by Alan Furst
They stood in silence for a time, then DeHaan said, “There’s one thing about this, mission, Major, that I really don’t understand.”
“Only one?”
“Isn’t a commando operation usually done with a submarine?”
“Ideally, it is. And it started out that way, I believe, but we only have so many, and they’re mostly up north. In fact, we were damned close to canceling the thing, then somebody came up with the idea of a merchant ship. A neutral.”
Noordendam was laboring too hard, DeHaan thought, and had the helmsman come a few points west.
“Truth is,” Sims said, “where we’re going, it’s not healthy for submarines. Our side has the east and west ends of the Med, with Gibraltar, and the fleet at Alexandria, but, in the middle, that’s another story. There are French airbases at Algiers and Bizerta, Italian planes across the Sicilian Channel at Cagliari, and they have a naval base at Trapani, and, since January, the Luftwaffe is operating from an airfield in Taormina, in Sicily. Submarines don’t like airplanes, Captain, as I’m sure you know, and add the destroyers, which fly seaplanes from their decks, and you stand a rather good chance of losing your submarine.”
“And a commando unit.”
“That’s not really the thinking, I’m afraid. It’s the Andrew, the Royal Navy, wanting to keep what it has. You can replace commandos.”
And tramp freighters. “I suppose you can,” DeHaan said. “Anyhow, we’re proud to do our part.”
“Your crew? I’m sure your officers are.”
“Hard to tell, with the crew. They always do what needs to be done, that’s just life in the merchant marine. I think the men with families in Holland like the idea of a raid. As for the rest, it’s probably different for each of them. We had six German crewmen in August of ’39, then, in September, after war was declared, four of them asked to sign off, including our second engineer, and we put them ashore in Valparaiso. But the other two stayed on. There was a time when we didn’t think about these things-nation of the sea and all that-but then the politics started, in 1933, and everything changed. Our chief engineer, Kovacz, was an officer in the Polish navy. He came aboard in January of 1940, in Marseilles. He’d been in port, up in Gdansk, when the Germans attacked. His ship blew up in the harbor.”
“Bombed?”
“Sabotage, he says.”
“Bloody war.”
“We had to sign him on as a fireman, but we lost our chief engineer a few months later and Kovacz was right there in the engine room. We’re lucky to have him.”
“And your two Germans? Still aboard?” He meant the question to sound like ordinary conversation, but there was an edge in his voice.
“Yes, and they’re good seamen. One’s an anarchist, the other didn’t want to die for Hitler. He’s young, nineteen maybe. They’ve had a few bad moments, fights in the crew quarters. Officially, I don’t know about it, and the men sorted it out among themselves.”
“It’s no different with us,” Sims said. “An officer can only do so much.”
Sympathy, DeHaan thought, as commanders we all face the same problems, and decided to take advantage of it. “What are you after, Major, on Cap Bon? I know I shouldn’t ask but I’m responsible for this ship, and for the lives of my crew, and on that basis maybe I have a right to know.”
Sims didn’t like it. Went silent as a stone, and, for a long minute, it was very quiet on the bridge. Then he walked over to the bulkhead, away from the helmsman. DeHaan let him stand there for a while before he followed.
“For you only, Captain DeHaan. May I have your word on that?”
“You have it.”
“Commando operations are meant to do many things: they upset the enemy, they help public morale-if they’re reported, they destroy strategic facilities. Communications networks, power stations, drydocks.”
Sims was just talking so DeHaan waited, and was rewarded.
“Also,” Sims said, “coastal observation points.”
“Like Cap Bon.”
“Yes, like Cap Bon. They seem to be able to watch our ships, even at night, in dense fog. We must get convoys through, Captain, to our bases on Malta and Crete, because the Germans are going to attack them. Must. Without these bases, as points of interception, our forces in Libya, all our operations in North Africa, are in peril.”
“At night? In fog?”
“Yes.”
“Can that actually be done?”
“Apparently it can. We suspect they’re using infrared searchlights, which can ‘see’ the heat of ship engines.”
DeHaan knew the span of nautical technology-there was hardly any aboard the Noordendam but it was still his job to know what there was. Even so, he had never heard the expression infrared. “What kind of searchlights, did you say?”
“Infrared. An invisible barrier, like a curtain, projected from both shores. Bolometers, Captain.” Sims almost smiled. “Sorry you asked?”
“I know about radio waves, radars, but, after that…”
“Goes back to the Great War, in Germany, they’ve been playing with it for a long time. But, now that I’ve told you, here’s my end of the bargain. If we manage to get technical equipment back to your ship, and something happens, to me, and my lieutenant, be a good fellow and make damn sure the thing finds its way to a British base. Will you do that?”
DeHaan said he would.
“There,” Sims said. “You see? All you needed was something more to think about.”
On the tenth of May, in the early evening, they passed through the Strait of Gibraltar. The mist and rain continued, but they steamed with running lights on, as a devil-may-care neutral ship would, and DeHaan could feel the telescopes and binoculars of the shore watch, British and German, French and Spanish, as they entered the Mediterranean.
DeHaan did not remain on the bridge for his midnight watch, instead, after a look at the charts, he left the helmsman to work alone and met with Ratter, Kees, and Kovacz in the wardroom. Ratter had the assistant cook produce coffee and a can of condensed milk, which he poured liberally into his mug while repeating the time-honored quatrain “No shit to pitch / No tits to twitch / Just punch a hole / In the sonofabitch,” then stirred it in with the end of a pencil.
“It looks like we’re going to be on time,” DeHaan said. “The twelfth, just before midnight. Sometime after that, the commandos go ashore. We’ll run them in as close as we dare, then drop anchor about two miles out, ship dark, and there we wait. The signal for return is two flashes of a green light, so we’ll have deckhands standing by to lower scramble nets.”
“And the gangway?”
“Might as well.”
“What if they don’t show up?” Kees said.
“We wait. For three days.”
For a moment, no one spoke. Then Ratter said, “Three days? Anchored off Tunisia?”
“We’ll be boarded,” Kees said.
DeHaan nodded.
Finally Kees said, “What about the weather?”
“Last report from Mr. Ali, the meteorological forecast for allied shipping, says that this system has settled in all over southern Europe, and is likely to continue.” The forecast came in code-the weather-report war one more small war within the big war.
“We want that, right?” Ratter said.
“I suppose we do. Anyhow, we’ll need to rework the watch list, so we have the best people at the helm, and on deck.”
“Vandermeer at the helm?” Kees said.
“No, on watch. Young eyes are better.”
“Schoener, then,” Ratter said.
“A German, for this?” Kees said.
“He’s right,” DeHaan said. “Use Ruysdal. He’s older, and steady.”
“Mr. Ali in the radio room?”
“As usual. But I want a good signalman, maybe Froemming, on deck with the Aldis lamp.” He meant the hand-operated, shuttered light that flashed messages.
DeHaan turned to Kovacz. As with many Poles, Kovacz’s second languag
e was German, sufficiently fluent so that Dutch, the nautical part of the language at any rate, came easily to him. He was a little older than DeHaan, stooped and bearlike, with thinning curly hair and sunken, red-rimmed eyes. His speech, always deliberate, came in a deep, gravelly bass thickened by a heavy accent.
“Stas,” DeHaan said. “You take the engine room, with your best oiler and fireman.”
Kovacz nodded. “Boilers up full?”
“Yes, ready to run for it.”
“Run like hell,” Kovacz said with a grin. “Screw down the safety valve.”
“Well, be ready to do it if you have to. Everything working?”
From Kovacz, an eloquent shrug. “It works.”
“Lifeboats in good shape?” DeHaan asked Ratter.
“I’ll make sure of the water tanks. The chocolate ration’s missing, of course.”
“Replace it. Davits, lines, blocks?”
“I replaced a rotten line. Otherwise, all good.”
The assistant cook knocked at the wardroom door, then entered. He was an Alsatian, short and plump, with a classic mustache, who looked, to DeHaan, like the dining-car steward he’d once been. “Patapouf,” DeHaan said, the word was French slang for fatty. “More coffee, please. Any dessert left from dinner?”
“Some pudding, Captain.” A thick, potato-starch concoction with dried dates.
“Anybody joining me?”
There were no takers. “Just for me, then, Patapouf.”
“Aye, Captain,” he said, and waddled off.
The meeting lasted another twenty minutes, then DeHaan went back up to the bridge for a quiet watch. At 0400, when he returned to his cabin, he cranked the handle of his Victrola and put on his record of Mozart string quartets. He opened one of the drawers built into his bunk and, from beneath a sweater, withdrew a belt and holster, well spotted with mildew, which held a Browning GP35 automatic, made in Belgium. Firing a 9-millimeter Parabellum round, it was the standard-issue sidearm for the Dutch military, and served as the captain’s weapon, always to be found on a merchant ship. Three years earlier, when it had replaced an ancient revolver, DeHaan had thrown an empty tomato-sauce can off the stern and banged away at it until, evidently unharmed, it disappeared beneath the waves.
He took a box of ammunition from the drawer, disengaged the magazine, and began pressing the oily bullets into the clip. Ratter had the other weapon on board-that he knew of, at any rate-a. 303 Enfield rifle, which was kept in a locker in his cabin. When attacked by an enemy vessel, a freighter had only one tactic-to turn stern to, where it could accept the most damage without sinking, and try to run away. That, and the pistol and the rifle, completed the ship’s defensive array. Some British merchantmen were being outfitted with antiaircraft guns and small cannon but such martial measures were not for the likes of the Noordendam, and most certainly not for Santa Rosa. The Mozart, however, was scratchy but pleasant against the sound of the sea, and DeHaan found himself calm and contemplative as he armed for war.
11 May, 2300 hours. Off Mostaganem, Algeria.
DeHaan was sound asleep when somebody pounded on his door.
“Yes? What?”
A lookout opened the door and said, “Mr. Kees says for you to come to the bridge, sir. Right away, sir.”
DeHaan managed to get his shirt and pants on, and went barefoot up to the bridge, the ladderway cold and wet as he climbed. Kees was waiting for him on the wing.
“There’s some damn thing out there,” Kees said.
DeHaan stared out into the rain and darkness, saw nothing. But, somewhere out to port, just astern, was the low rumble of an engine.
“Smell it?” Kees said. “Diesel fumes, and no outline I can see.”
A ship low to the water, with big engines that ran on diesel. DeHaan swore to himself-that could only be a submarine. Which could hide and fight beneath the sea but by preference attacked at night, at speed, on the surface, where it could run at sixteen knots instead of the underwater five. Kees and DeHaan walked to the stern and peered out into the gloom.
“He’s stalking us,” Kees said.
“We’re a neutral ship.”
“He may not care, DeHaan, or maybe he knows better.”
“Then he’ll demand surrender, and, if we try to run, he won’t waste a torpedo, he’ll sink us with his gun.”
“What can we do?” Kees’s voice was unsteady, and querulous.
“We can refuse,” DeHaan said. “And do our best with what comes next.” He’d played this moment out in his mind a thousand times but now he realized he would not surrender. The presence of a British commando unit gave him an excuse, but that’s all it was. Final orders, he thought. Firefighting crew, distress call, lower boats, abandon ship.
It was a fine rain, almost a mist, but he was soaked, water running down his face. A minute went by, and another, long minutes, then Kees said, “My God,” as a dim shape, gray and low, emerged from the darkness beyond the Noordendam ’s lights. A moment later, a hatch opened at the top of the conning tower and a man’s upper body, in silhouette, appeared above it. A searchlight came on, the beam swept back and forth across the deck. Then, amplified by a loud- hailer, a challenge, an Italian version of the standard “What ship?” An Italian submarine, then. Perhaps, DeHaan thought, the Leonardo da Vinci — fine job of naming there-infamous for attacks on British convoys. The challenge was repeated, the officer, likely the captain himself, clearly growing impatient.
DeHaan held his open hands on either side of his mouth and shouted, “Santa Rosa, Santa Rosa!” He was blinded by the light shining in his face. It moved to Kees, who shielded his eyes with his hand, then it shifted forward to the bridge. Turning to Kees, he said, “Go get Amado. Do it yourself.” He saw that several crewmen had come aft, and were milling about in small groups. “And get those people below, ” he said. Then he called out, “Momentito, per piacere, capitn vene, capitn vene!” Which was pretty much the extent of his Spanish, or Italian, or whatever he’d said. Maybe some Latin in there, in case they were monks. The captain’s hat he’d always imagined Amado wearing was in his cabin, on a peg behind the door.
The figure with the loud-hailer climbed down the conning tower and walked up to the bow. DeHaan was suddenly conscious of his bare feet-but maybe that wasn’t so bad. Here on this rusty old whore of a Spanish tramp. DeHaan tried for an ingratiating smile, said “Momentito,” and raised helpless hands. The figure, in full naval uniform, stared at him as though he were a bug.
Now both of them stood there, watching each other, until DeHaan heard footsteps on the deck and Kees appeared, with his arm around Amado’s waist. In an undertone, Kees said, “Oh Christ,” and half-carried Amado to the edge of the deck where, DeHaan could see, he dared not let him go. Amado, roused from his bunk in the crew’s quarters, was shirtless and, a loopy half smile on his face, drunk as a lord. “You’re the captain of the Santa Rosa, remember?”
Amado nodded fervently, ah yes, of course. He closed one conspiratorial eye.
The officer shouted in Italian, angrier by the minute, and Amado shouted back in Spanish, the words Santa Rosa repeated several times.
Another question.
From Amado, “Cmo?”
Tried again.
Kees said something to Amado, who yelled, his words well slurred, some sentence that included the words Izmir and tobacco.
Another figure appeared next to the officer, a big, burly fellow with full beard and black turtleneck, a submachine gun carried carelessly at his side. The officer asked another question, Amado tilted his head-what’s he saying?
“Tell him ‘Valencia,’” DeHaan said. Better, he thought, to answer some question.
Amado did it, then stumbled and, but for Kees, would have pitched into the water. Kees, out of the side of his mouth, said, “I think he’s going to be sick.”
The man with the beard began to laugh, and, a moment later, the officer joined in. And the captain was dead drunk!
The officer shook hi
s head, then dismissed the whole stupid business with a cavalier wave of his hand. The two returned to the conning tower and disappeared, the engine rose in pitch, and, with its exhaust vents pumping clouds of black smoke, the submarine rumbled away into the night.
DeHaan wanted a drink, he had a personal bottle of cognac in his cabin. He left Kees to deal with Amado, who’d fallen to his knees, and headed back toward the bridge. There was, on the way, a ventilating fan built into a louvered housing, some four feet high. As DeHaan went past, he saw that Sims and one of his men were kneeling in its shadow. The soldier held a rifle with a sniper scope, the weapon’s strap circled tight on his upper arm to keep the gun steady, a practice common to the target shooter, and the sniper.
DeHaan raised his eyebrows as he went past, and Sims gave him a smile in return, and a brisk little salute.
12 May, 1830 hours. Off Bizerta.
Twice that day they’d been looked over. First by a reconnaissance flying boat, flat-bottomed cabin suspended below wings with pontoons, French roundels on wings and fuselage. Sims guessed it might be a Breguet 730, but admitted he’d only seen photographs. He was sure, however, of the one that showed up in the late afternoon, an Italian Savoia-Marchetti in desert camouflage with a white cross on its tail, called the Gobbo, “the Hunchback,” Sims said, for the bulbous shape of its cabin.
Both planes came down to five hundred feet and circled for a good look. Behavior anticipated by DeHaan who had his full cast on deck-the cook and his assistant, in their usual dirty aprons, peeling vats of potatoes, and three deckhands sitting in a circle on the hatch cover of the forward hold, playing cards. He’d had a laundry line strung between two cargo booms, with shirts and drawers flapping in the wind, and, according to instructions, all the men on deck looked up at the planes and waved. The French pilot waved back. Toward dusk, a column of smoke was sighted on the horizon but the ship, whoever she was, showed no interest in the Noordendam.
As night came on, DeHaan called for Dead Slow from the engine room. They were not far, he thought, from Cap Bon. Finding it would not have been a problem, in better days, when every point and cape, harbor and river delta on the merchant shipping routes showed identification lights, described in the almanacs, but war had turned the coasts to low, dark shapes at the edge of the sea-once again the sea of Homer. Ratter had taken bright-star sights the night before, and shot the sun at midday. He had the navigator’s gift, a mathematician by birth, and was formidably better than DeHaan, or anyone on board, at celestial dead reckoning. And, when a soft glow lit the landward sky, he said it was Bizerta.
