I nodded.
He said, “Transmitted to me under the seal of the General Staff.”
“I accept your innocently obedient role in this, Colonel. Otherwise, I would not be speaking to you like this. I am enlisting your help.”
He withdrew his hand. Restacked both of them. He straightened as if sitting for a portrait. He was ready for further obedience. He was trained for this.
I said, “General Falkenhayn was himself unaware of the details of this mission. Though I do not suggest treason.”
Colonel Ziegler braced himself.
“The Kaiser has certainly been unaware of the mission about to depart from Spich.”
I could hear Ziegler’s breath catch in his chest.
I said, “Though the officers in our High Command all yearn for victory over our enemies — and England is certainly the most heinous of these enemies — there is much dissension as to methods and targets. You are surely aware of this.”
He nodded.
“This is very difficult for loyal and obedient officers in the field,” I said. “Men such as yourself.”
“I serve the Kaiser,” Ziegler said.
“Just so,” I said. “And we all serve our shared blood. The blood of the German race.”
“Germany above all,” he intoned. Deutschland über alles.
I gave him a paternal smile.
And then I made it vanish instantly. “This Englishman,” I said.
The colonel’s eyes narrowed a little. Yes, this Englishman.
“I do not suggest treason,” I said. “The man is of German forebears. Though he is a prominent man in the English government, he works secretly for our cause.”
I let this sit for a brief moment in Ziegler.
“Nevertheless,” I said. “His blood is not purely ours. Do you understand?”
He did. He nodded.
“Should not our trust for a special mission be pure?”
One more beat to let the rhetorical question answer itself in his mind.
“He must not fly, this Englishman,” I said. “Do you understand?”
“Yes sir,” Ziegler said in his heel-clicking voice. “And this special bomb?”
I flickered now. I’d made a snap decision back in Berlin, in Reinauer’s office. I’d compounded that decision later. To let this go forward. To sabotage Stockman’s intentions in the riskier way, with the mission launched, so as to draw full, failed, discredited attention to it at the highest levels of the government. With the Kaiser himself. Otherwise I would only briefly delay things. I still believed that.
But the terrible moment I’d arranged was now upon me. The moment when I myself would order a poison gas attack on London.
“The bomb and its mission will go forward,” I said.
50
“What would you have me do about the Englishman?” Colonel Ziegler asked.
I had two tasks now. Planting the bomb was one. But first I had to get Stockman out of the way. I briefly considered using Ziegler to accomplish this. But the crucial thing was to keep Berlin ignorant. Short of having the commandant arrest Stockman and prevent him from any outside communication, I had to expect Bauer would quickly become involved in any change of plans.
“I will take care of that, Colonel,” I said. “In due time. Meanwhile, you can serve the Kaiser and our country by speaking to no one about any of this. No one.”
“Of course.”
“I may even allow the Englishman to proceed for a time in ignorance of our suspicions.” I paused, leaned forward in my chair. And I added, “So we may be sure there are no matters of treason involved. Do you understand me?”
“Yes sir,” he said.
“If there are, then we must determine how far the crimes extend. Both up the chain of command and down.”
“Yes sir,” he said, his voice gone tight. It was best to let him continue to worry about his own behavior.
Which he began at once to defend by going on the offensive, good officer that he was. He said, “May I say, Colonel, that I am relieved this man will not fly with our brave crew?”
“Yes, Colonel, you may say that.”
“We choose to carry no parachutes, even though our airship has fixed launching hooks for the latest Paulus model. But each chute weighs fifteen kilos. We carry more bombs instead. And the men scorn even the temptation. If they cannot save their ship, they prefer to perish with it. But this man insisted on having a parachute.”
I thought how this was Stockman, all right. He admired my Schmiss. He wanted to fight the war against England somehow. But his satisfaction was to have me shave and so to share the honor vicariously. And his fight was to sneak in and dose them with poison. Of course he’d figure out how to save his own skin.
“Just so,” I said. “He is English.” That was for Ziegler’s consumption, but in my head: Just so. This is the man my mother loves. Another professional pretender. “Tell me, Colonel, what arrangement did you make with him last night? For his flight.”
“We are ready each day,” Ziegler said. “We await our final weather information. This comes to us by telegraph at about three o’clock each afternoon. If the weather seems favorable, I will contact him at his hotel.”
Even as I improvised along now, new challenges were presenting themselves. The weather. As far as I knew, the weather today looked good for the mission. But I had no idea what it was in England, which was the crucial question. And the weather could quickly change, could stop the mission. If I eliminated Stockman and then the flight was suddenly canceled, his fate would quickly come to light — surely before the next opportunity for the mission to fly — and my only chance to expose the poison gas strategy in a bad light to Berlin would be lost.
Ziegler said, “We must be in the air by five to arrive in London at the target hour.”
Another problem. Whenever I’d visualized planting the bomb on the Zeppelin, my mind had seen it as nighttime. But of course it couldn’t be night. The flight to London was upward of five hours. I had to do my work in broad daylight.
Ziegler and I sat for a moment, fretting in parallel, showing none of it to each other.
“Will you load the bombs at three?” I said.
“Yes.”
“But I presume the mission could be canceled in those last two hours.”
“Yes sir. If the weather changes abruptly. We’d be advised of that.”
So much could go wrong in all of this already. I didn’t want to be forced to destroy the Zeppelin on the ground. I didn’t know how far the phosgene would reach or how quickly from the larger explosion. Far enough and quick enough to be nasty. Far enough and quick enough, perhaps, to be inescapable. But if I’d already eliminated Albert and the weather changed and the Zepp didn’t fly, I would have no choice.
First things first.
I had to be sure of access to him.
“Are you picking him up when it’s time?” I asked.
“I am to telephone him. He wished to make his own way here.”
I thought: He’s bringing her to see him off.
I set that thought aside.
“You will telephone me first at the Boar’s Head Inn,” I said.
“Of course.”
“There is no instrument in my room,” I said. “You will make sure the innkeeper finds me. Leave no message. You must hear my voice.”
“Yes sir.” Colonel Ziegler punched each word.
I sat back in my chair.
I fixed my gaze firmly on him. I let him work all this over in his mind for a few moments under my steady scrutiny.
Then I said, “Perhaps it’s not too early, Colonel.”
His face muddled up. The gears ground in his head.
I gave him a faint smile. “To have that drink.”