Andrew Williams - The Poison Tide

They stood for a few seconds in silence, she with half an eye to the meeting; he to Hinsch and Rintelen and their companions.

‘You’ll have to excuse me, Jan,’ she said at last. ‘There’s something I must do.’

He raised his eyebrows enquiringly.

‘I’m taking the names of men who will need strike pay.’

‘From their Swiss banker?’

She frowned and bit her lip. ‘If you mean your Mr Gaché, I don’t know.’

A burst of applause and cheering. Devoy was shaking hands with the platform party, slapping ‘Big Jim’ on the back, celebrating their little victory, an unholy alliance of Irish muscle and German money, an unofficial walk-out, a few days lost, some bullets, some shells. The goddamn price of famine, C would say. But no one at the Front would notice, the killing would go on as before, and sooner or later big American business would speak, no, shout, ‘Enough’, and the strike would be broken by a bribe or by policemen enforcing the free traffic of goods and services with the hard round end of a ‘paddy-whacker’.

‘I must go,’ said Laura, picking up her skirts.

‘Will I see you soon?’ he called after her.

Grinding his cigarette end into the grass, he turned with a sigh and strolled towards the little group of conspirators beneath the trees. As he approached, a very fat man detached himself from it and began to waddle away. He cast a furtive glance at Wolff, his face florid like a Bavarian butcher’s, chins rolling on to his chest, head rocking from side to side. Ageless, as fleshy people often are, and guilty, Wolff thought, the perpetrator of an unspeakable crime that would be discovered in the fullness of time.

‘Well met, Mr de Witt.’ Rintelen stepped out from beneath the tree to offer his hand — or was it to distract Wolff from his associate? ‘I saw you talking to Miss…’

‘McDonnell.’

‘An Irish lady?’

‘And American.’

‘What does Miss McDonnell think of our strike?’ His own view was plain enough, written boldly in his face.

‘Our strike?’

‘Another of Mr Gaché’s enterprises,’ he explained smugly.

Wolff nodded. ‘Mr Gaché is a resourceful man. Actually, he asked me to meet him here.’

‘To consult you on… let’s say, a technical matter.’ Rintelen looked carefully around the park. The meeting was over, the longshoremen were drifting home or chatting and smoking in tight circles. At a trellis table to the left of the dais, Laura and other members of the Clan were taking the names of those hoping to benefit from Gaché’s munificence. ‘I have an office, we can talk there,’ he said.

‘But first it was necessary to drag me out here.’ Wolff’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.

Rintelen laughed his short yelping laugh. ‘No, no, Mr de Witt, patience, patience, you shall see.’

SHE WAS BATHED in the last golden light of the setting sun like a large soprano taking her curtain call at the Hofoper.

‘Our piece of Germany,’ Rintelen observed as they walked along the quay towards her.

‘Fifteen knots?’

‘So, always the engineer,’ he replied coolly. ‘Yes, fifteen, with a fair wind . ’

Top-heavy, thought Wolff, her fine Atlantic lines spoilt by too much amidships, with all the passenger cabins in the superstructure: uncomfortable in a high sea. Two yellow funnels, probably two sets of quadruple expansion engines — that would be typical of her class — two minutes to walk from stem to stern, half a block on Broadway. Once the pride of the Norddeutscher Lloyd fleet, idle and rusting at a pier, the largest ship in a graveyard of ships.

A hefty sailor, a stoker once perhaps, was guarding the foot of the gangway. Instinctively he stiffened, his arm rising in what would have been a salute but for Rintelen’s sharp ‘Nein’.

‘A good German crew,’ he said as they walked up the gangway. ‘They know how to keep their mouths shut and von Kleist works them hard for me. So, welcome aboard the Friedrich der Grosse , Mr de Witt.’

A junior lieutenant had scurried down from the bridge to greet them. Did the Kapitän require assistance? he panted. The captain required two stout seamen to guard the passageway to his office. Just a precaution, he said with a strangled laugh, to be sure no one listened at the door, a British spy.

Wolff concentrated on his smile. Water-bloody-tight? Christ, it better be.

‘She’s perfect for my enterprise,’ Rintelen continued. ‘Is there a general at the Front in France with a finer headquarters than the Friedrich der Grosse ?’ Cabins, kitchens, workshops, one way on, one way off, impossible to approach undetected by day, and no one to hear a prisoner scream, Wolff thought, or discover a body weighted and buried according to the customs of the sea. Watertight? The damnedest thing; if his cover story leaked like an old bucket he wasn’t going to have an opportunity to take it up with Gaunt.

‘His Majesty stood where you stand now, Mr de Witt.’ Rintelen turned to the young officer, ‘A famous day, Braun.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Fifteen years ago.’ Rintelen shook his head as middle-aged men seeking the sympathy of peers at the passage of so much time are wont to do. ‘And you were fighting in South Africa?’

‘On my way.’

‘Different times. But the Emperor saw this day. He knew there would be war in Europe.’

‘Everyone saw this day, Captain,’ said Wolff curtly. No point in pretending de Witt had any affection for their Kaiser.

‘Not just that there would be war, but here, aboard the Friedrich der Grosse ,’ said Rintelen, tapping his foot and pointing animatedly to the few feet of deck between them. ‘He predicted how it would be fought, Mr de Witt. War in our time.’

‘I see. Well, when the cheering stops,’ replied Wolff sarcastically.

Rintelen’s smile came slowly. ‘I forgot — you are a practical man — and an impatient man. So,’ he said, with a gracious sweep of the hand, ‘we are ready.’

From the shelter deck, the lieutenant escorted them into a polished-panel passageway and up the main companionway to a stateroom on ‘A’ deck. ‘The dark invader’s office,’ said Rintelen without any trace of irony.

It was no more than a large first-class cabin with two ports on the starboard side, flock wallpaper, black lacquer furniture, and the bed had been replaced by three large oak filing cabinets. Rintelen walked over to the middle one and took out a folder and a cylinder of paper which he unrolled and anchored to the table. It was a draughtsman’s drawing of a cargo ship.

‘A technical matter, Mr de Witt. She is not the Titanic but an associate of mine thinks he has come up with a plan to cripple her rudder at sea — here…’ he nudged the file. ‘What do you think?’

‘And for this advice?’

He lifted his chin haughtily. ‘You will be compensated — if you are the engineer you claim to be.’

Wolff nodded and reached for the file. ‘A glass of water, please.’

‘Whisky?’

‘Yes.’

Careful notes, some sketches, a simple plan on paper; its architect knew what he was doing. Attach the charge to the rudder of the ship. In the tip of the charge, a needle-shaped pin to connect to the rudder shaft. Shaft turns, pin turns, boring its way into the mercury fulminate, detonating an explosion powerful enough to blow the rudder. Ship left helpless.

‘Well?’ Rintelen set the whisky on the table in front of Wolff.

‘It’s technically possible, yes.’

‘You do not sound sure.’

Wolff lifted his glass, squinting reflectively at the plans through the twinkling crystal. ‘It is possible.’ He raised it to his lips but lowered it again without taking a sip. ‘Is it a good plan? No, it isn’t a good plan.’