The Poison Tide (47 page)

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.

M
ASEK 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.