The Poison Tide

was at his lips when the sudden trilling of the telephone in the hall made him start. At that hour, it could only be the man he was preparing to call.

‘Sorry to telephone so late, sir.’ The flat unflappable voice of Thwaites’ man, White. ‘I’m ringing on behalf of Royal, sir. Mr Schmidt’s compliments, he’s anxious to speak to you. An offer of employment.’

‘Very well, I’ll visit Mr Schmidt…’

‘At the office, sir.’

‘The office, yes, of course.’ To insist on the Consulate, well, it had to be urgent. ‘I’m obliged to Mr Schmidt. I’ll visit the first opportunity I have.’

He put the receiver down gently. First opportunity was their code for right away. Was his cover compromised? But Rintelen’s cronies would have finished him and dumped his body in a boxcar. He didn’t know, couldn’t, and that was unnerving, so he put it from his mind and bent his thoughts to avoiding the spy in the derby hat. Off all lights except the lamp in the bedroom, change of hat and coat, revolver in pocket, stocking feet from the apartment, fire escape into the foul-smelling back court, the spare key to the building opposite hanging in the coalhole where he’d watched the drunken janitor leave it one evening.

It was a while before he found a taxicab and he was obliged to walk most of the way. The British Consulate was at 44 Whitehall Street in a brutal sandstone-and-brick building close to the elevated railway and an army recruitment office. Wolff walked along the street, then back, before slipping through the door. White was in the lobby and greeted him with a broad grin that suggested he was enjoying this new adventure as valet and spy. Why not? The last one had taken him on Mr Churchill’s bloody goose chase to Gallipoli. The Bureau’s new rooms were on the first floor, Sir William Wiseman, Munitions handwritten on a card at the door of his outer office. Perhaps Gaunt was resisting anything more permanent.

‘Whisky, isn’t it?’ Wiseman asked. He must have come from dinner, breezing into the Consulate in his white tie.

Thwaites had a face like an undertaker’s mute.

‘You better tell me,’ Wolff said impatiently. Englishmen always made a mess of bad news. ‘Come on — spill it.’

‘Sit down.’ Wiseman waved the whisky tumbler at a large leather armchair in front of his desk.

‘Is it my mother?’

‘Your mother, old boy?’ Wiseman handed Wolff the whisky and eased himself carefully into the chair opposite, Thwaites sitting beside him. ‘No, not your mother. But I’m afraid it is bad news. The Blackness was lost — sunk. An explosion.’ He jerked his hands out theatrically. ‘Terrible luck.’

‘Bloody incompetence,’ chipped in Thwaites. ‘The Navy should have dealt with it and I told Gaunt so.’

‘Gone? Christ. Christ.’

‘Captain Gaunt…’ said Wiseman reprovingly, ‘informed us this afternoon. Lost three days ago.’

‘Were there survivors?’

‘None, I’m afraid.’

‘How many men?’

‘Forty-five.’

‘Christ.’ Wolff closed his eyes, pressing his fingers firmly to his temple. When he opened them he would wake and know it for a nightmare. Just as he used to in the boxroom at the farm: always the graveyard hours. But Thwaites was speaking again: ‘…Gaunt says they tricked you. The fuse was set for two days, not four.’

‘Christ. I told him I couldn’t be sure.’ He shivered and opened his eyes, his head still in his hands. ‘I’ve sunk one of our ships.’

‘No. They sank one of our ships, one more of our ships,’ Wiseman insisted quietly. ‘I know how you must feel but…’

‘What sort of madness…’ he interjected. My God, what had he done? To lose a ship and crew… no, they didn’t know how he felt. How could they? ‘I used to be a seaman.’

‘Nothing else you could do,’ Thwaites declared firmly.

‘…forty-five men.’ Wolff remembered the flat, pugnacious face of the ship’s mate he’d browbeaten into letting him place the explosives. ‘I could have stopped…’

‘Rintelen’s operation has sunk at least three this month,’ Thwaites continued. ‘There are Clan men in all the large ports — you said so yourself.’

‘But the Blackness was me.’ Rising quickly, Wolff stepped over to the fire, his mind clouded. ‘I should leave, seek another path,’ but he knew he didn’t have the courage. He had delivered them to the enemy just as he’d done in Turkey, and he would pay for both in time because, in some way he perceived only dimly, that was how it always was, and should be.

‘Our job is to stop him,’ he heard Wiseman say from what sounded like a great distance.

‘Yes,’ he said flatly.

‘Here.’ The baronet was suddenly beside him, pressing the whisky into his hand. ‘Come on, old fellow.’

‘Yes.’

They sat in awkward silence, gazing into their glasses, at the patterns of the Persian rug, the embers in the grate; Thwaites turning his stick impatiently between thumb and forefinger, Wiseman with chin on bow tie, careful not to catch his eye. Fortitude, Wolff, their silence seemed to say; only a battle lost, the war to fight; you’ve blundered, but ‘Was there a man dismay’d?’ Somewhere a clock with a Westminster chime struck two.

‘Rintelen’s going to attack the Black Tom,’ he said at last.

‘Oh?’ Wiseman leant forward, his elbows on his knees.

‘I was on the point of arranging a meeting to warn you.’

‘Has he told you when?’ Wiseman asked, staring earnestly at him over his fingertips, arrogant in a good- natured sort of way.

‘No.’

‘Is the fellow boasting?’ Thwaites threw in. ‘You said yourself he’s conceited, Dark Invader and all that — Black Tom is a bit of a fortress.’

‘It’s nothing of the sort,’ Wolff replied, and he told them of his visit; that the price of the ticket was a few dollars to a doorkeeper from the Clan, and that enough TNT was sitting on the dock to rock Liberty from her foundations with just toe rags from Green’s to keep her safe.

‘The Consulate would probably lose its windows,’ he remarked matter-of-factly.

‘Ouch.’ Wiseman pulled a face. ‘That would be unfortunate. Yes.’ He patted his pockets, then rose and drifted over to his desk. ‘Well, we have some ideas, don’t we?’ he said, addressing Thwaites. ‘Ah, here it is.’ He picked up a leather pouch from the desk and began tearing at tobacco, pressing the shreds into his pipe with a key. ‘You see, Norman has made contact with his friend in the Police Department Bomb Squad — you were right, he’s on to this fellow Koenig. Takes a dim view.’ Striking a match, he lowered it carefully to the bowl. ‘Have to find the right balance,’ he gasped between puffs. ‘He wants to have his cake and eat it. Doesn’t want us to interfere, but will take what he can from us — isn’t that so, Norman?’

‘He’s one hundred per cent,’ interjected Thwaites. ‘Thinks Rintelen’s men are behind a fire at a munitions factory in Pennsylvania too. Haven’t told him about you, of course. Police Department’s full of Irishmen.’

‘We’ll expose Rintelen in the newspapers, use Norman’s friends on The Times and the New York World,’ Wiseman said. ‘Only we need to offer some proof.’ He took the pipe from his mouth and began inspecting it carefully. ‘Yes, this cabin of Rintelen’s,’ he offered casually, ‘the one where he keeps his records — any chance?’

The springs of Thwaites’ chair groaned as he shifted awkwardly. Wolff glanced over at him but his head was turned away.

‘I’ll try,’ replied Wolff deliberately.

‘Yeees,’ drawled Wiseman. ‘After today, the sooner the better.’

‘Of course,’ he retorted indignantly. ‘Of course.’ Was Wiseman trying to make him feel guiltier? ‘Look, can’t you just make Rintelen disappear?’ It wasn’t a solution C encouraged, but after the