The Poison Tide
Page 37
‘Who are you?’ Hilken stammered at last.
Wolff placed a hand in the middle of his chest and gave him a shove. ‘This won’t take long. I see you have a drink – why don’t you sit and finish it?’
‘How dare you touch me,’ he protested, angrily brushing Wolff’s arm aside. ‘Who the hell do you think . . .’
‘I’m de Witt.’
That Hilken knew the name, and was unhappy to hear it, was written plainly enough in his face. ‘If it’s business – make an appointment with my clerk.’
They were standing toe to toe like cowboys squaring up in a saloon, Wolff a few intimidating inches taller, broader and set with the confidence of a man who knows he can take a punch and return it with more than equal measure. ‘Sit down,’ he commanded. Hilken glared at him but his shoulders dropped, and a second later he turned to walk over to his desk, anxious to place four feet of mahogany between them.
‘It’s a business proposition,’ Wolff said, pushing further into the room; ‘if that helps a chap like you make sense of it. You see, my clients know all about your activities – you’re trying to poison our soldiers – and our horses. Killed at least one American, I hear, you and Hinsch, and Dilger.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Wolff’s features settled into a bored expression, his forefinger trailing lazily along the edge of the desk until it came to an ugly silver paperweight, a ship’s dog in a sou’wester. He picked it up, testing its heft in his hand. ‘Well, of course you know. You don’t do the dirty work – you pay people like McKevitt. You settle the bills. You helped Dilger set up his laboratory – goodness, what would your president say if he knew a German spy was culturing anthrax a few miles from the White House?’
Hilken lifted up his glass, inspected his drink, then placed it gently back on the desk. ‘He’d recognise it for British propaganda,’ he said, affecting indifference.
‘Well, of course I was expecting you to suggest something of the sort. I wouldn’t be here if my clients . . .’
‘Can we stop this pretence?’ Hilken sneered.
Wolff shrugged; ‘. . . my friends didn’t have proof. Your associate, Dr Albert – an excellent bookkeeper – he made a very careful record – you have accounts at two banks in New York, don’t you? I’m sure the Baltimore Sun – oh, and the Secret Service – would be interested to know why a German diplomat implicated in a sabotage campaign is paying you thousands of dollars. No, just a minute, let me finish,’ he said, holding up his hand. ‘You see, he was foolish enough to entrust his accounts to von Rintelen, who kept them in an oak filing cabinet, the middle one of three, if I recall.’
Hilken had turned a sickly white. ‘And Miss Dilger,’ Wolff continued, ‘we visited her – I’m sure you know by now. Do you think she’ll be strong enough to lie when the police and newspaper reporters are on the doorstep?’
Carefully replacing the paperweight, he stepped over to the hearth, holding his hands to the glowing embers. ‘Think of the disgrace, Hilken, a saboteur helping a foreign power. If they don’t execute you as a spy they’ll put you in prison. What will the other members of the Baltimore Germania Club say, and your business associates, your father, your wife – does she love you enough to wait for twenty years? You know, you won’t be able to afford to keep the girlfriend – Miss Johnston, isn’t it? Perhaps the newspapers will speak to her too.’ He stared disapprovingly at Hilken. ‘But it doesn’t have to be like that. We’re not interested in you – it’s Hinsch and his people we want – his contacts in the ports – the network – most of all the sailors at the warehouse last night – yes, I know all about that. I want their names and their ships. I know you kept a record. Was it for Albert?’
Hilken’s gaze was flitting blindly about the room as he tried to manage his fear. ‘Albert,’ he repeated with dismay.
‘I was sure it must be,’ Wolff continued. ‘It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you give me the ships and the men. Eight men.’
‘How the hell . . .’ Hilken was so astonished he forgot he was afraid, but only for the briefest of moments. ‘You want me to be your creature?’
‘A small enterprise. An exchange. I want those names.’
‘Even if I were inclined – I don’t have that sort of information here.’ He paused, then added with less conviction, ‘And I wouldn’t give it to you if I did.’
‘I know, you’re a German patriot.’ Wolff smiled patiently. ‘But for a few names – is it worth the sacrifice? – your life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness—’
He was interrupted by polite knocking at the door. For an unguarded second, hope flickered on Hilken’s face before his expression settled in a sullen frown.
‘Who is it?’ Wolff demanded.
‘My clerk. I expect he’s come to collect the papers I was working on.’
Another knock at the door. ‘Mr Hilken? Müller, sir.’
‘Let me see,’ said Wolff, waving Thwaites’ revolver at the documents on the desk.
They were invoices and orders, nothing of importance. Wolff handed them back, then gestured with the gun to the door.
‘Your driver’s waiting, sir.’ The clerk sounded bemused. Hilken handed him the papers and they spoke briefly about the next day’s business. He was clearly surprised to be going through the diary in the corridor. ‘Is everything all right?’
Perfectly, Hilken assured him, and was on the point of closing the door when he checked, his forefinger across his lip. ‘The victualling of the Breslau – I almost forgot – it needs a signature.’ He turned back to his desk for a pen. ‘Tell my driver I’ll be down in ten minutes.’ He bent over the document the clerk presented to him and wrote his name. Wolff realised it had been a mistake to let him even as the door was closing.
‘Your offer,’ Hilken said quickly. ‘I might be able to collect this information – it will take a little time, just a few hours. Of course, I’d want Dr Albert’s accounts in return.’
‘Has Dilger gone?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the anthrax – you still have some?’
Hilken examined his nails. ‘A little.’
‘Where?’
‘That’s Hinsch’s concern,’ he replied evasively.
‘And you’re going to culture more?’ Wolff asked, walking to one of the windows overlooking the street.
Another long pause. ‘We haven’t talked about it.’
Wolff knew he was lying. ‘And Dilger – are you expecting him back or is his brother going to culture it?’
A streetcar, perhaps the last of the night, pulled up to the stop outside the building and a drunken sailor stumbled up its steps, tripping and almost falling at the top.
‘No, Dr Dilger’s gone and won’t come back,’ Hilken said in a neutral monotone.
Hilken’s Packard was parked at the kerb, the driver’s back against the bonnet, a cigarette burning between his fingers. A noise seemed to startle him; he turned sharply to look down the street but at what, Wolff couldn’t tell.
‘You know, Hilken, I could knock you down.’ He stepped away from the window and closer to the desk. ‘I could shoot you. Or you could give me the names I want – the sailors and their ships. They’re here, aren’t they?’
‘No. I don’t . . .’ he hesitated, taking a step sideways behind the desk. ‘I’ll shout for help. My clerk, and there are thirty . . .’
‘You can try,’ Wolff levelled the gun at him. ‘It might be the last thing you do. You’re wondering if I’m bluffing . . .’ He was bluffing, but it was invested with fifteen years of quiet menace.
‘I haven’t got the names.’ Hilken’s voice shook. ‘I haven’t. Not here.’ He was lying.
Wolff was upon him before he had time to raise a word, striking him hard on the left cheekbone with the grip of the gun, then a punch to his right side. As he fell, Hilken struck his head on the edge of the desk. Dazed, whimpering, he sprawled on the floor beneath it, Wolff on one knee beside him, br
eathing hard, the revolver raised to strike again. ‘Tell me,’ Wolff gasped; ‘tell me.’ The words came to him like an echo from his Turkish prison cell, and in that instant he was gazing up at a sunburnt face with a full moustache, dark smiling eyes. Hilken tried to curl into a ball. ‘Please. I don’t . . . just, just . . . please don’t . . .’ he mumbled between fingers. And this time the echo was Wolff’s own voice. Christ.
‘The drawer,’ Hilken said. ‘The drawer.’
‘Which one?’
‘Right – top right.’
‘Stay there,’ Wolff commanded.
A black file, papers in date order, and glancing through, a sheet with a list of eight ships.
‘The Richmond, the Lagan, Oberon . . .?’ He pushed Hilken with his shoe.
‘Yes.’
‘And the sailors’ names?’
‘Devoy has those. Only Devoy – that’s the deal.’
It made sense and it sounded true. He had the ships at least, that was a start. ‘All right. I’ll contact you tomorrow. Time for you to collect the names of the people you are using in the port, and an opportunity to think about how much you enjoy being a pillar of society. What a hard thing it would be to give up.’
‘But what if I . . .’ Hilken was struggling too obviously for something to say, his thoughts at the end of the corridor or in the hall or in the shadows of the street.
‘Just give me the key to your room.’
The clerk had gone, his desktop empty but for a rectangle of writing paper and four sharp pencils in perfect parallel lines. Wolff locked Hilken in his office with a fleeting prayer: Please God, the oily bastard’s in there a long time. It was galling to acknowledge but he knew his clumsy attempt at blackmail was going to fail. I’ve shot Wiseman’s bolt and hit very little, he thought, as he walked quickly along the corridor to the stairs. Large payments from a foreign diplomat to a businessman’s private accounts were proof of nothing but profiteering, and wasn’t that just the sort of enterprise to make America richer still? Perhaps he should have tried harder. It was the recollection of Turkey, his own torturer – well, he couldn’t – just the thought made him sick. The ships, he had the names of the ships.
The singing had stopped and someone was trying to stroke the old piano through the Moonlight Sonata. The party in the club below was over and a commanding voice and the clatter of furniture suggested the stewards were clearing the tables. If Hilken’s clerk was organising a reception committee, it wouldn’t be here, he thought. At the bottom of the stairs the doors of the club swung open and a sober-looking merchant officer stalked out with his hat under his arm. Wolff followed him from the building but waited in its shadow and watched him climb into a horse cab. Parked a few feet from the entrance was Hilken’s Packard – the driver had retreated behind the wheel – and striding along the sidewalk opposite, two smartly dressed men, heads bent in conversation. Midnight on a chilly downtown street in March, well lit, almost empty, nothing out of the ordinary or so it seemed, but his heart was pounding. Where the hell was Masek? He could feel the danger creeping over his skin.
Sidewalk to sidewalk on the brightest streets, bending his mind to movement, faces, footsteps, a reflection shifting in a shop window; a route through downtown Baltimore; and if I’m lucky I’ll find a cab. Cursing Masek as he walked, because at such times it was important to blame someone. On Baltimore Street he was startled by a drunk who lurched out of an office doorway to ask for money.
‘Get lost,’ he muttered angrily. Half a block further on he was sorry he hadn’t found a nickel or dime. Baltimore was so empty, so still, the sound of his own footsteps was unnerving. It reminded him for just a moment of Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt; the gas cloud that wipes people from the world, leaving its streets to machines.
Beyond the Custom House he began to breathe more easily. A few blocks to the harbour basin, on into President Street and he would be there. What happened to you, Masek? Ahead of him now, the chimney of the new pumping station; on his right the lights of the city dock. Damn stupid to check in to the hotel under the same cover name; what was he thinking? Careless, as if it was over, when it was never over. He tightened his grip on the revolver.
Two sailors staggered from an alleyway with their arms draped around each other and began to weave along the sidewalk away from him. He slowed a little, seeking some assurance that they were the harmless drunks they appeared to be. They were disconcertingly well-built men, the sort he used to baulk at tackling on the naval college rugby field. Drawing closer, his pulse began to quicken again. There was something wrong. What? He was close enough now to hear their shuffling footsteps. Footsteps, footsteps. They were rolling home in silence. I’m a fool. It was a performance. He’d known a lot of drunken sailors, he’d often been drunk himself and he could remember quiet moments, but not at turning-out time, not in a street, not with an arm round a buddy.
Christ. Here we go again; and he set off across the street, checking for just a second to avoid a passing carriage. Only three blocks more to the hotel; and if the bastards came for him, he’d fire one over their heads. They were sober now all right, keeping step through one junction, and the next, and past the pumping station, men on the graveyard shift smoking at its gates: They won’t take me here. But a few more yards and they made their move, breaking across the street towards him. Turning smartly, steadying himself, he took aim: ‘Halt.’ For a second they did, but only for a second, edging forward step by step like children in a playground game. To be sure they knew these were his rules, he yelled: ‘Another and you’re dead.’ But the larger of the two seamen kept coming. Have it your own way then; he was close enough to be sure he’d hit something. He squeezed, the revolver kicked, the seaman crumpled, the shot echoed for ever – or so it seemed because at that moment he felt a searing pain in his shoulder. A scream locked behind his teeth, and he spun round to confront a man with a bullet head and blue eyes, his mouth slightly open and his knife raised to strike again. Wolff tried to level the gun but he felt weak and someone was holding his arm. There were more men – three – a tangle of arms and fists and boots. Then an agonising jarring in his chest, and through a blinding kaleidoscope of shapes and lights he fell. I’m going to die. He was lying on the cobblestones and he’d never felt colder. I love you, and I’m sorry. He tried to shape the words but couldn’t move his lips. That’s it then – over, over. Hadn’t it all been a bloody waste.
35
Attrition
MASEK WAS FOUND floating in the harbour. They left Wolff where he fell. The doctors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital did all in their power, without hope. The blade passed within half an inch of his heart and he’d haemorrhaged too much blood to recover, or so they said.
Beyond the bright white confines of the hospital, the thick cotton sheets, the perfect bed corners, the laboratory coats and starched aprons, a dirty little battle was fought over his body in the press and on Capitol Hill. The Baltimore Evening Sun broke the first story. The stabbing in our streets of a Dutch engineer united the sympathies of the citizens of this city, its columnist, Mr Mencken, observed; but this newspaper understands that the unfortunate Mr de Witt is neither Dutch nor an engineer. He is a British spy. The newspaper’s well-informed source was also able to reveal that a Norwegian sailor called Christensen had told the authorities in Berlin that the same spy had tried to induce him to betray the Irish patriot, Sir Roger Casement.
The answering shot came in the New York Times under the headline: ‘Germans attack America again’. The newspaper had seen incontrovertible evidence implicating German diplomats and respectable American businessmen in another sabotage campaign. Using the ships and premises of the Norddeutscher Lloyd Line as cover, ruthless men have sought to undermine this country’s interests and security, its editor wrote in an opinion piece. German Americans must now show where their true loyalty lies. A few days later the New York World was able to reveal that police were investigating shocking claims that German agents in America were using a
terrible new biological weapon. With help from sympathisers in this country, German agents are infecting animals with anthrax in the hope of striking at Allied soldiers and their supply lines on the battlefields in France. In the course of this attack, at least one American dockworker was infected and had died, the paper claimed, and it printed a picture of a prominent Baltimore businessman with the caption: Mr Paul Hilken has denied any role in the campaign.
By April, Congressmen were debating it on the floor of the House and a senator called on the presidential candidates to pledge that they would do all in their power to end ‘the secret war’ being waged by Britain and Germany on American soil. Finally the German diplomat, Dr Albert, was asked to leave the country and efforts were made to arrest his associates. For a time the police search for the guilty men pushed the glad tidings of record-breaking export sales to the Allies down the page, and the slaughter on the battlefield at Verdun inside.
Wolff knew nothing of his celebrity. Later, when he thought of the weeks he had spent at Johns Hopkins, he could remember only disparate images: a nurse with eyes a little like Laura’s lifts a cup to his lips; a fly struggles in a single thread at the angle of the ceiling; hushed voices, the yellow shaft of the morning sun through a chink in the curtains they never seemed able to close; and in the afternoons the shadow of a maple tree dancing tirelessly on the wall.
Then, as conscious minutes became hours, Thwaites’ valet reading in a bored monotone at his bedside: ‘There pass the careless people / That call their souls their own . . .’
‘Oh Christ, have some pity,’ he mumbled, and White jumped up, excited: ‘Them’s your first words,’ and he made Wolff smile: ‘You shouldn’t blaspheme, sir, not after what you’ve been through.’ And after that they all came. Gaunt paced his room, barely making eye contact, a quip about nurses’ ankles, a promise to ‘see to Hinsch’, and a present of The Life of Horatio, Lord Nelson by Southey. Thwaites refused to tell him anything but left a small bottle of brandy, and Wiseman brought some letters from home, and the news of the Easter Rising in Dublin. ‘Army wasn’t ready – in spite of our warning,’ he said with a resigned shrug, ‘but the rebels didn’t have enough support anyway.’