The Poison Tide

‘Stay with him, Masek,’ Wolff said. ‘Take this,’ and he handed him the revolver.

The meadow at the end of the parade was soft underfoot and thick cord grass grew at its edge. Stumbling forward a few feet, Wolff found a path and, presuming the young man with the package had taken it, he pushed on quietly, weaving first away from the road then back, the faint glow of light from the wharf buildings behind the fence his guide. It didn’t take long to catch him. Sinking to his knees, Wolff watched the longshoreman make his way from the meadow up to the road and across to the fence. He bent over his toes to tug at the bottom of the wire: it lifted like a curtain. Then, slipping under, he ran for the cover of a warehouse. Bloody idiot — I should have kept the revolver, Wolff thought, as he scrambled after him. On the other side of the wire, he crouched to gather his bearings — twenty or so yards, three warehouse buildings, no lights, no sign of a guard. He struck out fast and low to the nearest. Back pressed to it, the first thing he noticed was the smell of shit, then a restless murmur like the breaking of waves on a distant shore, and in the seconds it took to reach the front of the building he realised that the dockyard was full of horses. Covered stables occupied two sides, an open corral the third, the administrative block along the fourth — the Union flag flying from a pole above the door. Beyond this, the dock and the dim lights of two large ships.

What the hell was he doing here? Were the ships the target, or the horses? It was a British remount depot. He’d seen a place like it in a New York park, and there were half a dozen more on the East Coast. Horses and mules to haul British guns, bring up the rations, and carry the luckless into no-man’s-land; from Midwest pastures by train, then sea; no passport, no neutrality — big business. A precious investment guarded by careless nightwatchmen: or was Hinsch paying them to turn a blind eye? If so, to what end?

A whinnying, the scraping of hooves and Wolff was suddenly conscious of the horses shifting in the old warehouse at his back, their shoulders shaking the planking. It was lit by only a few dim lamps so he could see no further than the first pen, but its darkness seemed to have a pulse, to breathe, move with a will, inexorably, like the tide. There was something else too — fear. Close by, an animal snorted and whinnied, startling its neighbours. Christ, he wished he had the gun. Treading lightly on tiptoe, he advanced towards the central feeding aisle. At the corner of the first pen he paused to place the movement on the opposite side. Creeping forward a few more steps, he could see the horses stirring in the second pen, pressing together, heads high in distress. Another step, and brown packaging in the straw at the gate, a wooden box with its lid open, phials, a glass syringe with a cork on the needle, and he knew it was the contents of Delmar’s case. Crash, a horse kicked at the gate and, shying away, exposed in the murky light of a wall lamp, the poisoner and his poison, motionless, his face covered by a mask, the syringe upright in his right hand like a priest holding the host. Then he was hidden again and on the move, the horses buffeting the slats as he tried to force a way through to the first pen. If he’s running, he isn’t armed, Wolff reasoned, and he isn’t thinking clearly.

Releasing the bolts on the gate, Wolff eased his way in among the horses. The longshoreman was in a blue funk. Had he dropped the syringe? Terror was infectious too, borne in the air from pen to pen, screaming, sweating, restless enough surely to worry even a corrupt nightwatchman. Ahead in the darkness the fence creaked and he heard a sound like the slapping of a horse’s haunches; yes, closer, closer, and he tensed to spring — but the poisoner was ready too. His needle missed Wolff’s face by inches. Instinct must have made him flinch. Grabbing the man’s right arm, holding the needle away, in desperation Wolff tried to gouge his eye with a thumb; the beasts shouldering them, locked in their dance. Then, thrusting at the man’s chin, pushing the facemask up, the needle dropping, Wolff knew his enemy was stronger, and for a second he remembered: Christ, it was like this with the man in the derby hat. A shower of glass and liquid as the syringe splintered in the poisoner’s hand and, grunting with fear, he loosened his grip. Wolff struck hard at his throat and he staggered back, grasping for some support. But a horse kicked out, catching him below the knee and he fell, then Wolff kicked him again — in the head — again, and again — in the back, his sides, again, again.

‘All right,’ Wolff gasped at last, ‘the syringe, what was in it?’ But the young longshoreman was curled tightly in a ball, his face hidden by his rubber gloves. ‘Come on,’ Wolff bent over him, shaking him by the collar. ‘What was in the syringe?’ He slapped the man’s head with the palm of his hand and shook him some more. ‘Tell me or I swear to God I’ll make you eat the stuff.’

‘Anthrax.’

‘Anthrax?’ Wolff grabbed his coat and was dragging him to his feet when someone at the entrance of the warehouse called, ‘McKevitt, that you?’ A Southerner, an old voice trembling with fear. ‘McKevitt?’

Wolff shook the longshoreman again: ‘You McKevitt?’

He dropped his hands at last. ‘Yeah.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘That’s Flynn and he’s got a gun.’

‘Has he?’

‘Yeah,’ McKevitt drawled. ‘Here — over…’ he tried to shout. Wolff caught him hard in the mouth. He tried to cover his face but Wolff punched him again and grabbed his hair, slamming his head once, twice, against the stone floor until he lay there unconscious. Then Wolff pushed through the horses to the gate, let himself out and turned to pick up the box of phials.

‘McKevitt?’ The old nightwatch was advancing slowly with a cavalry revolver.

‘Flynn? I’m working with McKevitt.’

‘Just wait there, mister.’ He waved the revolver at Wolff. ‘McKevitt said nuthin about anyone else.’

Wolff kept walking: ‘I brought the stuff for him.’

‘Don’t want to know about that — don’t wanna know nuthin’. Where’s McKevitt?’

‘He didn’t say where he was going.’

‘Now hold it there. You ain’t from here, are you?’ This time he levelled the gun at Wolff. ‘Where you from?’

‘Sure you want to know? I mean, best not to — best let me get on. You got the money, didn’t you?’ Wolff was close enough to register the uncertainty in Flynn’s weatherbeaten face. ‘You see, what you don’t know can’t get you in trouble, can it?’

‘No, no, reckon you’re right,’ he said, his voice quaking. Wolff stopped beside him and gazed down into his rheumy drinker’s eyes. ‘Forget you saw me — that would be best for you, Flynn.’

Then he left the way he had come, discarding his coat by the fence. It was stained with the contents of the syringe.

‘Is that the parcel?’ Thwaites enquired, as Wolff climbed into the motor car beside him.

‘This? This is Delmar’s box,’ he remarked grimly. ‘Fetch Masek — we need to leave — at once.’

On the journey to the hotel he told them what he’d seen and done.

The little he knew of anthrax he’d learnt as a boy growing up on a farm; a contagion in horses, cattle, sheep — a killer.

‘Evil,’ Thwaites declared, and he repeated it many times, and that only the Germans would behave so dishonourably. ‘Are you afraid you might be infected?’ he bellowed over the roar of the road.

Wolff said he was too tired and hungry to be afraid.

‘And the poisoner,’ he shouted, ‘did you kill him?’

‘Knocked him out.’

‘Pity.’ He glanced across at Wolff. ‘You should have, you know — killed him, I mean. He saw you.’

‘For God’s sake, man,’ Wolff exclaimed, thumping the door of the car. ‘What do you take me for?’

At the hotel they wrapped the box in brown paper as before and wrote on it: Handle with Care. Their courier caught the last train to New York. ‘I’ll telephone Wiseman — warn him it’s on the way,’ said Thwaites. ‘Have a bath, old boy, you smell of horse shit and you should,’ he hesitated, ‘well, you know — you have to be careful.’

Later, they sat in his room and drank too much whisky — antiseptic, Thwaites called it. After a time he observed with the tearful sentiment of the tipsy that no one could doubt they were fighting a war for civilisation. ‘You — you — you’ve had your doubts, I know,’ he slurred, ‘but you can see now, can’t you — you can see what we’re up against.’ Wolff sipped his drink and wondered why poisoning animals made it a war for civilisation when so much that was an abomination had been done already. He was confused and a little drunk, exhausted too — he ached all over. Was the poison working through his system?

Thwaites prodded his knee. ‘I know what you’re thinking — you — you’re thinking “animals — just