Page 114 of Flight of Dreams

Werner leads him to the small windowless room and helps him lift the lockbox onto the table. “Do you want a shower first? A change of clothes?”

“No. That can wait. I need to do this now.”

He has to do it now. This is his anchor.

The door closes with a soft click, and Max sits at the table beneath the single hanging lightbulb. He opens his palm and studies the key.

The lockbox opens easily and Max pulls out the package that Colonel Erdmann paid him to keep. It is addressed to his wife, Dorothea, and the very way he has written her name—the gentle, sloping letters—suggests an adoration that makes Max wince.

He will not open the package, but his curiosity is aroused. He gives it a gentle shake, then presses his ear against the brown paper wrapping. Within he can hear the faint chimes of a music box, a few random notes let loose by the movement. Erdmann could have given his wife this gift in Frankfurt when he’d had her paged. But no, he had waited. And Max believes he had done so purposefully. This was to be a gift she would receive in the event of his death. A farewell. He slides the package carefully to the side, incapable of sorting through his emotions.

Erdmann’s is the only package in the box. The rest are letters and postcards. He pulls them out and places them in two large stacks to be counted. There are 358, but this is not something he will be able to say with any degree of certainty for at least an hour. Because he has counted half of the first stack when he finds the letter.

There is no stamp. No address—return or otherwise. Just one name written hastily in black ink.

Max.

His own name. And he recognizes Emilie’s direct handwriting.

The letters blur before his eyes, and frantic blinking does nothing to clear his vision. He lays the envelope on the table and presses it down with a trembling hand.

Max Zabel drops his head to the table and weeps.

THE CABIN BOY

Werner won’t back away from the cordoned-off wreckage despite orders from the gruff soldier. The man can’t be much older than Werner, but he’s had the fear of God put in him and he won’t let Werner near the airship. American soldiers stand at regular intervals guarding what’s left of the Hindenburg. They hadn’t moved quickly enough the night before, so spectators made off with bits of the ship and various objects. Now they don’t know if important clues were lost. Commander Pruss blames this on the Lakehurst leadership. They blame it on him. Tension sweeps through both ranks, and the finger-pointing and the whispering have already begun.

In theory Werner could move down the line and try his luck with the next soldier, but he doesn’t see the point. The base commander has given him permission to search for his grandfather’s pocket watch, and he intends to do just that.

“My name is Werner Franz—”

“I don’t care who you are,” the soldier says but then hesitates when he notes the heavy German accent.

“—And I’m cabin boy on this ship.” Werner chooses words that he knows. Simple, clear words. He speaks them loudly. With confidence. “Rosendahl gave me permission.”

He doesn’t break eye contact and he doesn’t betray any emotion. The soldier looks uncertain, but Werner stands there, hands clasped in front of him, waiting. He’ll go back and get it in writing if he has to.

“Let him through, Frank!” someone shouts from twenty feet away. “That’s the kid I told you about last night.”

Werner turns to see the soldier who had so kindly lent him a coat. He waves a greeting and then ducks under the rope before anyone else has a chance to object.

The ship has burned its mark into the field; a patch of scorched earth the exact length and width of the Hindenburg. Werner stands at the edge, unsure how to enter. It’s only when he catches a glimpse of Max picking his way through rubble at the rear of the ship that Werner finds the courage to step in.

He goes first to where the officers’ mess was located. Even with nothing left but ashes and blistered metal, he finds the place by instinct, making turns where corridors would have been, imagining the steps down to B-deck. Werner knows the pocket watch could not be here, but he doesn’t think he’ll get another chance to look around. Besides, he wants to find a souvenir if he can. Perhaps a bit of the fine china on which he used to serve meals to the officers. He wants proof—something he can hold on to with his own hands—that he was on the Hindenburg and that he survived. Seeing his name in print this morning has made him fear his own mortality. But it has also made him proud of his service.

There is nothing left of the officers’ mess. Not a dish. Not a table. Nothing but bits of broken metal and melted glass. So he moves on toward the crew quarters and the room he shared with Wilhelm Balla. He has a sinking feeling in his heart that the watch has been lost forever. How will he explain that to his father and his grandfather? They gave the watch to him, not Günter. He should have taken better care of it.

Werner is mentally berating himself when he steps through what is left of the doorway to his cabin. The fabric-covered walls, the carpet, the beds have all been burnt to ash. But he sees a glimpse of what used to be the closet. He kicks at it with his foot and it crumbles further, revealing the corner of a burlap bag. Hope trembles in his chest. Werner squats to pick through the bag. Bits of burned clothing and the heel of a shoe are all that’s left. Or at least he thinks so until his fingers touch the unmistakable links of chain.

He lifts his grandfather’s pocket watch from the ruins with the tip of one dirty finger. He sits back on his rear end, right in a pile of ashes, astonished. Had he been forced to wager, he would have said the watch was lost. Yet here it is, cradled in the palm of his hand, its survival as improbable as his own.

Werner sets the watch in his pocket and dusts the soot from his pants. He isn’t certain what to do with himself now that he has no duties to perform. The officers and crew members who survived are either in the infirmary or meeting with the base commander to figure out what happened, how this could possibly have happened, and what they will do about it now. There is no place for Werner, so he wanders away from the wreckage, circling it aimlessly.

He has seen the small clumps of flowers, but it’s not until the toe of his boot catches one for the third time and he stumbles forward that he stops and looks at them. The petals are small, but they are bright and open and they smell like spring.

Werner Franz has something to do after all.

He picks a messy handful of the white starbursts and jogs back to the main office where he left the newspaper earlier that day. He scans the list of names more thoroughly this time now that the shock has worn off. He finds the one he’s looking for and reads it three times, just to make sure. He sounds out the letters carefully, using the tricks that his mother taught him.