“Eleven words when four would do. I guessed eleven is the key to the telegram, and when you count out every eleventh word you get…” Harry wrote out the secret message: May seven Lake Hearst air ship Hind Enburg. Success oboe. “Bowie was telling Einstein that he was returning to the United States aboard the airship Hindenburg and to have him met on May 7 in Lakehurst. Success is obvious, but I don’t know what that bit about oboes means.”
“I do,” Mercer and Cali said at the same time and exchanged a grin. He indicated for her to explain. “Obo is a large town in the Central African Republic. It’s pretty close to where we found Bowie’s canteen.”
“He was telling Einstein the approximate location to the uranium deposit,” Mercer summed up.
“Didn’t everyone die when the Hindenburg blew up?” Cali asked the men, but she was looking at Harry.
Harry edged his chin toward Mercer. “Ask him. He’s the expert.”
Mercer demurred. “I’m no expert. I was fascinated by airships when I was young, so I’ve read a few books about the disaster. A couple of years ago I managed to buy a piece of a girder from the wreck. I hate to say it’s been in a closet ever since. And to answer your question, sixty-two of the ninety-seven on board got out of the zeppelin alive. If Bowie was on her that fateful day, there’s a one-in-three chance he survived. The man we need to talk to is Carl Dion. He’s the real expert and the guy who sold me the girder.”
Mercer’s near-photographic memory failed him. He knew Dion lived in Breckenridge, Colorado, but couldn’t remember the number. He got it from information and dialed the retired aerospace engineer.
“Hello?” a timid woman answered after the seventh ring.
“Mrs. Dion?”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Dion, my name is Philip Mercer. I’m an acquaintance of your husband. Is he there?”
“One moment please.”
Three full minutes went by before Carl Dion came on the phone. “Hello. Who is this?”
“Carl, it’s Philip Mercer.”
“Oh, hello, Dr. Mercer. My wife doesn’t hear so well and she told me it was my friend Phyllis Matador, a friend, I needn’t point out, I don’t have. What can I do for you?”
“I need a little information about a passenger on the last flight of the Hindenburg. His name was Bowie, Chester Bowie.”
The aviation expert’s reply was as instantaneous as it was damning. “No such passenger, I’m afraid.”
Tension flooded Mercer’s shoulders even as he felt his body deflate. He collapsed into a chair. “Are you sure? I have a telegram from him saying he was going to be on the flight.”
“Sorry, but there was no Bowie listed on the passenger manifest. He wouldn’t have had a difficult time booking passage. The flight from Germany wasn’t even half-full. The zepp’s trip back to Europe was, however, fully booked by people going to a coronation.”
“Think, Carl; this is important. Is there any way he could have gotten on? Stowed away, perhaps, or under an assumed identity.”
“Now that you mention it, there was an anomaly.” Mercer’s fist tightened around the phone as if physical strength would draw out what he wanted to hear. “A German couple, Professor and Mrs. Heinz Aldermann, were to have been aboard but never showed up in Frankfurt for the flight. However, their luggage did make the crossing. If I recall, there was a substantial amount of it.”
“Enough so it could cover the weight of a stowaway?”
“Oh, yes, four or five hundred pounds.”
“Then someone could have been in their cabin?”
Dion became a little more excited. “Now this is pure rumor, mind you, but witnesses claim there was a foot found in the debris after the crash that didn’t correspond with any of the bodies. This has been widely discredited as, oh, what do you call them, an urban legend, a tidbit to make the disaster just that much more horrifying.”
Mercer wasn’t sure if this was good news or bad. It brought Bowie that much closer to home, but if he’d died as a result of the crash then the trail went cold again. “But if the rumor was true, then it could belong to Chester Bowie.”
“Like I said, it’s a rumor.”
“What happened to the luggage?”
“Oh, gosh, what little wasn’t burned beyond recognition was returned to its rightful owners or their heirs. Mind you not much made it out of the blaze, though. I don’t know specifics about the Aldermanns’ luggage.”
“And the stuff that wasn’t claimed?”
“Shipped back to Germany, actually. There were a few bits and pieces carted off by the curious, like that small piece of duraluminum you bought from me, but the Hindenburg’s skeleton and everything else went back and was recycled into fighter planes for the Luftwaffe. Göring was never a fan of airships and detested Dr. Eckner, the head of the Zeppelin Company.”
“Dead end.” Mercer sighed. Harry had turned on the television and Mercer waved at him to lower the volume.
“What’s this all about?” Dion asked.
“Oh, nothing, Carl. This guy Bowie might have been carrying some important geologic samples. I’m trying to track them down.”
“I see. Well I have another rumor for you and take it for what it’s worth, which I believe is nothing. About fifteen years ago, right after the publication of my book on the disaster, I received a letter through my publisher from a gentleman in New Jersey who claimed to have a safe thrown from the Hindenburg on the afternoon she crashed.”
“A safe?”
“Yes. He even included a photo. Smallish affair, totally unremarkable. He claimed his father found it a few days after the wreck when he was plowing a field. Because there were no tire prints around the safe, he said it must have been thrown from the airship and wanted to know if I wished to buy it.”
“How much?”
“This was when zepp memorabilia was at its peak. He wanted fifteen thousand dollars and would provide no provenance other than what his deceased father had told him. I spoke to him once. Very disagreeable fellow. I didn’t even make an offer. I believed then, and I still do, that the man is a shyster and the safe is something he, or his father, had bought in a pawnshop.”
“Do you have his name?” The chances the safe was real or that it had belonged to Bowie were so remote they were off the chart and into the realm where early cartographers wrote “beyond here there be dragons,” but Mercer was desperate.
“I knew you’d ask. I’m searching for it now. I remember what you’re like when you want something. You were after me for years to buy that piece of the Hindenburg. I certainly hope you have it prominently displayed.”
“Er, yes,” Mercer lied. “It’s on a credenza next to my desk.”
“Ah, here we go. He still lives on his family farm in Waretown. Believe it or not his name is Erasmus Fess.”
“Mercer!” Harry shouted from where he was reclined against the bed’s headboard.
Mercer didn’t turn, just held up a finger for Harry to wait. “Erasmus Fess?”
“That’s right.” Mercer wrote out the address Dion rattled off.
“Goddamn it, Mercer!”
“Hold on, Carl.” He covered the phone. “What?”
Harry was pointing to the television. Mercer looked. On the screen cops and a medical team were swarming around a small suburban house. Mercer tuned into the reporter’s voice. “…this morning by a neighbor who describes the scene inside as a slaughterhouse. While the body has yet to be found, sources have been unable to locate Miss Ballard and the amount of blood in her house indicates foul play.”
Mercer went numb and the color drained from his face. He cut the connection without saying good-bye to Carl Dion. “Serena?”