LITMIR.BIZ

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hit anything of military value or kill more than half a dozen people.’

      ‘Sounds mighty callous, Glenn.’

      ‘The British lost fifty thousand infantry before lunch on the Somme a few weeks back.’

      The old man sighed. ‘Well, maybe you are right. But it would rile me to think of those Germans cruising overhead unchallenged.’

      ‘It’s politics, Dad. The politicians wouldn’t dare leave London undefended, even if it was the right thing to do. The voters would never stand for it. My boys wouldn’t stand for it, either….’ He drank. ‘Especially now that we have rich civilians offering rewards for anyone who downs a zep.’

      ‘I was reading about that.’

      ‘Three thousand five hundred pounds sterling for any pilot who gets himself an airship, and any time at all someone is likely to chip in another bagful of gold. That’s enough to set one of my boys up for life.’

      ‘Are you still flying with your buddy Piper, the Englishman you met on the boat?’

      ‘The one that went for Veronica.’

      ‘Veronica?’

      It was the whiskey of course. Glenn could have bitten his tongue off. ‘It’s a long time ago.’

      ‘Veronica. My Veronica?’

      ‘You remember how I went to stay at old Frau Winter’s house that summer when they were all on vacation there. It was long before the war … 1910, I think. I was starting that tour around Germany that I did with “Boy” Piper. I’d just met him, and we spent a week with the Winters.’

      ‘Never mind the goddamned filibuster,’ said his father. ‘What happened?’

      ‘Hell, nothing happened, Dad. But Boy wanted Veronica to marry him. He was crazy about her. He still is. He never got married, and once, when he left his wallet and stuff in my locker – Royal Flying Corps pilots are not allowed to carry personal effects when they’re in the air – a photo of Veronica fell out. He made some silly joke about it being a photo of his sister, but I recognized Veronica all right. Then, after that, he always carried it with him, like a lucky piece.’

      ‘Jesus! How did Harry react to all this?’

      ‘I told you, Dad, there was nothing to react to. Boy just fell head over heels in love with Veronica. I think she went for him too, but she figured she had to stay with Harald because of the boys.’

      ‘You mean you even discussed this with Veronica?’ His father was incredulous. ‘She knew Piper was in love with her? It sounds like a damned funny business.’

      ‘We were in a hotel in Kiel. Veronica told me that Boy had asked her to go away with him. She had to tell someone, and she couldn’t tell Harald. She was in love with Boy, there was no doubt about that. I could see it in her face.’

      ‘And what did you say?’

      ‘I wish I’d told her to go with Boy. He’s a great guy; she would have been happy with him. And Harald is a louse.’

      ‘Well, I’m glad you told me about this,’ said Cyrus bitterly. ‘I’m relieved that your mother never found out.’

      ‘No one will find out. I never even discussed it with Boy.’

      ‘And is your friend Piper still working with you?’

      ‘The lucky dog got command of a squadron on the Western Front. Can you imagine that? He’s over forty years old. And he didn’t even learn to fly until the war began. How the devil he fixed it I’ll never know. Not fighters of course, but even so…’

      ‘What’s that across there?’

      ‘Searchlights. That will be a zeppelin; they always come in that way from the northeast. Some of them mistake the river Lea for the Thames and drop their bombs there, which can be bad luck if you live out that way.’

      ‘More searchlights.’

      ‘I think they’ve got him. See the little sparks – bluish-white flickers. That’s the anti-aircraft shells exploding. Maybe you can hear them.’

      ‘Well below him.’

      ‘We haven’t got enough long-range high-velocity guns.’

      Glenn’s father noticed that ‘we’ hadn’t got the guns. Although Rensselaer senior was an unreserved Anglophile, he was, above all, an American, and determined to stay out of this European quarrel. He was tempted to lecture his son on the subject, but he wisely decided that this was not the time or place. ‘There must be a dozen searchlights there.’

      ‘The defences concentrate there because that’s the way the Germans come.’

      ‘What kind of dopes are they to keep coming that way?’

      ‘No, they are smart to come that way. The Thames estuary is wide. The zeps come over the water and they can get very close to London before making a landfall.’

      ‘More searchlights.’ There were much louder explosions from the other direction, somewhere south of the river – Southwark, probably – but the bombs were small ones and the sound was muffled. In the street below a policeman cycled past, blowing blasts on a whistle.

      ‘There’s another zep there … maybe three or four. The searchlights are trying to find them all. They come in like that sometimes – three or four together – one zep is detected but the others slip past.’

      ‘They’re coming this way.’

      ‘It’s central London they are looking for. Look at the gunfire now.’

      ‘The searchlights have got him!’ Despite the elder man’s determination to stay neutral, the atavistic excitement of the hunt now brought him to his feet. Glenn steadied his father on the slippery moss that grew in the guttering. Now the silver fabric of the airship was gleaming as the stiletto-thin beams stabbed into it. There were half a dozen lights and, at the point of the pyramid, the fishlike airship. ‘He’s hit!’ For a moment the airship disappeared behind a cloud of white smoke. As it cleared, the fish was tilted at a crazy upward angle. ‘He’s hit!’

      ‘No. That’s not smoke. He’s dropping water ballast…’

      Boom, boom, boom. Like distant thunder came the sound of high explosive, much lower and more vibratory than the crack of the guns. The building shook.

      ‘…and his bomb load, too. Now he’s lightened, he’ll climb for dear life.’

      ‘What’s that?’ Coloured flares lit the sky bright red.

      ‘They’re Very pistol lights. One of my boys telling the guns to stop firing while the airplanes try. Look at that zep go!’ Without bombs and water ballast, the zeppelin rose at an astonishing speed, so that the searchlights slid away and the airship disappeared into the dark night.

      ‘Has he escaped?’

      ‘Maybe. Somewhere up there two of them are playing a game of hide and seek. There’s a little scattered cloud to the north. If I was the zep captain I’d be making for it.’

      ‘And if you were the airplane pilot you’d be heading that way, too.’

      They continued to stare towards the northeast. ‘It’s damned cold tonight,’ said Rensselaer senior. He shuddered.

      Suddenly there was a red glow in the sky. Small at first; then, like a Chinese paper lantern, the great airship became a short red tube that lengthened as the flaming hydrogen burst from one gas cell to the next until the whole shape of the airship was depicted in dull red. Then at one place the flames ate through the fabric and were revealed as bright orange. Only then, as the aluminium melted, did the zeppelin cease its graceful forward motion. Halted, it became a cloud of burning gas around a tangle of almost white-hot metal, and then,

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