Andrew Williams - The Poison Tide

‘Why?’ She smiled and reached for his other hand, clattering a knife against a plate and drawing the gaze of the waiter. ‘Don’t worry. Put it from your mind — and you didn’t ask, I offered.’

But she was wrong. He’d drawn it from her, tempting her into an act of faith. As they ate and spoke of other things, he considered the intelligence she had given him with something close to dismay. I shouldn’t have asked , he’d said to her with sudden clarity. Perhaps he’d hoped she would have the strength to hold her secret close. It was too late to put it from his mind, but he didn’t wish to hear more.

‘You seem distracted,’ she observed. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought you here. It’s a simple place.’

No, he assured her, it was perfect in its simplicity; and for a time he tried to bend his mind to easy conversation. But later a Polish pianist played in the restaurant, his bony fingers stroking the keys, and the aching poignancy of his music was almost too much to bear. Why did I press her? And during one short piece Wolff felt, then shaped, the conviction that Laura could never know. Never. He wouldn’t hurt her.

A Prelude in E minor by Chopin, she told him, as the manager helped her into her coat. ‘But it’s rather sad.’

Wolff met Wiseman the following morning. Gaunt and Thwaites were at the safe house too. They had summoned him to talk about the Germans and he sensed at once that they were bristling for a fight. ‘You must go to Baltimore,’ Wiseman insisted, as soon as the terse pleasantries were over. They were taken aback when Wolff agreed at once, even a little disappointed. Wiseman offered his reasons, although it was hardly necessary: ‘Can’t hold off any longer. Our masters have intercepted a wire authorising Agent Delmar to resume his activities. Been on holiday, what?’

For an hour they sat in the stuffy smoked-filled sitting room discussing Wolff’s best course, although there was really only one. ‘Our chaps down there will let you know when Hinsch is aboard his ship,’ Wiseman said. ‘It’s asking a great deal, I know.’ He was always charming enough to sound grateful. ‘Rough customer, Hinsch,’ he continued. ‘He may not be pleased to see you.’

Wolff was sure he wouldn’t be.

‘Didn’t expect you to roll over and offer your tummy like that,’ Thwaites observed when they were alone. ‘Quite took the wind out of Sir William’s sails.’

‘Is that possible?’ Wolff enquired.

He made light of his sudden acquiescence, falling back for an explanation on the first word in the Bureau’s lexicon, the word to trump all other words: duty. The truth? In so far as he was able to perceive the truth, his decision owed more to guilt than a sense of duty. Guilt, because even when Thwaites enquired, astutely perhaps, how things were ‘with your Fenian girl’, he chose to say nothing of plans for the Rising. He wasn’t entirely sure why. He’d meant to — and he knew it was topsy-turvy to chase a new secret in Baltimore in order to feel a little better about concealing the one Laura had shared with him: trading lies and loyalties.

I will tell them about Ireland — soon, he decided. I will. I have to because they are with the enemy. Casement, his garrulous sister, Laura …

Did he have a choice? There were boys from the fenland villages he knew well, stumbling with fear in their hearts into no-man’s-land, trench whistles ringing in their ears. In this together, C would say. But wasn’t that merely the shell of duty, like Norman Thwaites fighting for lads he’d left on the Turkish wire? Was there sense in such thinking? Where would it end? Was it thinking at all?

As he slipped out of the safe apartment, he remembered that his mother used to upbraid him in verse, the old cliché about the tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive . Christ, he’d been practising a long time. And now he was struggling with confused feelings, searching for a way to unravel some of the threads he’d spun, because… he admired Laura more than he should. He wanted her. Did he love her? He wasn’t sure, but if he didn’t quite yet, he knew he would soon. He’d stepped from a high building and the sidewalk was rushing towards him.

So, a month after his encounter with Dr Albert, Wolff caught a train to Baltimore, and from its new railway station took a cab round the harbour basin to the hard-working dockland district of Locust Point. At its eastern edge, in the shadow of the city’s historic fort, stood the Bremen pier where thousands of German immigrants had stepped ashore in the country they wished to make their home. In the years before the war, Captain Hinsch’s ship, the Neckar , was often to be seen there. Her last voyage had brought her to the pier with passengers and cargo a fortnight after the pistol fired in Sarajevo led to the outbreak of general hostilities. Since then, she had travelled no further than a cable distance to her new berth among the tramps and colliers plying their smoky trade from the wharfs at the tip of the point.

It was a cold day but blue, the sun bright on the water. The harbour ferry was steaming out of the old clipper yard on the opposite shore, the breeze whisking its plume away to the west in a horizontal line. Beyond the roof of a low shed, Wolff could see the frayed and faded house flag of Norddeutscher fluttering from the Neckar ’s foremast, and walking round it to the wharf, her sharp black bow. She was larger than he’d imagined, five hundred feet in length, riding high and rusting in the slack water of the dock. At the foot of her gangway, a junior officer was supervising the unloading of supplies from a wagon. Wolff introduced himself and, with the determined authority of one used to addressing Germans in uniform, asked to be taken to the captain.

The skipper of the Neckar filled his little chart room. It was the first time Wolff had seen Hinsch in uniform, immaculately groomed, clean shaven, blond hair combed with a little oil: his sour expression was the same.

‘What are you doing? You shouldn’t have come here,’ Hinsch declared belligerently.

‘Albert gave you my message?’

He gave a curt nod.

‘Well?’ Wolff prompted.

‘The British have von Rintelen,’ he snapped. ‘Stopped his ship, took him off.’

‘Are you accusing me? They stop most ships,’ Wolff observed coolly; ‘they stopped mine.’

‘They arrested him — not you.’

‘I’m more careful. You saw yourself how—’

‘And the stories in the newspaper?’ Hinsch interrupted. ‘You know nothing about those? Koenig was arrested…’

‘You’re blaming me?’

Hinsch glowered at him for a few seconds then looked away, his right hand trailing across a chart to a pair of dividers. ‘It might be you — or an Irishman — I don’t know. It’s over, anyway. Finished.’

‘Over?’ Wolff looked pained. ‘Don’t take me for a fool. Mind if I sit down?’ He perched at the edge of a swivel chair bolted to the deck before the table. ‘Are you in charge of the new operation? Look, Hinsch, you know what I can do — I’m not German, and yes, I want to be paid — paid well — but this work suits me, and I have my reasons, you know them well enough. You don’t like me — I don’t care much for you — but we want the same thing.’ He paused in hope of acknowledgement but the lines on Hinsch’s face seemed to indurate like clay. ‘I’m not here as a supplicant but as an enemy of the British Empire,’ Wolff added testily. ‘Berlin gives the orders and I was sent here to be of service.’

‘There is no operation,’ he retorted. ‘I’ve said — no work.’ He spoke without respect, as if he were upbraiding the least member of his crew. ‘And if I change my mind, I know how to find you.’