Andrew Williams - The Poison Tide

‘You are threatening me, Captain Smith?’ Rintelen laughed, grimly. ‘I was taken from the ship by your boarding party.’

‘That’s as may be. You were travelling on false papers. Your army shot Miss Cavell for less.’ Cumming lifted his chin pugnaciously. ‘You must have read about her case in the New York papers.’

Rintelen didn’t reply but returned his gaze without flinching.

‘You know you were sacrificed by your Count Nadolny — yes, you smile, but this –’ Cumming tapped the signal in his jacket pocket — ‘this is proof enough. You were making too many waves in New York, things were becoming difficult for the other network — Delmar was more important than you. It was simple enough to shut you down: a word to the newspapers and the police and…’

‘Real-ly, Captain Cumming.’ The patient smile slipped, the faultless English too and he leant forward to smack the palm of his right hand on the desk. ‘Yes, I know who you are, and your Secret Service — I know who is responsible for putting me here. Was he working for you or for Admiral Hall? It does not matter. But now we are finished,’ and he began to rise.

But Cumming wasn’t finished. Threatening, scowling like a playground bully, then coaxing with more bitter coffee and some sympathy. He pressed hard because Rintelen expected him to. He learned nothing more of importance but he had learned enough, and when the prisoner was taken away he placed a call to the director of Naval Intelligence to tell him so. ‘As we feared, Admiral.’ He knew he was betrayed and he knew it was by a British spy, and although Cumming hadn’t probed deeper for fear of giving something more away, he thought it likely Rintelen would have named his chief suspect ‘de Witt’.

‘Do you think he’s informed anyone?’ Hall enquired, pensively. ‘We may have picked him up before he was able to.’ But it was impossible to say and because they couldn’t, they would have to take a chance.

‘It was always going to happen like this,’ Hall observed, ‘Rintelen doesn’t know Delmar…’

‘…We’re pushing Wolff’s luck.’

‘No alternative,’ Hall said, and reluctantly Cumming agreed — no alternative. And yet, waiting beneath the great Gothic entrance arch for his motor car to be delivered to the steps, he was troubled by the recollection of almost the same risk taken two years before. Wolff had spent nine punishing months in a Turkish jail and it had almost broken him. Hadn’t they said ‘no alternative’ then?

THE CHILDREN RETURNED with their nanny at dusk, then Frau Albert in the motor car, the chauffeur following her up the steps with an armful of parcels. A few minutes later Wolff glimpsed the silhouette of her full figure at a second-floor window before a maid drew the curtains. White stone house in the neo-classical style, six storeys, quiet tree-lined street in a fashionable part of the Upper East Side: the man the papers had dubbed an architect of terror lived well. Have the neighbours forgiven you? Wolff mused, as he waited at the wheel of the motor car. Well-to-do people have short memories. The worst crime a gentleman might commit in what the real-estate sharks were calling the Gold Coast streets was to lose one’s money. The sabotage story was already last year’s news; the headlines of that morning’s World were of a rise in the country’s gold reserves, and shipyards too busy to handle new orders, the President ready to embark on his ‘America First’ tour of the Midwest. Besides, the German gentleman in the bowler hat who walked briskly home with cane and case every evening did not cut a dangerous figure — or even a memorable one.

Gaunt’s runners had logged his routine, his contacts, and the traffic in and out of his Broadway office. ‘Just as you’d expect,’ the naval attaché reported. ‘Leaves home at seven thirty, spends all day at his desk, home again at eighteen thirty sharp. No mistresses, no trips to the theatre, no restaurants. No fun. He might be keeping his head down, but you know, I think he’s just a dull man.’ Distant father and husband, grumpy with the servants, a Polish maid had confided to one of the runners. ‘A real bringer of joy,’ Gaunt had observed drily.

Wolff glanced at his watch, extinguished his cigarette, then stepped down from the motor car. I’ll shake my chains at him, he thought with a smile; an unpleasant smell too close to home. The street was wreathed in threads of a freezing mist that put him in mind of the afternoon he had wandered in Hyde Park with his first confused thoughts of Casement and the operation. It was almost twelve months to the day. Had the smog cleared? He hardly knew.

Once in a while a taxicab ground down to a hotel on the corner, and there was a trickle of commuters from the omnibus stops on Madison and Park, collars up, hats down, gazes fixed on the sidewalk: ordinary men with tan leather cases, well-pressed suits and regular office hours. Wolff watched them without envy. Bowler and cane, straight back and steady gait, Albert was easy to spot even in the mist, almost gliding from one puddle of yellow lamplight to the next.

All right, give him a few more yards . Moving with the precision of a Patek timepiece, two, three, four, and Wolff was away, stalking across the street, into his path.

‘Dr Albert.’

‘I am sorry, I don’t know you…’ But then his expression changed from puzzlement to alarm, like a cat’s paw ruffling the surface of a calm sea. ‘De Witt!’

‘ Mr de Witt, if you please,’ Wolff replied in German. ‘I would like a brief word…’ and he took Albert’s arm. ‘There’s a car across the street, Doctor.’

‘What are you doing here?’ He shook himself free. ‘Our business is over. I’ve nothing to say.’

‘Let’s not draw attention to ourselves. I suppose you know your office is watched?’

‘I’ve nothing to say,’ he repeated icily and he tried to push past, lifting his stick in a half-hearted threat.

‘I wouldn’t, Doctor. Please stay calm. Goodness, a contract is a contract — you of all people should understand that!’ Wolff grasped his arm tightly this time. ‘Just here, Doctor.’

‘I’ve nothing to say to you,’ he protested again, but he permitted Wolff to guide him to the car. They sat side by side in the front, Albert’s thin face in shadow, his eyes sickly in the light of a streetlamp.

‘Your contract was terminated when our associate was obliged to return to Germany,’ he declared flatly.

‘Oh? Has Germany surrendered?’ Wolff asked sarcastically.

‘What do you want, Herr de Witt?’

‘I wish to continue serving His Imperial Majesty on the same terms.’

‘I told you, your contract is terminated. Captain von Rintelen has gone. Detained at sea by the British…’ he paused to consider his words carefully; ‘…his former associates are of the view he was betrayed.’

‘Not by me. My record speaks for itself.’

‘That’s as may be. I have no part to play in those kinds of—’

Wolff interrupted: ‘Save it for the police, Albert. We both know the war here in America isn’t going to end with this small setback — only to be expected, in my view. Your Rintelen was a man of vision, no doubt, but careless. Who’s in charge of things now — Hinsch?’

Albert’s features were stiff and cold, like a bureaucratic corpse.

‘Make the contact for me.’ Wolff reached into his coat for a slip of folded paper. ‘Hinsch can leave a message at this address.’

After a moment’s thought, Albert dipped his index and forefinger as if plucking the paper from a muddy pool. ‘Don’t come to my home again.’