The Poison Tide by Andrew Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

beneath the bench and turned the tap on the cylinder. First a puff as if someone with an evil cigarette had exhaled into the jar, then a steady stream of yellow-green gas. Dilger was surprised that he could see it so clearly. It was heavy, sitting in a cloud at the bottom, the rats scrambling for the top of the bell jar, pink eyes, white fur twisting, turning, clawing at the glass.
    ‘Our dissections show clear evidence of spontaneous pulmonary disease – an increase in the mucus-secreting cells in the bronchial tree,’ Haber observed, tapping the glass with his knuckle. ‘They drown in their own body fluids.’
    ‘Extraordinary.’ Professor Troester leant closer, pocket watch in his hand; ‘About a minute and thirty seconds.’ The rats were twitching at the bottom of the bell jar. ‘Yes, extraordinary. Don’t you think so, Doctor?’ he asked, glancing sideways at Dilger.
    ‘I . . . yes, extraordinary,’ Dilger said, although he didn’t know what to think.
    The twitching had stopped. ‘Extraordinary,’ Troester repeated, straightening his long back. ‘But will it be possible to ensure a satisfactory result in normal atmospheric conditions, Professor?’
    ‘We will err on the side of caution,’ said Haber, polishing his glasses with his handkerchief. ‘I have advised the General Staff we will require something like a hundred and sixty tons of liquid chlorine along a front of two or three kilometres. Of course it will depend upon wind speed and direction, but I’m confident six thousand cylinders will be enough and, well, yes, will . . .’
    ‘Secure a decisive breakthrough?’
    Haber put his glasses back on his nose and smiled. ‘Yes, Count, a decisive breakthrough.’
    ‘Ha! There you have it, gentlemen,’ Nadolny declared, clapping his hands together. ‘A triumph of German science. What do you think of that, Doctor?’ The professor was one of the first to recognise the need for science to keep in step with the people, he gushed, even when they marched to war.
    Then Haber led them from his laboratory and along corridors where work was taking place on even more ‘interesting’ possibilities. On the stairs they saw a uniformed scientist in one of the new gas masks, and in the lecture theatre an excitable member of the director’s research team was instructing the first special gas unit on the handling and placing of the new weapon.
    ‘I’m going to supervise the first release myself,’ Haber confided to Dilger as they were leaving the theatre. ‘I must make my own observations.’
    ‘Do any of the men in your research unit have doubts, Professor?’
    Haber stopped abruptly, his hand on the half-open door. ‘My dear Doctor,’ he said irritably, ‘my dear Dr Dilger – they obey my orders.’
    ‘Yes, I see.’ But he didn’t see. No. He wanted the great scientist and great patriot to explain. Wasn’t that why Troester had brought him to the Institute?
    ‘The international agreement prohibiting poison gas, Professor,’ prompted the Count, at Haber’s shoulder. ‘I think Dr Dilger would like to hear your view on the ethical question.’
    ‘The ethical question? Ha. My dear fellow.’ Haber was smiling again. ‘Yes, of course, in more congenial surroundings.’
    The professor invited them to his home and they drank tea with milk and sugar in the English way. He lived a short distance from the Institute in the city village of Dahlem, in a surprisingly modest villa that was painted a sickly shade of yellow like the gas. A Prussian home, too self-consciously so, Dilger thought, placing his cup and saucer on a table by the arm of his chair. Everyone knew that Haber and his wife were Jews who had converted to Christianity. Some said he had traded his religion for a professor’s chair, others, to be a better German. Their drawing room was unimaginatively furnished with heavy imperial pieces and landscape prints and in the hall Dilger noticed a full-length portrait of the Kaiser. Frau