The Red Zeppelin

by Jack Treby

  Lazenby shook his head. ‘Not the originals. A photographic copy. The original file is back in London.’

  ‘Photographic? But...’

  He waved a hand. ‘It’s not important. All you need to know is that Schulz is in possession of a copy.’

  ‘Right.’ I sat back in my chair. ‘But if it’s nothing military, then why all the fuss?’ What kind of information would interest a US newsman and get the British establishment in such a lather? Lazenby wasn’t about to tell me but that didn’t stop me trying to work it out for myself. ‘What is it? Evidence of corruption?’ That might get the attention of the media. ‘Double dealing at the highest levels?’

  Lazenby regarded me sourly. ‘I don’t think it’s helpful for you to speculate. The important thing...’

  ‘Or some august personage caught with their pants down?’ That would be more like it, I thought. The American media had a reputation for prurience and there was nothing they enjoyed more than seeing some revered aristocrat brought low by their own stupidity. ‘It’s not the Prince of Wales, is it?’ I asked. ‘Again?’ I chuckled at the idea. The heir to the throne was notorious for his bed-hopping. But no, the British government would not go to all this trouble to recover a few dirty pictures. ‘Or something to do with the Prime Minister perhaps?’

  Lazenby gritted his teeth. I had a feeling I was getting close to the truth but my companion was not about to confirm anything. ‘All I can tell you is that it is a matter of national security. It is vital that these documents are recovered before they fall into the wrong hands. To be frank, I would rather have brought my own men in to deal with this.’ The necessity of relying on an outsider clearly irked him. ‘But we couldn’t spare anyone else just now. Not with all this going on.’ He gestured vaguely to the posters plastered across the square. Men in republican colours were waving banners not ten feet away from us. I nodded. It was understandable that London would want to keep a close eye on events in Madrid, on this of all days. ‘I was reluctant to come here myself, if I’m brutally honest,’ Lazenby confessed. ‘But our lords and masters insisted. That’s the importance they are placing on this.’

  I nodded. ‘So what time is this...Schmidt arriving?’

  ‘Schulz. Gerhard Schulz.’ Lazenby glanced at his watch. ‘I’m not altogether sure. But some time in the next couple of hours. I would rather have followed him myself, but there’s a chance he might recognise me. We do know he left Friedrichshafen yesterday evening.’

  Friedrichshafen. That was in Germany somewhere. ‘Is he coming by train?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Lazenby smiled. He was holding something back and he didn’t care if I knew it. ‘Shall I order us a spot of tea? There might be a bit of a wait, I’m afraid.’

  People always imagine spies lead glamorous lives but the reality is often quite dull. I had spent most of the past eighteen months kicking my heels on the Rock of Gibraltar, doing a bit of low grade surveillance work for MI5. The old firm had been thinking of establishing a regular outpost on the Med and, since I was in the area and in need of work, I had been enlisted as their guinea pig. The task was a simple one: turn up, test the water, see what useful intelligence you can uncover. The answer, as it turned out, was not very much. And now, after fourteen months of hobnobbing with various admirals and spending far too much time observing the comings and goings of merchant ships, I was rapidly losing the will to live. I had never much warmed to the notion of paid employment and, after a decade of fine living, being back in the saddle had proved something of a shock to the system. I had a budget, of kinds, but barely enough to keep me in whisky, let alone to satisfy my creditors. Not that I had any right to complain – I had left England under a bit of a cloud – but when the telegram arrived from London, asking me to assist our colleagues in the senior service with a rather delicate matter, I had been more than happy to oblige. A nice jaunt across Andalucía in a rented motor car with my new man was just what the doctor ordered. Now I was beginning to have second thoughts. The prospect of following some bald idiot around Seville in the heat of the afternoon did not fill my heart with joy. I had already spent over an hour sat at the café waiting for the elusive Mr Kendall, who was still refusing to put in an appearance. It was not my idea of an agreeable afternoon. At least on the Rock they knew how to brew a decent cup of tea.

  Lazenby was doing his best to distract me but the conversation was proving as tepid as the refreshment. ‘How are things going in Gibraltar?’ he asked, as if to prove the point. He had told me precisely nothing of his own work. According to my contacts, he had been with the SIS – the Secret Intelligence Service – for three or four years, and Special Branch before that, but everything else was a blank to me and Lazenby did not seem inclined to fill in the details. I had to admire his nerve, though, sitting out on the street in full view of the hotel entrance, wearing a blue blazer and a panama hat and doing the Times crossword. He couldn’t have looked more English if he had tried. In fact, he was so conspicuous, I doubted anyone would pay him any attention whatsoever.

  ‘The whole thing’s winding down now,’ I admitted, in reply to his question. ‘Budget cuts, you understand.’ Everyone was tightening their belts in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash. And, despite my best efforts, Gibraltar had been a complete wash out. There was not enough useful intelligence to be gathered there to justify the expense of a permanent post and there was nothing to be gained from prolonging the operation. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve been offered a new position. Across the pond, as they say. Not with Five. With your lot. The foreign service in America.’

  ‘Sounds interesting,’ Lazenby said.

  ‘I’m not so sure about that. Passport Control Officer in some banana republic, apparently. At least, that’s the cover story. Same sort of thing as you do, I would imagine.’

  ‘A bit of a step up,’ Lazenby observed, without rancour. ‘C doesn’t usually take on anyone sight unseen. You must have made a good impression back home.’

  ‘The Colonel’s a good friend of mine.’ Sir Vincent Kelly, the head of MI5, had taken something of a personal interest in my career. I had worked for him briefly before the war and we had always got on. He had offered me the post in Gibraltar – more as a favour than anything else – and now that it was being wound up it was considerate of him to recommend me to the head of the foreign division.

  ‘Have you accepted the job?’ Lazenby asked.

  I nodded. ‘Been trying to persuade my man to come with me. But he’s dragging his heels a bit. Not altogether keen on boats. I think I might have managed to persuade him, if it hadn’t been for that ridiculous business with HMS Glorious the other week.’

  Lazenby suppressed a smile. ‘Yes, I read about that.’

  ‘Damn fool of a captain,’ I muttered. The accident had taken place at the beginning of April, about sixty miles off the coast of Gibraltar. I had compiled a report on the matter for London. It had made grim reading. ‘I appreciate it’s difficult to navigate in fog, but hitting a passenger liner. The man ought to be shot.’

  ‘They rescued most of the passengers, didn’t they?’ Lazenby asked. He must have read about it in the Times.

  ‘Yes,’ I grunted. ‘But hardly a good advertisement for the Royal Navy is it? And it does rather put one off the whole idea of sea travel. I was going to book our passage from Lisbon later this month but Maurice is refusing to commit himself.’

  ‘Maurice?’

  ‘My valet. I have to call him Maurice. His surname’s unpronounceable. Useful fellow but a bit surly. French, you understand. Hasn’t been with me long.’

  Lazenby was intrigued. ‘Yes, I’d heard you had a valet. Bit odd, in our line of work.’

  ‘Surprisingly useful, though. A good distraction, if nothing else. He has been fully vetted by London. Not sure I’ll get him on a boat, though. Have you finished with that paper?’

  Lazenby smiled indulgently. ‘It’s all yours. Last Thursday’s, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I usually get the wee
kly one.’

  ‘It’s not always available in Madrid. I like to have a go at the crosswords.’ He glanced down at the paper as he handed it over. ‘Just one I couldn’t get today. Six across. “One of three, and often one more”.’

  I shook my head and opened the paper. ‘Haven’t the foggiest.’ The crossword craze had largely passed me by, though it had been going for some time when I had left England. It was rather a shock when the Times had succumbed to the craze the previous year. What next? I wondered. News on the front page?

  A cab was pulling up on the far side of the square, just outside the entrance to the Hotel Alfonso XIII. A short, serious looking man in spectacles and a felt hat was bending down at the window to pay the driver. I flipped over the Times and pointed a finger. I couldn’t tell from this distance, but it might well have been one of the men in the photographs. ‘Do you think that’s your man?’

  ‘Don’t point at him, you fool!’ Lazenby hissed. He peered across the plaza as the fellow made his way up the steps and into the lobby of the hotel. ‘Yes, that’s him.’ He lifted his wrist and glanced at his watch. ‘Later than I expected. The plane landed at eleven thirty. So, let’s say...half an hour to check in and change, perhaps. Then off to the meeting.’

  ‘Assuming Mr Schulz is on his way. You didn’t say where I’m supposed to meet him, when he does turn up.’ Lazenby had been annoyingly vague on the details so far. ‘Or how we’re expected to know he’s on his way.’ There had certainly been no telephone call at the café, nor any messages passed along while we had been waiting.

  ‘No I didn’t. But he’ll be here any time...’

  Lazenby stopped himself and his head whipped around to the opposite side of the square. Motor cars were grinding to a halt in the middle of the street on the far side of the fountain. Pedestrians had stopped walking and were looking back the way they had come. Jaws were falling open. Fingers were being pointed. And all at once I noticed a strange buzzing noise in the air. It sounded like the propeller of an aeroplane. Several aeroplanes, in fact. I followed the upward gaze of the crowd and my eyes fixed on a bizarre object, floating above the Hotel Alfonso. A huge silver whale was hanging calmly in the sky at the far end of the street.

  ‘Good lord!’ I exclaimed. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  An enormously inflated balloon had rumbled into view, a monstrous behemoth all but blocking out the sun. I had never clapped eyes on an airship before; not outside of newsreel footage, anyway. The thing looked unreal, like a giant cigar suspended in mid toss. It seemed scarcely credible that there could be people on board. But there the damned thing was, hanging improbably in the sky; a Zeppelin airship – the D-LZ128, no less, according to the serial number on the side. I watched, my mind numb, as the huge metal dirigible glided serenely over the town hall towards Seville Cathedral. The onlookers in the street were beginning to clap and cheer. Motorists were honking their horns. A little girl with her mother, not four feet away from me, was crying out in amazement and delight.

  ‘“Cheer”,’ I announced abruptly, to no one in particular.

  Lazenby could not take his eyes from the Zeppelin. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, his face lit up like an enthusiastic schoolboy.

  ‘Six across,’ I muttered absently. ‘“One of three, and often one more”. It’s “Cheer”.’

  Lazenby tore his eyes away from the ship for a brief moment. ‘Never mind that!’ he exclaimed. ‘I think our Mr Schulz is about to arrive!’

  Chapter Two

  Dozens of men rushed forward across the grass as the mooring lines were dropped down from on high. I wasn’t close enough to see if the men were wearing gloves, but it was clear that grabbing hold of those ropes was no easy endeavour. The Zeppelin had dipped lower and appeared to be hovering now some two hundred feet above the ground. A number of small propellers on either side of the craft were whizzing around like dervishes. That was what caused the buzzing noise. The head of a man was sticking out of the engine casing in front of each propeller. And in the control gondola, towards the front of the ship, I could just make out the captain and his crew, overseeing the descent as the craft was manoeuvred into port.

  On the ground, the mooring lines had been pulled taut and the great balloon juddered in the air as the ground crew struggled to bring it under control. The back of the great beast remained free, however, and while the front end was pulled lower to the ground, the rear hung up, creating something of a slope. The tail end, with its heavy fins, was still swaying in the breeze and I saw one man on the ground lose his footing. For all the great majesty of the beast and all the engineering prowess involved in its construction, I couldn’t help but think that the airship looked fragile. The skin of it was little more than cloth woven around an aluminium frame and the buffeting even of a gentle afternoon breeze caused the whole thing to rock back and forth, like a giant whale caught in a net, struggling to break free. But the groundsmen had got a firm hold of it now and were preparing to lead the enormous vessel across to the metal mooring post where the craft would be tethered for the night.

  The landing strip was barely more than a field to the north east of the city. Hundreds of grubby looking locals in cloth caps had gathered to witness the arrival of the Zeppelin. Some were taking photographs, others were laughing and joking. A few enterprising individuals had set up food and drink stalls. Automobiles and motor bicycles were scattered across the periphery of the field. There were horses too, mostly for the tourists, with open-topped carriages attached. Loosely shirted drivers stood back from the throng, chatting idly among themselves. Only the area directly beneath the Zeppelin was kept clear. The groundsmen had now pulled the back half of the ship down and were attaching it to a wheeled platform while others were grabbing hold of the gondola towards the front.

  The airstrip had not been an easy place to find. Charles Lazenby had only given the briefest of directions. The Zeppelin had circled for some minutes over the centre of the city – I had the curious notion that the captain was giving his passengers the opportunity to take photographs – and that at least had afforded me the time to summon Maurice with the motorcar. I wasn’t sure how easily the two of us would be able to follow the great airship, in our rented Hispano Suiza, but as luck would have it half of Seville seemed to be headed in the same direction, towards the fields marked on the map as “Hernan Cebolla”. It was a peculiar landing site. The place looked more like a farm than an airport.

  ‘Cebolla means “onion” doesn’t it?’ I asked Maurice, who was sitting in the driving seat of the automobile. His grasp of Spanish was better than mine.

  ‘Yes, Monsieur.’

  ‘So the pride of the German fleet is come in to land on Mr Hernan’s onion field?’

  The valet shook his head. ‘Not exactly, Monsieur.’

  I shrugged. Whatever the truth, Mr Hernan would not be growing any onions here any time soon. The field was being trampled to death by sight-seers.

  I focused my binoculars on the middle section of the airship. The heads of some of the passengers were visible now through a row of windows embedded into the lower side of the balloon. They were waving enthusiastically at the crowds, who were responding with equal vigour.

  I dropped the binoculars and pulled out the photograph from my inside pocket to take another look at it. I hadn’t recognised Gerhard Schulz among the passengers, even with the binoculars, but it wouldn’t be long before he disembarked with the rest of them. Quite why an Austrian journalist had chosen to travel to Seville by airship was beyond me. The tickets were not cheap and a train journey would only have taken a couple of days. But perhaps he had a private income of some kind.

  I envied him that, if he did. I had forfeited most of my estate when I left England, apart from a couple of small annuities which I had managed to keep quiet about. I certainly could not have afforded to take rooms at the Hotel Alfonso, which is where most of the passengers would be staying the night.

  A courtesy bus had been sent out to co
llect them. The vehicle had a rather grand crest stencilled on the side. Gerhard Schulz, however, was booked into another hotel on the far side of the cathedral.

  Lazenby had given me clear instructions with regard to the Austrian. ‘Follow him to the hotel and then anywhere else he goes. Don’t try to intercept him. Let him hand over the goods and leave me to deal with the American.’ Lazenby had been insistent on that last point. How exactly he proposed to acquire the documents from Walter Kendall he was not prepared to say, but I had a nasty suspicion he would not be picking any pockets. I had seen the Webley revolver tucked away inside his jacket. There was an edge of steel to Mr Lazenby beneath that amiable façade.

  My legs were beginning to get cramp in the passenger seat of the car so I opened the door and pulled myself out onto the parched, sunburnt grass. I needed to get closer to the Zeppelin in any case. I couldn’t risk losing sight of Schulz once he had stepped off the airship. There was no guarantee he would join the others on the courtesy bus and the crowd was thickening as the passengers prepared to disembark.

  I stuck my head briefly back into the car. ‘Wait here, Morris. We may need to leave in a hurry.’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur.’

  As I strode forward into the crowd, I noticed a cameraman with a tripod filming the arrival of the ship. I veered right and pulled down my hat. In my line of work, it doesn’t do to be documented, especially on celluloid. The fellow was clearly more interested in the crew, however, as the camera was aimed tightly at the control gondola. It was not the first time a Zeppelin had visited Seville but it was still something of a novelty. If the elections had created a party atmosphere here, the arrival of the D-LZ128 had provoked a full blown carnival.

  I gazed up at the craft in bewilderment. I couldn’t for the life of me see what all the fuss was about. It was just a machine, a way of getting people from A to B. I could admire the engineering involved – the scale of the Zeppelin was certainly impressive – but when all was said and done it was just a giant balloon; a children’s toy writ large. And considerably less safe, as a means of transport, than an ocean liner or even an aeroplane.