Chapter Eleven

Gustov Voss stood barefoot in the field and listened to the stolen machine fly far beyond his reach. Panting for breath, he raised his pistol and fired the last of its eight rounds in the direction of the departing sound, purely from frustration rather than intent, as the Luger’s effective range was no more than fifty meters. He kept his arm extended, glaring along the barrel at the stars, trying to understand what had just occurred.

“Captain?”

Twenty minutes ago, he’d awakened peacefully and made his way from his borrowed bedroom through the dark house to the kitchen. He prepared a kettle for tea. Then the noise alerted him, and he’d retrieved his gun. Now he stood hard-jawed and breathing heavily with an empty sidearm pointed at an equally empty sky.

“Captain Voss?”

He lowered the gun, finger still on the trigger. He wore a long nightshirt and trousers and nothing else. He’d just raced across an airfield as one of the craft in his care was taken from him, leaving him with dirt between his toes.

What had just happened? How had it happened?

It angered him to look away from the sky, to admit that he’d been outwitted, robbed. The sound of the vanished plane was not even that of a buzzing insect. A second later it was entirely gone.

Gustov gathered himself, turned, and said, “There is a teapot on the stove, Lieutenant Mier. See that it is removed before the water boils away and ruins the kettle.”

“Of course, sir.”

That helped. Gustov restored order to himself with that simple command. Mier trotted away, his own sidearm still in his hand, its magazine depleted.

Resisting the urge to cast another angry glare at the vacant sky, Gustov stalked to the remaining planes. Swinging lanterns revealed more of his men, all in various stages of undress. Ignoring them for a moment, Gustov inventoried the squadron, noting instantly that all eleven Fokkers were accounted for. The Rumpler C.IV was gone. Over fifteen hundred kilos of plane and munitions had been spirited away.

Gustov’s rage was not really rage. He realized it was embarrassment. Thank Christ the men could barely see his face in the dark. Without looking at any of them, he said, “Does anyone hold any information that I do not possess regarding this incident?”

Almost at once they replied, “No, sir.”

He held very still, making random, baseless guesses at to what might have happened. They were too far from the Front to be the target of enemy provocateurs. Weren’t they? And if a trained pilot had gotten drunk and fancied a midnight flight, why not choose one of the unbeatable Fokker triplanes?

“I want six of you in the air immediately. Though our craft just departed on an eastward heading, they might very well change direction. Split up. Fly at different elevations. Cover as much airspace as you can. Go now.”

They quickly chose who among them would go; Gustov always encouraged them to make choices rather than blindly follow orders. To those who remained, he said, “Assemble the household. Everyone. But do it politely.”

In a moment, he was alone.

An earlier, pre-war version of himself would have chuckled at his plight. He’d always been a jovial youth who enjoyed horsemanship and hunting and anything in skirts. He’d intended to pursue a career in finance, if he was ever forced to give up gallivanting and put a roof over a woman’s head. But then a Serbian assassin had put a slug into the Archduke of Austria, the world lit itself on fire, and six months later Gustov learned to fly.

He turned and walked purposefully to the house.

While the others gathered in the drawing room, he attended to his appearance, dressing in the full service regalia of a German officer of the Air Force. He donned his gray M1910 field tunic. He buttoned its high collar, where double silver braids of metal flashed on dark velvet. With the help of a mirror, he straightened the tunic’s shoulder boards, each outlined in red piping and featuring a gilt-metal winged propeller device in the center. He inspected his wool field cap for lint, cleaning its black visor on his palm. He carried it with him as he went downstairs.

As soon as he entered the drawing room, he knew he would need to move everyone outside. The chamber was appointed in stained walnut with brass accents. The writing desk was a great bear of a thing, a slab of wood on legs carved with an aggressive Etruscan motif, with a bust of some honored ancestor or perhaps a Roman senator resting sternly on one corner. Due to that desk and the fine cabinetry around it, there simply wasn’t enough space, as the aircraft mechanics, cooks, couriers, and valets had arrived last night, tripling the property’s population.

With assistance from Father, they herded the sleepy crowd outside, where a thin band of light appeared in the east, casting pale light over the lawn. Even Karl and Truda were here, the latter slumped against Father’s shoulder while the former looked around expectantly with his hair rampant on his head. The first birds had awakened. The air smelled crisp and faintly of apples.

Gustov took his place at the front, facing them, hat on his head at the prescribed angle. His men stood at attention; the civilians blinked and looked around, wondering why they’d been summoned. Gustov loved them all, these hardworking, scrappy men and women who cooked good food and raised respectful children. This is why he fought, not for the government in Berlin—a congregation of craggy old misers who provided inadequate boots for their soldiers—but for people who whistled, people who chopped cabbage, people with heart.

Yet…one of them might know something they’d yet to share.

“My deepest apologies,” he began, his voice carrying easily across the morning field. “As you are no doubt aware by now, one of our flying machines was taken from us within the last half hour. Quite…daringly, an unknown person absconded with property not their own. I will be frank with you, my friends, and admit that I have not the faintest notion as to how or why this happened. And so I beseech you, please, if you have any insight into this matter, come forward now.”

His men did not move, iron rods in their backs. The mechanics and the rest of the enlisted men did the same, though many of them were unshaven, with dirt under their nails. The household staff and family members, not bound by rank, traded confused glances, shook their heads, or shrugged.

Gustov had anticipated this precise reaction, and so he leveled his gaze on individual faces, rapidly moving from one to the next, depending on his instincts as a hunter. He thought he noticed something almost immediately, but he needed to be sure.

“Do not be afraid,” he told them. “I have complete faith in your good intentions. Please.” He spread his hands, palms out, in a gesture that invited cooperation.

One of the women, the cook, looked around as if seeking something.

“Madam?” Gustov smiled. “Dagmar, isn’t it?”

Everyone looked at her. She nodded.

“Madam, I find myself rather desperately in need of your assistance. What do you know that can help me?”

“Nothing, sir. I swear it. I was…I was just looking for…”

“For whom?”

“For Miss Jantz, sir.”

Gustov studied the small crowd again. Miss Jantz? How had he overlooked her absence? “The American is missing,” he said, as much to himself as to his audience. “She’s not in her room?”

“She is not, Captain,” Schmit confirmed, never breaking attention. “I checked every room myself to make sure all had heard the summons.”

Gustov didn’t know what to make of it. Ellenor Jantz, as alluring as she might have been, had not stolen a bomber. “Has anyone seen her since dinner last night?”

No one had.

Again he watched their faces. With every passing second, his suspicions deepened. He kept his apprehension from his voice when he said, “I find it difficult to imagine that Miss Jantz is actually a man in disguise who was trained by French intelligence to infiltrate a German farm on the small chance that an air squadron would be stationed there so he could steal an observation plane from among a group of freshly painted Fokkers.” He smiled a little; that’s how strange it sounded. “Don’t you all agree?”

His eyes settled on the tall, rangy stablemaster. “You, sir. I’m sorry, but I can’t recall your name.”

“Um…I am Josef. Josef Rosenstein.”

“Of course. I won’t forget again. I couldn’t help but notice that you seem troubled, Mr. Rosenstein. The look on your face…I can’t quite read it. Could you enlighten me?”

Josef turned his cowboy hat over and over in his hands. His friends looked at him askance.

“Mr. Rosenstein? It seems you have us all at a disadvantage. Can you share?”

“It’s that, uh…Ellenor…well, she was…helping someone.”

Gustov moved closer. The crowd parted. He stood before Josef and extended his hand. He’d always liked shaking hands, clasping another’s fingers, making contact. Some days that simple act seemed like the last civilized gesture in the world.

Josef, surprised, shook vigorously.

“Call me Gustov, and I shall call you Joe.”

Josef nodded.

“Joe, I am at a loss. Ellenor did not steal that plane.”

“No, sir.”

Gustov dismissed the sir with a wave. “You’re ten years my senior, Joe. Please call me by the name my mother gave me.”

“All right.”

“So. Ellenor. Our clever American. She was helping someone, you say?”

“Yes, Gustov.”

For some reason, Gustov recalled the line Ellenor had quoted at supper to demonstrate her command of German: Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law. Gustov’s universal law was honor. What was Ellenor’s?

He leaned so close that only Josef could hear: “Helping whom?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Josef whispered the answer in his ear.