I looked at my Waltham.
It was five minutes to four.
The matter of Stockman and my mother had taken too much time.
I started the engine and drove away fast.
At the air base I was tempted, because of the time, to drive up to the place where the colonel’s driver had parked this morning. But if something went wrong, if the bomb went off with the Zepp still on the ground — by a delayed takeoff perhaps — I wanted the car in a place away, a place I could run to and not have to throttle and spark and crank while phosgene rolled immediately over me.
So I stopped in a stand of birch trees near the entrance to the air base grounds, just off the road to Uckendorf. There was no security out here and the camouflaged Torpedo was inconspicuous among the trees.
I hung the bag over my shoulder and walked away from the Torpedo, taking my watch out to see the time and hearing it tick — the Waltham had a loud tick, muffled by my watch pocket but audible in the open air — and I thought of the ticking in the bag, and it was five minutes past four o’clock.
I hustled on, wanting to jog the half mile to the hangar area, but slowing myself to a brisk walk for the sake of the bomb under my arm, its delicate wired connections. I reached the administrative building in a little less than ten minutes.
Ziegler was in his outer office, on his feet, and he spun to me, strode to me at once. “Good,” he said. “Come.”
I followed him out of the administrative building and into the hangar through the same side door we’d used this morning.
LZ 78 loomed instantly above me. And against me, its gray vastness feeling like a palpable weight upon my eyes, my face, my chest. It staggered me, made me work hard to steady myself on my feet. It made the thing hanging from my shoulder feel dangerous only to myself.
“The commander is forward,” Ziegler said.
I dragged my body away, moved my legs, followed Ziegler along the length of the ship, the upwind doors wide open now, the sky going pale white from a thin spew of clouds, a breeze funneling into the hangar and into my face.
The breeze made me think: The Torpedo was well away from here, but it was downwind. Gas released in the launching zone would roll my way. I would have to run fast, if it came to that. I would have to start the car fast.
But if the flight went off on time, I would surely have time to get away.
Where exactly would LZ 78 be at seven minutes past five?
“Colonel,” I said, “are we still on schedule for a five o’clock launch?”
“From what I gather,” he said.
“Good,” I said.
All along the airship’s length there was the bustle of ground crew, in gray shirt sleeves and soft caps, unfurling the handling lines.
The lines were slack. The hangar ballast was still on board.
We reached the control cabin, a long, boat-shaped, enclosed gondola suspended a man’s body-length beneath the great gas-packed hull. An exposed aluminum ladder went up from the gondola and into the keel walkway.
“Here we are,” the colonel said.
He stopped at the foot of a rope ladder leading to the forward compartment of the gondola.
He motioned for me to go up. “I’ll leave you here. They don’t want extra weight. They’re expecting you.”
We snapped off a simultaneous salute to each other.
He said, “When you’ve finished, would you care to join me at my office to watch the launch?”
“Of course, Colonel,” I said.
And I went up the ladder into the major’s command area.
The place felt unfinished, with the web of aluminum braces visible overhead and along stretches of the lower walls. The focal working parts were prominent panels under the windows at the front and along the sides, holding gauges and instruments for heading and for incline, for altitude and for speed, for hydrogen pressure and for fuel level, and standing before the panels were wheels and levers for rudder and elevator and ballast.
The place bustled with half a dozen men in leather jackets and heavy scarves doing their pre-flight checks. In the midst of them was Dettmer with a clipboard in his hand, speaking intensely with one of his officers.
I waited.
I was prepared to insert myself into his awareness. But I felt the need to seem casual about all this, to plausibly portray a benign observer. I had a few minutes of margin. Ideally I’d plant the bomb somewhat nearer its detonation to minimize the possibility of its being discovered in time to disarm it.
Another officer approached the two men, and his arrival drew Dettmer’s eyes up and over to me. Immediately he excused himself and stepped my way.
He saluted.
“No need for that, Major,” I said. “This is your domain.”
His chest lifted and he smiled, grateful for the sign of respect.
I wished I could order him to use the parachute they’d put on board for Stockman, if something were to happen.
But he was a dead man.
All these men around me — I’d roughly parsed them as executive officer and helmsman, navigation officer and chief engineer and telegraph operator — these were all dedicated professional soldiers in obedient service to their country, and all of them were dead men if I did my obedient service to my own country and to my country’s ally. As was the watch officer a dead man, whom Dettmer now temporarily nodded off the ship to execute his duties with the ground crew. I was there to compensate for his weight.
“How long do I have on board?” I asked.
Dettmer looked at his clipboard. He looked at his own watch, which he drew from his tunic pocket on a dull gold chain. “Half an hour certainly. Perhaps more. We can wait till the weighing off to reboard the watch officer.”
I said, “My official duty is to check on our special bomb. But I’d like to see some of the ship.”
Dettmer nodded and went immediately thoughtful. I presumed he was trying to think of someone to spare as my guide.
“I know your men are busy,” I said. “After being led to the bomb rack for inspection, I’d need only a little orientation from someone. You wouldn’t mind my respectfully and carefully looking around on my own, would you?”
“No sir,” he said. “Of course not.”
He summoned one of the other officers nearby.
He introduced Lieutenant Schmidt, his telegraph operator, a lanky young man with hollowed cheeks and calloused hands, the perfect image of a rube off a farm in southern Illinois, down where you couldn’t tell the difference between Illinois and Kentucky.
“This way, sir,” he said.
He stepped to the aluminum ladder in the middle of the floor and I followed.
We climbed through the gondola roof and into the open air for a few steps, the smell of hydrogen suddenly strong around us, and then into the hull.
We emerged on the wood slat floor of the keel walkway. It stretched the length of the airship within a tight A-frame of aluminum girders, but this end of the ship was in darkness at the moment, with only swatches of self-luminous paint defining the path. The lieutenant switched on a tungsten flashlight.
“We won’t have light in here till we are under way,” he said. “The generator.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You would be astonished,” he said, “how carefully insulated all the electrical devices are.”
He led on, heading aft. He shined his light here and there, identifying whatever his beam fell upon, trying to be a proper tour guide: the vast flanks of the gas cells, covered in goldbeater’s skin to prevent leaks; the wiring and the cables, for rudder controls and engine telegraph and speaking tubes; the containers for ballast, full of water laced with alcohol to keep it from freezing at ten thousand feet. He even pointed out the tools and spare parts and the rigging ropes. He loved his airship, this apparent rube of a Lieutenant Schmidt, who was not such a rube after all. He had a mechanical turn of mind.