The Poison Tide

by Andrew Williams

  ‘It’s too dangerous,’ she declared, handing him a cup. ‘What about the British and – well – the Lusitania?’

  That his mission might be sunk by a German submarine made him smile.

  ‘No. Please, think of it,’ she demanded. ‘Why now, when we’re at war?’

  ‘It won’t be for long.’

  ‘It isn’t necessary,’ she persisted. ‘Is it Emmeline? Is she sick? She hasn’t said anything to me in her letters.’

  Their sister Emmeline was well, all the family in America were well, he assured her, but there were things he must attend to.

  What sort of things? she wanted to know. What could be so important that it would take him away from his work at the hospital and from his sister? Did she remember the last time they had visited their father’s farm at Greenfield? he asked her. Peter was old enough to ride. They’d spent hours on horses in the woods and meadows above the house. He had taken his nephew to New York City and they’d stared in wonder at 15 Park Row and the new Singer Building.

  ‘Why, Anton?’ She wasn’t to be deflected. ‘Tell me,’ she said with a stamp of her foot; thin straight lips, jaw set, the little Dilger dimple in her chin – a face full of determination. Just like mine, he thought.

  ‘Sister, I can’t tell you,’ he replied firmly.

  She stared at him for a few seconds, the thumb and forefinger of her right hand plucking distractedly at her black skirt. ‘Don’t go, Anton,’ she pleaded. ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘It won’t be for long.’

  Biting her lip, turning her face away: he reached for her hand but she pulled it away, fumbling with her sleeve for a handkerchief. ‘I can’t lose you . . . not you as well.’

  ‘You won’t.’ He gave a little laugh but it sounded strained. ‘Elizabeth – I’ll be back in a few months.’ She wasn’t to be reassured because she knew him too well. Why couldn’t he speak of it? It was something dangerous. Stay, said the siren voice, stay in Berlin, please stay; and he wanted to. What’s more, she knew he did.

  ‘Come back,’ she sobbed, her face wet with tears. ‘Please come back to me, Anton.’

  But he left the house after lunch and walked all afternoon. In the evening he telephoned one of Frieda’s friends, a banker, a self-satisfied profiteer, boring, rich. They went to a cabaret and he drank too much wine. The following morning he took a taxicab to the Veterinary Academy. Half an hour later he left in another, his right hand resting firmly on the brown leather case.

  11

  Blighty

  THE BORDER POLICE ignored their military passes. A spy was attempting to leave the country, they said; everyone to be questioned, luggage searched – no exceptions. They were older men and cripples, unfit for the Front, grateful for a uniform, punctilious in the prosecution of their duties – Germany had more than its fair share of the type, even in peacetime – and they were thorough because they received the same ‘intelligence’ every day. Foreigners were escorted from the train to the station ticket office to wait their turn on low backless benches. Wolff sat between Christensen and the priest, briefcase and trunk at his feet. Like a music-hall joke, he thought, drawing heavily on his cigarette; by imperial appointment, misfits and conspirators. Ten miles from the border, a ticket to New York, money, the promise of more – they were so close that it frightened him. He had always said he didn’t believe in any luck he didn’t make for himself, but it felt too easy. On his last night in Berlin he’d copied the guts of his report on to sheets of tissue paper and sewn them into the lining of his coat with the dexterity of an experienced sailor.

  The coat was lying across his knee when the police called him; over his arm as they rummaged through his luggage. They went through the pockets of his suits, tapped the heels of his shoes, felt the lining of his briefcase, handed his files to a police clerk, emptied his shaving kit and brushes on to the table; they fingered and peered at his possessions until the only pieces he had left were on his person, and then they searched him too. In the seconds it took the sergeant to go through the pockets of his coat he felt his skin prickling cold with fear. Later he wondered if the Count had planned a final check within spitting distance of the border to catch his guard a little lower. It was the story he knew he’d tell in his memoirs. Everything would have to be part of a great conspiracy in his memoirs.

  The police didn’t ask many questions. He refused to answer any. Speak to Berlin, he said, and they didn’t press him for more. At a little before midday the train rattled across the border into the Netherlands, and for the first time in months he felt something like happiness. What is happiness, if not an absence of anxiety and pain?

  ‘A hostile place,’ Father Nicholson observed, leaning forward to peer out of the window at the cultivated farmland of the Overijssel. Wolff was still smiling.

  ‘Mr de Witt, I’ve heard stories of the British snatching people from here,’ the priest explained indignantly.

  ‘I don’t doubt it, Father,’ he replied, ‘but this is my home.’ At least, that was how it felt, like stepping out of the shade. Mr de Witt had done all that was asked of him – more. Coat neatly folded on the rack above Christensen’s head.

  ‘I know the fella in Rotterdam, Ryan – the American consul. Another one of us,’ said Nicholson. ‘He might be useful. We’ll be safe with him until we sail.’

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ muttered Christensen, eyes closed, head on chest. He’d lost patience with the priest too. Wolff didn’t judge as a rule; with priests he made an exception. It was the Dutch Protestant prejudice of his mother. Nicholson had sweated up the platform and offered his flabby hand like the next Pope. His holy mission was England’s ‘lasting defeat’. In Germany he’d talked like a young hero. ‘Important men’ trusted him and ‘fine ladies’ shared their confidences. ‘He’s a good man but a little garrulous,’ Casement had warned. ‘Look after him, please, he’s going to recruit in Boston for us.’ Casement tried to see the best in everyone. Father John was the sort of Irish cleric who was only inclined to love a neighbour wearing the green. Most of all he was in love with himself. Wolff listened to his fatuous pronouncements with patience before they crossed the border; once across it, the strain of months got the better of him and he fell into a deep sleep. He woke with a start as they pulled into Rotterdam, the priest standing over him like a fat crow.

  They took a taxicab from the station to the Holland America Line pier. The Germans had booked tickets for them in second class because they were less likely to be noticed there. C would have done the same but to save money. She was the SS Rotterdam, twin-screw, four-cylinder quadruple expansion engines, displacing 15,000 tons.

  ‘Slower than the Lusitania,’ observed Wolff with a wry smile.

  Christensen squinted at her with a stoker’s eye and nodded. ‘By ten knots.’

  ‘And older than the Titanic.’

  Father John looked a little white. The queues at the gangways were shorter than before the war. No one was making the trip for fun. Wolff glanced at his watch. It was five o’clock. She would sail at seven, her lights blazing to distinguish her as a friend to all: there was just time. ‘See to my luggage, will you?’ he said, pushing his trunk with his foot.

  Christensen scowled but said nothing. Things were different now they’d left Germany. But Nicholson was alarmed: ‘Are you going? What can be so . . . there isn’t time.’

  It was a personal matter, Wolff said, and no, it couldn’t wait. He would be aboard before she sailed, there was no need to fuss. And coat in one hand, briefcase in the other, he walked quickly away from the pier. He knew C’s man, Tinsley, had an office above a warehouse somewhere in the docks. He had little more than an hour to find it.

  Dilger was at the Rotterdam’s rail in time to watch him leave. There were only twenty passengers in first class and they were already comfortably settled topside. He’d left the case in his cabin, relieved to be free of it for a time, and found a place on the promenade deck with a view of the pier. The priest was easy
to spot, fussing over his luggage, the circle widening round him and his exasperated companion. Steerage was still filing aboard when de Witt returned an hour later. Dilger watched him approach the gangway, lost for a moment among the flat caps and ready-to-wear suits, Dutchmen for the most part, their new lives in cardboard suitcases. He walked with a regular, purposeful stride, like a soldier trying not to march, still carrying the briefcase but not his coat. Strange, the Count hadn’t described a careless man.

  Dilger saw him again at dinner. He had the blond Norwegian in tow but not the priest. They were shown to a table beneath the gallery at the opposite end of the dining saloon. Dilger was closer to the ship’s orchestra, too close, caught between a loud New York banker and a charmless textiles manufacturer from Lille, and as soon as it was decently possible he made his excuses and left. It was a clear night with a fresh breeze from the north-west, the last of Holland twinkling on the port side. He took a turn about the deck, stopping only to help a woman from the American Peace League with directions to the Palm Court. She was touchingly grateful but too plain and earnest to be worth engaging in conversation. Her scent reminded him of his Frieda. He wasn’t labouring under the illusion she was just his, of course; he wasn’t a fool.

  He flicked his cigarette over the side, the tobacco glowing brightly as it swept to stern on the breeze. Somewhere – perhaps in the ballroom – a band was playing rag tunes. Such a pity, he liked to dance.

  In his cabin the war felt closer. He found it difficult to keep his eyes off the case. Struggling out of his shirt, untying his laces, carefully folding his trousers – he’d had to dispense with the services of a valet – he even glimpsed it in the mirror while he was washing his face. He climbed into bed and switched off the light but he could still sense it there in the rack at his feet. Damn. It would be such an easy thing to drop it over the side, and wouldn’t his conscience be clearer? He followed its arc: smack on the surface, phials splintering, spilling their poison into the ocean. Yes, the Dr Dilger who refused to bring war to America. But wasn’t it too late? He would be casting so much of his life away with the case. Duty, conscience, he was weary of worrying about a choice he’d already taken and impatient with himself. I want to dance with a pretty girl, he thought, turning on his side, and he tried to imagine her fingers touching the back of his hand as they swept about the floor, an adoring look in her eyes.

  He was woken by an urgent knocking at a door and raised voices in the passageway. No, they were banging on more than one door. Switching on the cabin light, he glanced at the case, then at the clock. Half past two in the morning. Something was wrong. The ship was barely moving. He jumped out of bed and reached for his trousers. The Lusitania had sunk in minutes. He was doing up his laces when someone knocked sharply: ‘Andersson, sir. You must get up.’

  It was the young Swede who’d settled him into the cabin.

  ‘What is it?’ he shouted, stumbling towards the door. ‘Are we sinking?’

  ‘No, sir,’ came the muffled reply. The steward was smirking when Dilger opened the door.

  ‘First class to the library, sir.’ He turned to rap at the cabin door opposite. ‘A British cruiser, you’ll see her on the port side. No need to worry, sir.’

  ‘What do they want?’

  Either Andersson didn’t hear him or wasn’t able to say.

  Stay calm, remember, the British won’t be looking for someone like you, the Count had advised.

  ‘Come on, don’t just stand there.’ It was an old lady in a lobster-green silk dressing gown and a life preserver, her grey hair caught in a net. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ she huffed, pushing past with her elbows. Further along the passageway a young woman was trying to arrange two bleary-eyed children in her arms and he recognised the New York banker, struggling into a coat.

  ‘Do you know your way, sir?’ a steward asked.

  In the end, Dilger left the case sitting in the middle of the table in his cabin. If they found it hidden in a cupboard they would examine it more carefully. If they knew what he was doing, his number was up anyway. How could they know?

  The British were aboard. A young lieutenant with a ‘rules-the-waves’ air was sitting at a table in the library, the passenger list in front of him, two marines with revolvers at his back.

  ‘American,’ he said, glancing up from Dilger’s passport. ‘On the way home, from where?’

  ‘Germany.’ Nadolny had instructed him to tell the truth.

  ‘Your business there?’

  ‘Family business,’ he replied. A few weeks with his sister and now he was returning to his practice in Virginia.

  The lieutenant considered him carefully for a few seconds, then slid his passport back across the table. ‘All right, please take a seat.’

  Everyone looked bored, everyone looked weary, and the little textiles manufacturer was wearing a hole in the rug, restless with anger at the affront to his dignity, a Frenchman, an ally. Dilger stood at the green marble mantelpiece with his back to a fire. Stewards glided about the room with drinks and saucissonages and he accepted a glass of water, but only minutes after draining it his mouth was sticky with anxiety again. They’d been waiting half an hour when the lieutenant rose from his table. No regrets, no apologies, with the superciliousness of an Empire Englishman he informed them that the Rotterdam had been taken under escort; that they could return to their cabins to finish dressing but they were to gather in the library again in half an hour, and that was all his orders permitted him to say.

  ‘They’re looking for German stowaways and spies,’ the steward informed Dilger at his cabin door.

  ‘But the ship’s on her way to America.’

  The Swede shrugged philosophically. The same thing had happened to the Noordam a few weeks before, he said; forced to anchor off Ramsgate while some of her passengers were questioned ashore. ‘It will add at least a day and a half to the journey,’ he grumbled.

  ‘Where on earth is Ramsgate?’ Dilger enquired.

  First-class passengers were permitted to take the air at daybreak, the coast just visible through a grey sea mist, the cruiser a few cables to stern. At seven o’clock they were served breakfast in the dining saloon, the captain and the first officer drifting between tables with words of reassurance. No more than a day or two in Ramsgate, they said, and while they were anchored the passengers would stay aboard.

  ‘All except the spies,’ observed the little textiles manufacturer. ‘They’ll be going ashore.’

  Dilger smiled politely. But at nine o’clock the British lieutenant read out the names of first-class passengers who were to be taken ashore.

  ‘Just a formality, Doctor,’ he said coolly. ‘Our people would like to talk to you – no, no, not under arrest, just a few questions – a little information.’

  Dilger protested that he was an American, spitting that their war was none of his goddamn business, to disguise his fear. What information? He was visiting his sister and there was nothing more to say; a private matter, damn their formality, they were treating him like an enemy. Were they going to rifle through his belongings too? Damn them.

  The lieutenant held his hands open like Pilate. ‘I’m sorry for the inconvenience but you must understand – the war.’

  The launch was hanging from its davits a little below the rail. Steerage in the bow, to judge by their jackets; they were in for a good soaking. The real spies were second class, a score or more in coats amidships, de Witt and his companions among them, the priest the colour of old lace. First class were handed down into the stern.

  ‘Steady with my medical bag,’ Dilger shouted to the crewman offering it to him on a safety line. ‘There are bottles . . . steady, steady . . .’

  He could hear the glass tinkling. Pray God they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between one phial and another.

  12

  The Club

  THE GRILLE SLID back with an emphatic clunk.

  ‘Lieutenant Wolff?’

  ‘Who the dev
il are you?’

  A jangling of keys and after a few seconds the cell door swung open.

  ‘Fitzgerald. I’m to take you to London.’ He looked fresh out of school, a good school naturally, one with a tie that the doorman at the Ritz would recognise and with old friends in Whitehall.

  ‘Call me de Witt here, and keep your voice down.’

  Fitzgerald blushed. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Where are you holding the rest?’ he asked, gathering his jacket from the bench.

  ‘Most of them are still at the harbour Clock House.’

  Wolff stopped at the door to look him in the eye: ‘Make sure they’re unpleasant to the priest, will you? God, he deserves it. Oh, and he’s carrying letters from Casement in the lining of his cassock – he rustles like a pig in straw. Tell them to ignore those.’

  They caught the one o’clock from Ramsgate Station. Fitzgerald found an unoccupied carriage and wanted to talk ‘tradecraft’. He was too impressed, too Boy Scout – they’d all been like that once. ‘Learn on the job,’ C used to say, and it wasn’t a problem before the war – except for Turkey; you couldn’t make a mistake there.

  ‘Chuck it, will you, I’m tired,’ Wolff declared, settling into his corner.

  Fitzgerald woke him as the train rattled across the Thames.

  ‘Fine view of the Court. Look, I say . . .’ he turned from the window to Wolff with a diffident smile. ‘Do you mind if I ask you one thing – why did he do it? I met him once, you know.’

  ‘Why did who do what?’

  ‘Roger Casement.’

  Wolff lifted his briefcase from the rack. The trunk was still on the ship; the last of Mr de Witt – dress coat, three pairs of black shoes, two of brown, six white shirts, four aggressively American suits. Poor man, lost to the bloody British, the colonial oppressor. The first thing he was going to do now he was home was get rid of the beard.