The Poison Tide (12 page)

‘You’re wrong.’

‘Don’t be a fool.’ Wolff slipped off the ledge and took a step towards him. ‘This is a dirty business, you can’t imagine.’

‘Sir Roger wouldn’t let them.’

He sounded very sure – cocksure. Wolff glared at him until he looked away.

‘He isn’t going to fall on his knees and beg them to spare you, Adler.’

‘No? Why not?’ His finger was trailing over the architect’s wife again, from her hair, to her forehead, to her nose, to her lips. ‘He’s fallen on his knees for me before, you know.’

Wolff felt a frisson of disgust before he was entirely sure why. ‘I don’t know what you mean and I’m not sure I care to know.’

‘Yes you do, I can see you do,’ he said, smirking. ‘That’s why he’ll always want
me
, not you, you see – for what I let him do.’

Wolff stared at him coldly: filth. A liability. He would have to go. In the Grünewald forest perhaps, the body in the Havel. For a few seconds Wolff wanted to do it. Of course that fool Findlay should have told him.

‘You see . . .’ prompted Christensen, watching Wolff closely. ‘Leave it to me. Keep away. I’ll get you what you want.’

‘Shut up, Adler. Shut up.’ Wolff grabbed him by the collar and shook him. It wasn’t easy; he was a big man. ‘Do what you and Casement do . . .’ he paused, ‘. . . if you must, but you’re a bloody fool if you think he’ll save you. They don’t give a damn about him. If they catch me, they’ll probably shoot him too.’

‘Get off me,’ Christensen said, brushing Wolff’s hand from his collar. His eyes had narrowed to slits beneath his heavy brow. ‘They care about him. He’s helping them, here and in America.’

Wolff took a step back and leant against one of the columns. ‘How?’

‘Are you going to pay me?’

‘So you’re still in business?’ He stared at Christensen for a moment, then reached into his jacket for his wallet. ‘It better be good.’

‘I copied it from his diary. You’d be surprised what there is in there,’ he said with a little chuckle. ‘All sorts of little secrets.’

‘Oh?’

‘But nothing that would interest you,’ he added sheepishly.

‘It might.’

‘No, it wouldn’t. Look, here are my notes.’ He was suddenly keen to talk about something else.

Wolff glanced at them, then at Christensen.

‘From his diary, you say?’

‘Yes. He copies important documents into his diary.’

‘Word for word?’

‘Yes.’

It was the text of a minute from the Chief of the General Staff of the Army.

‘It’s word for word?’ Wolff asked again. His voice cracked a little. ‘Word for word?’

‘Yes, didn’t I say so? From Falkenhayn.’

‘Yes.’ Wolff folded it carefully into his pocket.

‘It’s good – isn’t it?’ prompted Christensen.

Wolff smiled at him. A few minutes earlier he had wanted to finish their arrangement. Now he was hungry for approbation. Knowing how to please was his living.

‘It’s good, Adler, yes. It’s very good. First rate.’

It was worth the forty. More. Much more. Even a tight bastard like C would say so.

S
HE’D TAKEN
H
ABER’S
army revolver from the desk, stepped into the garden and shot herself in the chest. The boy had found her by the light of an almost full moon. His face was still covered in her blood three hours later, eyes wide, uncomprehending, ignored by everyone.

They had carried his mother into the house but she’d died before the doctor could arrive. Nadolny was dining with the Foreign Minister and Count Blücher when the police rang to notify him. He made an excuse and left at once. He didn’t care a fig for Frau Haber. In so far as he’d formed an opinion of her, it was of a clever but hysterical woman whose outbursts were distracting the professor from his work. She had solved that problem.

It was a little before midnight when he arrived at the house. No one had thought to clean her blood from the steps or the porch, and it trailed along the hall into the drawing room. Haber was in his study with a police inspector, ashen faced, chewing on his cigar, puzzled and a little shocked but in control of his emotions. One of the desk drawers was open and he was showing the inspector where he had kept the revolver.

‘My dear Professor, I’m so very sorry,’ Nadolny said, advancing across the carpet to greet him.

‘Count . . .’

‘No, please don’t get up.’

He pulled a chair closer to the desk and listened as the inspector asked his questions. ‘She said she couldn’t bear it – I’d betrayed her, and I’d betrayed science.’ Haber gave a heavy sigh, pressing the ball of his thumb to his forehead. There were more angry words, it seemed; a nightly occurrence in the week since Haber’s return from Ypres.

‘Shouting in front of the servants. I was at my wits’ end. “Gas is a perversion and you’re a criminal,” she screamed at me when Baron Kiehlmann came to dinner. He must have thought she was mad.’

‘My dear fellow, she was unwell, that much is obvious,’ replied Nadolny carefully.

‘Then, tonight, she begged me to stop. Begged me. “Stop this madness,” she said. I was leaving for the Russian Front in the morning, you see, our first release in the east. But the tears, the threats . . .’

There was nothing for the inspector to discover. Nadolny impressed upon him the need for total secrecy: nothing in writing, his men to speak to no one, the servants to receive the same instructions. Frau Haber was very ill, he said; the war was having a terrible effect on people; another casualty, a tragic business.

‘There’s the funeral to arrange. Can you send a message to my unit?’ Haber asked when the policeman had gone. He was slumped in his chair as if the stuffing had been pulled from him, his uniform jacket crumpled, ash on his sleeve.

‘My dear fellow, I’ll make the arrangements.’ Nadolny patted his arm. ‘When is your train?’

Haber looked at him for a moment, then away. ‘No, Count, I have to stay. Hermann, my son, he found her, you know. He’s only twelve.’

Nadolny stood up and walked slowly about the room, stopping to gaze at the thick green spines on the shelves. The only work of literature was a copy of Heine’s
Buch der Lieder
. There wasn’t much poetry in the professor and he guessed the book must have belonged to his wife. Yes, her name was on the flyleaf and the inscription:
To Fritz on his birthday, with the hope that these songs will touch his heart.

‘Captain Haber, it’s your duty as a German officer,’ he said, slipping the book back on the shelf. ‘The Field Marshal won’t attempt to break the line without a gas attack. After Ypres, it’s only a matter of time before the Russians start issuing their soldiers with respirators.’

Nadolny walked back to stand above Haber, his hand on the back of the chair.

‘It’s a question of the maximum tactical advantage.’

‘And Hermann?’ Haber asked, looking up at him uncertainly.

‘You have family? Then I will arrange for Hermann to visit them. Now when is your train?’

The boy was sitting alone in a corner of the drawing room, his gaze fixed on the revolver. The police had left the weapon on a table just out of his reach. At least they’d had the sense to unload it, Nadolny thought, picking it up and wrapping it in his coat.

‘You must go to bed, Hermann.’ Haber held out his hand. ‘Come.’

Was it the first time they had spoken since the death of the boy’s mother? Nadolny wondered.

He watched Haber lead his son upstairs, then instructed the servants to have the car ready at six o’clock. A maid was on her knees scrubbing the steps in the moonlight when he left: everything would be in order by the morning.

Clara Haber’s death wasn’t reported in the newspapers. Her neighbours were instructed to forget the crack of the shot and the policemen at her door in the night. Her husband’s colleagues at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute knew better than to ask questions, and there was no need for an autopsy. So Frau Dr Haber was buried without fuss in a quiet corner of the cemetery at Dahlem. The small congregation of family and a few friends heard the pastor speak of her role as the wife of a great chemist and as a mother. It was just as the professor would have wished it to be. It was a pity that important duties kept him at the Front: ‘a noble sacrifice,’ the pastor remarked in his sermon. Nor was Count Nadolny able to pay his respects. As the final prayer was recited, a clerk was escorting him along a corridor at the Military Veterinary Academy.

Professor Troester was sitting in silhouette with his back to a long window, sunlight pouring across his desk, dappling the polished floor and the glass cabinets that lined two sides of his office.

‘Does Doctor Dilger know?’ Nadolny asked, dispensing with pleasantries.

‘I haven’t told him,’ Troester replied defensively. ‘Does it matter? The woman was mad.’

‘I think it would be wise to say nothing. I hope the good doctor will be in America by the end of the month.’

‘He’s grown his first cultures,’ Troester picked a handbell from the edge of his desk and rang it; ‘but it isn’t difficult in a laboratory environment.’

With a tinkle of china cups a clerk came into the room and placed the tray on a bureau.

‘How much equipment will he need?’ Nadolny enquired.

‘Nothing out of the ordinary – nothing an American doctor won’t be able to acquire. Coffee?’ He nodded to the clerk.

‘Setting up a laboratory won’t be difficult, but he will have to carry phials of the bacilli to America – that is troubling. If his luggage is searched and they’re discovered, well, you can imagine the consequences . . .’

They sat in silence while the clerk served the coffee then slipped from the room.

‘On reflection, the consequences are quite unimaginable,’ Troester added. ‘I’m not a politician but America, international opinion, the law . . .’ He frowned and his gaze dropped to his hands.

‘My dear Professor, don’t trouble yourself with matters that aren’t your concern.’ Nadolny picked up his cup and held it to his mouth. ‘Our task is to help him execute this operation without being caught,’ he sipped his coffee, ‘and I’ve assured the Chief of the General Staff he won’t be.’

‘Yes, well, I’m sure I know my duty, Count,’ he replied, tetchily. ‘I have something to show you.’ Rising from his desk, Troester stepped over to a filing cabinet and lifted a stiff brown leather case from the top of it. ‘We’ve prepared this for the operation,’ he said, carrying it back to his desk. ‘As you can see, it looks something like a doctor’s bag, but the sides, well, they’re more robust and . . .’ he slid open the two brass locks, ‘. . . there’s a hidden compartment here.’

Nadolny got to his feet and bent to look inside. ‘Most ingenious,’ he muttered. ‘Isn’t it rather an unusual shape?’

‘Do you think so? He’ll be able to carry two phials of E and of B.’ Troester gazed over his pince-nez at Nadolny. ‘That will be sufficient to culture enough of both pathogens to meet your requirements – if he isn’t—’

‘But you’ve found the perfect solution,’ interrupted Nadolny, waving his ring at the case.

‘No, no, you don’t understand. If it’s handled roughly by a steward or the police, one or more of the phials will break and, well, you’ll lose your spy . . .’ he closed the bag, snapping the locks back into place, ‘. . . and a good number of other people too.’

‘That would be unfortunate. We won’t find anyone more suitable than our friend the doctor.’

‘Yes, I can see that, yes. It’s only . . .’

‘Please, Professor,’ prompted Nadolny. ‘There’s something else?’

‘Probably nothing.’ Troester took off his glasses and examined them thoroughly. ‘Only that he’s an American.’

‘Yes, that’s why we’ve chosen him. I’m sorry but you’ll have to explain.’

‘Simply, will he have the necessary resolve to go through with it when he’s there?’

Nadolny pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I believe so,’ he said at last. ‘One of my men followed him to a patriotic review and noted he was singing and cheering with the rest – louder than most.’ He smiled. ‘And he has quite a following in Berlin society, never short of an invitation – dining at the Kempinski, a regular at the Fledermaus
,
always gracious, especially to a lady. Often to be seen in the company of Frieda Hempel.’

Troester looked uncomprehending.

‘The opera singer, my dear Professor, the opera singer – really, you should enjoy life a little more,’ he teased. ‘Yes, he’s been observed at Frau Hempel’s apartment in the sinful hours. So, setting aside his late cousin and his other family ties for a moment, I think I can say with confidence that he’s embracing Berlin life to the full.’ Nadolny paused to lift his cup again. ‘And, as good fortune would have it, Frau Hempel has an apartment in New York too.’