‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
She shook her head.
‘You don’t seem surprised to see me,’ he observed, tapping a cigarette on the back of his case.
She looked away, the colour rising to her neck and face. ‘Mr Devoy thought you might be here.’
‘I wonder how he knew.’
‘From his German friends, I expect.’ Her gaze led him discreetly to where three, perhaps four men were standing beneath the canopy of a weeping cherry. They were twenty yards away, their faces hidden by the tree, but Wolff recognised one of them at once. Shifting awkwardly as large men do, his back turned towards them and his right arm raised to a branch above his head — the master of the
‘Your Mr Gache?’ she asked.
‘And some of his business associates, yes.’
‘I thought so.’ She bit the corner of her bottom lip, something she did when she was uneasy. ‘It’s a good turnout; quite a few men here,’ she said, catching his eye.
‘But only one woman.’
She laughed and looked down, self-consciously sweeping a loose strand of hair behind her ear. ‘I’m perfectly safe. Sir Roger says the only true gentlemen are Irishmen; they are gentlemen by instinct, not by an accident of birth.’
‘Then there’s no hope for me.’
‘There might be exceptions,’ she said with another light laugh, the tinkle of fine crystal. ‘After all, you are Roger’s friend.’
‘An honorary Irishman, then.’
‘That must be right.’
They stood for a few seconds in silence, she with half an eye to the meeting; he to Hinsch and Rintelen and their companions.
‘You’ll have to excuse me, Jan,’ she said at last. ‘There’s something I must do.’
He raised his eyebrows enquiringly.
‘I’m taking the names of men who will need strike pay.’
‘From their Swiss banker?’
She frowned and bit her lip. ‘If you mean your Mr Gache, I don’t know.’
A burst of applause and cheering. Devoy was shaking hands with the platform party, slapping ‘Big Jim’ on the back, celebrating their little victory, an unholy alliance of Irish muscle and German money, an unofficial walk- out, a few days lost, some bullets, some shells. The goddamn price of famine, C would say. But no one at the Front would notice, the killing would go on as before, and sooner or later big American business would speak, no, shout, ‘Enough’, and the strike would be broken by a bribe or by policemen enforcing the free traffic of goods and services with the hard round end of a ‘paddy-whacker’.
‘I must go,’ said Laura, picking up her skirts.
‘Will I see you soon?’ he called after her.
Grinding his cigarette end into the grass, he turned with a sigh and strolled towards the little group of conspirators beneath the trees. As he approached, a very fat man detached himself from it and began to waddle away. He cast a furtive glance at Wolff, his face florid like a Bavarian butcher’s, chins rolling on to his chest, head rocking from side to side. Ageless, as fleshy people often are, and guilty, Wolff thought, the perpetrator of an unspeakable crime that would be discovered in the fullness of time.
‘Well met, Mr de Witt.’ Rintelen stepped out from beneath the tree to offer his hand — or was it to distract Wolff from his associate? ‘I saw you talking to Miss…’
‘McDonnell.’
‘An Irish lady?’
‘And American.’
‘What does Miss McDonnell think of our strike?’ His own view was plain enough, written boldly in his face.
‘Our strike?’
‘Another of Mr Gache’s enterprises,’ he explained smugly.
Wolff nodded. ‘Mr Gache is a resourceful man. Actually, he asked me to meet him here.’
‘To consult you on… let’s say, a technical matter.’ Rintelen looked carefully around the park. The meeting was over, the longshoremen were drifting home or chatting and smoking in tight circles. At a trellis table to the left of the dais, Laura and other members of the Clan were taking the names of those hoping to benefit from Gache’s munificence. ‘I have an office, we can talk there,’ he said.
‘But first it was necessary to drag me out here.’ Wolff’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.
Rintelen laughed his short yelping laugh. ‘No, no, Mr de Witt, patience, patience, you shall see.’
17. The
SHE WAS BATHED in the last golden light of the setting sun like a large soprano taking her curtain call at the Hofoper.
‘Our piece of Germany,’ Rintelen observed as they walked along the quay towards her.
‘Fifteen knots?’
‘So, always the engineer,’ he replied coolly. ‘Yes, fifteen, with a fair wind
Top-heavy, thought Wolff, her fine Atlantic lines spoilt by too much amidships, with all the passenger cabins in the superstructure: uncomfortable in a high sea. Two yellow funnels, probably two sets of quadruple expansion engines — that would be typical of her class — two minutes to walk from stem to stern, half a block on Broadway. Once the pride of the Norddeutscher Lloyd fleet, idle and rusting at a pier, the largest ship in a graveyard of ships.
A hefty sailor, a stoker once perhaps, was guarding the foot of the gangway. Instinctively he stiffened, his arm rising in what would have been a salute but for Rintelen’s sharp ‘Nein’.
‘A good German crew,’ he said as they walked up the gangway. ‘They know how to keep their mouths shut and von Kleist works them hard for me. So, welcome aboard the
A junior lieutenant had scurried down from the bridge to greet them. Did the
Wolff concentrated on his smile. Water-bloody-tight? Christ, it better be.
‘She’s perfect for my enterprise,’ Rintelen continued. ‘Is there a general at the Front in France with a finer headquarters than the
‘His Majesty stood where you stand now, Mr de Witt.’ Rintelen turned to the young officer, ‘A famous day, Braun.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Fifteen years ago.’ Rintelen shook his head as middle-aged men seeking the sympathy of peers at the passage of so much time are wont to do. ‘And you were fighting in South Africa?’
‘On my way.’
‘Different times. But the Emperor saw this day. He knew there would be war in Europe.’
‘Everyone saw this day, Captain,’ said Wolff curtly. No point in pretending de Witt had any affection for their Kaiser.
