The Hansa Protocol (24 page)

Angus Macmillan lived on the shores of Dunnock Sound in a village that was rapidly being turned from a poor rural street of cottages subsisting on stone-cutting, to a poor rural street covered in coal dust. For over a year, colliers had come round Duneansby Head from England, and dumped their cargoes into the old stone-yards along the waterside. Now, Angus Macmillan, pulling a handcart that wet Saturday through the mud towards the Naval Quay, could breathe in the fine black coal dust as well as the yellow dust from the stone
quarries
.

A group of neighbours watched Angus as he passed them. He waved a hand in greeting, but they knew that his time was precious, and he didn’t stop to chat. He’d been a wanderer, had Angus, and was not often at home there, in Thirlstane village. When he was, he’d drop into the alehouse, and tell them tales of another Scotland, a land of bagpipes, and grouse moors and distilleries, and a host of other fine things. Here, on the shores of the Sound, there was only hard work, poverty and dust.

The nice thing about Angus Macmillan was that he always fitted in immediately when he returned from his journeying. He would open his rambling and ruinous flint cottage in the trees above the road, one or other of them would bring him up some kindling, and there he would be. This time he’d brought a little wife and her taciturn mother to live with him. The little wife was flighty, you could see it in her eyes. Angus had better watch out. And the little wife too. For Angus Macmillan was known to have a foul, unforgiving temper, though with those he liked he could be pleasant enough.

Angus Macmillan spoke the Gaelic, though not well. His family had come from those parts, and his father had been a Thirlstane man, though he’d gone abroad long years ago, and married a foreign woman. Angus had always been a wanderer. He’d been to Clydeside and worked in the bowels of ships, readying and priming the coal bunkers. Then he’d gone to England. Now, it seemed, the new fleet depot had brought him back to Thirlstane. With his skills, he could make seven shillings a day down at the coaling basin.

As Macmillan dragged his handcart on to the setts of the Naval Quay he was challenged rather half-heartedly by two armed marines. He grinned at them as he began to undo the ropes holding a tarpaulin over the cart.

‘Och, away with your guns, lads. You know quite well who I am.’

‘Aye, we ken that fine,’ one of the two marines replied, ‘we’ve seen your ugly mug off and on since last autumn. But you’re a real will-
o’-the
-wisp, aren’t you, Angus? Flitting round, here and there …. You’re like a conjurer with his tricks: now you see it, now you don’t!’

Angus Macmillan laughed.

‘I’m a ship man, Soldier, and ships are always on the move. A ship man follows the ships! Where would they all be, with their fine vessels and their tall funnels, if it weren’t for the likes of me? It’s very fine for you fellows, too, strutting around here on the quay with those rifles, but there’s no glamour down there, among the boilers.’

He had brought his cart right to the edge of a wooden landing-stage where a trim steam-cutter lay anchored. It contrasted sharply with the grimy bunkering vessels anchored further along the quay. One of the marines put down his rifle and helped Macmillan to drag a polished wooden box down from the cart.

‘There’s not much glamour up here, either, is there, Jimmy?’ said the other marine. ‘Just standing still in the cold, challenging the likes of poor Angus there.’

‘Och, stop your whining. Let’s get the man out to the
Fearnought.’

It was 21 January. The following Monday the coaling-up of the fleet was to take place in readiness for the 25th. For a whole frantic day the air would be dark with the dust of thousands of tons of coal emptied by unending lines of men through the deck-ports into the bunkers of the warships. It was essential that the chutes and the door-mechanisms
functioned without faults. Angus Macmillan was skilled in that
particular
aspect of heavy coaling operations.

Within minutes, Macmillan and his box of tools were on board the steam-cutter which began its journey, weaving skilfully through the cruisers towards HMS
Fearnought.
The two marines on the quay resumed their watchful guard.

‘There’s that skulking spy again,’ said the man called Jimmy, motioning with his head in the direction of a well-dressed but seedy man of about forty leaning against the wall of a small brick office. ‘He was there yesterday, too. Hey, you! Clear off out of it!’

The man rolled himself upright off the wall with a kind of studied insolence that made the marine flush with anger, and strolled off into the rain-soaked stony village behind the quay gates.

Later in the day, Angus Macmillan was brought back to the pier in the cutter. His box was hauled up on to his handcart, and he began his slow uphill journey home. He reached his cottage, and his mother-in-law came out to help him lift the heavy box down prior to dragging it into the house.

The cottage lay half hidden in a clump of stunted oaks. It was in a state of semi-dereliction, but at one time must have been home to a large family. There were four large rooms on the ground floor, and a number of disused store-rooms facing into the trees on the hillside that rose above the Thirlstane road.

Once across the threshold, Colin McColl shed the strong Scots accent that he had employed as Angus Macmillan. He looked at the woman who was supposed to be his mother-in-law, and read the signs of something amiss in her furrowed brow.

‘All has gone well, Frau Feissen,’ he said, ‘but you look vexed. What has happened?’

Frau Feissen shrugged her shoulders. She motioned McColl to follow her into one of the sparsely furnished rooms of the dwelling, where a fire burned fitfully on an open stone hearth.

‘It is Miss Ottilie,’ said Frau Feissen. ‘You’d better do what you can to placate her. She’s still seething about what was done to Fritz Schneider. She vented her rage on me this morning – with no result, as you may imagine! I think that, tonight, it will be your turn.’

Frau Feissen turned as Ottilie entered the room. The older woman pulled a wry face at McColl, and slipped away, leaving the murderous
Scotsman and Ottilie Seligmann alone together in the firelit room.

‘What is the matter with you, madam?’

There was a dangerous ring to McColl’s voice that would have silenced most women. It served only to kindle Ottilie’s pent up wrath, which exploded in a barrage of words.

‘The matter?’ she cried. ‘What is the matter? Fritz Schneider’s death is the matter! I have held my peace for Germany’s sake, but now I will speak out. How dare you exceed your orders! Poor Fritz! What harm had he ever done?’

Ottilie Seligmann’s eyes flashed with a dangerous fire born from the arrogance of her Junker ancestry. The fire was almost immediately quenched by a flood of tears.

Colin McColl’s lip curled in something like contempt.

‘Your onset of tenderness does you no credit, Countess Czerny,’ he said. ‘Schneider was dangerous to our cause, because he was a fool. A dangerously naive fool. He had become the unwitting go-between for our enemies—’

‘You murdered him! When your hired thug failed to kill him with his vile horse and cart, you crept into that hospital, and poisoned him!
Feigling
!’

Colin McColl made as though to lunge at the enraged Ottilie. His face was drained of all colour.

‘Silence, you frantic woman! You fling that word “coward” in my face. But it was I who risked life and limb to destroy the traitor Otto Seligmann, and with him the copy of
The
Hansa
Protocol
that he had stolen for the use of Germany’s enemies. True, it was you who
discovered
it, hidden in the Belvedere, but it was I who triggered the mechanism, at great personal risk. I do always what is needful to usher in the New Age. As for Schneider, I had no personal feelings about him one way or the other. I had no personal feelings about Oliver, or Fenlake, or a dozen others whom I have sent to perdition.’

Ottilie, he could see, had made a monumental effort to regain control of herself. It would not do to antagonize her further.

‘We must be careful, Countess Czerny,’ he said, in milder tones, ‘not to fly at each other’s throats. You know what is at stake. Very soon now, the great victory will be ours. One of the marines down at the quay today said that I was like a conjurer. He spoke more of the truth than he could possibly imagine.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Ottilie softly, ‘the trick – the sleight of hand. If you fall into their hands before the 25th, confessing to that trick will serve you well. But think!
There
are
only
four
days
left!
When I think of that, my anger dies!’

‘I am glad,’ said McColl. ‘In one way, this whole glorious project owes its origin to you! You befriended that girl, Ottilie Seligmann, when she was dying of consumption at Jena. Everyone, so I was told, commented on your uncanny resemblance to her, despite a certain difference in age—’

‘It is true! She and I were like sisters. She was a good German, unlike her uncle, the traitor. The Herr Doktor Otto Seligmann accepted me as his niece. He had not seen her since she was a child. Maria Feissen was already established as housekeeper, and so matters took their course ….’

Ottilie moved restlessly. She glanced around the dim room with distaste, mingled, so McColl thought, with fear.

‘Four days!’ she cried. ‘They cannot pass quickly enough for me! Soon it will be done, and my husband will spirit us away from this benighted land. How I hate this place! This loathsome hovel, and the so-called village beyond the road. His Excellency my husband would not deign to stall his cattle in a place as wretched as that! This house is dark, and alive with sounds. I hear noises, footsteps—’

‘There is no one here but us three, Countess. I am tired of searching the place every time you fancy that someone is walking about.’

‘You are right. It is nerves. So you must forgive me, and my severe language. You will forgive me, no? Ah! Here is the good Maria. All is in order, Frau Feissen.’

The door had opened quietly, and the woman who had called herself Mrs Poniatowski came into the room. She looked as grim and
forbidding
as ever, but her eyes shone with a purposeful fanaticism.

‘I heard your voices raised,’ she said. ‘I hope that you are not falling out with each other? The tension up here in this cursed wilderness is getting on your nerves, no doubt. But think of the prize that is so nearly in our grasp! Calm yourself, Mr McColl. You have done excellent work. Countess, your role in this business has been vital all along. We are a
dedicated
group, are we not? We each have a role to play. So let us do our work for the Fatherland cheerfully, and without complaint. Dear Countess Czerny, do not let personal animosities or anxieties put our victory at risk.
As for poor Fritz – well, I, too, was fond of him, and warned him many times that it would be wise to return to Saxony. He did not heed my
warnings
, and so he had to pay the price ….’

Ottilie seemed to be subdued by the older woman’s words, and Colin McColl visibly relaxed. Mrs Poniatowski’s voice assumed a coaxing and conciliatory tone.

‘Do not spoil things at this late stage, dear friends, by quarrelling. Soon, it will all be over. His Excellency is holding himself in readiness. Play your parts! Be true to your destiny! Remember the rallying cry of the
Eidgenossenschaft
:
for Kaiser and Fatherland!’

In one of the ruinous chambers at the rear of the cottage, the
well-dressed
seedy man who had been warned off from the Naval Quay waited for the voices of the Queen’s enemies to recede as they left the room. With a deftness born of experience, he crept quietly from the dim store-room where he had been crouched in hiding, and slipped noiselessly away into the trees.

Colonel Kershaw walked round the stony bulk of Craigarvon Tower, which was bordered by a flint-strewn path. His course lay downward from the gaunt pile, and across a bleakly exposed ploughed field, at the far end of which there was a ruined bothy, little more than a dry-stone shed, with the tattered remains of a thatched roof. Kershaw pulled the skirts of his long military overcoat around him, stooped low, and passed under the lintel of the gaping doorway.

There was scarcely any shelter inside, but it was a convenient place for a meeting. Waiting for him was the well-dressed but seedy man whom the guards had driven away from the Naval Quay. He wore a well-cut black overcoat, and had the look of someone who had once been a gentleman, but who had fallen on evil times. He sat on a pile of fallen stones. Kershaw gingerly sat down near him, but did not look at him.

‘Well?’ said Kershaw abruptly. The other man replied in low tones.

‘They’re all there, holed up in a cottage at Thirlstane village. Colin McColl, Ottilie Seligmann, and Mrs Poniatowski. I have seen them.’

‘How did you contrive to do that?’

‘I gained entrance to the cottage. It’s a rambling, ruinous kind of place, and it was easy enough to hide away from their sight. I saw them, and I heard what they said to each other. Let me tell you what they said.’

When the man had finished his account, he added, after a brief pause, ‘I will now do whatever you ask me to do.’

Kershaw sat silent for a moment. He kicked a loose stone, which rattled across the ruined floor. He sighed, and rested his chin on his hand. Then he spoke.

‘You do realize, don’t you, Lankester, that I can do nothing to save you?’

‘Yes,’ said the other man, in the low voice of a man without hope. ‘Yes, I know that. Nevertheless, I will do whatever you ask me to do.’

‘Very well,’ said Kershaw. ‘Listen carefully to what I have to say. Somewhere in that cottage near Thirlstane village, McColl will have hidden a letter. The letter was written by the late Dr Seligmann to a young woman called Miss Whittaker. A copy of that letter is fortunately in our hands, but McColl has the original. Do you know what I’m talking about, or must I go over it all?’