The Poison Tide Read online

  Wolff nodded approvingly.

  ‘Look to your own part, Mr de Witt; rest assured I know what I’m doing. Now another . . .’ and, half rising, he reached across the desk for the bottle. ‘And this time I hope you’ll join me.’

  ‘Are there references to the rifles in the paperwork?’

  ‘Do you read Norwegian? No, well . . .’ Paulsen put down the bottle and picked up the ledger. ‘Let me put your mind at rest.’ He flicked through it lazily in search of a suitable page. ‘Here’s something: The shipment will be hidden in a large consignment of electrical equipment and stamped by the Westinghouse Company . . . And here: . . . the client’s agent will board in Darwin . . . he will make his own arrangements for unloading . . . You see. Clues. Only clues. But lots of them.’

  ‘Good. To our arrangement then,’ Wolff replied, leaning forward to pick up his glass. ‘To the success of your performance, Mr Paulsen. Skoal.’ He drank the spirit in one and banged the glass down emphatically on the edge of the desk.

  Paulsen smiled: ‘And to yours, Mr de Witt.’

  Medium height, slight build, brown hair, young – perhaps twenty-five – dressed like a clerk. He was waiting in a doorway a little way along the street from Paulsen’s and moved into the cover of the building too quickly. Wolff pretended to consult his Baedeker. Was the tip-off from the hotel or one of Paulsen’s people? he wondered. It didn’t matter. He had begun leaving a trail a child could follow the moment he stepped from the ship. But make the fellow work a little, he thought. He’d expect that. He closed the guidebook and adjusted his hat. It was only a pity Christiania was such a dull city.

  Shuffling too close one minute, racing to catch up the next, bumping into passers-by, spinning round to gaze in shop windows. For a time he made Wolff smile. But what he lacked in craft he made up for in persistence. He was very young. Wolff caught a glimpse of his face in a mirror at the Continental as he was being shown to a table for luncheon. Younger than twenty-five. Twenty. A runner for someone else, that’s all. Did he have any idea what he was getting into? Wolff toyed whimsically with the thought of calling him over, sitting him down with a glass of wine and saying, ‘Whatever they pay you, my boy, it will never be enough.’ But after lunch he took a tram from outside the parliament to the palace and in the course of a stroll through the royal park gave him the slip. To be sure, he caught a second tram in the direction of the smart coastal district of Bygdoy but got off after only a few stops and hopped on to another heading back into the city. It was not until he’d changed twice more that he felt ready to catch one to the St Hanshaugen Park. At the entrance, he consulted his guidebook until he was satisfied that he was still alone, then began to climb through the formal gardens to the reservoir and viewpoint. He’d walked the same route on a summer day fourteen years earlier – a young naval officer enjoying a furlough from his ship. The hill was popular with locals and visitors in the late afternoon. The elderly came to sit and listen to the military band in the pavilion by the lower pond; mothers ambled through the arboretum on its slopes while their children played hide and seek, and courting couples strolled to the top to gaze over the city. It wasn’t the sort of place Wolff would have chosen for a clandestine meeting at any time of the year.

  The reservoir keeper lived on the crown in a yellow-and-white tower house that Wolff had mistaken on his first visit for a church. Beyond it was the basin with the water supply for the district, the fountain in the centre cascading the colours of the rainbow in the evening sunshine. The stiff breeze was whipping spray across the gravel esplanade and spotted his overcoat as he walked round to the benches on the south side. There was still a nip in the air and as luck would have it the place was deserted but for a Norwegian couple spooning at the rail, too wrapped up in each other to show any interest in Wolff. He sat on a bench and took out his cigarettes. To the east, the wooded slopes of the Ekeberg; Oscarshall and the brick spire of the Uranienborg Church to the west, and beyond it the shimmering sea. But a daft bloody place to meet, just daft. Wolff bent to light a cigarette from the flame guttering in his cupped hands, then rose from the bench and ambled over to the rail, turning his back to the city. It was almost five o’clock. The lovers were drifting along the esplanade. He watched them laughing and kissing with a wry smile of regret. Damn it, didn’t they know there was a war on?

  A few yards from the keeper’s house, they separated as if conscious they were not alone. A moment later, an exceptionally tall figure with the stride of a fairy-tale ogre stalked past them and down the steps to the basin. He was dressed in a bowler hat and black overcoat and used his umbrella as a walking stick as if he was making his way down Whitehall. He was the sort of man it was impossible not to notice and his imperious swagger suggested that he wanted to be. Wolff walked over to a bench and sat down again. A few seconds later Mr Mansfeldt Findlay crunched up the path to stand towering above him.

  ‘Do you think it will rain?’

  It was the code he’d suggested in his note.

  ‘I think we can dispense with the formalities, don’t you,’ replied Wolff.

  ‘All right.’ He sounded disappointed. ‘Mansfeldt Findlay, Head of Legation.’

  ‘Sit down, Mr Findlay. We’ll be less conspicuous.’

  ‘Is something wrong?’ His voice was surprisingly high pitched for such a large man.

  ‘You should tell me what you have to tell me quickly, then go.’

  ‘I don’t like your tone,’ he snapped.

  ‘And I don’t like your idea of a discreet rendezvous. But we’re here now, so let’s get on with it.’

  Findlay glared at him for a few seconds, then sat down with the umbrella upright between his legs like a weapon, his enormous hands resting on its ebony handle. A bear of a man in his mid fifties, square jaw, thick grizzled moustache. A man who looked as if he knew how to handle himself in a ring. Queensberry Rules, of course.

  ‘You met our friend Paulsen?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A good fellow. Won’t let us down. Needs the money.’

  Wolff frowned. ‘It’s only the money?’

  ‘Not a bit of it. Anglophile too. A lot of them are, you know. He’ll play his part, you can be sure of it.’ He paused, then said, ‘I’ve spoken to our friend in the police. Told him a little of my interest in Mr de Witt’s activities. His people are looking into it already.’

  ‘How very obliging.’

  ‘Good diplomacy,’ he said coolly. ‘The enemy has friends here too but our friends are better placed and more sincere. When are you leaving for Berlin?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Good. Make sure it’s no later. They’re visiting Paulsen tomorrow, then they’ll come for you. My guess is the local Germans will have wind of it by the end of the day. They’ll know you’re on your way to Berlin.’

  Wolff took a last draw on his cigarette and ground the butt into the gravel beneath his shoe. ‘Tell me about the informer, Adler Christensen.’

  Findlay’s face wrinkled as if he was recalling an unpleasant smell: ‘Came to us at the end of October. He’d struck up a friendship with Casement in New York and was acting as his valet. They were staying at the Grand Hotel and had already made contact with the German delegation in the city.’

  Wolff nodded. ‘How much did it cost you?’

  ‘A hundred and twenty-five krone. He gave me a contact address in Berlin – here,’ and he reached into his coat pocket and took out a small envelope. ‘It’s a boarding house run by a Norwegian woman. His mother writes to him there. There’s a copy of Christensen’s last letter too. Damn fellow wants more money. Do you know how you’re going to get your information out?’

  Wolff took the envelope from him without comment.

  ‘Well, I expect you’ve met his sort before.’ He shook his huge head in disgust.

  ‘What sort? What was he like?’

  ‘Dishonest. Typical Norwegian sailor. Perhaps more dishonest than most. Speaks English like an American. It’s all
in the file we sent you. Wouldn’t trust him further than I could throw him,’ he snorted disparagingly.

  ‘Does Christensen like Casement?’

  ‘They’re close. He says Casement calls him a “treasure”. And I sensed he . . .’ His heavy brow gathered in a frown. ‘Well, I just didn’t like the fellow,’ he added, lifting his umbrella to his shoulder.

  ‘Is there something else?’

  ‘I think we should be going, don’t you?’ Findlay looked uneasy.

  ‘There’s something you aren’t telling me,’ Wolff insisted.

  ‘Goodness, no. No, no. Damn mercenary, that’s all. A loathsome creature,’ he replied, getting quickly to his feet. ‘I don’t want to give him another thought,’ and he turned deliberately to gaze at the view. It was the hour before sunset, the sky burnt orange and gold like a peach. ‘They do their best for us, you know. The Norwegians, I mean.’

  Wolff stood up slowly. ‘All right. If you’re sure you’ve told me everything.’

  ‘I was only with him for an hour. Glad to get away. A dangerous rascal. Casement too.’

  They walked back along the esplanade in silence. When they reached the tower house, Findlay said, ‘I’d offer you a lift but . . .’

  ‘No. Thank you.’

  Another long silence. The diplomat seemed reluctant to leave.

  ‘We’ll get him in the end, you know,’ he said at last. ‘I just hope the Liberals have the balls to hang him. Pour encourager. Can’t let Ireland go.’

  Wolff couldn’t think of anything to say. He wasn’t sure he cared.

  ‘Look, good luck.’ Findlay offered his hand. ‘Be careful, for God’s sake. Rest assured your friends here will do all they can.’

  He began to walk towards his car but stopped after only a few yards and turned to Wolff again. ‘You’re a brave fellow,’ he said stiffly.

  He’s written me off already, thought Wolff.

  3

  A German Scientist

  HERR PROFESSOR DR Fritz Haber brushed the chalk from his uniform jacket and turned to face them with an indulgent smile.

  ‘You know a little chemistry.’ He didn’t wait for Anton Dilger to reply. ‘For the benefit of the Count,’ he said, pointing to the equation he’d written on the blackboard in a bold hand.

  ‘Chlorine is a diatomic element. It combines with most elements but not with oxygen and nitrogen. At certain concentrations, corrosive when it comes into contact with epithelium, forming hydrochloric acid in moist tissue – eyes, nose, throat, lungs and . . .’ He picked up the chalk again and wrote the symbol HOCl: ‘Hypochlorous acid,’ then took a step away and frowned at the board as if the simple act of writing the equation had set his mind to another thread of chemical possibilities.

  Is he a genius? Dilger wondered. Some people said so. The first to fix nitrogen from the air. Brot aus Luft! Bread out of air. His discovery made fertilisers possible; he’d enriched the soil and fed the world. Yes, there were some who called it ‘an act of genius’.

  Haber was completely bald, like a wrinkled egg. Late forties, short, his eyes almost hidden beneath a pronounced brow and by pince-nez spectacles. He had a bushy moustache and a large nose. His manner was clipped, even a little haughty. He won’t suffer fools gladly, Dilger thought anxiously. He knew he was a little too conscious of the honour Haber was bestowing in speaking to him as an equal. Professor Troester had arranged the visit to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. ‘I’d like you to meet the director,’ he had told Dilger. ‘The professor is a great German patriot,’ and, more cryptically, ‘You’ll find him helpful.’

  Haber had greeted the three of them – naturally, Nadolny had come too – in his lecture hall. He’d been sitting near the back, almost lost in the rows of empty benches, elbows on his knees, rolling a large cigar between his fingers, his assistants in white coats at the door like monks in attendance on an abbot at prayer.

  ‘I still don’t understand a word of it, do you, gentlemen?’ remarked Count Nadolny, turning with a wry smile to Troester.

  ‘Of course,’ he replied curtly.

  ‘To the director of this Institute, everything is simple,’ said Nadolny, acknowledging Haber with a gracious bow. ‘I am merely an old soldier.’

  ‘You do yourself an injustice. The Count has a subtle mind, don’t you agree?’ Haber asked, turning to Dilger with a distant smile. ‘In chemistry as in life, Count; few things are as simple as they appear. There are always choices to be made.’

  ‘Tested in the crucible of time, but . . .’ the Count paused, flourishing his hand and the red intaglio at the blackboard. ‘Perhaps you can demonstrate the practical application of your work here, Professor.’

  The late-afternoon sun was casting strange shifting shadows as it streamed through the laboratory windows on to shimmering Bunsen flames and assorted bell jars, flasks and cylinders. It was a long room with a high barrel-vaulted ceiling, the ceramic-topped benches in rows facing the door, glass-fronted cabinets and shelves against the walls. Better equipped than Heidelberg, Dilger thought, and a more orderly environment than the one he’d studied in at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, but unremarkable except in one respect. The collars and Saxon cuffs beneath the white coats of the young men at the work benches were field grey, and peaked caps were hanging on the stand by the door. On a board next to it was the old saying, War is the Father of all things, and in ebony frames on the wall, the Kaiser and the Chief of the General Staff, von Falkenhayn. Professor Dr Fritz Haber’s laboratory belonged to the Army and to its industry.

  ‘We discussed the possibility in a general way before the war and I carried out a little research of my own,’ he said, leading them over to the workbench nearest the window, ‘but it wasn’t until we had the money and there was the political will.’

  One of his research assistants had drawn a hose from a steel cylinder beneath the bench and was attaching it to the bottom of a large bell jar. In the jar were five albino rats.

  ‘Doctor Hahn is my Pied Piper.’ Haber smiled benignly at his assistant, then bent forward to peer at the squealing tangle of white fur. ‘Our calculations suggest it will be effective on the battlefield at a concentration as low as one to one thousand.’ He paused, his brow wrinkled like an anxious Humpty Dumpty, before adding as an afterthought: ‘Of course, we won’t be able to determine this precisely until we’ve tried.’

  Then he nodded to his assistant who reached beneath the bench and turned the tap on the cylinder. First a puff as if someone with an evil cigarette had exhaled into the jar, then a steady stream of yellow-green gas. Dilger was surprised that he could see it so clearly. It was heavy, sitting in a cloud at the bottom, the rats scrambling for the top of the bell jar, pink eyes, white fur twisting, turning, clawing at the glass.

  ‘Our dissections show clear evidence of spontaneous pulmonary disease – an increase in the mucus-secreting cells in the bronchial tree,’ Haber observed, tapping the glass with his knuckle. ‘They drown in their own body fluids.’

  ‘Extraordinary.’ Professor Troester leant closer, pocket watch in his hand; ‘About a minute and thirty seconds.’ The rats were twitching at the bottom of the bell jar. ‘Yes, extraordinary. Don’t you think so, Doctor?’ he asked, glancing sideways at Dilger.

  ‘I . . . yes, extraordinary,’ Dilger said, although he didn’t know what to think.

  The twitching had stopped. ‘Extraordinary,’ Troester repeated, straightening his long back. ‘But will it be possible to ensure a satisfactory result in normal atmospheric conditions, Professor?’

  ‘We will err on the side of caution,’ said Haber, polishing his glasses with his handkerchief. ‘I have advised the General Staff we will require something like a hundred and sixty tons of liquid chlorine along a front of two or three kilometres. Of course it will depend upon wind speed and direction, but I’m confident six thousand cylinders will be enough and, well, yes, will . . .’

  ‘Secure a decisive breakthrough?’

  Haber put his glasses back on
his nose and smiled. ‘Yes, Count, a decisive breakthrough.’

  ‘Ha! There you have it, gentlemen,’ Nadolny declared, clapping his hands together. ‘A triumph of German science. What do you think of that, Doctor?’ The professor was one of the first to recognise the need for science to keep in step with the people, he gushed, even when they marched to war.

  Then Haber led them from his laboratory and along corridors where work was taking place on even more ‘interesting’ possibilities. On the stairs they saw a uniformed scientist in one of the new gas masks, and in the lecture theatre an excitable member of the director’s research team was instructing the first special gas unit on the handling and placing of the new weapon.

  ‘I’m going to supervise the first release myself,’ Haber confided to Dilger as they were leaving the theatre. ‘I must make my own observations.’

  ‘Do any of the men in your research unit have doubts, Professor?’

  Haber stopped abruptly, his hand on the half-open door. ‘My dear Doctor,’ he said irritably, ‘my dear Dr Dilger – they obey my orders.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’ But he didn’t see. No. He wanted the great scientist and great patriot to explain. Wasn’t that why Troester had brought him to the Institute?

  ‘The international agreement prohibiting poison gas, Professor,’ prompted the Count, at Haber’s shoulder. ‘I think Dr Dilger would like to hear your view on the ethical question.’

  ‘The ethical question? Ha. My dear fellow.’ Haber was smiling again. ‘Yes, of course, in more congenial surroundings.’

  The professor invited them to his home and they drank tea with milk and sugar in the English way. He lived a short distance from the Institute in the city village of Dahlem, in a surprisingly modest villa that was painted a sickly shade of yellow like the gas. A Prussian home, too self-consciously so, Dilger thought, placing his cup and saucer on a table by the arm of his chair. Everyone knew that Haber and his wife were Jews who had converted to Christianity. Some said he had traded his religion for a professor’s chair, others, to be a better German. Their drawing room was unimaginatively furnished with heavy imperial pieces and landscape prints and in the hall Dilger noticed a full-length portrait of the Kaiser. Frau Haber didn’t keep an orderly house. The furniture was new but scruffy, as if she cared nothing for her husband’s reputation. It smelt of strong tobacco. The professor was sitting in a swirling cloud of smoke now, his back to the window.