“Nice fantasy,” Bell said, “but it’ll never happen. I know who your gunman is, and he won’t get anywhere close enough to detonate the mines.”
The German shook his head as if he’d caught a child in a lie. “You can’t possibly.”
“The only person I told about Marion leaving on the Spatminster was Tats Macalister. He’s your man.”
Bell knew he was right. Dreissen would make a terrible poker player. His nostrils had gone a little white, and his eyes shifted down and to the left. Some of the arrogance seemed to leave Dreissen’s puffed-out chest.
Bell continued. “He’s too good at playing the English dandy to be one of your employees, so I’m going to guess he’d be military intelligence. I forget what you people call it.”
“Sektion IIIb,” Dreissen said, shocked. “He’s a Major.”
“And the final blow to your plans is, I had an investigator canvass all the hotels in Milwaukee, looking for the name Dreissen. I know you have a brother based in New York. You and Talbot had to accelerate your plans when word leaked that TR was coming to inspect the canal, and I mean leaked even before I was called in by his political party. You wanted to complete your brother’s mission from two years ago. He was the hand pulling the strings to have Roosevelt assassinated by John Schrank. One of our detectives who was there at the time and saved Roosevelt’s life knew that Schrank’s uncle worked for Essenwerks. You and the German government are terrified that he might become our President again.”
Dreissen didn’t deny it.
Bell continued. “When my colleagues discover your brother was in Milwaukee on the day of the failed assassination, I have arranged it so that Roosevelt is prevented from coming ashore, and your shot at blowing him up is over.”
“All very clever, Herr Bell. Your insights and deductions are quite accurate. My government does not want him in the White House, nor do we want the United States to have the power to control maritime commerce of the Northern Hemisphere.” He let out a dark chuckle that was soon drowned out by the howling wind. “But you are wrong about one critical detail. My brother didn’t feel the need to stay with him all the way to Milwaukee. He left Schrank, and the psychologist who kept Schrank drugged and deep in his sick fantasies, in Chicago.”
It was like being gut-punched. He’d figured it all out, but it wasn’t going to prevent a catastrophe.
Several tense minutes went by. The air grew cold and thin. Their breaths condensed each time they exhaled. The airship’s ascent didn’t seem to be slowing at all. A loud bang caused Marion to scream. Bell was growing more concerned, and even Dreissen’s expression darkened.
“Why haven’t we stopped rising?” Bell shouted.
Wind then found a weak seam in the airship’s canvas skin and tore open a flap that allowed icy air to rush inside the envelope and fill the stairway with racket.
Dreissen said nothing.
Another bang, and the dirigible shuddered like a ship caught in a storm at sea. More wind filled the stairs, and the massive bags of gas that kept the airship aloft fluttered and chaffed against the wires and braces that held them in place. Metal screamed as it was pushed to the very breaking point.
Marion began panting to get enough oxygen, and Bell felt himself growing light-headed. He had no idea how high they’d gone but it felt like he was standing atop some of the mountains around Denver. The dirigible began a corkscrew motion that made them feel weightless at times and the shrieks of tortured metal became banshees’ wails.
“Since you’re trapped, I will deal with you after this crisis is over.” Dreissen began to climb down toward the control gondola along the airship’s keel, lowering himself hand over hand with his feet barely touching the stairs’ treads.
Marion’s lips had gone blue and her hands were as white as porcelain. They both gulped air like fish trying to get enough oxygen into their lungs while their breath wreathed them like smoke. The vapor became frost whenever it touched an ice-cold aluminum support strut.
What followed a minute after Dreissen’s disappearance deeper into the ship was utter chaos. There came a huge rending crash somewhere aft of the nose section. The wind suddenly grew into a hurricane gale. Marion’s scream was drowned by the roar. Metal screeched and tore. The nose suddenly pitched upward, leaving the pair dangling in space and then it swung through several loops, spinning like a dervish. Debris filled the air while the gas bag moaned like a wounded animal as pressure within its envelope rose and fell.
And then everything seemed to stabilize. Bell looked down the stairs and along the central hallway only to see black sky. He didn’t understand what had happened. And then the main section of the dirigible revealed itself. It was dropping away from the nose, its backbone snapped. The airship had torn itself apart midway between the entrance hatch and the control gondola. The nose section remained buoyant, the single remaining gas bag providing more lift than the structure’s weight. The bags in the rest of the airship had erupted through multiple rips and the broken craft now hurtled earthward.
A pocket of escaping hydrogen met the spark from the one motor that was still chugging away. The explosion was like all the light in the world had been concentrated on that one spot. Heat and fire reached up, and had the fifty-foot section of nose been closer it would have been consumed by the fire and added its own explosive gush of flaming hydrogen to the mushrooming pyre.
When the initial blinding flare faded Bell could see the Cologne’s burning husk falling away like a meteor trailing a flaming tail.
The nose section stabilized so that its peak was pointing upward with maybe a couple degrees of tilt. Bell and Marion
