The Poison Tide (37 page)

‘I think Delmar’s network in America was more important to Berlin than yours,’ Cumming observed. Perhaps Rintelen agreed because he was uncharacteristically silent. Impossible to shut the fellow up, Admiral Hall had said, but too clever to let something of consequence slip.

‘Come on, come on.’ Cumming banged his stick down sharply on the brightly polished parquet floor. ‘Do you know Delmar or don’t you?’

‘Surely you would not expect me to say so if I did,’ he replied stiffly.

Cumming glared at him for a moment, then shuffling awkwardly through the narrow gap between the wall and the desk, lowered himself into the commandant’s chair. The football match was over and the prisoners were being summoned to lunch by handbell like the pupils at a preparatory school. Rintelen pointedly took out his pocket watch: ‘If there’s nothing more?’

‘You don’t understand your situation, Rintelen,’ Cumming snapped at him. ‘You came ashore as Emile Gaché, as a spy.’

‘You are threatening me, Captain Smith?’ Rintelen laughed, grimly. ‘I was taken from the ship by your boarding party.’

‘That’s as may be. You were travelling on false papers. Your army shot Miss Cavell for less.’ Cumming lifted his chin pugnaciously. ‘You must have read about her case in the New York papers.’

Rintelen didn’t reply but returned his gaze without flinching.

‘You know you were sacrificed by your Count Nadolny – yes, you smile, but this –’ Cumming tapped the signal in his jacket pocket – ‘this is proof enough. You were making too many waves in New York, things were becoming difficult for the other network – Delmar was more important than you. It was simple enough to shut you down: a word to the newspapers and the police and . . .’

‘Real-ly, Captain Cumming.’ The patient smile slipped, the faultless English too and he leant forward to smack the palm of his right hand on the desk. ‘Yes, I know who you are, and your Secret Service – I know who is responsible for putting me here. Was he working for you or for Admiral Hall? It does not matter. But now we are finished,’ and he began to rise.

But Cumming wasn’t finished. Threatening, scowling like a playground bully, then coaxing with more bitter coffee and some sympathy. He pressed hard because Rintelen expected him to. He learned nothing more of importance but he had learned enough, and when the prisoner was taken away he placed a call to the director of Naval Intelligence to tell him so. ‘As we feared, Admiral.’ He knew he was betrayed and he knew it was by a British spy, and although Cumming hadn’t probed deeper for fear of giving something more away, he thought it likely Rintelen would have named his chief suspect ‘de Witt’.

‘Do you think he’s informed anyone?’ Hall enquired, pensively. ‘We may have picked him up before he was able to.’ But it was impossible to say and because they couldn’t, they would have to take a chance.

‘It was always going to happen like this,’ Hall observed, ‘Rintelen doesn’t know Delmar . . .’

‘. . . We’re pushing Wolff’s luck.’

‘No alternative,’ Hall said, and reluctantly Cumming agreed – no alternative. And yet, waiting beneath the great Gothic entrance arch for his motor car to be delivered to the steps, he was troubled by the recollection of almost the same risk taken two years before. Wolff had spent nine punishing months in a Turkish jail and it had almost broken him. Hadn’t they said ‘no alternative’ then?

T
HE CHILDREN RETURNED
with their nanny at dusk, then Frau Albert in the motor car, the chauffeur following her up the steps with an armful of parcels. A few minutes later Wolff glimpsed the silhouette of her full figure at a second-floor window before a maid drew the curtains. White stone house in the neo-classical style, six storeys, quiet tree-lined street in a fashionable part of the Upper East Side: the man the papers
had dubbed an
architect of terror
lived well. Have the neighbours forgiven you? Wolff mused, as he waited at the wheel of the motor car. Well-to-do people have short memories. The worst crime a gentleman might commit in what the real-estate sharks were calling the Gold Coast streets was to lose one’s money. The sabotage story was already last year’s news; the headlines of that morning’s
World
were of a rise in the country’s gold reserves, and shipyards too busy to handle new orders, the President ready to embark on his ‘America First’ tour of the Midwest. Besides, the German gentleman in the bowler hat who walked briskly home with cane and case every evening did not cut a dangerous figure – or even a memorable one.

Gaunt’s runners had logged his routine, his contacts, and the traffic in and out of his Broadway office. ‘Just as you’d expect,’ the naval attaché reported. ‘Leaves home at seven thirty, spends all day at his desk, home again at eighteen thirty sharp. No mistresses, no trips to the theatre, no restaurants. No fun. He might be keeping his head down, but you know, I think he’s just a dull man.’ Distant father and husband, grumpy with the servants, a Polish maid had confided to one of the runners. ‘A real bringer of joy,’ Gaunt had observed drily.

Wolff glanced at his watch, extinguished his cigarette, then stepped down from the motor car. I’ll shake my chains at him, he thought with a smile; an unpleasant smell too close to home. The street was wreathed in threads of a freezing mist that put him in mind of the afternoon he had wandered in Hyde Park with his first confused thoughts of Casement and the operation. It was almost twelve months to the day. Had the smog cleared? He hardly knew.

Once in a while a taxicab ground down to a hotel on the corner, and there was a trickle of commuters from the omnibus stops on Madison and Park, collars up, hats down, gazes fixed on the sidewalk: ordinary men with tan leather cases, well-pressed suits and regular office hours. Wolff watched them without envy. Bowler and cane, straight back and steady gait, Albert was easy to spot even in the mist, almost gliding from one puddle of yellow lamplight to the next.

All right, give him a few more yards
.
Moving with the precision of a Patek timepiece, two, three, four, and Wolff was away, stalking across the street, into his path.

‘Dr Albert.’

‘I am sorry, I don’t know you . . .’ But then his expression changed from puzzlement to alarm, like a cat’s paw ruffling the surface of a calm sea. ‘De Witt!’

‘
Mr
de Witt, if you please,’ Wolff replied in German. ‘I would like a brief word . . .’ and he took Albert’s arm. ‘There’s a car across the street, Doctor.’

‘What are you doing here?’ He shook himself free. ‘Our business is over. I’ve nothing to say.’

‘Let’s not draw attention to ourselves. I suppose you know your office is watched?’

‘I’ve nothing to say,’ he repeated icily and he tried to push past, lifting his stick in a half-hearted threat.

‘I wouldn’t, Doctor. Please stay calm. Goodness, a contract is a contract – you of all people should understand that!’ Wolff grasped his arm tightly this time. ‘Just here, Doctor.’

‘I’ve nothing to say to you,’ he protested again, but he permitted Wolff to guide him to the car. They sat side by side in the front, Albert’s thin face in shadow, his eyes sickly in the light of a streetlamp.

‘Your contract was terminated when our associate was obliged to return to Germany,’ he declared flatly.

‘Oh? Has Germany surrendered?’ Wolff asked sarcastically.

‘What do you want, Herr de Witt?’

‘I wish to continue serving His Imperial Majesty on the same terms.’

‘I told you, your contract is terminated. Captain von Rintelen has gone. Detained at sea by the British . . .’ he paused to consider his words carefully; ‘. . . his former associates are of the view he was betrayed.’

‘Not by me. My record speaks for itself.’

‘That’s as may be. I have no part to play in those kinds of—’

Wolff interrupted: ‘Save it for the police, Albert. We both know the war here in America isn’t going to end with this small setback – only to be expected, in my view. Your Rintelen was a man of vision, no doubt, but careless. Who’s in charge of things now – Hinsch?’

Albert’s features were stiff and cold, like a bureaucratic corpse.

‘Make the contact for me.’ Wolff reached into his coat for a slip of folded paper. ‘Hinsch can leave a message at this address.’

After a moment’s thought, Albert dipped his index and forefinger as if plucking the paper from a muddy pool. ‘Don’t come to my home again.’

‘That depends on you. Do your duty, Dr Albert.’

‘I always do my duty, Mr de Witt,’ he said in English, releasing the door. ‘It is not necessary for a Dutchman to remind me of my duty.’

He climbed carefully from the car, then crossed the street without a backward glance. Wolff observed him in the light above the portico, standing below an entablature carved with a laurel garland, in his bowler hat, a hero for the new age.

Days, a week went by, a fortnight, and every morning a note from Thwaites, a telephone call or a summons to a meeting:
London’s impatient, old boy, terribly concerned. Does Albert suspect you? Visit him again. Go to Baltimore and see Hinsch, why don’t you?
Wolff said that London could go to hell.

With Laura’s assistance he was going up in the world – by elevator to the fifth floor of a new brownstone block on the Upper West Side, a well-appointed bachelor apartment with a fine view east over the Hudson. They’d seen a good deal of each other at Christmas, dining first with her father – florid and opinionated and a voice to whip the froth from a pint of stout at fifty paces – then at her sparrow aunt’s home. Wolff was a student of friendship. Priests, politicians and publicans, soldiers and scientists, matrons and maids, he’d inveigled his way into the confidences of them all. Mr McDonnell had presented no great challenge. ‘I like yer,’ he had declared while his daughter was away from their table. ‘You’re a practical man like me. That’s what Laura needs.’ And as a favour to her he had used his friends in the archdiocese to find Wolff somewhere ‘respectable’ to live.

Thwaites dismissed his new arrangements as
‘foolhardy’
. Good cover, Wolff argued, and it sounded quite plausible.

‘And who, pray, is paying the rent on this new apartment?’ Thwaites asked.

‘Me, Norman, as you ask – from the fruit of my labours on behalf of the Kaiser.’

‘Damn cheek!’ Thwaites complained.

But some sober nights Wolff paid in dreams, too, as he had done in the past – confused images of ten years’ service, waking in the dark, sheets damp, his conscience rocking like an upturned derby hat.

One evening Laura dragged him to the opera to hear the soprano, Frieda Hempel; he took her to the Clef Club where the pianist Jelly Roll was playing ragtime. There were meetings in draughty halls, more talk of votes for women, of Ireland and Empire, lively debates in which she played a full and passionate part, always impatient for change, determined, but also funny. For all her strong convictions, she took no offence at his teasing and was quick and merciless in her turn. She wasn’t an elegant woman, and she didn’t have a figure like Violet’s to turn heads; she was shorter, with generous curves, her gestures and speech often hurried as she wrestled with an idea or an opinion; pretty but not in a conventional way, sharp intelligence always apparent in her face. Wolff had decided on reflection that her eyes were robin’s-egg blue, the finest he’d been privileged to gaze into.

Thwaites liked to remind him that the growing warmth of their friendship was supposed to serve a purpose. But Laura was careful not speak of Clan na Gael’s activities and Wolff made no effort to coax them from her – until one Sunday afternoon, the last in January.

A briny wind was chasing blue-grey clouds westerly across the river, rattling the flag ropes at the Blessed Sacrament School and shaking dead twigs from the trees in front of the church. They had arranged to meet at four o’clock, but it was only a few blocks from his new apartment, so with time to waste he arrived early and was waiting on the sidewalk when members of the Clan began leaving the parochial house. Shrugging on their overcoats, hands planted on hats, bent double into the wind as they hurried along the street to the omnibus stop. Only John Devoy spoke to him.

‘Waiting for Laura?’ He shook his grey head disapprovingly. ‘She knows what I think of ye.’

‘I’m sure everyone knows what
you
think, Mr Devoy.’

Right hand gripping the iron railing, left in a fist at his side, Devoy glared at him like an old bar-room brawler living on his reputation. Wolff returned his stare defiantly.

‘Tough one, aren’t ye?’ Devoy muttered. ‘More of a man than that fella Christensen, I’ll give you that.’

Wolff acknowledged this small olive branch with a smile.

‘I hear you did good work for the Germans.’ Devoy frowned, his eyes lost beneath his shaggy Old Testament brow. ‘Just mind you’re careful with our Laura, now.’ He wagged a biblical forefinger; ‘I know she’ll be careful with you.’ He scrutinised Wolff’s face for a few more seconds, then nodded and walked away, turning the collar of his well-worn coat up against the wind.

‘It’s just Mr Devoy’s way,’ Laura said, when he related the substance of their conversation. She was cross and upbraided him for arriving early.

‘Ashamed of me?’ he asked provocatively, the wind sweeping them along the sidewalk in the direction of Central Park.

‘How can you suggest such a thing?’ she chided.

‘You spoke to Devoy about—’

‘Mr Devoy asked me,’ she interjected defensively.

‘You told him you’d be careful not to tell me anything.’

‘Oh! For goodness’ sake!’ she exclaimed, and she pulled her arm free and turned to face him, exasperated and at the same time beguiling. ‘What did you expect me to say to him? It doesn’t mean I don’t trust you. How can you say so?’ Her eyes were blazing with indignation, and Wolff loved her for showing no respect for the difference in their ages. But was she protesting too vehemently?
‘We have to be so careful, especially at this time,’ she declared. ‘Things are happening at last,’ she added, filling the pregnant silence. ‘It’s difficult – Mr Devoy knows you’re a friend of Sir Roger’s.’