The Poison Tide (42 page)

‘No Hinsch, then?’ Thwaites enquired, blowing the steam from the top of his glass. Briefly, at the foot of the ship’s gangway, came the reply. He was seen with a large black man, a stevedore. They’d spoken for a minute, then Hinsch had given him a package.

‘The Negro isn’t Irish, is he?’ Thwaites remarked with an unpleasant little laugh. ‘So of no interest to us.’

Wolff wasn’t sure. ‘Hinsch may have found some of his own people.’

One of Masek’s runners was inside the yard, another at the gate, two more at the flophouse or in the bar, and there was nothing for Wolff to do but wait. Rather than contemplate the stains on the hotel wallpaper, he left Thwaites to his Tacitus and walked down to the waterfront. His route took him through a salty neighbourhood of brick terraces and cobblestone streets, taphouses, whorehouses, markets and missions, empty warehouses and decaying timber wharfs that brought to mind London’s docks and Portsmouth and a score of other ports over almost as many years. At a place called Fell’s Point he stopped to gaze at the last of the sun on the water. A stiff breeze was rocking the oyster boats and beating loose halyards against the masts. From the other side of the harbour the long, empty echo of a ship’s horn. Keep moving, keep busy, concentrate on the operation, he said to himself, but the ache in his chest was there – as if he’d been kicked by a horse. Closing his eyes, he could see Laura looking up at him expectantly, a small surrender that only served to sharpen his pain: and what was his pain?
Love, loss, regret, guilt, anger, hopelessness – all those words and ones he didn’t remember or had never known.

Thwaites was waiting in the hotel lobby. ‘Where have you been?’ he hissed, pulling Wolff roughly aside. ‘You came here to do a job – Hinsch is at the Hansa Haus – the Negro too.’

They parked in front of a row of shops on the opposite side of the street, about fifty yards from the main entrance. Masek recognised their motor car and wandered over, stepping up to the back seat. ‘My man there,’ he said with Slavic disdain for prepositions. ‘Front automobile showroom. Hinsch inside with Hilken two hours, but that nothing strange – here always.’

Wolff looked at Thwaites sceptically. ‘So no need to get excited.’

‘We need to be with him all the time,’ he replied coolly. ‘If you haven’t the stomach for it . . .’

‘All right,’ Wolff held up his hand, ‘I know.’

Masek patted him on the shoulder. ‘Pretty girl – Brooklyn. I remember you. Followed you for Captain Gaunt.’ Sliding down the seat, he pulled his peaked cap over his eyes – ‘Masek have nap’ – and like a dog he was asleep and snoring gently in minutes. Wolff lit a cigarette and watched the lights go out in the large office building opposite. Clerks from the downtown business district were striding home along the Charles Street corridor or queuing for streetcars to the suburbs. The tinkling of a bell signalled the approach of another and the scramble for a seat. ‘You know it’s Valentine’s Day?’ Thwaites remarked. ‘Did you send your Irish lady a card?’

‘Chuck it, will you?’

‘Just killing time, old boy. But I say, you’re not . . .’

‘Shut up, for God’s sake.’ He nudged Thwaites with his elbow. ‘There’s our man,’ and turning to wake Masek, ‘Hey, you, any idea who the other two are?’

They were standing at the main door, the Norddeutscher house flag flapping above their head. ‘Hinsch – and that is Hilken in wool cap – the Negro do not know and . . .’ Masek pointed over Wolff’s shoulder, ‘Hilken’s driver.’ A large burgundy-and-orange Packard was drawing to the kerb a few yards from the group.

‘The Negro’s carrying something – looks like a present for his mother,’ Thwaites observed sardonically. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.

With a curt nod to his companions, Hilken walked over to the motor car and stepped into the back. The driver was plainly expecting another passenger because he stood waiting at the open door.

‘We should follow the black man,’ Wolff declared.

‘Because of his parcel?’ Thwaites sounded sceptical.

‘Because Hilken and Hinsch won’t be doing their own dirty work. Hilken isn’t comfortable with – look, here we go . . .’ Hinsch had shaken hands with his companion and was lumbering towards the motor car.

‘Hurry up, you ox,’ Wolff said between gritted teeth. The black man had set off at a good pace, faltering only to wave at one of the city’s gaudy yellow cabs. ‘We can’t wait – you go after him, Masek – don’t lose him.’

Thwaites stepped out to start the motor car and was bending over the handle when the Packard pulled away. He limped back slowly, was caught at the first set of lights, then the second. ‘Come on, man, come on,’ Wolff grumbled. Masek flagged them down outside the bank at the corner of Baltimore and Charles Streets. ‘Where you been?’ he railed. ‘Go west – go straight.’ They caught up the stevedore’s cab at the City Hall and followed it without difficulty through cobblestone streets to the harbour. Beyond the old wharfs at Fell’s Point it turned south-west into new docklands, through a dark tunnel of warehouse walls broken only by glimpses of the navigation lights on the shore, emerging after a mile in a neighbourhood of workers’ rowhouses.

Morahan’s Bar was the last building in a parade of rundown shops, at the edge of a salt marsh; opposite, a dockyard gate and chain-link fence. Single storey, windows part boarded, it was a hard-drinking place for run-ashore sailors and stevedores with piecework wages to blow in an evening.

‘What do you think?’

Masek rubbed his little beard: ‘Think dangerous.’

‘Yes.’ Wolff took a deep breath. ‘I think so too. Have you got a gun?’

Thwaites patted his pocket.

‘Then give it to me.’

‘I’m coming,’ he protested.

‘Not with your leg – not in that suit,’ Wolff insisted. ‘Masek – you come.’

The Czech touched his cap facetiously. ‘Du bist der Chef.’

‘We’re Germans,’ Wolff muttered, stepping out of the car. ‘I’ll do all the talking.’

But as they were crossing the street the stevedore appeared on the threshold of the bar again. He must have thought nothing of the approaching sailors because he pushed the door ajar and called to someone inside. His companion was young, white, well built and dressed in a longshoreman’s cap and short coat. Cradled in the crook of his right arm was the parcel.

‘Got a light?’ Wolff asked in German, stopping a few yards short of them to fumble for a cigarette.

Masek nodded. ‘Sure.’

The stevedore seemed to barely notice. He whispered something to his associate, then watched him walk beyond the circle of light cast by the parade lamps.

Wolff bent over the guttering lighter flame. ‘Hold it steady, man,’ he protested loudly. The stevedore gazed at them for a moment then stepped back into the bar.

‘Stay with him, Masek,’ Wolff said. ‘Take this,’ and he handed him the revolver.

The meadow at the end of the parade was soft underfoot and thick cord grass grew at its edge. Stumbling forward a few feet, Wolff found a path and, presuming the young man with the package had taken it, he pushed on quietly, weaving first away from the road then back, the faint glow of light from the wharf buildings behind the fence his guide. It didn’t take long to catch him. Sinking to his knees, Wolff watched the longshoreman make his way from the meadow up to the road and across to the fence. He bent over his toes to tug at the bottom of the wire: it lifted like a curtain. Then, slipping under, he ran for the cover of a warehouse. Bloody idiot – I should have kept the revolver, Wolff thought, as he scrambled after him. On the other side of the wire, he crouched to gather his bearings – twenty or so yards, three warehouse buildings, no lights, no sign of a guard. He struck out fast and low to the nearest. Back pressed to it, the first thing he noticed was the smell of shit, then a restless murmur like the breaking of waves on a distant shore, and in the seconds it took to reach the front of the building he realised that the dockyard was full of horses. Covered stables occupied two sides, an open corral the third, the administrative block along the fourth – the Union flag flying from a pole above the door. Beyond this, the dock and the dim lights of two large ships.

What the hell was he doing here? Were the ships the target, or the horses?
It was a British remount depot.
He’d seen a place like it in a New York park, and there were half a dozen more on the East Coast. Horses and mules to haul British guns, bring up the rations, and carry the luckless into no-man’s-land; from Midwest pastures by train, then sea; no passport, no neutrality – big business. A precious investment guarded by careless nightwatchmen: or was Hinsch paying them to turn a blind eye? If so, to what end?

A whinnying, the scraping of hooves and Wolff was suddenly conscious of the horses shifting in the old warehouse at his back, their shoulders shaking the planking. It was lit by only a few dim lamps so he could see no further than the first pen, but its darkness seemed to have a pulse, to breathe, move with a will, inexorably, like the tide. There was something else too – fear. Close by, an animal snorted and whinnied, startling its neighbours. Christ, he wished he had the gun.
Treading lightly on tiptoe, he advanced towards the central feeding aisle. At the corner of the first pen he paused to place the movement on the opposite side. Creeping forward a few more steps, he could see the horses stirring in the second pen, pressing together, heads high in distress. Another step, and brown packaging in the straw at the gate, a wooden box with its lid open, phials, a glass syringe with a cork on the needle, and he knew it was the contents of Delmar’s case. Crash, a horse kicked at the gate and, shying away, exposed in the murky light of a wall lamp, the poisoner and his poison, motionless, his face covered by a mask, the syringe upright in his right hand like a priest holding the host. Then he was hidden again and on the move, the horses buffeting the slats as he tried to force a way through to the first pen. If he’s running, he isn’t armed,
Wolff reasoned, and he isn’t thinking clearly
.

Releasing the bolts on the gate, Wolff eased his way in among the horses. The longshoreman was in a blue funk. Had he dropped the syringe?
Terror was infectious too, borne in the air from pen to pen, screaming, sweating, restless enough surely to worry even a corrupt nightwatchman. Ahead in the darkness the fence creaked and he heard a sound like the slapping of a horse’s haunches; yes,
closer, closer,
and he tensed to spring – but the poisoner was ready too. His needle missed Wolff’s face by inches. Instinct must have made him flinch. Grabbing the man’s right arm, holding the needle away, in desperation Wolff tried to gouge his eye with a thumb; the beasts shouldering them, locked in their dance. Then, thrusting at the man’s chin, pushing the facemask up, the needle dropping, Wolff knew his enemy was stronger, and for a second he remembered:
Christ, it was like this with the man in the derby hat.
A shower of glass and liquid as the syringe splintered in the poisoner’s hand and, grunting with fear, he loosened his grip. Wolff struck hard at his throat and he staggered back, grasping for some support. But a horse kicked out, catching him below the knee and he fell, then Wolff kicked him again – in the head – again, and again – in the back, his sides, again, again.

‘All right,’ Wolff gasped at last, ‘the syringe, what was in it?’ But the young longshoreman was curled tightly in a ball, his face hidden by his rubber gloves. ‘Come on,’ Wolff bent over him, shaking him by the collar. ‘What was in the syringe?’ He slapped the man’s head with the palm of his hand and shook him some more. ‘Tell me or I swear to God I’ll make you eat the stuff.’

‘Anthrax.’

‘Anthrax?’ Wolff grabbed his coat and was dragging him to his feet when someone at the entrance of the warehouse called, ‘McKevitt, that you?’ A Southerner, an old voice trembling with fear. ‘McKevitt?’

Wolff shook the longshoreman again: ‘You McKevitt?’

He dropped his hands at last. ‘Yeah.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘That’s Flynn and he’s got a gun.’

‘Has he?’

‘Yeah,’ McKevitt drawled. ‘Here – over . . .’ he tried to shout. Wolff caught him hard in the mouth. He tried to cover his face but Wolff punched him again and grabbed his hair, slamming his head once, twice, against the stone floor until he lay there unconscious. Then Wolff pushed through the horses to the gate, let himself out and turned to pick up the box of phials.

‘McKevitt?’ The old nightwatch was advancing slowly with a cavalry revolver.

‘Flynn? I’m working with McKevitt.’

‘Just wait there, mister.’ He waved the revolver at Wolff. ‘McKevitt said nuthin about anyone else.’

Wolff kept walking: ‘I brought the stuff for him.’

‘Don’t want to know about that – don’t wanna know nuthin’. Where’s McKevitt?’

‘He didn’t say where he was going.’

‘Now hold it there. You ain’t from here, are you?’ This time he levelled the gun at Wolff. ‘Where you from?’

‘Sure you want to know? I mean, best not to – best let me get on. You got the money, didn’t you?’ Wolff was close enough to register the uncertainty in Flynn’s weatherbeaten face. ‘You see, what you don’t know can’t get you in trouble, can it?’

‘No, no, reckon you’re right,’ he said, his voice quaking. Wolff stopped beside him and gazed down into his rheumy drinker’s eyes. ‘Forget you saw me – that would be best for you, Flynn.’

Then he left the way he had come, discarding his coat by the fence. It was stained with the contents of the syringe.

‘Is that the parcel?’ Thwaites enquired, as Wolff climbed into the motor car beside him.

‘This? This is Delmar’s box,’ he remarked grimly. ‘Fetch Masek – we need to leave – at once.’

On the journey to the hotel he told them what he’d seen and done.

The little he knew of anthrax he’d learnt as a boy growing up on a farm; a contagion in horses, cattle, sheep – a killer.

‘Evil,’ Thwaites declared, and he repeated it many times, and that only the Germans would behave so dishonourably. ‘Are you afraid you might be infected?’ he bellowed over the roar of the road.

Wolff said he was too tired and hungry to be afraid.