The Poison Tide (21 page)

‘Not yet. We must wait for nature to take her course.’

For a few seconds there was only the line. Then he laughed nervously. ‘“
That I may smite thee and thy people with pestilence . . .
”’
His voice sounded shaky and he laughed again to disguise his embarrassment. ‘Well, goodbye, Doctor. Take good care.’

H
E SAID HIS
name was Mr Emile V. Gaché. He said he was Swiss but even Martha Held’s ‘ladies’ knew that was a lie. He said he was a banker, also a barefaced lie. He said he was a friend to Germany and in that at least there was truth.

‘What do you want from me?’ Wolff asked him after an hour of questions and lies.

‘You do not feel comfortable?’

‘It’s very intimate . . .’ Wolff waved his hand languidly at the waitress serving drinks and displaying her cleavage to the gentlemen on the couch opposite.

‘It is safe. Martha is a patriot,’ and he raised his glass to the spirit of the large operatic lady who was their hostess. ‘And you, Mr de Witt?’

‘Me? A businessman, I told you. More of a businessman than you, I think.’

He laughed – a strange, strangled laugh like a yelping dog. ‘An entrepreneur in the spirit of our times,’ he offered; and he was dressed like one, in an expensive suit and spats, fashionable middle-aged businessman or broker – more than a disguise or affectation; military in his bearing but in everything else trade, second or third generation – a new patriot. Convincingly good humoured for a vain man and a German officer. A little older than Wolff, early forties, with a large straight mouth, thin hair swept from a high forehead and sharp little eyes.

‘Our mutual acquaintance, Count Nadolny—’

‘Yes, the Count did mention you,’ he interrupted. ‘I like to make up my own mind.’

‘So do I,’ replied Wolff, rising impatiently from his chair.

‘Mr de Witt,’ he leant forward, his arm raised; ‘wait, please.’

Wolff stared at him for a moment, then resumed his seat.

‘Thank you. More wine.’ He turned to look for one of Martha’s girls, then got to his feet, fastidiously smoothing imaginary creases from his perfectly pressed trousers. ‘So, please, I will be just a minute.’

Wolff watched him weave across the drawing room to where Miss Held was holding court at a table. Fifties, full figure, auburn wig and frills; madam by night, German matron by day. Front of house an ordinary brick row, drawing room sinful Parisian silk and velvet, with couches so soft a small man might drown. Martha’s young ladies – coy smiles and laughter, ‘
. . . everything light, darling . . .
’, squeezing the hand of a burly German businessman, draped on the arm of a sailor’s chair, ‘Champagne! More whisky!’ Oh, such
Mädchen
.

‘Correct. I’m not a banker,’ he said in a low voice, sitting beside Wolff again. ‘Champagne?’ He began to pour. ‘Captain Franz von Rintelen of the Imperial German Navy at your service.’

Wolff raised his glass in salute.

‘You’re a man who enjoys taking risks, correct?’

‘For the right price.’ Wolff put down his glass, took out his cigarette case and offered it to Rintelen. ‘No?’ He lit his own and reached for the ashtray. ‘I do have
some
principles.’

‘Of course, you are an associate of Sir Roger Casement.’

‘He doesn’t like to use the title,’ said Wolff, ignoring his ironic smile. ‘I’ve told you something of my history. If I can be of service to Germany, well . . .’

Rintelen’s sharp little eyes flitted about Wolff’s face like a persistent bluebottle. ‘So, I may have something that will suit you,’ he said at last. ‘There is someone I want you to meet first, another . . . entrepreneur.’

Captain Friedrich Hinsch was playing skat in the room above. He’d drunk too much, he was losing, he was in a foul temper, and the table breathed a collective sigh as he scooped what was left of his money into a sweaty palm and rose to join them. He was big and rough and rolled like a steamer in a gale, weather-beaten, a beetle brow, black calf-length boots over a grey suit, soap beneath one ear, a shock of blond hair, careless with his appearance, and the sort of man who would enjoy squaring up to anyone foolish enough to say so. He was expecting them and knew a little of de Witt’s story but was plainly unimpressed. ‘Don’t trust a man with more than one country,’ he grumbled.

‘Captain Hinsch is an . . .’ Rintelen slipped apologetically into English, ‘old salt.’

‘Hey, a beer.’ Hinsch waved to one of the girls.

‘And Mr de Witt is a man of principle.’

‘Principle.’ Hinsch spat it back sceptically.

‘But at a price,’ Rintelen continued. ‘He is an engineer, and he has experience of handling explosives.’

‘You
have
been talking, Mr Gaché.’

Rintelen coloured a little but ignored the jibe. ‘My associate is the master of the
Neckar.
He has been here since the beginning of the war . . .’

‘Almost a year,’ Hinsch interjected.

‘His ship is, what do the Americans say – “interned” – interned in Baltimore, a prisoner of the British blockade. But you have not been idle, Captain Hinsch, have you? Ah. Here we are.’

As the girl served Hinsch his beer, his eyes wandered proprietorially from her face, down her long neck to her chest – daringly décolleté, of course – and he tipped her like a regular.

‘An engineer, you say?’ He paused to wipe froth from his mouth with the back of his chubby hand. ‘Know about ships?’

‘I’ve worked my passage a few times,’ Wolff replied coolly, ‘when things were difficult. Know my way about an engine room, know why the
Titanic
sank.’

‘Ah, very good.’ Rintelen picked up the champagne and leant forward to fill his glass. ‘But would you have been able to sink her?’

‘A little thought, a lot of explosive.’ He shrugged. ‘No such thing as unsinkable, is there? Some of us never forgot that.’

‘Easy for the right man, perhaps,’ Rintelen sucked his teeth, ‘sadly, there are too many of the wrong sort.’

‘Too many stupid buggers,’ barked Hinsch.

‘Good people are not easy to find,’ Rintelen observed with a weariness that suggested he’d tried.

With that, they seemed to have said all they wanted to say about ships and explosives and began to crawl through de Witt’s life again, family, war, his work – ‘the Dutch East Indies, you say, and after that?’ He’d told the story so often that it was his own; like flicking a switch in the brain, his memories now, every taste, every smell, the dust of the Highveld scouring his face, engrained in his pores.

‘But now you must enjoy yourself,’ Rintelen said when he had finished scribbling in his pocketbook. Meet Clara. Clara would be his friend for the rest of the evening. ‘She’s a good girl,’ Hinsch whispered like a beery pimp. Poor Clara. Slender, twenties, small breasts, sweet round face, tired combat eyes. Too bored and drunk to be their spy. What would Martha Held say about the drink? It wasn’t good for business. But Clara could still manage it, sweating and groaning, faking it for a few dollars; it just took practice. The lie was all part of the service, that’s why it was a profession. Wolff knew the routine, knew the tricks, goodness, wasn’t it the same? Didn’t the Bible say so somewhere? Clara could probably perform in her sleep. But not with him, not this time.

‘Brought up by a God-fearing mother,’ he whispered to her, removing her fingers. ‘Here,’ and he offered her a few dollars.

‘No, no,’ she protested, placing her hand firmly back on his thigh.

‘Yes, yes, take it. And, Clara . . .’ His gaze drew her attention to Hinsch. ‘Stay away from him. He isn’t a nice man.’

She didn’t understand but smiled weakly and took his money.

The clock in the lobby at the Algonquin struck two while he was collecting his key at the desk. In the corridor, a shine was placing the shoes he’d cleaned at their owners’ doors. Cowboy boots for a country boy; a young couple at 903, small feet, perhaps Italian or Spanish; and Wolff’s neighbour was an Englishman, his shoes from a Jermyn Street shop. At his own door he bent and ran fingertips over the carpet: the grit he’d sown was trodden deeply into the pile and the hair he’d fixed across the lock was on the step.

The following morning he sent a coded message to Mr Ponting
at the Consulate office in Whitehall Street. They met in the dark corner of a downtown restaurant a few hours later, and he told the naval attaché the little he’d learnt at Martha’s.

‘I suppose Rintelen is checking your story,’ Gaunt observed, stirring a third spoonful of sugar into his coffee.

‘Most likely.’

‘It’s watertight, don’t worry.’

Wolff frowned. C had used the same words before the fiasco in Turkey.

‘Something the matter?’ Gaunt asked.

‘He has a monstrously high opinion of himself, but he isn’t a fool. Perfect English. Energetic. Can’t keep still. Likes everything to be “correct”. Let’s hope he’s in a hurry.’ Picking up his coffee spoon, Wolff peered at his reflection in the back of it. ‘If he is, I’ll get the job. If he isn’t, he’ll kill me.’

‘You sound a little windy,’ Gaunt scoffed. ‘Don’t overdo it. Look, got an address? I’ll put someone on to him, Hinsch too.’

Wolff smiled. ‘He’s your neighbour – staying at the Yacht Club.’

‘Bloody hell!’ Gaunt choked on his coffee. ‘He’s a German.’

Wolff decided to prepare for the job by moving somewhere more discreet. He settled on a comfortable first-floor apartment in a red-brick house on the Lower East Side, at the edge of
Kleindeutschland
. The landlord was a Jew from Lvov, his neighbour a voluble Italian; there was a Russian family upstairs and a bent old lady from Posen lived on the ground floor with her cats. Not a patch on the Algonquin but the sort of place an out-of-work engineer counting his coin might wish to rent for a while. Shabby but respectable, furnished with dark old-world pieces his landlord had accepted as rent from the previous tenants. Terms included a maid and a kosher meal if he wanted it, typically
lokshen
,
gefilte
fish, or something made with chopped liver. His sitting-room window looked over East 5th, one broad stone stair to the front of the house, fire escape into a dark courtyard at the rear, private telephone in the hall, sturdy locks and a bolt.

Before he left the hotel, he sent notes to Ponting
and Gaché. The first telephone call he made from the apartment was to Miss Laura McDonnell.

‘I thought you would choose somewhere . . .’

‘Smarter?’

‘Downtown.’

‘Yes.’

The line crackled for a few seconds, then they began to speak at once.

‘I interrupted, please,’ he said.

‘Only that Nina, Mrs Newman, thought – thinks you’ve forgotten her.’

He smiled with secret pleasure. ‘Sorry. You know, looking for the apartment, making contact with business people . . .’

‘I’m sure she understands . . . when you have the time.’

He said he would write to her at once, and he hoped Miss McDonnell remembered her promise to act as his guide to the city. She said her name was still Laura and it wasn’t a promise – but she agreed to meet him nonetheless.

Coats and scarves already, a breezy blue September day with white horses in the bay, struggling to hold the
Tribune
open, the front page full of the first British gas attack in France.

‘It isn’t the city,’ she said, when he proposed they catch the ferry to Coney Island. ‘I thought you wanted a guide to the city. What about Liberty Island? Have you been?’

‘No,’ he lied.

They caught the ferry from Battery Park pier.

‘Oh dear, if only I’d known we would be on the river,’ she declared, trying to hold her hair beneath her hat.

‘You’re regretting it already.’

‘Yes,’ she said, with a teasing frown.

She made him climb to the top of the green lady so she could number the buildings on the Manhattan skyline from the balcony. He was happy to listen, prompting her with a question from time to time even when he knew the answer. She was conscious that he was gazing at her and tried not to catch his eye. Why have you come, Laura? he wondered; did they tell you to? But his instinct told him ‘no’, that she was smart but guileless, and intrigued by Mr Jan de Witt.

‘The first of the New World,’ she said as they strolled round the platform, their heads bent into the wind. ‘You know, my father says he cried when he saw this statue from his ship. Ah, you smile. Sentimental Irishman, is that it? Doing what he was supposed to do? My father doesn’t cry.’

‘Look.’ He pointed to the flame above their heads. ‘A bit battered and tarnished, isn’t it?’

‘You’re joking, I see,’ she observed tartly. ‘Bit of an old cynic. Does Roger know?’

‘I don’t know; “perhaps” to both.’

She turned towards him, small gloved hand on the rail, the Jersey shore at her back. ‘Then you’re sure to think me a fool. You see, I have faith in our journey. I’m an optimist. I believe in this . . .’ she lifted her arms like a vestal beseeching a goddess. ‘Think what you like. Naïve American if you like. I believe in progress.’

‘Why?’ He closed his eyes for a second and shrugged. ‘It isn’t inevitable. Here, read today’s newspaper.’ He tried to present it to her but she ignored the offer.

‘Horrible. They’re as bad as each other,’ she insisted, im-patiently sweeping a loose lock of hair from her face. ‘But when this madness is over, well, we’ll build something better.’

‘For the world or just for Ireland?’

‘Here and in Ireland; everywhere in time – for women too. Universal suffrage, liberty, equality; that’s our trajectory, our duty, isn’t it?’

She was trembling with passionate intensity, her green eyes indecently large. He wanted to kiss her. She didn’t give a fig what the other visitors thought of her. Perhaps they were like him and couldn’t see more from the balcony than the stains on Liberty’s copper skin.

‘You’ve risked your life for freedom.’

He shook his head a little, as if to say ‘what of it’.

‘Stop it,’ she commanded, letting go of the rail. ‘Cynicism is poison. You’re trying to provoke me.’

He smiled. ‘I wouldn’t dare. But you’re confusing me with Roger.’