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
