Andrew Williams - The Poison Tide

‘All right, Adler, that’s enough for tonight.’

‘And what about our agreement?’ he asked, a little sheepishly.

‘Findlay gave you a hundred and twenty-five krone, didn’t he?’

‘But…’

Wolff grasped his forearm, pinching it tightly. ‘Let’s not talk about it again. There’s nothing more now. Here,’ and he handed Christensen a piece of paper. ‘It’s the address of a café in Wedding. Will you be able to make ten o’clock on Wednesday?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘If you can’t, I’ll be there at the same time on Friday. By then I’ll have read this,’ and he patted the front of his coat. ‘Don’t visit my hotel. Don’t send messages.’

‘I understand,’ he replied gloomily.

They said goodbye and Wolff walked quickly away. Glancing up at Victory holding out her Prussian laurels to the city, he smiled at his own small triumph. But a man like Christensen he would have to fight again and again. He was as slippery as an eel. What use would he be if he wasn’t? But what did Casement see in the fellow? Wolff pondered this a little as he strolled back to his hotel but came to no firm view. It was impossible to say until he met Casement.

After dinner he settled at the desk in his room and worked his way through the notes Christensen had given him. But for one short memorandum there was nothing he couldn’t glean from the newspapers. It was wrapped tightly in the centre of the roll and had been copied in such haste that it was barely legible.

14 February, 1915

The Chief of the General Staff requests Sir Roger Casement’s assistance in contacting reliable and discreet Irish in America for special work of importance in the defeat of our common enemy. The General Staff has sent Captain von Rintelen to New York to make the necessary contacts.

One of the names on the distribution list was a Count Rudolf Nadolny, Section P of the General Staff.

It was of some importance, but how much Wolff couldn’t say; nor was he confident that Christensen would be able to help. He made a note of the German cipher, the names, and other important details, in his own code and buried them in the text of a report he’d begun writing on his business meetings in Berlin. Then he destroyed Christensen’s papers. When an opportunity presented itself he would send his coded report to Westinghouse by their office in Amsterdam. An agent would pick it up and forward it to the Bureau.

Christensen arrived at the café before him on the Wednesday. He said he knew nothing of ‘special work’ in America or a ‘von Rintelen’. Wolff bought him Bratkartoffeln and bacon and he gobbled it down as if he was fighting for his share in the stokers’ mess.

‘Is that it?’ he asked, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his wool suit. ‘My payment?’

‘Not necessarily. It depends what else you have for me,’ Wolff declared. ‘Let’s walk.’

That became the pattern: first a plate of food for Christensen, then a stroll through a park. Thoughts came quicker to Wolff on the move. When he tried to explain this, Christensen just shrugged his square shoulders: ‘Wherever you like, Mr de Witt — so long as you pay.’ But after only a short time he was bored with questions. ‘Why do you need to know that?’ he complained. ‘It doesn’t matter why,’ Wolff told him curtly. He wanted everything, not just Casement’s contacts and his correspondence, but his routine, what he liked to eat and drink, the newspapers he bought, when he went to bed and who he went to bed with — ‘No one,’ said Christensen with another sly smile, ‘only cares about his cause.’ Of Sir Roger’s personal habits he spoke with authority but he knew little of his mind and nothing of his plans for a rising in Ireland. Casement called him ‘friend’ but plainly treated him as something less than his equal and certainly not as a gentleman. A nasty word here and there, a certain resentful tone, the narrowing of his light-blue eyes, and it wasn’t long before Wolff understood that Christensen’s betrayal wasn’t just about money: Christensen was a disappointed young man. Why didn’t his ‘friend’ do more to help him? More than an old green suit. His pride was hurt. Doors opened for Sir Roger but he shut them in poor Adler’s face. Perhaps he had begun to realise that they would always be closed to someone of his class and blamed Casement for that too.

‘He’s let me down, you know,’ he said at their fourth meeting. ‘You can see that, can’t you?’ Wolff said he could.

Most of the lies Christensen told were to himself but was he any different in that way from anyone else? Wolff did all he could to nourish his grievance. The more he understood the man, the more important it became. For all the childish slights, the bitter words, the pleasure he took in passing on confidences, he was plainly attached to ‘Sir Raj-er’.

‘He’s a great man, an honest man,’ he observed, only minutes after railing at Casement’s vanity.

The portrait he painted of Casement was of someone naïve, impulsive, and with an exaggerated sense of his own importance, but principled and generous to a fault. Wolff could see that Adler was as fond of the man he was betraying as he was capable of being of anyone, and that made him even less trustworthy. So Wolff didn’t mention the note he left for Casement at the Eden or the visit he received from the security police the following day.

THEY MUST HAVE been waiting at the hotel but Wolff didn’t notice them until he stopped to watch a column of soldiers march by. It was part of his daily routine: faces in a crowd, reflections in shop windows, skipping on and off trams. It was an exchange of glances only but his heart missed a beat. Two powerfully built men in their forties who walked like Unteroffiziere and wore their cheap blue suits like uniforms. They followed him into Wilhelmstrasse, working the pavements in tandem and with a professionalism that suggested they were of a different calibre to the state gendarmes he’d encountered so far.

After the note he had sent to Casement, he was expecting something of the sort, but not quite so quickly. He was very relieved to reach the sanctuary of his new country’s embassy. ‘That’s Turkey,’ he thought as he climbed the stairs to the trade section on the first floor.

Secretary Boyd was dictating a letter to a clerk. He didn’t look pleased to see Wolff.

‘I’ve been instructed not to talk to you,’ he said brusquely. ‘From Ambassador Gerard himself. No assistance. No contact. Persona non grata.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s best you leave.’

‘If you explain…’

‘I can’t.’

‘Then I will have to see the Ambassador.’

The trade attaché looked horrified. ‘All right, Adams, we’ll finish this later.’ He dismissed the clerk with a wave and rose quickly from his desk, catching his thigh against its edge. Wolff watched him hobble to the door and shut it firmly.

‘The Ambassador won’t see you.’ He was still gripping the handle, his eyes locked on the floor. ‘He’s got more pressing concerns.’

‘He will see me. I’m an American.’

‘Oh?’ he snorted sceptically. ‘Look, it’s somethin’ to do with your business, that’s all I can tell you.’

‘Westinghouse?’

‘Yes. No. Instructions from the State Department. Look, I want you to leave at once.’

‘But it was a matter concerning Westinghouse?’

‘I’ve said too much already.’

‘You haven’t said anything.’

‘That’s not what the Ambassador thinks,’ Boyd said, lifting his eyes to Wolff’s face at last. ‘Unprofessional. Damn stupid,’ he barked in the straight-talking manner of Ambassador Gerard, flushing at the recollection. ‘There you have it, Mr de Witt. Too much charity.’ He frowned unhappily. ‘It’s that business in the papers, the Boers and their rifles. Made a bit of a fool of me, didn’t you?’