The Poison Tide (34 page)

‘Some you know already,’ Thwaites observed, grinding his cigarette into an ashtray. ‘Thousands of dollars to the Clan
for its help with the strikes and with the sabotage campaign, payments to Larkin and some of the other agitators; to three detective agencies – Green’s here in New York, and this . . .’ he said, running a bony forefinger down the flimsy, ‘May the third
this year to a chap called McCarthy for what friend Albert calls
a service to His Majesty at the Anderson Chemical Company in Wallington
– that’s in New Jersey.’

‘There was an explosion at Anderson’s on that day – three men killed,’ Gaunt interjected. As usual, he looked out of sorts. ‘You see – I told you it was important we lay our hands on these files.’

‘And how right you were, Captain.’ Wiseman smiled at him patiently.

‘Five days later another payment,’ Thwaites continued; ‘this time
to Dr Scheele for scientific services
. . . your Dr Ziethen?’

‘There’s a contract?’ Wolff nodded to the photographs. ‘You have an address and a company name.’

‘We’re checking. The thing is, a few days later the SS
Langdale
was damaged by fire. The doctor’s special scientific service perhaps? Almost all these entries in the ledger . . .’ he lifted the sheets, ‘. . . can be matched to some misfortune aboard one of our ships or in a munitions factory. May the tenth:
explosion at Dupont in Carneys Point
;
May the thirteenth:
SS Samland catches fire at sea
;
May the twenty-fifth:
another explosion at Dupont
,
and so on and so on . . .’

‘Yes,’ Wiseman frowned. ‘Rintelen’s been busier than we thought, and for longer.’

Gaunt dumped his hands on the table, leant forward to speak but changed his mind, content instead to glare at them defensively.

‘And the source at the bank?’ Wolff enquired.

Wiseman said, ‘Working on that, aren’t we, Norman? Friend of a friend on the board of the National City, you know – he’s making discreet enquiries. One of the clerks churning out munitions purchases – Irish or German, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Agent B-1 in Albert’s ledger,’ Thwaites chipped in. ‘He should be easy to spot because he’ll be wearing the best suit in the bank.’

The audit trail was pretty straightforward. It wandered up and down the East Coast, to Canada and even to someone with an Irish name in San Francisco. ‘No limit to the fellow’s ambition, really,’ Wiseman remarked with admiration. ‘And this chap Hilken in Baltimore – know anything about him?’

Wolff said he didn’t.

‘Norddeutscher representative in America,’ Wiseman declared. ‘Father before him too. Rich it seems, and Norman’s newspaper pals say he’s thick with the German smart set. So why is he picking our friend Albert’s pockets, eh? Tea, anyone?’ Half turning to the door, he shouted: ‘Do the honours, would you, White?’

‘He’ll be paying for German sailors caught by the blockade,’ rumbled Gaunt. ‘Look, what are we going to do—’

‘That’s what I thought at first,’ interrupted Wiseman, lifting his hand apologetically, ‘but it seems not. My banking friend tells me those payments come from an account in the company name. Is it possible . . .’ he paused, his moustache playing above a clever smile, ‘. . . well, that he’s our Delmar – if not – the contact to Delmar? We’ve talked about another show, two networks with the same old woman holding the purse strings. Albert counts everyone else’s coppers, why not Delmar’s too?’

‘Delmar, Delmar, Delmar.’ Gaunt pushed his chair back impatiently. ‘Could be nobody! Just a code word – let’s talk about Rintelen. I think it’s time we told the Ambassador. He can take it to the President.’

The kitchen door opened and White reversed through it with the tray.

‘Over here, yes, on the table,’ said Wiseman with a sigh of what may have been exasperation. ‘Clear those photographs, old boy. Sugar?’ he asked, chin raised enquiringly to Gaunt.

‘Two.’

Gaunt sat forward again and the table instantly felt smaller.

‘I’m sure you’re right, Captain,’ Wiseman cooed, ‘only, our masters do have a bee in their bonnet about old Delmar. Won’t let me rest. I think we should take a little look at Mr Hilken. Keep ’em happy, what? No lemon, I’m afraid. Here we are,’ he presented Gaunt with a china cup; ‘damn it, no cake either – what were you thinking, man?’

White said he was very sorry.

‘As for Rintelen,’ Wiseman continued, ‘I’m sure the President has more pressing concerns. No. We thought, drip, drip the story to Thwaites’ newspaper pals and the city police.’

‘Once they’ve got it you’ll lose the bugger.’ Gaunt had turned a high colour. ‘You must . . .’

‘Politics,’ said Wiseman, pushing a cup in front of Wolff. ‘Bound to go down badly – Huns blowing up factories and ships, interfering with commerce. Public won’t like them turning the country into a battleground – politicians won’t like it with an election round the corner. Small steps, Captain, let’s help America make up her mind which side she’s on – nudge her in the right direction.’

If the police arrested the Dark Invader, things would become messy, he said, glancing at Wolff. He wasn’t the sort to blab under pressure but the city’s finest could be very persuasive. Putting him out of business mattered the most.

‘Enough here to see off old Gaché and his business, Scheele, Koenig and those rogues in the detective agencies,’ he remarked, stirring his tea slowly. ‘As for the Irish – well, it ain’t a crime to take German money – look at all the fellows on Wall Street – the best we can hope to do is embarrass them, there’s nothing we can magic up here,’ he waved his teaspoon over the table, ‘nothing that will put more than the foot soldiers away. And we mustn’t drag you into all this,’ he said, turning to gaze at Wolff; ‘you might look like a provocateur. We’ve got to keep our hands clean. Don’t want the President thinking we’ve been flaunting the laws of his country too. Besides,’ he paused, stroking the end of his moustache thoughtfully, ‘we need to keep you in play.’

Wolff didn’t reply. His first thought was the body of the little spy; Rintelen would surely know by now. Strangely, his second was of Laura.

‘Sebastian,’ prompted Thwaites.

‘You look tired,’ said Wiseman, oozing sympathy. ‘Your leg? Must let a doctor have a look at you. Accident?’

Wolff lifted his eyes to the ceiling for a second. ‘I had to kill one of their men,’ he said, dropping them to Wiseman’s face.

‘Oh?’ the baronet returned his gaze impassively.

‘Messy business. He stabbed me. I stabbed him. Anyway, if they’ve found his body the game’s up for de Witt.’

For a few seconds no one spoke, Thwaites shuffling his papers, Gaunt swilling the dregs of his tea. They must have killed, thought Wolff, just not a man in a bowler hat, not close enough to smell his breath or feel it hot on your cheek.

‘Can we move him?’ Gaunt asked at last.

Wolff said he didn’t think so; it was probably too late.

‘And von Rintelen, have you seen him since?’

‘To drink champagne;’ and he told them of the risk he’d taken in making the rendezvous with McKee, of the dockyard and boarding the ship, and the meeting at Martha’s. While he was speaking, Gaunt rose from the table to prowl the sitting room like a caged bear. ‘What were you thinking, man?’ he blurted at last, unable to contain his anger. ‘Isn’t one enough!’

‘You mean the ship?’

‘Of course I mean the bloody ship,’ he shouted.

Thwaites intervened: ‘Steady on . . .’ but he was swept aside as Gaunt’s pent-up resentment broke in a torrent. ‘You gave Wolff too much rope,’ he declared, addressing himself to Wiseman. ‘Now this – another ship, another bloody . . .’

‘It hasn’t exploded yet,’ the baronet observed calmly.

‘But he shouldn’t have put us—’

Wolff slammed the palm of his left hand on the table: ‘It won’t explode.’ He rested his head in his right hand. ‘Look, that’s why I did it. I couldn’t trust you . . .’ the words tumbled wearily from him, ‘. . . not after the
Blackness
. Did you mean to? I wonder. I couldn’t take the risk, and they’d have asked someone else – and it was easy, you see, they knew it would be . . .’

Thwaites touched his elbow gently. ‘Sorry, old boy, don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.’

‘I pierced the end of the detonator.’

‘The cigar bomb?’

‘Drained the acid, so if you want some evidence for the police, you can arrange for the detonators to be found on the ship – she’s the
Linton
, West Quay . . . sails tomorrow – there’s just time.’

No one spoke for a few seconds, Wiseman easing back from the table, his languid gaze settling on Gaunt.

‘Jolly clever of you, Sebastian,’ said Thwaites, slapping him heartily on the back; ‘clever and – well, bloody brave.’

‘Hear, hear,’ Wiseman chorused.

Gaunt hesitated, then offered his hand. ‘I say, sorry, Wolff.’

Wolff didn’t care much for his apology. He didn’t care very much for anything. The pain in his leg was worse, throbbing bone-deep; it was almost impossible to think of anything else. Their conversation he heard in snatches as if at a distance, barely marking his consciousness, the page blank, his eyes wandering from hands to faces – Gaunt fidgeting with a pen, Wiseman’s enigmatic smile – as if through the frosted bottom of a bottle.

Thwaites bent to his ear: ‘You’re coming with me. We need to get you to a doctor.’

‘I’m fine. I’ll stay in bed,’ he muttered thickly. ‘Honestly – fine. Can White arrange a taxicab?’

‘Norman’s right,’ said Wiseman firmly. ‘Must keep you safe. We need you, the work’s not over yet;’ this with a teasing smile. ‘You can afford to disappear for a few days. Goodness, by tomorrow all Captain von Rintelen’s friends will be doing the same.’

‘C
AREFUL WHAT YOU
say, Doctor,’ Hilken cautioned. Albert’s fear seemed to crackle down the telephone line. A mistake to trust so many secrets to an inflexible and guileless man. Breathing like a blacksmith’s bellows. When he found his voice, it was thin and querulous.

‘Have you seen it? They have it all – almost all . . .’

‘Pull yourself together, please,’ Hilken bristled angrily. ‘Tell me – carefully, mind – who has what?’

‘In this morning’s
New York World
, my name, and payments linking me . . .’

‘I’ll read the newspaper.’ What was he thinking? ‘A time for cool heads, Doctor.’

But the second Hilken hung up the receiver his own thoughts clouded with the worst possibilities, and by the time his driver fetched the motor car to the front of the house he was on the point of ordering his wife to pack their cases. He felt trapped behind the glass in the back and insisted on sitting beside his chauffeur. Gazing out on streets he’d known since he was a child, he trembled with resentment at the thought that he might have to leave. Life was good in Baltimore, business was good, a fine house in a streetcar suburb, the country club, a pillar of the German community: the name Hilken meant something in the city. I shouldn’t have become involved, he told himself. But what choice did I have? He was an American and a German but not, like Dilger, he was ‘an American first’.

The Hansa Haus was a brick-and-timber folly in the high renaissance style, with gable windows set in a red-tiled roof, the shields of the Hanseatic cities painted on its walls. It had opened just before the war, the new home to German interests in the city, just a few streets from the port. Norddeutscher Lloyd was on the first floor, across the corridor from the Consulate. It was half past seven in the morning and the New York papers were delivered at a quarter to eight. Hilken counted the minutes in yards, pacing the length of his office until his assistant knocked lightly and entered with a copy of the
World
. ‘
Sabotage’
and ‘
German’
jumped out from the front page and a picture of the spy ‘
Mr Gaché
’.

‘That’s it then,’ he muttered, spreading it open on his desk. But glancing through the story he found no mention of his name, and when he took the trouble to read it properly he felt a fool. It was the end for von Rintelen’s network, all right. There were details of attacks and of the bomb maker – a Dr Scheele of Hoboken – some Irish names, a reference to the military attaché, von Papen – it wasn’t clear why – and beneath an unflattering picture of Albert, the caption: ‘
German commercial attaché
bankrolls destruction
’
.
The investigation into the sabotage ring was being led by a Captain Tunney of the New York Police Department Bomb Squad, ‘
an officer of great experience and tenacity
’.

An editorial called for robust action to stop Germany waging war in America. ‘
The time may come when this country will be forced to take sides
,’ warned its writer. ‘
This illegal campaign has only succeeded in bringing the point of decision closer. It has cost British and American lives but no one has lost more than Germany.’

‘So says the
World
,’ Hilken muttered in disgust; the newspaper was in the British camp – most of them were. He’d been expecting something like this to happen – too many people seemed to know the Dark Invader’s business. It might have been a great deal worse. If that was all they had, he was safe. There were no references to the only man who tied the networks: Hinsch. Berlin would expect them to batten the hatches for a few weeks, then resume their operation in the New Year. But a salutary lesson, he reflected, wiping newsprint from his damp hands; someone had signed one of those damn contracts of Albert’s, taken his money, then squealed to the press and the police.

Sitting at the desk, Hilken wrote two short letters, the first to Albert advising him to go to ground for a while, to avoid the Broadway office, the embassy and anyone named in the story, and under no circumstances speak of their arrangements by telephone; the second to Hinsch, suggesting the same. Then he instructed his assistant to send a man to New York with both letters: ‘but take this telegram yourself.’ He scribbled Dr Dilger’s name and address in Chevy Chase on an envelope. ‘The message is simply:
Laurel 1700
. Do you have that?’