Page 4 of Flight of Dreams

The ground crew scurries around, preparing to cast off, while the flight crew stands in a long, neat line near the gangway waiting to greet them. The American chooses this moment to finish his drinking song with one last, raucous burst.

Gertrud is up and out of her seat like a shot. She climbs over Leonhard, knees the American in the shoulder, and rushes down the aisle without regard for any of the other passengers. “I’m sorry,” she says by way of apology to the driver. “I’m feeling sick. I need fresh air.” The bus is still rolling to a stop, but the driver swings the door open and Gertrud takes the steps two at a time, only pausing to breathe when her feet are planted firmly on the ground. She stands off to the side, waiting for Leonhard, while the other passengers unload and venture toward the ship, forming a line in front of the crew. She clenches her fists and inhales deeply through her nose. For the first time since early that afternoon she can neither see nor hear the American. Gertrud takes another deep, ragged breath and stands with her eyes closed in the middle of the tarmac, soaking in the fresh, cool evening air. She can feel the tension begin to lessen in her neck.

A bevy of ground crew come to collect the luggage stored in compartments beneath the bus, but Gertrud intercepts one of them and grabs a brown leather satchel. “I’ll keep this with me,” she says. “It’s mine.”

“Come along.” Leonhard has their tickets in hand, and he steers her to the back of the line. In front of them is a family of five. Two young boys jump up and down, barely able to contain their excitement, while their teenage sister holds her father’s hand and grins with unabashed delight.

“I can’t do this,” Gertrud whispers. “Egon—”

“Will be fine,” he says, finishing her sentence with certainty. “Three months. We can do this for three months.”

“He will think we have abandoned him.”

“He will not even remember our absence.” Leonhard sets his hands on her shoulders. He looks at her calmly, with a smile that does not reach his eyes. He appears lighthearted, jovial even. His voice, though, is low and measured and serious. “We will do what we have to do, Liebchen. And then we will return home to our son. Now, turn and give your papers to the steward. Do it with a smile if possible.”

They are greeted at the base of the gangway by the chief steward. His name tag reads HEINRICH KUBIS—neat, square little letters as neat and square as the man himself. He takes their paperwork, scrutinizes it, then runs the stubby end of one finger along his clipboard. “Ah. You are in one of the staterooms on B-deck,” he says. “Cabin nine, just aft of the smoking room. Your bags will be taken up, and you are free to board. If you follow these stairs all the way to the top you will have a lovely view of takeoff from the portside dining salon on A-deck.”

“May I take your bag, Frau Adelt?” Gertrud hears the voice, recognizes it as female, but does not acknowledge it. She stares instead at the rectangle of light at the top of the gangway stairs.

“Frau Adelt?” Again that voice. She ignores it.

Leonhard pulls the satchel from her hands. “Yes. Please. My wife would like that very much.”

“It will be with your things.”

Leonhard leads his wife up the steps, but it is as though she’s an automaton, stiff and leaden. “You were quite awful to that woman just now.”

His voice registers. “What?”

“The stewardess. The one who took your bag. You didn’t even look at her. You will have to watch that, Liebchen.”

Gertrud looks over her shoulder and sees the back of a tall, slender woman dressed in uniform. Her hair is dark and wavy and falls neatly to her shoulders. One of the ship’s officers approaches her, his hands tucked shyly in his pockets, and she laughs at something he says. The stewardess has the charming, musical sort of laugh that Gertrud has always envied in other women. She sniffs, irritated.

The gaze she levels at her husband borders on panic. “My mind is on other things right now. Yours should be as well.”

THE NAVIGATOR

“You’re staring at her again.”

Max turns to find a slow, amused smile disrupting the sharp angles of Wilhelm Balla’s usually stoic face. It looks ill-fitting on the steward, as though he has borrowed another man’s coat.

“Wouldn’t you?”

“I would go talk to her, not stand there like a pubescent boy with a secret crush.”

“It’s hardly a secret.”

“Get on with it, then.”

“Emilie is greeting passengers. And we’ve already said hello.”

For a man with such a blunt personality, Wilhelm Balla has razor-sharp insight. “Can’t have been much of a greeting. You didn’t kiss her.”

“How—”

The steward cuts him off by holding up his manifest—right between their faces—and reading from it. “It appears as though Frau Imhof is greeting the last of her passengers now. Journalists from Frankfurt. She will likely have a few scarce moments before boarding herself.”

Max can’t hear what Emilie says to the dismissive young woman, but she has to repeat herself. The journalist still doesn’t respond, and her husband finally tugs a satchel from her hands and passes it to Emilie with an apologetic shrug. Emilie looks slightly embarrassed, and Max takes a strong and immediate dislike to the journalists.