Flight From Berlin: A Novel Read online

  ‘How about a spin over the lake,’ he joked, knowing the ship couldn’t go anywhere without some three hundred ground crew present.

  ‘How would you like to fly next Saturday?’ Eckener said, slapping his shoulder. ‘The Hindenburg will make a pleasure trip over the opening ceremony of the Olympiad in Berlin. And in the meantime, enjoy a few days here on the lake, as my guest of course.’

  ‘I would like that very much,’ Denham said.

  ‘Excellent. There will be a movie crew on board, too.’

  This man is the other Germany, Denham thought. The Germany of decent, kind people who stand like rocks against the flow of the times.

  In the navigation room next to the bridge, Eckener motioned for him to sit at the chart table. A golden light burnished the dials and switches of the radio instruments. The old man’s face seemed rejuvenated in the sunset. At sixty-eight he had the appearance of a man years younger, though his hair and goatee beard were white. His face was large, jowly, and intelligent, with flinty blue eyes, one of which, disconcertingly, was higher than the other.

  ‘Let’s have a schnapps,’ he said, unlocking a drawer and taking out a bottle and two glasses. ‘I sometimes permitted the night watch a nip on board the Graf at the end of the shift. It gets very cold over the Atlantic in spring.’ They toasted each other in silence, and knocked it back. ‘And now, my dear Richard, I have something for you.’ He opened a cupboard beneath the table to reveal a small safe. ‘I keep a precious relic in this chest, but by rights it belongs to you.’ He turned the dial slowly. ‘The combination is five-ten-nineteen-thirty.’

  Denham was puzzling over why the doctor should give away the numbers to his private safe, when it struck him. They made the date of his father’s death. Eckener removed a small felt bag and handed it over with what seemed to Denham a look of earnest pity. He opened it and a pocket watch fell into his hand.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for a chance to give it to you in person,’ Eckener said.

  For a fleeting moment he had a sense that his father was present in the room, as though he’d slipped in through some fissure in time. The watch lay cool in his palm. He turned it over and saw in tiny engraved italics the words:

  For Arthur Denham—On his retirement—Royal Airship Works—Cardington

  An overpowering sense of love and loss welled inside him. His eyes filled, and hot tears rolled freely down his cheeks. Eckener put his arm around Denham’s shoulders.

  ‘You were young to lose your father.’

  ‘Not that young. I am forty next year.’

  Denham fell silent for a while, staring at the watch as he turned it over in his hand.

  ‘I thought there was nothing . . .’

  ‘It was found near the site,’ Eckener said. ‘Somehow it must have been thrown clear.’

  Later, as they walked back across the Zeppelin field in the gloaming, Denham turned to look again at the Hindenburg. Dully it reflected the purple light.

  Chapter Three

  Eleanor, paddling her legs as hard as she could, strained against the rope that attached her waist to the side of the tiny swimming pool on deck. But it was no use. As the ship pitched and rolled, she found herself flailing in two feet of water at one end of the pool, with six feet at the other end, before it all slopped back the other way. She stood up and undid the rope.

  ‘Another twenty minutes, please.’ The women’s swimming coach was pacing the edge of the pool.

  ‘I can’t train like this.’

  ‘It’s the only pool we’ve got for the next few days.’

  ‘Yeah, with water straight from the goddamned icebergs.’

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘For a shower,’ Eleanor said, plucking up a towel. ‘And a cigarette.’

  She headed along the deck, leaving a trail of wet footprints. A fresh wind had been blowing all afternoon, whipping spray from the crests of the waves high into the air. Patchworks of cloud skittered overhead, breaking now and then to admit flashes of hot sunshine that coloured the ocean a deep verdant green. The ship was making slow progress as it seesawed through the weight of wind and water.

  As she turned the corner towards the stairs that led back to D deck—smack—her shoulder collided with a strapping blond running laps.

  ‘Hey, mister,’ she said, clutching her shoulder. ‘Oh. Sorry, Helen.’

  ‘No problem, sis,’ the woman growled and continued her lolloping stride.

  Her guess was that poor Helen Stephens, the hundred-metre champion from Missouri, was forever being mistaken for a guy, but she didn’t seem to care. All the same, her flat-chested manliness was sure to raise eyebrows when they got to Berlin. Helen had even more brawn than her archrival, Stella ‘the Fella’ Walsh.

  Eleanor washed her hair as best she could under the thin trickle, then slipped into her bathrobe and lit a Chesterfield. The cabin vibrated from the hum of the engines below. One by one, she pulled out the gowns hanging in the tiny closet, cocking her head as she appraised each in turn, before settling for a shining pearl grey chiffon number to wear with her white-sable stole. She laid it on her bed and was choosing some jewellery when Marjorie and Olive returned.

  ‘So, guys,’ she said, ‘how was your turn in the Olympic paddling pool?’

  Marjorie stared at Eleanor, wide-eyed. ‘Is that what you’re wearing to dinner?’

  ‘Sure. Why, what are you wearing?’

  ‘Our team uniforms.’

  Eleanor wouldn’t even be joining them for dinner if Mrs Hacker hadn’t ordered her to be present for Brundage’s speech. But she had no intention of sticking around afterwards for whatever entertainment the team had organised. The playwright Charlie MacArthur, whom she’d run into on deck earlier, had invited her to join him and his wife, Helen Hayes, for a little drink with the press corps up in first class. Now that sounded like a party worth going to.

  There was a knock on the door, and the cabin boy entered, smirking, with Eleanor’s curling tongs.

  ‘Got them heated on the chef’s grill, ma’am.’

  ‘Thanks, kid,’ Eleanor said, handing him a second pair. ‘Girls, whatever you want, just ask Hal.’

  ‘That’s right. Coffee . . . tea . . . me,’ the boy said as he left.

  She took out her small beauty mirror, balanced it against her trunk, and blew smoke thoughtfully into her reflection.

  ‘Eleanor,’ said Olive in a schoolma’am voice. ‘You’re smoking again.’

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ Eleanor said as she set about waving her hair. ‘I train on cigarettes and champagne.’

  She found most of her teammates already assembled in the noisy C deck dining room. They were so many that they ate in two sittings, but all had gathered to hear Avery Brundage’s speech, with dozens standing around the edges of the room. Jesse Owens entered, looking a little delicate, she thought. She’d heard he’d spent the day in his cabin, seasick.

  Eleanor found herself sitting at a table with the decathlete Glenn Morris, the five-thousand-metre runner Lou Zamperini, and two relay runners, Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman. Morris had matinee-idol looks: six foot two, with brooding, Cherokee eyes and a chin like a DC Comics superhero.

  The noise subsided as Avery Brundage strode in, followed by two AOC officials and Mrs Hacker, the team chaperone, self-important with her clipboard. She’d applied some lipstick, Eleanor noticed.

  Brundage, the president of the American Olympic Committee, had on his buttoned-up double-breasted suit and rimless eyeglasses, which, together with his bolt-upright posture, gave him a trim, conceited appearance. He was a tall ex-pentathlete, broad shouldered, and at forty-nine wore his age well. Not handsome exactly—his chin and forehead were large and plain—but he had the charisma of conviction. Eleanor knew from the public beefs he’d had with her dad that Brundage took himself seriously in the extreme. Both were men of strong principles, but where her father’s were inclusive and egalitarian, she suspected Brundage’s were quite the opposite.
He stood still, waiting until the dining room had fallen silent.

  ‘Fellow Olympians,’ he began, ‘we are finally on our way.’ Cheers and whistles from the audience. ‘You, America’s finest, are participating in an event that enshrines the world’s noblest sporting ideal: the Olympic Games. It is an ideal that exemplifies all that is good in man’s nature, an ideal that transcends the quotidian struggles of everyday life . . .’

  ‘The what?’ mumbled Lou Zamperini.

  ‘Hold the spirit of this ideal in your hearts and remember that you represent the grandest country in the world. You are going to Germany to win for the honour of your country and for the glory of sport.’

  The athletes applauded with wild enthusiasm, but now Brundage wagged a finger in the air.

  ‘It has not been an easy road. Only a few months ago, it was still uncertain whether we would be competing in this Olympiad. Those in the so-called boycott movement—the Communists and the cosmopolitans who understand little of sport—sought to make the American athlete a martyr for a cause not his own . . .’

  ‘He means Communists and Jews are not real Americans,’ Eleanor said in a low voice.

  ‘ . . . but common sense has prevailed. The Olympic ideal rises above all those issues of politics and skin colour, and let no one tell you otherwise.’ Again, the athletes applauded and whistled. ‘Whatever misconceptions people may have about Germany, whatever distortions are perpetuated in the press, let one thing be understood.’ Pointing into the audience, he paused, looking at everyone in the room. ‘Germany appreciates the Olympic ideal better than any other country I know. It has made athletic excellence the highest priority in its national life—a policy our own government would do well to emulate. For I believe that in striving for this ideal we may one day witness the development of a new race. A race forged through sportsmanship, a race physically strong, mentally alert, and morally sound . . .’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Eleanor.

  Brundage stopped for a moment and seemed to be looking in her direction, his eyeglasses flashing in the light.

  ‘A race that scorns injustice and will fight for fair play and what it believes is right.’

  The applause this time was less certain, as the arcane articles of Brundage’s faith passed over the heads of most in his audience.

  ‘Sounds like fascism to me,’ said Marty Glickman.

  Eleanor looked at him, this almond-eyed relay runner from the Bronx, still in his teens, and wondered if he and Stoller were the only Jews on the team.

  ‘Finally,’ Brundage said gravely, ‘I must give you a word of warning about your conduct over the next few days at sea. You will be tempted by an unlimited variety of rich food. If you are undisciplined in controlling your appetites, your medals will be lost at the dining table . . .’

  Even as he spoke, waiters were preparing the tables for the first course, placing baskets of bread rolls on each.

  ‘Will you look at that?’ said Lou Zamperini in hushed amazement. ‘Six types of bread roll.’

  ‘ . . . Second, I would remind you all of the AOC handbook rules, which demand that you refrain from smoking, the drinking of intoxicating liquors, gambling, and other forms of dissipation.’ He looked slowly around the room to make sure everyone was hearing. ‘Anyone who violates these rules will be dealt with severely. Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a challenge,’ Eleanor said, to laughter from those around her. She’d heard enough of Brundage’s views to know that if Communists and Jews didn’t fit into his Olympian ideal—whatever bunk he spoke about sport transcending all—then, frankly, neither did she. Athletes, in his world, were supposed to be poor and pure, but she had made money of her own and had tasted plenty of what life had to offer. But she was a sure bet to win a gold—and Brundage knew it.

  ‘What’s on the menu tonight?’ Lou asked a waiter.

  ‘Pumpkin soup, roast chicken with gravy and mashed potatoes, roast beef with French fries, tomato salad, baked apple, cranberry Jell-O, and ice cream.’

  ‘Oh my Lord . . .’ Lou’s eyes filled with wonder.

  ‘Careful, Lou,’ Eleanor said. ‘Fatty Arbuckle never won the five thousand metres.’

  After coffee, she slipped on her white sable stole. ‘Well, see you boys around,’ she said. ‘This joint’s a little clean for me.’

  ‘Have fun,’ said Lou, into his second ice cream.

  The rolling seas had calmed, and Eleanor stepped out onto the deck to a beautiful night. She leaned back against the rail and watched the Olympic flag on the top deck flutter gently against a sky already filling with stars. Water lapped away from the ship, which hummed gently. The lights of a distant vessel twinkled and bobbed, and she felt a sudden yearning in her heart, a void that longed to be filled, but with what, she wasn’t sure. Didn’t she already have love? Phrases of music from the upper decks carried down on the breeze. She turned and climbed the stairs up to first class, trying to push Herb from her thoughts.

  Some of the ship’s grander passengers were walking off their dinner with a promenade on A deck. Eleanor caught the sparkle of diamonds around the women’s necks and the scent of expensive perfume. Inside, a piano was playing a familiar song, ‘The Glory of Love.’

  She followed the music down a wide corridor to a small lounge decorated in the modern style. The lighting was soft and low.

  At a bar made entirely of polished chrome, Charlie MacArthur and his wife, Helen Hayes, were standing drinks for a number of men Eleanor guessed were the reporters. Helen, fair haired and delicate in a white gown and corsage of apple blossom, looked lovelier in the flesh than she did on the silver screen, and, unlike Eleanor, had received the benefit of the A deck hairdresser.

  Charlie spotted her in the doorway and clicked his fingers several times to get the attention of the pianist, who obliged him by playing the signature tune Eleanor sang in her shows with the band.

  ‘Charlie,’ she said, arching an eyebrow. ‘I’m on board as an athlete.’

  ‘Eleanor, my rose, you know Helen of course? Come and meet our friends.’ The men stood up. He introduced her to Allan Gould of the United Press, and two journalists, John Walsh of the Chicago Tribune and Paul Gallico, the chief sportswriter of the New York Daily News.

  ‘The pleasure’s ours, ma’am,’ said Gallico. ‘We’re fans of yours.’

  He had a fresh, square-chinned face, glasses, a college tie, and an Ivy League manner of the shy sort. She liked him immediately.

  A groomed young man with an Errol Flynn moustache stepped forwards, holding a half-pint glass brimming with champagne. He was the only one wearing white tie. ‘William,’ he said, handing her the glass. And she realised he must be William as in Randolph Hearst Jr. ‘You’ve got some catching up to do, my dear. We’re all getting pleasantly soused here.’

  ‘You can’t shake your shimmy on tea,’ Eleanor said, raising the glass and downing it in one.

  ‘Now, where did you learn to do that?’ said Hearst, slipping his arm around her waist.

  ‘An Illinois roadhouse called the Sudsbucket,’ said Eleanor, gently removing his hand.

  Another gentleman, introduced as George Kennan, an American diplomat returning to Moscow, joined them. ‘Seems you’ve got the run of the decks here,’ he said to Eleanor, a pipe clenched in his teeth. ‘I’ve been dodging gum-chewing Tarzans all afternoon.’

  ‘Mr Kennan, some of those Tarzans were Janes,’ she said.

  Helpless laughter.

  ‘So I guess you finally told those boycotters where to get off,’ said the diplomat.

  ‘Oh please, George, this is a party,’ said Helen, clutching his elbow. ‘Did Charlie tell you I’ve returned to Broadway? California was simply ruining my skin . . .’

  Eleanor considered for a moment, reminded of something that had irked her in Brundage’s speech. She’d heard every boycott argument over this last year and shrugged them off. Politics, as far as she was concerned, was supremely irrelevant to the Games. Not once had her conscien
ce been troubled by the thought that she shouldn’t go to Berlin; not a wink of sleep had she lost. But tonight? She found herself very reluctant to side with Brundage, whose pro-German argument had struck her as highly unsavoury, with its mysticism and horseshit about forging a new race. The text of that anonymous note from under her pillow flickered across her mind like a title card in a silent movie—every day citizens who do not think like the Nazis are tortured and murdered—and now she caught herself wondering how much truth was in it. And yet . . . her mind reached for an argument that trumped them all: Jesse Owens. Wasn’t he the key?

  ‘The fastest man on earth is on board this ship,’ she said, interrupting Helen, ‘and he’s a Negro. He’s going to win gold in Berlin in front of the whole world. Don’t you think that’ll be one in the eye for stupid, hokey race theories? I think it’s damned right that we’re going to these Games.’

  Mumbles of ‘Here, here.’

  But for the first time along the contours of her brash and uncomplicated worldview, there were buds of doubt.

  They were joined by a dozen more friends and acquaintances of Charlie’s and Helen’s, who arrived to squeals and cheers—‘My dear, what a surprise seeing your name on the passenger list’—and the party progressed noisily through its indistinct stages: sociable, elated, raucous.

  Eleanor was enjoying herself. Enjoying herself more and more as the champagne went down. Two hours later, after repeated requests from Paul Gallico, and now more than a little refreshed, Eleanor was persuaded to sing.

  ‘Name your song,’ she said.

  ‘ “Let’s Misbehave,” ’ someone shouted to howls of laughter and encouragement. She stepped unsteadily up to the piano, which played her in, and began, in her low voice:

  ‘We’re all alone,

  No chaperone