Andrew Williams - The Poison Tide

‘Dr Ziethen is going to demonstrate his ingenious device,’ Rintelen declared, rubbing his small hands with relish. ‘Doctor, would you?’

They walked to Ziethen’s motor car and their driver lifted a trunk down from the back seat. Inside it were at least twenty of the cigar-shaped detonator casings Wolff had seen in the ship’s workshop.

‘You drove these here?’

Ziethen blinked at him indulgently. ‘Perfectly safe, Mr de Witt. Here…’ and he tossed one to Wolff. It was surprisingly light; smooth and round at one end, flat at the other. Hollow inside but for a copper disc pressed and soldered halfway along its length, Ziethen explained; at one end of the device, picric acid, at the other sulphuric. It was simple but ingenious.

‘You understand?’ he asked.

Wolff nodded slowly. ‘I think so. The acid eats through the copper disc and the device detonates?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you set the time by altering the thickness of the copper disc?’

‘Correct,’ interjected Rintelen. ‘The beauty of it is, the acid melts the lead leaving almost no trace, so no one knows what caused the fire. But we will show you. How long, Doctor?’

‘How long?’ Ziethen lifted a watch from his waistcoat. ‘Just a few minutes, I think. Yes.’

‘No longer, I hope. We have a busy evening,’ Rintelen observed, glancing impatiently at his own watch.

Ziethen had set one of his devices in the long grass a few yards away, its position marked by a white peg. They stood side by side peering into the gloom like naughty boys waiting for a firecracker. Wolff lit a cigarette and had almost finished smoking it when a blinding flame burst from the device at last: white-hot, stiff, twelve inches high and completely silent.

‘You see?’ Rintelen demanded.

It burned for less than a minute. Fifty-three seconds precisely, according to the doctor’s pocket watch. Nothing remained of the casing but a few hot lumps of lead.

‘Just a question of putting our firework in its proper place.’ Rintelen bent to pull the white marker from the ground. ‘Your job, Mr de Witt,’ he said, tossing it into the trees. ‘But there are some arrangements I must make, if you will excuse me,’ and he turned to stride back to the motor car.

‘I’ve packed them in paper,’ Ziethen observed, at his side. ‘Try and keep them upright. Four will be enough, don’t you think?’ He coughed and looked down, shifting the scorched earth with the toe of his boot. It was made of fine Italian leather.

‘Place them near some combustible material. They may not burn long enough to ignite a shell, but if you manage to, get a good fire going. Perhaps you know this.’ He spoke ponderously and with a phrasing that suggested the flat farmland and long winters of East Prussia.

‘And how long will the fuse — the discs — last for?’ Wolff asked in English.

Ziethen hesitated, his hand drifting to his moustache. Was it supposed to be a secret or was he just surprised to be addressed in English?

‘Three, four days. Until the ship is out of American territorial waters,’ he replied in English.

‘Gentlemen, please.’ Rintelen summoned them to the motor car. He was standing in the circle of light cast by its lamps, a small briefcase in his right hand. It was seven o’clock but seemed later, darker. Wolff’s driver was sitting behind the wheel of the other motor car with the engine running.

‘Is our comrade ready, Dr Ziethen?’ Rintelen asked.

The doctor was examining his boots, recalling the white flame perhaps, or his bank draft from Albert, or the little redhead at Martha’s who crossed her legs just so. Or was it because he didn’t answer to the name ‘Ziethen’ as a rule?

‘Doctor!’ Rintelen dragged him from his stupor. ‘Please, Doctor. Does our comrade know all he needs to know?’

Ziethen glanced at Wolff, then nodded.

‘Good.’ Rintelen held out the case. ‘So, Mr de Witt, the opportunity you have been waiting for.’

The case was made of light-brown leather and would have looked well in the hands of a Wall Street banker.

‘You want me to…’

‘Yes.’ Rintelen thrust it towards him again. ‘Hinsch is waiting for you.’

Wolff lifted it carefully by the corners, then by the handle. ‘New York?’

‘Hans, your driver, will take you there,’ he said with a smile. ‘Good luck.’

Wolff held the case steady between his knees as they crawled back to the highway. If Hans was anxious, he gave nothing away. Just obeying orders: weren’t they all? There was nothing Wolff could do but sit tight until he was alone, a tenth of an inch of copper from incineration. If it didn’t end badly on the road there might be an opportunity to dump the detonators in the Hudson. He felt calmer on the highway. For a time the rhythm of the engine acted like an anaesthetic, his thoughts drifting and dissipating, just as they used to when he pounded the hard-baked fenland lanes of home.

They drove down to the Jersey waterfront, rumbling cautiously along cobbled streets, between brick warehouse blocks and busy dockside bars, sailors staggering along sidewalks, stevedores emptying from a shipyard gate. Then on past a freight train wheezing in a siding, across the tracks, turning left at a mission chapel, pulling up at last beside a patch of wasteground.

‘This is it?’ asked Wolff.

Hans didn’t answer but reached forward to extinguish the car’s kerosene side lamp. On the opposite side of the street, a dockyard wall and the sharp silhouette of cranes, Manhattan bright across the water. Wolff reached into his jacket for his cigarettes. It was colder and his hand trembled a little. Perhaps it was fear. His chest felt tight, his head ached too. ‘Look, do you have a light?’

‘There,’ replied the driver, nodding to the street. Someone close to the end of it was signalling with a small light, swinging it like a wrecker luring a ship to a reef. ‘All right, we are coming,’ he muttered, and he swung the Ford away from the kerb.

Hinsch greeted Wolff with his customary scowl. ‘You’re late.’ He was standing by the wall with two burly longshoremen he introduced in heavily accented English as Walsh and McKee. Wolff recognised McKee as one of the men he’d seen at the strike meeting with the leaders of the Clan.

‘The bombs?’ Hinsch asked, pointing to the case.

‘Yes.’

‘Then put these on.’ McKee handed Wolff a stevedore’s cap and a threadbare woollen coat that was too small and made his chest feel tighter still.

‘It is good,’ Hinsch observed. ‘You can go,’ and he nodded to McKee.

‘Hell’s teeth, what am I…?’

‘The job you were paid for, de Witt,’ he snapped in German.

At the end of the street they turned right and followed the wall for a hundred yards to the gates. Christ, they’re not going to be fooled by a flat cap, Wolff thought, the briefcase brushing against his suit trousers. But McKee must have arranged everything because the guards let them pass without a word. ‘Don’t open your mouth,’ he warned, as they walked across the yard. ‘I’ll see everything straight.’ They stopped by the door of a warehouse and he disappeared inside, returning after only a few seconds with a sack. ‘Put the case in this.’

Three piers ran at right angles to the quay, with three ships alongside. Munitions had been loaded aboard the nearest and an engine with empty wagons was waiting to leave the dock. Stevedores were shifting through its steam like wraiths, caught in silhouette against the arc lamps for a second, then away.

‘The Blackness of Liverpool. Three holds: two fore, one aft,’ McKee whispered as they walked towards her companionway. ‘Artillery shells for the Russians. You know what to do?’