Andrew Williams - The Poison Tide

‘You’re going to the Front,’ she said, raising her right hand a little in alarm.

‘No, no,’ he assured her. ‘I’m going home, to America.’

‘America?’ For a second she was relieved. ‘For how long?’

Before he could answer there was a knock at the door and the maid entered with a tray. The china rattled as she brushed the back of a chair. Elizabeth sighed irritably. She’d been impatient with the servants since Peter’s death, and it was a wonder they had any. Good staff were hard to come by since the start of the war. There was going to be a shortage of pretty much everything.

‘It’s too dangerous,’ she declared, handing him a cup. ‘What about the British and — well — the Lusitania ?’

That his mission might be sunk by a German submarine made him smile.

‘No. Please, think of it,’ she demanded. ‘Why now, when we’re at war?’

‘It won’t be for long.’

‘It isn’t necessary,’ she persisted. ‘Is it Emmeline? Is she sick? She hasn’t said anything to me in her letters.’

Their sister Emmeline was well, all the family in America were well, he assured her, but there were things he must attend to.

What sort of things? she wanted to know. What could be so important that it would take him away from his work at the hospital and from his sister? Did she remember the last time they had visited their father’s farm at Greenfield? he asked her. Peter was old enough to ride. They’d spent hours on horses in the woods and meadows above the house. He had taken his nephew to New York City and they’d stared in wonder at 15 Park Row and the new Singer Building.

‘Why, Anton?’ She wasn’t to be deflected. ‘Tell me,’ she said with a stamp of her foot; thin straight lips, jaw set, the little Dilger dimple in her chin — a face full of determination. Just like mine, he thought.

‘Sister, I can’t tell you,’ he replied firmly.

She stared at him for a few seconds, the thumb and forefinger of her right hand plucking distractedly at her black skirt. ‘Don’t go, Anton,’ she pleaded. ‘Please don’t.’

‘It won’t be for long.’

Biting her lip, turning her face away: he reached for her hand but she pulled it away, fumbling with her sleeve for a handkerchief. ‘I can’t lose you… not you as well.’

‘You won’t.’ He gave a little laugh but it sounded strained. ‘Elizabeth — I’ll be back in a few months.’ She wasn’t to be reassured because she knew him too well. Why couldn’t he speak of it? It was something dangerous. Stay, said the siren voice, stay in Berlin, please stay; and he wanted to. What’s more, she knew he did.

‘Come back,’ she sobbed, her face wet with tears. ‘Please come back to me, Anton.’

But he left the house after lunch and walked all afternoon. In the evening he telephoned one of Frieda’s friends, a banker, a self-satisfied profiteer, boring, rich. They went to a cabaret and he drank too much wine. The following morning he took a taxicab to the Veterinary Academy. Half an hour later he left in another, his right hand resting firmly on the brown leather case.

THE BORDER POLICE ignored their military passes. A spy was attempting to leave the country, they said; everyone to be questioned, luggage searched — no exceptions. They were older men and cripples, unfit for the Front, grateful for a uniform, punctilious in the prosecution of their duties — Germany had more than its fair share of the type, even in peacetime — and they were thorough because they received the same ‘intelligence’ every day. Foreigners were escorted from the train to the station ticket office to wait their turn on low backless benches. Wolff sat between Christensen and the priest, briefcase and trunk at his feet. Like a music-hall joke, he thought, drawing heavily on his cigarette; by imperial appointment, misfits and conspirators. Ten miles from the border, a ticket to New York, money, the promise of more — they were so close that it frightened him. He had always said he didn’t believe in any luck he didn’t make for himself, but it felt too easy. On his last night in Berlin he’d copied the guts of his report on to sheets of tissue paper and sewn them into the lining of his coat with the dexterity of an experienced sailor.

The coat was lying across his knee when the police called him; over his arm as they rummaged through his luggage. They went through the pockets of his suits, tapped the heels of his shoes, felt the lining of his briefcase, handed his files to a police clerk, emptied his shaving kit and brushes on to the table; they fingered and peered at his possessions until the only pieces he had left were on his person, and then they searched him too. In the seconds it took the sergeant to go through the pockets of his coat he felt his skin prickling cold with fear. Later he wondered if the Count had planned a final check within spitting distance of the border to catch his guard a little lower. It was the story he knew he’d tell in his memoirs. Everything would have to be part of a great conspiracy in his memoirs.

The police didn’t ask many questions. He refused to answer any. Speak to Berlin, he said, and they didn’t press him for more. At a little before midday the train rattled across the border into the Netherlands, and for the first time in months he felt something like happiness. What is happiness, if not an absence of anxiety and pain?

‘A hostile place,’ Father Nicholson observed, leaning forward to peer out of the window at the cultivated farmland of the Overijssel. Wolff was still smiling.

‘Mr de Witt, I’ve heard stories of the British snatching people from here,’ the priest explained indignantly.

‘I don’t doubt it, Father,’ he replied, ‘but this is my home.’ At least, that was how it felt, like stepping out of the shade. Mr de Witt had done all that was asked of him — more. Coat neatly folded on the rack above Christensen’s head.

‘I know the fella in Rotterdam, Ryan — the American consul. Another one of us,’ said Nicholson. ‘He might be useful. We’ll be safe with him until we sail.’

‘You’ll be all right,’ muttered Christensen, eyes closed, head on chest. He’d lost patience with the priest too. Wolff didn’t judge as a rule; with priests he made an exception. It was the Dutch Protestant prejudice of his mother. Nicholson had sweated up the platform and offered his flabby hand like the next Pope. His holy mission was England’s ‘lasting defeat’. In Germany he’d talked like a young hero. ‘Important men’ trusted him and ‘fine ladies’ shared their confidences. ‘He’s a good man but a little garrulous,’ Casement had warned. ‘Look after him, please, he’s going to recruit in Boston for us.’ Casement tried to see the best in everyone. Father John was the sort of Irish cleric who was only inclined to love a neighbour wearing the green. Most of all he was in love with himself. Wolff listened to his fatuous pronouncements with patience before they crossed the border; once across it, the strain of months got the better of him and he fell into a deep sleep. He woke with a start as they pulled into Rotterdam, the priest standing over him like a fat crow.

They took a taxicab from the station to the Holland America Line pier. The Germans had booked tickets for them in second class because they were less likely to be noticed there. C would have done the same but to save money. She was the SS Rotterdam , twin-screw, four-cylinder quadruple expansion engines, displacing 15,000 tons.

‘Slower than the Lusitania ,’ observed Wolff with a wry smile.

Christensen squinted at her with a stoker’s eye and nodded. ‘By ten knots.’

‘And older than the Titanic. ’