Page 115 of Flight of Dreams

It is not a pleasant task but Werner will keep his promise. He finds Irene Doehner laid out beside her father, arms crossed over her chest, a blanket laid across her body. Their names are written on cardboard signs at the base of their cots. There are almost three dozen bodies in the room, and hers is the smallest of them. Werner does not see her mother or her brothers, either on the cots or anywhere else, and he wonders where they might be. He wonders, but he doesn’t go in search of them to offer his condolences because his business is with Irene alone.

“I told you that I would bring you flowers today,” Werner whispers over her still, slender form. He lays them on her chest, then presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubs. The tears spill around then. Down his cheeks. Over his chin. Werner stands beside the body of Irene Doehner and cries until his throat is dry and his nose is red.

THE NAVIGATOR

Twenty-four hours ago Max was kissing Emilie for the last time and now he’s standing inside the burnt skeleton of the Hindenburg. The sight is confounding. This is the ship he has lived in every day for almost two years, but it’s only an echo of the ship he knew. The bones are here but the flesh is gone. The shape is broken. Twisted. Warped by heat and impact. And yet he knows exactly where he is. The axial catwalk is usually forty feet in the air and hangs directly over the keel catwalk. But they lie parallel on the ground now, and Max stands between them, hands in the pockets of a borrowed U.S. Navy petty officer’s uniform. It’s the best they could do on short notice, and judging by the uneasy glances he has received for the last three hours, they’re eager for his clothes to be laundered and returned.

The fire started here, somewhere in the vicinity of gas cell number four. That’s what the witnesses on the ground reported to Pruss. Now that Lakehurst is swarming with reporters and cameras and gawkers, the crew will be called upon to give an answer. There is a rumor, though he can’t believe it is true, that the explosion was recorded and broadcast over the radio and that the entire wreck was filmed for a newsreel. They are saying this disaster made history.

The questions are coming from all directions. Why? How? No one knows. Not yet. But Max is here, picking through the rubble like every other crew member who can stand without crutches, in an effort to give his commanding officers an answer to these questions.

Airships crash sometimes. And they’ve been torn apart by storms, but Max has never heard of one exploding for no reason. During battle, yes. But the Hindenburg wasn’t taking fire and it wasn’t under duress—the strain of their near miss off Newfoundland and again during landing might have torn a gas cell, but still, there would need to be a spark to ignite the hydrogen. It couldn’t have been lightning. That happens often enough. And the ship was built to withstand it. He can think of no plausible explanation for how the ship exploded. So he looks for one instead.

For an hour Max searches the rubble, at times focusing on the larger, twisted skeleton for clues, and then digging through the ash itself. The wicker cages that held the dogs are gone but he finds a collar—little more than burnt leather and a melted nameplate that reads ULLA. There are charred bones as well, but he can’t bear to look at them, so he walks away.

Max misses the object at first. It appears to be nothing more than a lump of blackened metal caught on the twisted girders at the rear of the ship. But something catches in his mind and he turns to look at it again. Bends lower. He nudges it with the toe of his shoe and it slides loose, clatters across the metal, and comes to a stop three inches from his foot.

It is a pistol. A Luger. He knows the shape of this gun because he owns one himself. Or he did until it was taken from his cabin. He doesn’t have to check the serial number stamped on the side to know that this is his weapon. With a detached calm, Max opens the chamber and counts the bullets inside. One round is missing. A single shot. He has seen muzzle flash on countless firing ranges. It’s not just a spark, but a small bolt of flame large enough to ignite an airship carrying two hundred thousand cubic meters of combustible hydrogen.

Max Zabel stares at the weapon in his hand with the stupid, horrified expression of a man who is slowly coming to a terrible conclusion. The gun issued to him brought down the Hindenburg.

U.S. COMMERCE DEPARTMENT BOARD OF INQUIRY

HINDENBURG ACCIDENT HEARINGS

May 19, 1937

Naval Air Station, Main Hangar, Lakehurst, New Jersey

Though sabotage could have produced the phenomena observed in the fire that destroyed the Hindenburg, there is still in my opinion no convincing evidence of a plot, either Communist or Nazi inspired. The one indisputable fact in the disaster is that the Hindenburg burned because she was inflated with hydrogen.

—Douglas H. Robinson, Giants in the Sky: A History of the Rigid Airship

Max has decided on his lie, but in the end it doesn’t matter. The Board of Inquiry is not interested in the people who traveled on board the Hindenburg—the quarrels and plans, the passions or the duplicities. They are interested in gas valves and bracing wires and stub keels. They are interested in technicalities. The Board of Inquiry wants to know if the tight turns the airship took in its second approach toward Lakehurst resulted in structural damage that punctured the gas cells. They want to know if everyone on board followed protocol. The committee of experts gathered to investigate the disaster is focused on mechanics. They spend a good bit of time talking about lightning strikes and static electricity. An hour is spent discussing wind speeds. Another twenty minutes on mooring lines.

Max Zabel sits in his wooden chair before a room full of people and carefully explains how he lowered the forward landing wheel. He tells them how strong headwinds delayed the trip by twelve hours over the journey of three and a half days, how the first landing attempt was thwarted by storms.

He is never asked about tensions between the passengers or secrets kept. He is never probed about his relationship with Emilie or the confiscation of her travel papers. He is not called on to account for his missing pistol or why his name was listed on the manifest as the owner of the second dog. Nor does he volunteer any of this information.

The German and American aviation experts gathered at Lakehurst are here to absolve themselves of blame. They are concerned only with things that do not matter. They are each determined to acquit their own countries. The one great success of the Board of Inquiry is that they agree on a single thing: they agree that they do not know why the airship crashed, only that it did. Only that its massive, combustible stores of hydrogen are at fault.

Sabotage is mentioned, of course. It has to be. But there is no proof. And while this might not be a court of law, they still require an eyewitness. A weapon. A motive. And none of these things is readily available, so the possibility of malicious intent is cast aside before it can be seriously considered. The results of this great raucous investigation are inconclusive. And that answer is more than good enough for both countries.

THE CABIN BOY

May 22, 1937, aboard the steamship Europa, 6:05 a.m.

Werner Franz has forgotten that today is his fifteenth birthday. He sees this reminder written on a cardboard sign in the hands of Xaver Maier when he enters the steamship’s elegant dining hall. He stands in the doorway as a small group of surviving stewards and kitchen crew members let out a chorus of raucous shouts and whistles. Most of his fellow crew members cluster near the chef, but a handful linger at the door, waiting for him to enter. Waiting to slap him on the back. Xaver steps away from the small round table to reveal a birthday cake.

The chef shrugs when he sees Werner’s stunned expression. “They let me use the kitchen.”

“You made that?” Werner asks.

There is something mischievous in Xaver’s smirk. He tries to hide it by drawing on the lit cigarette in his hand. “It’s a big day.”

Even though they are on board the Europa as passengers, Werner cannot shake the habit of rising early and reporting for duty. The others have teased him about this for days, but Werner can’t help it. He doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore. He doesn’t know how to let others serve his meals or make his bed. Nor does he enjoy this languid rocking pace at sea. It makes him nauseous. He is restless and out of sorts. So he sticks with the comfort of long-established routine. Yet this is the first time any of the crew has joined him in the dining room so early. He has gotten used to eating alone. Werner finds that he is so grateful for the company that he has to twist his face so they won’t see him cry. The sight of his friends and this gift is so overwhelming that he can allow only one delighted smile, a small nod, and then he stares at his shoes. It is too much.

He is wondering how to get control of these erratic feelings when suddenly there is a frigid torrent rushing down his shirt and into his trousers, followed by the sound of splashing water. Werner gasps, eyes squeezed shut, arms out, mouth open. When he tries to yelp he chokes on ice water. The water keeps coming, and he can hear laughter and cheering. He tries to speak but coughs instead. He stands there, before his fellow crew members, dripping wet. Werner shakes his floppy hair and water splatters across the plush carpet.