly and nodded. Peter wondered how old he was; rumours said he was a grandfather.

‘We lost the Dragon.’

‘Yes, Herr Oberleutnant.’ Trees appeared behind the desolate sandy coastline. They were very low. He stared down into the darkness.

‘Good men on the Dragon.’

‘Yes, Herr Oberleutnant.’

‘Oh my God!’

Everything happened so suddenly that there was no time to avert the crash. The elevator cables had been in shreds for hours. Hildmann didn’t realize that the movements of his wheel depended upon a single steel thread until the final thread snapped and the elevators slammed over to put the airship into a violent nose-down attitude. It all happened in only a few seconds.

First there was the sudden snapping of the control cables: bangs like explosions came as the released steel cables thrashed about, ripping through the gas bags and tearing into the soft aluminium. The lurch started Hildmann’s wheel spinning and sent Hildmann staggering across the car so that he stumbled and was thrown half out of the hole in the floor. Then came the big crash of the airship striking the tree tops.

Branches came into the car from every side, and a snowstorm of leaves and wood and sawdust filled the control room, until the weakened gondola was torn into pieces by the black trees. There was a scream as Hildmann disappeared into the darkness below, and then the airship met a tree that would not yield, and, with a crash and the shriek of tortured metal, the vast framework collapsed upon him and Peter lost consciousness.

‘My poor Harry’

In Vienna that same September morning it was bright and clear. The low-pressure region that had provided the zeppelins with cloud cover over England had broken. Southern Germany and Austria had blue skies and cold winds.

Martha Somló – or Frau Winter, as she had engraved on her visiting cards – was awake. She’d been an early riser ever since she was a child, when she’d got up at five every morning to prepare the work in her father’s back-room tailor shop.

Harald Winter was sound asleep. He snorted and turned over. ‘Wake up! Harry.’ She had a tray with coffee and warm fresh bread.

He grunted.

‘Wake up! You were snoring.’

He rubbed his face to bring himself awake. ‘Snoring?’

‘Yes. Loud enough to wake the street.’ She smiled sweetly and forgivingly.

He looked at her suspiciously. Veronica had never mentioned his snoring, nor had any of the other women he enjoyed on a more-or-less regular basis. ‘It’s an ugly habit, snoring,’ he said.

He opened his eyes to see her better. She was wearing the magnificent silk dressing gown he’d bought for her on one of his trips to Switzerland. It was black and gold, with huge Chinese tigers leaping across it. He’d thought at the time how like Martha the snarling tigers looked. ‘It doesn’t matter, darling. You can’t help it,’ she said.

The truth was that Harald Winter did not snore, but teasing him was one of the few retaliations she got for being neglected.

She set the tray down on the bed and slid back under the bedclothes. This was her very favourite time: just her and Harry at breakfast. He gave her a quick hug and kiss before taking a kaiser roll and waiting for her to pour his coffee and add exactly the amount of cream and sugar he liked. From the street below came the sound of horses’ hoofs and wheels upon the cobbles and the jingle of harness. It was a large contingent of field artillery moving off to the war. The noise continued for a long time, but neither Harry nor Martha went to the window to look. Soldiers had become too common a sight in the streets of Vienna for breakfast to be interrupted.

Prompted by the sounds of the horse artillery, Martha said, ‘The war’s going badly for us, isn’t it, Harry?’ She removed the tray to the side table and came back to bed.

‘It goes up and down: wars are always like that.’

‘And you don’t care, as long as you sell your airships and planes, and make lots of money.’

‘My God, but you are a little firebrand, aren’t you?’

He grabbed her wrist and clutched it tight. It hurt, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of complaining. In fact, his physical strength attracted her even when it was directed against her. In the same way, her strong-willed antagonism fascinated him. She was the only woman who openly defied him.

‘I heard there were wooden airships now,’ she said spitefully, ‘and smaller, collapsible ones better than Count Zeppelin makes.’

He smiled. ‘I have persuaded the navy that airships made of wood and glue are not suitable for use over the sea in bad weather.’

‘You think only of money!’ she said.

He released her arm and said softly, ‘How can you say that, you little bitch, when I have two sons fighting for us?’

‘I’m sorry, Harry. I didn’t mean it.’

He gently pulled the silk negligee from her shoulders so that he could look at her pale body. ‘You are exquisite, darling Martha. All is forgiven in your embrace.’ It was the frivolous, supercilious manner he adopted for their bouts of lovemaking. It was a way of avoiding any serious discussion.

But as he reached for her there was a knock at the bedroom door. Martha twisted away from his hand and, pulling her dressing gown tight, went to the door.

It was her maidservant. He couldn’t hear what was said. Despite reassurances from his physician, he was convinced that he was growing deaf.

‘What is it?’ he said as she returned to the bed. ‘Come back to bed, my little tiger.’ But she remained where she was, a petite, pale figure, her face forlorn, with jet-black hair tumbling over her eyes till she pushed it back with her small, perfect hands.

‘The zeppelins over England last night…five didn’t return. Your son Peter…’ She couldn’t go on. Tears filled her eyes.

‘My Peter…What?’ He got out of bed, and went to her and held her. She was sobbing. ‘My poor Harry,’ she said.

It was almost noon next day when Peter started to regain his senses. Even before he tried to open his eyes, he smelled the ether in his nostrils. The hospital room was filled with yellow light: the sun coming through a lowered blind. When he moved his feet – an exploratory movement to discover if he was all in one piece – he felt the stiffly starched sheets against his toes. It was only then that he realized he was not alone in the hospital room. Two men in white coats were standing near the window, looking down at a clipboard.

‘…the only one to escape from the forward gondola,’ said one voice.

‘And completely unharmed, you say?’

‘Just scratches, bruises, and the finger.’

‘Did he lose the finger?’

‘No, he had the luck of the devil. I just removed the tip of it.’

‘And it was the left hand, too; well, I can’t imagine that that will make a scrap of difference to any young chap.’

‘Unless he was a pianist…’

‘And the pianist – Hennig, isn’t it? – was the one with the broken ankle. God moves in strange ways; I’ve always said that.’

‘It’s a curious war, isn’t it? The zeppelin staff plan to bomb Saint-Omer’s town hall when all the top Allied military commanders are there together with the King of England and the Belgian King. And the Kaiser forbids it.’

‘You disagree?’

‘After a night looking at the cruelly mutilated bodies of so many very young men, I simply say it’s a curious war.’

Peter heard one of them hang the clipboard back on its book before they went out of his room, but he kept his eyes closed and pretended to be asleep.

In England the next day, visitors went to the wreckage of the zeppelin that had been shot down near London. Frederick William Wile – one time Berlin correspondent of The Daily Mail – wrote ‘…even those who felt most bitterly about the brutality of raids upon unarmed civilian populations could not refrain from pity at the sight.’

Wile continued: ‘It is one of the traditions of the Hohenzollerns that the King of Prussia must ride across the battlefields on which his soldiers have fallen and look his dead men in the face. Trench warfare and a decent regard for his own skin have prevented William II from carrying out this ghoulish rite in his war. But I wish some cruel Fate might have taken the Kaiser by his trembling hand yesterday morning and led him to that rain-soaked meadow in Hertfordshire, and bade him look as I looked at the charred remains of human wreckage which a few hours before was the crew of an Imperial German airship. I wish Count Zeppelin, the creator of the particular brand of Kultur which sent the baby-killers to their doom, might have been in the Supreme War Lord’s entourage. I wondered, standing there by the side of that miserable heap of exposed skulls, stumps of arms and legs, shattered bones and scorched flesh, whether the Kaiser would have revoked the vow he spoke at Donau-Eschingen in the Black Forest eight years ago when he christened the inventor of airship frightfulness, “the greatest German of the twentieth century”.’