The Poison Tide

‘All right,’ he sighed again, ‘all right,’ and he picked up a pair of surgical gloves. A crash in the kitchen above made him start. Emmeline must have dropped a plate. Damn it, he hadn’t locked the basement door. Gloves, face mask, Bunsen flame, culture dish, he was ready. Bacillus anthracis. The anthrax microbe was the most challenging of the two. He took a phial of B from the rack and held it up to the light. A pale-yellow gel to the naked eye, distinctive rod-shaped bacilli beneath a microscope; so extraordinary, so simple, so efficient, so resilient, so deadly. Carefully, he drew the stopper. He’d carried out the procedure at least a dozen times in Berlin but it still made his heart beat faster. Always in his mind’s eye at this moment, an image came to him of the man in bloodstained sheets he’d seen at the Charite Hospital.

‘That’s it.’

Placing the phial in an empty rack, he picked up a length of wire with a small loop at the end and held it in the Bunsen flame. When he was sure it was sterile, he dipped it in the phial, turning the loop once, twice, three times. With his left hand he lifted a Petri dish of growth medium from the shelf above. Then, removing the contaminated wire from the phial, he drew it slowly back and forth across the dish. He repeated the procedure with a second dish. Then he placed both of the new cultures in the incubator.

‘Shit.’ He smiled. God damn, he was shaking a little. Why? He knew what he was doing, it was simple. He dropped his gloves in the sink, soaped his hands well and selected another pair. Phial E for equus. Burkholderia mallei. The glanders microbe. A fresh wire and dish, a different growth medium for this culture — ox blood — but the procedure was the same. Infection, by inhalation or ingestion, or perhaps through an abrasion to the skin. The symptoms: coughing, fever, chest pain, followed by septicaemia and death.

‘Have you finished, Anton?’ Emmeline called from the top of the stairs.

‘For now,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be right up.’

At four o’clock they stepped across the street to take tea with young Mr and Mrs Mitchell. He was something in insurance; she was expecting their first child. What a fascinating place Europe must be, they said, so many fine buildings, so much history. How sad its great nations were at war. It made the insurance business very tricky, Mr Mitchell confided chirpily.

‘I’m sorry, Anton,’ Emmeline said later. ‘Not your sort of people.’

Dilger smiled and took her hand, so rough from the farm pots and pans. ‘We’ll make friends, don’t you worry.’

After supper he left her sewing curtains in the parlour and caught a tram along Connecticut Avenue into town. He got off just beyond the Dupont Circle and walked the last three blocks.

The Grafton was the sort of comfortable but ugly modern hotel favoured by businessmen on a budget. No one stayed long enough for the staff to remember a name and no one gave Dilger a second glance as he walked across the lobby. The hotel telephones were in a booth close to the desk, mounted on the wall and a little low. He chose the one at the end, cranked it and asked the operator for a Baltimore number.

‘Tell Mr Hilken it’s Dr Dilger,’ he instructed the servant who answered his call.

The empty line crackled for two, three, four minutes and he was on the point of hanging up when he heard a bang and someone curse.

‘Sorry, the receiver. Are you still there?’

‘Mr Paul Hilken?’

‘Delmar? I got your telegram,’ he replied in German. He spoke it well, plainly a cultivated and youngish man.

‘Call me Dr Dilger. Look, you’ll need to send someone to me in two weeks, someone reliable.’

‘It’s all organised — Captain Hinsch will be your contact, but why don’t you visit us here?’

‘No. He must come to my house. On the fifteenth. He’ll need some instruction.’

‘All right, then, come here after you’ve made the delivery,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Do you like the theatre?’

‘And money. I need some money.’

‘I’ll send it with Hinsch. Don’t worry, everything is in order.’

Dilger gave him the address. ‘My sister’s staying with me.’

He was surprised. ‘So it’s a family business?’

‘She doesn’t know.’

‘I see. Well, is there anything else I can do for you?’ Hilken enquired politely.

‘Not yet. We must wait for nature to take her course.’

For a few seconds there was only the line. Then he laughed nervously. ‘“That I may smite thee and thy people with pestilence…”’ His voice sounded shaky and he laughed again to disguise his embarrassment. ‘Well, goodbye, Doctor. Take good care.’

16. Unholy Alliances

HE SAID HIS name was Mr Emile V. Gache. He said he was Swiss but even Martha Held’s ‘ladies’ knew that was a lie. He said he was a banker, also a barefaced lie. He said he was a friend to Germany and in that at least there was truth.

‘What do you want from me?’ Wolff asked him after an hour of questions and lies.

‘You do not feel comfortable?’

‘It’s very intimate…’ Wolff waved his hand languidly at the waitress serving drinks and displaying her cleavage to the gentlemen on the couch opposite.

‘It is safe. Martha is a patriot,’ and he raised his glass to the spirit of the large operatic lady who was their hostess. ‘And you, Mr de Witt?’

‘Me? A businessman, I told you. More of a businessman than you, I think.’

He laughed — a strange, strangled laugh like a yelping dog. ‘An entrepreneur in the spirit of our times,’ he offered; and he was dressed like one, in an expensive suit and spats, fashionable middle-aged businessman or broker — more than a disguise or affectation; military in his bearing but in everything else trade, second or third generation — a new patriot. Convincingly good humoured for a vain man and a German officer. A little older than Wolff, early forties, with a large straight mouth, thin hair swept from a high forehead and sharp little eyes.

‘Our mutual acquaintance, Count Nadolny—’

‘Yes, the Count did mention you,’ he interrupted. ‘I like to make up my own mind.’

‘So do I,’ replied Wolff, rising impatiently from his chair.

‘Mr de Witt,’ he leant forward, his arm raised; ‘wait, please.’

Wolff stared at him for a moment, then resumed his seat.

‘Thank you. More wine.’ He turned to look for one of Martha’s girls, then got to his feet, fastidiously smoothing imaginary creases from his perfectly pressed trousers. ‘So, please, I will be just a minute.’

Wolff watched him weave across the drawing room to where Miss Held was holding court at a table. Fifties, full figure, auburn wig and frills; madam by night, German matron by day. Front of house an ordinary brick row, drawing room sinful Parisian silk and velvet, with couches so soft a small man might drown. Martha’s young ladies — coy smiles and laughter, ‘…everything light, darling…’, squeezing the hand of a burly German businessman, draped on the arm of a sailor’s chair, ‘Champagne! More whisky!’ Oh, such Madchen.

‘Correct. I’m not a banker,’ he said in a low voice, sitting beside Wolff again. ‘Champagne?’ He began to pour. ‘Captain Franz von Rintelen of the Imperial German Navy at your service.’

Wolff raised his glass in salute.

‘You’re a man who enjoys taking risks, correct?’

‘For the right price.’ Wolff put down his glass, took out his cigarette case and offered it to Rintelen. ‘No?’ He lit his own and reached for the ashtray. ‘I do have some principles.’

‘Of course, you are an associate of Sir Roger Casement.’

‘He doesn’t like to use the title,’ said Wolff, ignoring his ironic smile. ‘I’ve told you something of my history. If I can be of service to Germany, well…’