The Poison Tide

by Andrew Williams

  The summons from the Germans was delivered to him the following day. The author had stolen an idea from a dime-store novel and signed it ‘The Dark Invader’:

  Take the ferry to Hoboken, then a tram to the park across the street from the Norddeutscher Lloyd Line piers. Be there at 1900 on the 29th – tell no one.

  Wolff telephoned Mr Ponting with the news.

  ‘Sure it’s Rintelen?’ Gaunt asked.

  ‘Dark Invader? It’s too ludicrously vainglorious to be anyone else.’

  ‘My people followed him to a trade-union office on the New Jersey side yesterday. Stirring up the Irish on the docks to strike, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘Another of his “enterprises”.’

  ‘Best go armed,’ he advised.

  But Wolff was glad he’d left the revolver nailed beneath the floorboards; it was too cumbersome for a light coat on a warm autumn evening, pressed between the worsted shoulders of longshoremen on the tram from the ferry, a sharp smell of stale sweat and beer. Everyone was going the same way, rumbling and cussin’ like a crowd before a football game, with Billy the barrack-room lawyer from Belfast – a true son of the city – threatening to kick anyone ‘up the arse’ who didn’t join the strike, and a fella from ‘Jerzee’ who was booed and thumped for complaining that it wasn’t his war and who was going to feed his family if he joined a walk-out? ‘Who the hell are you?’ someone asked Wolff as they approached the Norddeutscher terminal. ‘NYPD?’

  ‘Dressed too smart for the police,’ growled Billy. ‘Look at that suit there; from Paris, I wouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘Berlin,’ he replied, and it didn’t seem to be necessary to explain more.

  In their tackety boots they clattered from the tram in front of the terminal, and hurried across the street into the park. Beyond the first belt of trees, a crowd of several hundred longshoremen was gathered about a small dais; on the sidewalk close by, a dozen bored-looking police officers. No sign of a ‘Dark Invader’. Turning his back on the park, Wolff walked towards the long, low red-brick terminal building where many thousands of passengers had set foot in the New World for the first time, eerily empty now the Atlantic was closed to German shipping lines. Beyond the terminal, the topmasts of the steamers laid up at the piers for the rest of what was going to be a long war. A small car appeared at the angle of the building and accelerated across the parade towards Wolff, but the driver swung left through the gate without giving him a second glance. From the park, a murmur of recognition and applause as the speakers stepped on to the platform. Facing the crowd alone on the sidewalk, Wolff felt like a hooker touting for business. The attention wasn’t healthy. He walked across the street and through the trees, drifting at the edge of the gathering until he could see the booming Irishman who’d just begun to address it.

  ‘. . . you have the power to strike a blow for freedom,’ he told them, his ‘freedom’ echoing effortlessly across the park. John Devoy was standing at his back.

  ‘You know me. Big Jim Larkin cares no more for kaisers than for British kings. But Germany’s cause is now our cause – this is for Ireland.’

  More cheering. ‘You men are the ones who load British guns and shells, the horses, the food they need for their war . . . and you are the ones who can say, “No, enough, we’ll not serve your bloody purpose any more. Leave our country.”’

  Some men near Wolff began to chant, ‘Strike, strike, strike.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Larkin pointed in their direction. ‘Those men there have it – strike for auld Ireland, here in New Jersey.’

  The cry was taken up: ‘Strike, strike, strike,’ and Wolff was clapping with the rest, or trying to, only someone was tugging at his sleeve. Half turning to look, he discovered Laura smiling up at him.

  ‘What on earth . . .’

  She shrugged and put her hands over her ears, then she shouted something but it was lost in the noise of the crowd.

  ‘To meet an associate,’ he said – or did she know already?

  She shook her head blankly. The man beside her was bellowing inarticulately, like a punter cheering home the favourite: Big Jim was heady stuff. They were all drunk with excitement at the prospect of breaking strike laws in the service of auld Ireland.

  ‘Strike, strike, strike.’

  Wolff touched her elbow and with a tilt of the head suggested they move away. She smiled weakly and nodded.

  ‘Those who come out can draw from a strike fund for their families,’ Larkin told them. ‘Mr John Devoy from Clan na Gael is here to tell you how . . .’

  They walked just far enough for conversation to be possible.

  ‘Is it like this at your suffragette rallies?’

  She laughed lightly. ‘Noisier.’

  ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You don’t seem surprised to see me,’ he observed, tapping a cigarette on the back of his case.

  She looked away, the colour rising to her neck and face. ‘Mr Devoy thought you might be here.’

  ‘I wonder how he knew.’

  ‘From his German friends, I expect.’ Her gaze led him discreetly to where three, perhaps four men were standing beneath the canopy of a weeping cherry. They were twenty yards away, their faces hidden by the tree, but Wolff recognised one of them at once. Shifting awkwardly as large men do, his back turned towards them and his right arm raised to a branch above his head – the master of the Neckar. He was listening to someone in his shadow, nodding vigorously. Then he turned towards the meeting and Wolff caught a glimpse of the Dark Invader behind him.

  ‘Your Mr Gaché?’ she asked.

  ‘And some of his business associates, yes.’

  ‘I thought so.’ She bit the corner of her bottom lip, something she did when she was uneasy. ‘It’s a good turnout; quite a few men here,’ she said, catching his eye.

  ‘But only one woman.’

  She laughed and looked down, self-consciously sweeping a loose strand of hair behind her ear. ‘I’m perfectly safe. Sir Roger says the only true gentlemen are Irishmen; they are gentlemen by instinct, not by an accident of birth.’

  ‘Then there’s no hope for me.’

  ‘There might be exceptions,’ she said with another light laugh, the tinkle of fine crystal. ‘After all, you are Roger’s friend.’

  ‘An honorary Irishman, then.’

  ‘That must be right.’

  They stood for a few seconds in silence, she with half an eye to the meeting; he to Hinsch and Rintelen and their companions.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me, Jan,’ she said at last. ‘There’s something I must do.’

  He raised his eyebrows enquiringly.

  ‘I’m taking the names of men who will need strike pay.’

  ‘From their Swiss banker?’

  She frowned and bit her lip. ‘If you mean your Mr Gaché, I don’t know.’

  A burst of applause and cheering. Devoy was shaking hands with the platform party, slapping ‘Big Jim’ on the back, celebrating their little victory, an unholy alliance of Irish muscle and German money, an unofficial walk-out, a few days lost, some bullets, some shells. The goddamn price of famine, C would say. But no one at the Front would notice, the killing would go on as before, and sooner or later big American business would speak, no, shout, ‘Enough’, and the strike would be broken by a bribe or by policemen enforcing the free traffic of goods and services with the hard round end of a ‘paddy-whacker’.

  ‘I must go,’ said Laura, picking up her skirts.

  ‘Will I see you soon?’ he called after her.

  Grinding his cigarette end into the grass, he turned with a sigh and strolled towards the little group of conspirators beneath the trees. As he approached, a very fat man detached himself from it and began to waddle away. He cast a furtive glance at Wolff, his face florid like a Bavarian butcher’s, chins rolling on to his chest, head rocking from side to side. Ageless, as fleshy people often are, and guilty, Wolff thought, the perpetrat
or of an unspeakable crime that would be discovered in the fullness of time.

  ‘Well met, Mr de Witt.’ Rintelen stepped out from beneath the tree to offer his hand – or was it to distract Wolff from his associate? ‘I saw you talking to Miss . . .’

  ‘McDonnell.’

  ‘An Irish lady?’

  ‘And American.’

  ‘What does Miss McDonnell think of our strike?’ His own view was plain enough, written boldly in his face.

  ‘Our strike?’

  ‘Another of Mr Gaché’s enterprises,’ he explained smugly.

  Wolff nodded. ‘Mr Gaché is a resourceful man. Actually, he asked me to meet him here.’

  ‘To consult you on . . . let’s say, a technical matter.’ Rintelen looked carefully around the park. The meeting was over, the longshoremen were drifting home or chatting and smoking in tight circles. At a trellis table to the left of the dais, Laura and other members of the Clan were taking the names of those hoping to benefit from Gaché’s munificence. ‘I have an office, we can talk there,’ he said.

  ‘But first it was necessary to drag me out here.’ Wolff’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.

  Rintelen laughed his short yelping laugh. ‘No, no, Mr de Witt, patience, patience, you shall see.’

  17

  The Friedrich der Grosse

  SHE WAS BATHED in the last golden light of the setting sun like a large soprano taking her curtain call at the Hofoper.

  ‘Our piece of Germany,’ Rintelen observed as they walked along the quay towards her.

  ‘Fifteen knots?’

  ‘So, always the engineer,’ he replied coolly. ‘Yes, fifteen, with a fair wind.’

  Top-heavy, thought Wolff, her fine Atlantic lines spoilt by too much amidships, with all the passenger cabins in the superstructure: uncomfortable in a high sea. Two yellow funnels, probably two sets of quadruple expansion engines – that would be typical of her class – two minutes to walk from stem to stern, half a block on Broadway. Once the pride of the Norddeutscher Lloyd fleet, idle and rusting at a pier, the largest ship in a graveyard of ships.

  A hefty sailor, a stoker once perhaps, was guarding the foot of the gangway. Instinctively he stiffened, his arm rising in what would have been a salute but for Rintelen’s sharp ‘Nein’.

  ‘A good German crew,’ he said as they walked up the gangway. ‘They know how to keep their mouths shut and von Kleist works them hard for me. So, welcome aboard the Friedrich der Grosse, Mr de Witt.’

  A junior lieutenant had scurried down from the bridge to greet them. Did the Kapitän require assistance? he panted. The captain required two stout seamen to guard the passageway to his office. Just a precaution, he said with a strangled laugh, to be sure no one listened at the door, a British spy.

  Wolff concentrated on his smile. Water-bloody-tight? Christ, it better be.

  ‘She’s perfect for my enterprise,’ Rintelen continued. ‘Is there a general at the Front in France with a finer headquarters than the Friedrich der Grosse?’ Cabins, kitchens, workshops, one way on, one way off, impossible to approach undetected by day, and no one to hear a prisoner scream, Wolff thought, or discover a body weighted and buried according to the customs of the sea. Watertight? The damnedest thing; if his cover story leaked like an old bucket he wasn’t going to have an opportunity to take it up with Gaunt.

  ‘His Majesty stood where you stand now, Mr de Witt.’ Rintelen turned to the young officer, ‘A famous day, Braun.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Fifteen years ago.’ Rintelen shook his head as middle-aged men seeking the sympathy of peers at the passage of so much time are wont to do. ‘And you were fighting in South Africa?’

  ‘On my way.’

  ‘Different times. But the Emperor saw this day. He knew there would be war in Europe.’

  ‘Everyone saw this day, Captain,’ said Wolff curtly. No point in pretending de Witt had any affection for their Kaiser.

  ‘Not just that there would be war, but here, aboard the Friedrich der Grosse,’ said Rintelen, tapping his foot and pointing animatedly to the few feet of deck between them. ‘He predicted how it would be fought, Mr de Witt. War in our time.’

  ‘I see. Well, when the cheering stops,’ replied Wolff sarcastically.

  Rintelen’s smile came slowly. ‘I forgot – you are a practical man – and an impatient man. So,’ he said, with a gracious sweep of the hand, ‘we are ready.’

  From the shelter deck, the lieutenant escorted them into a polished-panel passageway and up the main companionway to a stateroom on ‘A’ deck. ‘The dark invader’s office,’ said Rintelen without any trace of irony.

  It was no more than a large first-class cabin with two ports on the starboard side, flock wallpaper, black lacquer furniture, and the bed had been replaced by three large oak filing cabinets. Rintelen walked over to the middle one and took out a folder and a cylinder of paper which he unrolled and anchored to the table. It was a draughtsman’s drawing of a cargo ship.

  ‘A technical matter, Mr de Witt. She is not the Titanic but an associate of mine thinks he has come up with a plan to cripple her rudder at sea – here . . .’ he nudged the file. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘And for this advice?’

  He lifted his chin haughtily. ‘You will be compensated – if you are the engineer you claim to be.’

  Wolff nodded and reached for the file. ‘A glass of water, please.’

  ‘Whisky?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Careful notes, some sketches, a simple plan on paper; its architect knew what he was doing. Attach the charge to the rudder of the ship. In the tip of the charge, a needle-shaped pin to connect to the rudder shaft. Shaft turns, pin turns, boring its way into the mercury fulminate, detonating an explosion powerful enough to blow the rudder. Ship left helpless.

  ‘Well?’ Rintelen set the whisky on the table in front of Wolff.

  ‘It’s technically possible, yes.’

  ‘You do not sound sure.’

  Wolff lifted his glass, squinting reflectively at the plans through the twinkling crystal. ‘It is possible.’ He raised it to his lips but lowered it again without taking a sip. ‘Is it a good plan? No, it isn’t a good plan.’

  ‘Ha,’ exclaimed Rintelen, sweeping his hand above the table in a grand gesture. ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘You want to sink or damage the enemy’s supply ships, but this—’ Wolff was interrupted by the door. Hinsch rolled into the room, tossing his coat over a chair. ‘Well?’ He nodded curtly towards Wolff. ‘Is he any good?’

  Rintelen ignored him. ‘Please, Mr de Witt.’

  ‘Simply because it will be very difficult for the diver to fit the detonator without being caught,’ Wolff’s hand trailed over the drawings, ‘and what about the water in winter? There are easier ways.’

  ‘A little more?’ Rintelen held up the whisky bottle.

  Wolff shook his head. ‘And the diver would need to know what he was doing with the charge.’

  Rintelen nodded thoughtfully. ‘So, what would you suggest?’

  ‘Don’t you know? You’re the Dark Invader.’ Yes, of course he knew; Wolff could see it in his face. ‘Just light the touchpaper, Captain. These ships are waiting to go off.’

  ‘The ammunition?’

  Wolff laughed. ‘Enough. No more games. You know that’s what I mean, and you’ve tried, haven’t you?’

  Silence as they stared at each other. A tinkle of ice. Hinsch was fixing himself a whisky American-style. Rintelen’s eyes flitting around Wolff’s face. He wanted to swot them away. One step forward and slap.

  ‘So, here . . .’ Rintelen looked away at last. Reaching for the file, he took out a copy of the Shipping News and spread it on the table in front of Wolff. ‘This report. The English ship, Beatus – lost with all hands and many tons of ammunition.’ He was fidgeting with the edge of the paper excitedly. ‘Our success, Mr de Witt. Ours.’

  ‘You sank her?’ Wolff raised his glass in salute. ‘Congra
tulations.’

  ‘There have been other English ships, but many failures.’

  Hinsch snorted disdainfully. ‘Twenty-two.’

  ‘Too many, yes.’

  ‘The detonator?’ Wolff asked.

  Rintelen shook his head. ‘The detonator is good . . .’

  ‘The Irish,’ interjected Hinsch. ‘The Irish are stupid . . .’

  ‘That is why we need you, Mr de Witt,’ Rintelen continued. ‘It could be profitable for both of us.’ He lifted the draughtsman’s plan from the table and began to roll it into the cylinder. ‘If I can trust you, of course.’

  ‘Isn’t it a bit late to decide?’

  Rintelen was pretending to concentrate on the tube, long fingers scrabbling it tighter. ‘There!’ he remarked with a chillingly false nonchalance. He lifted the tube and his gaze to Wolff. ‘Not too late, Mr de Witt.’

  ‘No, I suppose it isn’t.’

  ‘But I can trust you . . .’

  ‘Yes, of course. Correct.’

  ‘Good.’ Scooping up the rest of the papers, he walked over to the filing cabinet and locked them back in the top drawer. ‘Now, Hinsch,’ he turned back to them both with his little smile, ‘let us show our new comrade the stock.’

  Half-lit companionways from carpeted ‘first’ to steerage, into the echoing body of the ship and down to the boiler room; a stoker keeping vigil, tending the flame of a single furnace; plating clatters, bulkhead doors icy to the touch. Cursed by idle darkness, they walk in silence or whisper like intruders at the heart of a mountain, in a place where it is impossible to say ‘to thine own self be true’, until they come at last to a workshop, buried in the ship like the embers of a dying fire, full of noise and light that breathes, a dozen seamen grinding away at lathes, sparks and shavings showering the deck and their heavy workboots.