The Poison Tide

Wolff was on the ninth floor. Too high to survive a tumble, he’d joked when the bellboy delivered his luggage. ‘This is New York, sir,’ he’d replied laconically. The elevator opened on to a broad landing, pot plants, theatre mirror, leather couch. His room was to the left, halfway along a bright, thickly carpeted corridor. An elderly American couple were bickering at their door, the man struggling to turn the key with arthritic fingers. A little further along, a lady was arranging her shoes for the shine. Everything in order, everything as it should be in a good seven-dollar-a-night hotel — and yet, and yet… there was something amiss — a spy’s sixth sense, a chill: he’d felt it before they arrested him in Berlin; in Turkey too.

Without hesitating, he walked past his room and round the corner to the door at the end of the corridor. He’d checked and knew that it opened on to a fire escape gantry. Removing his shoes first, he stepped out lightly and quickly, counting the windows, seven to the corner of the building, then five more to his room. The curtains were still open, a light inside but a small one, perhaps the desk lamp. Conscious that he was casting a dim shadow, he stooped low and shuffled under the sill, listened for a few seconds — nothing — then glanced inside. A man was sitting a few feet from him at the desk beneath the window. Wolff couldn’t see his face, only his legs, one crossed over the other, his forearm, a hand that disappeared as he drew on his cigarette — and through the smoke the silhouette of a revolver. He crept away from the window and back along the fire escape. Manhattan was still humming, steam rising from rooftops nearby, the night sky lost in the glow of the city firmament, like something in one of Wells’ dystopian stories. In the corridor once more, he didn’t trouble to step lightly and opened the door to his room with no particular care. The intruder was still at the desk, large right hand covering the revolver.

‘Lieutenant?’ he asked.

Wolff pushed the door to and switched on the chandelier. ‘Never call me that: plain Mr de Witt, if you please. You should have left a message.’

‘You should have left a message, sir,’ he replied angrily.

Wolff ignored him, shrugging off his coat and throwing it on a chair.

‘Gaunt, Captain Gaunt,’ he rose from his chair; ‘but you know.’ He gripped Wolff’s hand too tightly, squeezing it like a boarding-school bully. ‘Look, old fellow, calm down, no one saw me.’

‘I’ll stick with Mr Ponting,’ Wolff replied.

‘No point. I’m the naval attache, for God’s sake. Everyone knows me here — well, the people who matter do.’

‘I’m sure. That’s why it was damn stupid to come to the hotel.’

‘Who the blazes do you think you’re talking to?’ He took another step forward, big right hand balled in a fist. Just itching for a fight, always itching for a fight; it was in the hard lines of his face, lantern jaw, gazing down his beak at Wolff, thin, almost colourless lips, all prickly self-regard; captain cum old-fashioned boatswain cum spy, but a spy who wore a crisp white uniform, took rooms at the New York Yacht Club and never missed a diplomatic party. ‘He’s one of theirs,’ young Fitzgerald had said, quoting C directly, by which he meant Naval Intelligence. ‘He’ll tell you America’s his patch, senior service and all that…’ Gaunt enjoyed his role too much to let a lieutenant fifteen years his junior kick sand in his face.

‘Drink?’ Wolff asked. ‘Only whisky, I’m afraid.’

‘I’ve got everything sewn up here.’ Even after twenty years in the Navy there was the trace of a colonial accent. ‘I need to be kept informed — clear lines of sight — understand?’

‘Perfectly.’ Wolff offered him a tumbler. ‘I’m anxious not to bugger things up — I’m anxious to stay alive.’

‘Too anxious, I hear…’ he interjected maliciously; ‘at least, if that business in Turkey is anything to go by.’

Wolff settled in the only armchair, casually balancing his glass on his knee. ‘Trying to put me in my place?’

‘They say you gave them Chambers and some of the Turks.’

Wolff sipped his whisky and swallowed hard. Was that how they boiled it down? Bureau chap squealed: a poor show. ‘I think we should talk about why I’m here,’ he said.

‘I know why you’re here,’ Gaunt snapped at him. ‘Who do you think sorted out your cover, squared the people at Westinghouse, the leaks to the newspapers…’

‘It was an excellent story,’ Wolff raised his glass in salute, ‘worked a treat. It’s kept me alive — so far. Thank you.’

He gazed at Wolff, trying to decide if this small peace offering was enough to satisfy his injured pride. ‘All right, what do you need?’ he asked, pulling his chair closer.

Wolff took the letter from his jacket and offered it between thumb and forefinger. ‘Recognise the name?’

‘No. But West 15th, that’s Martha Held’s place — for Germans with the money to spend on parties and pretty girls. Their military attache, von Papen, uses the place when he’s here. If you’re thinking of going, watch your step.’

Not everyone who could afford to pay for the good time Martha promised her guests was a gentleman, Gaunt said. Some of the regulars were merchant captains, their ships bottled up in East Coast ports by the British naval blockade. ‘Met Dr Albert?’

Wolff said he hadn’t had the pleasure.

‘He’s their purser. Once a week, a procession of these captains visits his office on Broadway. I wager they’ll have something to do with your sabotage campaign.’

Albert paid the bills; the orders came from someone else. Gaunt’s people were hearing whispers of a new ‘fellow on the block’. ‘Perhaps this Rintelen or Delmar,’ he observed; ‘anyway, the new man seems to have put old Papen’s nose out.’

‘The military attache?’

‘Queer bird. Gave me a present when I arrived in Washington. Got to have some sympathy…’

Wolff looked at him quizzically.

‘Fellow from Berlin pushing him aside,’ Gaunt explained with a rueful smile. ‘The enemy and his friends in Congress are doing all they can to keep America out of the war, sucking up to anyone with an axe to grind against the Empire; every bloody tribesman between here and Timbuktu,’ he remarked with a disparaging grunt. An attempt had been made to stir up the ‘bloody’ Irish on the docks; there had been a few suspicious fires on ships carrying rifles and shells to the Allies, an explosion at an ordnance factory in New Jersey. Gaunt had recruited a network of runners to keep an eye on the docks: ‘The enemy have got our Irish; we’ve got their Czechs and Poles.’ Wolff could call on them for assistance, ‘but you come to me first, old boy. They’ll do the job for you, trained them myself — if you need someone followed or frightened, drop a fellow in a hole, and here…’ he got up and stepped over to the table ‘…your chaps asked me to find one…’ — lifting the trigger guard of the revolver with his forefinger and swinging it back and forth like a steel cradle. ‘American, I’m afraid. A little clumsy. Careful who you point it at, we don’t want to upset our hosts.’ He placed it back on the table. ‘You’ll have a job hiding that in a jacket.’

‘I won’t take it to dinner.’

‘You have the telephone number at Whitehall Street?’

‘Not on the telephone.’

‘Then a coded note to Mr Ponting,’ he said, reaching for his overcoat. ‘I’ll leave by the fire escape. Can jump back when I reach the first floor.’

For a few seconds, he listened at the door. Satisfied, he turned the handle and was opening it carefully when Wolff reached forward to close it again.

‘One last thing,’ he whispered, looking Gaunt in the eye. ‘Your gypsy, the fellow who picked me up this afternoon…’

He offered a taut smile. ‘Careless of him — just to be sure you come to no harm, you understand.’

‘Well, call him off. It isn’t easy judging friends from enemies in this business… sir.’

15. Dilger Family Business