The Poison Tide

by Andrew Williams

  ‘You’re late,’ growled Gaunt. The room was full of tobacco smoke and for no obvious reason the curtains were drawn conspiratorially. Rising from the couch, a dapper young man he didn’t recognise, and from the seat opposite, an old Secret Service Bureau lag he did.

  Wolff looked Gaunt up and down pointedly. ‘Mr Ponting is a businessman.’ The damn fool had come to their meeting dressed in his naval attaché’s uniform, medal ribbons, all the trimmings.

  Gaunt flushed angrily. ‘Clearing the mess you left us last night . . . Impertinent,’ he blustered. ‘There wasn’t time to change.’

  ‘There would be if it was your life at stake,’ replied Wolff coldly.

  ‘Lieutenant Wolff, isn’t it?’ interjected the young man, stepping forward sprightly to offer his hand. ‘William Wiseman. Expecting me, I hope.’ He smiled engagingly, his thick brown moustache bristling like a squirrel’s tail. ‘Cambridge, wasn’t it? Before my time; I was up at Jesus in ’03.’ Excepting his moustache, he didn’t look old enough to have been at university in ’03. Very English country house but with the quiet authority of one familiar with the world beyond its gates. He must have paid a good deal for his clothes. ‘You weren’t a boxer, were you?’ he enquired, with just the suggestion in his inflection of time spent in America.

  ‘A runner.’

  ‘I’m a boxer.’ Small and plump, he was no more than a hopeful bantam weight, but with a certain swagger. ‘Well, I used to be,’ he added with a regretful smile, the moustache twitching again. ‘Just a scrapper now.’

  ‘Yes, well . . .’ Gaunt wriggled his shoulders as if he could hear the echo of the same ringside bell, ready to square up to all-comers. ‘Sir William’s setting up shop here, Wolff. Reporting . . .’ he paused for particular emphasis ‘. . . to me.’

  Wiseman raised his right eyebrow a little but said nothing.

  ‘Officially, Sir William will be our man from the Ministry of Munitions,’ Gaunt continued.

  ‘Unofficially, we’re Section V of MI 1(c). That’s what the War Office chaps are calling our bit of the Bureau. Everything has to be a number or letter, don’t it?’ observed Wiseman smoothly. ‘You, me, old Thwaites here,’ he turned to his companion; ‘we’ve become a traditional two-finger salute to the Hun.’

  ‘Glad you’re still alive, Wolff.’ Thwaites limped a few steps to greet him with a handshake and a slap on the back. ‘My leg?’ he asked, following Wolff’s gaze. ‘Gallipoli. Lucky they left me with it.’ He looked ten years older, thinner, his skin yellow like a smoke stain.

  ‘A couple of crocks,’ Wiseman joked, hand to his chest. ‘Touch of gas at Ypres. But the brain still works, eh, Thwaites?’

  ‘Can we get down to business?’ Gaunt grumbled.

  First Wolff wanted to open the curtains, and yes, it was possible, perhaps because he asked so humbly. It was a dreary November day and cold on the street, the hotel doorman blowing vapour into his balled hands, a baker unloading warm rolls in front of the restaurant opposite, the faces of passers-by bent into their scarves; no parked motor cars, no one loitering, no one where they shouldn’t be.

  ‘Your ship, the Blackness – she sailed this morning,’ Gaunt called to him from a chair.

  ‘Christ!’ Wolff spun away from the window to face him. ‘Rintelen said she was leaving tomorrow.’ His heart fluttered like a tiny bird.

  ‘Then he lied,’ replied Gaunt, with something very like relish. ‘I got your message but it was too late. Late again . . .’; even this opportunity to score points he took without shame. ‘I couldn’t get my people aboard her.’

  ‘That’s why he made me visit him at the club, and . . .’ Wolff hesitated, his conscience pricking him hard, ‘. . . kept me there.’ Lie back, he thought; goodness, he’d fallen over.

  ‘I thought he trusted you.’ Wiseman was gazing at him intently over his fingertips.

  ‘No one trusts anyone in this sort of enterprise. He was making sure.’

  ‘Three to four days before they detonate, you say?’ enquired Gaunt. ‘There’s still time to get them off.’

  ‘He may have lied about that too,’ Wiseman noted, smoothing his moustache thoughtfully with the tip of his right index finger.

  ‘Yes.’ Wolff felt obliged to acknowledge the possibility. He loosened his tie a little, his collar slipping between damp fingers. Suddenly the room felt close.

  ‘Look, there’s time. My people are onto it,’ said Gaunt empathetically.

  ‘And they know . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes. Hold number two. Six along, six up.’ Gaunt sounded very Australian suddenly, a sure sign that he was losing his temper again. ‘Sit down, Wolff, for God’s sake.’

  ‘You did the right thing, old boy;’ this from Thwaites. ‘No choice but to plant the things. As they say here in America, you’re the ace in our hole. Can’t risk your cover.’

  Wolff nodded gratefully. He walked round the couch to join the circle. Gaunt was holding court at its centre in the only comfortable armchair.

  ‘The real question is, how on earth is he doing it? Can you tell me . . .’ Wiseman glanced sideways at Gaunt, ‘. . . us how he’s smuggling these bombs aboard the ships?’

  Of course Wolff could explain. Hadn’t he just planted two of the damn things on the Blackness? The same unholy alliance: Irish and German. A spark from Roger Casement in Berlin, fanned to a flame by the presence of a prodigiously energetic man, the self-styled Dark Invader.

  ‘Dark Invader . . .’ Thwaites guffawed. ‘That’s a bit rich, isn’t it?’

  ‘He’s an actor certainly,’ replied Wolff, running his fingers through his hair reflectively. ‘There’s a little of that in all of us who do this work, isn’t there? He knows what he’s doing. Firstly, forcing up the price of ammunition to the Allies – that’s through a cover company . . .’

  ‘Gibbons. Cedar Street,’ interjected Gaunt. ‘My Czechs are watching the place . . .’

  ‘Dr Albert made me sign one of the company’s contracts,’ continued Wolff. ‘Albert’s the paymaster. Then there’s Clan na Gael – Rintelen is encouraging the Irish to organise strikes in all the East Coast ports we use. Thirdly, the sabotage network – taking the war to us here in America;’ and he told them about the envelope Koenig had passed over his greasy plate to the man from Green’s. ‘Koenig used to organise the security for Hamburg America, knows all the agencies I shouldn’t wonder. I turn up like Santa Claus with my sack and a Green’s detective gives me a badge. Result, two packages in the hold.’ He frowned pensively. ‘I expect Dr Albert is paying detective agencies at the other ports too.’

  ‘Quis custodiet, what?’ observed Wiseman. ‘Who guards the guards?’

  ‘The thing is,’ Wolff leant forward to offer him his cigarette case, ‘someone with a badge and a lot of balls can do whatever he damn well pleases.’

  ‘And the cigar bombs, tell me about those, man,’ demanded Gaunt, the springs of his chair groaning as he crossed then uncrossed his long legs. He was unsettled, he wanted to ask the questions.

  ‘They’re ingenious.’ Wolff bent to light his own cigarette. ‘Simple, inexpensive, easy to hide. They leave no trace – ingenious. The inventor is elderly, Bismarck whiskers, Prussian I would say. Got him to say a few words in English – he speaks it well and with an American accent – New York, New Jersey – so he’s been here a while.’

  ‘Do you have a name?’ Gaunt was fumbling for a notebook.

  ‘Only a false one, Ziethen.’

  ‘You’re sure it’s false?’

  ‘Not one hundred per cent . . .’

  ‘Von Ziethen was one of Frederick the Great’s commanders,’ Thwaites explained.

  ‘“Correct”,’ as friend Rintelen would say. And the code word for the operation was one of Frederick’s battles: Leuthen.’ Wolff drew heavily on his cigarette. He was apprehensive about the ship and impatient for Gaunt to leave. ‘Is there any tea?’

  Wiseman was watching him from behind his fingertips, as inscrutable as a plaster sai
nt. ‘It’s not very warm;’ but rising from the couch, he stepped over to the table and poured Wolff some anyway. ‘Sugar?’

  ‘Two, thank you.’

  ‘Heard any word of this fellow, Delmar?’ he drawled, handing Wolff the cup.

  ‘No.’

  ‘They’re worried in London. The Admiralty has a source . . .’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You do?’ Wiseman raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘London thinks the fellow’s important, wants to know what he’s doing here.’ He sat down and took a pipe from his jacket. ‘Inspiration, anyone?’

  ‘Wolff needs to take a look in Rintelen’s office,’ replied Gaunt with quarterdeck confidence. ‘It’s all in there.’

  Wolff would have liked to disagree; the ‘Wolff needs to’, he didn’t appreciate. Irritatingly, it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. Contracts, accounts, receipts, the business of war in America expressed as a balance sheet; that Dr Albert was a meticulous record keeper he’d witnessed with his own eyes. Was there a securer repository available to him in New York than the Friedrich der Grosse? ‘Our piece of Germany,’ Rintelen called her.

  ‘Do you think you’ll be able to take a look?’ Wiseman enquired, pulling at strands of tobacco.

  A number of thoughts flashed through Wolff’s mind as he considered his answer: that Rintelen would never trust him to be alone on the ship; that no one but the crew would hear the crack of a revolver in the cabin, and if they dropped him from the stern the tide might take him to Coney Island – he’d always meant to visit. He wondered how sorry Laura would be and resolved to ask her to dinner, and he remembered that the cabin door was secured with a basic mortise, the filing cabinets with something simpler, but there wouldn’t be time to do more than glance through the files and some would be in code. And if he was caught he would shoot, and he would make a particular effort to finish Hinsch because that would be a genuine pleasure. He thought also that for a Bureau new boy almost ten years his junior, Wiseman was asking rather a lot, but that he managed it so graciously he was probably accustomed to getting his way.

  ‘It’s a question of opportunity,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Believe me, I’m sensible of the risk,’ Wiseman observed with what at least sounded like humility; ‘and we can’t leave it all to Lieutenant Wolff.’

  ‘It’s his duty,’ replied Gaunt.

  ‘You know, I have some ideas . . .’ Wiseman held a match to his pipe. The tongue of flame rising from its bowl reminded Wolff of the detonator, and with a frisson of anxiety the smell of rotting vegetables, a crate six up and six along the stack, and fifty Empire sailors.

  ‘I have . . . some . . . some thoughts . . . I might share, Captain,’ Wiseman puffed. ‘Shall we leave these fellows and sort a few things out by ourselves?’

  There wasn’t anything more to discuss – it was a Navy show, Gaunt grumbled. But Wiseman persisted, oiling his ruffled colonial feathers with a charm that demonstrated perfectly why C had put his faith in a Secret Service rookie.

  ‘Americans are dewy eyed about English aristocrats,’ Thwaites observed when they’d gone. ‘Sir William will be a great success here.’

  Wolff got to his feet and wandered back to the window. ‘I think that’s what Gaunt is worried about,’ he muttered distractedly. A motor car had broken down in the middle of the street and a plump lady in a preposterously large hat was standing in front of it with a crank in her hand, waiting for a gentleman to do the decent thing. ‘He’s careless,’ Wolff remarked. ‘You saw the naval uniform’.

  Storm clouds were rolling in from the Atlantic, towering grey and shifting in an awkward image of the city. Different faces in the windows of the restaurant, a police officer strolling along the sidewalk, more cars, more people moving with purpose. There would be rain. Hard rain.

  ‘Prickly customer,’ Thwaites declared. ‘Thinks we’re taking over his patch.’

  ‘Aren’t we?’

  ‘I suppose we are. But it’s time to get on the front foot here.’

  Thwaites had friends in America. He’d spent ten years in New York, most of them as a foreign affairs adviser for a newspaper. Charming, self-deprecating, the sort of upper-middle-class Englishman who went down well with everyone from millionaire steel magnates to State Department secretaries; a cocktail-party regular, a particular favourite on the Long Island summer circuit, a guest and special companion of the celebrated beauty, Edna May Lewisohn. How special was a matter of speculation because Thwaites’ American friends knew him to be the soul of discretion – and in affairs of the heart at least he could be. Wolff had met him in Washington before the war and was so impressed by the ease with which he worked the room that he’d mentioned his name to the Bureau. If that meant he was responsible for drawing him into C’s web, he was heartily sorry.

  ‘I think we should work with the people here,’ Thwaites continued. ‘Get them onside. Sir William feels the same. Your Captain Gaunt seems to wants to do it alone . . .’

  ‘He isn’t my captain, Norman.’

  ‘No, of course not, sorry old boy.’ He waved his cigarette at Wolff apologetically. ‘Damn fool nonsense. Look, there’s a chap called Tunney in charge of the Police Department Bomb Squad; might have a word with him. Keep your name out of it, of course. Any objections?’

  ‘Koenig . . .’ Wolff had forgotten. ‘I think the police are watching him already.’

  ‘I’ll ask old Tunney, he’ll know.’ Rising with the help of his stick, Thwaites limped across the room to a drinks tray. ‘I’m having one, you? Know it’s a little early but, well . . . whisky all right?’ He was perspiring with the effort.

  Wolff said that whisky was fine. For a while neither of them spoke. Thwaites was taking his time with the drinks. Across the street a storekeeper was rolling his awning, the wind had taken a little girl’s hat and it tumbled along the sidewalk with her mother bent almost double in pursuit. Sharp splashes on the window.

  ‘They let you down rather,’ Thwaites said at last, his back still turned. ‘Turkey, I mean. We all thought so.’

  He glanced over his shoulder at Wolff, then hobbled back to his chair with both glasses, his stick hanging from his arm.

  ‘Leaving you in the hands of those savages all that time. Here . . .’ he placed Wolff’s whisky on an occasional table, almost obliging him to take the seat opposite.

  Wolff didn’t want his sympathy, he wanted to forget – at least, he wanted to try.

  Thwaites persisted. ‘Made all of us angry,’ he observed with a shake of the head. ‘There but for the grace – what? Didn’t think they’d leave you high and dry – not the old man, not Cumming.’

  ‘Drop it, would you.’

  ‘It’s just – but if you say—’

  ‘Yes,’ he interrupted emphatically. ‘Yes, I do. Yes, please.’

  Thwaites nodded slightly. ‘All right.’

  Wolff stared at him for a few seconds longer, then walked to the chair and sat down. ‘What was Gallipoli like?’ he asked to fill the silence.

  ‘Well, you know Johnny Turk.’ Thwaites frowned and studied his glass for a few seconds before taking a long pull of whisky. ‘Don’t care for your Mussulman. Never have.’ Thwaites didn’t ‘care for’ anyone with a skin darker than his own and assumed other gentlemen felt the same way. ‘A shambles, a bloody shambles,’ he muttered disconsolately; ‘the Dardanelles. Damn fool idea. I was lucky to escape with this in May,’ he said, slapping the stick against his boot. ‘The boys in my battalion say it was worse in the summer – hot as hell . . .’ He took a little more whisky and swallowed hard. ‘It isn’t any better in France, is it?

  The front had settled on the city and gusts of rain were rattling the window like bursts of gunfire. They sat in silence, Thwaites twisting his glass distractedly on the arm of his chair. The memory of that fly-blown foreign field where bits of Englishmen were left jigging on the wire had drawn the light from him.

  ‘What a pair we are,’ he said at last, lifting his glass and his chin. �
�Another?’

  ‘No, thank you, Norman.’

  ‘I think I will,’ he said, struggling to his feet again. ‘Sure? No, well . . .’ He poured himself another stiff one, his hand a little unsteady, then hobbled back to his chair. ‘We’ll win the war – with the Empire, with our friends here in America. Salute,’ he said, raising his glass to Wolff. ‘Trouble is, a lot of chaps are going to die before we do. We’re too good at it, aren’t we?’ He slumped heavily into his chair and settled his leg in front of him. ‘Killing, I mean.’

  Wolff took another cigarette, tapping it lightly on his case. ‘I don’t know if we’ll win,’ he said, bending over the flame from his lighter, ‘and I can’t remember why it’s important, can you?’

  Thwaites may have said something about little countries like Belgium and international law. He may have said something of democracy and an end to autocracy. Then he said nothing for a while, sipping the question in the gathering gloom of the room.

  ‘Why?’ he muttered at last. ‘Why?’ Bent forward, elbows on his knees, holding his head and his gaze to the carpet somewhere between his boots. ‘Why? For a boy called Roberts out there in no-man’s-land who will always be crying for his mother; and for Lowe, the little Durham miner whom I brush from my jacket every morning; and the baker’s son, Rees, who gives me a startled smile if I jostle a stranger on a train. Yes, Private Brown – he was so very sorry for the trouble he put me to, dying in the piss and the mud far from home. Yes . . .’ he raised his eyes to Wolff. ‘That’s why it’s important to me.’

  Wolff gave a little nod and drew deeply on his cigarette.