The Titanic Secret (7 page)

The question seemed obvious, but Tremayne asked it anyway. ‘If he was only meeting a low-level informer, why did he end up dead?’

Mansfield Cumming smiled bleakly. ‘That’s the point,’ he said. ‘In fact, the man was only a clerk. But he was looking for some easy money, and when one particular report was given to him to register and then file away, he read it, or part of it anyway. What he saw prompted him to contact one of the staff members at the British Embassy, with the result that we paid him quite a lot of money for details of a particularly nasty little scheme that the Germans are engaged in. Of course, he won’t be able to spend it now. The Germans’ll probably just shoot him.’

‘So where did Curtis fit in?’

‘That’s simple. Most of the embassy staff are employed to push bits of paper around. They’re not trained for any kind of covert activity, so after this German clerk – his name was Klaus Trommler – contacted them, they reported the fact to the Foreign Office, and the Foreign Secretary called me in and told me to sort it out.’

‘So you sent David Curtis because he speaks – or rather he spoke – fluent German? His family came from Bavaria, if I remember correctly, and he came over here to Britain in his twenties. You were a bit reluctant to recruit him, too.’

Cumming nodded. ‘You’re right, I was, though he proved his worth to me several times over. Anyway, this should have been a simple enough job, but because of what happened I think the Germans were already watching Trommler. Either that or they’d been following Curtis. The mechanics don’t matter. All that concerns us is the information that Trommler passed on, and which Curtis relayed to the British Embassy in Berlin and then on to us.’

‘Which was?’ Tremayne prompted.

Mansfield Cumming looked down at his desk and picked up a single sheet of paper, one side covered in closely spaced typewritten lines. ‘It’s a plot, basically,’ he replied, after glancing at it for a few moments. ‘Let me give you some background information. As things stand, the Royal Navy dominates the oceans. It’s the biggest navy the world has ever seen, equipped with the most modern and most powerful warships we have been able to construct. In any maritime conflict, with any nation, the Royal Navy would prevail.’

‘I’m not a sailor,’ Tremayne remarked, ‘but supposing Germany combined its own navy with the other maritime forces of this Triple Alliance they’ve set up. How would it work then?’

Cumming shook his head. ‘We would still be more than a match for them. Even if Germany produced a combined fleet with Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, we would still have something like a twenty-five per cent higher gross tonnage. I grant you, that would give us a much smaller margin of superiority, but it would still be enough.’

‘So the only way that the German Navy could hope to achieve maritime superiority would be if the Kaiser managed to secure an alliance with another – a different – nation, one which already has a strong navy?’

Cumming smiled. ‘As usual,’ he said, ‘you’ve gone to the crux of the matter. Without a new alliance, I don’t believe Germany would dare to declare war on Britain. With such an alliance, it could happen tomorrow.’

‘But an alliance with whom?’

‘One nation Germany could contemplate linking up with is Russia. They have a total warship tonnage of over eight hundred thousand, and if that nation threw in its lot with the Triple Alliance, the combined force would be so powerful that it could take on the Royal Navy on the high seas and probably beat it. And if the time ever comes when the Royal Navy no longer dominates the oceans, the British Empire will cease to exist within one generation. Make no mistake, Tremayne, Britain is and always has been a maritime nation. Our most important single attribute, our strongest military arm and our most powerful instrument of diplomacy, is the Royal Navy.’

Tremayne shook his head. ‘But Russia would never join forces with Germany,’ he objected. ‘The Tsar has signed a treaty with France and that puts Russia in opposition to Germany right from the start.’

Mansfield Cumming nodded. ‘When the German clerk approached the Berlin Embassy with his story, that was their initial reaction as well. They were inclined to dismiss Trommler out of hand. But he was adamant that such an alliance was not only planned, but was about to be implemented, and he claimed he’d seen a document which proved it. Spelled it out, in fact.’ Cumming leant forward to emphasize the point. ‘But it isn’t Russia that Germany is planning to join forces with. It’s the United States of America. And the two of them together – America and Germany – have one goal in mind. They intend to declare war on Great Britain and destroy our Empire.’

9 April 1912
London

Tremayne stared at Cumming for a few moments, then shook his head. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘The Germans have got nothing in common with the Americans, and our relationship with them is very good. We speak the same language, we share the same ideals and values, and we have strong trading links. Why would the American people possibly want to form an alliance with Germany?’

‘It’s not quite that simple,’ Mansfield Cumming sighed. ‘America is a melting pot of different cultures and races. Though the English predominate, as you say, there’s a very large German presence over there and, more importantly, many of the richest and most influential families in America are either German by birth, or have German ancestors and strong cultural links with that country.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘And there’s something else,’ Cumming ploughed on, ignoring Tremayne’s interruption. ‘You mentioned the American people. What they want, or don’t want, is frankly of little concern to the government over there. Like all governments, the people running the United States are politicians first and foremost, and that means they’ll do whatever it takes to stay in power. They’ll say whatever they think people want to hear, but they’ll make sure that any decisions they take are to their own advantage as far as possible.’

‘That’s a very cynical point of view.’ Tremayne raised his left eyebrow.

Mansfield Cumming smiled. ‘It might be cynical, Tremayne, but it’s also true. All politicians are corrupt: it’s virtually one of the qualifications for doing the job. If almost any politician is offered enough money, he’ll take whatever decision the man who’s paying him wants him to take, and if enough of them take the bribes, they’ll ensure that the “right” course of action is followed.’

Tremayne looked confused. ‘Are you saying that the German government is going to try and bribe America to form an alliance?’

Cumming shook his head. ‘At the moment, we don’t know what lever the Germans are trying to pull. I suppose it could be bribery, using some of the fortunes amassed by German emigrants to America, plus funds from Germany itself, perhaps, but I doubt it. That would involve too many people, who might ask too many questions. Personally, I think this plot involves something much simpler. And that’s what we need to find out. The information that Curtis obtained from Trommler was only fragmentary, because the man only got a brief look at the relevant document. Our people stationed in America haven’t heard anything about any kind of moves aimed at creating this unholy alliance. To me, that suggests that the architects of this scheme haven’t yet made their move, and it also means that they must have some argument or information so compelling that the American president or members of the government would have no option but to agree to this alliance once the plotters reach America, and that an announcement would follow almost immediately.’

Cumming held up his hand to forestall the question he expected Tremayne to ask.

‘The answer’s no, we don’t know any more than that about the lever.’

Tremayne shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I guessed that. I was going ask you how sure we are that whoever’s orchestrating this isn’t already in America. You said “once the plotters reach America”. So how do you know they’re not there right now, completing their scheme?’

Mansfield Cumming smiled again. ‘Now that is something that we
do
know. Just before Curtis was murdered, he had enough presence of mind to pass a message on to one of the sentries. In the seconds before he died, he said four words to the soldier who was trying to help him. “Three men. Boss. You.” Or at least, that was what the sentry thought.’

Cumming picked up a file off his desk, opened it and glanced at the first page, then replaced it, still open so that he could read what it contained.

Tremayne waited. He knew Cumming of old, knew that he would explain things in his own good time.

‘The meaning of the first two words is quite obvious. This plot must obviously involve more than just one man. I’ll come back to the third word in a minute, but the fourth and last word he spoke – “you”– had us fooled for a while. “You” could have been the start of a new sentence: “You need to find this man”, or something like that. But it could also have been the first syllable of a new word, or the first letter of an acronym.’

Tremayne nodded. ‘So “u” as in the letter. “U” meaning “United States” or “USA”?’

‘Exactly,’ Cumming nodded. ‘And if we are right, then it means Curtis had received confirmation from his source that Germany was indeed planning to link up with the United States.’

‘So what about the other word? “Boss”?’

‘Actually, we don’t think Curtis said that at all. He was badly wounded already, his left shoulder smashed, one lung punctured and his left femur shattered into a dozen pieces. He was clearly in agony, and his speech would almost certainly have been affected. The sentry he spoke to thinks Curtis said “Boss”, but I think the word he was trying to get out was “Voss”. And if we’re right about that, it changes everything.’

9 April 1912
London

There was a knock on the office door, and a few moments later a shapeless middle-aged woman backed into the room carrying a small tray.

‘Tea,’ she announced economically, in a pronounced Scottish brogue, placing the tray on the end of Mansfield Cumming’s desk. Then she retreated as quickly as she’d appeared.

Cumming placed a cup on a saucer and then poured dark-brown, almost black, liquid from a small discoloured teapot, added a splash of milk and slid it across the desk to Tremayne, before pouring his own.

‘So who is Voss?’ Tremayne asked, taking a sip of tea, which tasted strong enough to be used as a disinfectant, or possibly as some kind of fuel. He decided that one sip was quite enough and, out of respect for his intestines, he replaced the cup and saucer on the tray.

‘Ever since we first got wind of this plot, a couple of weeks ago, we’ve been watching every possible German and American citizen who we thought might be involved. Here in Britain, Vernon Kell has had his people from MI5 mounting surveillance on everyone they could find. But frankly, I doubted if they were looking in the right place. There would be no point in the people involved in this plot spending much time in Britain. They would either need to be in Germany, finalizing details of the scheme there, or over in America.

‘We had to make some assumptions, of course. We presumed that the conspirators in this plot would either be Germans or, probably more likely, American citizens with German backgrounds. We guessed they would also be spending more time in Germany than anywhere else in Europe, and would be intending to return to America within the next few weeks.’

‘That must have covered hundreds of people,’ Tremayne suggested.

‘It did,’ Mansfield Cumming agreed. ‘I’ve had people in America checking the passenger lists of their shipping lines and other people doing the same in Britain and Europe, and the total we came up with was just over six hundred, but it could be a lot more than that. The Continent seems to be full of visiting Americans at the moment. Then one of my men suggested a way that we could use to identify any conspirators. He reasoned that anyone involved in such a plot would almost certainly be having meetings with members of the German government or high-level officials, most probably in Berlin. That cut the numbers drastically, and we ended up with a list of about twenty people. One of them was a wealthy American businessman named Gunther Voss.’

‘Voss is not an uncommon name in Germany,’ Tremayne pointed out. ‘It means “fox” in low German. Don’t forget, I spent five years in Munich and Berlin after university.’

Cumming nodded. ‘I remember. Your German isn’t bad either. And you’re quite right, but on our new shortlist, there was only one Voss. So if our assumptions were right, and if the German clerk gave Curtis the correct name, we might have identified one of the people involved in this plot.’

Tremayne didn’t look convinced. ‘I know your intuition is usually right, Mansfield, but it sounds to me as if you’re basing the identification of this man, this Voss, on a series of assumptions, many of which might be wrong, and on a single name uttered by a dying man, a name that could easily have been misheard in the circumstances. At best, what you’ve got is very shaky circumstantial evidence, and certainly not enough to arrest this man, or even bring him in for questioning.’

‘Two things. First, I have no intention of arresting or questioning this man. All we’re doing is watching him. Second, Curtis was killed three nights ago, so we’ve known about Voss since then. Why do you think I’m only telling you about him now?’

‘Because you spent the last two days investigating him?’

‘Precisely. And what we’ve found out so far suggests that our identification might be correct. Our people in America have established that Voss is anti-British – but that’s hardly a crime, of course – and he has something of a history of agitating for closer trade links with Germany. We also know that he has powerful connections within the Kaiser’s government through his mining interests.’

‘There must be more than that, surely?’

‘Patience! Voss made most of his money in the mining industry in America, and we know from looking at various correspondence we’ve been able to – ahem – acquire, shall we say, that he’s very keen to establish a foothold for his businesses in Africa. The problem for him is that Britain already controls many of the most important and productive areas.’