Andrew Williams - The Poison Tide

Did Maguerre believe him? At a little before four o’clock he was joined at the table by a man with a face baked and wrinkled by the sun. He said his name was Cronje and that he’d served in the ‘last war’ and had the honour to be Maritz’s representative in Germany. He looked as if he’d just ridden in from the Highveld in his long tweed waistcoat and jacket, and after a few minutes he slipped into the taal .

‘Don’t take me for another of your farmers,’ Wolff replied curtly in Dutch.

But Cronje wasn’t a simple Boer. He gazed at Wolff with the dispassionate eye of the experienced interrogator, the eye of one who has witnessed the worst a man can be. For an hour he picked at the threads of Wolff’s story, his questions always to the point, probing, probing for the smallest inconsistency to threaten the fabric of the whole. Perhaps he thought he’d found it because he kept returning to the identity of de Witt’s go-between for the arms shipment. A name, he insisted in his tight-lipped South African way, a name.

‘Maritz’s people call him “the Stork”,’ Wolff said at last.

‘And only you know his real identity, Herr de Witt?’

‘That’s right,’ he replied. ‘You know in Holland, Herr Cronje, the stork is…’

‘The bringer of treasure.’

‘Yes.’

‘And who paid for this treasure?’

‘Friends who trust me to keep my mouth shut.’

‘Who has that sort of money?’

‘I’ve told you, I won’t say,’ he snapped.

‘We’re friends here.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, yes,’ interjected Maguerre. He’d been wriggling impatiently for a while, breaking into exchanges to insist they were repeated in German, making no effort to stifle his yawns. It was plain that he had no time for the Boer. ‘We have enough information to speak to the Count,’ he said, rising from the table. ‘If you’ll excuse us, Herr de Witt.’ He gazed down his nose at Cronje for two or three seconds, then turned to the door.

Cronje didn’t move, he didn’t reply. His face was inscrutable, with only a suggestion of colour rising to his cheeks. His dark-brown eyes were fixed on Wolff, his rough hands clasped on the table. Then, slowly, theatrically, he looked away and down as if he were itching to spit on the stone floor.

‘Herr Cronje, we mustn’t keep the Count waiting,’ commanded Maguerre from the door.

The Boer caught Wolff’s eye again. ‘Shit,’ he muttered in the taal . ‘Shit.’ He stroked his chin thoughtfully with his thumb and forefinger, then, dropping his hands to his knees, he gave a heavy shrug to suggest that he suspected him but didn’t care: his ‘Shit’ was a plague on both their houses.

Once, as a small child, Wolff had lost his way in a fenland mist, conscious that a step from the path might be his last, alive to every sound, the reeds rustling on the banks of the dyke, a large bird breaking its waters, his pulse racing, and yet floating, detached, as if in a dream. Stretching on his bed in the hotel the following morning, he reflected that he’d found his way through his interrogation in much the same way. After Turkey, he’d wondered if he would be able to. Self-belief was a spy’s armour. Other performers could draw confidence from the approbation of an audience but no one slapped a spy on the back after his turn. Spies pulled their tricks alone. Only a job for the right sort of person, C liked to say. ‘That, sir, is a meaningless cliché,’ Wolff had once had the audacity to remark. ‘Who is the right sort of person?’

‘You’re the right sort of person, Wolff. An adventurer, clever, resourceful, patriotic… ah, you scoff, but—’

‘A loner,’ Wolff had interrupted. ‘A morally ambivalent loner actually, or is that just what you become after a while in the Service? Someone who loses himself in his disguises.’

C had leant forward to examine his face more closely, pinching the edge of his monocle. ‘That isn’t the right sort of person, Wolff,’ he’d commented. ‘That’s a professional hazard. The right sort of person holds on to himself.’

Wolff rolled on to his side and reached across to the bedside table for his drink. He was too tired to sleep and still a little on edge. It had ended so suddenly and not at all as he’d expected. Maguerre had escorted him down the stairs at dawn and spoken as one gentleman to another. Apologies for the lateness of the hour… one or two points to clear up another time… and they’d walked with lazy steps as if reluctant to say goodbye. Through a window, he’d glimpsed a car in the courtyard with its acetylene lights burning, waiting perhaps to take him to his hotel. It felt wrong. Surely they weren’t going to let him go without asking him? Perhaps they weren’t going to release him after all. All sorts of possibilities had flitted through his mind.

The Count must have watched him saunter down the stairs, coolly appraising him as only spies and clever tarts know how, processing every detail of his carriage, every flicker of emotion in his face, considering his likely qualities. Lying on his bed, tinkling the ice in his glass, Wolff could picture him in the shadow of the vast entrance hall like a magician in the wings. Click, click, his shoes had echoed round the empty hall as he approached them with a smile.

‘Count.’ Wolff had greeted him with a stiff bow. ‘It’s you I have to thank for my detention here, I suppose.’

‘And for your release too, Herr de Witt,’ he’d replied.

‘For that, I’ll reserve my thanks.’

He said his name was Rudolf Nadolny and that he worked for the Foreign Ministry, but with one half of Europe at war with the other he was of more service at home than in an embassy.

‘Rescuing innocent foreigners from our police,’ he added smoothly.

Wolff raised his eyebrows sceptically.

‘You are innocent, aren’t you, Herr de Witt?’

‘It depends who you ask.’

Nadolny scrutinised him closely. There was the suggestion of a smile on his lips but not in his eyes. He wanted an answer and it wasn’t necessary to say so. But for the scar on his left cheek he looked like the middle-ranking diplomat he claimed to be, and yet the force of his personality was quite out of the ordinary. Wolff had found himself blustering that he was a businessman and an American, that he was tired and he would be grateful if the Count would arrange to deliver him to his bed.

He closed his eyes and pulled a face at the recollection. He had wanted to present himself to them as a steady sort, discreet, reliable.

Nadolny had accompanied him to the motor car. Waiting in the beam of its lamps was the young police lieutenant who’d lifted him from the hotel eight hours before. The sun was creeping up the wall of the building they had left but in the courtyard it was still dark and would be until the summer. Above the rattle of the Opel’s engine and the crunch of gravel, Wolff had heard a confused echo, a man shouting a single word over and over, perhaps a name. As he walked round the car to the passenger door it became distinct enough for him to be sure it was coming from a barred window somewhere near the top of the block facing him.

‘Someone less fortunate than me?’ he’d observed to Nadolny.

‘Yes.’

The second the Count acknowledged the shouting, it stopped, as if at his command someone had lifted a phonograph needle from a disc. Bastards, Wolff thought.

‘You aren’t planning to leave Berlin, are you, Herr de Witt?’

‘No, Count.’

‘Good,’ and he’d offered Wolff his hand. ‘The Minerva, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes.’ He had glanced away as if trying to recall something he wanted to ask. The passenger door on the other side opened and shut and the engine roared as the driver slipped the Opel into gear. ‘Yes, there was one thing…’ the Count said at last, his voice barely audible. ‘Why did you visit…’