Andrew Williams - The Poison Tide

‘Ha,’ exclaimed Rintelen, sweeping his hand above the table in a grand gesture. ‘Enlighten me.’

‘You want to sink or damage the enemy’s supply ships, but this—’ Wolff was interrupted by the door. Hinsch rolled into the room, tossing his coat over a chair. ‘Well?’ He nodded curtly towards Wolff. ‘Is he any good?’

Rintelen ignored him. ‘Please, Mr de Witt.’

‘Simply because it will be very difficult for the diver to fit the detonator without being caught,’ Wolff’s hand trailed over the drawings, ‘and what about the water in winter? There are easier ways.’

‘A little more?’ Rintelen held up the whisky bottle.

Wolff shook his head. ‘And the diver would need to know what he was doing with the charge.’

Rintelen nodded thoughtfully. ‘So, what would you suggest?’

‘Don’t you know? You’re the Dark Invader.’ Yes, of course he knew; Wolff could see it in his face. ‘Just light the touchpaper, Captain. These ships are waiting to go off.’

‘The ammunition?’

Wolff laughed. ‘Enough. No more games. You know that’s what I mean, and you’ve tried, haven’t you?’

Silence as they stared at each other. A tinkle of ice. Hinsch was fixing himself a whisky American-style. Rintelen’s eyes flitting around Wolff’s face. He wanted to swot them away. One step forward and slap.

‘So, here…’ Rintelen looked away at last. Reaching for the file, he took out a copy of the Shipping News and spread it on the table in front of Wolff. ‘This report. The English ship, Beatus — lost with all hands and many tons of ammunition.’ He was fidgeting with the edge of the paper excitedly. ‘ Our success, Mr de Witt. Ours. ’

‘You sank her?’ Wolff raised his glass in salute. ‘Congratulations.’

‘There have been other English ships, but many failures.’

Hinsch snorted disdainfully. ‘Twenty-two.’

‘Too many, yes.’

‘The detonator?’ Wolff asked.

Rintelen shook his head. ‘The detonator is good…’

‘The Irish,’ interjected Hinsch. ‘The Irish are stupid…’

‘That is why we need you, Mr de Witt,’ Rintelen continued. ‘It could be profitable for both of us.’ He lifted the draughtsman’s plan from the table and began to roll it into the cylinder. ‘If I can trust you, of course.’

‘Isn’t it a bit late to decide?’

Rintelen was pretending to concentrate on the tube, long fingers scrabbling it tighter. ‘There!’ he remarked with a chillingly false nonchalance. He lifted the tube and his gaze to Wolff. ‘Not too late, Mr de Witt.’

‘No, I suppose it isn’t.’

‘But I can trust you…’

‘Yes, of course. Correct.’

‘Good.’ Scooping up the rest of the papers, he walked over to the filing cabinet and locked them back in the top drawer. ‘Now, Hinsch,’ he turned back to them both with his little smile, ‘let us show our new comrade the stock.’

Half-lit companionways from carpeted ‘first’ to steerage, into the echoing body of the ship and down to the boiler room; a stoker keeping vigil, tending the flame of a single furnace; plating clatters, bulkhead doors icy to the touch. Cursed by idle darkness, they walk in silence or whisper like intruders at the heart of a mountain, in a place where it is impossible to say ‘to thine own self be true’, until they come at last to a workshop, buried in the ship like the embers of a dying fire, full of noise and light that breathes, a dozen seamen grinding away at lathes, sparks and shavings showering the deck and their heavy workboots.

‘I bought the machinery through one of my companies,’ Rintelen shouted above the noise. ‘You see — Gaché is a proper businessman.’

Wolff picked up a strip of lead tubing from one of the workbenches. ‘Detonator casings?’

‘The business of destruction, Mr de Witt.’ He was revelling in the role he’d cast for himself. ‘Your Westinghouse, yes? I’ll buy what I can and blow up what I can’t.’

‘You attach some sort of timing mechanism?’

‘No, no, much better.’ He nodded to the chief petty officer and stepped back into the passageway. ‘So you see.’ He was still shouting, his voice ringing in the emptiness. ‘We set the detonator to go off when the ship leaves American waters. I will show you how, but not here.’

‘Yes, that would be useful if you want me to set them for you.’

This time Rintelen detected the irony and frowned disapprovingly, his small close-set eyes lost beneath his brow. ‘I am not short of people, Mr de Witt. I have people here and in Baltimore, Boston — in every port. But I need someone who can show them where to place the charges. My travelling representative, if you like.’

Wolff nodded slowly. ‘And for this service you will pay?’

‘I will pay well.’

A fine rain was falling, the lights of Manhattan almost lost in a soft mist. Rintelen tried to persuade him to stay because there was no possibility of a taxicab at that hour. Safer not to, Wolff replied.

‘You are careful,’ he remarked approvingly. ‘You are right to be. The English have spies, and the New York police sometimes. You need money?’

‘I want money.’

‘Visit Dr Albert. He will see you this time.’

‘You know how to contact me, Captain,’ Wolff said, pulling up the collar of his mackintosh.

‘Yes, I know how to contact you.’ His handshake was surprisingly limp and cold.

‘Goodbye.’ Wolff stepped on to the companionway.

‘The Emperor said we must be like the Huns, Mr de Witt, ruthless in pursuit of our victory.’

Reluctantly Wolff turned to face him again.

‘Here on this deck;’ Rintelen moved closer. His cheeks were shining wet in the ship’s lights, sallow like a Chinaman’s. ‘No prisoners. No quarter. I am a gentleman but this is not a business for gentlemen. I have become the Dark Invader.’

The preening villain again, von Brüning in The Riddle of the Sands , but Wolff was too afraid of him to laugh. ‘Your point, Captain?’

Rintelen’s sharp brown eyes were dancing about Wolff’s face again, his mouth hard and straight like an iron bar. ‘I’m sure we understand each other, Mr de Witt.’

The rain was quickening, heavy drops thundering on to the steel companionway steps, and Wolff was soaked to the skin by the time he reached the quay.

‘But my God, you look rough,’ observed Gaunt in his typically bluff fashion the following morning. He had arranged a room at the Prince George Hotel, between Madison and 5th. ‘The assistant manager’s son is on our side, he explained; ‘have to pay him, of course.’

The window was open, the room reassuringly full of the street three floors below.

‘Seen the papers?’ he enquired. ‘They shot Edith Cavell.’

‘Oh?’ Wolff didn’t have the slightest notion what he was talking about. ‘Is there any coffee?’ he asked, dropping into an easy chair. A shaft of sunlight burst through the window and he closed his eyes.

‘Wake up, for God’s sake, man,’ Gaunt commanded. ‘The British nurse… you must have read about her — here.’ He thrust a cup at Wolff. ‘She helped chaps caught behind enemy lines. Bad business.’ Standing above Wolff in his white uniform, bone-china cup almost lost in his fist, thin lips pursed in thought, ‘…but good in a way — it’s upset the Americans.’

He gazed down his long nose at Wolff for a few seconds more, then sat down, perching on the edge of the chair. ‘A fine-looking woman for her age,’ he noted between sips of coffee; ‘jolly fine.’

‘Heard of a ship called the Beatus ?’ Wolff asked. ‘She was lost with all hands sometime around the twenty-first.’