The Poison Tide (7 page)

‘My grandson,’ he’d explained to the shop assistant.

Everyone blamed the British. War with France was almost the natural order of things but no one Wolff spoke to – businessmen, waiters, cab drivers, the old Baron who lived in rooms at the Minerva
and spent his evenings talking to strangers in the saloon – no one understood why the British were at war with Germany.

‘Why do they want to destroy us?’ the policemen who visited his hotel wanted to know, ‘and why are you Americans helping them?’

‘Because they’re frightened of you,’ Wolff told them. ‘Frightened of losing their Empire.’

The police wanted to know his business. Two solid representatives of the city constabulary carrying out their routine check. Wolff was used to fear. It was a thick band about his chest that loosened and tightened according to circumstance: like the old torture
Peine forte et dure
. Since Turkey, Wolff understood better than anyone that there was only so much a man could bear before he was suffocated by the weight pressing upon him. This time his legend was a good one but would he be able to look them in the eye and, if he did, would it be a hunted look?

In the event, he was calm enough to arouse no more than the curiosity that was his object. De Witt’s past was waiting to be teased from him by someone in authority – at the right time.

‘The British are decadent,’ he told the policemen. ‘Germany will win this war,’ and they were satisfied with the sincerity of his loathing. After their visit he was ready to make contact with the informer.

It was a fifty-pfennigs-a-day sort of place in a quiet residential street. An elderly man with an unruly shock of grey hair was planting spring flowers in the window boxes on either side of the front door. It was the sort of risk Wolff had revelled in taking once, but as he opened the guest-house gate he was conscious only of being afraid. The outcome was more incalculable than a spinning chamber in a game of Russian roulette. He nodded to the gardener, knocked at the door and handed over to the landlady a note for Christensen. No need to cross the threshold, no need for more than a few words, no police. He felt foolish when it was over, and it was over in less than two minutes. Click. He’d pulled the trigger and heard the hammer fall on an empty chamber.

A reply was delivered to the Minerva the following day. Christensen would meet him beside the fountain in the Spittelmarkt at six o’clock in the afternoon. He was to carry a copy of the
Berliner Tageblatt.
The bellboy brought him the paper and he glanced through it at breakfast: stories of derring-do from the Front, bellicose commentaries exhorting the people to more sacrifices, German soldiers repelling British soldiers in France, Russian soldiers retreating before German ones in Poland. Who could be sure that any of it was true? But there were a few more column inches on the rifles captured before they could reach the Boer rebels in South Africa. The paper’s source could reveal that these were manufactured by Westinghouse in America.

‘We’re seeking clarification from Washington,’ Boyd told him when he visited the embassy later that morning. ‘If it’s proved, I’m afraid it might make your position here difficult.’ Wolff agreed that it might.

By six o’clock the junior employees of the state bank and business houses of the Spittelmarkt were streaming across the small square to the U-bahn and home. Christensen stood out like a sore thumb. Wolff watched him from the tram stop as he rolled round the fountain in search of a man holding the
Tageblatt
. He was a big fellow with large hands and stoker’s shoulders that shifted in his jacket like a crab adjusting to a new shell. Plain enough he wasn’t a gentleman, but there was something studied in his gestures, his expression, in the trouble he’d taken with his appearance, that suggested he wanted to be. The Spittelmarkt was too busy to be sure that he’d come alone. Wolff watched him saunter over to the newspaper kiosk, glance at the headlines, then turn back to the fountain. He didn’t notice a prosperous-looking businessman who was hurrying across the square with his arm raised for a cab. They cannoned into each other and the businessman was thrown sideways and on to one knee. Christensen bent at once to offer a helping hand but the man brushed it angrily aside and shouted something abusive. A documents case he’d been carrying under his arm had burst open and his papers were flapping about him like fish on the deck of a trawler. It was perfect. Crossing behind a tram, Wolff began weaving quickly through the crowd towards them, newspaper under his arm.

‘Not like that, you oaf,’ the businessman shouted, his face puce with rage. Christensen was trying to catch some of the papers beneath his boot.

A young clerk stopped to pick up one or two sheets and a hotel porter in the livery of the Continental was scrambling about the stones too.

‘Hold this, would you,’ Wolff commanded, pointedly thrusting the end of the
Tageblatt
into Christensen’s side. He obeyed without question, as he would have done on his last ship. Wolff took a few steps and bent to scoop up two of the businessman’s documents. He could sense that Christensen was watching him closely and turning back he caught his eye at once. There was an enquiring expression on his face and he lifted the newspaper a little in acknowledgement.

‘Take these, why don’t you,’ said Wolff, holding his gaze. ‘Do you know the U-bahn stop I will need for the east side of the Tiergarten?’

‘The Tiergarten? But I thought . . .’ Christensen looked confused.

‘Yes. The Tiergarten,’ Wolff replied with careful emphasis.

‘Leipziger Platz, then you’ll have to walk. Are you meeting someone there?’

‘Yes, in front of the statue of Gotthold Lessing . . .’

‘I’ll take those,’ interjected the businessman, snatching the papers from Christensen. ‘Damn fool. Look where you’re going next time.’

Christensen wasn’t a fool. He was careful. Wolff waited at a shop window and watched him cross from the square and file down the steps to the station. He was an easy man to follow, more than six feet tall, with blond hair, those broad shoulders, and dressed in the sort of green wool suit that was fashionable at country-house shooting parties before the war. Wolff wondered if it had belonged to Casement. By the time he reached the edge of the park it was dusk. Christensen was stalking impatiently to and fro beneath the statue, a streetlamp casting his enormous shadow on its marble plinth.

‘Why did we have to come here?’ he asked, angrily slapping the newspaper against his thigh.

‘So I could be sure you weren’t being followed.’

‘No one’s going to follow me.’ He shook his head in disbelief.

‘Look, Adler – may I call you that?’ Wolff stepped a little closer. ‘Let me be quite clear. We’re only going to stay alive in this country if we’re careful. Very careful. Do you understand?’ He paused to look him directly in the eye. ‘Do you?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘A silly mistake and we’ll wind up in a cell at the Alex.’ Then to be sure: ‘Both of us.’

‘Yes, I understand,’ he snapped.

But Wolff didn’t believe him. He was too young – only twenty-four – and too mechanical. The file said he had run away to sea as a boy. He’d have learnt some tricks and no doubt thought he could slip any obligation. They were all like that – informers.

‘Let’s walk, we’ll be less conspicuous. No, not in the Tiergarten at this hour,’ he said, touching Christensen’s sleeve. ‘At its edge.’

They ambled away from the Brandenburg Gate and the government district to the broad victory avenue, lined with statues, that cut through the heart of the park.

‘Is your real name de Witt?’ Christensen asked. Wolff said it was.

‘And you’ve spoken to Mr Findlay?’ Wolff said that he had.

Casement was staying at the Eden on the Kurfürstendamm, Christensen said, ‘but we’ll move soon. He can’t afford it.’

‘Aren’t the Germans paying him?’

‘He won’t take anything for himself,’ he grumbled. ‘Only people like him who are used to having money refuse when it’s offered.’

‘So who’s paying?’

‘Didn’t you hear me? No one. He says he’s expecting some from his Irish friends in America.’

‘Do you know their names?’

‘A man called Devoy, and his sister in New York, I think. He has friends here too.’

‘Who?’

Christensen shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t met them.’

‘All right, Adler.’ Wolff stopped abruptly. ‘Let’s be clear. I need names – who he meets and why, and what they’re talking about. I need to know who he writes to and what he says. Do you have access to his correspondence?’

‘Sometimes,’ said Christensen sulkily.

‘Who, what, why, when and where, my friend. Understand? Everything. That will be a profitable arrangement.’

He didn’t reply and he didn’t look Wolff in the eye, but stood there with his head bent, hands thrust in the pockets of his coat.

‘Who does he visit here?’ Wolff asked, at last.

‘You’ve got to give me more.’

Wolff took a step closer. ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that, Adler.’

‘You need to give me more,’ he repeated – belligerently this time. He took his hands from his pockets and stood a little straighter. ‘It’s dangerous here. It will cost you more.’

Wolff glanced over his shoulder. They had almost reached the top of the Siegesallee and the Reichstag was only a few minutes’ walk away.

‘Come with me,’ and he tugged roughly at Christensen’s sleeve.

‘Why?’

‘Come on, man, I’m not going to kill you,’ he said, impatiently. ‘We’ve been standing beneath this streetlamp for too long,’ and he turned and walked quickly into the trees. After a few seconds Christensen followed him.

‘Cigarette?’

Christensen shook his head. Wolff bent to light his own, then took a step away. They were only a few feet apart but it was too dark beneath the trees to see Christensen’s face. That he felt uncomfortable, even a little afraid, was apparent in his movements. The silhouette of his broad shifting shoulders made Wolff smile: an awkward troll of a man.

‘You going to threaten me?’ he asked defiantly in New York English.

‘Speak German. I’m not going to threaten you, Adler, but we must understand each other. You think you can play me, blackmail me – if I don’t pay enough, sell me to the security police . . .’

‘I only want to—’

‘Don’t interrupt,’ said Wolff fiercely. ‘You can try. They might pay you, but they might lock you up. I think they’ll lock you up, or shoot you . . .’

‘That’s not—’

‘I said, don’t interrupt. Now, let’s suppose they don’t shoot you. One of these days you’ll leave Germany. Go home to Norway or America. Visit mother. That’s when my friends will find you. They won’t let you get away with it. It’s bad for business. You can see that, can’t you? You’ll have to spend the rest of your life here. But they might get you here too.’ He paused to draw on his cigarette, dropped it and ground the end into the earth. ‘That’s just the way it is, Adler. It’s your choice. I’ll pay you a fair price for what you give me.’

‘That’s all I want,’ Christensen muttered. He sounded hurt. He’d probably convinced himself in the batting of an eyelid that it had never crossed his mind to betray Wolff, and he was incapable of such low behaviour.

God, they’re all the same, thought Wolff. Always victims. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

Christensen followed him back to the pavement and they walked on towards the victory column in Königsplatz in silence.

‘He writes some of his letters in a code the Germans gave him,’ Christensen declared at last. Reaching into his jacket he pulled out a roll of papers. ‘I’ve copied it out and some of his letters too – here.’

Wolff took the tube and slipped it inside his coat pocket.

‘He visits the Foreign Ministry two or three times a week,’ he continued. ‘The War Office too.’

‘Do you accompany him?’

‘Sometimes, but only as far as the lobby.’

‘Who does he meet?’

‘He usually sees a Foreign Office official called Meyer. But sometimes more important people. He’s met the Chancellor.’

‘Bethmann-Hollweg?’

Christensen nodded. ‘Also an aristocrat called Nadolny – something to do with the military.’

‘Do you know what they’ve promised him?’

Christensen said there was talk of men and guns, lots of talk, but all he could say for sure was that Casement was exasperated by how long his plans were taking to finalise. He’d even considered returning to the United States.

‘Does he trust you?’

‘Oh yes,’ he replied; ‘we’re friends,’ and he turned his head to hide a coy smile. It was a tight-lipped, manipulative smile, the smile of someone who takes pleasure in winning, then betraying, a confidence. It didn’t matter, of course. Wolff knew he couldn’t afford to actively dislike Christensen. Who was he to judge anyway?

‘All right, Adler, that’s enough for tonight.’

‘And what about our agreement?’ he asked, a little sheepishly.

‘Findlay gave you a hundred and twenty-five krone, didn’t he?’

‘But . . .’

Wolff grasped his forearm, pinching it tightly. ‘Let’s not talk about it again. There’s nothing more now. Here,’ and he handed Christensen a piece of paper. ‘It’s the address of a café in Wedding. Will you be able to make ten o’clock on Wednesday?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘If you can’t, I’ll be there at the same time on Friday. By then I’ll have read this,’ and he patted the front of his coat. ‘Don’t visit my hotel. Don’t send messages.’

‘I understand,’ he replied gloomily.

They said goodbye and Wolff walked quickly away. Glancing up at Victory holding out her Prussian laurels to the city, he smiled at his own small triumph. But a man like Christensen he would have to fight again and again. He was as slippery as an eel. What use would he be if he wasn’t? But what did Casement see in the fellow? Wolff pondered this a little as he strolled back to his hotel but came to no firm view. It was impossible to say until he met Casement.

After dinner he settled at the desk in his room and worked his way through the notes Christensen had given him. But for one short memorandum there was nothing he couldn’t glean from the newspapers. It was wrapped tightly in the centre of the roll and had been copied in such haste that it was barely legible.