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on that spot, seeing his mother, seeing baby Xabier wailing on the
     floor, seeing his father drift toward a vanishing point. Mariangeles extended the arm that was not holding their baby. She
     pulled Justo close, and he joined her on the bed, leaning his head on her shoulder.
    Manfred von Richthofen awoke congested. The cold and misty weather didn’t help, as a strong easterly wind carried a chilly
     bite. His allergies compounded the problem, attacking him as they did every spring. He took medication to clear the congestion.
     After all, it wouldn’t do to have the Red Baron, who had just claimed kills seventy-nine and eighty the previous evening,
     going around with the sniffles.
    Aggressive and deadly in the cockpit, the Red Baron was nonetheless admired for his chivalry, a carryover from the nineteenth-century
     mores that guided his caste of Prussian noblemen. Stories told of him writing letters of sincere regret and condolences to
     the widows of victims. One wounded British pilot was shepherded by von Richthofen to a German base to be taken prisoner. On
     his second day in the German field hospital, the English pi lot received a half-dozen cigars, a present from the Red Baron.
    His “Flying Circus” had recently added another von Richthofen. In addition to his brother Lothar, a veteran ace with his own
     renown, von Richthofen now also commanded his young cousin, Wolfram von Richthofen. Although new to flying, Wolfram was given
     a precious Fokker triplane.
    “If we come across the Lords, circle above the action,” the Red Baron told his cousin, using his pet name for British fliers.
     “Watch and learn.” Veterans told new pilots that they could fly above the skirmishes and not be targeted; it was how young
     pilots on both sides eased into combat.
    Royal Air Force planes from the aerodrome in Bertangles, near the Somme River in northern France, spotted nine Fokker triplanes
     and engaged. As the combatants met and separated into lethal pairs, the Red Baron circled behind a British Sopwith Camel and
     opened fire, but his guns jammed. Above him, Wolfram von Rich-thofen strayed too close to the action, and an eager young enemy
     pilot could not resist the target. Seeing his cousin’s peril, the Red Baron disengaged from his dogfight to drive off the
     British attacker, who veered wildly up the Somme canal.
    Perhaps unable to free his weapons, perhaps sluggish from the medication he’d taken, the Red Baron failed to score the kill.
     The normally omniscient von Richthofen also did not notice a Camel rallying from behind and diving steeply in his direction.
     At little more than a hundred yards from von Richthofen’s flame-red Fok-ker, the RAF pilot opened fire. The wounded Red Baron
     broke off into a climbing bank to his right.
    Whether struck by fire from the plane or by rifle shots from nearby Allied ground forces, the Red Baron absorbed a mortal
     wound. He managed to land the Fokker in a paddock near the Saint Collette brickworks. British and Australian soldiers raced
     to the plane as von Richthofen shed his goggles and tossed them over the side of the cockpit. He turned off the engine to
     reduce the chances of a fire. When the soldiers arrived, the famed Red Baron looked at them with resignation and uttered his
     final word.
    “Kaput.”
    Of course they heard their daughter Felicia slipping into Josepe Ansotegui’s room every night, and they recognized the sounds
     of frantic young lovers’ failed attempts at stealth. Moans muffled by pillows can be confused with no other sound. Alberto
     Barinaga and his wife acknowledged that Felicia was nearing her eighteenth birthday, and Josepe was a good young man, so they
     were intentionally indifferent to their couplings, and they did a passable job of voicing surprise when the two announced
     their plans to be married.
    Every crew in Lekeitio attended the ceremony. At Josepe’s side were his brothers, Justo and Xabier, both wearing starched
     white