The Poison Tide Read Online Free PDF Page B

with an old copy of the
New York Times
. At a little before nine he visited the front desk to ask for directions to Paulsen Shipping. It was his intention to walk the short distance to the harbour, he said, and when his business was over he hoped to walk a little further. Taking Baedeker from the pocket of his overcoat, he let the porter trace a route on a map to the city’s notable sights. A stiff north-easterly was shaking the hotel’s broad awning like the mainsail of a ship, force 6 fresh to rock the steamers anchored in the bay but bright enough for Wolff to step out with his coat over his arm. He walked briskly along Karl Johans gate towards the parliament, then on to the East Station, stopping from time to time to glance in shop windows, and even dashing between trams to a newspaper kiosk on the pavement opposite.
    Paulsen Shipping occupied a modest two-storey building of the sort that was being pulled down all over the city to meet the requirements of the brash new century. Its granite-faced neighbours had been built in the ten years since independence and were indistinguishable from many of a similar age in the City of London. A clerk led Wolff from its tiled hall to a large office on the first floor and asked him to wait, with the assurance that Mr Paulsen would be pleased to welcome him soon. It was a large mahogany-panelled room, smoke-filled and gloomy, with only two small windows overlooking the narrow street. A dozen or so brokers and clerks – young men in their twenties for the most part – sat facing their managing director’s door like children in a Victorian schoolroom. On the wall behind them, the severe grey countenance of the man Wolff took to be the company’s founding father.
    ‘Jacob the First. My grandfather.’ The managing director had slipped out of his office and was standing above Wolff with a broad smile on his face.
    ‘I’m the third. Jacob Paulsen the Third,’ and he offered Wolff his hand. ‘Isn’t that how you Americans style it, Mr de Witt? As if you were kings. This is my kingdom,’ he said, opening his arms to the room like a music-hall doxy, ‘until I’m swallowed up by Olsen or Knutsen Shipping or one of the others. Please . . .’ and with a flamboyant sweep of his hand he invited Wolff to step into his office.
    ‘My grandfather was a friend of Henrik Ibsen’s, you know,’ he said, pulling the door to behind them. ‘Helped him with a little money. Sit down, please.’ He pulled a red leather armchair away from his desk. A log fire was spitting in the hearth and dancing warmly on the polished panelled walls.
    ‘Peculiar, really, he didn’t care for the theatre. All my grandfather cared about was ships and money – we were quite a company in his day.’
    His English was perfect but drawled in the languid manner of an undergraduate aesthete. Early fifties, tall and thin, his straw-blond hair streaked with white, the same light-blue eyes as his grandfather, the same thin, almost colourless lips, a smile hovering constantly at the corners. Mr Jacob Paulsen the Third was an easy fellow but not a foolish one. There was a wariness in his glance, in the deliberate way he walked to the drinks cabinet in the corner of the room.
    ‘A celebration,’ he said, lifting two small glasses. ‘Have you tried our akevitt?’
    ‘Is there something to celebrate?’
    ‘Of course. Always. But our arrangement in particular,’ and he placed the glasses and a bottle on a tray and carried them back to his desk. The bottle in his left hand, he opened a drawer with his right, took out an envelope and slid it across the desk to Wolff. ‘It’s from the minister at your Legation, Mr Findlay . . .’
    ‘Do you know what’s in it?’
    ‘Arrangements for your meeting.’
    ‘Do you know where?’
    ‘No.’
    Wolff ran the tip of his forefinger along the flap to check the seal. Satisfied, he tore it open and unfolded the note. There were just two lines.
    ‘Have you been to our country