The Poison Tide

‘My name is Smith — Captain Smith,’ Cumming declared in English.

‘Like the captain of the Titanic?’ Rintelen remarked. His handshake was limp and careless, and Cumming was startled by the strangled pitch of his voice. Taken with the spirit of the house perhaps he was dressed in a brown wool suit like a country squire. ‘You have come from Admiral Hall?’ he asked, settling in a chair at the desk. ‘How is the Admiral? I enjoyed our conversations. There is a bond between naval officers, the sea, don’t you think? It is always the same. After the war we will be friends.’

‘Yes, I’m sure. As you say, the camaraderie of the sea.’ Cumming smiled benignly. ‘And I want to take a little of your time — a few small points I’m hoping to clear up.’

‘But you understand my position?’ Rintelen opened his arms and his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘I’m an officer of His Majesty’s navy, there is nothing…’

‘Yes, yes,’ Cumming interrupted. ‘Delmar, Captain, who is he?’ and dipping into the pocket of his uniform jacket he produced the square of signal paper. ‘This was sent from your embassy in Washington two days ago. It says,’ he paused, lifting it a little so he could observe Rintelen above its edge; ‘it says, “For Count Nadolny, General Staff, Section P. The Irish advise that the New York police are satisfied they have broken network. Delmar now ready to resume operations New York, New Jersey, Boston, Baltimore, Newport News. Require start date for Phase 2. Hilken estimates a cost of 25,000 dollars. Answer immediate. Hinsch.”’

Rintelen was still smiling but the corners of his mouth looked a little tighter.

‘What do you think of that, Captain?’ prompted Cumming. ‘Nadolny’s running another operation — you knew of course?’ He waited for Rintelen to speak, resuming after a few seconds when he showed no inclination to do so. ‘You’re surprised, I can see that,’ he guessed, ‘Hinsch didn’t tell you. I thought Hinsch was your man.’ He paused again. ‘Twenty-five thousand dollars. A lot of money. What do you think Delmar is going to do with it?’

Rintelen shrugged. ‘I cannot say.’

‘Guess.’

‘Go shopping on Fifth Avenue?’ Rintelen gave a yelp of laughter, but it sounded brittle.

‘I think Delmar’s network in America was more important to Berlin than yours,’ Cumming observed. Perhaps Rintelen agreed because he was uncharacteristically silent. Impossible to shut the fellow up, Admiral Hall had said, but too clever to let something of consequence slip.

‘Come on, come on.’ Cumming banged his stick down sharply on the brightly polished parquet floor. ‘Do you know Delmar or don’t you?’

‘Surely you would not expect me to say so if I did,’ he replied stiffly.

Cumming glared at him for a moment, then shuffling awkwardly through the narrow gap between the wall and the desk, lowered himself into the commandant’s chair. The football match was over and the prisoners were being summoned to lunch by handbell like the pupils at a preparatory school. Rintelen pointedly took out his pocket watch: ‘If there’s nothing more?’

‘You don’t understand your situation, Rintelen,’ Cumming snapped at him. ‘You came ashore as Emile Gache, as a spy.’

‘You are threatening me, Captain Smith?’ Rintelen laughed, grimly. ‘I was taken from the ship by your boarding party.’

‘That’s as may be. You were travelling on false papers. Your army shot Miss Cavell for less.’ Cumming lifted his chin pugnaciously. ‘You must have read about her case in the New York papers.’

Rintelen didn’t reply but returned his gaze without flinching.

‘You know you were sacrificed by your Count Nadolny — yes, you smile, but this –’ Cumming tapped the signal in his jacket pocket — ‘this is proof enough. You were making too many waves in New York, things were becoming difficult for the other network — Delmar was more important than you. It was simple enough to shut you down: a word to the newspapers and the police and…’

‘Real-ly, Captain Cumming.’ The patient smile slipped, the faultless English too and he leant forward to smack the palm of his right hand on the desk. ‘Yes, I know who you are, and your Secret Service — I know who is responsible for putting me here. Was he working for you or for Admiral Hall? It does not matter. But now we are finished,’ and he began to rise.

But Cumming wasn’t finished. Threatening, scowling like a playground bully, then coaxing with more bitter coffee and some sympathy. He pressed hard because Rintelen expected him to. He learned nothing more of importance but he had learned enough, and when the prisoner was taken away he placed a call to the director of Naval Intelligence to tell him so. ‘As we feared, Admiral.’ He knew he was betrayed and he knew it was by a British spy, and although Cumming hadn’t probed deeper for fear of giving something more away, he thought it likely Rintelen would have named his chief suspect ‘de Witt’.

‘Do you think he’s informed anyone?’ Hall enquired, pensively. ‘We may have picked him up before he was able to.’ But it was impossible to say and because they couldn’t, they would have to take a chance.

‘It was always going to happen like this,’ Hall observed, ‘Rintelen doesn’t know Delmar…’

‘…We’re pushing Wolff’s luck.’

‘No alternative,’ Hall said, and reluctantly Cumming agreed — no alternative. And yet, waiting beneath the great Gothic entrance arch for his motor car to be delivered to the steps, he was troubled by the recollection of almost the same risk taken two years before. Wolff had spent nine punishing months in a Turkish jail and it had almost broken him. Hadn’t they said ‘no alternative’ then?

1916

27. Inconvenient Truths

THE CHILDREN RETURNED with their nanny at dusk, then Frau Albert in the motor car, the chauffeur following her up the steps with an armful of parcels. A few minutes later Wolff glimpsed the silhouette of her full figure at a second-floor window before a maid drew the curtains. White stone house in the neo-classical style, six storeys, quiet tree-lined street in a fashionable part of the Upper East Side: the man the papers had dubbed an architect of terror lived well. Have the neighbours forgiven you? Wolff mused, as he waited at the wheel of the motor car. Well-to-do people have short memories. The worst crime a gentleman might commit in what the real-estate sharks were calling the Gold Coast streets was to lose one’s money. The sabotage story was already last year’s news; the headlines of that morning’s World were of a rise in the country’s gold reserves, and shipyards too busy to handle new orders, the President ready to embark on his ‘America First’ tour of the Midwest. Besides, the German gentleman in the bowler hat who walked briskly home with cane and case every evening did not cut a dangerous figure — or even a memorable one.

Gaunt’s runners had logged his routine, his contacts, and the traffic in and out of his Broadway office. ‘Just as you’d expect,’ the naval attache reported. ‘Leaves home at seven thirty, spends all day at his desk, home again at eighteen thirty sharp. No mistresses, no trips to the theatre, no restaurants. No fun. He might be keeping his head down, but you know, I think he’s just a dull man.’ Distant father and husband, grumpy with the servants, a Polish maid had confided to one of the runners. ‘A real bringer of joy,’ Gaunt had observed drily.

Wolff glanced at his watch, extinguished his cigarette, then stepped down from the motor car. I’ll shake my chains at him, he thought with a smile; an unpleasant smell too close to home. The street was wreathed in threads of a freezing mist that put him in mind of the afternoon he had wandered in Hyde Park with his first confused thoughts of Casement and the operation. It was almost twelve months to the day. Had the smog cleared? He hardly knew.

Once in a while a taxicab ground down to a hotel on the corner, and there was a trickle of commuters from the omnibus stops on Madison and Park, collars up, hats down, gazes fixed on the sidewalk: ordinary men with tan leather cases, well-pressed suits and regular office hours. Wolff watched them without envy. Bowler and cane, straight back and steady gait, Albert was easy to spot even in the mist, almost gliding from one puddle of yellow lamplight to the next.