The Poison Tide (45 page)

Masek glanced across. ‘Don’t worry. I look after her.’ He reached for the door handle.

Wolff nodded. ‘Leave me the car keys.’

He didn’t see them again for six hours. Only once did he risk leaving the motor car to stretch his legs. At one o’clock he moved the Ford to a small lot further from her apartment but with a view of its third-floor windows. There was a lamp on in the drawing room where they’d danced and he thought he saw a figure fleetingly at the curtains, although he couldn’t be sure. He wondered if it was Laura’s aunt until a taxicab dropped her at the door a short time later. Then Laura appeared, head bent, a frown on her brow as if she were pondering the shape of her next suffrage speech or the rising in Ireland or just the sound of her footfall on the sidewalk. ‘She caught train to Chambers Street, number 51,’ Masek said, settling in the seat beside Wolff. ‘A bank – something to do with church – took lift to tenth floor. She was there a long time. Masek very bored, tired, hungry, think British should pay him more.’

‘Mention it to Captain Gaunt, why don’t you?’ Wolff remarked.

Masek smiled wryly. ‘She come down at last – speaking to an old man, grey beard, bushy like this,’ he held his hands beneath his chin, ‘brown jacket – patches here and here,’ and he touched his elbows.

‘Devoy,’ said Wolff; ‘one of the Irish leaders. Clan na Gael meets in a judge’s office above the bank.’ It was where he’d met Laura for the first time.

‘She talk to the old man few minutes then go. Think she heard bad news. Looked sad. She cry a little on train.’

Wolff felt a pang. ‘Something the old man said to her?’

Masek shrugged.

They took turns to stretch their legs and grab something to eat. Masek returned with a bottle of liquor and five packets of cigarettes. ‘We find men to help us?’ he suggested.

‘Tomorrow – if we need to.’

But the little Czech didn’t have time to remove the top from his bottle before a taxicab drew up to the kerb. Laura appeared at the window, glancing up and down the street. Without a word, Masek pushed the starter and slipped the Cadillac into gear.

After a couple of minutes the door of the apartment block opened and Laura stepped out to speak to the cab driver. She looked anxious, her right hand to her temple. Turning most of a circle, she checked the street again, then walked back to the door.

‘Not a good spy,’ Masek observed laconically.

‘I think she’d take that as a . . . hello.’ Dilger was scuttling across the sidewalk, his hat pulled down over his face. Swinging at his side was the brown leather doctor’s bag he’d given to Hinsch in the parking lot at Laurel.

‘Is it him?’ Masek enquired.

‘Yes, it’s him.’ His bloody bag had been sitting in Laura’s apartment. Now it was in the back of the cab between them.

Masek swung the Cadillac out of the lot.

‘Not too close.’

Masek gave Wolff a reproving look.

The last of the sun was blinking in the windscreen as they drove west towards the Hudson. The taxicab turned left on 12th Avenue to run along the river, stopping briefly for lights at the Recreation Pier. They tried to keep their distance but Masek was afraid they would lose the cab in the evening traffic.

‘You think it’s a trap?’ he asked, braking for another set of lights. ‘Why this woman? I think it’s because of you.’

‘I think so too,’ Wolff said. ‘I’m not sure why. Perhaps they suspect me, perhaps they’re testing her.’

The traffic was flowing left on to 14th Street and Wolff was expecting the cab to do same, but at the junction it pressed on along the waterfront towards the abandoned piers running into the river opposite Castle Point. They bumped over granite setts in pursuit, passed empty and boarded warehouses, navigation buoys rusting on their sides, the carcase of an old tug on stocks, cranes, cables and carts, the dockyard detritus of decades that might have been heaved from the river by a great harbour wave.

‘Drop back,’ Wolff commanded. It was dusk now and if the cab driver had a mirror he would notice their lamps.

A few hundred yards more and the cab turned to the right and was lost behind a warehouse.

‘Pull up, they’re stopping.’

Masek guided the Cadillac into the shadow of the same building.

Reaching under his seat, Wolff lifted out a waxed canvas package.

‘Honey and plenty of money.’ It was Thwaites’ service revolver.

Masek frowned. ‘Don’t understand.’

‘Nor do I,’ said Wolff. ‘Wait here.’

It was just a few yards to the corner of the warehouse. The taxicab had come to a halt at the entrance. Parked beyond it were three more motor cars, the largest Hilken’s burgundy-and-orange convertible. Dilger had climbed down from the cab with his bag and was offering to help Laura but she was in no hurry to rise. Two men came out of the warehouse, the elder of the two, Devoy, his Old Testament beard sickly yellow in the light spilling through the open door. He shook Dilger’s hand, then leant inside the cab to say a few words to Laura. She had sheltered and delivered the doctor and her task was complete. Wolff was relieved when, a moment later, the taxi pulled away. He waited with his back pressed to the wall as the cab turned in a large circle to return the way it had come. Devoy had escorted Dilger into the warehouse and shut in the light. But by the dim glow of the city Wolff could see the silhouette of a driver lounging against the hood of a motor car. He was going to have to take a chance. Cocking the revolver, he put it back in his pocket, took a deep breath, then stepped forward like a man with an urgent appointment to make.

The chauffeur heard his footfall. Stamping guiltily on his cigarette, he turned and was plainly relieved to find a stranger. Heart pounding, Wolff opened the door of the warehouse and glanced inside. ‘They’re in here?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He felt a moment’s relief: the corridor was empty, gloomy, double doors at the end, to the left an iron staircase. Stepping lightly, quickly, damp fingers round the grip of the gun, he paused at the door to listen to voices and judged them only feet away. Christ, I should burst in and shoot the bastard, he thought. Instead he settled for the stair, moving carefully in the darkness, a steadying hand to the wall as he felt his way up the last few steps. The door at the top was stiff and he needed to ease it open with his shoulder. He misjudged the pressure; it grated and he froze, holding his breath, expecting a shouted challenge or the ring of boots on the stair. A cold night but he was perspiring, his shirt clinging to the small of his back. Through the open door a confused echo, movement, voices, someone speaking English, issuing instructions perhaps. After three or four minutes he was calm enough to try again. This time he was able to prise it free without a sound and in the blue light from a gallery of broken windows he could see a broad iron gantry, thick with dust and glass and pigeon shit. In a pool of light on the empty warehouse floor beneath it, a dozen men stood about a table, most of them dressed in pea coats and woolly bonnets, and in their midst the distinctive shaggy grey head of John Devoy.

Dropping to his knees, Wolff emptied his pockets, placing the revolver carefully by the door, then crawled forward until he was almost directly above the lamp and in the middle of the circle. He could see Dilger in the shadow at its edge, whispering to a heavily built man with a moustache who looked like Carl, the driver of the Winton in the station lot at Laurel. The medical bag was sitting on the table.

Bang
. Wolff almost jumped out of his skin as the door beneath the gantry swung heavily to, starting pigeons from the rafters and making the men on the floor flinch. A few seconds later Hinsch rolled into the light with Hilken in tow at his heels.

‘Doctor, you can speak to them now,’ he announced in his thick English.

Dilger muttered something Wolff couldn’t catch in reply and stepped up to the table.

‘I’ll be going, then. Until tomorrow.’ Devoy was shuffling from the circle. ‘Good luck to youse all,’ he declared, addressing his remarks in particular to the men – his men. ‘Beidh an lá linn. Remember – our day is coming.’

Dilger had removed from his bag, gloves, a mask and a box of phials like the one Wolff had taken from McKevitt.

‘My brother’s shown you what you must do?’ he asked, turning to his companion with the horseshoe moustache. Someone replied very sullenly in the affirmative.

‘Be sure to wear these when you handle both the phials and the sugar cubes.’ Dilger held up the mask and gloves. ‘If you don’t, you’ll . . . well . . .’ He paused to let them ponder the consequences. ‘If you’re careful you should have no difficulty; it’s a simple procedure.’

‘Do not let the enemy catch you,’ Hinsch barked. ‘Throw the empty phials over the side.’

Over the side. Christ.
Shifting his shoulders, Wolff craned further out from the edge of the gantry to examine the men more closely. Their clothes, their gestures, one man lifting his cap to scratch a bristly scalp, another slouching against an old packing case, the bored silence, the careless ease with which their minutes slipped by, as if whiling away the early hours of a watch at the rail of a ship: Wolff knew these men. He’d seen them beaten by the sea, wrestling with warps on a heaving foredeck; he’d seen them paralytic and gazing at the stars, heard them grouse, terrified then elated; he’d seen them in all moods, all weathers.

‘. . . and if you can’t use the syringe,’ Dilger was telling them, ‘use the sugar cubes.’ He’d taken a small package from the box. ‘Wait as long as you can – a day or two days from port would be best – no sooner. That is most important – vital. Any questions?’

‘And these gloves will be enough to keep us safe?’ one of the men asked, with just the suggestion of Irish in his voice.

‘And a mask, yes,’ Dilger replied. ‘Anything else?’

No one else spoke. They’d clearly been well schooled by Dilger’s brother.

‘Good,’ said Hinsch, nodding to Carl.

Wolff watched Carl disappear from the ring of light, returning a minute later with two packages wrapped in brown paper and string. He lumbered into the darkness like a fat German Santa, repeating his delivery until there were eight parcels on the table. The dust-dry spirit of Dr Albert floated about the warehouse as the sailors stepped forward to sign for a parcel and pay. They left at once, cradling their packages in the crook of an arm or against their chests, relieved to be away, their pockets jingling with money earned for Ireland’s cause. Did they know they were poisoning not just the animals but soldiers too? A lot of thoughts flitted through Wolff’s mind as he lay on his side in the filth. That Casement couldn’t know. That it was a bargain without principle, shaped by someone subtler – a man like Nadolny. No, Roger couldn’t know, not Roger, not Laura. They were being used by ruthless men, servants of their own empire, Devoy too perhaps, and Ireland. And what the hell to do about it?

With the sailors gone and no one to address, Dilger and his companions were speaking in no more than a conspiratorial whisper. It made the warehouse feel a colder, a more dangerous place. From the little Wolff could gather they were housekeeping, with mention of Devoy, travel arrangements, security checks: it was impossible to be sure. The doctor picked up his medical case and they began to drift from the light, pausing only at its edge for a few more words and long handshakes. Hilken said something funny and there was a little nervous laughter. They were on edge and wanted to be away. A moment later the door beneath the gantry banged again, the circle of light disappeared and Wolff was alone. His shoulder and hip were numb and he’d strained his neck peering out over the iron lip, but he lay still a few seconds longer, breathing deeply. Somewhere above him the beat of pigeons’ wings. I’ve spoilt my coat, he thought, with a wry smile. He was too relieved to care.

From his vantage point in a derelict shed, Masek had watched Dilger and the others leave the warehouse. Minutes later he saw Wolff do the same.

‘The doctor travelled with Hinsch,’ he observed as they walked to the motor car. ‘Maybe go back to your friend Miss McDonnell.’

But Wolff didn’t think so. ‘Drive me to a telephone, would you?’

The duty clerk at the embassy in Washington was wet behind the ears. Sir William was dining with the Ambassador and shouldn’t be disturbed, he declared, and certainly not for a man who refused to give his name and wasn’t prepared to share his business. It took ten minutes and the sort of language more commonly heard in a sailors’ whorehouse before Wolff bullied him into delivering a note.

‘Find Dilger?’ Wiseman asked as soon as he picked up the mouthpiece.

Wolff told him what he’d seen. Eight seamen, eight ships perhaps, he couldn’t say for sure. ‘They were instructed to wait until the end of the voyage before they infected the animals – horses and mules, I suppose – I don’t know.’

For a time the line crackled emptily.

‘Our soldiers.’ Wiseman sounded shocked even on a bad line. ‘They’re attacking our people, too.’ More crackle. ‘My God. I can’t quite . . . their own countrymen. It’s come to this?’

‘Yes.’

Another long pause.

‘The best men in my battalion were Irish.’ Wiseman’s sigh was long and audible from two hundred miles. ‘Sugar cubes, you say. Harder to find.’

‘Yes. If we want to catch Dilger we’ll have to . . .’

‘An American citizen, what can we do?’ Wiseman interrupted. ‘No, we have to stop those sailors, and stop the enemy sending more.’

Another silence filled only by the fizzing of the phone, as if a thought was taking shape on the wire.

Wolff spoke first: ‘I won’t recognise all of them but if the War Office and the Admiralty can hold British merchant ships here in port – the least we can do is check for Irish names.’

‘Actually, there’s another way,’ said Wiseman, a little too casually. ‘A better way.’ This time the line seemed to spit portentously. ‘That’s if you’re willing, Wolff?’

F
OR ONCE
M
R
Paul Hilken informed his wife by telephone that he would be working late at his office in downtown Baltimore. It wasn’t necessary or customary, but in the last few days he’d surprised her, and himself, by being attentive – even affectionate. It’s the uncertainty, he reflected, as he sat waiting for the call. He was frightened he would lose the things that made being married to a man like him tolerable. Hinsch had organised everything, taking it in his ungainly stride. No evidence, he said, no laboratory and no one who would dare speak to the authorities. To be sure, he’d sent the longshoreman caught with the poison to the West Coast: at least, that was what he said.