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The House in West Fifteenth Street

Martha Held disliked men who arrived early. Those who came late could be made to wait on the doorstep for half a minute — long enough to remind them that other people's time possessed value — while those who arrived precisely when invited demonstrated breeding, discipline and an acceptable acquaintance with clocks. Early callers, however, were a nuisance. They had to be put somewhere, given something to drink and, above all, prevented from encountering other visitors whom they were not supposed to know.

The bell rang at seven minutes before eight.

Martha examined the ormolu clock on the drawing-room mantelpiece, pursed her lips and said, "Of course." She had been adjusting a vase of chrysanthemums and, after a final critical inspection, returned it precisely to the position it had occupied before she started. Her electric-blue silk dress rustled magnificently as she crossed the room, the enormous bustle forcing her to negotiate the doorway with the practised turn of a vessel entering a narrow harbour. Somewhere below stairs her maid had heard the bell and was already approaching, but Martha intercepted her in the hall. "No, Anna. I'll answer it. Go and see that the coffee is ready, and tell Elise that if she drops another tray tonight she can pay for the china herself."

Outside, West Fifteenth Street shone black beneath a steady autumn rain. A hansom moved slowly towards Sixth Avenue, its horse steaming beneath the street lamps, while across the road a woman fought an umbrella determined to escape in the opposite direction. On Martha's step stood a narrow, anxious-looking man in a dark overcoat and homburg, clutching a substantial brown leather case. She knew his face, if not much else about him. That was hardly unusual these days.

"You're early," she announced.

The visitor managed a smile. "Good evening to you too, Baroness."

Martha's expression softened by perhaps half a degree. She was perfectly happy to be called Baroness when the speaker's social standing made the title worthwhile, rather less so when it was being used by somebody carrying a damp suitcase. "Come in before you flood the pavement." She stood aside, accepted his coat and then noticed that he had retained the case. "You can leave that there."

His grip tightened immediately. "I would prefer to keep it with me."

"And I would prefer not to have luggage in my drawing room. One of us owns the house." She pointed towards the umbrella stand with an imperious finger. The man hesitated, plainly weighing instructions received elsewhere against the more immediate danger of disobeying Martha Held, and eventually placed the case beside a collection of walking sticks. "There," she said. "That wasn't difficult, was it?"

He followed her into the drawing room, where a generous fire glowed beneath the marble mantelpiece and heavy curtains shut out the rain. Photographs of Martha in younger and, in her own opinion, considerably more important days crowded the top of the piano. In one she appeared as Brünnhilde, complete with breastplate and winged helmet; in another, somewhat alarming enlargement, she was dying magnificently as Isolde. A programme from the Metropolitan Opera lay conspicuously on a side table.

Her guest picked it up. "You still go?"

"Sometimes. I miss the stage every day of my life." Martha removed the programme gently from his hand and placed it back at precisely the angle she preferred. "I don't miss singers."

The bell sounded again at eight o'clock exactly. Martha glanced at the clock with satisfaction. "There. You see? Civilisation."

The second visitor proved to be Paul Koenig, broad, heavy and square beneath a rain-speckled fedora. He had the solid appearance of a man who might have been either a private detective or the proprietor of a particularly successful butcher's shop; in practice, he had been the former and Martha sometimes suspected he possessed enough of the latter's instincts to qualify for both. He removed his hat and greeted her politely. "Mrs Held."

"Mr Koenig. Eight precisely. I congratulate you."

"Has our friend arrived?"

"Seven minutes ago."

Koenig sighed as she helped him out of his wet coat. "He was specifically told not to arrive early."

"Then you employ idiots."

"Sometimes they're all that's available."

She escorted him through, where the first man had wisely decided not to touch anything else. Koenig gave him a withering look and received the explanation that he had happened to be in the neighbourhood. "No German is ever merely in the neighbourhood," Koenig replied, pouring himself a whisky. Martha, who had returned carrying a tray containing three glasses, removed his drink from his hand, replaced it with another and informed him that the first had been hers. Koenig accepted the correction without protest.

Their final expected caller arrived twelve minutes later and therefore, in Martha's estimation, committed the opposite offence. Wolf von Igel entered apologising for the traffic, immaculately dressed and visibly irritated by the weather. He was younger than Koenig, slimmer and carried himself with the faint stiffness of a man conscious that he represented something greater than himself. Martha had met hundreds of the type during her operatic career. They invariably expected everybody else to recognise this fact without requiring explanation.

After the necessary introductions, von Igel cast a doubtful glance in Martha's direction and remarked that what they were about to discuss was confidential. Martha settled her considerable person into the largest chair in the room, arranged her skirts and informed him that so was her house. When he continued to look uncomfortable, Koenig intervened. "Mrs Held has heard more confidential conversations than half the diplomatic corps. She also has the considerable advantage of knowing when not to hear them."

"Exactly," said Martha. "And if you're going to play spies in my drawing room, Herr von Igel, at least try not to be tedious about it."

Koenig disguised a laugh as a cough. Von Igel unfolded several papers taken from his inside pocket and began by explaining that the embassy was becoming increasingly concerned about American surveillance. The police had names, fragments of information and far too many newspaper reporters asking questions. Worse, they had Inspector Thomas Tunney and his Bomb Squad, who appeared incapable of accepting a perfectly reasonable explosion as an act of God when there was the remotest possibility that a German might have arranged it.

Koenig remained unimpressed. Tunney had been following him for months and would, he said, undoubtedly continue to do so until one of them died of old age. "He knows things happen. That isn't the same as knowing how they happen or who makes them happen." He sat forward, balancing his glass between both hands. "Too many names, too many fires, too many ships and warehouses. Too much noise. That's what protects us."

"For now," said von Igel. "They're connecting the incidents."

Martha, who had been listening despite officially not doing so, reached for the poker and rearranged a perfectly adequate fire. She had spent enough time among German patriots to recognise a familiar flaw: tremendous ability to organise large things, accompanied by an almost mystical belief that nobody else could understand the organisation once completed. "Perhaps," she said, "you might make fewer incidents."

Three male faces turned towards her.

"I know, I know," she continued. "I'm only a woman."

Koenig smiled. "I don't think anybody who has met you would ever describe you as only anything."

"Quite."

Von Igel resumed his briefing. Nobody was to carry unnecessary papers; meetings in restaurants and hotel bars were to cease; telephone conversations were to be kept innocuous and operational knowledge compartmentalised. Martha listened with increasing amusement. This solemn pronouncement was delivered in a Manhattan drawing room occupied by four people, one of whom maintained a discreet succession of young ladies upstairs for the entertainment of gentlemen whose wives imagined them attending patriotic committee meetings. Espionage, she reflected, plainly possessed a sense of humour.

The thin man eventually rose and asked Koenig whether he wanted to see "it". The sudden alteration in Koenig's expression caught Martha's attention. Whatever it was, she realised, it was currently standing beside her umbrellas.

"The case?" she asked.

Koenig gave the other man a murderous glance, but the damage was done. "There's no need to concern yourself, Martha."

"Then I shall concern myself enormously." She rose and swept into the hall, skirts swishing behind her like theatre curtains. The men followed. The case remained precisely where she had ordered it placed. Martha regarded it for several seconds before turning towards Koenig. "What's in it?"

His reply — that it was nothing which need trouble her — was precisely the wrong one. She pointed towards the front door. If that was the case, he could take it and everything else that did not trouble her somewhere else. Von Igel made the mistake of collecting his coat, whereupon Koenig ordered him to put it back and began the complicated business of restoring peace between the German Empire and Martha Held.

Finally, with the expression of a man surrendering a strategically important fortress, he said, "Dynamite."

Martha looked at the case. Then she looked at Koenig. "There's dynamite beside my umbrella stand?"

"It is perfectly safe."

She stared at him in disbelief. "My maid has walked past it three times."

The bearer of the case hastened to reassure her that without detonators the explosive posed very little danger. Unfortunately this merely moved Martha's attention to the obvious question of where the detonators were. The resulting silence was sufficiently informative.

"Oh, splendid." She turned back towards the case. "How much?"

Koenig attempted another vague answer, but his subordinate, perhaps deciding that honesty offered the shortest route out of the house, admitted there were approximately sixty pounds.

For several seconds Martha said nothing. During the height of her career she had sung before audiences of two thousand people and shared stages with tenors of such monumental vanity that one had once refused to continue Tannhäuser because the soprano's flowers were larger than his. She had weathered managers, impresarios, creditors, patrons, critics, adulterous baritones and one conductor who threw furniture during rehearsals. Very little surprised her. Sixty pounds of dynamite beside the umbrella stand came reasonably close.

"And where, exactly, is this going?"

Koenig glanced towards von Igel, who plainly believed the answer should remain secret. Martha caught the look and folded her arms. A moment later, Koenig capitulated. "Canada. The Welland Canal."

She knew the canal. More importantly, she understood why anybody fighting Britain might wish to damage it. "And you intend to blow it up?"

Von Igel observed carefully that the canal was of considerable strategic importance to the Allies. Martha waited. He tried another explanation, involving Canadian transport and military necessity. She continued waiting. Eventually Koenig rubbed a hand over his face. "Yes, Martha. The intention is to blow it up."

She looked once more at the innocent brown case, and something in the magnificent absurdity of it finally broke through. Martha began to laugh. Not the carefully measured society laugh she employed for guests, nor the theatrical peal once capable of reaching the upper gallery without musical accompaniment. This came from somewhere much deeper.

Koenig regarded her suspiciously. "What's funny?"

"Germany."

Von Igel stiffened. "Germany?"

"Yes. Germany." Martha swept back into the drawing room with the men trailing after her and resumed possession of her whisky. "You have an embassy in Washington, consulates across the country, banks, shipping companies, military attachés, naval attachés, diplomats, couriers, agents, detectives and Heaven knows how many patriotic societies. The Kaiser has an army of millions and a navy which everyone assures me is the finest thing afloat after Britain's." She pointed towards the hall. "And where does the German Empire keep its dynamite?"

Koenig's mouth began to twitch.

"Beside my umbrella stand!"

The subordinate laughed first, followed reluctantly by Koenig. Even von Igel eventually surrendered a smile. Martha allowed them their amusement before announcing that the case would be moved immediately into the cupboard beneath the stairs. It was dry, it possessed a lock and, unlike her hallway, nobody routinely left umbrellas in it. Koenig began to protest that he would require access the following morning, but Martha silenced him with a look. She would keep the key. He could have the dynamite when she was ready to give him the dynamite.

She watched while the case was carried downstairs and was struck by the curious banality of the whole business. History, she had always assumed, arrived with trumpets: declarations of war, cheering crowds, banners, marching troops and headlines black enough to be read from the far side of the street. Perhaps that was merely how it looked afterwards. In reality it might creep into one's life quietly, disguised as ordinary things — a visitor arriving seven minutes early, a whispered conversation, a leather case left among the walking sticks. Sixty pounds of dynamite resting behind a white-painted cupboard door.

Once the key was safely in her pocket, the meeting resumed. For the next forty minutes the men discussed ships Martha had never seen, warehouses she had never visited and industrial towns she had no intention of visiting. Baltimore appeared repeatedly, as did Hoboken and Jersey City. There was talk of munitions plants, railway sidings, shipping schedules, horses and mules being assembled for transport across the Atlantic, and factories working day and night to provide Britain and France with the means to continue killing Germans.

Martha's sympathies had never been complicated. Germany remained home, however many years she spent away from it, and she understood perfectly why German officers regarded every American shell loaded aboard an Allied ship as a weapon already pointed towards one of their countrymen. What troubled her was the gap between understanding something and approving every possible response to it.

"This is still America," she said eventually.

The conversation faltered. Von Igel reminded her that America was neutral, which Martha thought a particularly peculiar answer since it proved precisely her point. When he complained that American factories supplied Germany's enemies, she shrugged. "They sell things. Americans like selling things. If Germany could collect the ammunition, they'd sell it to you."

"Those weapons kill German soldiers," Koenig said.

"And when you blow up an American factory?"

Koenig's expression changed. Von Igel answered instead, speaking of legitimate military targets and the unavoidable risks inherent in wartime operations. Martha let him finish. "Is this a military operation?"

"Of course."

She surveyed the three civilian suits, the whisky glasses and her drawing room. "Where are the uniforms?"

That bought several seconds of silence.

Martha did not pursue the point. She wasn't suddenly overcome by American patriotism, nor had she become troubled by some abstract interpretation of international law. She simply possessed enough experience of men to recognise the moment at which enthusiasm began outrunning judgement. She had seen it on stage often enough. A tenor discovered that the audience liked a particular high note, so held it longer the next evening; then longer still, until at last the note collapsed and took half the aria with it. Success encouraged excess. Perhaps sabotage worked in much the same way.

The clock struck nine. Martha announced that they had thirty minutes remaining. Koenig reminded her that her original deadline had been nine. "I've revised it," she replied.

"Very diplomatic."

"I should have worked for the Foreign Office."

"Which one?"

Martha took a sip of whisky. "The winning one."

Even von Igel laughed at that.

With serious business more or less concluded, the atmosphere relaxed. Another bottle appeared and Martha contributed a story from her operatic days concerning the Italian tenor and the disputed flowers. The man's refusal to appear for the second act had delayed proceedings for twenty-three minutes, until half the offending bouquet mysteriously disappeared from the soprano's dressing room.

"What happened to them?" Koenig asked.

"I stole them."

He stared at her, delighted. Martha explained that two thousand people had paid to hear Wagner, not watch a grown man measure roses. Von Igel remarked that she would have made an excellent intelligence agent.

"Certainly not," she replied. "I dislike secrets."

Three men looked at her.

Martha raised her glass. "I didn't say I couldn't keep them."

At twenty-eight minutes past nine, she rose and announced that the evening's deliberations were at an end. Von Igel left first and disappeared towards Sixth Avenue. The thin man followed a few minutes afterwards, looking unhappily towards the cellar door as though abandoning a favourite child. Martha assured him that his dynamite would be perfectly safe and resisted adding that this was more than could be said for him if he arrived before ten the following morning.

Koenig remained while she helped him into his coat. He seemed unusually thoughtful. "You're angry."

"I was."

"About the dynamite?"

Martha adjusted his collar with unnecessary force. "About all of you."

He gave her the tolerant smile of a man who believed himself in command of events. "We know what we're doing."

"That's usually what men say immediately before proving otherwise."

The smile faded. Koenig told her that Germany was at war, and for the first time that evening there was no humour in his voice.

"America isn't," she answered.

"Not yet."

That made her look at him properly. Beyond the doorway the rain had stopped and the air possessed that peculiar washed silence of a city briefly exhausted by weather. "Do you think they will come in?"

Koenig took his time before answering. President Wilson did not want war, he said. That wasn't what Martha had asked, and they both knew it.

"Do you want them to?"

"No."

She believed him.

Martha stood in the doorway watching until his heavy figure disappeared into the darkness. She had known Paul Koenig long enough to understand that he was not a fool. That was what worried her. Fools made mistakes because they knew too little; clever men occasionally made much greater ones because they believed they knew enough.

Closing the door, she walked through the suddenly quiet house. Three abandoned glasses stood in the drawing room and a small patch of mud marked the carpet where somebody had failed to wipe his shoes. Tomorrow there would be telegrams, callers and another gathering to organise. There were bedrooms upstairs whose occupants occasionally required reminding that discretion was included in what gentlemen paid for, and a cook downstairs who considered any request after nine o'clock a personal insult.

Then there was the dynamite.

Martha extinguished the drawing-room lamps and stopped in the hall. Beneath the staircase stood an ordinary white-painted cupboard door. Behind it lay two trunks, a broken music stand, several boxes of old programmes, a fur coat whose moth problem had long ago passed beyond salvation and enough explosive, apparently, to interrupt navigation between two Great Lakes.

She took the key from her pocket and considered opening the cupboard.

The truth was that she wanted to see the stuff.

This irritated her.

During her years in the theatre she had lived among machinery designed to deceive. Painted canvas became mountains, pulley systems made gods descend from Heaven, stagehands created storms with sheets of metal and men who had been drinking beer ten minutes earlier transformed themselves into Valkyries, kings and dying heroes when the curtain rose. The closer one stood to theatrical magic, the more ordinary its mechanisms became.

Espionage, she decided, was much the same.

From a distance it consisted of secret agents, ciphered telegrams, diplomatic plots and governments moving invisibly against one another. Close up, it was wet coats, badly kept appointments, men arguing over whisky and a leather case in a cupboard beneath the stairs.

Anna appeared from the passage leading to the kitchen and asked whether the gentlemen had gone. Martha confirmed that they had and instructed her not to use the cupboard beneath the stairs the following morning.

The maid frowned. "Why, ma'am?"

Martha considered mice, damp, a broken lock and private papers. "Because I told you not to."

Anna accepted this with the weary resignation of a servant accustomed to employment in a household where explanations were distributed sparingly. Martha added that she was not at home to callers before ten, "especially Mr Koenig", and began climbing the stairs.

She had reached the turn when somebody knocked at the front door.

Not the bell.

Three soft knocks.

Martha stopped and looked back along the hall. Nothing moved. After a moment, the three knocks came again, too deliberate to be chance and too quiet for an ordinary caller.

She descended slowly and stood on the other side of the door. "Who is it?"

A man's voice answered that he was a friend of Paul. Martha asked, "Paul who?", and the hesitation outside was long enough to confirm that whatever else the visitor might be, he wasn't much of a spy.

"Koenig."

"That doesn't make you a friend of mine."

Another pause followed before the voice admitted that Mr Koenig had said she might respond in precisely that fashion.

Martha almost smiled. "What do you want?"

The caller had brought a package. He had been told to leave it at the house and apparently could not take it elsewhere. Martha closed her eyes and silently promised Paul Koenig a death of extraordinary artistic invention. "How large?"

"Ma'am?"

"The package. How large is it?"

"Not very."

She thought of the cupboard.

"Does it explode?"

There was a silence from the other side of the door sufficiently long to answer the question.

"Not by itself."

Martha rested her forehead briefly against the wood.

"Mr Koenig," she murmured, "is a dead man."

Undoing the locks, she opened the door to discover a nervous young man holding a wooden box against his chest. Rainwater dripped from the brim of his cap onto her step. He offered the package hopefully. Martha made no move to accept it.

"What's inside?"

He didn't know.

Of course he didn't.

She stepped aside and allowed him into the hall. The ormolu clock in the drawing room chimed a single note for the quarter hour, followed moments later by the distant rumble of an elevated train somewhere beyond Sixth Avenue. The young man stood dripping onto her carpet, still clutching his mysterious box, while Martha considered the peculiar direction her life had taken.

Once, gentlemen had come to her dressing room carrying flowers.

Now they brought explosives.

She sighed and pointed towards the umbrella stand.

"Put it there."