Zeppelins had been a part of Denham’s life for as long as he could remember. The serene giants first floated into his imagination in pictures on cigarette cards. Every day after school he’d walk home to Pound Lane, a quiet row of terraced houses along the river in Canterbury, daydreaming of airships-imagining fleets of them in the sky over the cathedral, humming like giant bumblebees. He’d draw them and make models from household litter. He wanted to know everything about them. Luckily his father, Arthur, a mechanical engineer, had caught the Zeppelin bug, too.
Even in those pioneer days there was no doubt in Arthur Denham’s mind that lighter-than-air ships were the future of long-distance travel. Aeroplanes, he said, were flying hedge-cutters. They’d never be good for anything but deafening, hair-raising hops. ‘Not for sailing through the clouds,’ he’d say with a twinkle in his eye, ‘across continents and oceans.’
The Great War was into its second year when Denham finally saw a Zeppelin. He was eighteen. He and his younger brother, Sidney, were on a day trip to London with their mother’s sister Joan, a nervous, childless woman who doted on them. Her surprise treat for them at the end of the day was a musical revue at the Strand Theatre.
Over the years the events of that night would assume a luminous clarity in Denham’s memory. It was a chill evening in October and an air raid blackout was in force. Only the yellow lights of trams and taxis lit the faces of the crowds along the pavements-the theatregoers, the office workers heading home, the soldiers on leave from the Front. Hollow-eyed lads lost in a gloomy limbo. Above the grand buildings of the Aldwych the constellations stood out as keen as diamonds.
The show was Sunshine Girl, and the audience was encouraged to join in the songs.
When the final curtain call ended, the audience rose and began making their way along the rows towards the exit. They hadn’t quite reached the auditorium doors when the floor shook and an ominous rumble sounded from outside.
‘And here’s us come without a brolly,’ Aunt Joan said.
The next rumble silenced the crowd and stopped them cold. Fragments of plaster dropped from the ceiling, and the stage curtains swayed. Sidney looked up at him wide-eyed, wanting reassurance.
When it came, the explosion was almost a direct hit.
A blast ripped through the foyer, sending rolls of plaster dust into the auditorium. The crowd fell to the floor, clutching their hats to their heads. In the commotion outside a man yelled, ‘ It’s a Zepp! It’s a bloody Zepp!’ A woman screamed, and unrestrained panic broke out as the crowd surged towards the exits. Sid began bawling and hid in the folds of his brother’s overcoat.
‘Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies-and-gentlemen- please,’ a voice boomed from the stage. Mr George Grossmith, the show’s star, was addressing them. ‘Remain inside until the danger has passed over, I beg of you.’ His peremptory tone seemed to take control of the crowd, making the panic subside somewhat. People hesitated, and one by one, they began to sit. ‘Now, all of you, sing along with me to calm yourselves down.’
The orchestra played ‘Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag,’ and slowly people joined in the singing. Aunt Joan’s voice came in short, rattled breaths, but she persevered, as if fearful of bringing on her asthma if she succumbed to hysteria.
As the explosions and rumbles outside grew fainter, voices that had sung out of terror sang out of defiance, and by the time the orchestra played ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’ the audience was a chorus of patriotic fervour. Soon, a Boy Scout appeared in the emergency exit to call the all-clear, and they ended with ‘God Save the King.’
When Denham, Sidney, and Aunt Joan followed the crowd in single file through the wreckage of the foyer someone was again screaming. Outside, they stared in disbelief. People bloodied by flying glass were being tended on the steps until ambulances arrived. The grand crescent of the Aldwych, lit by the blazing roof of a building, was strewn with masonry and cobblestones. An acrid stench of cordite hung in the air. In his shock Denham was not certain what he was seeing among the flames and shadows. An omnibus overturned, its axle shattered. A dying horse’s snorting and whinnying. A number of clothed forms, limbs at unfamiliar angles, sprawled over a mosaic of smashed glass.
‘Oh, gosh, look,’ said Sidney.
In the distance to the east were the cigar shapes of four Zeppelins, golden in the lights of the fires, the drone of their propeller engines clear on the night air. Arc lights swept the sky, holding one gleaming ship, then another, in the fingers of their beams. Artillery fire boomed, making chrysanthemum blooms of flame in the sky beneath them, but nothing touched them.
‘It’s a battlefield,’ said Aunt Joan, holding a handkerchief to her mouth. ‘London’s a battlefield.’
Denham continued to stare, after his aunt and Sidney had turned to leave. He could not take his eyes off the four magnificent messengers of death.
H e awoke clammy with sweat. Sheets writhed around his body, leaving striations and gullies across his neck and chest, like an artist’s impression of the canals on Mars. His dream of the Zeppelins had merged-as his dreams often did-into one of the trenches. After a few weeks’ training in the London Rifle Brigade he’d been shipped to France. Only a few days after that he’d seen his first man killed. And then more men killed than he could ever count.
A breeze from the lake moved the curtains, and light bouncing off water played on the ceiling of the elegant room.
He looked at his watch, and leapt out of bed.
‘Damn.’
He had a Zeppelin to catch.
A t eleven o’clock Denham found the hangar in a frenzy. Beneath the vast tethered bulk of the Hindenburg, hundreds of ground crew were moving through the shadows, preparing the ship for the voyage to Berlin. Surfaces buzzed with the roar of the propeller engine cars, which were running a thunderous preflight test. The ship almost filled the hangar’s cathedral space. From the rows of tall windows along the right-hand wall, shafts of light were given mass and texture by the dust in the air. Where the ceiling could be glimpsed above the leviathan, a galaxy of electric lights twinkled.
Dr Eckener was directing proceedings from the top of a truck loaded with hydrogen canisters, booming through a megaphone his demands for pressure readings, weather reports, and general haste. How soon all this purposeful mayhem would become chaos, Denham thought, without the concentrating effect of the old man’s magnetism-the force that kept the whole enterprise going.
Behind him a whistle sounded, and with an echoing clang the building’s great doors began to roll apart. Denham saw rays of sunshine blaze across the ship’s nose and along the streamlined ridges of its hull, and felt his suitcase become light in his hands.
Eckener spotted him, and climbed down from his perch.
‘Good morning, good morning,’ he bellowed, without the megaphone. He was wearing his commander’s cap, an old leather flying jacket over his tweed suit, and a waistcoat smudged with cigar ash.
‘My dear Richard,’ he said, shaking Denham’s hand warmly. ‘I hope everything on board will be to your comfort and satisfaction.’
‘I don’t doubt it. How are the skies looking?’
‘A low drizzle over the Reich capital this morning. Also a stiff northeasterly. So we’d better depart before the weather plays any dirty tricks-and hope the clouds clear for our moviemakers. They’re on board, together with a pair of our local Party big shots, along for the champagne and the free ride.’
Eckener held up his pocket watch for all to see and shouted, ‘Ten minutes.’
‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ Denham said.
‘Richard, my boy, just come back and see your old friend soon. I hope you get the story you want. You’re in Captain Lehmann’s hands now.’
‘You’re not commanding the ship?’
‘Unfortunately, no…’ The old man hesitated. ‘It seems I’m being moved aside for incurring the wrath of the Propaganda Ministry once too often.’ Eckener chuckled, but there was worry in his eyes. ‘I have apparently “alienated myself from the Reich,” and you reporters are no longer to mention me in the newspapers.’
Before Denham could respond, a young steward was beside them, pointing at the leather case hanging from his neck.
‘No personal cameras permitted on board.’
‘Oh for goodness’ sake, man,’ Eckener barked. ‘He has my authorisation to take his camera on board.’ The young man stepped back, smarting, and Denham noticed the small Party pin in his lapel. ‘Make yourself useful by offering Herr Denham whatever information he requires to write his article.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Eckener smiled at Denham apologetically. ‘You will have to hand him your matches, however. Not even you are exempt from that rule.’
The noise of the engine test stopped, filling the hangar with an iron silence. Eckener leaned towards Denham’s ear.
‘I’m sure I don’t need to advise caution to you of all people. The Party has members among the crew. They’ll be watching you…’
Denham winked. ‘Don’t you worry. I won’t tell them your joke about a little girl going up to Hitler and-’
‘Till we meet again,’ Eckener said in a loud voice, cocking his head towards the offended steward, and then giving a wheezy laugh despite himself. ‘That was a good one. If you hear any more, remember them for me… now hurry.’
Denham turned and climbed the narrow aluminium stairway, thinking of the joke Eckener had told him. A little girl approaches Hitler and his entourage with a bouquet of flowers but stumbles. Hitler catches her, cups her face in his hands, and kneels down to say a few quiet words. Afterwards people crowd around her. ‘What did the Fuhrer say to you?’ they ask. The little girl is puzzled. ‘He said, “Quick, Hoffmann, a photo!” ’
He was concerned about Eckener. Why did he have to go on making a stand like that, jeopardising his life’s work? It would not make one iota of difference.
Denham continued up into the belly of the ship. It was like boarding a flying ocean liner. He nodded to a bust of old Hindenburg on the landing, then turned the corner into a lounge furnished with modern, comfortable armchairs. On the wall a large mural map of the world traced the routes of the great expeditions, from the voyages of Magellan to the globe-trotting flight of the Graf Zeppelin.
The lounge was separated by a low rail from a long promenade, where wide windows slanting outwards offered panoramic views. Most improbable of all in a craft where everything was designed to save weight, a baby grand piano built of aluminium stood at the far side of the lounge. Above it hung the obligatory portrait of the dictator, whose hyperthyroid glare followed Denham across the room. The soft red carpet deadened his footsteps. The area was deserted.
The Hindenburg was truly an airborne hotel, and a luxurious hotel at that. It was the mother lode of his fantasies, and even greater than he’d imagined-more beautiful, more spacious. He touched the Plexiglas window, almost expecting it to dissolve as he woke from a dream.
‘Zeppelin marsch! ’
Outside, Eckener shouted the order to move, and the hundreds of ground crew picked up the ropes and pulled, walking the giant craft out through the hangar doors like Lilliputians heaving Gulliver into the sun.
In the open, as the men waited for the signal from the control car, Denham caught himself wondering whether a thing so large was really going to fly.
‘Schiff hoch!’
The mooring ropes were thrown off, and together the men gave a mighty upward shove, pushing the ship into the air. He heard laughter and a smatter of applause from a crowd of bystanders as water ballast was released from the prow, dousing some of the men.
Within seconds the ground was receding at an alarming speed. At about three hundred feet the ship slowly stopped rising and drifted in silence for a few moments, over the Zeppelin field and towards Lake Constance. Sunlight danced among the sailboats, and rippled like satin over the distant foothills of the Alps. Among the gabled roofs of Friedrichshafen, cars seemed like toys moving among matchbox houses.
Suddenly the four diesel engines sputtered into action; the propellers churned the air and pushed the great ship forwards.
Denham swept his hat off and laughed, holding his arms wide. He was charged with an electrifying freedom, as though he were slipping the world’s chains, floating free of all its fear. How sublime, he thought, how miraculous, how-
‘Hello, Richard,’ said a voice in English.
He turned, embarrassed, as if he’d been caught pulling faces in the shaving mirror.
‘Ah. Hello there.’
The young man he’d met at the bar, Friedl something, stood at the entrance to the lounge in knickerbockers and a sleeveless cricket sweater over a white shirt. His mop of black hair was swept under a Basque cap, as though he were a weekend guest of the Great Gatsby.
‘We’ve almost got the ship to ourselves,’ he said with that hustler grin. ‘Just a few guests, my colleagues in the movie crew-and you.’
‘Yes, it’s rather a privilege.’
‘Tell me something… do you listen to swing?’
Surprised, Denham said, ‘I do.’
‘Good. I want to know what grooves these days’-he raised a hand to the side of his mouth in a mock whisper-‘and about all the other things that are banned here…’
Again, he was struck by the man’s candid nature. It seemed hard to believe that it hadn’t got him into trouble. And he listened to swing. If there were two things utterly anathema to National Socialism, they were Jews and hot jazz.
‘We’ll do an exchange,’ Denham said. ‘I’ll tell you what’s hot and you can tell me any gossip you’ve heard about the Games-and I mean real news, not official stuff.’
On the port side of the airship a long dining room filled the length of the space, separated by a low railing from another promenade, also with panoramic views.
Tables were laid with white linen, fresh-cut flowers, and silver cutlery; the china plates bore a Zeppelin motif. White-jacketed stewards were arranging ice buckets and dishes of cured ham and roast venison for a buffet lunch. Halfway along the promenade Friedl’s crew was adjusting a rig holding a telephoto-lens movie camera pointed through an open promenade window. Denham recognised the men from the bar at the Kurgarten. The two Party big shots Eckener had mentioned-for whose enjoyment the sumptuous lunch was provided-were admiring the view with their wives and two young children, a boy and a girl. Both were colourless men in their late thirties, complacent in their light brown tunics, gold-trimmed swastika armbands, and booted legs, set wide apart. In any normal society they’d be town clerks or farm inspectors, Denham supposed, but in Germany the Party could elevate the most humdrum official into a Caesar, free to build an empire from which to draw homage and fealty.
‘A pair of golden pheasants,’ Friedl said.
They walked to the windows at the opposite end of the promenade from the Party men and watched the Rhine wind its way into the horizon through steep, wooded valleys. The castle tower of Meersburg passed below. As it gained height, the ship tilted gently, and a broad patchwork of cabbage fields and hamlets filled the view for as far as the eye could see. Horses pulling a hay cart reared their heads at the sight of the giant ship looming above; a farm dog chased its shadow across a field, barking.
Corks popped and champagne was poured, and shortly after, lunch was announced. Denham joined Friedl at a table for two.
‘That’s our director of photography, Jaworsky,’ Friedl said, pointing at an older man talking to the captain. ‘The best cameramen in Germany today-made his name shooting Alpine movies, our equivalent of the western, you could say. And over there is Gerhard, our gaffer.’ He nodded with a flash of shyness towards a tanned lad in shirtsleeves who was lifting reels. The lad smiled back at them.
‘He’s your boyfriend?’ Denham asked, before he could stop himself.
A change of pitch in the propeller engines and the ship picked up speed.
Friedl stared at his plate, reddening, as though he’d been slapped across the face. When he looked up, his fine features hardened.
‘No, he is not.’ After another pause, he said, ‘As you yourself might have said, is it that obvious?’
Denham wanted to kick himself.
‘Please forgive me. It’s a reporter’s bad habit. I spend too much time with hard-nosed hacks. I hope you’ll excuse it.’
Friedl was about to speak when his eyes froze on something over Denham’s shoulder. He turned to see a dull-eyed, freckled boy of about ten, the son of one of the Party men, standing near their table, watching them. The type of boy who’d stone birds for fun. He wore the Jungvolk uniform. The belt around his shorts had a dagger hanging from it.
‘It’s rude to stare,’ Denham said in German.
‘Why are you speaking English?’
‘We’re American gangsters planning a bank robbery in Berlin.’
The boy looked from him to Friedl. ‘He doesn’t look like a gangster,’ he said, then ran off to report this observation to his father.
‘You wait,’ Denham said. ‘He’ll be telling them he’s discovered a spy ring on board.’
Friedl didn’t seem to be listening. For a few moments his eyes were naked, and Denham saw the truth of his existence: a secret life, of courage poisoned by fear. Fear of whisperers and informers. Of midnight knocks on the door.
‘You must miss the old republic,’ Denham said, still trying to atone for his gaffe. ‘I mean, no one in Berlin cared who was a warm boy then, did they? What happened to the old El Dorado on Motzstrasse?’
‘Closed down,’ Friedl said, his face sullen. After a long silence, he spoke in a distracted voice, as though his mind was riffling through banks of old memories. ‘Berlin was the centre of the world, you know. Jazz to rival Harlem’s, great movies, new things happening in art every week. Nightlife, atmosphere, freedom. I had work at the UFA studios; friends I’d meet in the cafes on the Ku’damm. It was a great life. Look at the city now… The only atmosphere left is fear. Everyone’s afraid. Even those golden pheasants over there will worry over what their children say about them on Jungvolk evenings
… There is a shadow over everything.’
He looked at Denham, his face suddenly animated. Speaking in German, he said, ‘Didn’t we meet at a poetry reading in Mainz last year?’
Denham waited for him to elaborate, but he said nothing more. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, pulling a dubious face. ‘Not sure I’ve ever been to Mainz.’ He knocked back his champagne.
Friedl continued to watch him for a moment, but a light seemed to go out in his face, and his eyes drifted to the windows.
They waited until the Party men and their families had heaped their plates; then he and Denham helped themselves to smoked ham, black bread, pate, and pickles, and Friedl asked him what was new in Harlem and who was recording on which label, revealing an obsessive’s knowledge of jazz that petered out after about 1934. He listened keenly as Denham told him of Count Basie’s new tenor sax, and Benny Goodman’s move to Chicago.
‘Believe it or not,’ Friedl said, ‘something like the old life may return to Berlin for the duration of the Games. All part of this relaxed image they want to present while the city is full of foreigners. The police will tolerate jazz, and the Jews will get a break.’
A waiter refilled their glasses. They toasted each other, and Denham regarded his new friend with a mixture of respect and concern.
Friedl explained that nothing was being left to chance with the movie, Olympia, and with a blank-cheque budget from the Propaganda Ministry, they had more than forty cameras ready for every contingency. Any shots that could be filmed beforehand had been. ‘I’ve been on set at the stadium for a month,’ he said. ‘She films everything.’
‘She…?’ Denham wasn’t sure why he felt surprised. ‘You work for Leni Riefenstahl?’
‘Yes.’ Friedl gave him a quizzical look, as if unaware of the opprobrium and awe that attached to the woman’s name in equal measure. Denham had seen Triumph of the Will and remembered being dazed with disgust and admiration. It was an astonishing work, casting Hitler as a nation’s Messiah, glowing with a monochrome aura. The bastard had literally given her a cast of thousands.
‘Well then,’ Denham said, buttering a slice of bread, ‘what stories going round would you care to share with a discreet reporter?’
Friedl munched slowly on an apple. ‘None that wouldn’t get me into trouble…’
‘So you do have a story.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Come on. If it’s the one about the German lady high jumper who might be a man, I’ve heard it.’
‘No…’ Friedl shifted in his seat. ‘It’s about the Jewish athletes, the ones who trained for the German team…’ He turned again, to make sure they weren’t being overheard. The Party men and their wives were taking second helpings, but the boy was nowhere to be seen. ‘Sorry, but if I tell you, they’ll trace it back to me…’
This was a familiar situation for Denham, and he seldom felt proud of himself when he had to use the old hacks’ tricks.
‘Look, if it’s a story that damages the Nazis, the world needs to hear it. Don’t you agree?’
‘Yes, but-’
‘These people aren’t your friends, Friedl. If you keep quiet you’re sort of helping them… aren’t you?’
Friedl fell silent. Denham waited.
‘Do I have your word you’ll protect my name?’
‘Naturally,’ Denham said.
‘The Jewish athletes in the Olympic Games…,’ he began, and started again. ‘The Reich Sports Office had to allow some Jews to try for the German team; otherwise the IOC would have removed the Games from Germany… or countries would have boycotted.’
Denham searched his memory. There had been an outcry about this in the international press last year, before the Winter Olympics in Bavaria. The Americans sent a delegation to make sure the German-Jewish athletes were being given a fair chance.
Friedl leaned in closer. ‘It was a deception. The Nazis set up some fake training session for the benefit of the IOC, the press, and the Americans, with Jewish athletes present. But in fact the Jews got no facilities-nothing. They had to train in farmers’ fields. After all, they’re banned from every sports club in Germany…’
A buzzing noise, and an old Fokker biplane appeared alongside the airship’s promenade. The pilot, in cap and goggles, waved, and most of the diners interrupted their eating to watch at the windows. The boy was still not there.
‘It gets worse,’ Friedl said. ‘Last week, when all the countries’ teams were safely on board ships heading for Germany, the Reich Sports Leader simply told the Jews that they hadn’t been selected for the German team after all. I guess he calculated that it was too late for anyone to complain or take official action.’
‘ “Germans Drop Jews from Team”?’ Denham said. ‘Nothing new there.’
It was a depressing and familiar story, although this deception sounded more brazen than most.
‘They had to make a single exception, however. Hannah Liebermann. You’ve heard of her?’
‘The fencer? Are you joking?’ Denham reflected for a moment. It hadn’t occurred to him before that she was Jewish. ‘She’s one of the most famous athletes in the world.’
‘Exactly. She’s so famous they couldn’t not include her. But how is this for irony?’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘She refused. The one Jew they gave the honour of competing for the Reich told them where to put their invitation…’
‘Good for her. So she’s not on the team either.’
For a minute Denham had thought this was leading up to a scoop. He called the waiter over and asked for a whisky.
‘She is on the team,’ Friedl said, his expression dark. ‘They’re forcing her.’
‘What?’
‘They’re forcing her to compete on the German team by threatening her family if she doesn’t.’
‘Christ.’ Denham put his glass down. ‘Wasn’t she living abroad?’
Friedl was distracted again. The cameraman, Jaworsky, was calling him from the far end of the promenade.
‘She’s been in California since ’33. When she refused their invitation the Gestapo started arresting her family. She boarded the next ship back to Germany.’
‘How do you know all this?’
Friedl shrugged. ‘Call it pillow talk between me and someone who knows.’
‘I’ve got to interview her,’ Denham said.
‘Excuse me.’ Friedl got up. ‘I have to work.’
Denham had a story. A vital, personal story of courage and deception, a political story that even his agent, Harry, would like. It moved him. It went straight to the heart of all that was wrong with these Games. An innocent woman made to act in the charades of a boundlessly criminal regime in its bid to appear decent before a watching world. They were holding her up as proof of their fairness when they had nothing but hatred for her. To cap it all, she was a sporting superstar-with cover-girl looks.
He drained his glass and got up, noticing as he did so the white cloth on a nearby table twitch, and the scabbard of a Jungvolk dagger poking from underneath. Glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching, he delivered a brisk kick to the bulge where the boy’s backside was. He was out of the dining room before anyone could locate the source of the howling.
As usual when he was preoccupied Denham wanted to pace. He returned to the deserted lounge on the starboard side and ambled along the promenade window, drumming his fingers on the sill. Beneath him beech forests and fields heavy with crops rolled by, but in his mind’s eye he saw Hannah Liebermann, lithe and silken-haired, pointing her foil, arm straight. She was one of the greatest athletes Germany had ever produced, whose fighting style had an extraordinary grace.
He’d have to reach her in private somehow. An approach through the official channels would almost certainly be refused. In fact, Willi Greiser would surely expel him for this one. No doubt about that… Was it worth it?
He was sitting at the baby grand piano, looking up at the portrait of the tramp turned dictator, trying to remember the notes for that Bessie Smith number ‘ Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,’ when he saw the red jug ears and ginger hair of that steward approaching from the far end of the lounge. The one who’d asked for his camera earlier. The Party pin in his lapel glinted like an evil eye.
‘Herr Denham? I’m at your disposal.’ He spoke with a marked Swabian accent. ‘Captain Lehmann suggested you may like a tour of the ship.’
‘You read my mind,’ Denham said. ‘Could we start with the smoking room?’ He was dying for a cigarette.
They descended to B deck. The steward, who introduced himself as Jorg, led him to a small bar, which connected via an airlock to an intimate smoking room, pressurised, he explained, so that no hydrogen could seep in. It had small cafe tables and a comfortable leather bench running around its walls.
He lit Denham’s HB. On the far side of the room was a wide window set into the floor. Wisps of white cloud passed beneath the glass, filling the room with a pale light reflected from forests and valleys below. Surely this must be the acme of all smoking experiences, he thought.
‘Do you have mail to post?’ the steward asked.
‘Mail?’
‘We drop a postbag when we reach Berlin. Letters are franked in the mailing room.’
‘With Hindenburg stamps?’
‘Of course.’
‘You may just have saved a father’s reputation with an eight-year-old.’
Jorg grinned and fetched a blank postcard from behind the bar. Denham scribbled:
Dearest Tom
Here are the stamps I promised. Your old dad’s writing this from the smoking room of the ‘Hindenburg.’ To answer your question, my cigarette was lit with a car lighter attached to the wall. How about that? Be nice to Mummy.
Love, Dad
He handed the postcard to the steward, stubbed out his HB, and the tour continued. The young man gave him a pair of canvas shoe coverings in case his heel should make a spark on the metal grill floor, and they entered the keel corridor-no more than a narrow catwalk-which led deep into the stern of the ship. Denham took notes in shorthand of the statistics Jorg gave him as they passed storerooms with space for two and a quarter tonnes of fresh meat, poultry, and fish and 250 vintage wines; and the freight room, which was large enough to hold an aeroplane and the huge duralumin tanks filled with diesel fuel.
As they neared the end of the corridor the steward did an extraordinary thing. Beneath them stretched the silver fabric of the airship’s outer cover. To demonstrate its strength he leapt twelve feet off the catwalk and bounced up and down like a boy on a trampoline. For an instant Denham glimpsed the unremarkable lad beneath the Nazi persona he’d acquired like a greasy sheen on his skin.
Onwards they went until they reached a vertical shaft, which they climbed for what seemed like half a mile until it joined the main axial corridor, the bone that ran through the centre of the vast ship from fins to nose.
‘Amazing,’ Denham said, laughing.
It was like a film stage built from an Erector set. A gargantuan spider’s web of bracing wires and girders radiated out from the central axis, and looking along the corridor’s length was like seeing infinity reflected between two mirrors. The air was much colder.
Together they walked along the corridor between towering gas cells, which hummed quietly with the vibration of the engines.
‘There are sixteen of them,’ Jorg explained, ‘maintained around the clock by duty riggers.’
Denham touched one of them with the palm of his hand. That such a delicate membrane separated safety from catastrophe was unimaginable. What risks man takes in order to fly.
Soon the corridor intersected with another airshaft.
‘Wait here,’ said Jorg. ‘I must pass an instruction to the duty rigger.’ With that he disappeared down the shaft.
Seems a good moment to give him the slip, Denham thought. He continued alone along the axial corridor, eventually reaching a bay in the very tip of the ship’s nose, where huge coils of mooring rope were stacked on the floor.
Outside the bay window, fields of cumulus billowed, brilliant and numinous in the afternoon sun. The ship had gained considerable height while he was inside its hull and was now beginning its descent through the clouds. A minute later his vision filled with grey, and the rain of a summer squall flicked at the window, fanning across the glass in the headwind.
Suddenly, there was Berlin, vast and sullen.
The metropolis spread out in every direction. He hadn’t even realised they were near. The sun broke through for an instant, casting a shaft of gold over the eastern outskirts. He saw the River Spree snaking around the landmarks, opalescent in the metallic light. He saw coal barges, trams, and traffic moving.
The Hindenburg maintained its downward tilt and was soon gliding over the rain-washed streets and rooftops, casting its shadow. As it slowed, the propeller engines changed gear into a deep, pulsing drone.
He could see the entire Olympic route: all the way from the Brandenburg Gate, through the Tiergarten, where the road was hedged with flag-waving crowds, along the Kaiserdamm and the Heerstrasse between double rows of sycamores, until in the distance to the west he saw it: the granite colonnade with banners flying, the thousand-year stadium of the new order.
Within minutes he could make out the brazier on the Marathon Gate and the top-hatted heads of officials. The athletes, in their blazers and white shoes, stood in long rows, preparing to parade onto the track behind their flags.
Now the airship was passing slowly over the stadium’s stone rim, and Denham’s line of vision dropped into a vast crater seething with life, deeper than the surrounding ground. Half the bowl was plunged into shadow by the ship, and a hundred thousand people raised their heads towards him.
‘My God,’ he whispered.
The ship hovered for a moment, the engines humming so that the propellers seemed to caress the air.
A fanfare sounded faintly, distorted through loudspeakers, and then the movement of a wind over a field of barley passed through the hundred thousand, which rose as one, right arms raised, and he realised that the man himself was making his entrance, the tiny, striding figure in brown.
High in his vantage point, Denham heard the crowd’s roars, like waves crashing on a shingle shore.