‘Right — top right.’
‘Stay there,’ Wolff commanded.
A black file, papers in date order, and glancing through, a sheet with a list of eight ships.
‘The Richmond, the Lagan, Oberon… ?’ He pushed Hilken with his shoe.
‘Yes.’
‘And the sailors’ names?’
‘Devoy has those. Only Devoy — that’s the deal.’
It made sense and it sounded true. He had the ships at least, that was a start. ‘All right. I’ll contact you tomorrow. Time for you to collect the names of the people you are using in the port, and an opportunity to think about how much you enjoy being a pillar of society. What a hard thing it would be to give up.’
‘But what if I…’ Hilken was struggling too obviously for something to say, his thoughts at the end of the corridor or in the hall or in the shadows of the street.
‘Just give me the key to your room.’
The clerk had gone, his desktop empty but for a rectangle of writing paper and four sharp pencils in perfect parallel lines. Wolff locked Hilken in his office with a fleeting prayer: Please God, the oily bastard’s in there a long time. It was galling to acknowledge but he knew his clumsy attempt at blackmail was going to fail. I’ve shot Wiseman’s bolt and hit very little, he thought, as he walked quickly along the corridor to the stairs. Large payments from a foreign diplomat to a businessman’s private accounts were proof of nothing but profiteering, and wasn’t that just the sort of enterprise to make America richer still? Perhaps he should have tried harder. It was the recollection of Turkey, his own torturer — well, he couldn’t — just the thought made him sick. The ships, he had the names of the ships.
The singing had stopped and someone was trying to stroke the old piano through the Moonlight Sonata. The party in the club below was over and a commanding voice and the clatter of furniture suggested the stewards were clearing the tables. If Hilken’s clerk was organising a reception committee, it wouldn’t be here, he thought. At the bottom of the stairs the doors of the club swung open and a sober-looking merchant officer stalked out with his hat under his arm. Wolff followed him from the building but waited in its shadow and watched him climb into a horse cab. Parked a few feet from the entrance was Hilken’s Packard — the driver had retreated behind the wheel — and striding along the sidewalk opposite, two smartly dressed men, heads bent in conversation. Midnight on a chilly downtown street in March, well lit, almost empty, nothing out of the ordinary or so it seemed, but his heart was pounding. Where the hell was Masek? He could feel the danger creeping over his skin.
Sidewalk to sidewalk on the brightest streets, bending his mind to movement, faces, footsteps, a reflection shifting in a shop window; a route through downtown Baltimore; and if I’m lucky I’ll find a cab. Cursing Masek as he walked, because at such times it was important to blame someone. On Baltimore Street he was startled by a drunk who lurched out of an office doorway to ask for money.
‘Get lost,’ he muttered angrily. Half a block further on he was sorry he hadn’t found a nickel or dime. Baltimore was so empty, so still, the sound of his own footsteps was unnerving. It reminded him for just a moment of Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt; the gas cloud that wipes people from the world, leaving its streets to machines.
Beyond the Custom House he began to breathe more easily. A few blocks to the harbour basin, on into President Street and he would be there. What happened to you, Masek? Ahead of him now, the chimney of the new pumping station; on his right the lights of the city dock. Damn stupid to check in to the hotel under the same cover name; what was he thinking? Careless, as if it was over, when it was never over. He tightened his grip on the revolver.
Two sailors staggered from an alleyway with their arms draped around each other and began to weave along the sidewalk away from him. He slowed a little, seeking some assurance that they were the harmless drunks they appeared to be. They were disconcertingly well-built men, the sort he used to baulk at tackling on the naval college rugby field. Drawing closer, his pulse began to quicken again. There was something wrong. What? He was close enough now to hear their shuffling footsteps. Footsteps, footsteps. They were rolling home in silence. I’m a fool. It was a performance. He’d known a lot of drunken sailors, he’d often been drunk himself and he could remember quiet moments, but not at turning-out time, not in a street, not with an arm round a buddy.
Christ. Here we go again; and he set off across the street, checking for just a second to avoid a passing carriage. Only three blocks more to the hotel; and if the bastards came for him, he’d fire one over their heads. They were sober now all right, keeping step through one junction, and the next, and past the pumping station, men on the graveyard shift smoking at its gates: They won’t take me here. But a few more yards and they made their move, breaking across the street towards him. Turning smartly, steadying himself, he took aim: ‘Halt.’ For a second they did, but only for a second, edging forward step by step like children in a playground game. To be sure they knew these were his rules, he yelled: ‘Another and you’re dead.’ But the larger of the two seamen kept coming. Have it your own way then; he was close enough to be sure he’d hit something. He squeezed, the revolver kicked, the seaman crumpled, the shot echoed for ever — or so it seemed because at that moment he felt a searing pain in his shoulder. A scream locked behind his teeth, and he spun round to confront a man with a bullet head and blue eyes, his mouth slightly open and his knife raised to strike again. Wolff tried to level the gun but he felt weak and someone was holding his arm. There were more men — three — a tangle of arms and fists and boots. Then an agonising jarring in his chest, and through a blinding kaleidoscope of shapes and lights he fell. I’m going to die. He was lying on the cobblestones and he’d never felt colder. I love you, and I’m sorry. He tried to shape the words but couldn’t move his lips. That’s it then — over, over. Hadn’t it all been a bloody waste.
MASEK WAS FOUND floating in the harbour. They left Wolff where he fell. The doctors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital did all in their power, without hope. The blade passed within half an inch of his heart and he’d haemorrhaged too much blood to recover, or so they said.
Beyond the bright white confines of the hospital, the thick cotton sheets, the perfect bed corners, the laboratory coats and starched aprons, a dirty little battle was fought over his body in the press and on Capitol Hill. The Baltimore Evening Sun broke the first story. The stabbing in our streets of a Dutch engineer united the sympathies of the citizens of this city, its columnist, Mr Mencken, observed; but this newspaper understands that the unfortunate Mr de Witt is neither Dutch nor an engineer. He is a British spy. The newspaper’s well-informed source was also able to reveal that a Norwegian sailor called Christensen had told the authorities in Berlin that the same spy had tried to induce him to betray the Irish patriot, Sir Roger Casement.
The answering shot came in the New York Times under the headline: ‘Germans attack America again’. The newspaper had seen incontrovertible evidence implicating German diplomats and respectable American businessmen in another sabotage campaign. Using the ships and premises of the Norddeutscher Lloyd Line as cover, ruthless men have sought to undermine this country’s interests and security, its editor wrote in an opinion piece. German Americans must now show where their true loyalty lies. A few days later the New York World was able to reveal that police were investigating shocking claims that German agents in America were using a terrible new biological weapon. With help from sympathisers in this country, German agents are infecting animals with anthrax in the hope of striking at Allied soldiers and their supply lines on the battlefields in France. In the course of this attack, at least one American dockworker was infected and had died, the paper claimed, and it printed a picture of a prominent Baltimore businessman with the caption: Mr Paul Hilken has denied any role in
