The Poison Tide (40 page)

‘How far now, Carl?’

Carl glanced at Dilger, a happy smile lifting the corners of his thick moustache. ‘Not far, Anton
.
Thank God! Should have put on another pair of socks.’

Carl was six years older but he’d always looked up to his younger brother. ‘You got my share of the brains, Anton,’ he often joked. He was a fine brewer, but a poor businessman. ‘It’s good of you to find him something,’ their sister had said when he explained that Carl was going to help in the laboratory. He didn’t say why it was necessary and Emmeline didn’t ask. Carl would be a capable technician, once he learnt how to be careful. ‘Easier than a good beer,’ he’d observed, ‘but nothing to enjoy.’ A few days into his new work he’d suggested using the basement to brew some – ‘There’s room, Anton’ – and sulked when Dilger had told him not to be ridiculous.

‘Look out!’
The Winton swerved to avoid a buggy at the roadside.

‘Sorry, Anton
.
The pig had no lamps.’

They were approaching the creek, only twenty minutes from home.

‘Did Captain Hinsch say when he wanted the next batch?’ Carl enquired tentatively.

‘We didn’t agree a date.’

It had been a bad-tempered meeting, although it wasn’t necessary to say so.

‘I think you’re ready to handle the cultures on your own,’ Dilger observed. And you’ll have to, he wanted to confide, but it wasn’t the right time. He would tell his sister first
.
He felt guilty leaving them and worried about what would happen to the laboratory when he’d gone. Was it right to have embroiled Carl? Sooner or later someone would make a mistake and the police would roll up at the door of the little house in Chevy Chase; but he would have gone. It would be Emmeline and Carl on the front page of the papers. Before I leave I’ll tell him he can walk away, he thought, but he knew his brother wouldn’t. For the first time in a long while Carl felt important. ‘I’m a spy,’ he’d boasted, over a tub of their evil-smelling soup. ‘Will Berlin give us medals?’ ‘I expect so,’ Dilger had lied.

Now he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. This was dishonourable.

‘All right, Anton?’ Carl touched his shoulder. ‘Headache?’

‘Tired, that’s all.’

‘Well, nearly home,’ Carl said, swinging the Winton right into 33rd Street.

And there was the Dutchman, de Witt. ‘Sniffing about,’ Hinsch had dropped into their conversation sheepishly. ‘Berlin’s not sure about him.’

Not sure? What the hell did he mean by that? Hinsch had shrugged. ‘New information.’ Dilger had said nothing to his brother. He wondered if he ought to. Hinsch had urged him not to worry: ‘Keep your shirt on, Doctor, I’ll fix de Witt.’

‘Our sister’s waiting,’ Carl observed, as the Winton pulled up in front of the house. ‘Wonder if she could fix me something.’ It was midnight but the lights were on in the parlour and before he could cut the engine Emmeline was at the door.

‘Y
OU CAN’T BE
sure.’

Wolff said he was as certain as he could be of most things. If they didn’t believe him they might return to their beds.

And Gaunt held up his large hands: ‘Just an observation, Lieutenant, that’s all.’ He wasn’t the bastard he used to be. As the Germans say:
Not the cock who crows on the dungheap any more.

‘Testing. Quite right,’ said Wiseman, ready with his emollient smile, palms flat on the top of his desk, perfectly groomed even though the clock in his office had just struck six. Another hour before the sun would begin to creep down the many floors of Manhattan’s skyscrapers – and another before it reached the street – if it was able to.

‘Delmar was sent by Berlin – so was the fellow Wolff saw last night at the station. If he isn’t Delmar, he’s probably working with him. I’m inclined to believe he is,’ Wiseman said, easing back in his chair. ‘Lots of questions. First of all this doctor’s bag – why? What’s the fella got in the thing? Fuss he made on the ship – must be something breakable – nastier than Ma’s best china, I warrant.’ He smiled weakly at Wolff.

‘A bomb?’ Gaunt suggested.

‘In a medical bag? Too conspicuous.’ Wiseman’s moustache twitched with amusement. ‘Imagine – Hinsch on the train – an old lady in need of assistance – if you can’t save her, my friend, why are you dressed for the part?’ He leant forward, planting his elbows on the desk, his fingertips together. ‘Is he a doctor?’ he asked, pressing them to his lips. ‘And why Laurel? German American, you say, Wolff. Might have been travelling on false papers. But we need the names of everyone the Navy brought ashore at Ramsgate . . .’ He raised his chin enquiringly.

‘Last week of May,’ Wolff replied. ‘Travelling first class.’

‘Check them all. London to organise,’ Wiseman was directing his gaze to Thwaites. ‘Coffee, anybody? Think your chap can organise some, Norman?’

‘Managed it in a Turkish trench,’ Thwaites remarked laconically.

Wolff stood up and walked to the window, shielding his body with the curtain. He’d summoned them to the Consulate because it was more discreet than the safe apartment in the early hours.

‘They clock on at eight,’ Thwaites called from the door.

‘Same funny little chap,’ Wiseman added. ‘Only does a day shift.’

There was a taxicab at the recruiting office; further up the street, a delivery at the Custom House, and a few early business birds were striding out from the South Ferry subway, tightly buttoned-up in their grey overcoats from Brooks Brothers.

‘There’s something you should know,’ Wolff declared, his voice rising to command their attention. ‘The German spy I killed . . .’ he paused, reluctant to admit his mistake: too late. ‘The thing is . . . he was a police spy, not a German one, I’m afraid.’

Wiseman picked up a pen and began turning it in his right hand, his gaze fixed on his desk blotter, and Thwaites was contemplating his shoes. ‘Christ,’ Gaunt exclaimed under his breath. ‘Christ,’ he intoned again, plangently this time, craning forward as if he was scrutinising a dangerous creature. ‘You can’t distinguish friend from foe, can you?’

‘Can anyone in this business?’ Wolff remarked provocatively. For once, Gaunt’s anger would be welcome – but he was struggling to articulate it: ‘After the ship, it’s the damnedest thing . . .’

‘Ah, coffee,’ interjected Wiseman in a ‘not in front of the servants’ voice. ‘Well done, White. Over there, please, expect you know how everyone likes it.’ The silence was filled by the polite tinkle of china cups as Thwaites’ man placed the tray on a table between the windows. ‘Plenty of sugar for the lieutenant,’ Wiseman suggested, with an impish glint in his eye. Does he know about the police spy? Wolff wondered,
or is it simply that he doesn’t care?

‘There may be repercussions with the police but we haven’t time to worry about them,’ Wiseman observed the instant the valet closed the door. ‘Delmar. We have his scent – let’s get after him. We’ve got the Czechs in Baltimore, haven’t we? Well, tell them to wake up. Better still, go there, Norman – see to things. What’s Hinsch got in his medical bag? What’s he planning? Captain Gaunt and I will inform London.’

‘You asked, “Why Laurel?”’ Wolff placed his cup on the desk. ‘That’s undrinkable.’

‘You know?’

‘A guess. The station’s halfway between Baltimore and Washington. I think they’ve used it before – they seemed to know the geography of the place.’

‘So you think he’s in the Washington area. Let’s see if London comes back with a name for us.’ Wiseman contemplated Wolff over his fingertips for a few seconds, then said: ‘And Hinsch – do you think he’ll see de Witt again? – only if it’s necessary, of course?’

Wolff shrugged: ‘It’s possible. He doesn’t trust anyone who was part of the von Rintelen operation – but I have a reputation.’

When they’d said what they wanted to, Wolff went to his apartment, poured a breakfast whisky, then another, and fell asleep on the couch. He woke in the middle of the afternoon but lay under a blanket, gazing at the shadows on his ceiling. ‘Don’t worry about the police,’ Thwaites had said to him after the meeting at the Consulate. ‘We’ll manage it.’ It was plain enough from his voice that he had known for some time. ‘Sir William doesn’t want to deflect you,’ he explained. ‘These things happen. You were protecting yourself.’

These things happen
was the kitchen philosophy of his mother when a treasured object splintered into a thousand pieces on her flagged floor. It wasn’t an adequate explanation for six inches of steel in a man’s chest or the astonishment he’d left frozen on his face.

It was dusk and the shadows had gone when Wolff was roused from his couch by the telephone. His hand hovered over the earpiece, in two minds whether to answer.

‘So you are home.’ She sounded piqued and pleased.

‘It’s been a couple of days – that’s all,’ he teased her.

‘But there are things I wish to discuss with you – I have no engagements this evening,’ she said sheepishly; ‘I know it isn’t ladylike to say so.’

He laughed. ‘But you’re free of that sort of idle convention, aren’t you?’

He felt guilty in the taxicab to Laura’s apartment but not enough to dampen his anticipation of pleasure in her company. She looked very much a lady in a finely pleated ivory gown. Her aunt fussed over her like an old priestess at a sacrifice. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’

‘She means well,’ Laura said as he escorted her to the waiting motor car. ‘It’s just that sometimes she treats me as if I were a village girl in Ireland,’ she paused, colouring a little, ‘in need of a match.’

‘I see,’ he smiled affectionately at her. ‘But she’s right, you look very beautiful.’

She blushed deeper, like the pink of a wild hedge rose, turning her face from him but not before he caught the suggestion of a smile.

They chatted and laughed as she described her last suffrage meeting in a rough neighbourhood on the Lower East Side. An Italian mama had taken exception to the barrage of insults her son was directing at the platform and chased him from the hall.

They were to dine at Sherry’s, one of the best and dearest restaurants in town. Why? she asked. For the hell of it, and in honour of St Valentine, to celebrate his birthday in a fortnight’s time, but mostly for the enjoyment of her company, he said. He didn’t need to pay Sherry’s prices for that, she assured him.

A perfectly supercilious French waiter showed them to their table.

‘Parisian,’ Wolff observed.

‘Have you been to Paris?’ she asked. ‘I want to travel, I feel so uneducated – I haven’t left these shores. My father says not while the war’s on – not after the
Lusitania.
’

‘And you always obey your father?’ he teased.

‘No. But I don’t like to trouble him unnecessarily,’ she said defensively. ‘He’s very patient with me, but protective.’

‘And he’s right to be careful,’ Wolff remarked, conscious of the irony.

He ordered oysters – Blue Points – then English pheasant, and she requested the consommé and chicken fricassee, accompanied by wine that wouldn’t embarrass the waiter. For a time they spoke of Europe, the cities Laura hoped to visit when the world was at peace, and his memories of them before the war. ‘We always speak of the future and how things should be, never – or hardly ever – of the past,’ she observed. ‘I know so little about your life – your childhood in Holland and England, and South Africa, that’s all, and yet it’s as if we’ve been friends for ever.’ Embarrassed perhaps that her voice betrayed too much warmth, she began to concentrate on her plate.

‘We are good friends,’ was all he could think to say. She lifted her gaze to his face again and offered him a hesitant smile, a promise and a rebuke. ‘We are good friends, aren’t we?’ she said softly, inviting him to say more, her eyes sparkling like the sun on the sea. He wanted to please her, to reach for her hand and shape the words:
Laura, I love you.
He wanted to tell her,
It’s true, I love you, and that is the truth.

‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘You look unhappy.’

‘No, how can I be?’ he lied, the knot in his chest twisting tighter. ‘I think I must be the luckiest man in the city.’

‘Just the city?’ she asked.

‘All right, the world,’ he heard himself say, and he tried to smile. He probably made a good fist of it after so many years’ practice.

‘Do you really think so, Jan?’

‘Yes. Don’t you believe me?’

She seemed younger and, for once, vulnerable as if she wished to speak of her feelings but was uncertain of the grammar.

‘Now, there’s something you said you wanted to discuss with me,’ he declared, trying to jolly them both. ‘New curtains? A dress? Shoes? Your best friend is considering a proposal of marriage from someone called Rockefeller? No – a part in Mr DeMille’s new picture – abducted by a bandit.’

‘You know me so well, Mr de Witt,’ she countered with a happier smile.

She was going to help a new campaigning group called the National Women’s Party, she said. Tired of being ignored by the President, they were going to picket the White House, and, if necessary, break the law. ‘Look at our sisters in England – they were prepared to go on hunger strike,’ she observed, the battle in her eyes again.

Wolff said he was glad she’d been able to dine at Sherry’s
first. She laughed and said she wouldn’t speak to him if he was going to make fun of her. But he wasn’t, he assured her; he was full of admiration – always.

After dinner he suggested they visit a club but she wanted him to take her home. They sat very close in the taxicab although it wasn’t necessary, almost shoulder to shoulder, her thigh brushing against his at every corner, her hands resting lightly in her lap. She had used some more scent in the ladies’ room at the restaurant. They didn’t talk and he sensed she was excited and tense too. A few blocks from the apartment, she turned to look at him, her face so close he could feel her breath on his cheek.

‘Would you like to dance with me? I have a phonograph and some records,’ she said.

He laughed. ‘You are a most surprising woman.’

‘Isn’t that good?’ she asked, but not in a simpering voice.

‘It’s wonderful.’ He reached for her hand and squeezed it affectionately. ‘Wonderful.’