Andrew Williams - The Poison Tide

‘There was someone who helped us,’ Thwaites admitted cautiously. ‘This man of yours, he drowned?’

‘Murdered. Stabbed in the heart.’

‘I see.’ Thwaites cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry.’ His eyes were fixed on the policeman’s shield. ‘Of course, I’ll ask him, Captain. If I can reach him. After all this…’ he lifted Koenig’s file, ‘…he will be keeping his head down. They might be chasing him.’

Laurel was a dormitory town on the Royal Blue with nothing to distinguish it from half a dozen others along the line but a sanatorium for the treatment of nervous diseases and a thoroughbred racetrack. At weekends in summer, punters from the capital caught a train to its little brick station, then a bus to the course; on every other morning the town’s menfolk made the journey in the opposite direction, returning at seven in the evening. During the day the station was haunted by an old man in dirty blue denims who blew his whistle, spat and offered advice whether it was asked for or no. The temperature close to freezing, old Joe hovered at the stove in the ticket hall, puffing on a corncob pipe as if he’d stepped from the pages of a Mark Twain story. Anxious to avoid him, Hilken parked behind the station and sat at the wheel gazing into the darkness for a plume of steam. He expected Dilger to be on the 4.45 from Washington. He was bound to be jumpy, reflected Hilken wryly, remembering the state he had worked himself into.

But the doctor confounded his expectation. Tipping his hat to a lady, summoning Joe and the cart for her trunk, he sauntered through the steam and smoke with his hands in his overcoat pocket, the Good Samaritan at ease with his neighbours. Hilken stepped from the motor car to greet him.

‘Pleasant journey, Doctor?’ he enquired, for something to say.

‘I wasn’t followed, if that’s what you mean,’ Dilger replied laconically.

They sat side by side in the front of the car, a copy of the World open on Dilger’s knees.

‘I think we do nothing for now, do you agree?’ Hilken said.

‘And if Hinsch is in tomorrow’s paper?’

‘He will keep his mouth shut. It’s in his interests…’ Hilken sighed heavily. ‘You know, we always said this might — would — happen in time. Berlin said so too.’

‘Yes.’

They sat in silence for a while, their breath slipping down the windscreen, then Hilken said: ‘You should come to Baltimore for Christmas.’

‘The problem we spoke of before… Hinsch’s man with the disease…’

‘The man in the hospital? That was dealt with satisfactorily.’ Hilken shook off his driving gloves and blew into his hands. ‘I’ll tell Hinsch, no more. Keep away from the Irish. Until the dust settles. Perhaps after Christmas. The Secret Service and the police will take a close look at all the German sailors here — it’s the end for the Friedrich der Grosse . But there’s no reason to assume it will go further — to Baltimore.’

‘Is it worth it, Hilken? What have we achieved?’ Dilger shook his head slowly. ‘I would have done better service for Germany in a hospital.’

‘Doctor, three ships in the last month. A thousand remounts lost to the Allies — and Rintelen’s network did some good work — look.’ He snatched the newspaper from Dilger’s knees, peering in the gloom at a list on the front page. ‘Ships, the Dupont factories, Canadian Car and Foundry — small things but it isn’t finished yet.’ It was foolish but he was angry with Dilger for sharing his doubts. ‘Your Count Nadolny chose you — and the letter you told me about, from the Chief of the General Staff — Falkenhayn?’ Clumsily, he was trying to stiffen not just the doctor’s resolve but his own. ‘It’s our duty to Germany,’ he said resentfully. ‘And, Doctor, in a few months you’ll be able to leave the United States.’

The thought hung in the cold air between them. A train — the twenty past the hour — was pulling into the station. The next one from Baltimore would be carrying the first commuters home.

‘You’re risking a great deal, Paul, I know,’ Dilger acknowledged apologetically. ‘You know I’ll do my duty. It was never the Count’s intention that I should stay for long. I’m going to train someone to do the work when I’m gone.’

‘Can you?’

‘It isn’t difficult.’

Hilken nodded. ‘As you wish, but do nothing for now. Visit Frau Hempel in New York. Come to me, your sister can come too. There’s always a good party at the Baltimore Germania Club.’

They talked for a little longer and made half-hearted plans for a second visit to the opera, perhaps a weekend at the Hilken beach house on Long Island or the Dilger farm in Greenfield. At a quarter past the hour, old Joe stepped out of the ticket office again and a few minutes later the track began to sing.

‘I’ll catch this one,’ said Dilger flatly.

‘And the glasses at the Hansa Haus?’ He’d just remembered the phials in the safe.

‘Throw them in the sea or leave them in the safe — as you wish.’

‘Simple to replace, you say?’

‘If you know what you’re doing.’ Dilger had opened the car door and was perched at the edge of the seat. ‘I’m going to instruct my brother.’

‘Your brother?’ Hilken didn’t disguise his astonishment. ‘Is he a doctor?’

‘He’s a brewer.’

‘A brewer?’

‘Yes. A good one.’ Dilger stepped down stiffly, smoothing his coat then rising on his toes to encourage feeling back into his feet. ‘Don’t worry, Hilken, he’s perfectly capable.’

‘And he can be trusted?’

‘He’s a good German.’

And once you have taught him to culture your diseases you will leave your simple brother the brewer and your simple sister and return to Germany with your opera singer. Doctor, Hilken reflected as he watched Dilger walk to the station, you’re more cold-blooded than I thought.

‘The Secret Service wants to kick it into the long grass,’ Wiseman said to Thwaites in the grill room at the Astor that evening. ‘It’s made ’em look foolish. And the President’s people don’t want anything to raise the temperature with Germany this close to election year. They’re happy to leave it to the police.’ He put down his knife and fork and dabbed his moustache with his napkin. ‘How about your Captain Tunney?’

‘He wants help.’ Thwaites paused. ‘It may be awkward.’

‘Oh?’ Wiseman enquired, turning to catch the eye of the waiter. ‘Ask the sommelier to bring another, would you?’ he commanded, flicking his hand at the bottle.

‘Tunney’s lost one of his runners,’ Thwaites explained. ‘Chap called Kelly. Thinks he was murdered by Rintelen’s crew. Sore affronted.’

‘Perhaps Wolff can help—’

Thwaites interrupted. ‘Sorry, I should have been clearer. This fellow, Kelly, well, he was stabbed — through the heart apparently.’

Wiseman checked the glass he was raising to his lips. ‘Ah.’ It hovered there for a few seconds as he considered the implications, then he took a sip. ‘And he hasn’t any idea who—’

‘No. But he would appreciate our assistance. He’s a determined sort, I’m afraid. I think he’s going to worry away at it.’

‘Kelly, you say.’ Wiseman was gazing reflectively into the body of the restaurant, crystal twinkling in the candlelight, gentlemen in white tie, their ladies in satin, a murmur of contentment and money, punctuated by the ring of silver. ‘Wonder what it is like to kill a fella with a name,’ he remarked at last. ‘Have you? Don’t think we should mention it to Wolff. His conscience is a little fragile.’

REST, THE DOCTOR ordered, so they moved Wolff to a boarding house on Lexington, Thwaites’ valet to play nurse. For a time he drifted in submarine darkness, babbling of home and a man in a derby hat. But by the third day he was well enough to hold his tongue and order his thoughts, turning his back on blue hills to stroll along Broadway, a free man, engineer, a speculator — he needed some risk — with his particular friend, Miss Laura McDonnell of Philadelphia. Head on pillow, turned to the bright window, he wanted her as a man desires a pretty woman, but for her faith too: in the pursuit of liberty and the ruin of great empires, a just and equal society; for her conviction that no other cause was worthy of great sacrifice. The nature of her brave new order didn’t impress Wolff as much as her belief that it would be built in time. ‘Bolshie,’ Thwaites and the wise men of the half-world they shared would say, but Wolff didn’t care for their opinion.