The Poison Tide

by Andrew Williams

  ‘Of course, you are an associate of Sir Roger Casement.’

  ‘He doesn’t like to use the title,’ said Wolff, ignoring his ironic smile. ‘I’ve told you something of my history. If I can be of service to Germany, well . . .’

  Rintelen’s sharp little eyes flitted about Wolff’s face like a persistent bluebottle. ‘So, I may have something that will suit you,’ he said at last. ‘There is someone I want you to meet first, another . . . entrepreneur.’

  Captain Friedrich Hinsch was playing skat in the room above. He’d drunk too much, he was losing, he was in a foul temper, and the table breathed a collective sigh as he scooped what was left of his money into a sweaty palm and rose to join them. He was big and rough and rolled like a steamer in a gale, weather-beaten, a beetle brow, black calf-length boots over a grey suit, soap beneath one ear, a shock of blond hair, careless with his appearance, and the sort of man who would enjoy squaring up to anyone foolish enough to say so. He was expecting them and knew a little of de Witt’s story but was plainly unimpressed. ‘Don’t trust a man with more than one country,’ he grumbled.

  ‘Captain Hinsch is an . . .’ Rintelen slipped apologetically into English, ‘old salt.’

  ‘Hey, a beer.’ Hinsch waved to one of the girls.

  ‘And Mr de Witt is a man of principle.’

  ‘Principle.’ Hinsch spat it back sceptically.

  ‘But at a price,’ Rintelen continued. ‘He is an engineer, and he has experience of handling explosives.’

  ‘You have been talking, Mr Gaché.’

  Rintelen coloured a little but ignored the jibe. ‘My associate is the master of the Neckar. He has been here since the beginning of the war . . .’

  ‘Almost a year,’ Hinsch interjected.

  ‘His ship is, what do the Americans say – “interned” – interned in Baltimore, a prisoner of the British blockade. But you have not been idle, Captain Hinsch, have you? Ah. Here we are.’

  As the girl served Hinsch his beer, his eyes wandered proprietorially from her face, down her long neck to her chest – daringly décolleté, of course – and he tipped her like a regular.

  ‘An engineer, you say?’ He paused to wipe froth from his mouth with the back of his chubby hand. ‘Know about ships?’

  ‘I’ve worked my passage a few times,’ Wolff replied coolly, ‘when things were difficult. Know my way about an engine room, know why the Titanic sank.’

  ‘Ah, very good.’ Rintelen picked up the champagne and leant forward to fill his glass. ‘But would you have been able to sink her?’

  ‘A little thought, a lot of explosive.’ He shrugged. ‘No such thing as unsinkable, is there? Some of us never forgot that.’

  ‘Easy for the right man, perhaps,’ Rintelen sucked his teeth, ‘sadly, there are too many of the wrong sort.’

  ‘Too many stupid buggers,’ barked Hinsch.

  ‘Good people are not easy to find,’ Rintelen observed with a weariness that suggested he’d tried.

  With that, they seemed to have said all they wanted to say about ships and explosives and began to crawl through de Witt’s life again, family, war, his work – ‘the Dutch East Indies, you say, and after that?’ He’d told the story so often that it was his own; like flicking a switch in the brain, his memories now, every taste, every smell, the dust of the Highveld scouring his face, engrained in his pores.

  ‘But now you must enjoy yourself,’ Rintelen said when he had finished scribbling in his pocketbook. Meet Clara. Clara would be his friend for the rest of the evening. ‘She’s a good girl,’ Hinsch whispered like a beery pimp. Poor Clara. Slender, twenties, small breasts, sweet round face, tired combat eyes. Too bored and drunk to be their spy. What would Martha Held say about the drink? It wasn’t good for business. But Clara could still manage it, sweating and groaning, faking it for a few dollars; it just took practice. The lie was all part of the service, that’s why it was a profession. Wolff knew the routine, knew the tricks, goodness, wasn’t it the same? Didn’t the Bible say so somewhere? Clara could probably perform in her sleep. But not with him, not this time.

  ‘Brought up by a God-fearing mother,’ he whispered to her, removing her fingers. ‘Here,’ and he offered her a few dollars.

  ‘No, no,’ she protested, placing her hand firmly back on his thigh.

  ‘Yes, yes, take it. And, Clara . . .’ His gaze drew her attention to Hinsch. ‘Stay away from him. He isn’t a nice man.’

  She didn’t understand but smiled weakly and took his money.

  The clock in the lobby at the Algonquin struck two while he was collecting his key at the desk. In the corridor, a shine was placing the shoes he’d cleaned at their owners’ doors. Cowboy boots for a country boy; a young couple at 903, small feet, perhaps Italian or Spanish; and Wolff’s neighbour was an Englishman, his shoes from a Jermyn Street shop. At his own door he bent and ran fingertips over the carpet: the grit he’d sown was trodden deeply into the pile and the hair he’d fixed across the lock was on the step.

  The following morning he sent a coded message to Mr Ponting at the Consulate office in Whitehall Street. They met in the dark corner of a downtown restaurant a few hours later, and he told the naval attaché the little he’d learnt at Martha’s.

  ‘I suppose Rintelen is checking your story,’ Gaunt observed, stirring a third spoonful of sugar into his coffee.

  ‘Most likely.’

  ‘It’s watertight, don’t worry.’

  Wolff frowned. C had used the same words before the fiasco in Turkey.

  ‘Something the matter?’ Gaunt asked.

  ‘He has a monstrously high opinion of himself, but he isn’t a fool. Perfect English. Energetic. Can’t keep still. Likes everything to be “correct”. Let’s hope he’s in a hurry.’ Picking up his coffee spoon, Wolff peered at his reflection in the back of it. ‘If he is, I’ll get the job. If he isn’t, he’ll kill me.’

  ‘You sound a little windy,’ Gaunt scoffed. ‘Don’t overdo it. Look, got an address? I’ll put someone on to him, Hinsch too.’

  Wolff smiled. ‘He’s your neighbour – staying at the Yacht Club.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Gaunt choked on his coffee. ‘He’s a German.’

  Wolff decided to prepare for the job by moving somewhere more discreet. He settled on a comfortable first-floor apartment in a red-brick house on the Lower East Side, at the edge of Kleindeutschland. The landlord was a Jew from Lvov, his neighbour a voluble Italian; there was a Russian family upstairs and a bent old lady from Posen lived on the ground floor with her cats. Not a patch on the Algonquin but the sort of place an out-of-work engineer counting his coin might wish to rent for a while. Shabby but respectable, furnished with dark old-world pieces his landlord had accepted as rent from the previous tenants. Terms included a maid and a kosher meal if he wanted it, typically lokshen, gefilte fish, or something made with chopped liver. His sitting-room window looked over East 5th, one broad stone stair to the front of the house, fire escape into a dark courtyard at the rear, private telephone in the hall, sturdy locks and a bolt.

  Before he left the hotel, he sent notes to Ponting and Gaché. The first telephone call he made from the apartment was to Miss Laura McDonnell.

  ‘I thought you would choose somewhere . . .’

  ‘Smarter?’

  ‘Downtown.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The line crackled for a few seconds, then they began to speak at once.

  ‘I interrupted, please,’ he said.

  ‘Only that Nina, Mrs Newman, thought – thinks you’ve forgotten her.’

  He smiled with secret pleasure. ‘Sorry. You know, looking for the apartment, making contact with business people . . .’

  ‘I’m sure she understands . . . when you have the time.’

  He said he would write to her at once, and he hoped Miss McDonnell remembered her promise to act as his guide to the city. She said her name was still Laura and it wasn’t a promise – but she agreed to meet him nonetheless.
/>   Coats and scarves already, a breezy blue September day with white horses in the bay, struggling to hold the Tribune open, the front page full of the first British gas attack in France.

  ‘It isn’t the city,’ she said, when he proposed they catch the ferry to Coney Island. ‘I thought you wanted a guide to the city. What about Liberty Island? Have you been?’

  ‘No,’ he lied.

  They caught the ferry from Battery Park pier.

  ‘Oh dear, if only I’d known we would be on the river,’ she declared, trying to hold her hair beneath her hat.

  ‘You’re regretting it already.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, with a teasing frown.

  She made him climb to the top of the green lady so she could number the buildings on the Manhattan skyline from the balcony. He was happy to listen, prompting her with a question from time to time even when he knew the answer. She was conscious that he was gazing at her and tried not to catch his eye. Why have you come, Laura? he wondered; did they tell you to? But his instinct told him ‘no’, that she was smart but guileless, and intrigued by Mr Jan de Witt.

  ‘The first of the New World,’ she said as they strolled round the platform, their heads bent into the wind. ‘You know, my father says he cried when he saw this statue from his ship. Ah, you smile. Sentimental Irishman, is that it? Doing what he was supposed to do? My father doesn’t cry.’

  ‘Look.’ He pointed to the flame above their heads. ‘A bit battered and tarnished, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re joking, I see,’ she observed tartly. ‘Bit of an old cynic. Does Roger know?’

  ‘I don’t know; “perhaps” to both.’

  She turned towards him, small gloved hand on the rail, the Jersey shore at her back. ‘Then you’re sure to think me a fool. You see, I have faith in our journey. I’m an optimist. I believe in this . . .’ she lifted her arms like a vestal beseeching a goddess. ‘Think what you like. Naïve American if you like. I believe in progress.’

  ‘Why?’ He closed his eyes for a second and shrugged. ‘It isn’t inevitable. Here, read today’s newspaper.’ He tried to present it to her but she ignored the offer.

  ‘Horrible. They’re as bad as each other,’ she insisted, im-patiently sweeping a loose lock of hair from her face. ‘But when this madness is over, well, we’ll build something better.’

  ‘For the world or just for Ireland?’

  ‘Here and in Ireland; everywhere in time – for women too. Universal suffrage, liberty, equality; that’s our trajectory, our duty, isn’t it?’

  She was trembling with passionate intensity, her green eyes indecently large. He wanted to kiss her. She didn’t give a fig what the other visitors thought of her. Perhaps they were like him and couldn’t see more from the balcony than the stains on Liberty’s copper skin.

  ‘You’ve risked your life for freedom.’

  He shook his head a little, as if to say ‘what of it’.

  ‘Stop it,’ she commanded, letting go of the rail. ‘Cynicism is poison. You’re trying to provoke me.’

  He smiled. ‘I wouldn’t dare. But you’re confusing me with Roger.’

  But wasn’t that who he should try to be – if that was who she wanted him to be?

  ‘Is everything all right?’ It was the plump keeper of the flame in his green uniform. Perfectly all right, thank you. Goodbye, they said.

  ‘It isn’t attractive, is it? I mean, an old cynic.’ He plunged his hands into his pockets, drawing his coat tightly round himself like a rueful schoolboy. ‘Is it the world or me? Don’t you protect yourself from disappointment by expecting the worst?’

  She smiled and stretched out her hand, checking the impulse before she touched his arm. ‘As long as there are, well, right-thinking people in the world, things will change – you’ll see. We have to take risks, don’t we?’ She paused, biting her lip for a second; ‘haven’t you ever been in love?’

  He laughed. ‘What a question.’

  ‘Well, haven’t you? That’s a risk, giving so much.’

  ‘Have you?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not yet, but you’re . . .’

  ‘Older?’

  She blushed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why?’ He frowned intently. ‘You know, I don’t know if I’ve been in love.’

  ‘You don’t know?’ She sounded a little shocked.

  ‘I’ve forgotten,’ he said with a fresh laugh. ‘Yes. Forgotten. Come on . . .’

  They wandered round the balcony once more and this time she drew his attention to a finger of land on the Jersey shore.

  ‘That’s the Black Tom yard. Do you see? Yes, there. All of it for the British.’

  Piers protruded at right angles from a main dock like flanges on a mace. Wolff counted eight, nine, ten ships alongside, cranes swinging boxes of shells aboard in rope slings. Look, she said, a freight train crawling on to the wharf with ammunition from the factories upstate, and millions more pounds of explosives in the yard’s sheds awaiting shipment. ‘Guns, bullets, oh, I don’t know, horses, food . . .’ Arms open wide as if she were ready to embrace him; ‘. . . whatever they need to fight their war. The docks along the river, in Boston, Baltimore, Newport News, Norfolk . . .’ she shook her head angrily; ‘that’s one way to change the world for the better.’

  ‘Stopping it?’

  ‘Yes. Look, can we go?’ She was struggling to hold down her hat. ‘I do believe it’s getting worse.’

  Wolff didn’t move. He was still gazing across the narrow stretch of water.

  ‘We might have time for the next ferry,’ she prompted.

  ‘Do you think they’ll try to stop this?’ He nodded in the direction of the yard.

  ‘Stop it? Who? No. This is the land of the free, remember, free capital, free enterprise. A lot of people are becoming very rich. Our friends in . . .’

  ‘I don’t mean government . . .’ He glanced round to be sure no one was in earshot. ‘The Clan. Won’t Clan na Gael try?’

  ‘No,’ she bridled at the suggestion, ‘no’ – and shook her head angrily. ‘Don’t ask me about the Clan. Not here or anywhere – oh, now look what you’ve made me . . .’ she was tugging on the rim of her hat so hard it looked like a circus bowler, auburn curls breaking free and dancing in front of her face.

  ‘Come on, let’s find some shelter.’ He tried to take her arm, but she shook it free, ‘No . . .’, and stamped her foot in frustration. Hat pulled down over her eyes, head bent, she began to shake, and it was a moment before he realised she wasn’t crying but laughing heartily.

  ‘Very . . . unladylike,’ she managed to gasp.

  He laughed too. ‘Nonsense, really.’ Yes, it was nonsense. He thought she was very fine. ‘And what kind of gentleman takes a lady on the water in a gale?’

  ‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘just what kind of gentleman?’

  Only when she was in the cabin of the ferry, pinning up her hair, did she mention the Clan to him again. If there was something he wanted to know, she said as quietly as she could over the throbbing of the engine, he must speak to Mr Devoy, because the British have so many spies, Jan, you know how careful everyone must be. Wolff leant forward to gaze out of a port at nothing in particular.

  ‘I’m the girl who takes the notes, that’s all – you do understand, don’t you?’

  He turned and bent his head to look sideways at her. She returned his gaze but with a hesitant smile.

  ‘I met a Mr Emile Gaché, do you know him?’ he asked, leaning closer. ‘His real name is von Rintelen. He’s a German spy.’

  She frowned and looked away. ‘I don’t want to know.’

  ‘But you do, don’t you?’

  She gathered her skirts to rise. ‘Excuse me, Mr de Witt . . .’

  ‘A minute, please,’ and he reached across to her arm.

  Her jaw dropped in amazement, staring down at his hand holding her discreetly but firmly in her seat.

  ‘You need to know that I know.’ He took his hand away. ‘F
riends must be honest and open with each other,’ he said earnestly. ‘Please don’t be offended but, well, I want us to be friends – it’s important.’

  Biting her lip uncertainly, avoiding his gaze, she wasn’t used to being touched, that much was clear, but he sensed that she liked him, was intrigued, excited; she wasn’t going to waltz off in high dudgeon. He watched her struggling for something to say, her body turned stiffly away, loose strands of auburn hair at the nape of her long neck, eyes to the front and rows of polished benches. Before she could make up her mind the ferry drew alongside the pier, passengers crowding into the gangway between the seats.

  ‘I must be going,’ she said the moment she stepped on to the quay.

  ‘But you’re my guide.’

  ‘It has been interesting;’ her eyes were twinkling with amusement.

  ‘I’m glad.’ He hesitated. ‘Have I spoken out of turn?’

  ‘Yes, you have. Don’t pretend to be sorry, I won’t believe you.’

  He offered to escort her home. She said she wasn’t going home, and no, she didn’t need a taxicab.

  ‘Will you be my guide again?’ he asked.

  She looked at him coyly. ‘I don’t think you need a guide.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Perhaps, if I bring a chaperone.’ Turning to walk away, she checked and glanced back as if there was something she’d forgotten to say: ‘I’m sure we will be friends,’ and with a shy wave, ‘Slán go fóill.’

  ‘And what, pray . . .’

  ‘Ask an Irishman.’

  ‘Until the next time,’ said the man from Cork in the grocer’s store a block up from Wolff’s apartment. The next time was only three days later. By then he’d kept his promise and caught the train to Brooklyn to see Casement’s sister. She was restless, the house too small to contain her anxiety and a litany of woe. ‘He’s in hospital, Mr de Witt,’ she confided. ‘It’s too much for him, he’s so sensitive. He has these black moods, you see – he was the same as a boy.’

  They walked to the park and she told him of a new ‘unpleasantness’. The Clan had caught Christensen frittering away the funds they’d entrusted to him on a wife he’d kept a secret from everyone. ‘He came to see me. I could tell he was no good,’ she said in a strained and unhappy voice. ‘I’m like that, you know. I look at people and I know at once. I see who they really are.’ She wiped away a tear and gave Wolff a shaky smile. ‘Dear Roddy’s done so much for that young man. He’s going to be dreadfully hurt.’ Yes, he would be, thought Wolff, and he regretted it deeply. ‘Does he need to know?’ he asked. ‘Of course,’ she replied emphatically and with the conviction of the biblical stone-thrower for whom truth is always pure and simply an end in itself.