personal guests. I must ask you please to remain in your cabins until morning, when Captain Pruss will be informed of the situation. By then it will be too late to turn the ship around. Captain Pruss does not know of our plan. We are fortunate in having only thirty-six passengers on this voyage.’
‘You’re coming, too?’ Eleanor said.
‘Alas, no, dear lady. Our leaders are keeping me out of mischief by sending me on a lecture tour. Now, please everyone hurry, hurry,’ he said, taking his watch from his waistcoat pocket.
Denham helped Jakob, Ilse, and Hannah into the first of the large containers, which had wooden hatch lids in the side. ‘We’ll be like three cigars in this box,’ Ilse said.
Friedl went to give Martha a lift up, but she said, ‘Uh-uh, not me, kid. This is where I say goodbye. I’ve got enough to explain to Dad as it is.’
‘Martha.’ Eleanor reached out and drew the woman’s petite body tightly into her arms.
Martha’s voice was tender and serious. ‘Eleanor, dear, I know I’ve been a minx at times. I guess I envied you, you know that…’
‘We’d never have done this without you,’ Eleanor said, welling up.
‘Now look, you’re making me cry… Bon voyage, darling.’
‘I’ll see you in New York.’
Jakob, Ilse, and Hannah were installed in one container. Friedl got into the other; then Eckener helped Eleanor in.
‘I waited half an hour for you,’ he said, ‘I confess I thought you hadn’t made it.’
Eleanor kissed his cheek in gratitude, and he blushed.
‘I suppose I’ll arrive in New York dressed like this,’ Friedl said. He was trying to tug the red armband off the uniform.
‘Certainly you won’t,’ Eckener said. ‘Nor shall you dine on board in it. I have arranged for dinner jackets to be left in your cabins. I hope they fit.’
He shook Denham’s hand. ‘Your father had great humanity,’ he said softly. ‘He would be proud of you today.’
Denham thanked him warmly and climbed into the container. He sat back against the side next to Eleanor, the satchel between them.
Ralf said, ‘Please-your matches, lighters, or anything that may cause a spark.’ His sombre face could not hide his shock when he was handed a Walther and two Mauser automatics.
The wooden lid came down, and Eleanor clutched Denham’s hand in the dark. They heard the sound of Ralf grappling with the seals; another stream of announcements from the loudspeaker; the tow truck’s engine starting.
Then a shout from the far end of the shed.
Denham’s heart skipped a beat.
He pushed the lid open a crack. A uniformed customs officer was approaching, escorting another man in a shabby corduroy jacket, with long grey hair tumbling over his forehead…
‘My God,’ Denham said.
He pushed the lid wide and jumped down from the container. The customs officer was explaining the man’s presence to Eckener in wide hand gestures. Eckener looked alarmed. Whoever he was, his presence was compromising.
‘ What a business,’ Rex said, panting for breath. ‘Sorry I missed the rendezvous.’ He seized Denham’s hand. ‘Took a guess you’d be here, and I was right. Bloody plane from Berlin was delayed-just landed ten minutes ago.’
‘We all made it,’ Denham said.
‘Thank God. I was worried to death they’d tapped my phone and heard Eleanor’s call…’
Eleanor began to climb out, too, but Eckener stopped her. ‘No time for chitchat,’ he barked. ‘Richard, my boy, you are about to miss the departure…’
Denham continued to hold Rex’s hand, searching his old friend’s face as though he’d never truly seen it until now and wanted to commit it forever to his memory.
Finding himself choked, he whispered, ‘It’s yours, Rex…’
‘What’s that, old boy?’
‘What you came here for.’
‘I came for you.’
He dropped his friend’s hand, turned, and saw that Eleanor was holding out the satchel towards him. He opened it and put the dossier into Rex’s hands.
‘It’s a relief to be rid of it.’
‘You mean…’ Rex nodded, solemn and honoured.
‘Richard Denham,’ Eckener shouted. ‘We-are-leaving.’
‘Goodbye, Rex.’
Denham turned and got quickly into the container without looking back. The lid was closed and locked; the customs seals attached.
Five minutes later the two late items of cargo were loaded into the hold of the waiting airship. From the darkness of the containers they heard the shouts of the cargo loaders, the heaving of ropes, the closing of bay doors, followed by silence. A cool draught blew through narrow slits in the wooden sides. Then came the faint brass tones of ‘Deutschland uber Alles’ outside on the field, followed by a muffled cheer, an infinitesimally small sway-a buoyancy-and the creaking of canvas against a vast metal structure.
‘We’re up,’ said Denham. ‘We’re flying.’ He touched Eleanor’s face in the dark and kissed her.
‘We made it,’ Friedl said, laughing, and Eleanor hugged their faces to hers in the dark.
The four great propeller engines fired and began to drone, vibrating the wooden floor of the container. They were floating away from the ground, lifting westwards towards the skies beyond the Reich.
They sat for a while, listening to the propellers and the rushing wind. It was Eleanor who broke the reverie.
‘Why did you do that?’
‘Do what?’ Denham said.
‘Give Rex the bogus dossier. The real one’s here. I saw. And even now in the dark I recognise… its smell.’
‘Yes,’ Denham said.
‘Why?’
A long pause. And when he spoke he felt they were the saddest words he’d ever spoken.
‘Because Rex betrayed us.’
Chapter Fifty-five
In his mind’s eye Denham imagined the scene, early tomorrow morning in the summer palace of the Hohenzollerns on the Wilhelmstrasse. Rex enters the building unseen, perhaps through one of the tunnels that crisscross the government quarter. He is fresh and alert, nervous before his meeting with Reinhard Heydrich, the thirty-three-year-old dauphin, the Fuhrer’s rumoured successor. Satisfied, too, because through his initiative alone the mission had succeeded. He is ushered into the presence. A globe tilted to the window perhaps; equestrian trophies; even an epee, wire mask, and kit thrown in one corner. Heydrich rises to meet him. He is gangling and fair, towering in black, squinting at Rex over his long nose. An Olympian coldness. Rex presents the dossier. A word of congratulation perhaps, and then he takes it over to the tall windows and opens it, curious, but without emotion. His back is towards Rex. Inside, nine or ten loose sheets, some of the great man’s drawings. He had expected those. Behind the drawings, a thick, sealed envelope. He opens this and pulls out a wad of papers tied with string. All typewritten, with corrections in handwriting. This he is not expecting. Not expecting at all.
‘My dear Herr Palmer-Ward,’ he says, turning round on the heels of his boots. ‘ What have you given me?’
