THE 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.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’ He reached into the dark space between them to take her hand for the first time. Perhaps she blushed, he felt her tense, but she made no effort to withdraw it. ‘But I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why is my friendship with Roger an issue? Is it Christensen?’
‘Things are happening,’ she repeated. ‘Sir Roger and Mr Devoy don’t agree about, well…’ her voice fell away.
‘Guns?’ He took a half-step closer to her. ‘It’s about guns to Ireland then.’
‘No. Not really. I can’t say.’
‘Of course not,’ he replied quickly, but his tone was a little rueful. ‘Come on, it’s too dark and chilly to argue in the street.’
‘Are we arguing?’ She sounded anxious.
They chose a quiet trattoria a few blocks from the park, and once they’d settled her hand crawled across the gingham tablecloth to rest lightly upon his: ‘You do understand?’ Her face was pink with cold and confusion. ‘Please, Jan,’ she pleaded, ‘don’t sulk.’ That made him smile, and he gave her hand an affectionate squeeze.
‘Of course I trust you,’ she whispered, a little crossly this time; ‘I couldn’t be friends with someone I didn’t trust.’ She was lost in thought for a moment, biting the corner of her bottom lip. ‘Everyone’s in a flutter, you see — even more than usual.’ She glanced round the restaurant, then leant closer. ‘The rising in Ireland — it’s going to happen — soon — there are plans. And there are German guns. Only, not everyone agrees — Sir Roger thinks we’re making a mistake.’
‘A mistake? Why? I thought — but you mustn’t tell me more,’ he said earnestly.
‘But I trust you — you see? And I want you to rejoice with us.’
He closed his eyes momentarily and gave a regretful shake of the head. ‘It’s too early for rejoicing…’ then after a pause, ‘I shouldn’t have asked you.’
‘Why?’ She smiled and reached for his other hand, clattering a knife against a plate and drawing the gaze of the waiter. ‘Don’t worry. Put it from your mind — and you didn’t ask, I offered.’
But she was wrong. He’d drawn it from her, tempting her into an act of faith. As they ate and spoke of other things, he considered the intelligence she had given him with something close to dismay. I shouldn’t have asked, he’d said to her with sudden clarity. Perhaps he’d hoped she would have the strength to hold her secret close. It was too late to put it from his mind, but he didn’t wish to hear more.
‘You seem distracted,’ she observed. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought you here. It’s a simple place.’
No, he assured her, it was perfect in its simplicity; and for a time he tried to bend his mind to easy conversation. But later a Polish pianist played in the restaurant, his bony fingers stroking the keys, and the aching poignancy of his music was almost too much to bear. Why did I press her? And during one short piece Wolff felt, then shaped, the conviction that Laura could never know. Never. He wouldn’t hurt her.
A Prelude in E minor by Chopin, she told him, as the manager helped her into her coat. ‘But it’s rather sad.’
Wolff met Wiseman the following morning. Gaunt and Thwaites were at the safe house too. They had summoned him to talk about the Germans and he sensed at once that they were bristling for a fight. ‘You must go to Baltimore,’ Wiseman insisted, as soon as the terse pleasantries were over. They were taken aback when Wolff agreed at once, even a little disappointed. Wiseman offered his reasons, although it was hardly necessary: ‘Can’t hold off any longer. Our masters have intercepted a wire authorising Agent Delmar to resume his activities. Been on holiday, what?’
For an hour they sat in the stuffy smoked-filled sitting room discussing Wolff’s best course, although there was really only one. ‘Our chaps down there will let you know when Hinsch is aboard his ship,’ Wiseman said. ‘It’s asking a great deal, I know.’ He was always charming enough to sound grateful. ‘Rough customer, Hinsch,’ he continued. ‘He may not be pleased to see you.’
Wolff was sure he wouldn’t be.
‘Didn’t expect you to roll over and offer your tummy like that,’ Thwaites observed when they were alone. ‘Quite took the wind out of Sir William’s sails.’
‘Is that possible?’ Wolff enquired.
He made light of his sudden acquiescence, falling back for an explanation on the first word in the Bureau’s lexicon, the word to trump all other words: duty. The truth? In so far as he was able to perceive the truth, his decision owed more to guilt than a sense of duty. Guilt, because even when Thwaites enquired, astutely perhaps, how things were ‘with your Fenian girl’, he chose to say nothing of plans for the Rising. He wasn’t entirely sure why. He’d meant to — and he knew it was topsy-turvy to chase a new secret in Baltimore in order to feel a little better about concealing the one Laura had shared with him: trading lies and loyalties.
I will tell them about Ireland — soon, he decided. I will. I have to because they are with the enemy. Casement, his garrulous sister, Laura…
Did he have a choice? There were boys from the fenland villages he knew well, stumbling with fear in their hearts into no-man’s-land, trench whistles ringing in their ears. In this together, C would say. But wasn’t that merely the shell of duty, like Norman Thwaites fighting for lads he’d left on the Turkish wire? Was there sense in such thinking? Where would it end? Was it thinking at all?
As he slipped out of the safe apartment, he remembered that his mother used to upbraid him in verse, the old cliché about the tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive. Christ, he’d been practising a long time. And now he was struggling with confused feelings, searching for a way to unravel some of the threads he’d spun, because… he admired Laura more than he should. He wanted her. Did he love her? He wasn’t sure, but if he didn’t quite yet, he knew he would soon. He’d stepped from a high building and the sidewalk was rushing towards him.
So, a month after his encounter with Dr Albert, Wolff caught a train to Baltimore, and from its new railway station took a cab round the harbour basin to the hard-working dockland district of Locust Point. At its eastern edge, in the shadow of the city’s historic fort, stood the Bremen pier where thousands of German immigrants had stepped ashore in the country they wished to make their home. In the years before the war, Captain Hinsch’s ship, the Neckar, was often to be seen there. Her last voyage had brought her to the pier with passengers and cargo a fortnight after the pistol fired in Sarajevo led to the outbreak of general hostilities. Since then, she had travelled no further than a cable distance to her new berth among the tramps and colliers plying their smoky trade from the wharfs at the tip of the point.
It was a cold day but blue, the sun bright on the water. The harbour ferry was steaming out of the old clipper yard on the opposite shore, the breeze whisking its plume away to the west in a horizontal line. Beyond the roof of a low shed, Wolff could see the frayed and faded house flag of Norddeutscher fluttering from the Neckar’s foremast, and walking round it to the wharf, her sharp black bow. She was larger than he’d imagined, five hundred feet in length, riding high and rusting in the slack water of the dock. At the foot of her gangway, a junior officer was supervising the unloading of supplies from a wagon. Wolff introduced himself and, with the determined authority of one used to addressing Germans in uniform, asked to be taken to the captain.
The skipper of the Neckar filled his little chart room. It was the first time Wolff had seen Hinsch in uniform, immaculately groomed, clean shaven, blond hair combed with a little oil: his sour expression was the same.
‘What are you doing? You shouldn’t have come here,’ Hinsch declared belligerently.
‘Albert gave you my message?’
He gave a curt nod.
‘Well?’ Wolff prompted.
‘The British have von Rintelen,’ he snapped. ‘Stopped his ship, took him off.’
‘Are you accusing me? They stop most ships,’ Wolff observed coolly; ‘they stopped mine.’
‘They arrested him — not you.’
‘I’m more careful. You saw yourself how—’
‘And the stories in the newspaper?’ Hinsch interrupted. ‘You know nothing about those? Koenig was arrested…’
‘You’re blaming me?’
Hinsch glowered at him for a few seconds then looked away, his right hand trailing across a chart to a pair of dividers. ‘It might be you — or an Irishman — I don’t know. It’s over, anyway. Finished.’
‘Over?’ Wolff looked pained. ‘Don’t take me for a fool. Mind if I sit down?’ He perched at the edge of a swivel chair bolted to the deck before the table. ‘Are you in charge of the new operation? Look, Hinsch, you know what I can do — I’m not German, and yes, I want to be paid — paid well — but this work suits me, and I have my reasons, you know them well enough. You don’t like me — I don’t care much for you — but we want the same thing.’ He paused in hope of acknowledgement but the lines on Hinsch’s face seemed to indurate like clay. ‘I’m not here as a supplicant but as an enemy of the British Empire,’ Wolff added testily. ‘Berlin gives the orders and I was sent here to be of service.’
‘There is no operation,’ he retorted. ‘I’ve said — no work.’ He spoke without respect, as if he were upbraiding the least member of his crew. ‘And if I change my mind, I know how to find you.’
Wolff shrugged. ‘Have it your own way. I’ll contact the embassy — or Berlin.’ It sounded lame but it was all he could think of to say. He stared at Hinsch for a few seconds more, refusing to be intimidated by his enmity, then picked up his hat from the table and dusted a speck from its band. ‘I can find my own—’
‘There was a body.’
Wolff started, his right hand frozen over the hat. ‘What?’ he barked impatiently to disguise his confusion.
‘You know about this, I think?’ Hinsch asked, searching his face.
‘No — and perhaps I shouldn’t.’
‘The police are asking questions. It was one of their men.’
Another frisson of anxiety. ‘A dead policeman?’ Wolff heard himself say.
‘A nobody. An informer, but working for them,’ Hinsch squinted at him suspiciously. ‘They found his body in the bay, but he was killed at the terminal in Hoboken — stabbed, then thrown in the water,’ he paused, his eyes flitting away, ‘by someone else, I shouldn’t wonder. They’ll catch the killer, they say — won’t let it lie. They spoke to the crew of the Friedrich der Grosse,’ he paused again, lifting the dividers to stare down the line of them at Wolff. ‘Perhaps they’ll want to talk to you. Best be prepared.’
‘Yes,’ said Wolff, ‘yes, I will be,’ and he tried to smile.
Slowly down the ship’s gangway, slowly along the quay, concentrate on walking slowly, head up right, eyes to the front, determined not to falter in view of the bridge. Hinsch suspected but didn’t know. The Germans must have disposed of the body. Did the police have a description of de Witt? He’d tried to bury the memory, but bastard Hinsch had spat on it and burnished it until it was bright again. He must warn Wiseman and Thwaites. He would have to tell them he’d failed to find a way back inside the operation too. Hinsch wasn’t going to contact him — not in a month of Sundays. Or was he looking for an excuse to give up?
Confused, disconsolate, he walked a little way from the dockyard gates to stand at the kerb for a taxicab. From a sailors’ bar close by, drunken voices, a snatch of Southern song, although it was only one o’clock in the afternoon. After only a few minutes he changed his mind and set off for the station, relieved to be on the move. It was simple enough to follow the curve of the street round the harbour, the downtown skyline always ahead of him. Half an hour at a brisk pace and he would take a horse-drawn cab from one of the piers on the waterfront for the final mile. The wind was freshening still, obliging him to keep a hand to his hat but lifting his spirits a little. In another place, in different shoes, he would have run, chasing away frustration and his sense of foreboding. He was a little breathless — he knew he was out of condition — the rhythmic click of smooth leather soles, fast enough for sideways glances from strangers, but not fast enough to free him from his own cutting thoughts. At the corner of Light Street and Lee, he broke his stride, shuffling round a carter who was scooping oats back into a sack he’d emptied on the sidewalk. ‘Watch your feet,’ he grumbled, but Wolff ignored him, brushing his bent shoulder as he stepped from the kerb, checking his stride again for an oncoming cab. In a moment it was upon him, clopping, squeaking, jangling, barely worthy of a second look except that it was him.
Christ. You again.
Behind the driver, the broad frame and large head of his passenger: Captain Friedrich Hinsch, like a stout German nemesis. His eyes found Wolff and lifted away before the cab flashed by.
Wolff watched the cab trotting along Lee Street and slow down to cross Charles. Then he began to follow, skipping, breaking into a run — he wasn’t sure why — instinct and experience and anger and something furtive in the man’s expression, something… Perhaps it was a waste of time, but what had he got to lose? Weaving along the sidewalk in the shadow of shopfronts lest Hinsch look over his shoulder, tripping and fighting for his feet, one block, the next, and pausing to search busy Sharp Street before racing on to turn right at a junction when he could go no further. By then he’d lost sight of the cab but on he pressed; to his left a high wall, ahead the Italianate tower of what might be a church. A tram rattled past, drawing to a halt twenty yards in front of him. Shouldering his way carelessly through the queue at the stop, he realised suddenly that he was chasing along a railroad wall and the tower was above the entrance to another of the city’s stations.
Parked beneath a canopy ahead of him, were three motorised cabs and the burgundy hack he’d been chasing. Hinsch had gone.
‘Your fare?’ he demanded, a greenback between his fingers. The driver nodded to the station entrance.
Inside its oak-panelled hall, Wolff pushed to the front of a line. ‘An emergency,’ he explained to an old lady with sharp elbows. ‘A friend, broad, blond hair, thick accent, heavy grey overcoat, critical I find him.’ No one asked why. The ticket seller complained but spoke to his associates at the other counters all the same. ‘To Washington, mister, the Royal Blue,’ he informed Wolff when he returned, then, casting heavy-lidded eyes to the hall clock, ‘She’s due about now.’
Wolff took the ticket but not his change and ran helter-skelter through the barrier and down two flights of stairs to the lower level, pausing only to confirm the platform number. The passengers were aboard the train, the railroad workers uncoupling the electric locomotive that had guided it through the city’s tunnel. Was Hinsch at a window? He had seven yards to cross from the shadows at the bottom of the stair to a carriage. The guard’s whistle reminded him they were at war — would it always? — and the heavy clunk of doors: Damn it, just get on, why don’t you?
There were only four carriages. Wolff walked quickly to the second. Was Hinsch even on this train? he wondered, as the engine took up the slack, and then: it’s the final nail if he sees me. But it didn’t matter really. Hadn’t he decided already there was nothing to lose? Then he remembered Laura.
THERE WAS NOTHING to do but wait — wasn’t that most of a spy’s life? Thankfully this was on a broad leather bench in the parlour carriage, comfortable in the best tradition of the Royal Blue Line. Wolff glanced at his wristwatch — a gift at Christmas from Wiseman. It was an hour and a half to Washington so he would be arriving after dusk. Until then he couldn’t even be sure he was travelling on the same train as Hinsch. Better to sit tight than risk giving himself away. He’d noticed on the station board there were stops — Relay, Annapolis Junction, Laurel — but he didn’t expect a saboteur to have any business in a small town. All the same, he kept a close eye on the platform at Relay. Beyond it the train rumbled pleasingly through flat grassland dotted with neat brick and white weatherboard farms, the low sun blinding in the glass. A conductor punched his ticket. Two suited men and a sailor left the train at the next junction. Then onwards, gathering speed, but only for a few minutes before slowing again. ‘Laurel. This is me,’ the middle-aged lady opposite said, encouraging him with a pointed look at her portmanteau. ‘I should have put the thing in the van but it’s such a short distance.’ Wolff was still hauling her bag to the carriage door when they chuffed into Laurel.
‘You’re so kind,’ she drawled in a Dixie voice. ‘My brother will be here to take it, I’m sure.’
Stooping to the window, he could see a file of people emerging from the little brick station, some with luggage, others to meet passengers, their faces lost in shadow. An old railroad worker was pulling a trolley along the boardwalk platform. Parked in the yard at the side of the station were a buggy, a wagon and two automobiles. With a hiss and hollow groan, the train came to a stop. Seconds later a barrage of opening and closing doors, and the Southern lady was urging Wolff to step down to the platform. He was turning to make an excuse when Hinsch swept past the window. Fortunately his gaze was fixed on those who’d already left the train.
‘Are you going to help me, sir?’ the lady prompted him, her voice rising in agitation. ‘If not, perhaps you’d do me the courtesy of calling Joe the stationmaster for me.’
That wouldn’t be necessary, he assured her. He was leaving the train too, and pulling the brim of his hat lower, he lifted the bag on to the platform, then offered his hand to her: ‘Madam.’
She gave him a coy smile. She was of an age when, in Wolff’s experience, a woman was most likely to be grateful for the attention of a younger man, and it suited him well enough to offer it. Bending over her bag, he shuffled sideways in time to see Hinsch shake hands with a smartly dressed man at the station door. Hat, mackintosh, about five-ten, slim build, but at thirty yards and in shadow, it wasn’t possible to distinguish his features. His cramped shoulders suggested he was ill at ease, and he may have said something of the sort because Hinsch turned to look back along the platform. If he noticed Wolff and his new lady friend, he thought nothing of them because his gaze did not settle, and a second later he was distracted by a blast of the train’s klaxon, like the trumpeting of a dying elephant.
‘Is everything all right?’ she enquired. ‘Look, he’s here at last.’ Stalking towards them was a well-built young farmer, to judge from his clothes. She scolded him, then introduced him as ‘Tom Brown, like the schooldays’ — fishing for Wolff’s name in return. ‘Curtis,’ he said. Over the farmer’s shoulder he saw Hinsch conduct his associate into the ticket office.
The train began to trundle out of the station and those who had left it were making their way down badly lit steps at the back of the building on to the street, or to the vehicles on its west side.
‘Will you be staying in Laurel long?’ Miss Brown enquired, patting her hair artfully with a gloved palm. ‘Not long,’ he said, just a little business. He pretended to watch brother and sister walk away, taking in the stationmaster unloading packages from his trolley, the empty platform, and in the vehicle park the one remaining motor car, a Winton; at its wheel a man with jowls and a bushy moustache, eyes closed, chin nodding on to his chest. The station door was behind Wolff, facing the platform; there were windows at the front and back of the building, and a large one to the side, its blind half drawn. Crouching to do up a shoelace, he could see beneath the blind into the ticket office and beyond this the glass door of the waiting room. Hinsch was at the stove and his associate went to sit beside him but he had barely settled before he was up again. He was plainly anxious and Wolff guessed the meeting wouldn’t last long. Rising, he slipped out of his overcoat — it was the last thing Hinsch had seen him wearing — and began to stroll along the platform.
‘Washin’ton this side,’ the wizened stationmaster volunteered. He hadn’t replaced the bulb in the lamp above the door and the only light was spilling yellow through the windows.
‘You comin’ in, sit by the stove?’ he asked. ‘Fifteen minutes till the next ’un.’
Later, perhaps, Wolff replied.
The waiting room extended a few feet from the station façade so passengers could gaze along the platform. Wedging his shoulders in the angle of the wall, Wolff was able to peer through a slit window in the side across to the reflection of the room in its main one. Hinsch was still by the stove, his companion standing beside him. They were a thickness of brick from Wolff but it was impossible to distinguish their features in the glass or hear more than the murmur of their voices.
Then the image was moving, the stranger drifting to the window, and Wolff heard him say in German, ‘No. Look, tell Hilken two weeks and not a day longer.’ Hinsch must have replied because the stranger turned to gaze at him, his back still to Wolff. If he moves his head the other way, he might see me here, he thought. He was trusting to luck and the deep shadow beneath the hipped roof.
‘I’ll need a ticket and more money,’ the stranger said. ‘Money for Carl too.’
Was he a stranger? Wolff wasn’t sure. Dark hair, slight wave, strong jaw, slim but tall, heavy overcoat with a fur collar, and something in the way he held himself that was familiar. Perhaps one of the gentlemen at Martha’s, but not a sailor. He would know a sailor.
‘Carl knows what he’s doing, I’ve told you,’ the man said irritably.
Was he Delmar?
The image softened as the man walked towards the stove and out of earshot. But a couple of minutes later he was back, peering up and down the platform this time, his nose to the glass, too close for more than a murky reflection.
‘When did you say your train was due?’ The stranger didn’t wait for an answer. ‘The case is with Carl in the motor car. When we go out there, please don’t mention my plans to…’
But the rest was lost as the station door to Wolff’s right swung open, forcing him to step smartly from the corner.
‘Baltimore and Noo York in five,’ the stationmaster hollered as he stepped out to the platform.
He must have drawn the gaze of the stranger at the waiting-room window. Wolff could sense him there. Is he watching me? I should be carrying a suitcase, he thought.
‘Noo York,’ the old man called once more.
Slowly, stiffly, Wolff ambled along the platform, glancing through the window of the ticket hall. The waiting-room door was ajar: they’d gone. He walked on past the old man and his trolley and a military man in a blue dress coat; stepping round the luggage of a young couple who had just arrived and were arguing about timekeeping. A few yards more to the corner of the building and he paused, pretending to consult his watch. He gave an impatient shake of the head and half turned to search the vehicle park at the side of the station. A large motor car was jigging across the rough ground and as it swung right its lamps caught two men dropping down the steps. A few seconds later it came to a halt and Hinsch and his companion crossed its beam again. Wolff watched them walk a little further, to where ‘Carl’ was waiting at the wheel of the Winton. They were only a stone’s throw from the platform but it was too dark to see the stranger’s face. That he was German and involved in something nefarious, Wolff could be sure of. Why else would Hinsch drag his carcase to a place like Laurel? Was this Agent Delmar? If Wolff moved closer he was certain to arouse suspicion. And if he didn’t, he had nothing.
He was still weighing the risks when Carl turned on the lamps of the Winton. Stepping into the beam, Hinsch reached into his coat for his money, which he began laboriously counting from his left hand to his right.
That’s right, thought Wolff, play it by the book again. Are you insisting on a signature for Dr Albert? Wolff could imagine the stranger’s frustration. Help him, my friend, why don’t you? And as if pulled by invisible strings the stranger stepped forward, snatching at the money. There were angry words, the stranger shaking his head with incredulity. Then he turned abruptly to speak to Carl, his face full in the light and white like an apparition: strong jawline and chin, high brow, thin lips. And Wolff knew he’d seen the fellow before.
The howling of the klaxon made him jump and drew Hinsch’s gaze up to the platform. He was plainly intending to catch the train because the rest of their business was conducted with some urgency. The stranger opened the passenger door and removed a case from the well in front of the seat. From thirty yards, Wolff could see it was brownish, an unusual shape, perhaps a doctor’s bag, and not heavy because he lifted it from the car with ease. Hinsch took it from him almost gingerly. A final word and a cool handshake, and nodding curtly to Carl he turned towards the steps. The train was pulling in at Wolff’s back, its carriages casting a sickly light on the platform.
The engine came to a stop with a gasp of steam and the stationmaster’s cracked voice was straining to be heard over the clatter of doors and chatter of Washington commuters: ‘Laurel, this is Laurel.’ From the window of the ticket hall Wolff watched as a conductor directed Hinsch to a carriage at the head of the train.
It’s all about the case, Wolff realised. That’s why we’re here.
It was peculiar, about the size of a doctor’s bag, yes, but more rigid. The care with which Hinsch was nursing it was striking. He gripped the handle so tightly his knuckles were white and his arm tense, and he was holding it awkwardly, away from his left leg. As Hinsch climbed to his carriage Wolff turned to race down the station hall and out to the steps above Main Street. The Winton had reached the entrance to the vehicle park. Was Carl going to turn right or left? Careless, Wolff launched himself at the steps, two at a time, brushing someone aside, deaf to protests, eyes fixed on the street below.
What did the occupants of the motor car see? Shadows. Perhaps the silhouette of a man sprawled on the steps and another offering his hand and some frank advice. Was it a patch of ice or just too much ambition in a pair of expensive shoes? His left foot slipping, spinning like a dervish, but falling, cracking his elbow, his hip, then his knee; and the Winton’s number plate was gone before Wolff was able to think of more than the pain in his side.
‘Just piss off,’ he hissed at the man who stopped to a wag his finger. It sounded very English.
By the time he’d limped up the steps the train had left the station. He sat on Hinsch’s chair by the stove and stared into the coke fire, his thoughts drifting through Martha’s rooms, to the union rally in Hoboken and back further to the sea crossing and Berlin. He still had the face; he needed a spark to place it, just a word, an image, an object.
It was the case. No matter how hard Wolff tried to concentrate on other possibilities, his thoughts returned to an image of Hinsch’s associate lifting it from his motor car. He was still considering it when the next train to New York was called. Rocking gently in the parlour carriage, left leg out before him — his suit torn, his knee bloody — he closed his eyes to consider its colour and shape again. The task absorbed him completely. What do I know? he asked himself. That I associate the case in some way with my memory of this man; that they handle it carefully; that he called it a ‘case’ but it looks like a medical bag — is he a doctor? It’s the sort of bag people notice, so why does Hinsch want the thing?
He was asking questions he couldn’t hope to answer. He knew he should concentrate on the one he could.
Wisps of memory like the tails of light from streetlamps as the train raced on: Baltimore, to Aberdeen, Wilmington, Philadelphia — a whirligig — dizzying, round and round in a blur until he heard a cultivated American voice shout ‘Steady’, and suddenly the medical bag was flying through the air on a safety line. There was a seaman’s face at the rail, a grey Channel sky, arms raised in the stern of the pinnace to catch it, and a well-dressed passenger in a coat with a fur collar, turning to glance for’ard for just a second, tired eyes, thin straight lips, square jaw.
Wolff had to stand and walk the length of the carriage. It was you — in the ship’s boat! And the bloody bag. They must have questioned you at Ramsgate. Why? Because you’re a German and an American. But you’d visited Germany. What did they ask you to do, Delmar?
So many questions: ‘When will we visit Herr Hilken?’ — ‘Will you introduce me to Frau Hempel?’ — and money, always. But what they were doing didn’t trouble him in the slightest. Carl was as happy as a clam, fat fingers squeezing the top of the wheel, peering into the darkness. For Anton, for the money, for Germany, in that order.
‘How far now, Carl?’
Carl glanced at Dilger, a happy smile lifting the corners of his thick moustache. ‘Not far, Anton. Thank God! Should have put on another pair of socks.’
Carl was six years older but he’d always looked up to his younger brother. ‘You got my share of the brains, Anton,’ he often joked. He was a fine brewer, but a poor businessman. ‘It’s good of you to find him something,’ their sister had said when he explained that Carl was going to help in the laboratory. He didn’t say why it was necessary and Emmeline didn’t ask. Carl would be a capable technician, once he learnt how to be careful. ‘Easier than a good beer,’ he’d observed, ‘but nothing to enjoy.’ A few days into his new work he’d suggested using the basement to brew some — ‘There’s room, Anton’ — and sulked when Dilger had told him not to be ridiculous.
‘Look out!’ The Winton swerved to avoid a buggy at the roadside.
‘Sorry, Anton. The pig had no lamps.’
They were approaching the creek, only twenty minutes from home.
‘Did Captain Hinsch say when he wanted the next batch?’ Carl enquired tentatively.
‘We didn’t agree a date.’
It had been a bad-tempered meeting, although it wasn’t necessary to say so.
‘I think you’re ready to handle the cultures on your own,’ Dilger observed. And you’ll have to, he wanted to confide, but it wasn’t the right time. He would tell his sister first. He felt guilty leaving them and worried about what would happen to the laboratory when he’d gone. Was it right to have embroiled Carl? Sooner or later someone would make a mistake and the police would roll up at the door of the little house in Chevy Chase; but he would have gone. It would be Emmeline and Carl on the front page of the papers. Before I leave I’ll tell him he can walk away, he thought, but he knew his brother wouldn’t. For the first time in a long while Carl felt important. ‘I’m a spy,’ he’d boasted, over a tub of their evil-smelling soup. ‘Will Berlin give us medals?’ ‘I expect so,’ Dilger had lied.
Now he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. This was dishonourable.
‘All right, Anton?’ Carl touched his shoulder. ‘Headache?’
‘Tired, that’s all.’
‘Well, nearly home,’ Carl said, swinging the Winton right into 33rd Street.
And there was the Dutchman, de Witt. ‘Sniffing about,’ Hinsch had dropped into their conversation sheepishly. ‘Berlin’s not sure about him.’
Not sure? What the hell did he mean by that? Hinsch had shrugged. ‘New information.’ Dilger had said nothing to his brother. He wondered if he ought to. Hinsch had urged him not to worry: ‘Keep your shirt on, Doctor, I’ll fix de Witt.’
‘Our sister’s waiting,’ Carl observed, as the Winton pulled up in front of the house. ‘Wonder if she could fix me something.’ It was midnight but the lights were on in the parlour and before he could cut the engine Emmeline was at the door.
‘YOU CAN’T BE sure.’
Wolff said he was as certain as he could be of most things. If they didn’t believe him they might return to their beds.
And Gaunt held up his large hands: ‘Just an observation, Lieutenant, that’s all.’ He wasn’t the bastard he used to be. As the Germans say: Not the cock who crows on the dungheap any more.
‘Testing. Quite right,’ said Wiseman, ready with his emollient smile, palms flat on the top of his desk, perfectly groomed even though the clock in his office had just struck six. Another hour before the sun would begin to creep down the many floors of Manhattan’s skyscrapers — and another before it reached the street — if it was able to.
‘Delmar was sent by Berlin — so was the fellow Wolff saw last night at the station. If he isn’t Delmar, he’s probably working with him. I’m inclined to believe he is,’ Wiseman said, easing back in his chair. ‘Lots of questions. First of all this doctor’s bag — why? What’s the fella got in the thing? Fuss he made on the ship — must be something breakable — nastier than Ma’s best china, I warrant.’ He smiled weakly at Wolff.
‘A bomb?’ Gaunt suggested.
‘In a medical bag? Too conspicuous.’ Wiseman’s moustache twitched with amusement. ‘Imagine — Hinsch on the train — an old lady in need of assistance — if you can’t save her, my friend, why are you dressed for the part?’ He leant forward, planting his elbows on the desk, his fingertips together. ‘Is he a doctor?’ he asked, pressing them to his lips. ‘And why Laurel? German American, you say, Wolff. Might have been travelling on false papers. But we need the names of everyone the Navy brought ashore at Ramsgate…’ He raised his chin enquiringly.
‘Last week of May,’ Wolff replied. ‘Travelling first class.’
‘Check them all. London to organise,’ Wiseman was directing his gaze to Thwaites. ‘Coffee, anybody? Think your chap can organise some, Norman?’
‘Managed it in a Turkish trench,’ Thwaites remarked laconically.
Wolff stood up and walked to the window, shielding his body with the curtain. He’d summoned them to the Consulate because it was more discreet than the safe apartment in the early hours.
‘They clock on at eight,’ Thwaites called from the door.
‘Same funny little chap,’ Wiseman added. ‘Only does a day shift.’
There was a taxicab at the recruiting office; further up the street, a delivery at the Custom House, and a few early business birds were striding out from the South Ferry subway, tightly buttoned-up in their grey overcoats from Brooks Brothers.
‘There’s something you should know,’ Wolff declared, his voice rising to command their attention. ‘The German spy I killed…’ he paused, reluctant to admit his mistake: too late. ‘The thing is… he was a police spy, not a German one, I’m afraid.’
Wiseman picked up a pen and began turning it in his right hand, his gaze fixed on his desk blotter, and Thwaites was contemplating his shoes. ‘Christ,’ Gaunt exclaimed under his breath. ‘Christ,’ he intoned again, plangently this time, craning forward as if he was scrutinising a dangerous creature. ‘You can’t distinguish friend from foe, can you?’
‘Can anyone in this business?’ Wolff remarked provocatively. For once, Gaunt’s anger would be welcome — but he was struggling to articulate it: ‘After the ship, it’s the damnedest thing…’
‘Ah, coffee,’ interjected Wiseman in a ‘not in front of the servants’ voice. ‘Well done, White. Over there, please, expect you know how everyone likes it.’ The silence was filled by the polite tinkle of china cups as Thwaites’ man placed the tray on a table between the windows. ‘Plenty of sugar for the lieutenant,’ Wiseman suggested, with an impish glint in his eye. Does he know about the police spy? Wolff wondered, or is it simply that he doesn’t care?
‘There may be repercussions with the police but we haven’t time to worry about them,’ Wiseman observed the instant the valet closed the door. ‘Delmar. We have his scent — let’s get after him. We’ve got the Czechs in Baltimore, haven’t we? Well, tell them to wake up. Better still, go there, Norman — see to things. What’s Hinsch got in his medical bag? What’s he planning? Captain Gaunt and I will inform London.’
‘You asked, “Why Laurel?”’ Wolff placed his cup on the desk. ‘That’s undrinkable.’
‘You know?’
‘A guess. The station’s halfway between Baltimore and Washington. I think they’ve used it before — they seemed to know the geography of the place.’
‘So you think he’s in the Washington area. Let’s see if London comes back with a name for us.’ Wiseman contemplated Wolff over his fingertips for a few seconds, then said: ‘And Hinsch — do you think he’ll see de Witt again? — only if it’s necessary, of course?’
Wolff shrugged: ‘It’s possible. He doesn’t trust anyone who was part of the von Rintelen operation — but I have a reputation.’
When they’d said what they wanted to, Wolff went to his apartment, poured a breakfast whisky, then another, and fell asleep on the couch. He woke in the middle of the afternoon but lay under a blanket, gazing at the shadows on his ceiling. ‘Don’t worry about the police,’ Thwaites had said to him after the meeting at the Consulate. ‘We’ll manage it.’ It was plain enough from his voice that he had known for some time. ‘Sir William doesn’t want to deflect you,’ he explained. ‘These things happen. You were protecting yourself.’
These things happen was the kitchen philosophy of his mother when a treasured object splintered into a thousand pieces on her flagged floor. It wasn’t an adequate explanation for six inches of steel in a man’s chest or the astonishment he’d left frozen on his face.
It was dusk and the shadows had gone when Wolff was roused from his couch by the telephone. His hand hovered over the earpiece, in two minds whether to answer.
‘So you are home.’ She sounded piqued and pleased.
‘It’s been a couple of days — that’s all,’ he teased her.
‘But there are things I wish to discuss with you — I have no engagements this evening,’ she said sheepishly; ‘I know it isn’t ladylike to say so.’
He laughed. ‘But you’re free of that sort of idle convention, aren’t you?’
He felt guilty in the taxicab to Laura’s apartment but not enough to dampen his anticipation of pleasure in her company. She looked very much a lady in a finely pleated ivory gown. Her aunt fussed over her like an old priestess at a sacrifice. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’
‘She means well,’ Laura said as he escorted her to the waiting motor car. ‘It’s just that sometimes she treats me as if I were a village girl in Ireland,’ she paused, colouring a little, ‘in need of a match.’
‘I see,’ he smiled affectionately at her. ‘But she’s right, you look very beautiful.’
She blushed deeper, like the pink of a wild hedge rose, turning her face from him but not before he caught the suggestion of a smile.
They chatted and laughed as she described her last suffrage meeting in a rough neighbourhood on the Lower East Side. An Italian mama had taken exception to the barrage of insults her son was directing at the platform and chased him from the hall.
They were to dine at Sherry’s, one of the best and dearest restaurants in town. Why? she asked. For the hell of it, and in honour of St Valentine, to celebrate his birthday in a fortnight’s time, but mostly for the enjoyment of her company, he said. He didn’t need to pay Sherry’s prices for that, she assured him.
A perfectly supercilious French waiter showed them to their table.
‘Parisian,’ Wolff observed.
‘Have you been to Paris?’ she asked. ‘I want to travel, I feel so uneducated — I haven’t left these shores. My father says not while the war’s on — not after the Lusitania.’
‘And you always obey your father?’ he teased.
‘No. But I don’t like to trouble him unnecessarily,’ she said defensively. ‘He’s very patient with me, but protective.’
‘And he’s right to be careful,’ Wolff remarked, conscious of the irony.
He ordered oysters — Blue Points — then English pheasant, and she requested the consommé and chicken fricassee, accompanied by wine that wouldn’t embarrass the waiter. For a time they spoke of Europe, the cities Laura hoped to visit when the world was at peace, and his memories of them before the war. ‘We always speak of the future and how things should be, never — or hardly ever — of the past,’ she observed. ‘I know so little about your life — your childhood in Holland and England, and South Africa, that’s all, and yet it’s as if we’ve been friends for ever.’ Embarrassed perhaps that her voice betrayed too much warmth, she began to concentrate on her plate.
‘We are good friends,’ was all he could think to say. She lifted her gaze to his face again and offered him a hesitant smile, a promise and a rebuke. ‘We are good friends, aren’t we?’ she said softly, inviting him to say more, her eyes sparkling like the sun on the sea. He wanted to please her, to reach for her hand and shape the words: Laura, I love you. He wanted to tell her, It’s true, I love you, and that is the truth.
‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘You look unhappy.’
‘No, how can I be?’ he lied, the knot in his chest twisting tighter. ‘I think I must be the luckiest man in the city.’
‘Just the city?’ she asked.
‘All right, the world,’ he heard himself say, and he tried to smile. He probably made a good fist of it after so many years’ practice.
‘Do you really think so, Jan?’
‘Yes. Don’t you believe me?’
She seemed younger and, for once, vulnerable as if she wished to speak of her feelings but was uncertain of the grammar.
‘Now, there’s something you said you wanted to discuss with me,’ he declared, trying to jolly them both. ‘New curtains? A dress? Shoes? Your best friend is considering a proposal of marriage from someone called Rockefeller? No — a part in Mr DeMille’s new picture — abducted by a bandit.’
‘You know me so well, Mr de Witt,’ she countered with a happier smile.
She was going to help a new campaigning group called the National Women’s Party, she said. Tired of being ignored by the President, they were going to picket the White House, and, if necessary, break the law. ‘Look at our sisters in England — they were prepared to go on hunger strike,’ she observed, the battle in her eyes again.
Wolff said he was glad she’d been able to dine at Sherry’s first. She laughed and said she wouldn’t speak to him if he was going to make fun of her. But he wasn’t, he assured her; he was full of admiration — always.
After dinner he suggested they visit a club but she wanted him to take her home. They sat very close in the taxicab although it wasn’t necessary, almost shoulder to shoulder, her thigh brushing against his at every corner, her hands resting lightly in her lap. She had used some more scent in the ladies’ room at the restaurant. They didn’t talk and he sensed she was excited and tense too. A few blocks from the apartment, she turned to look at him, her face so close he could feel her breath on his cheek.
‘Would you like to dance with me? I have a phonograph and some records,’ she said.
He laughed. ‘You are a most surprising woman.’
‘Isn’t that good?’ she asked, but not in a simpering voice.
‘It’s wonderful.’ He reached for her hand and squeezed it affectionately. ‘Wonderful.’
Their eyes met but her gaze fell almost at once, and to cover her confusion he asked: ‘Does your aunt dance well?’
It was her turn to laugh. ‘I don’t think so. I haven’t seen her dance.’ Her eyes flitted up to his again. ‘But she’s with friends — she’s visiting the Sisters at the Sacred Heart Covent.’ She began to giggle like a schoolgirl and soon he was shaking with laughter too, her head resting against his shoulder.
It was a handsome apartment, paid for by her father but furnished to her aunt’s taste with dark Victorian pieces, potted plants and bad portraits of Laura’s immediate family. They had been executed to burnish the McDonnell name, she said, oil on canvas to cover the stain of poverty and famine. The maid took their coats and brought Wolff a whisky. They sat opposite each other by the drawing-room fire, the spell broken for a time as Laura spoke of her aunt’s concerns and their routine at home. Her aunt was a prisoner of her upbringing, poorly educated, with no appetite for books and very religious. ‘The perfect chaperone for Father’s daughter,’ she quipped. ‘But she’s wise enough to recognise that at twenty-three I know my own mind. She won’t support votes for women but is happy to help raise money for Clan na Gael, and we’ve held meetings here in the apartment.’
He nodded and sipped his whisky.
‘Were you in Baltimore to see the Germans?’ she enquired suddenly. Her voice shook and he wondered if she was afraid of her thoughts and anxious not to let the conversation flag.
‘So you know there are Germans in Baltimore?’
She laughed — ‘A quarter of the city, I believe.’ She laughed a good deal; it was one of the things he loved about her, but this time it sounded brittle. ‘And Captain Hinsch is one of them,’ she said.
‘You know Hinsch?’
‘Sometimes he’s mentioned by members of the committee.’
‘Yes, I saw Hinsch. It wasn’t a very useful meeting.’
‘I’m glad. I think it’s too dangerous — after the Rintelen affair. No good will come of it.’
‘But you’re ready to break the law by chaining yourself to the railings of the White House.’
‘Yes,’ she replied distantly, her hands turning restlessly in her lap. For a few seconds neither of them spoke and she avoided his gaze, nipping the corner of her mouth uncertainly. ‘Would you like to dance?’ she asked at last.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, Laura, of course. Shall I?’
‘No, the phonograph’s here.’ Rising quickly, she stepped over to a tall cabinet in the corner of the room.
‘Allow me.’
‘No, no, I can manage.’
‘Father says it’s a good one,’ she said, lifting the top. ‘A diamond disc — although I don’t know what that means.’ Her hands were shaking so much that it took quite a time to slip the record on the turntable: ‘Silly me.’ Then she turned the handle at the side of the cabinet and dropped the needle on the disc, wincing at the thump and crackle of protest. ‘Sorry.’
He had risen, and now he walked towards her. ‘A waltz, then.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not very good.’
‘Nor am I.’
He offered her his hand and she took it, her eyes fixed on his white tie. He stepped closer, placing his other hand at her waist: ‘one, two, three’ — and they were off, waltzing stiffly; one turn and two turns, and — three — and — four, and he could feel her relaxing and relief in the music — and growing elation in the warmth and their movement. They danced the length of the disc without speaking and when it was over he dropped his hands as he knew he should. She looked at him and smiled with more confidence. ‘You are good.’
‘So are you,’ he said.
‘Do you think you could manage…?’
‘Yes.’
So they danced again, closer, wearing away the hideous purple rug, dizzy with excitement, certain enough now to look each other in the eye; sweeping round in a cloud of perfume and to the rustle of her satin dress, the chandelier too bright but her hair lustrous in its light: drunk, cavalier, forgetful. This time when the music stopped he didn’t release her hand but bent to brush it with his lips.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
She raised heavy-lidded eyes to his, a small frown at her brow: ‘You can kiss me, if you like’ — and he did.
When he finished, his forehead resting against hers, she smiled happily and whispered, ‘Don’t stop.’ And he bent to her again, holding her close, arm about her shoulders, her hair brushing his cheek, soft lips quivering with desire — with love.
In the corner of the room, the tissh, tissh spitting of the phonograph disc, like a limping timepiece.
‘I love you,’ he said when they broke apart.
‘Do you?’ she asked, her eyes glittering with a film of moisture.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m glad because I love you.’
They stood there, silent, content, her head against his cheek and his mind empty of anything more than his feelings for her. Then she said, ‘I’m so happy, Jan. So many good things have happened today;’ and he was suddenly afraid of something in her voice, the promise of a confidence. He kissed and stroked her hair but said nothing.
‘Don’t you want to know why?’ She was a little hurt, lifting her head from his shoulder to gaze up at his face. ‘I want to tell someone, you see—’
‘If it’s Clan business, you shouldn’t,’ he interrupted, bending to silence her with a rough kiss — and for a time she let him.
‘But it’s important. I want you to… I only heard today — and you’re Sir Roger’s friend,’ she persisted. ‘It’s to be Easter, you see. It’s decided — and Roger will be there — with guns.’ She smiled, craning up to kiss him lightly on the lips. ‘Do you remember what you said the day we met? You spoke to the Clan, and you said it was time to prove we had the guts to do more than sing about dying for Ireland. Aren’t you pleased we’re going to at last?’
‘Of course,’ he said.
‘You don’t look pleased. Please be happy — this is what we’ve been hoping for — freedom at last.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he kissed her forehead, ‘it is wonderful news. I’m just anxious for Roger, that’s all. It won’t be easy, even if the people rise together against the British.’
‘I know, but it is something to celebrate, isn’t it?’
Something fine, he said, but a sad cold wave was washing through him. In an effort to suppress it he kissed her hair and her cheek and her neck, holding her very close, until with trembling breath and parted lips she turned her face, and he kissed her passionately, deeply, with all the love he felt for her. Why? Why did you speak of it? She was still trembling when they broke apart and he said in a broken whisper, ‘I must go.’ She squeezed him tighter, clinging to him as one who has known little, perhaps nothing, of men. Eyes firmly shut, stroking her hair, for a while he couldn’t speak as sad, cutting thoughts waltzed round his head to the tissh, tissh, tissh of the diamond disc phonograph. Why did you tell me? But to even ask was another lie. The blame was his alone. She trusted de Witt — she loved him.
‘I must go,’ he said with more determination. She spoke but it was barely a whisper, and her words were lost at his shoulder.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t…’ he said, pulling away to examine her face.
Her large eyes lifted shyly then dropped. ‘You don’t have to go. You can stay,’ she said.
‘Your aunt will be home, and…’ he understood and was afraid for her. ‘I… I think I should leave,’ he stammered.
‘Would you like to make love to me?’ She turned her face up with I can, I will eyes, and he felt a frisson of desire and at the same moment guilt that she was offering her love for the first time to a man like him. Tissh, tissh, tissh, the revolving phonograph, as if possessed by the spirit of her maiden aunt, and Laura looked down, disconcerted that he hadn’t spoken or kissed her. ‘You can, it’s all right — I love you,’ she whispered.
‘I love you, Laura,’ he said with quiet sincerity. ‘Please believe me — that’s why I’m going to leave.’ He bent to kiss her but she’d turned her face away, pulling from him, hurt and perhaps a little ashamed.
‘You’re very beautiful and I want you,’ he said. ‘It’s just…’ but he couldn’t think how to explain. ‘I love you,’ he said again, but this time it sounded like an excuse.
‘I’m glad. I love you too,’ she declared brusquely, her back turned as she lifted the needle from the disc.
And now she wanted him to leave at once. ‘I’m sorry. I do love you,’ he said again in the hall, his coat over his arm.
‘Why are you sorry? There’s no reason to be,’ she said, but wouldn’t look him in the eye.
‘Yes, there are many reasons why I should be sorry,’ he said bitterly; ‘but it doesn’t matter now… it’s gone, done…’
‘No. How can you say so?’ and she stepped forward, laying her hand upon his arm. ‘It’s just pride’ — and she lifted her eyes to his face and blushed. ‘What a hussy you must think me.’
‘You’re surprising, beautiful, clever and I want you very much — I love you,’ he repeated, drawing her close. ‘Please kiss me.’
Standing across the road from her apartment, gazing at her lighted windows, he could still taste that last kiss, smell and feel her pressed to him; and when for a moment he shut his eyes she was beckoning him back to be her lover. He stood in the empty street, the railings and the sidewalk were white with frost, his coat open, head bare, the cold pricking his face and hands. He was lonely, he hurt and he hated himself even more, though he knew he’d done the right thing for once; just too late.
There was a taxicab at the end of the street but he wanted to walk, striding out in his best shoes, slipping, almost falling, too angry to care. By the time he reached the Albemarle Hotel it was midnight.
Wiseman answered his door in slippers and a silk dressing gown, its pocket sagging with the weight of a revolver. Raising an eyebrow, he enquired with his customary composure, ‘Are you all right, my dear fellow? You did take care, didn’t you? They keep a pretty close eye on me here.’
Wolff hadn’t taken the trouble he should have.
‘Another drink?’ Wiseman asked, gazing pointedly at his tie and tails. ‘Whisky, isn’t it?’
‘No.’
Wiseman brandished the decanter. ‘You don’t mind if I…’ and poured himself a glass. ‘Sit down.’
‘No.’ Wolff took a deep breath. ‘There’s something you should know.’
‘You’re a bit out of sorts, I can see that. Are you in some sort of difficulty?’
‘I haven’t murdered anyone else, if that’s what you mean,’ he gave a bitter little laugh, ‘yet.’
‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ Wiseman replied quietly. ‘Sit down, why don’t you?’ and he indicated the couch opposite with his glass.
Wolff shook his head impatiently. He was standing with his back to the door, tapping his hat against his leg. ‘There’s going to be a rebellion in Ireland — at Easter.’ He spoke hurriedly and mechanically like someone repeating instructions. ‘Not sure of the precise date — perhaps Easter Sunday — don’t know — there will be German guns — don’t know when they’ll be landed — Casement will be part of it — not sure how much of a part — there are difficulties between him and the Clan and the leaders in Dublin. How good is my source? Good.’ He took another deep breath. ‘That’s it. That’s all I know.’
Wiseman had listened with the faintly superior air of a university don coaxing a temperamental undergraduate with nods and smiles. ‘You’re quite sure about this?’
‘Yes.’
‘They aren’t trying to smoke you out?’
‘They — whom do you mean?’ he snapped.
‘The Irish, the Clan, or the Germans — perhaps they fed her this information to test her, or you, or both of you.’
‘You know then?’
Wiseman acknowledged it with a slight nod.
‘No, it’s true,’ he said, wearily. He’d said what he had to say and he didn’t honestly care whether anyone believed him.
‘I see,’ Wiseman drawled, leaning forward, elbow on his knee and chin on his knuckles like Rodin’s Thinker. ‘Do you think you can learn more?’
‘No, and please don’t ask me to try.’
‘It must have been a difficult evening for you,’ Wiseman observed politely.
‘It was fine,’ he lied.
‘Sure you don’t want a drink?’
‘I’m sure. Look, there’s no reason for me to stay in New York, is there?’
‘Do you want to go to Baltimore?’
‘I don’t know — yes — somewhere.’
Wiseman considered this for a moment, sipping his whisky. ‘Perhaps Baltimore is best.’ Then, in his soapiest voice, ‘You’ve done well, old boy. I don’t have to tell you how important this might be. I know you’re tired — go home. Rest.’
Wolff left him to encipher his signal to London. Task complete, Wiseman may have gone back to his bed and was perhaps still sleeping the sleep of the righteous when, at daybreak, Wolff caught his train to Baltimore.
FROM THE SINGLE grimy window of Thwaites’ hotel room it was just possible to see the tips of the cranes on the south side of the harbour.
‘Better not to be too close, I hope you agree,’ he said, sweeping newspapers and an edition of Tacitus’ Histories from his bed. He had signed in as Schmidt and was dressed in a sack suit like a travelling salesman. His runners were staying at a flophouse on the south side, in spitting distance of Hinsch’s ship, the Neckar.
‘That Masek’s a taskmaster.’ The bed springs groaned as Thwaites perched at its edge. ‘His people hate the Germans, you know, which is all the better for us. Why don’t you settle in, then we can go over there.’
Wolff was on the same corridor. The room was damp and smelt of stale smoke and the window wouldn’t close. He inspected himself in the spotted mirror above the basin. His eyes were red rimmed so he bathed them in cold water. Then he changed into an old pea coat and boots. They left the hotel separately and took separate cabs to Locust Point. Masek met them in a dark little basement bar a few streets from the Norddeutscher Lloyd dock. The owner was also a Czech, he informed them, and for the right price could be trusted to hate Prussians too. Their host brought strong black tea and they sipped it and listened to Masek’s report of comings and goings to the ship.
‘No Hinsch, then?’ Thwaites enquired, blowing the steam from the top of his glass. Briefly, at the foot of the ship’s gangway, came the reply. He was seen with a large black man, a stevedore. They’d spoken for a minute, then Hinsch had given him a package.
‘The Negro isn’t Irish, is he?’ Thwaites remarked with an unpleasant little laugh. ‘So of no interest to us.’
Wolff wasn’t sure. ‘Hinsch may have found some of his own people.’
One of Masek’s runners was inside the yard, another at the gate, two more at the flophouse or in the bar, and there was nothing for Wolff to do but wait. Rather than contemplate the stains on the hotel wallpaper, he left Thwaites to his Tacitus and walked down to the waterfront. His route took him through a salty neighbourhood of brick terraces and cobblestone streets, taphouses, whorehouses, markets and missions, empty warehouses and decaying timber wharfs that brought to mind London’s docks and Portsmouth and a score of other ports over almost as many years. At a place called Fell’s Point he stopped to gaze at the last of the sun on the water. A stiff breeze was rocking the oyster boats and beating loose halyards against the masts. From the other side of the harbour the long, empty echo of a ship’s horn. Keep moving, keep busy, concentrate on the operation, he said to himself, but the ache in his chest was there — as if he’d been kicked by a horse. Closing his eyes, he could see Laura looking up at him expectantly, a small surrender that only served to sharpen his pain: and what was his pain? Love, loss, regret, guilt, anger, hopelessness — all those words and ones he didn’t remember or had never known.
Thwaites was waiting in the hotel lobby. ‘Where have you been?’ he hissed, pulling Wolff roughly aside. ‘You came here to do a job — Hinsch is at the Hansa Haus — the Negro too.’
They parked in front of a row of shops on the opposite side of the street, about fifty yards from the main entrance. Masek recognised their motor car and wandered over, stepping up to the back seat. ‘My man there,’ he said with Slavic disdain for prepositions. ‘Front automobile showroom. Hinsch inside with Hilken two hours, but that nothing strange — here always.’
Wolff looked at Thwaites sceptically. ‘So no need to get excited.’
‘We need to be with him all the time,’ he replied coolly. ‘If you haven’t the stomach for it…’
‘All right,’ Wolff held up his hand, ‘I know.’
Masek patted him on the shoulder. ‘Pretty girl — Brooklyn. I remember you. Followed you for Captain Gaunt.’ Sliding down the seat, he pulled his peaked cap over his eyes — ‘Masek have nap’ — and like a dog he was asleep and snoring gently in minutes. Wolff lit a cigarette and watched the lights go out in the large office building opposite. Clerks from the downtown business district were striding home along the Charles Street corridor or queuing for streetcars to the suburbs. The tinkling of a bell signalled the approach of another and the scramble for a seat. ‘You know it’s Valentine’s Day?’ Thwaites remarked. ‘Did you send your Irish lady a card?’
‘Chuck it, will you?’
‘Just killing time, old boy. But I say, you’re not…’
‘Shut up, for God’s sake.’ He nudged Thwaites with his elbow. ‘There’s our man,’ and turning to wake Masek, ‘Hey, you, any idea who the other two are?’
They were standing at the main door, the Norddeutscher house flag flapping above their head. ‘Hinsch — and that is Hilken in wool cap — the Negro do not know and…’ Masek pointed over Wolff’s shoulder, ‘Hilken’s driver.’ A large burgundy-and-orange Packard was drawing to the kerb a few yards from the group.
‘The Negro’s carrying something — looks like a present for his mother,’ Thwaites observed sardonically. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.
With a curt nod to his companions, Hilken walked over to the motor car and stepped into the back. The driver was plainly expecting another passenger because he stood waiting at the open door.
‘We should follow the black man,’ Wolff declared.
‘Because of his parcel?’ Thwaites sounded sceptical.
‘Because Hilken and Hinsch won’t be doing their own dirty work. Hilken isn’t comfortable with — look, here we go…’ Hinsch had shaken hands with his companion and was lumbering towards the motor car.
‘Hurry up, you ox,’ Wolff said between gritted teeth. The black man had set off at a good pace, faltering only to wave at one of the city’s gaudy yellow cabs. ‘We can’t wait — you go after him, Masek — don’t lose him.’
Thwaites stepped out to start the motor car and was bending over the handle when the Packard pulled away. He limped back slowly, was caught at the first set of lights, then the second. ‘Come on, man, come on,’ Wolff grumbled. Masek flagged them down outside the bank at the corner of Baltimore and Charles Streets. ‘Where you been?’ he railed. ‘Go west — go straight.’ They caught up the stevedore’s cab at the City Hall and followed it without difficulty through cobblestone streets to the harbour. Beyond the old wharfs at Fell’s Point it turned south-west into new docklands, through a dark tunnel of warehouse walls broken only by glimpses of the navigation lights on the shore, emerging after a mile in a neighbourhood of workers’ rowhouses.
Morahan’s Bar was the last building in a parade of rundown shops, at the edge of a salt marsh; opposite, a dockyard gate and chain-link fence. Single storey, windows part boarded, it was a hard-drinking place for run-ashore sailors and stevedores with piecework wages to blow in an evening.
‘What do you think?’
Masek rubbed his little beard: ‘Think dangerous.’
‘Yes.’ Wolff took a deep breath. ‘I think so too. Have you got a gun?’
Thwaites patted his pocket.
‘Then give it to me.’
‘I’m coming,’ he protested.
‘Not with your leg — not in that suit,’ Wolff insisted. ‘Masek — you come.’
The Czech touched his cap facetiously. ‘Du bist der Chef.’
‘We’re Germans,’ Wolff muttered, stepping out of the car. ‘I’ll do all the talking.’
But as they were crossing the street the stevedore appeared on the threshold of the bar again. He must have thought nothing of the approaching sailors because he pushed the door ajar and called to someone inside. His companion was young, white, well built and dressed in a longshoreman’s cap and short coat. Cradled in the crook of his right arm was the parcel.
‘Got a light?’ Wolff asked in German, stopping a few yards short of them to fumble for a cigarette.
Masek nodded. ‘Sure.’
The stevedore seemed to barely notice. He whispered something to his associate, then watched him walk beyond the circle of light cast by the parade lamps.
Wolff bent over the guttering lighter flame. ‘Hold it steady, man,’ he protested loudly. The stevedore gazed at them for a moment then stepped back into the bar.
‘Stay with him, Masek,’ Wolff said. ‘Take this,’ and he handed him the revolver.
The meadow at the end of the parade was soft underfoot and thick cord grass grew at its edge. Stumbling forward a few feet, Wolff found a path and, presuming the young man with the package had taken it, he pushed on quietly, weaving first away from the road then back, the faint glow of light from the wharf buildings behind the fence his guide. It didn’t take long to catch him. Sinking to his knees, Wolff watched the longshoreman make his way from the meadow up to the road and across to the fence. He bent over his toes to tug at the bottom of the wire: it lifted like a curtain. Then, slipping under, he ran for the cover of a warehouse. Bloody idiot — I should have kept the revolver, Wolff thought, as he scrambled after him. On the other side of the wire, he crouched to gather his bearings — twenty or so yards, three warehouse buildings, no lights, no sign of a guard. He struck out fast and low to the nearest. Back pressed to it, the first thing he noticed was the smell of shit, then a restless murmur like the breaking of waves on a distant shore, and in the seconds it took to reach the front of the building he realised that the dockyard was full of horses. Covered stables occupied two sides, an open corral the third, the administrative block along the fourth — the Union flag flying from a pole above the door. Beyond this, the dock and the dim lights of two large ships.
What the hell was he doing here? Were the ships the target, or the horses? It was a British remount depot. He’d seen a place like it in a New York park, and there were half a dozen more on the East Coast. Horses and mules to haul British guns, bring up the rations, and carry the luckless into no-man’s-land; from Midwest pastures by train, then sea; no passport, no neutrality — big business. A precious investment guarded by careless nightwatchmen: or was Hinsch paying them to turn a blind eye? If so, to what end?
A whinnying, the scraping of hooves and Wolff was suddenly conscious of the horses shifting in the old warehouse at his back, their shoulders shaking the planking. It was lit by only a few dim lamps so he could see no further than the first pen, but its darkness seemed to have a pulse, to breathe, move with a will, inexorably, like the tide. There was something else too — fear. Close by, an animal snorted and whinnied, startling its neighbours. Christ, he wished he had the gun. Treading lightly on tiptoe, he advanced towards the central feeding aisle. At the corner of the first pen he paused to place the movement on the opposite side. Creeping forward a few more steps, he could see the horses stirring in the second pen, pressing together, heads high in distress. Another step, and brown packaging in the straw at the gate, a wooden box with its lid open, phials, a glass syringe with a cork on the needle, and he knew it was the contents of Delmar’s case. Crash, a horse kicked at the gate and, shying away, exposed in the murky light of a wall lamp, the poisoner and his poison, motionless, his face covered by a mask, the syringe upright in his right hand like a priest holding the host. Then he was hidden again and on the move, the horses buffeting the slats as he tried to force a way through to the first pen. If he’s running, he isn’t armed, Wolff reasoned, and he isn’t thinking clearly.
Releasing the bolts on the gate, Wolff eased his way in among the horses. The longshoreman was in a blue funk. Had he dropped the syringe? Terror was infectious too, borne in the air from pen to pen, screaming, sweating, restless enough surely to worry even a corrupt nightwatchman. Ahead in the darkness the fence creaked and he heard a sound like the slapping of a horse’s haunches; yes, closer, closer, and he tensed to spring — but the poisoner was ready too. His needle missed Wolff’s face by inches. Instinct must have made him flinch. Grabbing the man’s right arm, holding the needle away, in desperation Wolff tried to gouge his eye with a thumb; the beasts shouldering them, locked in their dance. Then, thrusting at the man’s chin, pushing the facemask up, the needle dropping, Wolff knew his enemy was stronger, and for a second he remembered: Christ, it was like this with the man in the derby hat. A shower of glass and liquid as the syringe splintered in the poisoner’s hand and, grunting with fear, he loosened his grip. Wolff struck hard at his throat and he staggered back, grasping for some support. But a horse kicked out, catching him below the knee and he fell, then Wolff kicked him again — in the head — again, and again — in the back, his sides, again, again.
‘All right,’ Wolff gasped at last, ‘the syringe, what was in it?’ But the young longshoreman was curled tightly in a ball, his face hidden by his rubber gloves. ‘Come on,’ Wolff bent over him, shaking him by the collar. ‘What was in the syringe?’ He slapped the man’s head with the palm of his hand and shook him some more. ‘Tell me or I swear to God I’ll make you eat the stuff.’
‘Anthrax.’
‘Anthrax?’ Wolff grabbed his coat and was dragging him to his feet when someone at the entrance of the warehouse called, ‘McKevitt, that you?’ A Southerner, an old voice trembling with fear. ‘McKevitt?’
Wolff shook the longshoreman again: ‘You McKevitt?’
He dropped his hands at last. ‘Yeah.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘That’s Flynn and he’s got a gun.’
‘Has he?’
‘Yeah,’ McKevitt drawled. ‘Here — over…’ he tried to shout. Wolff caught him hard in the mouth. He tried to cover his face but Wolff punched him again and grabbed his hair, slamming his head once, twice, against the stone floor until he lay there unconscious. Then Wolff pushed through the horses to the gate, let himself out and turned to pick up the box of phials.
‘McKevitt?’ The old nightwatch was advancing slowly with a cavalry revolver.
‘Flynn? I’m working with McKevitt.’
‘Just wait there, mister.’ He waved the revolver at Wolff. ‘McKevitt said nuthin about anyone else.’
Wolff kept walking: ‘I brought the stuff for him.’
‘Don’t want to know about that — don’t wanna know nuthin’. Where’s McKevitt?’
‘He didn’t say where he was going.’
‘Now hold it there. You ain’t from here, are you?’ This time he levelled the gun at Wolff. ‘Where you from?’
‘Sure you want to know? I mean, best not to — best let me get on. You got the money, didn’t you?’ Wolff was close enough to register the uncertainty in Flynn’s weatherbeaten face. ‘You see, what you don’t know can’t get you in trouble, can it?’
‘No, no, reckon you’re right,’ he said, his voice quaking. Wolff stopped beside him and gazed down into his rheumy drinker’s eyes. ‘Forget you saw me — that would be best for you, Flynn.’
Then he left the way he had come, discarding his coat by the fence. It was stained with the contents of the syringe.
‘Is that the parcel?’ Thwaites enquired, as Wolff climbed into the motor car beside him.
‘This? This is Delmar’s box,’ he remarked grimly. ‘Fetch Masek — we need to leave — at once.’
On the journey to the hotel he told them what he’d seen and done.
The little he knew of anthrax he’d learnt as a boy growing up on a farm; a contagion in horses, cattle, sheep — a killer.
‘Evil,’ Thwaites declared, and he repeated it many times, and that only the Germans would behave so dishonourably. ‘Are you afraid you might be infected?’ he bellowed over the roar of the road.
Wolff said he was too tired and hungry to be afraid.
‘And the poisoner,’ he shouted, ‘did you kill him?’
‘Knocked him out.’
‘Pity.’ He glanced across at Wolff. ‘You should have, you know — killed him, I mean. He saw you.’
‘For God’s sake, man,’ Wolff exclaimed, thumping the door of the car. ‘What do you take me for?’
At the hotel they wrapped the box in brown paper as before and wrote on it: Handle with Care. Their courier caught the last train to New York. ‘I’ll telephone Wiseman — warn him it’s on the way,’ said Thwaites. ‘Have a bath, old boy, you smell of horse shit and you should,’ he hesitated, ‘well, you know — you have to be careful.’
Later, they sat in his room and drank too much whisky — antiseptic, Thwaites called it. After a time he observed with the tearful sentiment of the tipsy that no one could doubt they were fighting a war for civilisation. ‘You — you — you’ve had your doubts, I know,’ he slurred, ‘but you can see now, can’t you — you can see what we’re up against.’ Wolff sipped his drink and wondered why poisoning animals made it a war for civilisation when so much that was an abomination had been done already. He was confused and a little drunk, exhausted too — he ached all over. Was the poison working through his system?
Thwaites prodded his knee. ‘I know what you’re thinking — you — you’re thinking “animals — just animals” — but what if they’re using it on us, eh?’
‘Then why poison horses?’
‘Who knows how far this Delmar will go. I don’t understand why, why… a doctor would do such a thing.’
Wolff gazed at him for a few seconds. ‘Men like us have to, well, prove we belong somewhere.’
Thwaites looked at him quizzically. ‘Don’t… don’t… follow…’
‘A bad joke, that’s all.’
‘You know there have to be laws, Wolff,’ he muttered, then louder, ‘There… there have to be limits — without them there’s no civilisation.’
THERE WERE TELEPHONE calls, telegrams, and on the second day Thwaites caught the train to Washington, but he was back in the hotel at dusk. ‘We’re to sit tight while they put the pieces together.’ Time had meant little to Wolff in a Turkish cell with only dreams and memories to measure the dark hours between interrogations. A wristwatch and a square of leaden sky made for harder time, the hours trickling like grains of sand through a glass. Too bored and restless to read, he sat on his bed wrapped in a blanket, fighting the future, his past, civilised society and his feelings for Laura. After a few drinks he recalled her large blue-green eyes gazing up at him with a smile; a few more and he wanted to kick down the door.
‘Are you sick?’ Thwaites enquired warily.
‘Aren’t you? Delmar may be halfway across the Atlantic.’
‘Ah. I see.’ Thwaites couldn’t disguise his relief. ‘Don’t worry — Masek’s people say there’s nothing unusual. Hinsch is still aboard his ship, Hilken in his Hansa Haus. The man at the remount depot may have kept his mouth shut.’
Wolff didn’t think so.
‘This anthrax — it’s very nasty,’ said Thwaites uncomfortably. ‘You know, Sir William thinks you should see someone.’
‘Oh?’ He muttered impatiently. ‘It isn’t necessary, I feel fine.’ It was a lie; he felt terrible — hungover and out of sorts.
‘Don’t be an ass,’ Thwaites chided. ‘It’s for your own good — and mine.’
The Johns Hopkins Hospital was a five-minute cab ride, its tissue culture laboratory on the third floor of a red-brick neo-Gothic block that resembled the station hotels of the last century.
‘I’ve told Sir William I want to keep you a while,’ Dr Reid said, breezing into his office in a spotless white coat; ‘a few tests, a skin and a blood culture.’ He bent over his desk, distracted for a moment by some paperwork. He was a tall man with boyish features and a shock of ginger hair he must have spent most of fifty years trying to tame. ‘Blood,’ he muttered in his Scots American brogue; ‘blood,’ and lifting his gaze to Wolff at last, ‘How are you feeling? Any shortness of breath, sneezing, light-headedness? Fever? Any itching or blisters?’
No aches and pains that couldn’t be placed at the door of a longshoreman with fists the size of dinner plates, Wolff assured him.
‘We’ll see. Put this on, would you,’ and he handed Wolff a surgical mask. ‘Just a precaution, and please — don’t touch anything.’
As old as man, he explained as he guided Wolff along the corridor to the tissue laboratory. Bacillus anthracis: one of the biblical plagues. Grazing animals ingested or inhaled its spores from the soil and once they were infected they could spread the contagion to man. ‘Through the skin or sometimes by breathing in the spores — tanners and wool workers have picked it up from animal hides. Here we are… no, no, let me get the door,’ he said, placing a firm hand on Wolff’s arm. ‘Don’t touch anything, remember.’
His laboratory was larger and better equipped than most, perhaps; brighter than some, with arched windows facing south, and emptier than many at midday, with just a single research student bubbling a flask at a bench.
‘This won’t take long,’ Reid declared, summoning his assistant with a wave. ‘Cutaneous infection from a diseased animal is the most common cause — the tiniest unseen abrasion on your skin is enough, or by touching eyes, nose or mouth.’ He was busying himself with a microscope and some slides. ‘Here, this is a gram stain — it’s the rod-shaped bacilli between the cells.’ Wolff bent over the eyepiece. The bacilli looked unnervingly like tiny jointed worms and he said so. ‘If you’ve spoken to Sir William, you’ll know…’
Reid had closed his eyes and was shaking his head irritably. ‘I live here now and whatever dirty little war is being fought behind the backs of the authorities…’ He sighed heavily. ‘Yes, it can be used as a weapon. It spreads quickly — horses brushing against each other. If you’re asking me about people…’ he paused, his gaze fixed on the microscope slide. ‘It’s a zoonosis. Human-to-human transmission is rare. The reservoir for the infection is the animal.’
For a few strained seconds they stood in silence while the laboratory assistant laid syringes and dishes on a surgical trolley. Reid reached for some rubber gloves. ‘You can thank the Germans for this test,’ he said with a sardonic smile.
He took some mucus from Wolff’s nose, some blood from his arm; he examined his mouth for ulcers and his skin for blistering, tapped his chest and prodded for signs of soreness. ‘I’m fine,’ Wolff repeated, hoping to God it was true.
‘Yes, you’re probably free from infection,’ Reid conceded a little reluctantly. ‘Too early to be sure. Did you bring some things?’
But Wolff refused to stay. ‘I’ll let you know if I find any blisters.’
‘Too late by then,’ the doctor observed savagely. ‘Want to know how you die?’
‘No. You can spare me the details.’
They parted without a handshake even though Reid was wearing his gloves. But as Wolff was approaching the end of the corridor he came bounding like a camel in pursuit, his white coat flapping about him. ‘Do you read German?’ He thrust some medical papers and a book into Wolff’s arms. ‘Put them in the mail when you’ve finished, if you please.’
Wolff was turning away again when Reid grabbed his arm. ‘Just a minute.’ He waited for three nurses to rustle by, then said, ‘Since Wiseman came to see me I’ve given this…’ he hesitated, searching for a suitable corridor euphemism, ‘…problem. I’ve given this problem some thought, and it occurs to me the clever thing about Bacillus anthracis is that it would be easier to target than most diseases.’
‘I’m sorry, Doctor, I don’t…’
‘Look, it’s in those papers,’ he reached a finger across to them. ‘Just a possibility — I hope I’m wrong. I’m sure I’m wrong,’ and with a curt nod he walked away.
The summons to the British Embassy in Washington was delivered by telegram the following morning. Thwaites wanted to drive. They arrived in the middle of a downpour and were escorted without ceremony up the ornate oak stairs to a salon on the first landing.
‘You must be frustrated,’ said Wiseman, advancing across the silk carpet to greet them. ‘It’s taken an age.’ They shook hands and he drew them into the circle of chairs about the fireplace. The room was furnished with pretentious gilt pieces of a sort favoured by diplomats of all nations. The King-Emperor hung above the black marble chimneypiece and on the longest wall a large canvas of British soldiers engaged in another battle.
‘Congratulations the order of the day again,’ said Gaunt from his place at the hearth.
‘Plaudits from everyone,’ agreed Wiseman, squeezing his hips into a fragile-looking fauteuil. ‘Agent W — the toast of Whitehall.’
‘How gratifying,’ Wolff replied.
‘Must be.’ Wiseman smiled weakly. ‘So, let’s begin. We’ve tested the poison, spoken to C, the Admiralty, the War Office, the British Army chaps here, and we’ve enough information to be sure the Germans are trying to infect everything on four legs we buy — horses, mules, cattle.’
‘Evil bastards,’ Gaunt murmured.
‘There have been fatalities.’ Wiseman leant forward, elbows on his knees; ‘London says five British sailors on horse transports — and a newspaper here reported another — a stevedore in a hospital just before Christmas.’ His gaze rested pointedly upon Wolff: ‘You’ve seen Dr Reid?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said, with more confidence than he felt.
‘He’s sure?’
‘Yes.’
Wiseman relaxed back in the chair. ‘This whole thing has been an almighty cock-up. The damn fools in the War Office who organise the supply of horses kept it to themselves. C says they admit to more than a dozen outbreaks of anthrax in the last three months — that’s thousands of animals destroyed at depots or tipped into the sea — no one is entirely sure of the precise number. Infections have been reported at five ports on the East Coast and on goodness knows how many ships — the last the Brownlee, two weeks ago. The Admiralty dismissed it as poor animal husbandry. Well, biological warfare — who would have thought it?’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Gaunt, stooping to stir the fire. ‘Why are they killing animals?’
‘Only a sailor would need to ask.’ Wiseman observed with an indulgent smile. ‘An army can’t feed or fight without horses and mules, Captain; it can’t move. The Americans have sold us hundreds of thousands already. We’re getting through horses pretty quickly, aren’t we, Norman? Thank God we don’t publish those casualty figures.’
Thwaites coughed. ‘Depressing thought.’
For a few silent seconds it hovered in the room.
‘And Agent Delmar?’ Wolff prompted. ‘Did London come up with a name?’
‘You were right. He’s an American doctor,’ said Wiseman, rising to his feet. ‘Doctor Dilger — Anton Casimir Dilger;’ and leaning on the back of his chair he trotted through the facts he’d gathered as if intent on making up the lost time. A bacteriologist he had consulted knew of a Dr Dilger and was able to find papers on tissue cultures he’d written before the war. The family were Germans from Virginia, his father a hero of the Civil War. ‘The rum thing is that old man Dilger stayed in America to breed horses. Ironic, don’t you think? Berlin must have run our Dr Dilger as a separate sabotage operation, with Hilken to handle financial affairs and Hinsch to recruit and run the necessary…’
‘Scum,’ Gaunt chipped in with venom.
‘…network. German and Irish, no doubt,’ Wiseman continued with a twinkle in his voice. ‘They’ve kept things tight. If you hadn’t followed Hinsch, who knows how long it would have been before we picked up the scent.’
Wolff raised his eyebrows: ‘Are you confident we still have it?’
‘Sent a fella to the Dilger farm yesterday — he spoke to some people. Dilger’s living with a sister just a few miles from here. The cheek of the man — he’s listed in the directory as a “physician”.’
Thwaites sighed heavily. ‘Isn’t it time to give this to the Americans?’
‘Your leader has thought of that.’ Wiseman paused, putting his palms together as if in prayer. ‘London says, “Ask our Ambassador.” The Ambassador says, “Proof.” He can’t — won’t — take it to the White House without proof. President Wilson wants to keep the temperature with the Germans low. He’s campaigning for re-election on the slogan “I — kept –”’ and Wiseman drew it in the air, ‘“us — out — of — the — war”.’
‘The phials, the syringe — aren’t they satisfactory?’
‘British propaganda.’ Wiseman had taken his seat again and was contemplating Wolff over his fingertips. ‘What do we have that can’t be dismissed as bad husbandry or propaganda? Goodness, it isn’t easy to believe.’
‘Poisoning animals, food, water supplies — I suppose we’ve been doing something of the sort for centuries,’ Thwaites remarked gloomily, ‘and now it’s the turn of the scientists. Is that progress?’
‘I dipped into the Bible last night,’ Wiseman said, ‘half remembered something from Revelation;’ and screwing his eyes tightly shut in concentration he intoned in a fire-and-brimstone voice: ‘When he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. There,’ he exclaimed, opening his eyes again, ‘the seal’s broken and behold death on a pale horse.’
For a few seconds there was silence.
‘“The Black Bane”,’ muttered Wolff at last.
Wiseman lifted his chin quizzically.
‘Anthrax. The last pandemic in Europe killed thousands.’ Wolff paused, turning the thought. ‘There haven’t been cases at the Front?’
Wiseman shook his head in disgust. ‘Honestly, I don’t think the War Office has a clue how its animals die. Has enough of a job accounting for…’
Wolff cut him short. ‘No — soldiers. How can we be sure the Germans aren’t poisoning our soldiers?’ He leant forward distractedly, his gaze fixed on the carpet, as if the answer was waiting to be teased from its fibres and motifs. ‘Reid gave me some medical papers — the enemy has chosen wisely. For one thing, anthrax is deniable. A disease found in horses and cattle — it’s a silent killer. Look, we’re struggling to convince our own Ambassador it’s a weapon, aren’t we? Secondly,’ he said, counting it coldly on his fingers, ‘delivery. The enemy has targeted American horses and mules as a reservoir of infection. It’s easier to operate here. The British pay through the nose for diseased animals, then obligingly ship them to the boys at the Front. A gunner harnesses his battery team, the Army Service Corps bring the supplies up to a field kitchen on the backs of mules, a soldier in a reserve trench pats the neck of a cavalryman’s horse as it passes — spreading the contagion is that simple.’
They were staring at him uncomfortably. Gaunt opened his mouth as if to speak, then shut it again with a frown. The light in the room was fading, the rain rattling against the windows.
‘Influenza, the plague, even cholera would jump no-man’s-land in time, like gas shifting with the wind,’ Wolff observed quietly. ‘The enemy is taking less of a risk of infecting his own men with anthrax.’ He paused to breathe deeply. ‘And it seems to me fear of the disease would be the most potent weapon. Dead horses, dead cattle — diseased carcases on the battlefield — anthrax spores grow quickly and survive for decades. Are they infecting our cattle too? What about the supplies we’re importing from America? If soldiers believe they can catch the disease from their animals or food, well, they’ll panic.’
‘Steady on,’ Wiseman interjected. ‘We have no proof, Wolff. There’s nothing…’
‘We haven’t, Sir William,’ Wolff snapped back, ‘but if we don’t look, we won’t find.’
Thwaites shifted uncomfortably beside him. ‘You really think they would go that far?’
Wolff shrugged. ‘I don’t know…’ he hesitated, then said forcefully, ‘Yes. Yes. They’ve used gas — we’ve used it too. They’ve bombed civilians — the Allies have too. So why not this? There are no limits, Norman.’
There was another oppressive silence. The rain still lashing the building, the heavy Empire clock still ticking, and distant English voices drifting up the stairs.
‘I don’t believe they’ve gone that far, or intend to,’ Wiseman declared at last. ‘For one thing, animals infected here would die before they reached the Front. We don’t have any evidence they’re—’
‘We’re guessing,’ Gaunt interrupted gruffly. He was still clutching the poker, flexing his fingers as if he was itching to beat someone over the head with it. ‘Catch this bugger Dilger and we can be sure.’
‘Quite right. We must pay him a visit.’ Wiseman’s gaze floated between Wolff and Thwaites. ‘After the time we’ve wasted, the sooner the better.’
But they should eat first, he said, and he ordered beer and sandwiches, fussing around them like a baronet’s butler. Perhaps he was feeling guilty about his magisterial use of the collective pronoun, or just that he was sending them into the pouring rain on what he suspected to be a wild goose chase. No violence on the President’s doorstep — the Ambassador was insistent, he informed them with an ironic smile. ‘But if he’s there…’ he paused, stroking the end of his moustache thoughtfully with his forefinger, ‘…well, we can’t let him go.’
THE DILGER HOUSE was just fifteen minutes’ drive from the embassy. They parked beneath a dripping cedar on the opposite side of street.
‘Folksy,’ Thwaites observed. ‘Can you imagine him living in this place?’
‘Respectable American doctor living in a respectable part of town,’ Wolff declared, wiping condensation from the windscreen. Thwaites offered his cigarette case and they smoked and listened to the rain drumming on the motor car and trickling through a rip on to the rear seat. The patch of sky Wolff could see through the canopy of the cedar was many shades of grey. The lights were on in most homes already, glowing with contentment, even self-satisfaction. Behind new lace curtains and plush draperies, bankers’ wives padded through rooms without memories, furnished from the same stores in just the same way. The Dilger house was dark.
‘He’s gone, hasn’t he?’ Thwaites remarked, winding down his window a little to flick his cigarette end into the street.
Wolff rebuked him: ‘Wrong sort of neighbourhood,’ although he hardly cared. ‘Let’s take a look at the house.’
‘We’ll be soaked.’
‘This is a good time. If the sun comes out, so will the neighbours.’
‘All right,’ Thwaites muttered between gritted teeth.
Wolff’s jacket and trousers were wet through before they reached the porch and the rain had worked its way round the brim of his hat and inside his collar. They pulled the bell and waited a few minutes to be sure the place was empty. ‘Let’s look round the back. Friends of friends, if the neighbours have the temerity to ask.’
Kitchen, dining room, rented furniture and the walls were bare but for a large photograph in the sitting room. Five narrow steps down to a cellar door and two small windows. He squatted on his haunches and wiped the rain from the glass — empty but for a workbench, a sink and some rough shelving. How much more would the doctor need?
‘Anything?’ Thwaites asked. ‘If I bend to look I won’t get up again’.
‘I don’t know — perhaps.’
‘Has he gone?’
Wolff shrugged. ‘Probably.’ The Dilgers seemed to have made an effort with the garden, planting spring bulbs in the borders, and the earth at the back fence had been broken recently too.
‘I’ve looked at the door — we can force our way inside,’ said Thwaites, turning back to the house, ‘if you keep an eye…’ His mouth snapped shut in surprise. A woman was standing beneath the eaves in a winter coat and sou’wester.
‘Who are you?’ She was softly spoken, unmistakably of the South.
‘Frau Dilger?’ Wolff enquired.
‘Yes.’
‘My name is von Eck — my friend here is Mr Schmidt. If you’ll excuse the discourtesy, I’ll keep my hat on.’
She pretended to smile. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I hope I haven’t startled you. We’re friends of a friend — may we speak inside?’
‘Whatever your business, I’m sure it can’t be with me.’ She moved closer to the door, her face hidden by the sheet of water cascading from the roof. ‘Is it Dr Dilger you wish to see? My brother isn’t here, I’m afraid.’
Wolff took a couple of steps closer. ‘We’ve come from Baltimore — associates of Mr Hilken.’
She was considering him carefully. Perhaps she had a kind heart and would take pity on them. His jacket was clinging to his back. ‘Mr Hilken asked me to put your mind at rest on a few matters.’
‘Oh, I see,’ she said, taking a key from her pocket. ‘Then you better come inside.’
She invited them into her kitchen but no further, and she rejected Wolff’s offer of assistance with her coat. A handsome woman, early forties, a thin straight mouth like her brother’s, the same determined jawline and dimple in the chin.
‘We’re making a puddle on your floor.’ He smiled reassuringly.
‘I’m sorry if I appeared rude. I have to be careful now I’m on my own.’ Her voice shook a little and she wouldn’t look him in the eye.
‘Have we missed Dr Dilger?’
‘Yes.’
‘When do you expect…’
‘I don’t. You said you had a message. Please give it to me.’
‘For you and your brother, Miss Dilger,’ Wolff replied. ‘Is he at the farm, or in New York perhaps?’
Her eyes flitted up to his face, then away. They were a warm brown-green colour. ‘He’s visiting Germany — Mr Hilken knows that.’ She shuffled to her left, perhaps consciously putting the broad oak table between them.
‘But not yet,’ Wolff remarked. ‘We were told he was here.’
‘Well, he’s gone.’ She was staring at Wolff defiantly now, unflinching, her small dry hands clasped beneath her chest. ‘I’d like you to go too.’
‘I’m sorry, Miss Dilger.’ Wolff slapped his wet hat down on the table. ‘I don’t want to inconvenience you, but we have a few questions.’
‘Leave.’ She glanced at the door.
‘Please don’t,’ he said in an aggrieved voice.
‘I’ll shout — my neighbours…’
‘No one will hear you,’ Wolff gestured to the rain beating at the window, ‘and it isn’t necessary.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Please sit down.’
She didn’t move.
‘Sit down,’ he repeated firmly, and this time she did.
‘Where is Dr Dilger?’
‘I’ve told you.’
‘I saw him myself only a few days ago,’ he lied.
‘He sailed from New York yesterday.’
‘The ship?’
‘The Rotterdam.’
Wolff nodded. ‘Did you know?’ Their eyes met, the colour rising in her cheeks. Then she looked down at her hands. ‘Know?’
‘Know what your brother was doing?’ He leant closer, forcing her to look up.
‘My brother’s a doctor. I don’t know who you are — but a doctor visiting his family — he’s on — was on — vacation, that’s all.’
‘Your brother was a cheap poisoner,’ Thwaites interjected harshly. ‘Instead of treating the sick he’s been culturing disease. Where? — here?’
She shook her head. ‘My brother’s a doctor.’
She denied it, refused to even countenance the possibility, but he read shame in her face, heard it in her voice. Not the details perhaps, but she’d guessed and turned a blind eye. It wasn’t so unusual, even among the God-fearing. Wolff touched Thwaites’ sleeve. ‘I’m going to look around.’
The main rooms of the house were empty of the past, just as he’d expected them to be. He found a photograph of the doctor on his sister’s bedside table and took it from its silver frame, and in the sitting room a family group with young Anton at the feet of the soldier-patriarch. Finally, he clomped down the stairs to the basement and was reaching for the door when he suddenly froze, his fingers just touching the handle. In the kitchen above, Thwaites’ abrasive German, then a sullen silence punctuated by the scraping of a chair leg and the rain at the window. But it wasn’t a voice, a noise, that had startled him; it was a smell — the faint but sharp odour of the slaughterhouse — or so he imagined it to be. This is the place, he thought, here beneath Miss Dilger’s kitchen. He pushed open the door and turned on the lights. White walls, sink, trelliswork bench, home-made shelves; just as he’d seen it through the window. Everything had been scrubbed with bleach and yet the sickly-sweet smell of decaying blood lingered like a bad spirit. Inspecting the room carefully, he found only shards of glass which he wanted to call a Petri dish, but it was impossible to be sure.
‘What did he use, Miss Dilger?’ he asked her at the kitchen table. ‘An animal of some sort — blood?’
She didn’t reply. She couldn’t look him in the eye but kept twisting, twisting her lace handkerchief tighter.
‘Whatever it was — it smelt awful,’ he explained to Thwaites. ‘Here in this basement.’
‘Culturing disease in the house?’ Thwaites exclaimed, incredulous. ‘You must have known,’ Wolff said to her. ‘What about your neighbours — did you think of their safety?’
She began to rise — ‘Leave my house.’ Her lower lip was quivering, the first tear on her cheek — ‘Leave, leave, leave’ — then she bolted for the door.
Wolff held Thwaites’ arm — ‘No, let her’– and flinging it open she ran out into the rain.
‘Don’t you feel sorry for her?’ he asked.
Thwaites scoffed. ‘No, I damn well don’t.’
‘Don’t you see? She’s been betrayed by someone she loves.’
‘Left her things,’ Thwaites joked, lifting her coat from the back of a chair. Her clasp bag was on the table, just large enough for powder, a handkerchief, some money.
‘Rummage through the coat, would you?’ Wolff reached for the bag and emptied it on to the table. Just a respectable middle-aged lady’s essentials, although he was surprised to find a Levy lipstick. He opened her pocketbook and thumbed through the pages.
‘Nothing,’ Thwaites declared, dropping her coat back. ‘Bills from a grocery store and her key.’
Wolff looked up at him blankly, her pocketbook still open in his hands.
‘Come on — what is it?’ Thwaites prompted him.
‘Notes, some telephone numbers — just…’ he hesitated, swallowing hard, ‘…numbers — probably family,’ then closed it deliberately and slipped it into his breast pocket. ‘Let’s go.’
They pulled the back door to behind them and scuttled across the street. The motor car had sprung some more leaks. Thwaites uttered a profanity and ran his sleeve over the driver’s seat. ‘We’re sinking.’
‘There’s something I have to do,’ Wolff said, sliding on to the passenger seat. ‘I’ll need your revolver. Can you drop me at Union Station?’
Thwaites stared at him intently. ‘This thing you have to do…?’ He paused, waiting for Wolff to accept his invitation to explain. But Wolff just looked away. ‘Look, whatever it is, you should tell me, it might be—’
‘It isn’t — not to you or Wiseman.’
Silence but for the rain beating on the canopy. A motor car sploshed by with its lamps blazing. Wolff was gazing impassively at the windscreen, misted with their breath. ‘Is it her?’ Thwaites whistled softly. ‘It is.’ He slapped his palm on the steering column in frustration. ‘Remember C’s rules, I said.’
‘Yes, you did.’ Wolff dipped into his jacket for the pocketbook. ‘Last entry.’
Thwaites flicked through to the page. ‘This number?’
‘Zero, three, six, five, six. It’s Miss McDonnell’s.’
‘And you think…’
‘I don’t know. I’m going to find out.’
WOLFF TOOK UP his post before dawn, loitering in doorways as New York began to rise. A clear cold city day in March, a day for thick socks, gloves and a muffler, walking at a brisk pace, and coffee and eggs in a smoky café. But Laura’s apartment wasn’t on that sort of street. He tried to keep on the move, shifting his position, drifting between blocks, brushing shoulders and smiling at businessmen fixing their hats on the doorstep or striding the sidewalk to the subway. He was exchanging short words with a man who had charged him with malicious intent when a motor car came to a stop close by and flashed its lamps once. A moment later Masek’s pinched face appeared at the driver’s window.
‘Have breakfast,’ he said, as Wolff climbed in beside him. ‘I watch apartment. Café three blocks,’ and he pointed over his shoulder with his thumb.
Wiseman had sent Masek in a Consulate car. ‘She not know Masek,’ he explained. ‘I follow — no trouble.’ There was no denying it would be simpler. Slight of frame, penetrating gaze, Masek had the air of a poor scholar at a provincial university, threadbare but respectable, fingers stained yellow by tobacco, the sort of man you might pass on a New York street without a second glance. They didn’t say much because it was business, but shared cigarettes and took it in turns to doze. Then, at nine o’clock, Laura appeared at the door, sifting through the morning mail, placing it in a portfolio she was carrying, adjusting her hat and tidying strands of hair. As Wolff watched her pass he felt a desperate urge to leap out of the motor car and ask her outright: ‘Have you seen Dilger? Do you know what he does?’
Masek glanced across. ‘Don’t worry. I look after her.’ He reached for the door handle.
Wolff nodded. ‘Leave me the car keys.’
He didn’t see them again for six hours. Only once did he risk leaving the motor car to stretch his legs. At one o’clock he moved the Ford to a small lot further from her apartment but with a view of its third-floor windows. There was a lamp on in the drawing room where they’d danced and he thought he saw a figure fleetingly at the curtains, although he couldn’t be sure. He wondered if it was Laura’s aunt until a taxicab dropped her at the door a short time later. Then Laura appeared, head bent, a frown on her brow as if she were pondering the shape of her next suffrage speech or the rising in Ireland or just the sound of her footfall on the sidewalk. ‘She caught train to Chambers Street, number 51,’ Masek said, settling in the seat beside Wolff. ‘A bank — something to do with church — took lift to tenth floor. She was there a long time. Masek very bored, tired, hungry, think British should pay him more.’
‘Mention it to Captain Gaunt, why don’t you?’ Wolff remarked.
Masek smiled wryly. ‘She come down at last — speaking to an old man, grey beard, bushy like this,’ he held his hands beneath his chin, ‘brown jacket — patches here and here,’ and he touched his elbows.
‘Devoy,’ said Wolff; ‘one of the Irish leaders. Clan na Gael meets in a judge’s office above the bank.’ It was where he’d met Laura for the first time.
‘She talk to the old man few minutes then go. Think she heard bad news. Looked sad. She cry a little on train.’
Wolff felt a pang. ‘Something the old man said to her?’
Masek shrugged.
They took turns to stretch their legs and grab something to eat. Masek returned with a bottle of liquor and five packets of cigarettes. ‘We find men to help us?’ he suggested.
‘Tomorrow — if we need to.’
But the little Czech didn’t have time to remove the top from his bottle before a taxicab drew up to the kerb. Laura appeared at the window, glancing up and down the street. Without a word, Masek pushed the starter and slipped the Cadillac into gear.
After a couple of minutes the door of the apartment block opened and Laura stepped out to speak to the cab driver. She looked anxious, her right hand to her temple. Turning most of a circle, she checked the street again, then walked back to the door.
‘Not a good spy,’ Masek observed laconically.
‘I think she’d take that as a… hello.’ Dilger was scuttling across the sidewalk, his hat pulled down over his face. Swinging at his side was the brown leather doctor’s bag he’d given to Hinsch in the parking lot at Laurel.
‘Is it him?’ Masek enquired.
‘Yes, it’s him.’ His bloody bag had been sitting in Laura’s apartment. Now it was in the back of the cab between them.
Masek swung the Cadillac out of the lot.
‘Not too close.’
Masek gave Wolff a reproving look.
The last of the sun was blinking in the windscreen as they drove west towards the Hudson. The taxicab turned left on 12th Avenue to run along the river, stopping briefly for lights at the Recreation Pier. They tried to keep their distance but Masek was afraid they would lose the cab in the evening traffic.
‘You think it’s a trap?’ he asked, braking for another set of lights. ‘Why this woman? I think it’s because of you.’
‘I think so too,’ Wolff said. ‘I’m not sure why. Perhaps they suspect me, perhaps they’re testing her.’
The traffic was flowing left on to 14th Street and Wolff was expecting the cab to do same, but at the junction it pressed on along the waterfront towards the abandoned piers running into the river opposite Castle Point. They bumped over granite setts in pursuit, passed empty and boarded warehouses, navigation buoys rusting on their sides, the carcase of an old tug on stocks, cranes, cables and carts, the dockyard detritus of decades that might have been heaved from the river by a great harbour wave.
‘Drop back,’ Wolff commanded. It was dusk now and if the cab driver had a mirror he would notice their lamps.
A few hundred yards more and the cab turned to the right and was lost behind a warehouse.
‘Pull up, they’re stopping.’
Masek guided the Cadillac into the shadow of the same building.
Reaching under his seat, Wolff lifted out a waxed canvas package.
‘Honey and plenty of money.’ It was Thwaites’ service revolver.
Masek frowned. ‘Don’t understand.’
‘Nor do I,’ said Wolff. ‘Wait here.’
It was just a few yards to the corner of the warehouse. The taxicab had come to a halt at the entrance. Parked beyond it were three more motor cars, the largest Hilken’s burgundy-and-orange convertible. Dilger had climbed down from the cab with his bag and was offering to help Laura but she was in no hurry to rise. Two men came out of the warehouse, the elder of the two, Devoy, his Old Testament beard sickly yellow in the light spilling through the open door. He shook Dilger’s hand, then leant inside the cab to say a few words to Laura. She had sheltered and delivered the doctor and her task was complete. Wolff was relieved when, a moment later, the taxi pulled away. He waited with his back pressed to the wall as the cab turned in a large circle to return the way it had come. Devoy had escorted Dilger into the warehouse and shut in the light. But by the dim glow of the city Wolff could see the silhouette of a driver lounging against the hood of a motor car. He was going to have to take a chance. Cocking the revolver, he put it back in his pocket, took a deep breath, then stepped forward like a man with an urgent appointment to make.
The chauffeur heard his footfall. Stamping guiltily on his cigarette, he turned and was plainly relieved to find a stranger. Heart pounding, Wolff opened the door of the warehouse and glanced inside. ‘They’re in here?’
‘Yes, sir.’
He felt a moment’s relief: the corridor was empty, gloomy, double doors at the end, to the left an iron staircase. Stepping lightly, quickly, damp fingers round the grip of the gun, he paused at the door to listen to voices and judged them only feet away. Christ, I should burst in and shoot the bastard, he thought. Instead he settled for the stair, moving carefully in the darkness, a steadying hand to the wall as he felt his way up the last few steps. The door at the top was stiff and he needed to ease it open with his shoulder. He misjudged the pressure; it grated and he froze, holding his breath, expecting a shouted challenge or the ring of boots on the stair. A cold night but he was perspiring, his shirt clinging to the small of his back. Through the open door a confused echo, movement, voices, someone speaking English, issuing instructions perhaps. After three or four minutes he was calm enough to try again. This time he was able to prise it free without a sound and in the blue light from a gallery of broken windows he could see a broad iron gantry, thick with dust and glass and pigeon shit. In a pool of light on the empty warehouse floor beneath it, a dozen men stood about a table, most of them dressed in pea coats and woolly bonnets, and in their midst the distinctive shaggy grey head of John Devoy.
Dropping to his knees, Wolff emptied his pockets, placing the revolver carefully by the door, then crawled forward until he was almost directly above the lamp and in the middle of the circle. He could see Dilger in the shadow at its edge, whispering to a heavily built man with a moustache who looked like Carl, the driver of the Winton in the station lot at Laurel. The medical bag was sitting on the table.
Bang. Wolff almost jumped out of his skin as the door beneath the gantry swung heavily to, starting pigeons from the rafters and making the men on the floor flinch. A few seconds later Hinsch rolled into the light with Hilken in tow at his heels.
‘Doctor, you can speak to them now,’ he announced in his thick English.
Dilger muttered something Wolff couldn’t catch in reply and stepped up to the table.
‘I’ll be going, then. Until tomorrow.’ Devoy was shuffling from the circle. ‘Good luck to youse all,’ he declared, addressing his remarks in particular to the men — his men. ‘Beidh an lá linn. Remember — our day is coming.’
Dilger had removed from his bag, gloves, a mask and a box of phials like the one Wolff had taken from McKevitt.
‘My brother’s shown you what you must do?’ he asked, turning to his companion with the horseshoe moustache. Someone replied very sullenly in the affirmative.
‘Be sure to wear these when you handle both the phials and the sugar cubes.’ Dilger held up the mask and gloves. ‘If you don’t, you’ll… well…’ He paused to let them ponder the consequences. ‘If you’re careful you should have no difficulty; it’s a simple procedure.’
‘Do not let the enemy catch you,’ Hinsch barked. ‘Throw the empty phials over the side.’
Over the side. Christ. Shifting his shoulders, Wolff craned further out from the edge of the gantry to examine the men more closely. Their clothes, their gestures, one man lifting his cap to scratch a bristly scalp, another slouching against an old packing case, the bored silence, the careless ease with which their minutes slipped by, as if whiling away the early hours of a watch at the rail of a ship: Wolff knew these men. He’d seen them beaten by the sea, wrestling with warps on a heaving foredeck; he’d seen them paralytic and gazing at the stars, heard them grouse, terrified then elated; he’d seen them in all moods, all weathers.
‘…and if you can’t use the syringe,’ Dilger was telling them, ‘use the sugar cubes.’ He’d taken a small package from the box. ‘Wait as long as you can — a day or two days from port would be best — no sooner. That is most important — vital. Any questions?’
‘And these gloves will be enough to keep us safe?’ one of the men asked, with just the suggestion of Irish in his voice.
‘And a mask, yes,’ Dilger replied. ‘Anything else?’
No one else spoke. They’d clearly been well schooled by Dilger’s brother.
‘Good,’ said Hinsch, nodding to Carl.
Wolff watched Carl disappear from the ring of light, returning a minute later with two packages wrapped in brown paper and string. He lumbered into the darkness like a fat German Santa, repeating his delivery until there were eight parcels on the table. The dust-dry spirit of Dr Albert floated about the warehouse as the sailors stepped forward to sign for a parcel and pay. They left at once, cradling their packages in the crook of an arm or against their chests, relieved to be away, their pockets jingling with money earned for Ireland’s cause. Did they know they were poisoning not just the animals but soldiers too? A lot of thoughts flitted through Wolff’s mind as he lay on his side in the filth. That Casement couldn’t know. That it was a bargain without principle, shaped by someone subtler — a man like Nadolny. No, Roger couldn’t know, not Roger, not Laura. They were being used by ruthless men, servants of their own empire, Devoy too perhaps, and Ireland. And what the hell to do about it?
With the sailors gone and no one to address, Dilger and his companions were speaking in no more than a conspiratorial whisper. It made the warehouse feel a colder, a more dangerous place. From the little Wolff could gather they were housekeeping, with mention of Devoy, travel arrangements, security checks: it was impossible to be sure. The doctor picked up his medical case and they began to drift from the light, pausing only at its edge for a few more words and long handshakes. Hilken said something funny and there was a little nervous laughter. They were on edge and wanted to be away. A moment later the door beneath the gantry banged again, the circle of light disappeared and Wolff was alone. His shoulder and hip were numb and he’d strained his neck peering out over the iron lip, but he lay still a few seconds longer, breathing deeply. Somewhere above him the beat of pigeons’ wings. I’ve spoilt my coat, he thought, with a wry smile. He was too relieved to care.
From his vantage point in a derelict shed, Masek had watched Dilger and the others leave the warehouse. Minutes later he saw Wolff do the same.
‘The doctor travelled with Hinsch,’ he observed as they walked to the motor car. ‘Maybe go back to your friend Miss McDonnell.’
But Wolff didn’t think so. ‘Drive me to a telephone, would you?’
The duty clerk at the embassy in Washington was wet behind the ears. Sir William was dining with the Ambassador and shouldn’t be disturbed, he declared, and certainly not for a man who refused to give his name and wasn’t prepared to share his business. It took ten minutes and the sort of language more commonly heard in a sailors’ whorehouse before Wolff bullied him into delivering a note.
‘Find Dilger?’ Wiseman asked as soon as he picked up the mouthpiece.
Wolff told him what he’d seen. Eight seamen, eight ships perhaps, he couldn’t say for sure. ‘They were instructed to wait until the end of the voyage before they infected the animals — horses and mules, I suppose — I don’t know.’
For a time the line crackled emptily.
‘Our soldiers.’ Wiseman sounded shocked even on a bad line. ‘They’re attacking our people, too.’ More crackle. ‘My God. I can’t quite… their own countrymen. It’s come to this?’
‘Yes.’
Another long pause.
‘The best men in my battalion were Irish.’ Wiseman’s sigh was long and audible from two hundred miles. ‘Sugar cubes, you say. Harder to find.’
‘Yes. If we want to catch Dilger we’ll have to…’
‘An American citizen, what can we do?’ Wiseman interrupted. ‘No, we have to stop those sailors, and stop the enemy sending more.’
Another silence filled only by the fizzing of the phone, as if a thought was taking shape on the wire.
Wolff spoke first: ‘I won’t recognise all of them but if the War Office and the Admiralty can hold British merchant ships here in port — the least we can do is check for Irish names.’
‘Actually, there’s another way,’ said Wiseman, a little too casually. ‘A better way.’ This time the line seemed to spit portentously. ‘That’s if you’re willing, Wolff?’
FOR ONCE MR Paul Hilken informed his wife by telephone that he would be working late at his office in downtown Baltimore. It wasn’t necessary or customary, but in the last few days he’d surprised her, and himself, by being attentive — even affectionate. It’s the uncertainty, he reflected, as he sat waiting for the call. He was frightened he would lose the things that made being married to a man like him tolerable. Hinsch had organised everything, taking it in his ungainly stride. No evidence, he said, no laboratory and no one who would dare speak to the authorities. To be sure, he’d sent the longshoreman caught with the poison to the West Coast: at least, that was what he said.
‘And the doctor?’ Hilken protested. ‘If they find him…’
‘They won’t. Now, in God’s name behave like a man,’ Hinsch had upbraided him.
Hinsch was a brute, but a clever one, Hilken mused. Their relationship had changed: he’d always tried to bully, now he expected to be obeyed, and when he’d asked Hilken to wait at the Hansa Haus for a telephone call, it was issued as an order.
In the hall below his office, seamen from ships washed up by the war were gathering round the piano, as they did most evenings. A few cheap beers, a distribution of letters from home, and by nine o’clock they were ready to sing. Floating up the stairs a Plattdütsch shanty he’d heard countless times since the beginning of the war. At one time he used to hum the tune. There was a sudden swell as the door opened and his clerk brought in more papers: victualling orders, ships’ repairs, the day-to-day business of the Line. He tried to settle to them but found it impossible to anchor his thoughts.
‘Is it true?’ Miss Dilger had demanded on the telephone. ‘Was my brother doing what they said — those diseases?’ She’d been quite hysterical. All lies, he’d assured her; spies trying to discredit Germany. It wasn’t the first time the enemy had tried this sort of propaganda. ‘Believe me, Miss Dilger, they made up the story because they hate us and hope America will as well,’ he’d said, and she was desperate to believe him. She had scrubbed their basement and repeated her brother’s lies to neighbours and spies without question or complaint. When Hilken had spoken of patriotic duty she had cut him — ‘I love my brothers,’ she’d said, and that was enough. When the time was ripe, Carl Dilger would resume the work and she would cook, clean and look the other way as before.
‘Is that Mr Hilken?’ he heard someone say. After so long, the tinkling of the telephone bell had startled him and he’d dropped the receiver. ‘Mr Hilken?’ The line crackled and hissed like an old phonograph. ‘Mr Paul Hilken?’
‘I’m Hilken,’ he replied.
‘John Devoy.’
‘Yes, Mr Devoy, I’ve been waiting for your call.’
‘Your friend’s gone.’
‘You’re certain?’
‘Of course I am — I saw him go aboard myself.’
Hilken closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Thank God.
‘Are you there, Hilken?’
‘Yes, I’m here,’ he said, ‘thank you, Mr Devoy. Thank you. A weight off my mind, I can tell you.’
Perhaps he’d said more than was wise because the Irishman growled something inaudible and hung up the telephone.
Hilken was too relieved to care. He’d said harsh things about the Irish after the von Rintelen affair, but honestly, thank God for them! He took another deep breath: they’d almost tied up all the loose ends. What a state he’d worked himself into. Rising from the desk, he stepped into the corridor to instruct the clerk to arrange for his motor car. Then he poured a drink. He was carrying it to one of the armchairs at the hearth when there was a sharp rap at the door.
‘Yes.’
There was no response. ‘Come in,’ he shouted impatiently in German. This time the visitor knocked more forcefully. Exasperated after a tense evening, he walked back to the door, ready to give him the sharp edge of his tongue. The stranger was dressed as a petty officer in a pea jacket and bosun’s cap, his face thin, his eyes dark and hostile.
‘Hello, Hilken,’ he said, barging into the room.
They’d talked about breaking in and rummaging the safe but the Hansa Haus was never at rest. From a doorway across the street, Wolff had listened to the pianist thumping out the old tunes and the singing of a rowdy chorus. Some of the songs he’d learnt in a Wilhelmshaven beer cellar when spying felt like an adventure and a respectable profession for a gentleman. ‘Every night sing — wait until they sing,’ Masek had counselled. ‘Then they will be too drunk and sad to notice a stranger.’ Somewhere in the shadows of the street he was waiting to be sure Wolff was safe. He must have noticed Hilken at the first-floor window, and watched Wolff turn up the collar of his coat and cross the street to follow a group of seamen inside.
‘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, breathing 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.
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.’
‘Were there German soldiers?’
‘None, and the Navy intercepted the guns they’d sent — oh, and that damn fool Casement was captured by a local bobby almost as soon as he stepped ashore.’
A nurse brought Wiseman coffee and he joked and flirted with her as she rustled about the bed in her well-starched uniform, refolding corners, plumping pillows. When she had gone he reached into his briefcase and lifted a stained sheet of paper. ‘Remember this? You should — you spilt your blood for it.’ It was the list of ships Wolff had taken from Hilken’s office. ‘We found it in your jacket,’ Wiseman explained. ‘Bloody fools didn’t look, or didn’t have time to. Anyway, we identified the sailors. Their captains detained them as soon as they left American waters, and we had a reception committee waiting for them in France. They didn’t have much idea what they were doing — thought it was just an attack on our animals.’ He paused, patting the mattress in a show of applause, then said with feeling, ‘Well done, really, old chap. Well done. Only sorry it ended for you in hospital.’
Wolff smiled weakly. The whole damn business made him feel low.
‘You’re tired,’ he said, rising, brushing the creases from his trousers; ‘thoughtless of me.’
‘No, no, I’m sorry.’
Wiseman gazed intently at him and for a second their eyes met. ‘Is something troubling you?’
‘Yes. Roger Casement — you said they’d taken him?’
Wiseman couldn’t quite conceal his surprise. ‘Yes, we have,’ he said with careful emphasis. ‘He’s being held in the Tower of London of all places — makes more of him than he deserves, if you ask me.’
‘And after that?’
‘He’ll go on trial for treason. Does that concern you?’
‘Yes, it does.’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Well, you should know, the other Irish leaders were shot.’
A few days later Wiseman arranged for a guard in the corridor outside Wolff’s room. ‘You’re not that popular,’ Thwaites explained. ‘The Germans will probably leave you alone but Sir William’s concerned about the Irish.’
The doctors tried to refuse Wolff newspapers but he insisted that boredom would set back his recovery. They all carried Casement’s appearance in a London court and the prosecution’s case that he was a traitor. ‘Not to the Irish people,’ his sister, Mrs Agnes Newman, told the New York Times. ‘He is an Irishman captured in a fair attempt to achieve his country’s freedom.’
Only at the end of May was Wolff permitted to leave the hospital. Wiseman rented a handsome weatherboard beach house on Long Island. An attentive young lieutenant from the embassy called Keane travelled with him in the motor car.
‘Can’t we go to New York?’ Wolff asked, a little pathetically.
But he loved the house. Perched alone at the top of a dune, with picture windows and a veranda looking out to the Atlantic, he was content sitting for hours watching the tide roll in up the beach and out again. Sometimes he could see only the dark shadows on the sea’s surface, but they passed, and at night its shushing helped him sleep. Most days were bright with a stiff onshore breeze whipping fine salt spray in his face. It was on just such a day in June that Wiseman and Thwaites came bumping up the track.
‘We’re celebrating,’ Thwaites shouted, lifting a hamper from the motor car. ‘The Royal Navy has engaged the enemy at Jutland — a complete victory — at least that’s what our people are saying. Apparently the Germans are saying the same.’
‘Another stalemate then,’ Wolff remarked.
‘Make up your own mind, old boy.’ Wiseman thrust a bundle of newspapers at him. ‘On such a lovely day even a draw is worth celebrating.’
They spread a blanket on the beach in front of the house. The food was from the Waldorf, ‘because even if we’re pretending, we should do it properly,’ Wiseman said. Cold fried chicken, salmon and mayonnaise, veal, tongue, cheeses, pickles, jellies, cakes: a great deal more than they could manage. ‘Emergency rations in case we stay the night.’
As they ate and drank, Thwaites entertained them with the story of the visit he’d made to the home of a millionaire socialite. ‘Showed me an album of photographs — honestly, I almost fell off my chair. There was old Bernstorff, the German Ambassador, cavorting with a couple of young things, neither of them his wife — who isn’t that young. I said to myself, “Norman, that picture is priceless” — so I stole it. That’s the sort of education you get working for newspapers. And, well, stop the presses — there will be red faces in the German Embassy tomorrow.’
After lunch Wiseman lay snoozing in the afternoon sunshine, his moustache twitching beneath his boater like a fat mouse.
‘Don’t you want to know what’s happening to Hinsch and the others?’ Thwaites asked as they ambled along the shore. ‘Don’t you care? They almost killed you.’
‘I honestly don’t. Glad to be given another chance, that’s all.’
‘Hinsch is in hiding somewhere. Hilken’s still at his desk. We’ve thrown a lot of mud but not enough of it has stuck.’
‘So there’s nothing to stop them trying again?’
Thwaites stopped to gaze at the sea. ‘It’s beautiful here.’
‘Very.’
‘There’s something you should know.’ His gaze was fixed on the horizon. ‘The New York police, actually Captain Tunney of the Bomb Squad, is taking an interest in de Witt.’
‘Because of the man in the derby hat?’
Thwaites looked blank. ‘I don’t…’
‘The police informer I…’
‘Yes,’ he said quickly, ‘the police informer.’ He glanced at Wolff, then down, drawing the point of his stick over the wet sand. ‘I’ve tried to convince Tunney it’s nothing to do with you.’
‘But he doesn’t believe you.’
‘No.’ The pattern he was drawing with his stick resembled the criss-cross grille over the window of a prison cell. ‘But you don’t need to worry,’ he said. ‘Sir William is sorting it out.’
‘Oh?’
‘I think I’ll let him say.’
Wolff smiled weakly. ‘As you wish.’
A short time later, Thwaites announced that he was driving back to New York. A meeting with a newspaper reporter, he said. It was the sort of smooth polite lie they told each other all the time. Wolff said he was sorry, and Wiseman pretended to be surprised but joked that there wasn’t enough food left for him anyway.
And when he’d gone they retreated from the advancing tide to the veranda to gaze at the rippling gold and grey of the evening.
‘You heard about the New York police?’ Wiseman enquired eventually. He leant close to fill Wolff’s glass. ‘The President’s people are going to hold them off. Don’t want a scandal.’ He lifted his champagne to the dying light. ‘This isn’t bad. Actually, it’s bloody good — 1911. What do you think?’
‘Yes, it’s good. Thank you.’
‘Yes, it is.’ He lifted the glass to his lips then lowered it again without drinking. ‘Unfortunately there is a price for fending off our friends in the police. Thing is, President Wilson has promised the people he won’t allow foreign spies to flout the law, and it’s an election year, so it’s a promise he wants to keep.’ He offered an ironic smile. ‘What’s more, we’re supposed to be the good boys. The President’s on our side, well, his advisers are…’
Wolff interrupted: ‘So you want me out of the way?’
‘They do, old boy, they do. Persona non grata, I’m afraid.’
For a while they didn’t speak, their silence filled with the sea’s sad cadence.
‘Perhaps it’s for the best — it isn’t safe for you here,’ Wiseman said at last. ‘When America comes into the war this nonsense will be…’
‘You think she will enter the war?’
‘I do. One last heave, I say.’
‘But it isn’t nonsense, is it? The death of the informer.’ Wolff swept his hand across his eyes. ‘I did kill him.’
‘Yes, you had to.’ Wiseman shifted his chair a little to look Wolff in the eye. ‘And you were extraordinarily brave. HMG owes you a great debt of gratitude. It owes me the price of the best champagne I could buy to thank you properly on its behalf,’ and he raised his glass in salute.
‘I thought we were toasting the victory at Jutland?’
‘Course not. Another costly stalemate. It would be a waste of good champagne.’
Wolff smiled weakly. ‘You know, I’ve done nothing of real worth.’
‘Now you’re fishing for compliments, old boy.’
‘They’ll culture more poison. Probably send another von Rintelen.’
‘Of course they will,’ he huffed, ‘it’s a war — goodness, a bloody brutal one. A war of attrition. We’ve enjoyed a few victories, that’s all, we haven’t won it. But when they come back it will be harder. The President has told his advisers America must start protecting its interests more vigorously — happily, those interests correspond with our own.’
He paused to sip his champagne, his lips smacking a little. ‘It’s one of those little ironies thrown up by war that the more trouble the enemy causes us here in America, the better we like it, because our hosts are losing patience.’
The tide had crept up the beach and would soon be at the full, the sea quite calm, a feathery trail of mist lifting from its face but a shining firmament above.
‘When do I leave?’ Wolff asked, offering his cigarette case.
‘No, thank you. My pipe,’ Wiseman said, tapping his blazer pocket. ‘Soon, I think — a fortnight? Is that all right? White will accompany you.’
‘That isn’t necessary.’
‘We think it is. Don’t want you dumped over the side like a sick horse.’
Wolff bent to the flame he was cupping in his hands and inhaled deeply. ‘I’ve a favour to ask.’
‘Ask away.’
‘Something I must do. Actually someone I must see. I’d like a driver for a day, perhaps two.’
Wiseman frowned thoughtfully. ‘Do you think that’s wise?’
‘No.’ Wolff drew deeply on his cigarette. ‘No, it isn’t wise. It is something I must do.’
‘I see.’ Wiseman took out his pipe and spent a few minutes preparing and lighting it. Teeth clamped on the bit, he muttered, ‘Just this pipe, then bed.’ The tide was high now and breaking gently thirty yards from the house. Soon it would turn and draw away from the fringes of the earth.
‘This business with the poison — the anthrax,’ he said, inspecting the bowl of his pipe. ‘I don’t mind telling you, Wolff, it’s shaken my faith in the march of man, or for want of a better… civilisation. Is that an inevitable consequence of war, I wonder — any war?’
Wolff examined the back of his hands. ‘I have a friend who says only a great moral cause is worthy of such sacrifice. Is ours a great moral cause?’
Wiseman sighed. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps it is too late to ask.’
The Consulate Cadillac collected Wolff from the beach house two days later. It was midday when they parked outside Laura’s apartment on the Upper West Side. He didn’t expect her to be in at that hour. Campaigning for a new world, he thought, instantly ashamed of his cynicism. He sent the driver to eat and sat gazing at her front door. An old lady hobbled out to a waiting carriage and a short time later a concierge helped a nurse and her young charges to another. There was a chance that he would be there for hours. He was torn between impatience to see her and relief that he couldn’t. In the many idle hours of his recovery he’d often pondered what he might say. He couldn’t explain, and why would she believe him if he said he loved her? He was sorry and he hated what he’d done; that much he should say, he had to say.
When the driver returned from lunch Wolff instructed him to leave his hat and jacket in the motor car and join New York in the park. Was Laura there too? It was an overpoweringly hot afternoon; he guessed the thermometer was pushing ninety-five. An expensively dressed young couple came out of the adjoining block and floated arm-in-arm along the street. At three o’clock, Laura’s aunt took a cab west towards the river. Oppressively stuffy in the Cadillac, by half past three he’d smoked his last cigarette. For God’s sake, he thought, what’s the point of hiding? He felt a little better in the sunshine, leaning against the scorching bonnet and meandering short distances, the heat shimmering over the sidewalk. I’m glad to be alive in spite of this, of everything, he reflected, and if he felt a little weak and tired of waiting he was sure it was the right thing to do. It was possible he would be there all evening.
But it didn’t happen like that in the end. At a little after five o’clock he saw her walking briskly from the direction of the Columbus Circle subway. She was wearing a cream dress and floppy sunhat to protect her fair skin, wisps of hair escaping as always, lifting her left hand to tidy them away, and again after only a few steps; leather portfolio in her right hand; bending into her stride, unmistakably a woman of purpose. He felt sick with confusion but at the same time full of joy and sudden, crazy, crazy hope. He began to walk towards her — when will she see me? — but she was occupied with her thoughts. He could imagine the little frown of concentration hovering at her brow. Taking a shaky breath, he stepped lightly into the street, his gaze fixed on her advancing figure.
He was a few yards from her when she lifted her head and caught him there. She stopped abruptly, eyes screwed tight shut, an anguished expression, and biting her lip. Then, dropping her chin so her face was hidden by the brim of her hat, she set off again, her pace quickening with every step.
‘Laura,’ he called. His voice sounded distant, uncertain. ‘Can we talk?’ He tried to step closer, but she raised her hand as if to push him away.
‘Laura, I want to say…’ but he wasn’t able to — not yet. ‘Please stop. Please speak to me.’
‘Leave me alone,’ she said in barely more than a whisper. He was at her side, step for step.
‘Did you know about Dilger? Doctor Dilger?’
She ignored him.
‘Dilger — you were sheltering…’ He was trying to engage her, but her stride didn’t falter. ‘Look, I know what you must think of me. I’m sorry — believe me — I didn’t want to hurt you. I didn’t think I would…’ Words stuck in his throat again. Without thinking, he reached a hand out to her.
‘If you were a gentleman, you’d leave me alone,’ she said quietly, her voice shaking with anger.
She’s right, he thought with sudden cold clarity, like a drunk in a fleeting moment of sobriety. ‘Of course, if you wish…’
‘How can you doubt it?’ and she glanced up at him, her blue-green eyes sparkling with a fury that cut deeper than the German sailor’s knife.
‘Yes, I’ll leave,’ he said softly. ‘I wanted to say how sorry I feel — and that I did — I do — love you.’
She ignored him, lifting the hem of her dress to lengthen her stride, almost scuttling, frantic to cover the last few yards to her door. That was almost the end of the affair, but in her hurry to escape she tripped and, pitching forward, dropped her portfolio. It burst, spilling papers on the sidewalk. ‘Oh God, no,’ she cried in frustration.
He bent down to help her, anchoring as many as he could, their hands close as she scrabbled for the papers with her nails, one hand still to her hat. He couldn’t see her face but he saw her shoulders rise and fall heavily as she struggled to control her feelings, and a few seconds later he heard her strangle a sob.
‘Oh Laura, I’m so sorry.’
And then she looked up, her lower lip trembling, her fine eyes wet with tears. ‘How could you? How could you?’ she asked, and the dam burst, her words flowing in an agonising torrent: ‘Who are you, who — how could you when I loved you? — but I don’t know you — you betrayed Roger — and Nina — everyone — you let me love you, and you lied — liar! You liar! Liar!’
He tried to touch her but she brushed his hand away. ‘Liar! What do you care — liar — you care for nothing, no one — I don’t even know your name — liar,’ and with a heart-wrenching groan she rose from the sidewalk, papers clenched in her tiny fist, and turning to the door — somehow she managed to find the key — closed it quietly behind her. He could hear her sobbing in the entrance hall and a moment later saw her silhouette at the pane of blue glass to the left of the door. She was bent almost double in tears.
‘Laura.’ He rapped on the door once. ‘Laura, let me in — please.’
There was only a thickness of glass between them but she didn’t turn to look at him or reply.
‘Laura, I love you. Please,’ he pleaded, longing to cherish her. But she wasn’t going to open the door. She couldn’t forgive him and perhaps she wanted to punish them both, because she stood crying at the window for at least ten minutes. Wolff waited in silence beside her.
Then, standing straight and without a backward glance to the shadow in the glass, she walked away. He followed her footsteps across the mosaic floor and heard the elevator doors open and close and knew she’d gone. Her leather portfolio was still lying on the sidewalk, papers fluttering in the gusts from passing cars. Moving slowly and in a mist, he painstakingly collected them all and posted the portfolio through the letterbox.
A few days later, he took a passage to England.
BERLIN WAS NOT the city it used to be. Everything was changing and for the worse, Anton Dilger reflected as he shuffled from the platform on to the station concourse. He could read it in the creased face of the factory worker beside him in the queue, and in the rheumy eyes of the old lady with her eggs to sell at market, and he could hear it in the frazzled voice of a mother scolding the children at her skirt. Greyer, grubbier, thinner, the city was shrinking from the fine-figured lady she used to be into a street urchin. Every day of the three months he’d been home had brought new sadness. He shut his eyes for a second, trying to force from his mind the scenes he’d witnessed in Karlsruhe just a few days before, but he could hear an endless echo of them in the huff and rumble of the station.
His sister, Elizabeth, had taken it sorely when he had announced, after only a few weeks, that he was leaving Berlin to become a surgeon at a hospital closer to the Front.
‘You’ve only just come back to me,’ she had protested.
‘Karlsruhe, isn’t so far,’ he had assured her.
Count Nadolny had tried to persuade him to stay, too.
‘Take some time, but we need you here,’ the Count had insisted. ‘Things are worse in Germany — open your eyes, you’ll see.’
And here I am again, he thought.
It was five in the afternoon and the queue for cabs stretched across the front of the station and round the side. Too impatient to wait, he threw his bag on his back like a soldier’s knapsack and set off at a brisk pace. It was a fine June day and he hoped some vigorous exercise and sunshine would lift his spirits a little. But it was impossible to walk away from the war. Cripples begging in front of a church; at a street corner a gang of women in flat caps and bloomers, wielding picks and shovels as their menfolk at the Front used to do; and crossing the Tiergarten in silence a column of fresh young recruits — passers-by turning away, frightened to look them in the eye.
Walking on, the sun blinking, blinding through the trees, Dilger’s mind was confused with angry thoughts, his chest tight with the unconscious pain of memory. Only the death of his sister’s son, Peter, had hurt him like this before. Perhaps he’d been naïve not to understand the enemy’s hate sooner.
In his first week home, his sister Elizabeth had asked him to visit a family in the working district of Wedding in the north of the city. The widow of the footman, she’d explained; the poor man had been killed a few months after her Peter and they had no money for a doctor. Dilger had found the family at the top of a tenement block, mother, grandmother and nine pale children in two rooms and a kitchen. The flat was almost empty of furniture and their clothes were riddled with more holes than a Swiss cheese. The youngest was lying listless in her cot, a scrap of skin and bone.
‘How old is she?’ he’d asked.
‘Almost two,’ came the reply. Shocked, he had berated the mother for neglect and she’d burst into anguished tears. What could she do with so many mouths to feed and no money? Scraping by on 120 marks a month, she said; they couldn’t even afford the local food kitchen, and the ration of milk had been cut to a pint a day. They were living on tea and potatoes. ‘We’re all suffering from the sickness,’ she’d sobbed.
‘From what?’ he’d asked.
‘The English sickness,’ she said.
Before he left he gave her some money and perhaps they’d eaten a little better for a few days. When he had described the visit to Elizabeth, she had said it was the same with most of the families in the district. ‘You don’t understand, Anton, you’ve come back from the land of plenty. It’s the same in every city — your English sickness.’ The curse of the blockade, the enemy’s grip on the Atlantic — hadn’t he seen it with his own eyes? Fleets of British ships loading grain, cattle, horses, shells, and America growing fat on the trade while Germany wasted away. His old neighbours in Chevy Chase called it ‘neutrality’. ‘If we don’t win soon, we’ll all be sick,’ his sister had observed.
She was watching for him now at a window and greeted him on the doorstep. ‘Oh Anton,’ her voice quivered a little, ‘I’m sorry — it must have been awful;’ and she kissed him and gave his hand a comforting squeeze. He tried to say something but could manage only a crooked smile. The maid took his coat and he carried his own bag to his room, falling on the bed, breathing slowly, deeply. When he was calmer he rang for some tea and a hot bath.
They didn’t speak of what he’d seen in Karlsruhe at dinner. Elizabeth told him she had visited the Zoological Gardens as they used to do every Sunday, but the gaiety had left the place. No concert band, no beer, only empty tables.
‘And the colonel?’ he asked, picking at his food. ‘Have you heard from him?’
She reached for her handkerchief, as she always did when he mentioned her husband. ‘He’s well,’ her voice was tense, ‘but his regiment has been engaged in the fighting at Verdun.’
‘Oh,’ he replied as casually as he could, then, because he had to, ‘I’m sure he’ll keep well, Elizabeth.’
‘Yes,’ she said mechanically, because that was also the polite thing to say.
Then she scolded him gently, just as she had when he was a boy: ‘You’ve hardly eaten anything, Anton — when so many go without food.’
After dinner they sat in her gloomy drawing room for ersatz coffee, and he drank the last of the colonel’s French brandy. The clock on the mantelpiece was still silent in his nephew’s memory. The photograph of him playing with Peter at the Dilger farm was on a table to the right of the fireplace; there was another of them both in uniform beneath the mirror.
‘I read about the attack in the newspaper, Anton,’ she said at last, leaning forward to touch his hand lightly. ‘What is our world coming to?’
Then it tumbled from him, in bursts like machine-gun fire.
‘They celebrate Corpus Christi with a festival in Karlsruhe,’ he said. ‘After the church services, there’s a circus for the children — Hagenbeck’s. It’s famous for its elephants and lions. I heard the planes, then the anti-aircraft guns, but I…’ he paused for a moment, too choked to continue; ‘…you see, the children were making so much noise no one in the big tent heard the enemy — anyway, I don’t know how many bombs were dropped…’ He paused again to take a deep breath. ‘The children were wearing white robes from the church procession and they were ripped and bloody — terrible, terrible injuries, little arms and legs — we did all we could but… and the mothers trying to identify the bodies — oh God.’ He let out a long sigh. ‘We were operating all night — children — children are different, aren’t they? It wasn’t war — a crime — it was a crime. The papers say two hundred people killed — seventy children, and more injured: a church festival, Elizabeth. A church festival.’
She tried to hold him as she used to do when he was a child, but he pulled away from her. ‘I didn’t realise — it is a fight for our survival — the survival of the German race. Corpus Christi. Ha!’ He wiped his cheek with the back of his hand and reached for his glass. ‘Do this in remembrance of me — isn’t that what they say?’ Then, after a pause, ‘Sorry — what a performance.’ He took a sip, the glass shaking against his teeth. ‘I’m tired.’
‘You’ve left the hospital, Anton?’ she asked quietly.
‘Yes.’
Silence.
‘Will you try for one here?’ She sounded anxious.
‘No. No, I don’t think so.’
Another silence.
‘You know Emmeline wrote to me,’ she said at last. ‘She says some men were chasing you — Englishmen. They talked about your work — your experiments.’
He grunted crossly.
‘She says they were spies. Don’t be cross with her, Anton, she sent them away — she’s worried about you, that’s all.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m worried about you.’
He stood up abruptly. ‘Yes. Well, she shouldn’t — you shouldn’t worry.’ He spoke more sharply than he meant to because he felt guilty.
‘Well, we are,’ she said firmly. ‘Emmeline says you’ve changed — I’ve noticed it too.’
He shrugged carelessly. ‘Hasn’t everybody? Isn’t that war?’
She paused, her gaze steady. ‘Will you see your Count Nadolny?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps,’ he said evasively, then, reluctant to lie to her, ‘Probably — yes.’
Elizabeth’s face was set in the determined expression they all had from their father. Feeling awkward, he stepped away from her to rest his elbow beside the silent clock on the mantelpiece.
‘What will he ask you to do?’
‘I don’t know if he’ll ask me to do anything,’ he replied coolly.
‘Promise me you won’t do anything dangerous. Promise me.’
He smiled at her concern but wasn’t sure what he should say. ‘I don’t know what—’
‘Promise.’
‘I’m not a soldier, like your Peter or the colonel.’
‘Promise’; the pitch of her voice rising.
‘I promise.’
Her gaze dropped to her hands, cupped in her lap. ‘Promise me you won’t do anything dishonourable.’
‘Elizabeth,’ he exclaimed, hurt by the implication that he might. ‘Only my duty.’
She took a deep breath. ‘War — this war — people are not themselves. The bitterness. Perhaps because it touches us all so. I don’t know who will win — if it is even possible—’
‘We must win,’ he interrupted.
‘Yes, yes,’ she said, shifting impatiently on the edge of the settee, ‘we will, Anton, I’m sure. But when it’s over we must live with ourselves — with what we’ve become.’
‘Didn’t you hear me say — we’re fighting for survival?’
‘I don’t know, Anton,’ she replied quietly, ‘but we must hold true to what is good, in others and in ourselves. Our father was so proud of you — his clever son, the doctor. You have the gift to heal — to help those who suffer. I’m sure he’d want you to use it. But I’ve said enough, I know.’ Lifting her dress a little, she rose and took half a step towards him. ‘You know we love you, Emmeline, Carl, Josephine, Butzie — all of us. Peter loved you too,’ and she reached out to touch his arm. ‘Please be careful.’
They didn’t speak of the Count in the following days but he considered what she’d said, drifting through parks and through galleries, sitting in cafés where he paid too much for very little. In the new Kaiser Wilhelm Church, too, the blues and reds and yellows of the memorial glass dancing at his feet, and although he wasn’t a believer he tried to say a prayer for the children of Karlsruhe. He telephoned Frieda Hempel but her housekeeper said she’d left to sing to the old Emperor in Vienna. One evening he visited a seedy club near the Anhalter Station with doctors he knew from his time at a city hospital. To pretend he was merry he drank too much, and when at last the girls came high-kicking on to the stage he felt ashamed. ‘Thinner than before the war,’ one of his companions remarked, with the carelessness of someone who spent most of his waking hours triaging the wounded. To forget, I must work, Dilger told himself, and he remembered thinking the same after Peter’s death: only in action will I find release.
A baking hot day at the end of June, dressed in a light-blue suit from Wanamaker’s like an American gentleman. Stifling on the tram, seated next to an old man with a summer cold, wheezing, and wiping his nose on his sleeve. Walking the last few stops, and the Military Veterinary Academy was extravagantly decked in imperial bunting. ‘The Crown Prince of Prussia visited this morning,’ the professor’s assistant informed him as they walked along the whitewashed corridor. Professor Carl Troester was at his desk, tall and pale in the sunshine pouring through the window behind him. The room was extraordinarily bright, clinical like an operating theatre. Count Nadolny was rising from the chair beside him with a pleasant smile: ‘My dear Doctor.’ As he stepped forward his reflection was mirrored in the glass-fronted cabinets lining the walls, and for a moment it was easy to imagine he had many faces: dark-brown eyes appraising Dilger carefully, the signet ring pressing his hand, a gentle reminder always of his authority. ‘Appalling.’ He shook his head. ‘So many children — a religious festival. I was just saying to the professor, it is impossible to imagine the enemy could mistake a striped circus tent for a military target’ — he shepherded Dilger to a chair — ‘and you operated on the children? What a shock.’
‘You’re our second important visitor of the day,’ Troester observed with a distant smile. ‘You saw the flags? The Crown Prince came to see some of the research we’re doing on new vaccines.’
‘And our work?’ asked Dilger. ‘Did you show His Royal Highness our work?’ Startled by his hostile tone, Troester was unable to think of something to say.
‘I didn’t think it was wise, Doctor,’ Nadolny remarked, coming to his rescue; ‘not after the fuss in the American newspapers. We must let the dust settle.’ The sun was full on his face, smoothing lines and the duelling scar from his skin. It seemed to Dilger he enjoyed its heat, his eyes almost closed, like the skinks that used to bask on walls at the family farm.
‘You achieved so much in America,’ said Troester, finding his voice. ‘An experimental operation that yielded notable successes. So unfortunate it ended the way it did.’
‘I blame myself, of course,’ Nadolny declared. ‘De Witt surprised us all. I should have taken more care. And I’m afraid Sir Roger Casement was a poor judge of men — rather an innocent — but that is the past and the future is our concern, isn’t it, Professor?’
‘Always, Count,’ Troester replied stiffly, recognising the question as a gentle rebuke. The door opened and an orderly brought in the coffee. ‘Thankfully we’re not reduced to drinking acorns yet,’ he observed, lazily stirring sugar into his cup. ‘We will be if things carry on as they are.’
‘The doctor has seen how things stand at home with his own eyes,’ the Count said, turning to address Dilger more directly. ‘You know, America was merely a setback. Your — our work isn’t over — it can’t be.’ He paused, gazing down at his hands long enough to indicate that he was preparing to say something of importance. ‘The Chief of the General Staff has given me authority to expand our operations — to improve the delivery of these germs…’
‘Germs, Count?’ Troester snorted contemptuously.
‘To harness the deadly force of nature, shall we say. New targets — new weapons—’
‘What sort of new weapons?’ Dilger interjected.
‘Well, we will consider everything — we must.’ He inclined his head quizzically. ‘I hope you agree?
They were staring at Dilger, inviting him to reply. Troester removed his pince-nez and wiped his face with his handkerchief. ‘One of our doctors is proposing we drop liquid cultures of plague bacilli from Zeppelins,’ he declared, inspecting his glasses carefully. ‘But there are other possibilities — cholera perhaps.’
‘We need someone with experience to explore the possibilities,’ Nadolny explained; ‘direct an experimental laboratory.’
In the corridor outside the office, the sound of breaking glass and the clatter of a tray.
‘Clumsy fool,’ Troester muttered.
‘And the Crown Prince?’ Dilger enquired. ‘Will he be invited to visit this new experimental laboratory?’
Nadolny smiled. ‘I know why you ask — and you’re right, there is a certain hypocrisy. No, it will remain secret…’ he paused, examining his nails thoughtfully. ‘But it’s part of the science of war now, whether the rest of the world is ready to acknowledge it or not. The enemy will do the same in time; he’ll have to — it’s the future.’
Troester was shuffling papers on his desk impatiently. It was too hot in his office. I’m perspiring so profusely they’ll think I’m afraid, Dilger reflected as he gazed beyond the professor to the window and the stern face of the Charité opposite. His sister had told him that the hospital was founded by the Prussian King to treat victims of the plague. But that was then; this is now, he thought. They were at the beginning of a new century, a new age.
C SENT THE new office boy to escort Wolff to London.
‘What happened to Fitzgerald?’ Wolff enquired.
‘Didn’t care for the work, sir,’ came the reply. ‘He enlisted — probably in this latest show.’
The show was the British offensive on the Somme that had begun on the first of July, just four days before. His young chaperone, Lieutenant Snow, was full of the news and confident that victory was at most weeks away. The Times correspondent in France sounded a more cautious note, describing the battle as ‘ninety miles of continuous chaos, uproar and desolation’. Just the fog of war, Snow declared, shaking the newspaper excitedly. Wolff said he would wait for it to clear. His eye had been caught by a small piece on an inside page, confirming that the King was to ‘degrade the traitor’ Roger Casement of his knighthood.
At Charing Cross Station they were held at the platform barrier while the wounded from a hospital train were loaded into ambulances. ‘Haven’t stopped,’ Wolff heard a guard grumbling to a passenger; ‘so many we’re diverting to Paddington.’ A crowd had gathered in the Strand to cheer the wounded as they swept by. Snow spent ten minutes searching for a taxicab before tentatively suggesting they leave the luggage and walk. ‘If you’re feeling strong enough, sir?’
It was the sort of hot white-sky day that made London seem drabber and oppressively close. Christ, wasn’t it good to be home, Wolff thought with a pang of regret, what with its dirty little buildings and khaki uniforms, Coleman’s and Wright’s, ‘Enlist today’ and ‘Let your conscience be your guide, boys’, while in Trafalgar Square well-heeled women shook their tins for the limbless. He longed for the shade of a canyon street and the view to the Hudson from his last apartment, and, well, lots of things it was foolish to contemplate.
They had drained the lake in St James’s Park so the Army could build barrack huts; it wasn’t the pleasant place to walk that it used to be. Soldiers showed no respect for things they couldn’t polish. Lieutenant Snow was anxious because they were late, and C was unpleasant to people who were late. Wolff trailed faithfully in his wake, very short of breath. He’d spent the daylight hours of the Atlantic crossing wrapped in a blanket on the promenade deck and his evenings brooding and drinking in his cabin. A comfortable invalid, at least; he had Sir William to thank for easing his passage.
The doorman at The Rag recognised him although it was a year since his last visit. He would have made a good spy. Cumming was waiting in the same private room, with its guns and spears and portraits of Empire soldiers. Advancing with just one stick now and a broad smile of welcome — ‘Good crossing? First class, wasn’t it? Suppose you deserved it’ — peering at him through his gold monocle, in his particular way — ‘you’re thinner.’
‘Probably. Yes.’
They sat in the same leather armchairs by the hearth. ‘Did the war seem a long way from America?’ he asked.
‘Not when the Germans are trying to kill you.’
‘I meant the fighting in France. The newspapers say you could hear the guns firing for this new offensive in London. I didn’t hear them.’ He removed his monocle and inspected it for a few seconds, then slipped it back in his eye. ‘Country’s expecting a decisive victory.’ There was just the suggestion in his voice that he didn’t share the general optimism. ‘I hear there are a lot of casualties.’
Wolff nodded slowly. There was nothing he could say that wouldn’t sound either bitter or trite.
‘Sir William thinks we can expect more trouble in America,’ C continued. ‘Our lawyers say anthrax is illegal –’ he laughed grimly — ‘illegal! Be sure and tell the police, I told them. But the politicians are a-flutter. They want to know what will happen if the Germans try the same thing here — with something nastier perhaps. “What about civilians?” they ask. “I don’t know,” I say; “ask your scientists.” “You must have spies,” they say; “find out what they’re thinking” — as if it were as simple as marching another battalion over the top.’ C leant forward, his large sailor’s hands resting on top of his stick. ‘I’ve tried to understand why I find the use of these diseases so shocking.’ He sighed heavily. ‘It’s a long way from the Battle of Trafalgar, isn’t it?’
For a while neither of them spoke, C restlessly tap-tapping his stick against his shoe. Lifting his Punch-like chin at last, he asked: ‘Did Roger Casement know about the anthrax, I wonder? He put the Germans in touch with the Irish in America, didn’t he?’
‘He wouldn’t have approved.’
‘Well, Wolff, you must have a higher opinion of him than the rest of us,’ C remarked tartly. ‘Count Nadolny was handling both Casement and Dilger. So I think we can assume…’
‘Another reason to hang him, I suppose?’
‘I don’t think we need another reason.’ Cumming was fidgeting, trying to keep his temper. ‘Ironic that you were betrayed by the same man, don’t you think — that Norwegian sodomite Christensen.’
Wolff shook his head a little. ‘Actually, I’m glad. It was a relief.’
‘You’re a strange fish. Did you know Casement was like that, by the way?’
‘No,’ he lied.
‘I don’t think I believe you.’ C bent his head to one side, gazing at him thoughtfully. ‘We will hang him, you know. How do you feel about that?’
‘Does it matter how I feel?’
‘No, not really, I suppose. There’s a lot of bitterness, you see. They — we — put him on a pedestal, didn’t we? No one’s inclined to be forgiving, not the way the war’s going — and not with Irishmen dying in khaki for their country.’
‘I’m sure there will be plenty of his compatriots who think he’s doing the same.’
‘There may be some, yes,’ he conceded. ‘Not sure they’ll feel the same when they hear about his proclivities.’
‘Why would they?’
He looked awkward, even shifty. ‘Not my business — Special Branch are handling those things. I think it…’ He hesitated, ready to say more, then thought better of it. ‘Anyway, thought you should know.’
‘Know?’
‘That they’re going to hang him.’
‘You’re very sure.’
‘Yes,’ he said firmly, ‘I am sure.’
Wolff tried to sound matter-of-fact. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t hate yourself for it, Wolff, you’re not responsible. The bloody fool should have stayed in Germany.’
There was another long silence, with C scrutinising him through his damned monocle like Reid at the hospital in Baltimore. ‘You’re battered and bruised but safe — I’m glad,’ he said, levering himself from his chair. ‘I must let you go.’ They drifted towards the door. ‘Take a few weeks’ leave. I can see you need a little more time to recover.’ Then, more jauntily, ‘And I almost forgot, you’ve been promoted — Commander Wolff. Thoroughly deserved — congratulations.’
Wolff said thank you, and he supposed he was grateful. In the taxicab to Devonshire Place, he wondered why, and reasoned that it was probably natural to take pleasure in promotion even if he despised most of what he’d done to earn it. His apartment was clean, tidy, empty and soulless. Returning to it after so long, he felt like Mole in The Wind in the Willows, catching on the breeze the telegraphic current of the past, not happy times but thrilling ones. The housekeeper had folded Violet’s scarf and placed it on the arm of a couch. She must have left it the night he’d spent ashore from the ship, just a few months — or was it weeks? — before she’d become the Honourable Mrs Lewis. Lieutenant Snow had seen to his luggage and it arrived within the hour. He didn’t unpack: he was sick of the closeness of the old city already.
First thing the following morning he sent a telegram to his mother, then took a taxicab to King’s Cross. Rumbling north felt like a journey through his life, a familiar roll call of stations and memories, home on leave from the sea, undergraduate outings at Cambridge, and school visits to Ely, the ship of the Fens, its lantern tower brilliant in the July sunshine. At King’s Lynn Station he paid a cab to drive him the last few miles across the Great Ouse into the open Lincolnshire farmland, drained and settled by the Dutch for centuries and more recently by his own family. Hamlets, isolated farms and the breeze from the Wash shaking the hip-high barley and wheat, still a few weeks from harvest. Above all, a vast tent of sky: wondrous as a boy, wondrous still. He thought perhaps that something of him had been shaped by its moods, its emptiness, its deep summer blues and angry winter greys, the shifting chiaroscuro of the Fens, clouds scattering and amassing in infinite variations, like a great unfinished symphony.
The farm was a mile from the village of Gedney, a large but undistinguished red-brick house and three low barns sheltered by trees. His grandfather had purchased the land with money he’d earned as a merchant captain with the Netherlands Steamship Company. It was the old man who’d taken him to school every day, rising before six to harness the horse and chaise.
The cab dropped him at the gate and he carried, half dragged his bags to the farmhouse. His mother discovered him bent double on the step.
‘Trying to catch my breath,’ he gasped.
She gave him a quiet smile of welcome and he rose to kiss her cheek.
‘You look older, Sebastian,’ she observed with characteristic bluntness. ‘Are you unwell?’
‘I’m getting better.’
She nodded. ‘You look more like your father.’
She led him into the kitchen and he sat at the old oak table as she prepared their supper of boiled ham and potatoes. I’m older but she’s just the same, he thought, as he watched her at the range, her grey hair — had it ever been anything else? — swept severely off her face in a bun, small like a chapel mouse but spirited, and sometimes fierce. A practical woman, strong, she liked to say, in the knowledge that Christ was her sword and shield. While she peeled and chopped and stirred he spoke of New York skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty. As always, she listened with mild curiosity but asked no questions. ‘I don’t want you lie to me,’ she’d explained once.
Later, she talked of the farm and how hard it was becoming to work with the young men away. The Baker boys had gone and John Vickers from Gedney Marsh, she said, and the Kidbys of Green Dyke had lost their eldest son already. It was a sin, and she’d told the minister so after chapel. ‘“Stop preaching nonsense,” I said — my goodness, it was there on the wall above his head — “Thou Shalt Not Kill”.’
She made Wolff say grace before supper and after it they wandered the farm together, the sun dipping into the barley. ‘Will you stay for harvest?’ she asked. He said he’d try to.
‘It’s a good life here, you know. A good Christian life.’ She sounded sad, perhaps because she knew it didn’t mean as much to him as she’d always hoped it would. ‘We must hold on to that in these times.’
They stopped at the eastern edge, beyond it the old sea bank and the salt marsh stretching out to the Wash. Above them, an exaltation of larks chirruping gladly, a sound that always conjured this place for him.
‘It’s harder for clever people to be happy — sometimes it’s a curse,’ she said suddenly. ‘I used to say that to your father. Do you have a lady friend?’
‘There was someone for a time. She decided she didn’t like me.’
‘Was she a good woman?’
‘Yes.’
‘She might change her mind. Perhaps you’ll persuade her.’
‘Perhaps — one day.’
‘Or there’ll be someone else.’ She threaded a grey hair behind her ear. ‘Goodness, after this war there’ll be plenty of women to choose from.’ Then, pointedly, ‘You’ll be forty soon.’
He turned away from her to gaze out to the darkening sea. Is she lonely? he wondered. Perhaps she was worried about the future of the farm, the comfort of family, and grandchildren in old age. But if she wanted those things, she wouldn’t say so.
There was no electricity at the farmhouse but she lit the oil lamp he’d always used and carried it up to his bedroom. Everything was how he’d left it when he went up to Cambridge. There was almost nothing to change. Black cross on whitewashed wall, a few sticks of homely furniture, a single bed and a shelf of books. He picked up a favourite his grandfather had given him as a boy, its spine broken by over-eager young hands. It told of the voyages of famous Lincolnshire explorers, Flinders, Franklin and Bass, and Vancouver from King’s Lynn. They had played their part in nurturing his restless spirit.
Over the next days, he rose early and rolled up his sleeves to repair fences and clear ditches, climbing up on the old barn to replace the broken tiles. In the afternoons he wandered through green lanes choked with kingcups and cow parsley, skirting fat wheatfields and striking across the old salt pans to the sea. Striding home late one evening, the sound of a tolling bell rolling across the fen from the tower at Gedney touched him deeply. Sempiternal, mysterious in childhood when death was so confusing — especially his father’s — it was now an affecting reminder of the war and the poems White had read to him in hospital of ploughboys who would never grow old.
‘Say a prayer for John Vickers,’ his mother said, as she was readying his lamp a few hours later. ‘He was only nineteen. He shouldn’t have gone. He wasn’t the sort to be a soldier.’
The following day Wolff rode the old cob into the village and ordered the newspapers. ‘Do you want to know?’ he asked his mother, spreading them on the kitchen table.
‘Is it bad?’
‘The Times is calling it the Battle of the Somme. It says: fighting intense — another day of spectacular gains — relentless advance. I don’t know,’ he paused, ‘but I’m sure the correspondent doesn’t either.’
There was a report that troubled him more, although he didn’t speak of it to his mother. Somewhere on all the front pages was a column or so for Casement. His friends were seeking a reprieve but most of the newspapers were determined he should hang. To be sure they carried the public with them, they were blackening his name.
‘Are you all right?’ his mother enquired.
‘Yes. Fine,’ he said, ‘fine. I think I’ll chop that wood in the stable.’
‘Don’t exhaust yourself.’
Swinging the axe with all his strength, splintering the log in two, and again in four, and another, and another, full of rage and disgust at the cruelty. C had known, of course. ‘They’re going to hang him,’ he’d said with certainty. He’d known that the police were ready to tighten the noose. Wolff could recall the distaste in his voice when he spoke of Casement’s ‘proclivities’. Whitehall was intent on a double death, trying him for treason, then again in the press for immorality, on the front page, forcing the stories of soldiers dying on the Somme inside.
Crack. The log splintered into four with one blow, leaving him gasping and the stable spinning. Christensen in the cemetery; his forefinger trailing down a marble bust. ‘I copied it from his diary,’ he’d boasted with a sly grin. ‘You’d be surprised what there is in there.’ And now Special Branch was leaking it to the jackals on Fleet Street. Wolff picked up a log and hurled it at the wall. How was the News of the World reporting it? Nobody who sees the diary will ever mention Casement’s name again without loathing and contempt. Peddling poisonous stories of liaisons with Indian boys to blacken his character. Is this what we’re fighting for? he wondered. Putting the axe down, he sat in the straw to smoke a cigarette. I didn’t bring him to this, he reflected in its haze, but I did betray him. He’d lied to a lot of people, betrayed some and been betrayed, all in the name of duty. He’d betrayed Roger, then used him to betray others — Laura. Christ, the irony of it. Two people with a vision of how the world could be better, so the sacrifice wasn’t a waste. For that, they were intent on casting Roger Casement down, from saint of the Empire to sinner and degenerate, falling to at least a rope’s length. Sickening. And Commander Wolff wrings his hands and feels guilty.
He was still brooding when his mother called to him an hour later — and when he went to bed that evening and rose the following morning. ‘Something’s troubling you,’ she observed at breakfast. ‘No. Still a little tired,’ he lied, because how could he explain?
In the days that followed, he read of appeals for clemency from Ireland and America but also more calculated poison, more calumnies. This is what Laura will believe I am, he thought. Why should it matter? But it preyed upon him continually. He walked his old routes still but not with the same unconscious pleasure. If I’m well enough, I might run, he reflected, fast and hard, outpacing his shadow like a middle-aged Peter Pan. Drop it like a hat and stick at the cloakroom of a London club or in an armchair in one of its smoke-filled rooms. But no, his part was always with him; he’d brought its sadness home to the fen, to his family’s sky-filled fields, out to the salt marshes and into the secret lanes where he’d run easy as a boy.
‘There’s a telegram for you, Sebastian,’ his mother said when he returned one afternoon. ‘Behind the clock.’
It was a summons to the Admiralty signed by C.
‘We should start harvesting next week,’ she said, gazing at him over her spectacles. ‘We’ll be short if you go.’
‘I’ll come back.’
‘I’ve got five women and Griggs who’s too old to fight, Atkin the butcher’s boy from Long Sutton, and our neighbours will help when they can.’ She closed her eyes, the care lines obvious in the lamplight. ‘I expect I’ll manage.’
‘I’ll come back — I said so.’
His instructions were to report to Naval Intelligence at precisely four o’clock the following day. He arrived in his old country suit, patched at the elbow, flannel waistcoat, green tweed tie.
‘You’ve caught the sun. You look healthier but like a bumpkin,’ C observed as they walked slowly up the stairs to Admiral Hall’s office. ‘Disrespectful, Wolff.’
The Director of Naval Intelligence was on the first floor of the new building, with large south-facing windows overlooking Horse Guards Parade. The white stone heart of our Empire, he’d once observed to Wolff, with its view of 10 Downing Street, the Admiralty, Parliament and the Foreign Office and, craning east, the top floor and roof of the War Office.
Hall greeted him with a reproachful frown. ‘Undercover, are we?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, sorry to drag you from your fields then. Thought you might help us win the war. Sit down.’ He retreated behind his desk but remained standing, hands resting on the back of his chair. ‘Last night there was an explosion at an ammunition depot in America — the largest.’ He paused, blinking furiously. ‘Are you smiling, man?’
‘Was it the Black Tom yard?’
‘You think it’s sabotage?’
‘Ask von Rintelen. You still have him, don’t you?’
‘Captain Gaunt thinks so too. Two million pounds of ammunition and explosive — broke windows twenty-five miles away and damaged the Statue of Liberty. Like the Somme, Gaunt says — how the hell he knows, I can’t imagine,’ Hall observed dryly. ‘But that isn’t why you’re here.’ He reached down to a file and slid a piece of paper from it across his desk. ‘Take your time.’
It was an enciphered signal in number groups of five, bearing the legend at the top: BRITISH EMBASSY, PARIS. Rendered in English beneath:
French advise arrest of German agent. Sugar and glass phials in possession contain Bacillus anthracis. His orders to infect animals in holding pens close to Allied front line. Received anthrax and instruction in use at laboratory in Berlin from man he called DELMAR.
Wolff lowered the telegram to the edge of the desk.
‘Seems your Dr Dilger is set on turning this into an industry,’ Hall remarked grimly. ‘Who knows what else his laboratory is cooking up. I suppose it was naïve to hope the fuss in America would end it all.’
C leant forward to place his large hand on the telegram. ‘One of our people needs to question the German agent,’ he said. ‘I don’t expect we’ll get any more but…’ He was deliberately avoiding Wolff’s eye.
For a time no one spoke. Admiral Hall stepped out from his desk, dragging his fingers across its bright surface. ‘Can you imagine the panic out there if the public thought it was under attack from some disease?’ A battalion of soldiers was stamping rhythmically beneath his window. Turning, it began to advance on Downing Street in close order. ‘The War Office is setting up a new experimental station so some of our scientists can run tests on anthrax and a few other diseases…’ he paused, leaning closer to the window, ‘…just to see how we might fight an attack — understand what we’re up against.’
Wolff was conscious of C fidgeting uncomfortably beside him.
Hall turned to face them again, a short broad silhouette against the window. ‘The scientists aren’t going to tell us what Delmar is planning and where. The Army is circulating a confidential memorandum to intelligence officers urging them to be vigilant — the Home Office is doing the same with the police.’ He paused again, then said, as if to himself, ‘Just a damn shame we didn’t dispose of Dilger when we had the chance.’
‘For God’s sake, have you ever stabbed a man?’ Wolff asked with a cold fury that surprised him too. ‘So close you can smell him, feel his beard against the back of your hand, wriggling, biting — then that last little gasp. Christ.’ He was shaking his head. ‘The Germans — Nadolny — would have found someone to take his place — wouldn’t you?’
The incredulous silence was broken only by the distant beat of marching feet. Then Hall exploded: ‘Who the hell do you think you’re talking to, Commander?’
‘Was it you?’ Again, Wolff was surprised to hear his voice trembling with passion. ‘Did you instruct the police — instruct Special Branch to give the newspapers that poison?’
‘Sir,’ C prompted him quietly. ‘Did you give the newspapers Casement’s diary, sir?’
‘I’m here to tell you how contemptible—’
‘You’re here, Wolff, because I ordered you to come,’ C said, struggling to his feet to stand above him. ‘I thought you might be of use but I see—’
‘As you ask, yes,’ Hall cut in belligerently. ‘Yes, I asked Special Branch to circulate extracts — to politicians, bishops, the King — they have a right to know. I have a copy here, if you’d like to look — if you have the stomach for it. Perfectly genuine,’ he sucked his teeth; ‘the man is a disgrace. But you knew that, didn’t you?’
‘And libelling him in the newspapers is your idea of decency and duty?’
‘Don’t be a bloody fool. He was a traitor…’
‘Not to Ireland.’
‘There are Irishmen dying every day out there for their country and the Empire.’ Hall gestured angrily to the window. ‘Those few misguided souls calling for a reprieve — radicals, Americans — need to understand this man’s nature. He knew what he was doing when he introduced the Germans to his friends in America — he probably knew about Dilger and his diseases — he’s a traitor, he’s a sodomite — he’s a moral degenerate…’
‘Tawdry — it wasn’t enough…’
‘No. Shut up before I — you fool. Shut up and listen,’ Hall commanded icily. ‘This isn’t about Casement — it’s you — your guilt. If it wasn’t, I’d have you thrown in a brig — just pull yourself together. You did your duty — you did what was right. Now get the hell out of my office before I change my mind. Oh, and Wolff, for God’s sake see a doctor. You’re cracking up.’
And Wolff did leave — meek like a lamb. He left because there was nothing he could say with integrity. Blinker was right, and bleating, wringing his hands, just made him a hypocrite. In the Admiral’s outer office, heads were bent over desks, sideways glances, silence. Wolff passed them in a daze, slowly, one foot in front of the other like a bandsman slow-marching to the Mall. He was fumbling with a bent cigarette and his lighter at the Admiralty entrance when C limped over to speak to him.
‘Would you like me to do that?’ he asked.
‘I can manage.’
‘Go home. You’re not ready.’
‘Ready?’ Wolff gave a shaky little laugh. ‘Ready?’
‘I think you should see a doctor. There’s someone…’
‘Is he good with a bad attack of conscience? No, thank you. I don’t need a doctor.’
‘You do need more time. My God, you almost died. Go home, Wolff — that’s an order.’
‘Yes, I will.’
C’s Rolls-Royce was parked at the kerb a few yards away. He took a step towards it, then checked. ‘I don’t know if I should say this, but I expect you’ll work it out for yourself in time. This is the best thing that can happen to Roger Casement. I don’t mean the attacks on his reputation — the diary.’ He sounded disapproving. ‘No, his execution — his death. If you’d been a little less confused about your own part in it all, you’d have… well… He wasn’t much of a rebel, was he? He’ll be a bloody good martyr. Dying is the best thing he can do for his country—’ he corrected himself at once — ‘his cause.’ He pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘Actually, I think we’re making a mistake — can I still say “we”?’ He sighed heavily. ‘It won’t be the first we’ve made in this war, will it?’
Wolff nodded slowly.
‘I hear he’s being received into the Roman Church — that will help, of course.’ He swung the end of his stick at a cigarette packet, neatly driving it into the gutter. ‘This place used to be spotless — they’ve let the Army into St James’s Park, you know. Anyway, I have—’
‘One more thing,’ said Wolff abruptly. ‘Turkey — did you…’ he was struggling for the words, with his feelings. ‘I wanted to ask, were you going to…’
C’s small grey eyes were fixed intently on Wolff’s face, the monocle dangling on its string for once. ‘If you’re trying to ask whether anyone betrayed or abandoned you — no, Wolff.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘We think the worst of everyone, don’t we? No. No one betrayed you. Now go home.’
‘Nine months — you could have…’
‘Go home,’ he repeated firmly.
Wolff heaved a lungful of smoke. ‘All right. Yes. I will. Soon.’
At nine o’clock the hangman released the trapdoor in the execution shed and the prison bell tolled once for the benefit of the crowd. There was some cheering, mocking, then silence. Roger Casement was pronounced dead at nine minutes after nine o’clock on the morning of 3 August 1916. He would have been hurt by the cheering, Wolff thought as he stood waiting for the notice to be posted at the gate. He wouldn’t have understood why anyone would wish to cheer the death of another.
Women and a few men with the sickly yellow faces of munitions workers, chatting, joking, flirting; city clerks in bowlers and ready-to-wear suits; mothers and young children, some with breakfasts or mugs of tea from local shops that had opened early to offer ‘a service’. The sort of gathering a prince several degrees from the throne might expect at the opening of a library. Just to say they were there, Wolff thought. And me?
At the back wall of the prison, thirty Irish men and women were bent discreetly in prayer. At the front, a prison warder was pasting whatever proclamation there was still to be made on the gate and the crowd was pressing round him for a part in this final scene. Judgement of death was this day executed on Roger David Casement in His Majesty’s Prison of Pentonville in our presence.
There was no one for Wolff to say sorry to, no one to comfort; he didn’t believe, so he couldn’t say a prayer. But he was there to keep watch, as he knew she would be doing through the early hours in America. For Laura then, for Roger and his sister, for Reggie Curtis and the little man in the derby hat whose name he’d never known, and for others — the men who even at that hour were advancing across no-man’s-land on the Somme.
At the station he bought an evening newspaper and read the report of Casement’s last hours. He’d mounted the gallows’ steps firmly and commended his spirit to God. Then they had buried him in an unmarked grave, like many who were dying at the Front.
‘So this time you have come back.’ She smiled and stepped aside to let him through the door. ‘We started on the barley yesterday.’
‘I’ll take the wagon over at six tomorrow.’
‘They won’t be there before half past seven.’
‘Half past seven then.’
And in September he would burn the stubble, for miles the fields aflame, flickering in the night sky as far as the eye could see, plumes of choking brown smoke — like the torment reserved for the unjust on the last day, his mother said — until it settled at dawn on the fen, so dense it was easy to stumble and fall, but only for the hours it took the sun to rise and a fresh breeze from the sea to blow.