And they had all been waiting for an hour now. Like inviting two thousand people to the theater, she thought, and the curtain doesn't go up.
Bad enough for the audience, but what about the men on stage? She could see the mist drip off the girders above them and down their backs. It collected like a sheen on their black frock coats as they sat waiting. Twenty men just like Bishop - too important to be kept waiting.
At the edge of the stage stood Henri Meurthe, the president of the Aéro Club. He looked most uncomfortable of all. The others were glaring at him, angry that he had dragged them out in this weather.
"When is Pouchet going to show up?" demanded Bishop.
"Maybe he's waiting for the fog to lift," said Harding. "Or maybe he's scared some anarchist will throw a bomb at him. Like the blond guy over there, the one who looks like a boxer."
Mary Ann glanced behind her, trying to peer over the first line of top hats and parasols. Behind them were the journalists in derbies, clutching yellow notebooks, and further back the laborers in their blue peaked caps.
But standing outside the protection of the Tower, taking no notice of the drizzle, she saw a tall man pacing up and down. He wore no hat at all. His blond hair was plastered against his head, but he didn’t look wet. Now he could be dangerous, she thought to herself.
“Henri!” called out one of the men on the podium. “Is your friend Pouchet ever going to show up? We sit in this filthy soup while he hides in his palace.”
Harding chuckled. "That loud-mouth Lothario is Fabian Bouchard. We shared a lot of wine, a few women and a very big secret about what's happening today. No one outside the Aero Club is supposed to know."
Mary Ann saw saw Meurthe yank the chain on his waistcoat and pull out his gold pocket watch, the kind that was so big they called it a “turnip.” But Meurthe wasn’t looking at the time. He was looking at the picture inside the top cover. Whose picture? Mary Ann wondered.
Then she heard the clatter of carriage wheels and hooves on cobblestones. The President had finally given up waiting for the weather to change. Three identical closed carriages arrived, attended by the horse guard. The President jumped nimbly from the middle carriage, surrounded by soldiers.
Pouchet strode casually up to the podium as if it were his second home. He shook hands with several of the men in top hats, and glanced ruefully at the sky. He was a small, balding man, unimpressive in appearance, but a person who was going to make you take him seriously, she decided. He cleared his throat three times before the crowd quieted enough to hear him.
“It is with the greatest pleasure,” his voice high-pitched in the damp air, “that I make an announcement of utmost importance to all Frenchmen.
“As a climax to our glorious Exposition of 1900, Monsieur Henri Meurthe and these other members of the Aéro Club, all leading citizens of France, have designated a substantial prize for a feat of aeronautical navigation never before accomplished in this or any other nation.”
Pouchet paused. A murmur from the crowd subsided instantly as the President drew a long breath. Mary Ann was impressed.
“The contest,” Pouchet said, and raised his right arm over his head, “The contest is, quite simply, to fly around the Eiffel Tower.”
A second murmur came from the crowd, a much louder one. All eyes followed the President’s arm upward. The mist obscured the top of the Tower, making it seem even taller. All they could see were the long iron girders swooping in toward the sky. It looked like a voyage without end.
Pouchet had stunned the crowd into silence. Even the reporters were quiet. No one had ever flown, except in a balloon. And a balloon could not really fly. It was simply blown by the wind.
Then a reporter for Le Temps broke the silence: “The prize! What is the prize, assuming such a thing can be done?”
“Yes, the prize!” shouted another, and then another.
Mary Ann watched as the President allowed the shouts to grow to a roar. Pouchet smiled smugly. He would not be rushed. He would wait for the crowd to coax him into doing exactly what he had already planned.
“The prize...” said the President, and there was instant silence, “is this solid gold medal,” which he took off the lectern and dangled from its ribbon. The medal depicted a winged man in flight.
The audience moaned in disappointment: “Only a medal? Who will risk his life for a medal, even if it is gold?”
“This medal...” the President continued, “and one million francs!”
There was a gasp from the crowd. Some of the derby hats bolted for nearby buildings to find telephones. Those who remained pressed closer to the podium. They had shaken off the gloom of the day.
"The thought of so much money has warmed them in artificial sunshine," Harding laughed. They looked up at Pouchet, who was beaming with pride.
“What are the conditions under which the flight must be made?” shouted the reporter for Le Figaro.
Pouchet turned to Meurthe. “For those questions I will ask Monsieur Henri Meurthe, president of the Aéro Club, to provide the answers.”
Meurthe stepped forward. He was tall, in his late 50s and had drooping mustaches, grizzled hair and a huge prow of a nose. It was a handsome, determined and intelligent face that reminded Mary Ann of pictures he had seen of Lincoln. She noticed that Meurthe deliberately avoided standing too close to Pouchet so that no comparison between the size of the two presidents could be made.
“The conditions are simple: one must circle the Tower in a flying machine of any kind, being above the ground at all times,” he said.
Other reporters now jostled for a favored position in front of Meurthe, bumping Mary Ann and Harding out of the way. There were hundreds of newspapers in Paris and, at this moment, all of them had questions.
“Why so much?” asked the correspondent for Le Petit Parisien, largest of the city’s papers. “The Tour de Marseilles auto race offers a prize of 50,000 francs. The Tour de France bicycle contest awards only 20,000 francs.”
“The size of the prize,” answered Meurthe, “indicates the difficulty of the endeavor. In the Tour de France, we are guaranteed a winner, no matter how fast or slow the contestants." He paused and glanced above him at the height of the Tower. "Here, nothing is assured and the risks are great.”
A reporter for L’Humanité, a Socialist newspaper, had pushed his way to the foot of the podium. His clothes were rumpled, his striped tie askew, and his jaw jutted out.
“Are you saying, then, this task is impossible?” he sneered. “Is that why you and your rich friends have made the reward so handsome? So poor laborers and farmers will take their bedsheets and jump from the Tower?”
Mary Ann saw Pouchet motion to the police at the edge of the crowd, but Meurthe caught the gesture and raised a hand to stop it. He looked down at the reporter and answered him:
“We do not expect anyone to jump from the Tower as a consequence of this offer and, indeed, it would not benefit him to do so, since he would die and collect no money. The sole purpose of the Aéro Club is to foster the fledgling science of aeronautics.”
“But man cannot fly as you describe it—by making a circle in the air,” another reporter yelled. “Isn’t that correct?”
“No man has done so yet,” Meurthe conceded. “But who would have thought a few years ago we would hear music from wax cylinders, or capture the image of life on a screen, or get light from the white magic of electricity. Every day, as the new century turns, we witness awakenings of the human mind. Why not encourage new discoveries?”
“Then you are saying someone will win the prize?” pressed the same reporter.
“Nothing is impossible,” answered Meurthe, “and nothing is inevitable. Whatever we get we must strive for. Hence this prize.”
“Is there any machine that could now make this flight?” shouted a reporter from the back.
"None to my knowledge,” said Meurthe. “But there are balloons capable of raising themselves into the air and maneuvering by means of
electric or steam engines. Now we have the lightweight gasoline engine that powers our automobiles. Why not use it to conquer the sky?”
“Of the million francs,” asked the reporter for Le Matin, “how much is out of your personal fortune?”
Meurthe hesitated. “The greater part,” he answered.
"Tell the truth," muttered Harding under his breath. "It’s all your money. None of the others put up a franc."
Pouchet stepped forward again. “We owe a great debt to Monsieur Meurthe and the Aéro Club,” he said. “From its beginning with the earliest balloons, aviation has been a French science, and every advance has come from France. This reward will insure that we, and not our friends the Germans, will have the glory of the conquest of the air!”
As the crowd cheered, Mary Ann saw the blond man make his way to the front. He did not push, but his size and self-assurance cleared a path for him. Now he raised his hand.
“Yes,” said Pouchet.
“If you please, sir,” said the blond man in clipped, precise French, “having heard what you said, I must ask: Is this contest open only to the French? Will you exclude the citizens of other nations to ensure a French victory?”
"Careful, Pouchet, he’s baiting you," Harding whispered to Mary Ann.
“We will not exclude anyone!” shouted Pouchet. “But the Eiffel Tower is sacred to France, and it would be a travesty if anyone else were to succeed before a Frenchman.”
The blond man leaped to the podium, making Pouchet shrink back.
“I am Maximilian von Hohenstauffen, German military attaché, and I have a letter for you.” He waved it aloft to the crowd. “It is from His Majesty the Kaiser’s Imperial Government announcing that Germany will enter your contest to sail around the Eiffel Tower. And yes, gentlemen,” he said, turning to the men on the podium, “there is a machine that can make this flight. And we Germans have it.”
At that moment, as if by design, the sound of an explosion echoed down from above. The little cannon on the second level of the Tower, fired each day to signal the noon hour, had just sounded with a hollow boom.
The crowd reeled from the shadowy noise, and from the second stunning surprise of the morning. Germany, France’s mortal enemy since their war in 1870, might soar around France’s shrine and win the million francs from the fools of the Aéro Club!
Reporters spilled out onto the plaza, crashing and butting one another, confused. Mary Ann watched as Pouchet attempted to control his rage. His eyes widened, his mouth dropped, and his nostrils flared. His complexion turned dark.
Bishop was even angrier. He turned and grabbed Harding by the shoulders. "I thought you said this was a secret. We were supposed to be the only ones Bouchard told!"
Harding ignored Bishop and looked at the podium. Bouchard was wiping the sweat off his face even though the day was cool, and making swift covert glances at the German.
"Look at that fat sweating Judas," he whispered to Bishop and Mary Ann. "He didn’t just tell me; he tipped off the Germans too."
"But he's your friend!" yelled Bishop, not caring who heard.
Harding shrugged. "He's a friend to the highest bidder, just like the rest of us." He watched as Bishop stormed off.
Mary Ann was watching Maximilian. The German stood poised, smiling ever so slightly. Only a long thin scar down his left cheek marred his handsome face, with its high forehead and long aquiline nose. She watched as Maximilian contemptuously put a cigar in his mouth and flicked a match with his fingernail. The flame seemed to come out of his fist. He had no fear of the crowd...or anyone.
And now, as the people dispersed, so did the fog. The sun shone down through the filigree of the Tower, bathing Meurthe in the mottled light, making him look like a saint.
For a moment Mary Ann almost believed, wanted to believe anyway, that someone could fly and win this strange, glorious misbegotten contest. After all, wasn't Paris was a bottle that had freed many a genie, a place where she had seen vaulted ceilings, statues and steeples rise from the ground like a stone forest, a city that woke and groped for the sky each morning?
Then she shook herself out of the daydream. "What do we do now?" she asked Harding.
"We go to work. But first, a drink! It's noon already."
Chapter Four: Parc de Chalais—May 21
The storm clouds were rolling in when Henri Meurthe arrived at the French military camp of Parc de Chalais in the hills south of Paris. The black thunderheads thickened on the ridge above him, jostling each other like cavalry preparing for a charge. The flashes of faraway lightning overwhelmed the sunset.
Meurthe saw the soldiers scurrying, battening down for the storm as if it were an artillery barrage. They deflated all the balloons, which dwindled into strange, humorous little shapes as the hydrogen hissed out of them. They dismantled a huge kite, threw it hurriedly into a wagon, and sent it clattering to shelter. They fastened windows and latches, for winds of up to 30 miles per hour had been predicted. Two sentries were even spreading canvas coverings over the twin hand-cranked machine guns that stood guard outside the main building as Meurthe came up the steps.
But some were oddly unaffected by the storm’s warning signs. As Meurthe stood at the door, he saw a tall figure—dressed in white shirt, blue military pants and boots—stride across the parade ground toward the reviewing stand.
“What is that fool doing?” growled one of the guards at the door.
“That’s the Wild Man,” said the other. “It’s Chevrier.”
So much has happened in the last week since I announced the contest, Meurthe thought as he walked down the long, flag-draped hallway. And much of it has been good. But now comes the real test.
There is a saying that, for all their faults, God loves the French best. They are the leaders in conquering the air; ever since the Montgolfier brothers put fire under a paper balloon and sent a duck, a rooster and a surprised sheep into the sky. The French built the largest balloon. A Frenchman made the first parachute jump. A French woman was the first aeronaut.
But lately, Meurthe thought, God loves us less. A man-lifting kite is invented, but not in France. From across the ocean comes word: the Americans are flying gliders on the sand dunes of Lake Michigan. In the south of Germany there are stories of great warships gliding over The Bodensee, built by a Kaiser who wants to rule the world.
And what of France, the birthplace of flight? Paris is a grand soiree. It is celebrating the Universal Exposition of 1900. Imitation Africans and pretend Turks mingle with belly dancers. The city is full of greasepaint and hustle. The big Ferris Wheel takes passengers 350 feet into the air, and who would want to go higher than that?
Yes, Meurthe thought, Paris is a great party. There are 10,000 balls every month. The best one, everyone agrees, is when Robert de Montesquieu has his pet monkey baptized. The balloons still fly, but now they are toy balloons fired by gunpowder from a little tin cup. Their luminous bubbles drift over the city at night, sputtering and crackling. How typical of the French to turn something so serious into a toy!
But Henri Meurthe has changed all that. He gathers the members of the Aéro Club and proposes a reward for a flight around the Eiffel Tower. One million francs. His colleagues are stunned.
“Why so much?” they ask.
“Because we have become satisfied with so little,” Meurthe tells them.
Now the French have something to anticipate. The domino players, the drinkers at the petit zinc bars, the strollers at the kiosks, all argue about it: “Man can fly.—He can’t.—The weight of the air will smother him to earth.—In 10 years we will dance on the moon.—A scientist in Serbia has invented electromagnetic waves that will neutralize gravity!”
Everywhere he goes now, Meurthe is recognized and applauded. An elephant at the Paris zoo is named for him. When he attends the theater to see a new play starring the actress Sarah Bernhardt, the house lights dim and a single spotlight shines on him and his beautiful daughter, Yvette. The great actress herself dedicat
es her opening night to him!
And when Meurthe walks the streets with his long limping stride, the result of a war wound, people clear a path for him as if he were the new Napoleon. At the Corn Exchange, where he owns a seat, the traders cheer him on the floor.
Even old Jules Verne, crippled and nearly unable to walk, comes to Paris. He hobbles across the floor of the Aéro Club and seizes Meurthe’s hand. “I wanted to meet another man who sees the future,” he says.
A whole new industry starts: balloon-shaped chairs too fragile to sit in, glass balloon chandeliers that fall and break, balloon-faced clocks that sometimes work! Lovers pose for photographers in a fake balloon basket, against a backdrop of clouds. The anarchists’ bombs going off all over Europe are forgotten. Instead, drawings of strange ghostly galleons floating in the heavens appear in the newspapers; ships propelled by rotors instead of masts hover above the moon.
Cartoonists give up their favorite occupation of showing politicians rising from chamber pots like foul odors. Now they set their imaginations free and draw whole worlds of people in the air; a crowded sky over a city full of flying machines. Some of them look like bicycles, others like submarines, some even like broomsticks. Women in huge flowered hats go shopping in balloons, their baskets hanging below them. Men with propellers on their backs meet in the clouds to confer. Policemen chase robbers through the air.
Meurthe shakes his head in astonishment at all this, but he is not impressed. “If I fail,” he thinks, “they will turn on me just as fast as I have become their hero. Men may ascend the sky like living angels, but their natures do not change.”
He opened the door to the commandant’s office. Major Vitary was waiting for him behind his desk.
Vitary was a shifty-eyed man with theatrical black mustaches. The kind who hides his cowardice behind a uniform festooned with medals, Meurthe thought. I must get past him quickly.
“Well, Monsieur Meurthe,” said Vitary smugly. “I see that you have finally come to seek my help.”
“Alas, Major Vitary, I did not come here to see you, but one of your officers, a Captain Chevrier.”
Vitary’s expression changed. First to surprise, then to anger. “Well, Monsieur Meurthe, I am not sure we can accommodate you.”