The Poison Tide

by Andrew Williams

  ‘Correct,’ interjected Rintelen. ‘The beauty of it is, the acid melts the lead leaving almost no trace, so no one knows what caused the fire. But we will show you. How long, Doctor?’

  ‘How long?’ Ziethen lifted a watch from his waistcoat. ‘Just a few minutes, I think. Yes.’

  ‘No longer, I hope. We have a busy evening,’ Rintelen observed, glancing impatiently at his own watch.

  Ziethen had set one of his devices in the long grass a few yards away, its position marked by a white peg. They stood side by side peering into the gloom like naughty boys waiting for a firecracker. Wolff lit a cigarette and had almost finished smoking it when a blinding flame burst from the device at last: white-hot, stiff, twelve inches high and completely silent.

  ‘You see?’ Rintelen demanded.

  It burned for less than a minute. Fifty-three seconds precisely, according to the doctor’s pocket watch. Nothing remained of the casing but a few hot lumps of lead.

  ‘Just a question of putting our firework in its proper place.’ Rintelen bent to pull the white marker from the ground. ‘Your job, Mr de Witt,’ he said, tossing it into the trees. ‘But there are some arrangements I must make, if you will excuse me,’ and he turned to stride back to the motor car.

  ‘I’ve packed them in paper,’ Ziethen observed, at his side. ‘Try and keep them upright. Four will be enough, don’t you think?’ He coughed and looked down, shifting the scorched earth with the toe of his boot. It was made of fine Italian leather.

  ‘Place them near some combustible material. They may not burn long enough to ignite a shell, but if you manage to, get a good fire going. Perhaps you know this.’ He spoke ponderously and with a phrasing that suggested the flat farmland and long winters of East Prussia.

  ‘And how long will the fuse – the discs – last for?’ Wolff asked in English.

  Ziethen hesitated, his hand drifting to his moustache. Was it supposed to be a secret or was he just surprised to be addressed in English?

  ‘Three, four days. Until the ship is out of American territorial waters,’ he replied in English.

  ‘Gentlemen, please.’ Rintelen summoned them to the motor car. He was standing in the circle of light cast by its lamps, a small briefcase in his right hand. It was seven o’clock but seemed later, darker. Wolff’s driver was sitting behind the wheel of the other motor car with the engine running.

  ‘Is our comrade ready, Dr Ziethen?’ Rintelen asked.

  The doctor was examining his boots, recalling the white flame perhaps, or his bank draft from Albert, or the little redhead at Martha’s who crossed her legs just so. Or was it because he didn’t answer to the name ‘Ziethen’ as a rule?

  ‘Doctor!’ Rintelen dragged him from his stupor. ‘Please, Doctor. Does our comrade know all he needs to know?’

  Ziethen glanced at Wolff, then nodded.

  ‘Good.’ Rintelen held out the case. ‘So, Mr de Witt, the opportunity you have been waiting for.’

  The case was made of light-brown leather and would have looked well in the hands of a Wall Street banker.

  ‘You want me to . . .’

  ‘Yes.’ Rintelen thrust it towards him again. ‘Hinsch is waiting for you.’

  Wolff lifted it carefully by the corners, then by the handle. ‘New York?’

  ‘Hans, your driver, will take you there,’ he said with a smile. ‘Good luck.’

  Wolff held the case steady between his knees as they crawled back to the highway. If Hans was anxious, he gave nothing away. Just obeying orders: weren’t they all? There was nothing Wolff could do but sit tight until he was alone, a tenth of an inch of copper from incineration. If it didn’t end badly on the road there might be an opportunity to dump the detonators in the Hudson. He felt calmer on the highway. For a time the rhythm of the engine acted like an anaesthetic, his thoughts drifting and dissipating, just as they used to when he pounded the hard-baked fenland lanes of home.

  They drove down to the Jersey waterfront, rumbling cautiously along cobbled streets, between brick warehouse blocks and busy dockside bars, sailors staggering along sidewalks, stevedores emptying from a shipyard gate. Then on past a freight train wheezing in a siding, across the tracks, turning left at a mission chapel, pulling up at last beside a patch of wasteground.

  ‘This is it?’ asked Wolff.

  Hans didn’t answer but reached forward to extinguish the car’s kerosene side lamp. On the opposite side of the street, a dockyard wall and the sharp silhouette of cranes, Manhattan bright across the water. Wolff reached into his jacket for his cigarettes. It was colder and his hand trembled a little. Perhaps it was fear. His chest felt tight, his head ached too. ‘Look, do you have a light?’

  ‘There,’ replied the driver, nodding to the street. Someone close to the end of it was signalling with a small light, swinging it like a wrecker luring a ship to a reef. ‘All right, we are coming,’ he muttered, and he swung the Ford away from the kerb.

  Hinsch greeted Wolff with his customary scowl. ‘You’re late.’ He was standing by the wall with two burly longshoremen he introduced in heavily accented English as Walsh and McKee. Wolff recognised McKee as one of the men he’d seen at the strike meeting with the leaders of the Clan.

  ‘The bombs?’ Hinsch asked, pointing to the case.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then put these on.’ McKee handed Wolff a stevedore’s cap and a threadbare woollen coat that was too small and made his chest feel tighter still.

  ‘It is good,’ Hinsch observed. ‘You can go,’ and he nodded to McKee.

  ‘Hell’s teeth, what am I . . .?’

  ‘The job you were paid for, de Witt,’ he snapped in German.

  At the end of the street they turned right and followed the wall for a hundred yards to the gates. Christ, they’re not going to be fooled by a flat cap, Wolff thought, the briefcase brushing against his suit trousers. But McKee must have arranged everything because the guards let them pass without a word. ‘Don’t open your mouth,’ he warned, as they walked across the yard. ‘I’ll see everything straight.’ They stopped by the door of a warehouse and he disappeared inside, returning after only a few seconds with a sack. ‘Put the case in this.’

  Three piers ran at right angles to the quay, with three ships alongside. Munitions had been loaded aboard the nearest and an engine with empty wagons was waiting to leave the dock. Stevedores were shifting through its steam like wraiths, caught in silhouette against the arc lamps for a second, then away.

  ‘The Blackness of Liverpool. Three holds: two fore, one aft,’ McKee whispered as they walked towards her companionway. ‘Artillery shells for the Russians. You know what to do?’

  Yes, Wolff knew what to do. Christ, he hoped he wouldn’t have to do it.

  Groups of longshoremen were drifting towards the quay, their work over for the night. Two men stopped to speak to McKee, glancing at Wolff, at his shirt cuffs, at his suit trousers, at the sack.

  ‘They’re still in the forward hold,’ McKee reported, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, his hand at his lip. The engine screeched a warning that made them flinch, and with an impatient whoosh of steam, began to trundle along the pier. McKee touched Wolff’s arm. ‘Will one hold be enough for yer?’

  ‘I can’t tell.’

  He cleared his throat nervously. ‘All right, let’s get it over with now.’

  The guards at the foot of the gangway were armed with rifles but dressed like storekeepers in cheap cloth coats and caps, gold badges pinned to their chests. Private security, Wolff guessed, perhaps something to do with Koenig or his contact in the café, the man with the old Empire moustache.

  McKee sidled up to the one without a rifle. ‘Brendan? McKee. The fella from Clan na Gael.’

  ‘You’re late,’ the guard called Brendan grumbled. He was another Irishman. His eyes met Wolff’s for a moment, his face florid, with the small broken veins of a drinker, a nasty scar splitting his top lip. ‘For God’s sake, couldn’t you find this fella a coat
that fits,’ he complained. ‘Look, put these on,’ and he dipped into his pocket for three of the shiny badges. ‘Anyone ask, you work for Green’s. Green’s Detective Agency. All right? And whatever you’re doing, make it quick.’

  One of Brendan’s men escorted them up the gangway and they were met at the top by another. A junior officer was on watch beside him at the rail. He glanced complacently at their badges and away, flicking his cigarette end over the side in a shower of hot ash. Under the upper-deck arc lamps, sailors were stowing the ship’s loading booms. Hatch number one over the for’ard cargo hold was sealed, hatch two still gaping.

  ‘Hey, what yer doing?’ They’d caught the eye of a mate.

  ‘Green’s,’ McKee shouted back, pointing to his badge. ‘Inspection.’

  ‘Says who, Paddy?’ the mate asked, stalking towards them, his shoulders rocking belligerently.

  ‘Says me,’ replied Wolff, in a military voice that startled them all. ‘Says His Majesty’s Government. This is a security inspection, a random inspection.’

  The mate looked nonplussed. ‘No one said . . .’

  ‘It wouldn’t be a random inspection if they had, would it, man?’

  ‘You are, sir . . .?’ enquired the mate tentatively.

  ‘Didn’t I just say? I work for His Majesty’s Government.’ Wolff spoke with the cut-glass confidence of one who presumes to be recognised as an English gentleman even in a stevedore’s cap. ‘The hold next, I think. Number two.’ His authority was vested in his broad A and his precise aitch: the sort of commanding performance possible only with subjects of the Empire.

  The mate stared at him sullenly for a few seconds, then nodded obediently because he was from somewhere like Birkenhead and lived in a two-up two-down with a family to feed on eight pounds, three and six.

  Just what the hell am I doing? Wolff wondered as they escorted him to the lower deck. He hadn’t the time to think it through; it was the smell of the thing now. He’d come too far for excuses.

  ‘Stay here,’ he demanded, releasing the dogs on the hold door, but he wasn’t surprised that McKee ignored him: Hinsch must have instructed him to stay close. Inside it was damp and smelt of rotting vegetables, perhaps the ship’s last cargo. The shells were stacked in two blocks, a gap the width of a man’s shoulders between them, five hundred identical crates, a thousand, maybe more. If he didn’t plant the detonators carefully, he would have the devil’s own job retrieving them. Six crates from the left of the door and six crates up from the deck. ‘Help me with this one, will you?’

  They lifted it down and McKee produced a jemmy, forcing it with a splintering crack. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ It was the voice of the mate. Walsh was blocking the door. ‘Just a little accident,’ they heard him say.

  The dim light kicked off the burnished steel of six high-explosive shells.

  ‘This will do,’ muttered Wolff. ‘Here,’ and he tossed one to McKee. ‘A souvenir.’

  ‘What the devil . . .’

  Wolff looked at him scornfully. ‘Pull yourself together, man, it isn’t that sensitive.’ In the space left, he placed two cigar detonators side by side.

  ‘All right. Help me put it together.’

  ‘What do I do with this?’ McKee lifted the shell.

  ‘Put it in the sack, of course.’

  They slid the crate back into place and were looking for another when they heard raised voices in the passageway. The mate was plainly in no mood to accept the brush-off a second time. McKee looked rattled.

  ‘I’ll deal with it,’ Wolff assured him.

  Jaw set, feet apart, seamen at his back, the mate meant business.

  ‘The captain, where is he?’ Wolff commanded before he could speak.

  His mouth opened then snapped shut like a fish expiring in a net.

  ‘Well, man? Where is he?’ Wolff removed his cap and slapped it against his leg, stroking his hair back in exasperation. ‘You know you failed, don’t you? You,’ he said, directing a finger at the mate’s chest, ‘you failed.’

  Why? Because the mate had allowed three strangers into a hold full of TNT. The badge? Anyone might wear a badge. Saboteurs might wear a badge.

  The Dark Invader approved. Wasn’t de Witt’s performance proof of his own fine judgement? He heard the story from Hinsch, who’d listened to McKee’s breathless account with something like grudging admiration.

  ‘You enjoyed your adventure, Mr de Witt?’ Rintelen enquired with boyish enthusiasm.

  ‘Not especially,’ replied Wolff tersely; he’d hated every bloody minute.

  ‘So, you earned your money.’

  They were sitting side by side on Martha Held’s couch, his arm draped round Wolff’s shoulder – like a couple of Schwule.

  ‘We will wait for the dust to settle,’ he said, leaning forward to pour the wine. ‘Next week, perhaps.’

  Wolff’s glass chinked against the neck of the bottle. ‘Next week?’

  ‘Another ship, Mr de Witt.’

  ‘I thought you wanted me to instruct your men?’

  ‘Correct. You will. But it would be a shame to waste your talent.’

  Wolff sipped his wine.

  ‘More? Naturally, I will pay you for this too.’ He shifted to the edge of the couch so his little brown eyes could dance about Wolff’s face. ‘Are you unhappy with this arrangement?’

  ‘Not if the price is . . .’ Wolff smiled wryly ‘. . . correct.’

  ‘Then that is agreed. Good. Now you must excuse me.’ He got to his feet, smoothing the same imaginary creases from his perfectly pressed trousers. ‘I have something I must attend to. No, stay,’ his small hand hovering above Wolff. ‘Please, there is one thing more . . .’

  ‘It’s after midnight,’ Wolff complained. He’d been wound so tightly all evening. ‘Can’t it wait? I’m tired.’

  ‘I am afraid, no, it cannot.’ Rintelen smiled shiftily. ‘I will be back. Soon.’

  But he didn’t come back. Half buried in the couch, eyes closed between sips of wine, the time ticked into the early hours. Clara, the girl he’d paid for nothing, found him again. Why wouldn’t she? It was the easiest money she’d earned in a long time. She sat with her head on his shoulder, sharing his glass of wine, and he was too tired and bored to care; too tired to get up and leave; too tired to resist when with a fragile smile she led him by the hand to her room. And although his mind was befuddled, he recognised he’d been played like a fool. The ship, the instruction to sink more ships, Martha Held’s at midnight – why hadn’t he rung Gaunt? – he’d been played the whole damn evening. And now the girl. I should be more afraid of Rintelen, he thought.

  She folded his clothes and placed them neatly on a chair. Then she took off her silk dress and put it carefully on a hanger on the back of the door. Naked on the threadbare rug before him, a little spindly, a little knock-kneed, with gooseflesh on her arms and thighs, and an uncertain, almost innocent smile. Perhaps that was his imagination.

  ‘I’m to look after you,’ she said, avoiding his gaze. ‘There’s more wine – if you want it . . .’

  ‘No. No. Thank you.’ Someone should protect her, comfort her, offer her some tenderness.

  ‘Lie back.’

  Her burgundy bedspread smelt of cheap cologne, but not enough to mask the stale sweat.

  ‘No. Lie beside me,’ he said softly. ‘Here. Just here.’

  But she didn’t lie beside him because it wasn’t part of her routine. Instead she fucked him, bumping him like a German horse.

  ‘Good?’ she asked, collapsing beside him at last.

  He brushed a strand of hair from her small face. ‘Fine. Thank you.’

  He didn’t need to pay, she said – unless he wanted to offer more. His friend Gaché had settled everything.

  20

  Dissonance

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING he woke with a wooden mouth and an agonising sense of self-disgust. He was still nursing it and a strong coffee in his spartan sittin
g room when the telephone rang.

  It was Laura. ‘Mr Devoy has taken you at your word.’ Her warmth made him feel worse. Of course he betrayed her every day, that was his job, but going with one of Martha’s tarts, well, he felt terrible.

  ‘The leaflets, silly,’ she prompted. ‘I can meet you at the Hoboken ferry terminal at ten.’ The line crackled expectantly. ‘It’s to be our largest meeting so far.’ She was willing him to say, ‘See you there,’ but he was glad he wasn’t obliged to. Something out of the blue, a business meeting, he explained, not Gaché, no, ordinary work of the sort he might mention to the neighbours. It wasn’t his best performance because he found it harder lying to women he admired, although he had had plenty of practice. Laura didn’t disguise her disappointment and he admired her even more for it and felt another intense pang of regret.

  Tired brown eyes in the mirror, struggling with a tie, it was a morning for reflection, a morning when the heart didn’t seem quite tough enough. Men learn to live with suffering and adversity until it breaks them, often suddenly. Sometimes it is the same with lies. Judgement is swift, his mother used to say with her scrawny forefinger raised, and he’d almost come to believe her in the impenetrable darkness of a Turkish cell. Every new lie a stone in a sack – like the one he’d carried on to the ship the night before. Sometimes he wasn’t conscious of its weight, sometimes he staggered beneath it – one day it would crush him. This morning his burden was a heavy one, and he was sure that was how it should be.

  ‘For God’s sake, man, you’re doing your duty. If you can’t love yourself more, learn at least to forgive yourself,’ C had chided him once. Pro Patria. Behind his desk, C was able to draw a thick straight line between the man and the lie. In the field it was easy to lose the line. The soldier stares down the barrel of his gun at a nameless face but the spy laughs, calls his enemy ‘friend’, makes love to, then betrays, his enemy. Wolff was glad there was enough left of who he used to be to feel sick about it, or was that simply the drink and the image he couldn’t shake off – of Clara counting her gratuity?

  At a little before ten o’clock he caught a taxicab as far as Madison and, thankful for the clear air, walked the last few blocks to the Prince George. Satisfied he didn’t have company, he crossed the lobby to the elevators and took one to the fifth. The doors opened on a bellhop balancing half a dozen pieces of luggage. Wolff nodded to him, stepped from the elevator, stopped, patted his jacket for a key, sighed heavily, then turned on to the stairs as if intent on returning to the first floor. On the third, he set off along the corridor to Mr Ponting’s suite.