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When the house party finished breakfast Graf Otto led them down the steps to the Schloss, where five elephantine black Meerbach touring limousines were drawn up. There were five high-ranking officers from the War Office in Berlin, all accompanied by their wives. The women were dressed as though they were off to the races, with parasols and feathered hats, the men in dress uniform, with swords hanging on their belts, their chests glittering with medals and diamond-studded orders. Etiquette was so strictly observed that it took time to get them into the waiting vehicles without violating military orders of precedence, but finally Eva found herself in the third car with an admiral of the fleet and his large, horsy wife as her companions.

It was a twenty-minute drive to the main Meerbach factory, and as he approached the main gate in the high barbed-wire fence that surrounded it Graf Otto, at the wheel of the leading limousine, sounded his horn. The gates swung open and the guards presented arms, then stood stiffly to attention as the convoy rolled through.

This was Eva’s first visit to the citadel at the centre of the Meerbach engineering empire, which sprawled over an area of almost twelve square kilometres. The streets were paved with cobblestones, and in the square in front of the administrative headquarters a magnificent marble fountain shot water fifty feet into the air. The three sheds that housed the fleet of dirigibles stood at the furthest corner of the complex. She was unprepared for their sheer size: they seemed as tall and commodious as Gothic cathedrals.

The weather was delightfully sunny and warm as the party dismounted before the high, rolling doors of the central building and made their way to the row of armchairs set out for them under spreading umbrellas, which all bore the coat of arms of the House of Meerbach. When they were seated, three waiters in white jackets came down the row carrying silver trays laden with crystal glasses of champagne. When everyone had a glass in hand, Graf Otto mounted the dais and gave a short but pithy speech of welcome. Then he went on to set out his own vision of the role his dirigibles were destined to play during the fateful years ahead.

‘Their ability to stay aloft for long periods is their main attribute. Non-stop flights across the Atlantic Ocean are now easily within our grasp. One of my airships loaded with passengers or even with a hundred-and-twenty-ton bombload could take off from Germany and be over New York City in less than three days. It could return without having to refuel. The possibilities are staggering. Observers could hover over the English Channel for weeks on end, keeping watch over the enemy fleet and radioing its position to Berlin.’ He was too shrewd a salesman to bore his audience, half of whom were women, with too many technical details. He kept his canvas broad, his brushstrokes heavy and vividly colourful. Eva knew that his speech would last seven minutes, which he had calculated long ago was the maximum attention span of the average listener. Surreptitiously she timed him with her gold and diamond wristwatch. She was out by only forty seconds.

‘My friends and distinguished guests.’ He turned to the shed’s gigantic doors and spread his arms like a conductor calling his orchestra to attention. ‘I give you the Assegai

!’ Ponderously the doors trundled open and a magnificent sight was revealed. His guests rose to their feet and burst into spontaneous applause, heads thrown back to gaze up at the 110-foot-high monster that filled the shed from wall to wall, and from the floor to within two feet of the high ceiling. Painted across the nose in ten-foot-high scarlet letters was her name, Assegai. Graf Otto had chosen it to commemorate his African lion hunt. The airship had been carefully ‘weighed off’ so the lift of her hydrogen-filled gas chambers exactly balanced the 150,000 pounds dead weight of the hull. The watchers gasped with surprise as ten men lifted her off the landing bumper set along her keel, on which she rested when she was on earth. They were dwarfed by her size, as tiny as ants bearing the carcass of a huge jellyfish.

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