The Poison Tide (26 page)

He’d arranged to meet Laura McDonnell at Burns’ on 6th Avenue. Volunteers were needed to distribute flyers at a strike rally, so she had volunteered him. ‘But if you have a rendezvous with Mr Gaché I forgive you,’ she said when they met at the restaurant.

Stop British Tyranny in Ireland.
He handed back the leaflet. ‘Telephone me tomorrow if you’ve any left,’ he suggested casually.

‘I’ll have found someone more reliable by then.’ She looked down at her hands then up at him with a smile, her large eyes twinkling with good humour.

‘You said you were going to forgive me, remember?’

She laughed, and tossed her auburn hair. It had a wicked lustre.

‘I’ll take some advice from Mr Devoy,’ she teased.

The motor car was where it was supposed to be, its driver bolt upright behind the
Staats-Zeitung
. He refused to say where they were going but sat awkwardly at the wheel, his large hands squeezing it too tightly, as if he were wrestling the life from a large snake. He drove south-west towards Elizabeth, but clear of Jersey City he made a left off the highway, bouncing down to a fringe of woodland above the bay. Twilight was dropping to a darker blue, Bayonne winking on the opposite shore. Four large steamers were riding at anchor in a line, waiting for a berth at Port Newark. Somewhere, the thump, thump of heavy machinery echoing across the still water. Stamping hard on the gear pedal, then the brake, the driver brought the Ford to a sudden stop. A few yards ahead, in the long shadow of the trees, two men were climbing from a motor car. Wolff recognised Rintelen’s slight frame. He greeted Wolff with a jaunty wave and walked briskly forward to offer his hand.

‘Your visit to Dr Albert, it was satisfactory?’ He was dressed like a theatre impresario in a homburg hat and ankle-length coat.

‘Quite satisfactory, thank you,’ Wolff said.

‘Good. Well, we don’t have any time to lose. First let me present Dr Ziethen.’ He turned to his elderly companion. ‘Step forward, Doctor. The doctor is a distinguished chemist and the designer of our bomb.’

‘At your service.’ Ziethen nodded stiffly. He had the air of an old soldier, sporting a thick grey moustache of a sort fashionable in Bismarck’s day, but was dressed in a light grey sack suit like a prosperous New Yorker.

‘Dr Ziethen is going to demonstrate his ingenious device,’ Rintelen declared, rubbing his small hands with relish. ‘Doctor, would you?’

They walked to Ziethen’s motor car and their driver lifted a trunk down from the back seat. Inside it were at least twenty of the cigar-shaped detonator casings Wolff had seen in the ship’s workshop.

‘You drove these here?’

Ziethen blinked at him indulgently. ‘Perfectly safe, Mr de Witt. Here . . .’ and he tossed one to Wolff. It was surprisingly light; smooth and round at one end, flat at the other. Hollow inside but for a copper disc pressed and soldered halfway along its length, Ziethen explained; at one end of the device, picric acid, at the other sulphuric. It was simple but ingenious.

‘You understand?’ he asked.

Wolff nodded slowly. ‘I think so. The acid eats through the copper disc and the device detonates?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you set the time by altering the thickness of the copper disc?’

‘Correct,’ interjected Rintelen. ‘The beauty of it is, the acid melts the lead leaving almost no trace, so no one knows what caused the fire. But we will show you. How long, Doctor?’

‘How long?’ Ziethen lifted a watch from his waistcoat. ‘Just a few minutes, I think. Yes.’

‘No longer, I hope. We have a busy evening,’ Rintelen observed, glancing impatiently at his own watch.

Ziethen had set one of his devices in the long grass a few yards away, its position marked by a white peg. They stood side by side peering into the gloom like naughty boys waiting for a firecracker. Wolff lit a cigarette and had almost finished smoking it when a blinding flame burst from the device at last: white-hot, stiff, twelve inches high and completely silent.

‘You see?’ Rintelen demanded.

It burned for less than a minute. Fifty-three seconds precisely, according to the doctor’s pocket watch. Nothing remained of the casing but a few hot lumps of lead.

‘Just a question of putting our firework in its proper place.’ Rintelen bent to pull the white marker from the ground. ‘Your job, Mr de Witt,’ he said, tossing it into the trees. ‘But there are some arrangements I must make, if you will excuse me,’ and he turned to stride back to the motor car.

‘I’ve packed them in paper,’ Ziethen observed, at his side. ‘Try and keep them upright. Four will be enough, don’t you think?’ He coughed and looked down, shifting the scorched earth with the toe of his boot. It was made of fine Italian leather.

‘Place them near some combustible material. They may not burn long enough to ignite a shell, but if you manage to, get a good fire going. Perhaps you know this.’ He spoke ponderously and with a phrasing that suggested the flat farmland and long winters of East Prussia.

‘And how long will the fuse – the discs – last for?’ Wolff asked in English.

Ziethen hesitated, his hand drifting to his moustache. Was it supposed to be a secret or was he just surprised to be addressed in English?

‘Three, four days. Until the ship is out of American territorial waters,’ he replied in English.

‘Gentlemen, please.’ Rintelen summoned them to the motor car. He was standing in the circle of light cast by its lamps, a small briefcase in his right hand. It was seven o’clock but seemed later, darker. Wolff’s driver was sitting behind the wheel of the other motor car with the engine running.

‘Is our comrade ready, Dr Ziethen?’ Rintelen asked.

The doctor was examining his boots, recalling the white flame perhaps, or his bank draft from Albert, or the little redhead at Martha’s who crossed her legs just so. Or was it because he didn’t answer to the name ‘Ziethen’ as a rule?

‘Doctor!’ Rintelen dragged him from his stupor. ‘Please, Doctor. Does our comrade know all he needs to know?’

Ziethen glanced at Wolff, then nodded.

‘Good.’ Rintelen held out the case. ‘So, Mr de Witt, the opportunity you have been waiting for.’

The case was made of light-brown leather and would have looked well in the hands of a Wall Street banker.

‘You want me to . . .’

‘Yes.’ Rintelen thrust it towards him again. ‘Hinsch is waiting for you.’

Wolff lifted it carefully by the corners, then by the handle. ‘New York?’

‘Hans, your driver, will take you there,’ he said with a smile. ‘Good luck.’

Wolff held the case steady between his knees as they crawled back to the highway. If Hans was anxious, he gave nothing away. Just obeying orders: weren’t they all? There was nothing Wolff could do but sit tight until he was alone, a tenth of an inch of copper from incineration. If it didn’t end badly on the road there might be an opportunity to dump the detonators in the Hudson. He felt calmer on the highway. For a time the rhythm of the engine acted like an anaesthetic, his thoughts drifting and dissipating, just as they used to when he pounded the hard-baked fenland lanes of home.

They drove down to the Jersey waterfront, rumbling cautiously along cobbled streets, between brick warehouse blocks and busy dockside bars, sailors staggering along sidewalks, stevedores emptying from a shipyard gate. Then on past a freight train wheezing in a siding, across the tracks, turning left at a mission chapel, pulling up at last beside a patch of wasteground.

‘This is it?’ asked Wolff.

Hans didn’t answer but reached forward to extinguish the car’s kerosene side lamp. On the opposite side of the street, a dockyard wall and the sharp silhouette of cranes, Manhattan bright across the water. Wolff reached into his jacket for his cigarettes. It was colder and his hand trembled a little. Perhaps it was fear. His chest felt tight, his head ached too. ‘Look, do you have a light?’

‘There,’ replied the driver, nodding to the street. Someone close to the end of it was signalling with a small light, swinging it like a wrecker luring a ship to a reef. ‘All right, we are coming,’ he muttered, and he swung the Ford away from the kerb.

Hinsch greeted Wolff with his customary scowl. ‘You’re late.’ He was standing by the wall with two burly longshoremen he introduced in heavily accented English as Walsh and McKee. Wolff recognised McKee as one of the men he’d seen at the strike meeting with the leaders of the Clan.

‘The bombs?’ Hinsch asked, pointing to the case.

‘Yes.’

‘Then put these on.’ McKee handed Wolff a stevedore’s cap and a threadbare woollen coat that was too small and made his chest feel tighter still.

‘It is good,’ Hinsch observed. ‘You can go,’ and he nodded to McKee.

‘Hell’s teeth, what am I . . .?’

‘The job you were paid for, de Witt,’ he snapped in German.

At the end of the street they turned right and followed the wall for a hundred yards to the gates. Christ, they’re not going to be fooled by a flat cap, Wolff thought, the briefcase brushing against his suit trousers. But McKee must have arranged everything because the guards let them pass without a word. ‘Don’t open your mouth,’ he warned, as they walked across the yard. ‘I’ll see everything straight.’ They stopped by the door of a warehouse and he disappeared inside, returning after only a few seconds with a sack. ‘Put the case in this.’

Three piers ran at right angles to the quay, with three ships alongside. Munitions had been loaded aboard the nearest and an engine with empty wagons was waiting to leave the dock. Stevedores were shifting through its steam like wraiths, caught in silhouette against the arc lamps for a second, then away.

‘The
Blackness
of Liverpool. Three holds: two fore, one aft,’ McKee whispered as they walked towards her companionway. ‘Artillery shells for the Russians. You know what to do?’

Yes, Wolff knew what to do. Christ, he hoped he wouldn’t have to do it.

Groups of longshoremen were drifting towards the quay, their work over for the night. Two men stopped to speak to McKee, glancing at Wolff, at his shirt cuffs, at his suit trousers, at the sack.

‘They’re still in the forward hold,’ McKee reported, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, his hand at his lip. The engine screeched a warning that made them flinch, and with an impatient whoosh of steam, began to trundle along the pier. McKee touched Wolff’s arm. ‘Will one hold be enough for yer?’

‘I can’t tell.’

He cleared his throat nervously. ‘All right, let’s get it over with now.’

The guards at the foot of the gangway were armed with rifles but dressed like storekeepers in cheap cloth coats and caps, gold badges pinned to their chests. Private security, Wolff guessed, perhaps something to do with Koenig or his contact in the café, the man with the old Empire moustache.

McKee sidled up to the one without a rifle. ‘Brendan? McKee. The fella from Clan na Gael.’

‘You’re late,’ the guard called Brendan grumbled. He was another Irishman. His eyes met Wolff’s for a moment, his face florid, with the small broken veins of a drinker, a nasty scar splitting his top lip. ‘For God’s sake, couldn’t you find this fella a coat that fits,’ he complained. ‘Look, put these on,’ and he dipped into his pocket for three of the shiny badges. ‘Anyone ask, you work for Green’s. Green’s Detective Agency. All right? And whatever you’re doing, make it quick.’

One of Brendan’s men escorted them up the gangway and they were met at the top by another. A junior officer was on watch beside him at the rail. He glanced complacently at their badges and away, flicking his cigarette end over the side in a shower of hot ash. Under the upper-deck arc lamps, sailors were stowing the ship’s loading booms. Hatch number one over the for’ard cargo hold was sealed, hatch two still gaping.

‘Hey, what yer doing?’ They’d caught the eye of a mate.

‘Green’s,’ McKee shouted back, pointing to his badge. ‘Inspection.’

‘Says who, Paddy?’ the mate asked, stalking towards them, his shoulders rocking belligerently.

‘Says me,’ replied Wolff, in a military voice that startled them all. ‘Says His Majesty’s Government. This is a security inspection, a random inspection.’

The mate looked nonplussed. ‘No one said . . .’

‘It wouldn’t be a random inspection if they had, would it, man?’

‘You are, sir . . .?’ enquired the mate tentatively.

‘Didn’t I just say? I work for His Majesty’s Government.’ Wolff spoke with the cut-glass confidence of one who presumes to be recognised as an English gentleman even in a stevedore’s cap. ‘The hold next, I think. Number two.’ His authority was vested in his broad
A
and his precise
aitch
: the sort of commanding performance possible only with subjects of the Empire.

The mate stared at him sullenly for a few seconds, then nodded obediently because he was from somewhere like Birkenhead and lived in a two-up two-down with a family to feed on eight pounds, three and six.

Just what the hell am I doing? Wolff wondered as they escorted him to the lower deck. He hadn’t the time to think it through; it was the smell of the thing now. He’d come too far for excuses.

‘Stay here,’ he demanded, releasing the dogs on the hold door, but he wasn’t surprised that McKee ignored him: Hinsch must have instructed him to stay close. Inside it was damp and smelt of rotting vegetables, perhaps the ship’s last cargo. The shells were stacked in two blocks, a gap the width of a man’s shoulders between them, five hundred identical crates, a thousand, maybe more. If he didn’t plant the detonators carefully, he would have the devil’s own job retrieving them. Six crates from the left of the door and six crates up from the deck. ‘Help me with this one, will you?’

They lifted it down and McKee produced a jemmy, forcing it with a splintering crack. ‘Jesus.’

‘Hey, what’s going on?’ It was the voice of the mate. Walsh was blocking the door. ‘Just a little accident,’ they heard him say.

The dim light kicked off the burnished steel of six high-explosive shells.

‘This will do,’ muttered Wolff. ‘Here,’ and he tossed one to McKee. ‘A souvenir.’

‘What the devil . . .’