Dan Vyleta - Smoke

“And yet, all the same, here it is. A secret police force, created by a subcommittee for public welfare. A very tiny committee it is. Five permanent members. Not aligned with either of the parties but neutral. A pure organ of the state, if you will. One of the first things they did was to have strands of wire drawn across the land. In secret of course, underground where possible, a thin, fragile network. Seven telephones: that is all we have, after a decade of work. I took my first call a few days ago, and how foolish I felt, shouting words into the ether.

“So here we both are, at headquarters. I am not even a regular officer! Past my youth too: too old — too fat! — to go trundling after bad people. But there are so few of us with any experience, and the matter is so very sensitive and at the same time so very important. All hands on deck, and those with experience, well, one likes to do what one can, doesn’t one? For Queen and country; for the good of the state. I am sure you will understand. My remit, I am afraid, is near-absolute. I can quite literally do to you whatever I wish. Ghastly, when one thinks about it. I prefer not to.”

All this the man recites quite fluently and without any menace, his chubby hands folded together high on his chest. For the first time I see that he is wearing sleeve protectors that run black from wrist to elbow. For some reason, this detail bothers me just as his gloves did before. How different is it, I wonder, from a butcher donning his apron before stepping into the abattoir?

“We had your ship searched, Captain. The cargo, it appears, is entirely in order. None of the custom seals have been meddled with and all the contents match up to the inventory you filed with the authorities. There are a number of pieces of illegal technology on board, but all these are listed and licenced: as long as they remain on board, there can be no objection. The logbooks are in order and chart your ship’s recent voyages without any obvious anomaly. Your private ledger is similarly unremarkable, though it contains a receipt for a very sizable amount of money made out to you by the Behrens Bank of Rotterdam. Now this would be entirely your business, if it were not suspected that the money in question originates in England and was, in fact, paid to you by Lady Catherine Naylor acting as the legal signatory of her husband, Baron Archibald Naylor, and with the Behrens Bank acting only as middleman. One may well say, however, that a man may accept money no matter where it comes from. It is noted that it was paid into your private accounts rather than the company who has ownership of the ship. You are a rich man, Captain van Huysmans. I congratulate you.

“On the ship itself, there is but one anomaly. It took my men a while to see it, it has been very well masked. Somewhere along your journey you had your cabin altered. It was very cleverly done. The proportions and look of the cabin were left entirely unchanged, but a narrow, L-shaped compartment was created behind the wood-panelling at the bow and starboard sides. A foot and a half in width, if this hasty drawing my men made is to scale, and perhaps five feet long in all. Not one of the crewmen we have located on shore knows a thing about this secret compartment, Captain van Huysmans, not even your first mate whom you had performing guard duty between the hours of ten and ten to one tonight, and who was dismissed by you the moment a certain coach pulled up at the end of the quay. You will understand that we are curious about this compartment. What in God’s name were you smuggling onto our shore, Captain?”

Of course it occurs to me to lie. An animal, I want to say, a tiger. Brought from farthest Sumatra, for a collector of exotic beasts.

But I am afraid to lie.

No, not just afraid. I recognise his authority. Not as a police officer but as a gentleman. His complexion is clear, his moral imperative beyond doubt.

So I ask instead: “What will you do to me?”

“For smuggling?” He weighs it, puffing out his cheeks, then letting out the air in a silent whistle. “Technically, it is a felony. A judge would have to hear the case. He might very well condemn you to the rope.

“Then again, we don’t really want to involve a judge. Who knows what you might tell him about this, our amiable chat? Square with me, Captain. Tell me all. If you do, we won’t touch a hair on your head. You can keep your money. Of course you are done doing business in this country. All travel privileges will be revoked. You will never clap eyes on fair England again. But then, this may be inevitable. There is a bill up for vote that will mark the end of foreign trade. One of our nobility, an illustrious earl, has lost his son to Irish hoodlums. He wants the borders shut for good.”

I consider his proposition. It is a damp country, this, no more beautiful than most. I shall not miss it. And I am, as he said just now, a rich man. It would be foolish to ask for guarantees. Or have him spell out the alternative. They are the secret police. They will do with me as they please.

“What,” he resumes, “did you transport in your secret compartment, Captain? Mind now, I won’t ask again.”

“The devil,” I answer. It feels good to say it. It has lain heavy on my heart. “The devil in the body of a child.”

ф

I tell him almost everything. The letter I received by private courier more than a year ago, the meeting with an agent in Rotterdam, then the dealings with the explorer in Belém. A rough man, I try to explain, used to living in the jungle. Instructions reaching me in the New World by telegraph, terse little missives that I read in the mildewed foyer of a self-styled Grand Hotel. How well I recall them when my captor prompts me, almost word for word! On the telegrams’ instruction, I ordered repairs when they weren’t needed and had the ship brought into dock for twenty-three days. A dreary seaport, the sailors drunk and whoring, the heat of the jungle rotting the clothes off our backs.

When they finally brought it, it came in a crate. The lid nailed shut and reinforced with ropes, like they were transporting a tiger. They loaded the crate at night: a group of natives, twigs through their noses, looking scared. And all the time, there was an invisible hand behind it all, some master strategist who, telegram by unsigned telegram, pushed us around a giant draughtsboard of his own design.

I had no contact with the cargo until we arrived in Europe. We’d emptied a hold for it and there it remained for the whole of the voyage: one crate, chained to the wall, and its guardian, the scar-faced explorer. A Boer he was, speaking with the awful dialect of the settlers there; always chewing on a native leaf. I did not see him more than a handful of times during three weeks at sea. Each time he had grown thinner, sallow, hollow-cheeked. We had difficult seas.

The paperwork proved to be no problem: a bag of money changed hands, and all stamps were issued. The New World is corrupt. So is the old, only more expensively so; one pays extra for the customs officials’ sweets. It was after our arrival in La Rochelle that I finally met the man I had corresponded with all these months. I try to describe him to the policeman. Slight, clean-shaven, well-mannered. Like a bookish manager, I say, at the best hotel in town. Only later it turns out he is the owner, returning your tip without malice.

My captor is amused by this description.

“What language did you speak in?” he asks.

“German.”

“He spoke it like a native?”

“Yes.” I hesitate. “But there was something foreign to it all the same. He gave me blueprints for the secret chamber in my cabin, worked out in detail, to the tenth of an inch. And made me sole custodian of the child.”

I explain the feeding instructions I was given, the pole I hooked into his harness to keep the creature at bay whenever I cleaned out its sty. There was special food, liquid food, like sloppy porridge, I had to mix it twice a day. There was a drug in it, I reckon. A sedative. It kept it asleep, much of the time. At others, I played the gramophone, or sang at the top of my voice. Once, it bit through its gag. I had to pretend to the crew the screams were mine.