Andrew Williams - The Poison Tide

‘What on earth…’

‘No. Let the doctor speak,’ Hinsch insisted. ‘How long?’

‘Which one?’

‘Anthrax.’

‘Do you know how he caught it?’

‘No.’ He ground the rest of his cigarette into an ashtray. ‘Look, I haven’t seen him; he’s in hospital.’

‘He’s in hospital!’

‘I said so.’

‘Oh God.’ Dilger leant forward with his elbows on the table, his forehead in his hands as if in prayer. ‘I don’t know, perhaps a week — less if he inhaled spores.’

‘Calm yourself, Doctor,’ Hilken whispered. He turned his head deliberately to check the café.

‘There’s no one. I’ve seen to that.’

‘It seems as if you’ve seen to rather a lot, Captain,’ Hilken remarked sharply.

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he replied indignantly. ‘I told the fool, “No mistakes or you’re done for.”’ The sick man’s wife had contacted one of Hinsch’s lieutenants at about half past eight, just as the Queen of the Night was making her first curtain call. ‘He’s in a ward at the Bellevue.’

Hilken stroked the end of his trim little moustache thoughtfully. ‘Has he spoken to the police?’

‘I don’t know. The wife says he’s a mess.’

‘Has she spoken to the police?’

‘She doesn’t know anything.’

‘Are you sure? By God, you better be sure,’ Hilken declared fiercely.

‘This is the end.’ Dilger dragged his elbows back across the table as if the conversation was over and he was ready to rise. If it was the end, most of him didn’t care.

‘You give up too easily, Doctor,’ Hinsch observed sourly. ‘He knows nothing of you.’

‘He knows you.’

‘Not for much longer, Doctor,’ Hilken interjected; ‘not if your diagnosis is correct. But…’ he paused, anxiously smoothing the end of his moustache again, his cuff retreating to reveal an expensive-looking wristwatch, ‘…we can’t take a chance. Someone must visit him.’ He sighed heavily and sat back from the table. ‘As soon as possible.’

‘That’s madness,’ Dilger exclaimed hotly.

‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s the only way.’

‘Why? What possible…’ But the answer was written plainly in the determined lines of Hilken’s face. Not money or flowers or a word of comfort; ‘You’re going to kill him.’

‘You’ve done that already, Doctor.’

‘He’ll be in an isolation ward, but that might make it easier,’ Hinsch remarked, scratching his beetle brow with a crooked forefinger. ‘We need to finish him without a mark. How? What do you say, Doctor?’

He tossed the question with a gallows sneer — doctor and opera lover, what do you say? — and the doctor flinched but said nothing because there was nothing he could say.

‘I’m sure your people can manage it without any help from us, Captain,’ Hilken replied coolly.

They sat in strained silence in the taxicab to their hotel but in the lobby Hilken took his arm and drew him into a corner. ‘Difficult times. We serve the best way we can,’ he said, thrusting his face close to Dilger in an effort to communicate his sincerity. ‘You mustn’t let it upset you.’

Dilger wanted to laugh but he felt a little sick. ‘You know what upsets me most? That it doesn’t upset me anywhere near enough.’

‘Oh? Well, it’s war,’ Hilken offered tentatively. ‘Look, I know it’s early but let’s have a drink.’

‘You know we swear never to harm others.’ Dilger closed his eyes for a moment, gathering the image of a brightly lit lecture room, a small dark painting of his great-grandfather Tiedemann high on the wall behind the professor. ‘Before today, I still thought of myself as a doctor.’

‘You are a doctor. Come on,’ Hilken shook his arm. ‘He’s just another casualty, one more casualty.’

Over the next few hours Dilger’s doubt and guilt reached fever pitch. But in the afternoon a bellboy delivered a second pink envelope from the opera. Dinner at the Hofbräuhaus on Broadway with Mencken, the newspaper man, and some German bankers whose names she couldn’t remember, and darling, collect me at a little before eight.

Of the dying stevedore there was no mention in the cable to Berlin. It was sent in Agent Delmar’s name, although he knew nothing of its content. An enciphered message slipped across the counter on Broadway and Dr Albert and his people saw to the rest. Dilger was fastening his shirt studs and the hotel valet was brushing his top hat by the time the signal began its journey up the stone stairs of the General Staff Building and along one of the many broad corridors the midday sun never managed to penetrate. The chief clerk in Section P presented it to Nadolny in a thin red leather file the size and shape of a fine restaurant menu, and the Count stood at the window behind his desk to consider its contents, turning his red intaglio ring and gazing out distractedly at the Reichstag.

‘Send this by courier to headquarters, for the eyes of the Chief of the General Staff only,’ he said, turning to his clerk. ‘Actually, no. That is not necessary.’ And placing the file on his desk he bent to write a line that stated simply the first phase of Delmar’s operation had begun. ‘Encipher and telegraph this to General von Falkenhayn — and you can show in Sir Roger.’

The two months since their last meeting had not been kind to Casement. He was thinner, his eyes more deeply set and the Count was struck by how slowly he walked down the room.

‘You have not been well,’ he said, shaking Casement’s hand and directing him to a chair.

Casement dropped into it with a sigh of frustration. ‘I’m kept idle and useless, Count. The men of my brigade are still treated as prisoners — I’m not much more than a prisoner myself. Is it any wonder it has brought me low?’

‘But I understand you have barely enough of your countrymen for a company, Sir Roger,’ Nadolny observed.

‘There were assurances of arms and men for a rising in Ireland but I’ve been here more than a year and—’

The Count cut him off. ‘I’m sorry, Sir Roger, I asked you to visit me to discuss a more pressing matter.’

Casement seemed startled. ‘Is there something…’

‘Your courier, Christensen — he has just returned from America?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did your Irish friends write to you?’

Casement said they had.

‘Then perhaps you know your servant was caught spending the money they intended for you on a common showgirl he pretended was his wife.’

Casement’s forehead creased with concern. He knew and it was plainly a source of pain. ‘A misunderstanding,’ he said. ‘Christensen has spoken to me about it and I believe—’

Nadolny interrupted again. ‘You can explain it to your comrades in New York, Sir Roger — it is of no interest to me.’ He paused, leaning forward, his hands clasped in a fist on the desk. ‘There is a much more serious matter, one that touches on the security of Germany. Your valet passed through Christiania on his way back to Berlin?’

‘He did.’

‘Our people in the city say he tried to make contact with the Head of the British Legation there — a man called Findlay.’

Casement’s face was white with shock, his hands gripping the wooden arms of his chair tightly. ‘I’m sure there’s an explanation. I trust Adler completely — with my life. There will — there is an explanation, Count. Your spies may be—’

‘Wrong? No,’ Nadolny replied shortly. ‘I have told you this as a courtesy, Sir Roger. We will question him.’ Then, with a wry smile, ‘but for now it would be wise to make other domestic arrangements.’

‘Arrangements?’ Casement seemed close to tears.