Page 82 of Flight of Dreams

“I didn’t—”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying! I swear!” Werner hates it when his voice rises and cracks and sounds like a girl’s. He hates that he can’t control when and where it happens. But his heart is hammering, and his breath is short, and he is terrified that he has stumbled into some kind of trouble that he doesn’t understand. “I never saw a gun. It was dark and I found your clothes. That’s it.” An entire litany of curse words flies into Werner’s mind, but he doesn’t say them. He’s crying. Stupid boy, he thinks, you look like a baby. So he wipes his nose and stands as straight as he can. “I didn’t know you had a gun. I didn’t take it. I promise.”

He isn’t sure whether Max believes him, but the navigator relaxes. He puts a hand on Werner’s shoulder. “You have to think. Was it there? Did you see it?”

“I don’t remember. I don’t think it was. But I can’t be sure. It was dark.”

Max gives him a gentle shake. “This is important.”

“I didn’t see a gun.”

“Damn it!” Max rips his cap off and throws it across the room. He yanks on his hair until it’s standing on end in clumps. “Someone took it.”

A thought occurs to Werner and with it comes a flutter of unease. “I can help you find it.”

“How the hell are you going to do that?”

He hesitates, then nods at Max’s clenched fist. “That key will get me into any cabin on this ship.”

Max unclenches his fingers and looks at the key as if it is some piece of incriminating evidence. “That would be wrong.”

Werner doesn’t argue. He just waits. This decision is Max’s to make. The navigator ponders for so long that Werner worries he will miss the start of his next shift. But finally Max hands him the key. “Don’t get caught,” he says.

The cabin boy is muttering assurances, backing toward the door, when Max stops him. “Wait. You never told me who brought the other dog on board.”

Werner blinks at him for a moment, confused. “You did,” he says.

THE NAVIGATOR

“I don’t have a dog.”

“There’s one in the cargo hold listed under your name.”

Max glares at the boy. “You’ve read my name wrong before.” Something on Werner’s face wavers. Uncertainty perhaps. “You can read, can’t you?”

“Of course I can read!”

“And you are certain, absolutely certain, you read my name?”

“Yes. Three times. Just to make sure.”

Werner is like a puppy standing there wagging his tail, waiting for a pat on the head, some morsel of approval. Max believes him. He has never known Werner to lie. To omit information, yes. And to evade, yes. But the boy is not a liar. Max needs time to think, time to sort through what this means. Why would someone put his name on that manifest? “Go back to work,” he says, “but I want to talk to you tonight, after your shift.”

Max can tell that Werner wants to ask him something but is too afraid. He takes a guess at what is worrying him. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. Besides, I need your help.”

Werner holds up the key. “And this?”

“Do what you can. But don’t let anyone see you.”

“Balla will want it back.”

“Then give it to him. Don’t argue. And don’t let on that you know anything.”

Max watches him hurry down the corridor and around the corner. He’s due back on duty in a few minutes, but there’s something he needs to check first. The mailroom is only a few yards from the officers’ quarters, and all the keys are on a hook at his belt. His room key. The key that opens the radio room. One for the mailroom. One for the officers’ safe in the control car. And a small pewter skeleton key for the lockbox. He used it that first night when he placed the brown paper package in the lockbox, and he holds it between thumb and forefinger now.

The owner of the package is trustworthy. Respected. Formidable. And, when Max looks up, he appears before him, as though summoned by guilt or magic or kismet. Regardless of the cause, Colonel Erdmann pushes open the radio room door just as Max reaches for the knob. Erdmann has been there, as he is most mornings, quietly observing. Taking notes. There is no reason to suspect his sudden appearance. And yet Max does. Especially when Erdmann steps into the hall and shuts the radio room door behind him. He clears his throat and scans the empty corridor.