Andrew Williams - The Poison Tide

Gaunt checked his cup a few inches from his mouth, then lowered it slowly on to the saucer. ‘Christ. They managed that? How?’

Wolff told him; some of it at least. He began by describing the strike meeting and how Rintelen was encouraging the Irish to stir up trouble in the ports. No need to worry about that one, Gaunt remarked imperiously; he was bankrolling people in the union too — they would sort out the Irish. Then Wolff told him of the Friedrich der Grosse , the network of saboteurs the Germans were putting in place, and that they’d sunk a number of ships already. ‘He’s set up a company to buy what he needs and…’

‘Cedar Street,’ interjected Gaunt. ‘Import–export — E. V. Gibbons Inc. My people followed him there.’

‘Emile V. Gaché,’ Wolff muttered to himself.

‘What?’

‘E. V. G. Not very imaginative.’

‘My Czech fellow says his company has spent a king’s ransom buying ammunition and other things, just to stop us getting our hands on it. Doctor Albert writes the cheques.’

Wolff reached into his jacket. ‘I have an appointment with him this afternoon. Damn…’ He held up a damp and crumpled cigarette. ‘Would you mind?’

The naval attaché leant forward with his case. ‘I want you to find out about this network.’ He looked at Wolff earnestly, belligerently, as if to say: ‘I am the commander of this operation and don’t you forget it when you are out there on your own.’

‘How are they smuggling the detonators past the guards?’ he asked, his mind rolling at the pace of a traction engine. ‘And this Agent Delmar — London has asked again.’

‘The Admiralty?’

‘Your lot.’ Rising quickly, he walked to the window, his shoulders wriggling in his uniform jacket. Wolff watched him as he gazed into the street below, a slight twitch at his eye. Your lot are sending someone. God knows why,’ he spoke as one for whom resentment is a habit. ‘Here…’ Taking an envelope from his jacket he tossed it to Wolff like a petulant schoolboy. ‘Bloody nonsense.’ It fell at his feet.

Wolff gazed at it for a moment, then picked it up and slipped it in his jacket.

‘Aren’t you going to look at it?’

‘Later.’

‘Later, sir. I’ll tell your fellow we don’t need anyone; wasting his time. I have it all in hand,’ he said, his senior service vowels slipping a little. ‘Perhaps we will have this sewn up by the time he arrives.’

Wolff raised his head enquiringly.

‘It’s obvious, man: the filing cabinets in his cabin. It’s in there, isn’t it? — the network, Delmar… everything.’

Dr Albert was typical of that stratum of middle-class men who are no more than the sum of their working lives and are only able to conduct relationships with others according to the rules and practices of their chosen profession. A man of precedents and privileges whose patent for life had been drawn up in a law faculty somewhere thirty years before. Pinched and dry, with bad skin and a scrappy grey moustache, he looked as if he had reached middle age without finding either just cause to laugh or demonstrative evidence for love.

He wanted no more involvement with de Witt than was necessary for the conclusion of a ‘satisfactory arrangement’ and was a little vexed to find that he was dealing with the sort of man who usually commanded his respect. ‘Most of Mr Gaché’s associates are… well, they are not educated men, Mr de Witt,’ he explained.

They were sitting in an office on the first floor of the Hamburg America building on Broadway, panelled like the stern cabin of a German clipper. ‘I have drawn this up on behalf of my client,’ he said, taking a file from a drawer and pushing it across the desk to Wolff.

It was the draft of a formal contract of employment with the company E. V. Gibbons Inc. ‘You are an engineer? Shall I say for “consultancy services”?’ He picked up his pen to make amendments. ‘Is something wrong?’

Wolff was smiling with amusement at the absurdity of a contract to commit acts of sabotage.

Dr Albert shook the knot of his tie irritably. ‘An initial period of three months?’

‘Is there any danger of you taking me to court for breach of contract?’

‘No, it isn’t likely,’ he replied slowly. ‘I expect my client would seek another form of redress.’ He examined his nails for a moment to allow Wolff time to consider the tenor of this observation. ‘Most of my client’s associates prefer to be paid in cash, of course, but he thought a professional man would need…’ he paused again, searching his lexicon for a legal euphemism.

‘An alibi?’

‘A more formal arrangement.’

Wolff pushed the contract back across the desk. ‘No.’

He stared at Wolff coldly for a moment, then put the file back in his drawer. ‘As you wish.’

They did agree on terms. A payment of four hundred dollars into the account of a Mr R. Curtis at J. P. Morgan on Wall Street. Albert pressed him to sign an invoice and he agreed, writing a false address and another false name. Every dollar had to be accounted for, Albert insisted. ‘It’s a process, you see.’

And when the process was over, his secretary escorted Wolff down to the lobby where half a dozen Hamburg America clerks sat twiddling their thumbs. At a desk a few yards from him was the fat man whom he’d seen slinking away from the strike meeting in the park. He looked just as guilty, perspiring with the effort of being alive. The clerk pushed a piece of paper towards him and he bent to sign it, resting his weight on his outstretched arm. Wolff guessed it was one of the fastidious Dr Albert’s receipts for cash-in-hand associates. Conscious that the fat man would see him if he glanced to his right, Wolff turned and fastened on a clerk for the address of an uptown restaurant. From the corner of his eye, he saw the fat man pick up an envelope and slip it into the pocket over his heart. Then, head rocking, he lumbered towards the door and out on to Broadway.

He was a surprisingly difficult man to follow. He moved warily in the shadows, his shoulder almost brushing walls and shopfronts, forcing sidewalk traffic to his left like a boulder at the edge of a fast-flowing stream. Catch me and the game’s up, Wolff thought; Dr Albert would write him off as a bad debt. But instinct and the envelope suggested it was something he couldn’t ignore. He didn’t expect a man that size to walk far. Sure enough, after a couple of blocks he hauled himself up the steps of the elevated at Fulton Street. Wolff held back for a few minutes but it was a busy station and he couldn’t afford to leave it for as long as he would have wished. He bought a five-cent ticket for the line, dropped it in the chopper, then drifted on to the platform. There were a dozen or so people waiting for the next train.

The fat man had wandered a few yards off but was still uncomfortably close. Wolff ambled in the opposite direction until he found a map of the elevated train network posted on the wall of a shelter, which he pretended to consult. He was considering what he should do next when the track began to sing. It was a Line 3 train all the way to Bronx Park with a score or more stops on the way. ‘Christ!’ He’d forgotten some of them pulled only a single carriage. ‘Lucky for once,’ he muttered under his breath: this time there were three. He watched the man climb into the first, then joined the last. At the next station he hovered by the door to confirm that the man was still on the train. The second stop was busy Chatham Square. For a moment he was distracted by an old Polish lady who pressed him to be a good citizen and help her from the carriage. The platform was crowded with commuters waiting for an express to take them across the Harlem River and it was not until the guard had blown his whistle and the train had taken up the slack that he noticed the fat man’s head swinging towards the barrier.