by Alan Furst
Still, despite the war, despite anything, really, it eased his heart to be back at sea.
The Atlantic on a spring morning, six miles off the coast of Africa. Low cloud bank on the horizon, gray, shifting sky, sea the color of polished lead, stiff breeze from the northeast trades, gulls swooping and crying at the stern as they waited for the breakfast garbage. The real world, to DeHaan, and reassuring after the strange dinner four nights earlier. The blazer was back in his locker, and DeHaan was himself again—faded denim shirt rolled up above the elbows, gray canvas trousers, tie-up leather ankle boots with rubber soles. And a single badge of authority: a captain’s hat, a very old and hardworn friend—the gold stitching of the Hyperion Line insignia, twisted rope in the shape of an H, faintly green from years of salt air—which he wore with peak tilted slightly over his right eye. A good Swiss watch on a leather strap, and that was that.
Done with his survey of the horizon, Ratter came in off the wing deck and said, “Morning, Cap’n.”
“Johannes.”
Ratter was in his thirties, with a long, handsome, serious face and dark hair. Three years earlier, he’d lost an eye in a wheat-dust explosion on the Altmaar, one of the Noordendam’s sister ships. There’d been no glass eye for him at the hospital in Rangoon, so he’d worn a black eye patch on a black band ever since. He was a good officer, conscientious and bright, who had long had his master’s papers and should have had his own ship by now, but the financial contractions of the 1930s had made that impossible.
“Service at oh nine hundred?” he said.
“Yes,” DeHaan said. It was Sunday morning, and an inviolable shipping tradition called for him to conduct a Divine Service, followed by captain’s inspection. He didn’t mind the latter so much, though he saw through all the tricks, but the former was a burden. “Compulsory today,” DeHaan added. “That means everybody. You already have the bridge, and you can keep the helmsman. Kovacz will take the engine room”—Kovacz, a Pole, was his chief engineer—“and I want everybody else on the foredeck.”
“All right,” Ratter said. “Full crew.”
DeHaan turned to the helmsman. “Come a point to starboard, and signal half speed.”
“Aye, sir. Point to starboard, half speed.” He turned the wheel—highly polished teak, an elegant survivor of the East India trade—and shifted the lever on the engine-room telegraph to Half Speed Ahead. From the engine room, two bells, which confirmed the order.
“I’m going to have to make a speech,” DeHaan said, clearly not happy about it.
Ratter looked at him. This never happened.
“We’re not going to Safi for phosphates.”
“No?”
“We’re going to Rio de Oro,” DeHaan said, using the official name for the strip of coastal sand known commonly as the Spanish Sahara. “Anchoring off Villa Cisneros—and I don’t want to get there much before nightfall, so, save the oil.” After a moment he added, “We’re changing identities, you might as well know it now.”
Ratter nodded. Very well, whatever you say. “Liberty for the crew?”
“No, they stay aboard. They all got ashore in Tangier, so they won’t take it too hard.”
“They won’t, and, even if they grumble, it’s Mauritania, whatever the Spaniards call it, and you know what they think about that.”
DeHaan knew. Sailors’ mythology had it that seamen on liberty in the more remote ports of northwestern Africa had been known to disappear. Kidnapped, the stories went, and chained to stepped wooden wheels, treadmills, in the lost villages of the desert interior, where they were worked to death pumping water from deep wells.
“We’ll have the local bumboats,” DeHaan said. “Crew will have to make do with that. And put the word out that we’re due for a long cruise, so, if they need anything . . .”
The mess boy came tramping up the ladderway—metal steps, too steep for a stairway but not quite a ladder—that led to the bridge. Known as Cornelius, he thought he was fifteen years old. He was, if that was true, small for his age, pale and scrawny. He’d grown up, he said, on the island of Texel and had first gone to sea on the herring boats at the age of nine. And running away to sea, according to Cornelius, had greatly improved his lot in life.
“Breakfast, Cap’n,” he said, offering a tray.
“Why thank you, Cornelius,” DeHaan said. Ratter had to turn away to keep from laughing. DeHaan’s breakfast was a mug of strong coffee and a slab of mealy gray bread spread thickly with margarine, which bore, at its edge, the deep imprint of a small thumb.
DeHaan chewed away at the bread and sipped the coffee and stared out at the low cloud on the horizon. In a moment, he’d go back to his cabin, read through the Divine Service—from a stapled booklet, dated Sunday to Sunday, provided by the Hyperion Line—and jot down what to say to the assembled crew. But, for the time being, with bread and coffee, Ratter’s silent presence, and fair weather, it was a pleasure to do nothing. The bridge was his true home on the ship—or, really, anywhere in the world. A sacred space, no clutter allowed. Only the helm, engine-room telegraph, brass speaking tube to the engine room with a tin whistle on a chain around its neck, compass mounted in a brass binnacle—a waist-high stand, signal flags in wooden compartments that climbed the port bulkhead, and an arc of grand, square windows in mahogany frames. Access was by doorways that led to the bridge wings, and a ladderway to the deck below—to the chartroom, captain’s and officers’ quarters, wardroom, and officers’ mess.
DeHaan permitted himself time for half his coffee, then said, “Well, I guess I have to go to work. Just keep it nice and slow, south-southwest at one-ninety degrees, and stay six-off-the-coast.” The phrase meant beyond the five-mile limit, international waters. “We’re running west of Morocco for the next few hours but, technically anyhow, that’s Vichy France.”
Ratter confirmed the order.
DeHaan took one last sip of coffee, then another, but he couldn’t leave. “I just want you to know,” he said, “that we’re really in it now, and it’s me who put us there. Maybe something had to happen, sooner or later, but it’s going to be sooner, and somebody’s going to get hurt.”
Ratter shrugged. “That’s the war, Eric, you can’t get away from it.” He was silent for a time, the only sound on the bridge the distant beat of the engine. “Anyhow, whatever it is,” he said, “we’ll come through.”
The wind blew hard on the forward deck, waves breaking at the bow, sun in and out of a troubled sky. The crew stood in ranks for the Divine Service, their heads uncovered, hats held in both hands. Kees, the Noordendam’s second mate, a stolid, pipe-smoking classic of the merchant service, counted heads, counted again, and went off to retrieve a couple of convinced atheists skulking in the crew’s quarters.
Divine Service was meant to be vague and ecumenical: for Lascar and Malay crews from the East Indies, Moslems—as Mr. Ali was thought to be though in fact he was a Coptic Christian—for Catholics, for everybody; a few simple words addressed to an understanding and comprehensive God. But DeHaan knew the services to have been written by the Terhouven family pastor, a Dutch Reformed minister in Rotterdam with a pronounced taste for Protestant gloom. Thus that day’s service was based on the words of Martin Luther: “Everyone must do his own believing, as he will have to do his own dying.” Given the speech that DeHaan would be making after the service, the worst possible choice, but this was not the moment to improvise.
Belief mattered, went the homily, one had to have faith in the ways of the Lord, one had to be compassionate, to express this faith by charity toward one’s fellow man. A reading of Psalms 93 and 96 came next, followed by a recitation of the reverend’s chief work, The Seaman’s Prayer—a stormy, nightbound opus that made at least some of the men flinch. The word storm was not to be said at sea, lest there be one about, which, on hearing the mention of its name, came to see who was calling. After a minute of silent prayer, as most of the men bowed their heads, the service was over.
“Men,”
DeHaan said, “before you are dismissed for captain’s inspection, I must say a few words to you.” DeHaan cleared his throat, consulted his notes, then held them behind his back. “We all know that half the world is at war, that we face a powerful and determined enemy. Over the next few weeks, the Noordendam and its crew will take part in this struggle by participating in a secret mission. Secret—I emphasize the word. It may be dangerous, you may be called on to take up duties which are not usual to you, but I know you will do what has to be done. I know you are capable, I know you are brave, and now you may be called on to prove it. During this time, you will remain aboard ship. Your officers and I will do everything we can to make life easier for you, but you are to expect the unexpected, and meet whatever happens with all your experience and skill.
“We will be anchoring off Rio de Oro later today, and the bumboat men will be coming to the ship, as usual. For those who may need a little extra money to buy the necessaries, you may call on Mr. Ratter, for the deckhands, or Mr. Kovacz, for the engine-room crew. I would like to end this talk by saying ‘if you have questions, ask me,’ but I would not be able to answer. I have always been proud of Noordendam and her crew, and I know you won’t disappoint me. What we do, we do for those at home, in Holland, in Europe, wherever they are.” He let them think it over for a moment, then said, “Those of you on watch can return to duty, the captain’s inspection will begin at ten hundred hours.”
Thank God that’s over. He wondered what they’d thought about it. Some of the men had met his eyes—you can count on me. Perhaps they’d lost friends or family in the Rotterdam bombing—when Holland had virtually lost the war—an object lesson from stern Papa Germany. Some of the men had stared at their shoes, while one or two seemed angry: at the enemy, at their captain, at life; there was no way to know.
Maybe a third of them had no idea what he’d said, because they didn’t speak Dutch, but their mates would find a way to explain it to them. The language of the merchant service was pidgin English, some three hundred words that got seamen through their daily duties and life below deck. A number of them couldn’t read or write, particularly the oilers and firemen in the engine-room crew. Former stokers, most of them, from the days before steamships had converted to oil, their hands seamed with black lines where cuts and blisters had healed over coal dust. There were a few communists, some secret, some not, supposedly on Hitler’s side since the pact of 1939, and a few who didn’t think the Nazi doctrines were all that wrong. But, in the end, they were all sailors, who couldn’t leave the life of the ships because they were—and they would say it just this way—married to the sea. A hard life, seen from the shore, brutal and dangerous and, often enough, mortal. Even so, it was in their blood, and it was the only life they wanted to live.
Kees stood by DeHaan’s side as the men broke ranks and headed for their inspection stations. Taciturn and reflective by nature, he made no comment, but for a single interrogatory puff of pipe smoke whipped away by the wind.
“There’ll be an officers’ meeting in the wardroom, before lunch,” DeHaan said, answering the puff.
Kees nodded. Just not enough trouble for some people in this world, they have to go looking for more. He didn’t say it out loud but he didn’t need to—DeHaan understood him perfectly.
1830 hours, Villa Cisneros.
DeHaan had anchored Noordendam well out in the bay. She could have tied up at the deepwater pier but her master chose, perhaps, not to pay the dockage fee—penny-pinching always a credible motive in the world of tramp steamers.
“Ever been here?” DeHaan asked the AB steering the ship’s cutter. There was a chill in the desert air as night came on, and he pulled his leather jacket, sheepskin-lined, around him and held it closed.
“Can’t say as I have, sir.”
“Seems quiet,” the other AB offered.
Benighted, maybe, or, better, godforsaken. But seamen tended toward diplomacy with officers present. A thousand souls in the town, according to one of DeHaan’s almanacs. Well, maybe there were, hidden away in a maze of bleached walls and shadows, but, from just off the pier, the place was deserted. Not much of anything, in Rio de Oro. Four hundred coastal miles of sand and low hills, and abundant salt, which they sometimes exported—a last tattered shred of the Spanish Empire. But, a neutral shred, and that made it useful.
They tied up to a bollard on the pier and, as DeHaan climbed the stone stairway to the street, a desert wind, smelling of ancient dust, blew in his face. Eight months earlier, on a street in Liverpool, he’d discovered the same smell, had puzzled over it until he realized that it rose from the foundations of old buildings, newly excavated and blown into the air by Luftwaffe bombs.
It was only a minute’s walk to the Grand Hotel Cisneros—Leiden had told him where to find it—which turned out to be three stories high and two windows wide, a stucco building that had been white at the turn of the century. The lobby seemed vast—a high ceiling with a fan, black-and-white tile floor, dead palm tree in a yellow planter. The clerk, an elderly Spaniard with the face of a mole and a wing collar, stared at him hopefully as he came through the door. In one corner, Wilhelm, in Barbour field jacket and whipcord trousers, was reading a book.
He greeted her, his words echoing in the empty lobby. From Wilhelm, a crooked grin—clearly they couldn’t talk here. She rose and said, “My car’s just out the back.”
DeHaan didn’t envy much in this world but he envied Wilhelm her car. It was parked in a small square behind the hotel, between a 1920s moving-company truck and a Renault sedan, a flock guarded by a mustached shepherd in a sheepskin vest and hat, with a rifle slung diagonally across his back. Wilhelm handed him a few dirhams, which he tucked away as he inclined his head by way of saying thank you.
“It’s wonderful,” DeHaan said. A low, open sports car, weathered by sand and wind to the color of chromatic dust—probably green if you thought about it, with a tiny windscreen, a leather strap across the hood, bug-eyed headlights, and the steering wheel on the right. In British movies, the hero vaulted into cars like this but DeHaan took the traditional approach, snaking his way inside and settling into the leather seat.
“Yes,” Wilhelm said. “Mostly.” The shepherd stared thoughtfully as Wilhelm tried the ignition, which coughed and died. “Now, now,” she said. On the fourth try there was an ill-tempered snort, then, on the fifth, a string of explosions—full power. The shepherd broke into a huge smile, and Wilhelm laughed and waved to him as they went bumping off down the street.
“What is it?” DeHaan said.
“What?”
“What is it?”
“Oh, it’s a Morgan. There’s more to it, I think, letters or numbers, something.”
They were out of town and on a dirt road almost immediately. Past a field of green shoots and a blindfolded ox, harnessed to a wooden bar and walking in a circle around the stone rim of a well.
“It used to belong to a friend of mine,” Wilhelm said. “An American. He liked to say that back in the States he’d had all the Morgans—the horse, the car, and the girl.”
The dirt track began to narrow and it was almost dark. Then, suddenly, they climbed to the crest of a hill and the ocean appeared on the left. Wilhelm braked to a stop. “There you are,” she said.
Down below, the Noordendam at anchor, lights shimmering in the haze, a thin stream of smoke from the funnel as one boiler was kept running to serve the electrical system.
“Did you see that old truck? In the square?” Wilhelm said.
“Yes.”
“That’s your paint,” she said. “In metal drums.”
“Is somebody watching it?”
“The guard, of course, as you saw. And the driver isn’t far away.”
“How much do you have?”
“Two hundred gallons. They said at the ship chandler you need gamboge and indigo, and burnt sienna—they wrote the proportions on the drums—to make dark green. And white, for the striping. Of course it needs to be thinn
ed, thinned way down, so there’s white spirit.”
Wilhelm handed him a sheet of paper with a description printed out in pencil, DeHaan could just barely read it in the failing light. “Funnel: black with green band. Hull: Black with broad green band between narrow white bands.”
“Is that correct?” Wilhelm said.
“That’s the description in Lloyd’s Register. No boot-topping, thank God.” Merchant-company colors were often used for the latter—the space that showed when the ship was high in the water, without cargo.
“Then Santa Rosa, on the side,” Wilhelm said.
“On the bow, yes. And at the stern.”
The Noordendam was to become the Santa Rosa, of the Compaa Naviera Cardenas Sociedad Annima, with offices on the Gran Via in Valencia. As a ship steaming under a Spanish, a neutral, flag, she could go anywhere. In theory. According to Leiden, the real Santa Rosa was in drydock, with a serious engine problem that would require a new casting, in the Mexican port of Campeche.
Leiden, and Section IIIA, presumed that with the wartime suspension of the “Movements and Casualties” page of the maritime journal Lloyd’s List—daily intelligence on the world of six thousand merchant ships—hostile personnel, at sea or in port, would have at hand only the annual Lloyd’s Register, and the false Santa Rosa would conform to the description found in the section on Spain. That is, if they even bothered to look. It was further presumed that the newly confidential—limited-distribution—version of the shipping pages would not be available to enemy observers. On these presumptions, Section IIIA was betting forty-two lives and a ship.
Still, not such a wild bet. The Noordendam and the Santa Rosa were, if not twins, at least sisters. They were typical tramp freighters, picking up cargo anywhere and taking it to designated ports, as opposed to liners, which made scheduled trips between two cities. They’d both been built around 1920, five thousand gross tons, some four hundred feet long and fifty-eight wide, draft of twenty-five feet, single funnel, derricks fore and aft, blunt in the bow, round in the stern, carrying nine thousand tons of cargo—enough to fill three hundred boxcars—with a top speed of eleven knots. On a fair day with a decent sea. They were similar to the eye, and not unlike a thousand others.