The Poison Tide Read online

  They ambled away from the Brandenburg Gate and the government district to the broad victory avenue, lined with statues, that cut through the heart of the park.

  ‘Is your real name de Witt?’ Christensen asked. Wolff said it was.

  ‘And you’ve spoken to Mr Findlay?’ Wolff said that he had.

  Casement was staying at the Eden on the Kurfürstendamm, Christensen said, ‘but we’ll move soon. He can’t afford it.’

  ‘Aren’t the Germans paying him?’

  ‘He won’t take anything for himself,’ he grumbled. ‘Only people like him who are used to having money refuse when it’s offered.’

  ‘So who’s paying?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear me? No one. He says he’s expecting some from his Irish friends in America.’

  ‘Do you know their names?’

  ‘A man called Devoy, and his sister in New York, I think. He has friends here too.’

  ‘Who?’

  Christensen shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t met them.’

  ‘All right, Adler.’ Wolff stopped abruptly. ‘Let’s be clear. I need names – who he meets and why, and what they’re talking about. I need to know who he writes to and what he says. Do you have access to his correspondence?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Christensen sulkily.

  ‘Who, what, why, when and where, my friend. Understand? Everything. That will be a profitable arrangement.’

  He didn’t reply and he didn’t look Wolff in the eye, but stood there with his head bent, hands thrust in the pockets of his coat.

  ‘Who does he visit here?’ Wolff asked, at last.

  ‘You’ve got to give me more.’

  Wolff took a step closer. ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that, Adler.’

  ‘You need to give me more,’ he repeated – belligerently this time. He took his hands from his pockets and stood a little straighter. ‘It’s dangerous here. It will cost you more.’

  Wolff glanced over his shoulder. They had almost reached the top of the Siegesallee and the Reichstag was only a few minutes’ walk away.

  ‘Come with me,’ and he tugged roughly at Christensen’s sleeve.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Come on, man, I’m not going to kill you,’ he said, impatiently. ‘We’ve been standing beneath this streetlamp for too long,’ and he turned and walked quickly into the trees. After a few seconds Christensen followed him.

  ‘Cigarette?’

  Christensen shook his head. Wolff bent to light his own, then took a step away. They were only a few feet apart but it was too dark beneath the trees to see Christensen’s face. That he felt uncomfortable, even a little afraid, was apparent in his movements. The silhouette of his broad shifting shoulders made Wolff smile: an awkward troll of a man.

  ‘You going to threaten me?’ he asked defiantly in New York English.

  ‘Speak German. I’m not going to threaten you, Adler, but we must understand each other. You think you can play me, blackmail me – if I don’t pay enough, sell me to the security police . . .’

  ‘I only want to—’

  ‘Don’t interrupt,’ said Wolff fiercely. ‘You can try. They might pay you, but they might lock you up. I think they’ll lock you up, or shoot you . . .’

  ‘That’s not—’

  ‘I said, don’t interrupt. Now, let’s suppose they don’t shoot you. One of these days you’ll leave Germany. Go home to Norway or America. Visit mother. That’s when my friends will find you. They won’t let you get away with it. It’s bad for business. You can see that, can’t you? You’ll have to spend the rest of your life here. But they might get you here too.’ He paused to draw on his cigarette, dropped it and ground the end into the earth. ‘That’s just the way it is, Adler. It’s your choice. I’ll pay you a fair price for what you give me.’

  ‘That’s all I want,’ Christensen muttered. He sounded hurt. He’d probably convinced himself in the batting of an eyelid that it had never crossed his mind to betray Wolff, and he was incapable of such low behaviour.

  God, they’re all the same, thought Wolff. Always victims. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  Christensen followed him back to the pavement and they walked on towards the victory column in Königsplatz in silence.

  ‘He writes some of his letters in a code the Germans gave him,’ Christensen declared at last. Reaching into his jacket he pulled out a roll of papers. ‘I’ve copied it out and some of his letters too – here.’

  Wolff took the tube and slipped it inside his coat pocket.

  ‘He visits the Foreign Ministry two or three times a week,’ he continued. ‘The War Office too.’

  ‘Do you accompany him?’

  ‘Sometimes, but only as far as the lobby.’

  ‘Who does he meet?’

  ‘He usually sees a Foreign Office official called Meyer. But sometimes more important people. He’s met the Chancellor.’

  ‘Bethmann-Hollweg?’

  Christensen nodded. ‘Also an aristocrat called Nadolny – something to do with the military.’

  ‘Do you know what they’ve promised him?’

  Christensen said there was talk of men and guns, lots of talk, but all he could say for sure was that Casement was exasperated by how long his plans were taking to finalise. He’d even considered returning to the United States.

  ‘Does he trust you?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he replied; ‘we’re friends,’ and he turned his head to hide a coy smile. It was a tight-lipped, manipulative smile, the smile of someone who takes pleasure in winning, then betraying, a confidence. It didn’t matter, of course. Wolff knew he couldn’t afford to actively dislike Christensen. Who was he to judge anyway?

  ‘All right, Adler, that’s enough for tonight.’

  ‘And what about our agreement?’ he asked, a little sheepishly.

  ‘Findlay gave you a hundred and twenty-five krone, didn’t he?’

  ‘But . . .’

  Wolff grasped his forearm, pinching it tightly. ‘Let’s not talk about it again. There’s nothing more now. Here,’ and he handed Christensen a piece of paper. ‘It’s the address of a café in Wedding. Will you be able to make ten o’clock on Wednesday?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘If you can’t, I’ll be there at the same time on Friday. By then I’ll have read this,’ and he patted the front of his coat. ‘Don’t visit my hotel. Don’t send messages.’

  ‘I understand,’ he replied gloomily.

  They said goodbye and Wolff walked quickly away. Glancing up at Victory holding out her Prussian laurels to the city, he smiled at his own small triumph. But a man like Christensen he would have to fight again and again. He was as slippery as an eel. What use would he be if he wasn’t? But what did Casement see in the fellow? Wolff pondered this a little as he strolled back to his hotel but came to no firm view. It was impossible to say until he met Casement.

  After dinner he settled at the desk in his room and worked his way through the notes Christensen had given him. But for one short memorandum there was nothing he couldn’t glean from the newspapers. It was wrapped tightly in the centre of the roll and had been copied in such haste that it was barely legible.

  14 February, 1915

  The Chief of the General Staff requests Sir Roger Casement’s assistance in contacting reliable and discreet Irish in America for special work of importance in the defeat of our common enemy. The General Staff has sent Captain von Rintelen to New York to make the necessary contacts.

  One of the names on the distribution list was a Count Rudolf Nadolny, Section P of the General Staff.

  It was of some importance, but how much Wolff couldn’t say; nor was he confident that Christensen would be able to help. He made a note of the German cipher, the names, and other important details, in his own code and buried them in the text of a report he’d begun writing on his business meetings in Berlin. Then he destroyed Christensen’s papers. When an opportunity presented itself he would send his coded report to Westinghouse by
their office in Amsterdam. An agent would pick it up and forward it to the Bureau.

  Christensen arrived at the café before him on the Wednesday. He said he knew nothing of ‘special work’ in America or a ‘von Rintelen’. Wolff bought him Bratkartoffeln and bacon and he gobbled it down as if he was fighting for his share in the stokers’ mess.

  ‘Is that it?’ he asked, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his wool suit. ‘My payment?’

  ‘Not necessarily. It depends what else you have for me,’ Wolff declared. ‘Let’s walk.’

  That became the pattern: first a plate of food for Christensen, then a stroll through a park. Thoughts came quicker to Wolff on the move. When he tried to explain this, Christensen just shrugged his square shoulders: ‘Wherever you like, Mr de Witt – so long as you pay.’ But after only a short time he was bored with questions. ‘Why do you need to know that?’ he complained. ‘It doesn’t matter why,’ Wolff told him curtly. He wanted everything, not just Casement’s contacts and his correspondence, but his routine, what he liked to eat and drink, the newspapers he bought, when he went to bed and who he went to bed with – ‘No one,’ said Christensen with another sly smile, ‘only cares about his cause.’ Of Sir Roger’s personal habits he spoke with authority but he knew little of his mind and nothing of his plans for a rising in Ireland. Casement called him ‘friend’ but plainly treated him as something less than his equal and certainly not as a gentleman. A nasty word here and there, a certain resentful tone, the narrowing of his light-blue eyes, and it wasn’t long before Wolff understood that Christensen’s betrayal wasn’t just about money: Christensen was a disappointed young man. Why didn’t his ‘friend’ do more to help him? More than an old green suit. His pride was hurt. Doors opened for Sir Roger but he shut them in poor Adler’s face. Perhaps he had begun to realise that they would always be closed to someone of his class and blamed Casement for that too.

  ‘He’s let me down, you know,’ he said at their fourth meeting. ‘You can see that, can’t you?’ Wolff said he could.

  Most of the lies Christensen told were to himself but was he any different in that way from anyone else? Wolff did all he could to nourish his grievance. The more he understood the man, the more important it became. For all the childish slights, the bitter words, the pleasure he took in passing on confidences, he was plainly attached to ‘Sir Raj-er’.

  ‘He’s a great man, an honest man,’ he observed, only minutes after railing at Casement’s vanity.

  The portrait he painted of Casement was of someone naïve, impulsive, and with an exaggerated sense of his own importance, but principled and generous to a fault. Wolff could see that Adler was as fond of the man he was betraying as he was capable of being of anyone, and that made him even less trustworthy. So Wolff didn’t mention the note he left for Casement at the Eden or the visit he received from the security police the following day.

  5

  Teasing

  THEY MUST HAVE been waiting at the hotel but Wolff didn’t notice them until he stopped to watch a column of soldiers march by. It was part of his daily routine: faces in a crowd, reflections in shop windows, skipping on and off trams. It was an exchange of glances only but his heart missed a beat. Two powerfully built men in their forties who walked like Unteroffiziere and wore their cheap blue suits like uniforms. They followed him into Wilhelmstrasse, working the pavements in tandem and with a professionalism that suggested they were of a different calibre to the state gendarmes he’d encountered so far.

  After the note he had sent to Casement, he was expecting something of the sort, but not quite so quickly. He was very relieved to reach the sanctuary of his new country’s embassy. ‘That’s Turkey,’ he thought as he climbed the stairs to the trade section on the first floor.

  Secretary Boyd was dictating a letter to a clerk. He didn’t look pleased to see Wolff.

  ‘I’ve been instructed not to talk to you,’ he said brusquely. ‘From Ambassador Gerard himself. No assistance. No contact. Persona non grata.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s best you leave.’

  ‘If you explain . . .’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Then I will have to see the Ambassador.’

  The trade attaché looked horrified. ‘All right, Adams, we’ll finish this later.’ He dismissed the clerk with a wave and rose quickly from his desk, catching his thigh against its edge. Wolff watched him hobble to the door and shut it firmly.

  ‘The Ambassador won’t see you.’ He was still gripping the handle, his eyes locked on the floor. ‘He’s got more pressing concerns.’

  ‘He will see me. I’m an American.’

  ‘Oh?’ he snorted sceptically. ‘Look, it’s somethin’ to do with your business, that’s all I can tell you.’

  ‘Westinghouse?’

  ‘Yes. No. Instructions from the State Department. Look, I want you to leave at once.’

  ‘But it was a matter concerning Westinghouse?’

  ‘I’ve said too much already.’

  ‘You haven’t said anything.’

  ‘That’s not what the Ambassador thinks,’ Boyd said, lifting his eyes to Wolff’s face at last. ‘Unprofessional. Damn stupid,’ he barked in the straight-talking manner of Ambassador Gerard, flushing at the recollection. ‘There you have it, Mr de Witt. Too much charity.’ He frowned unhappily. ‘It’s that business in the papers, the Boers and their rifles. Made a bit of a fool of me, didn’t you?’

  Mr James W. Gerard was otherwise engaged and his secretary was unable to find a time in his diary when he wouldn’t be. Wolff made his protest to a second counsellor who had no idea what he was talking about and urged him to ‘come back tomorrow’.

  There was a telegram from Westinghouse at the hotel. The concierge at the desk handed it to him with a butter-wouldn’t-melt expression that suggested it had passed through the security police’s hands already. They had trailed him from the embassy and watched him take lunch at a restaurant near the Potsdamer Brücke. They’d caught the same tram to the Tiergarten, then wandered with him in the rain, and now they were dripping on the marble floor in the entrance hall of the Minerva.

  In his rooms, Wolff hung up his hat and coat, lit a cigarette and stood at the window gazing down at the traffic in the Unter den Linden. He felt calm. The police were in no hurry. There would be time for a bath and perhaps dinner. Only when he’d finished his cigarette did he reach for the telegram. It was from a Mr J. P. Foote of New England Westinghouse, not in the customary commercial code but in hard telegraph capitals that communicated so much more than the two lines of type. ‘Look, reader,’ they screamed; ‘look how angry we are with you. We’re very angry.’

  SERVICES NO LONGER REQUIRED.

  BUSINESS WITH THIS COMPANY TERMINATED

  WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT.

  There was virtue in brevity. ‘Let your enemy embroider the rest,’ C liked to say. Wolff folded the telegram back into the envelope. It was funny how often C’s little expressions forced their way to the front of his mind.

  By the time Wolff entered the hotel dining room it was almost full. There was no sign of the policemen who had followed him so doggedly. He asked for, and was shown to, a table against the wall. The waiter took his order of fish in a simple hollandaise and a small glass of wine but he had no appetite when it came. He sipped at the wine and smoked a cigarette and watched the other tables. Business sorts in white tie and tails for the most part, laughing, eating, drinking fine wine, two – perhaps three – of the diners bold enough to cock a snook at the new moral fervour of the nation and entertain expensive prostitutes. War was kind to a few.

  At nine o’clock, Wolff wandered into the entrance hall and spoke briefly to the concierge about the weather and the latest news from the Front. He expected to see the policemen lounging on the leather benches between the pillars but they had gone. It looked as if they were going to leave him for another day. Damn, he cursed them under his breath; damn, damn, damn, why didn’t they get on with
it? Once they had you, your senses and every thought were bent on the story and staying alive. Waiting was the worst thing by far. It was fear, not the pain, that had broken him in Turkey.

  He considered taking the air, perhaps a walk to the river and the museum island, but it was bucketing down, and the concierge was sure the rain wouldn’t stop before morning. He would have to return to his room, to another cigarette, old newspapers, memories, and a small brandy at bedtime.

  That the evening was going to end differently was plain the second the attendant slid the lift cage open on the fourth floor: the police Unteroffiziere were standing in the corridor and the door of his room was ajar.

  ‘Well?’ Wolff asked, walking purposefully towards them. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

  They gazed at him blankly as if it wasn’t their place to say, and before he could repeat the question a young man with the hauteur of a recently commissioned officer stepped out of his room to stand beside them.

  ‘Who the devil are you?’

  ‘Herr de Witt?’ he asked, looking Wolff up and down very deliberately. ‘We are policemen.’ Then, after a pause, ‘But you know that. Passport, please.’

  ‘Don’t you have it?’

  ‘Find it for me.’

  Wolff brushed past him into the sitting room. His passport was still in a drawer of the escritoire but not in quite the same place.

  ‘Here.’

  The young officer pretended to scrutinise it but his eyes kept flitting to Wolff’s face. They were large and almost colourless, an unnervingly light shade of blue. Very like the eyes of a submariner Wolff knew who’d cracked and run amok at three hundred feet.

  ‘You must come with me,’ he said, slipping the passport into his overcoat.

  ‘At this hour?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you arresting me?’ Wolff sounded incredulous. ‘You’ve seen my passport.’

  ‘Some questions, that’s all,’ he ventured. ‘If you wouldn’t mind . . .’

  He was struggling to be polite. It wasn’t expected of secret policemen. Wolff guessed he had been instructed not to break the head of a neutral.