The Poison Tide (29 page)

When her ghost had left the room he rang Laura. For something to do, he told himself disingenuously.
Don’t get involved on an operation
was the third dark commandment
.
He’d slept with many women but broken it only once. After eight years the recollection still made him wince. Another brown memory.

Miss McDonnell wasn’t at home, he was informed by her aunt’s housekeeper. He left his name but no message. Absurdly, he was relieved. This is the dissonance of my life, he thought, a piece played on a badly tuned instrument, staring uselessly from another window into another street. Christ, it was going to be a long evening with only his tired memories and the little spy in the derby hat for company. Poor devil.

U
PTOWN ON THE
same evening, Dr Anton Dilger was sipping champagne with his new friend while casting warm glances at an older and very dear one. The queen of the New York night was holding court beneath a crystal chandelier in the ballroom of the German Club with the press and rich box regulars at the Met in attendance. Those who didn’t know Frieda Hempel thought her plain and a little matronly; those who did were caught in a glittering spell.

‘She’s worth more to us than a dozen old aristocrats in Washington,’ Paul Hilken whispered at his elbow. ‘Just look at Bodzansky. He worships her.’

Yes, the conductor was moonstruck; and I am too, Dilger reflected.

And yet she had greeted him in her crowded dressing room at the opera house like a stranger, large brown eyes only for Kahn, the railroad banking baron, and his friends.
Dr Dilger, isn’t it? A pleasant surprise. I hope you enjoyed tonight’s performance.
Performance. After so many months he’d forgotten that her performance didn’t end with the orchestra or in a shower of carnations at the curtain, but only when she stepped from her dress in her chamber – and sometimes she was the self-conscious artiste in silken sheets too. She’d cut him because he’d spoken proprietorially, too eager to impress his new friend Hilken, yes, cut him, humiliated him, left him seething with embarrassment, just to remind him she was a prima diva who belonged to everybody and to nobody. Confounded, he was inventing lame excuses when a dresser found him, with an invitation:
Frau Hempel would like to invite the doctor and Mr Hilken to a reception to be given in her honour.

Hilken was a member of the German Club. He was a member of a good many clubs, Dilger had discovered in the course of the three days they’d spent together. It was Hilken who’d persuaded him to enjoy some society, visit the homes of other Germans, share a box at the opera.

‘There’s nothing to be gained from hiding in the country with your sister. Live a little, Doctor. That’s what people will expect,’ Hilken had assured him. ‘Then you can return to your laboratory with a lighter heart.’

Dinner one night at Delmonico’s, the next at the Waldorf. By the time they reached the bottom of their first Latour, they understood each other perfectly. They were more or less the same vintage, good Germans both – Hilken from Baltimore – they shared the same dry sense of humour, the same shameless hauteur, the same taste in women. He was slight of build with the sort of boyish good looks that, in Dilger’s experience, appealed to ladies who were ready to lie about their age. Of the laboratory and their work, they had barely spoken. ‘We’ve used the first batch here and in Boston,’ was all Hilken ventured of their operation, ‘but that’s Hinsch’s business.’ For the first time since arriving in America, Dilger had managed to forget why he was there for a few hours, to pass a night without waking.

Frieda was hanging from Bodzansky’s arm now, smiling indulgently, head bent a little but with her eyes lifted beneath long lashes to his face. The conductor said something amusing and she laughed a perfect little portamento, lifting her hand gracefully, forefinger crooked as if grasping the neck of a violin.

‘Applause, please,’ Dilger muttered irritably.

‘The Austrian Jew?’ enquired Hilken. ‘They say he worked for Mahler.’

Dilger didn’t give a fig who the fellow had crept to; for goodness’ sake, why did everyone make such a fuss of musicians? Then she caught his eye, amusement playing on her lips, and he loved and he hated her for provoking him, and he wanted her, and hoped she felt the same.

‘Ah. That’s a pity.’ Hilken shifted at his side. ‘I think we should leave.’ He stepped closer, turning his back on the room. ‘There’s a club we might try.’ The waiter was hovering with a bottle of champagne but Hilken waved him away.

‘No, just a minute,’ Dilger protested, presenting his glass. ‘What’s the hurry?’ He’d only just managed to catch Frieda’s eye.

‘We should be careful.’

‘I’m always careful.’

Hilken shifted his position again, sipping his champagne to disguise the turn of his head. ‘The man in the dark suit – to the left of Mencken . . . see him?’

Short and dapper, hair swept back from a high forehead, military bearing, late thirties, a nonchalant air and easy to discover amongst the guests floating about the ballroom because he was almost the only man who wasn’t in white tie and tails.

‘Von Rintelen. He’s using the name “Gaché” but a lot of folk here know who he is. It would be better . . .’

‘I know,’ interrupted Dilger. It had been the Count’s last instruction: keep the operations separate, the circle tight, no chances, and he’d mentioned von Rintelen by name.

‘But disappearing in a puff of smoke would be worse,’ he declared with a tart confidence that he knew owed more to his determination not to let Frieda slip away than to an honest appraisal of the risk. She was drifting in to dinner on someone else’s arm, a preening banker perhaps, a shipping magnate or manufacturer, the sort of club patriot who toasted the Kaiser one day and his enemies the next.

‘You haven’t mentioned my name to von Rintelen, have you?’

‘Of course not,’ Hilken retorted hotly. ‘But you know, Hinsch sees a good deal of him.’ He pressed two fingers to his lips anxiously. ‘And he drinks too much. But I’m sure . . .’ Precisely what he was sure of, and why, he wasn’t at liberty to say because the subject of their whispered conversation began walking purposefully across the knotted pile towards them, his arms folded like a German genie.

‘Hilken, what a pleasant surprise,’ he said smoothly. ‘You were at the opera? Mencken says Frau Hempel was sublime, but isn’t she always?’

‘Always,’ Hilken replied, shifting his weight uneasily from one leg to the other. ‘May I present my friend, Dr Dilger.’

Rintelen turned to gaze at him amiably.

‘A German from the state of Virginia,’ Hilken continued. ‘And you studied at Heidelberg University too, Doctor?’

Yes, Heidelberg, Dilger said, and he’d spent a good deal of his childhood with his sister’s family in Berlin. ‘I was working in a hospital. Can’t fight, I’m an American citizen.’ Rintelen’s smile was set like concrete but his gaze flitted restlessly about Dilger’s face. ‘I lost my cousin in the first few months,’ Dilger continued, although he knew he was offering too much information, too quickly, ‘and, well, I wanted to do something for . . .’

‘Mr Gaché is a Swiss, Doctor,’ interrupted Hilken impatiently.

Rintelen’s eyes danced across to him for a moment, then back to Dilger. ‘But he’s told you,’ he observed coolly.

‘Yes.’

‘What has he told you?’

‘That you’re a German officer.’

Rintelen nodded crisply. Another waiter was hovering at his elbow with a bottle but he refused and Dilger felt obliged to follow his example. Perhaps it had been a mistake to accept the last time. The reception was over, the prima diva had left the stage. Patrons with the deepest pockets were to dine privately with her; the rest must step from the light and the warmth, edging out of the ballroom with flushed faces, champagne voices on the stairs, cloaks and hats in the lobby, carriages at the gate.

‘You are a friend of Germany’s, Doctor . . .’

‘I
am
German, Mr Gaché.’

‘Of course, yes.’ Rintelen bowed his head apologetically. ‘Then I can rely on your discretion?’

‘You can.’

Those sharp little eyes were still trying to discover the truth in the lines of his face, chin raised slightly, sniffing the wind, scenting or sensing another story. Hilken had said Rintelen was cocksure but good at getting things done. It seemed absurd to Dilger; two men fighting the same fight in a fog of suspicion.

They talked stiffly for a few minutes more, of the latest from the Front, of Washington and Wilson’s promise to keep America out of the war, then Rintelen made his excuses.

‘He’ll want to question me,’ Hilken remarked gloomily as they watched him leave the ballroom. ‘“Can your friend be trusted?” – that sort of thing. There’ll be a note at the hotel asking me to meet him at Martha Held’s.’ He paused, smoothing his trim little moustache. ‘I don’t know why he’s so fond of the place; it’s not as if he touches the girls.’

‘You’ve nothing to worry about – if Hinsch has kept his mouth shut.’ Dilger shook his head; honestly, he didn’t care. He was tired of that sort of intrigue. Like the foul soup he mixed for the cultures in his cellar, the smell seemed to cling to him, assaulting his senses. An evening that had begun with promise beneath the sunburst chandelier at the Met was slipping into shadow. What did it matter that there were other men in her life, that she’d snubbed him and kept him waiting? She held his imagination in thrall. It was her world, she made its laws, and he was her servant to command because she could make him forget everything and everyone else. Forget and laugh quietly at the stupidity of it all. ‘You see, Anton,’ she’d said once, ‘I’ll play many parts in my lifetime.’ Tonight he wanted it to be the lover.

Hilken was still speaking in a confidential tone as they walked down to the lobby, but he left at the foot of the stairs to summon a carriage. Two minutes later he was back with his cloak over his arm and a sly smile. ‘The porter was instructed to deliver this on pain of death,’ he declared, presenting a pink envelope on the palm of his hand like a tray. Dilger lifted it to his nose at once – as she must have known he would – and smiled as a kaleidoscope of memories danced through his mind to a head note of jasmine. Tastes, colours, the sweet ambered fragrance of Frieda’s warm skin, and it wasn’t necessary to read her letter to be sure it was a promise to be with him tonight.

‘If I arrange a meeting with Hinsch for ten o’clock tomorrow, will that be satisfactory?’ Hilken enquired artfully.

‘Perfectly,’ he replied.

In the end it wasn’t satisfactory. Stumbling into clothes, room curtains drawn, Frieda in her tumbled sheets, back turned, awake but silent, and by the time he had reached his hotel, washed and changed, he was almost an hour late. He listened with only half an ear as Hilken gave an account of his evening with ‘the Dark Invader’. ‘Yes, he calls himself that,’ he said disdainfully. ‘He says they’ve planted bombs on a dozen ships, a train, a factory, and in other places, I forget where. There’s no limit to his ambition, it seems.’ He frowned, biting his bottom lip thoughtfully. ‘He’s going to go down in a blaze of glory. Do you think Berlin expects him to? Your Count Nadolny?’

‘I can’t imagine he does,’ Dilger replied distantly.

‘Sure?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows quizzically. ‘Perhaps Rintelen’s meant to fall. A “
fall guy
”,’ he enunciated it carefully in English. ‘That’s what they say in prison, I believe. Just cover for our operation.’

Dilger sat straighter, disturbed by the suggestion. ‘That’s too devious.’

‘You think so?’ He plainly didn’t agree.

Hinsch chose to meet them in a smoky little café on the Lower East Side, the windows opaque with grease.

‘No one will see us here,’ he said without irony. ‘Want something?’ He clicked his fingers for the waiter and with a flick of the hand gestured crudely to the ripped leather bench opposite. ‘Sit down.’

While they ordered coffee Hinsch played with his cup, a spoon, the cuffs of his blue suit, then his cigarettes, his head bent heavily over the table; so close Dilger could see a vein pulsing in his right temple.

‘You don’t look well, Captain,’ Hilken observed. ‘Too much beer?’

‘Ha,’ he grunted bad-temperedly. ‘Too much beer, you think? I was doing my job. Haven’t been to bed;’ and to prove it, he ran a rasping palm over his chin. ‘Where were you? Champagne in the Chelsea?’

‘No, champagne at the opera. Not your sort of thing, but a very pleasant evening,’ Hilken replied, breezily. ‘Thank you for enquiring.’

Hinsch scowled but said nothing and for a minute or two they sipped their coffee in silence, avoiding eye contact, the purpose of their meeting crackling uneasily between them like electrostatic.

‘You were on the Jersey side?’ prompted Hilken at last.

Hinsch was examining his hands, picking distractedly at a piece of dry skin. After a few seconds he took a cigarette from his case, tapped it lightly on the top and lit it, inhaling very deeply.

‘Captain?’

‘Yes, all right, I heard you,’ he replied crossly. ‘Look, we have a problem.’ He paused to draw long on his cigarette again.

‘A problem? Come on, man, explain yourself.’

He ignored Hilken, his gaze settling on Dilger. ‘How long will it take a man with one of your diseases to die?’

‘What on earth . . .’

‘No. Let the doctor speak,’ Hinsch insisted. ‘How long?’

‘Which one?’

‘Anthrax.’

‘Do you know how he caught it?’

‘No.’ He ground the rest of his cigarette into an ashtray. ‘Look, I haven’t seen him; he’s in hospital.’

‘He’s in hospital!’

‘I said so.’

‘Oh God.’ Dilger leant forward with his elbows on the table, his forehead in his hands as if in prayer. ‘I don’t know, perhaps a week – less if he inhaled spores.’

‘Calm yourself, Doctor,’ Hilken whispered. He turned his head deliberately to check the café.

‘There’s no one. I’ve seen to that.’

‘It seems as if you’ve seen to rather a lot, Captain,’ Hilken remarked sharply.

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he replied indignantly. ‘I told the fool, “No mistakes or you’re done for.”’ The sick man’s wife had contacted one of Hinsch’s lieutenants at about half past eight, just as the Queen of the Night was making her first curtain call. ‘He’s in a ward at the Bellevue.’