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Authors: Jack Steel
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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.’
Chapter 8
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,
‘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.’
Chapter 8
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,
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