by Alan Furst
Dickie had heard all about the Noordendam mission—“But must say Santa Rosa, eh?”—and wanted to shake DeHaan’s hand, which, heartily, he did. Then insisted on drinks, and more drinks, at a rather sinister bar buried in the backstreets behind the waterfront, then “a damned nuisance of a tea,” at the khedivial yacht club, founded, he told DeHaan, when the Turkish viceroys ruled the city. The tea was offered by the British overseas arts council, or something like that—so very many drinks—where he was introduced to Demetria. Who stood close to him, with lavish glances, and put a hand on his arm while they talked and, eventually, mentioned supper. So it was off to a restaurant, where nobody ate much, and then, soon enough, the dear old Cecil, DeHaan feeling, somewhere in his astrology, the pull of exceptional stars. Or, put another way, too good to be true.
But so good he didn’t care if it was true. And, he reasoned, she could have done what she needed to do in the little Greek restaurant—table chat would’ve sufficed, it didn’t really need to be pillow chat.
Did it?
The daylight Noordendam, when night finally had to end in Room 38, was not easy on DeHaan. To technicolor memories and a head throbbing with Dickie’s drinks, the freighter added its scent of burnt oil and boiled steam, fresh paint cooking in the sun, fierce clanging and shouting, gray ducts and bulkheads, and the whole thing, topped off by a plate of canned herring in cold tomato mush, pretty well did him in. “I’m going to my cabin,” he told Ratter. “If the ship sinks, don’t call me.”
Ratter didn’t, but Mr. Ali did. With a discreet but persistent tapping at DeHaan’s door. Go to hell, DeHaan thought, rolling off his bunk. And whatever it is, take it with you.
“Forgive me, please,” Mr. Ali said. “But a most urgent message for you, Captain. Most urgent.”
He handed DeHaan a W/T message in plain text, which required his presence at a certain room in Building D-9, “this A.M., at 0900 hours.” DeHaan swore, dressed, and set off down the gangway to find Building D-9. Everywhere in the harbor was the British Mediterranean fleet, countless ships of every sort, all of them, that morning, doing work that needed jackhammers. The sun blazed down, DeHaan wandered among a forest of low buildings and quonset huts, where nobody seemed to have heard of D-9 until a Royal Marine guarding a barracks said, “Are you looking for the registry people?”
“D-9, is all I know.”
“They’re in Scovill Hall, some of them anyhow, temporarily. It’s the Old Stables building.”
“Stables? For horses?”
“Well, fifty years ago, maybe.”
“Where is it?”
“Quite a way, sir. Down this road a quarter mile, then turn left at the machine shop. Then, ah, then you’d best ask. For Scovill Hall, sir, or the Old Stables.”
“Thank you,” DeHaan said.
“Good luck, sir.”
It took a half hour, by which time his head ached miserably and his shirt was soaked through, to find Scovill Hall, and several false trails before he reached the right room where, in the outer office, three WRENs were talking on telephones. One of them put a hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Sorry, rotten morning, you’ll have to wait.” He sat next to an officer from the Royal Greek Navy, based in Alexandria, along with the government in exile, since the fall of Greece at the end of April. “Very hot, today,” DeHaan said to the officer.
Who raised his hands helplessly, smiled, and said, “No speak.”
They waited together while the phones rang relentlessly—came back to life almost immediately after the receiver was put back in the cradle. A messenger hurried in, then another, cursing under his breath. “Be nice, Harry,” one of the WRENs said.
For forty minutes, it never slowed.
“Sorry, he can’t come to the phone.”
“He’ll call you back, sir.”
“Yes, we’ve heard.”
“No, their number is six forty, we’re six fifty . . . No, it’s another building, sir . . . Sorry, sir, I can’t. I’m sure they’ll answer when they can.”
“Captain DeHaan?”
“What? Oh, yes, that’s me.”
“He’ll see you now, Captain, that door to the left . . . No, that’s the loo. There you are, Captain, that’s him, just go right in.”
Behind a gray metal desk, a naval lieutenant: university face and white tropical uniform—open collar, knee-length shorts, and high socks. Not yet thirty, DeHaan thought. The lieutenant, trying to finish up a phone call, pointed to a chair without missing a beat. “We really don’t know much over here, it’s coming in a little at a time. Total confusion, since yesterday. . . . I certainly will. . . . Yes, absolutely. Must ring off, Edwin, try me after lunch, will you? Count on it, goodby.”
When he hung up, the phone rang again but he just shook his head and looked at DeHaan. “Not going well,” he said.
“No?”
“Surely you’ve heard. They’re on Crete, since yesterday, an air assault. Thousands and thousands of them, by parachute and glider. We got a lot of them before they hit the ground but still, they’re holding. Extraordinary, you know, never been done before. Anyhow, you are?”
“Captain DeHaan, of the Dutch freighter Noordendam.”
“Oh? Well, congratulations then.”
He went to an open safe, and began to page through a sheaf of papers. Didn’t find what he was looking for, and tried again. “Right,” he said, relieved, “here you are.” He had DeHaan sign his name in a book, with the date and time, then handed him a single sheet of yellow teleprinter paper.
MOST SECRET
For The Personal Use Of The Addressee Only
NID JJP/JJPL/0447
OAMT/95-0447 R 01 296 3B - 1600/18/5/41
From: Deputy Director/OAMT
To: E. M. DeHaan
Master/NV Noordendam
Most immediate
Subj: Hyperion-Lijn NV Noordendam
Amendment to status: All cargos, routes and ports of call to be directed henceforth, as of the date above, by this office
0047/1400/21/5/41+++DD/OAMT
“All clear?” the lieutenant said. The phone rang, then stopped.
“The message, yes. The rest”—DeHaan shrugged. “Who, exactly, is telling me this?”
“Well, NID is Naval Intelligence Division.”
“And OAMT?”
“OAMT. Yes, certainly, that’s an easy one.” He pulled out the extendable shelf below the edge of the desk and ran a finger up one side of a list. “That is”—he hunted—“why that’s the good old Office of Allied Marine Transport, that is. Fine chaps, over there.”
This was very dry, and DeHaan, despite everything, almost laughed. “Who?”
“Can’t say more. Now logically, Captain, you’d belong to the Ministry of War Transport, the convoy people, but logic’s taken a hell of a beating since ’39, so you’ll just have to make do with those OAMT rascals.”
“Ah, any particular rascal, that you know about?”
“I suspect there is, and I’m sure he’ll be in touch with you. Meanwhile, anything you need, I’d suggest the people at the port office.”
He came around the desk, DeHaan stood, they shook hands, and the lieutenant said, “Well, success, they say, always brings change, right? So, all for the best. Right?”
22 May. Campeche, Mexico.
A quiet port, on the northern coast of the Yucatn peninsula, looking out over the Gulf of Campeche. Not much happened here—now and then the local revolutionaries shot up the bank, and the occasional freighter called, but there was never very much money in the bank, and a high sandbar and the temporales, autumn storms, sent much of the merchant trade elsewhere, to Mrida or Veracruz. Otherwise, the region was known for fearsome vampire bats and tasty bananas, and that was about it.
But there was some considerable excitement on the night of the twenty-second, which drew a crowd to the waterfront, which in turn drew a mariachi band, so the evening, despite the disaster, was festive. And the presence of a certain couple, vaguely mi
ddle-aged and well dressed, of obscure European origin, was noted, but not much discussed. They sat at an outdoor table at the Cantina Las Flores, on the leafy square that opened to the quay, the man tall and distinguished, with silvered temples beneath a straw hat, the woman in a colorful skirt and gold hoop earrings. They were from Mexico City, somebody said, and had made their way to the town by train and taxi, arriving two days before the excitement, before the Spanish freighter, called the Santa Rosa, caught fire at the end of the pier.
The Santa Rosa, having delivered drums of chemicals and crates of bicycles and sewing machines at Veracruz, had taken on a cargo of henequen—sisal hemp, raw cotton, and bananas, bound for Spain, then broken down, one day out of port, and put in to Campeche for repairs. This was nothing new to Campeche, everything broke down here, why not a freighter? The ship had docked in early April, which became May as the crew worked below deck and at a small machine shop ashore to repair the engine, while they waited, and waited, for parts. And—once again the local fate behaving as it usually did—the job was very nearly done when a cargo hold filled with henequen caught fire. The crew did what it could, the local firemen were called out, but the fire made steady progress, something blew up, and the crew left the ship and stood around on the dock, hands in pockets, wondering what came next.
At the foot of the pier, people drank beer and talked and listened to the band as night fell, bright yellow flames danced above the deck and the air was fragrant with the aroma of roasting bananas. It was a patient crowd, watching as the ship listed slowly to port, and waiting for it to roll over and disappear so they could go home.
The couple watched with them. Plenty of Europeans in Mexico City, what with war and politics in Europe, but one rarely saw them here. Actually, there’d been two more, a pair of young men, explosives experts generally employed by the Communist party in Mexico City, though at times willing to provide services on a freelance basis if the money was right. They were not, however, in Campeche that night, were on their way somewhere else by the time the fire drew a crowd. That left the couple, drinking red wine at the Cantina Las Flores.
“Really,” the man said, “I only spent ten minutes with her.”
“More like twenty,” the woman said.
“Well, a party, you know, one talks to people.”
“Oh don’t be so innocent, please. She looks at you a certain way, people notice.”
“She does not, mi querida, appeal to me. All those teeth.”
At the end of the pier there was a soft whump as a gust of yellow flame flared high above the ship and the crowd said “Ahh.”
The woman looked at her watch. “How long must we stay here?”
“Until it sinks.”
“It’s finished. Anyone can see that.”
“Oh you never know—a sudden miracle.”
“Unlikely, I would say. And I’m tired.”
“You can go back to the hotel, you know.”
“No, I’ll stay here,” she said, resigned. “The boys are gone?”
“Hours ago.”
“So, should there be a miracle, as you say, what could you do?”
“I could, attend it.”
She laughed. He was, had always been, a lovable bastard. “You,” she said, shaking her head.
22 May. Port of Alexandria.
DeHaan was called to the port office at noon and told what the Noordendam had to do—preparation to begin immediately. “This is an emergency,” the officer, a captain, told him. “So it’s you, the Maud McDowell, from Canada, and two Greek ships, Triton and the tanker Evdokia. We need you, laddie,” the captain said. “You’re volunteering, right? I mean, you know what’s involved—they’re running out of everything. And it’s only three hundred and seventy miles to Crete, maybe a day and a half. You make eleven knots, don’t you?”
“We try.”
“Triton may be a bit slower, but you’ll be escorted, two destroyers, anyhow, and maybe some air cover. Good company. After that, you can go back to doing whatever it is, but we need everybody we can put our hands on, right away. So?”
“We’ll go, of course. You can start loading whenever you want.”
“We’ve already started, as it happens, trucks on the dock. And, something extra, we’re going to repaint you, so you’re back to being the Noordendam.”
DeHaan nodded. He wasn’t surprised—this was a full-scale invasion, and resupply was everything.
“We’ll get it done,” the captain said. DeHaan thought he might be a naval reserve officer, a merchant captain drafted into the Royal Navy, which made him, for some reason, feel better. “So, the best of British luck to you. And”—a mischievous smile—“no smoking.”
DeHaan asked to use the telephone in the port office and called the number Dickie had given him. A woman with an Oriental accent answered, took his number and, fifteen minutes later, Dickie called him back. “Good to hear from you, DeHaan,” he said, but his normal bluster was undercut by a worried note—what the hell does he want?
DeHaan told him about the orders from the port office.
From Dickie, a brief silence, only an airy hiss on the line. “Hm. Damned inconvenient, I’d say. But . . .”
Did he know?
“It would appear,” he said, gaining momentum, “that the war has interrupted our war, but, nothing to be done, eh?” Meaning surely you aren’t asking me to get you out of this.
But DeHaan was himself at war—they could do with him what they wanted, but he would, in return, have what he needed. Or else. “There is one condition.”
“Oh?”
“The Noordendam must have a medical officer, a doctor. We won’t sail without one.”
More hissing. “Really.” He didn’t care for DeHaan’s tone.
Too bad. “Yes, really.”
“Well, I see your point.”
“I’ll be aboard, third slip, Pier Nine, all day, likely two or three days. Sailing time is secret, of course, but it isn’t far off.”
“Right, then, I’ll have a go. Best I can do, I’m afraid.”
“Find him, Dickie.”
“Right.”
DeHaan hung up. The curse of the trampship captain was that he had to serve as shipboard doctor, a medical manual provided for his use. And every time a seaman reported sick with a bellyache, DeHaan, reaching for the epsom salts, could think only one thing—appendicitis. Freighter captains had performed appendectomies at sea, the manual showed you how to do it, and, sometimes, given the extraordinary constitutions of merchant sailors, the patient actually recovered. To date, DeHaan had set broken bones, stitched up gashes, and treated burns, but the idea of surgery made him shudder.
Then, a few days earlier, he had determined that his doctoring days were over. It was daylight when they reached the ship off Cap Bon, and DeHaan realized that the sergeant who’d led them back to the beach, who’d explained his limp by saying he’d stepped in a hole, had lied. Walking across the deck, he left a bloody footprint with every step. Apparently, one of the surviving commandos served as corpsman, because DeHaan heard no more about it, but he believed that the sergeant had been shot, and had sworn to himself that he would not again take men into danger without a medical person to treat the wounded.
As he hung up on Dickie, none too gently, he thought, “Right,” yes, right is what you are; hardheaded, stubborn Dutchman, better give him what he wants.
No smoking. Well, he guessed not. DeHaan returned to his ship to find a very hardworking crew, a very quiet crew. Cargo hatches off, winches grinding and steaming, booms swinging left and right, Van Dyck in charge. In the Egyptian heat the bosun had taken his shirt off, his torso thick and smooth, not a muscle to be seen. Van Dyck was the strongest man he’d ever known—DeHaan had seen him, on a bet, tear a deck of cards in half. But strength didn’t matter that afternoon, Van Dyck was working with a delicacy worthy of a jeweler, not a bump, not a brush, not a hitch, as the cargo was lowered slowly, slowly, into the hold. First the crates, with ste
nciled markings: land mines, 75-millimeter tank shells, .303 ammunition, then the bombs, 250- and 500-pounders, stacked laterally all the way to the top of the hold. Five thousand tons of it, and more to be carried on deck. Along with four tanks, lashed down forward of the bridge and, up at the bow, two Hurricane fighter planes.
“Christ,” Ratter said quietly, when DeHaan joined him on the bridge. “Anything happens, we won’t come down for days.”
They were at it all night, the piers floodlit despite the possibility of German air raids. Alexandria had been bombed, and would be again, but the convoy had to be loaded, and that meant working straight through until the job was done. On the Noordendam, they worked twelve-hour shifts with four hours’ sleep and sandwiches for every meal. DeHaan was on deck, kneeling next to Van Dyck—who wore gloves to handle the hot steel—as he replaced a broken gear, when his doctor showed up.
He hadn’t really known what to expect. Retired medical officer maybe, living with his wife in cheap and exotic Alexandria. But no such person stood at the foot of the gangway, where a Royal Marine guard shouted up, “Says he’s here to see the captain.”
“Send him up.”
The man, a hesitant smile on his face, climbed the gangway slowly, carefully, hand white on the rope that served as a railing, lest he go flying off into the water and be swallowed by a sea monster.
“Are you Captain DeHaan?” he said, consulting a scrap of paper. “Am I on the right boat?”
And what language was this? Not Dutch, and not quite German. Yiddish, then, and DeHaan saw exactly what Dickie had done and, despite himself, felt a surge of admiration.
The man was in his twenties, wore a baggy black suit, a narrow black tie, a white shirt—now gray, from months of washing in hotel sinks—and a black hat, perhaps a size too large. He had a high forehead, and anxious, inquisitive eyes—a hopeful face, prepared for disappointment, with shoulders already hunched in the anticipation of it. “My name is Shtern,” he said.