Yes, Heidelberg, Dilger said, and he’d spent a good deal of his childhood with his sister’s family in Berlin. ‘I was working in a hospital. Can’t fight, I’m an American citizen.’ Rintelen’s smile was set like concrete but his gaze flitted restlessly about Dilger’s face. ‘I lost my cousin in the first few months,’ Dilger continued, although he knew he was offering too much information, too quickly, ‘and, well, I wanted to do something for…’
‘Mr Gache is a Swiss, Doctor,’ interrupted Hilken impatiently.
Rintelen’s eyes danced across to him for a moment, then back to Dilger. ‘But he’s told you,’ he observed coolly.
‘Yes.’
‘What has he told you?’
‘That you’re a German officer.’
Rintelen nodded crisply. Another waiter was hovering at his elbow with a bottle but he refused and Dilger felt obliged to follow his example. Perhaps it had been a mistake to accept the last time. The reception was over, the prima diva had left the stage. Patrons with the deepest pockets were to dine privately with her; the rest must step from the light and the warmth, edging out of the ballroom with flushed faces, champagne voices on the stairs, cloaks and hats in the lobby, carriages at the gate.
‘You are a friend of Germany’s, Doctor…’
‘I
‘Of course, yes.’ Rintelen bowed his head apologetically. ‘Then I can rely on your discretion?’
‘You can.’
Those sharp little eyes were still trying to discover the truth in the lines of his face, chin raised slightly, sniffing the wind, scenting or sensing another story. Hilken had said Rintelen was cocksure but good at getting things done. It seemed absurd to Dilger; two men fighting the same fight in a fog of suspicion.
They talked stiffly for a few minutes more, of the latest from the Front, of Washington and Wilson’s promise to keep America out of the war, then Rintelen made his excuses.
‘He’ll want to question me,’ Hilken remarked gloomily as they watched him leave the ballroom. ‘“Can your friend be trusted?” — that sort of thing. There’ll be a note at the hotel asking me to meet him at Martha Held’s.’ He paused, smoothing his trim little moustache. ‘I don’t know why he’s so fond of the place; it’s not as if he touches the girls.’
‘You’ve nothing to worry about — if Hinsch has kept his mouth shut.’ Dilger shook his head; honestly, he didn’t care. He was tired of that sort of intrigue. Like the foul soup he mixed for the cultures in his cellar, the smell seemed to cling to him, assaulting his senses. An evening that had begun with promise beneath the sunburst chandelier at the Met was slipping into shadow. What did it matter that there were other men in her life, that she’d snubbed him and kept him waiting? She held his imagination in thrall. It was her world, she made its laws, and he was her servant to command because she could make him forget everything and everyone else. Forget and laugh quietly at the stupidity of it all. ‘You see, Anton,’ she’d said once, ‘I’ll play many parts in my lifetime.’ Tonight he wanted it to be the lover.
Hilken was still speaking in a confidential tone as they walked down to the lobby, but he left at the foot of the stairs to summon a carriage. Two minutes later he was back with his cloak over his arm and a sly smile. ‘The porter was instructed to deliver this on pain of death,’ he declared, presenting a pink envelope on the palm of his hand like a tray. Dilger lifted it to his nose at once — as she must have known he would — and smiled as a kaleidoscope of memories danced through his mind to a head note of jasmine. Tastes, colours, the sweet ambered fragrance of Frieda’s warm skin, and it wasn’t necessary to read her letter to be sure it was a promise to be with him tonight.
‘If I arrange a meeting with Hinsch for ten o’clock tomorrow, will that be satisfactory?’ Hilken enquired artfully.
‘Perfectly,’ he replied.
In the end it wasn’t satisfactory. Stumbling into clothes, room curtains drawn, Frieda in her tumbled sheets, back turned, awake but silent, and by the time he had reached his hotel, washed and changed, he was almost an hour late. He listened with only half an ear as Hilken gave an account of his evening with ‘the Dark Invader’. ‘Yes, he calls himself that,’ he said disdainfully. ‘He says they’ve planted bombs on a dozen ships, a train, a factory, and in other places, I forget where. There’s no limit to his ambition, it seems.’ He frowned, biting his bottom lip thoughtfully. ‘He’s going to go down in a blaze of glory. Do you think Berlin expects him to? Your Count Nadolny?’
‘I can’t imagine he does,’ Dilger replied distantly.
‘Sure?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows quizzically. ‘Perhaps Rintelen’s meant to fall. A “
Dilger sat straighter, disturbed by the suggestion. ‘That’s too devious.’
‘You think so?’ He plainly didn’t agree.
Hinsch chose to meet them in a smoky little cafe on the Lower East Side, the windows opaque with grease.
‘No one will see us here,’ he said without irony. ‘Want something?’ He clicked his fingers for the waiter and with a flick of the hand gestured crudely to the ripped leather bench opposite. ‘Sit down.’
While they ordered coffee Hinsch played with his cup, a spoon, the cuffs of his blue suit, then his cigarettes, his head bent heavily over the table; so close Dilger could see a vein pulsing in his right temple.
‘You don’t look well, Captain,’ Hilken observed. ‘Too much beer?’
‘Ha,’ he grunted bad-temperedly. ‘Too much beer, you think? I was doing my job. Haven’t been to bed;’ and to prove it, he ran a rasping palm over his chin. ‘Where were you? Champagne in the Chelsea?’
‘No, champagne at the opera. Not your sort of thing, but a very pleasant evening,’ Hilken replied, breezily. ‘Thank you for enquiring.’
Hinsch scowled but said nothing and for a minute or two they sipped their coffee in silence, avoiding eye contact, the purpose of their meeting crackling uneasily between them like electrostatic.
‘You were on the Jersey side?’ prompted Hilken at last.
Hinsch was examining his hands, picking distractedly at a piece of dry skin. After a few seconds he took a cigarette from his case, tapped it lightly on the top and lit it, inhaling very deeply.
‘Captain?’
‘Yes, all right, I heard you,’ he replied crossly. ‘Look, we have a problem.’ He paused to draw long on his cigarette again.
‘A problem? Come on, man, explain yourself.’
He ignored Hilken, his gaze settling on Dilger. ‘How long will it take a man with one of your diseases to die?’
‘What on earth…’
‘No. Let the doctor speak,’ Hinsch insisted. ‘How long?’
‘Which one?’
‘Anthrax.’
‘Do you know how he caught it?’
‘No.’ He ground the rest of his cigarette into an ashtray. ‘Look, I haven’t seen him; he’s in hospital.’
‘He’s in hospital!’
‘I said so.’
‘Oh God.’ Dilger leant forward with his elbows on the table, his forehead in his hands as if in prayer. ‘I don’t know, perhaps a week — less if he inhaled spores.’
‘Calm yourself, Doctor,’ Hilken whispered. He turned his head deliberately to check the cafe.
‘There’s no one. I’ve seen to that.’
‘It seems as if you’ve seen to rather a lot, Captain,’ Hilken remarked sharply.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he replied indignantly. ‘I told the fool, “No mistakes or you’re done for.”’ The sick man’s wife had contacted one of Hinsch’s lieutenants at about half past eight, just as the Queen of the Night was making her first curtain call. ‘He’s in a ward at the Bellevue.’
