by Alan Furst
“You can thank me, Dr. Shtern, but what we do here is dangerous,” DeHaan said, thinking of the little ones. “Especially now. I hope you understand that.”
“Yes, I know,” he said quietly. “I read the papers. But I must find something to do.”
“I’m going to send you off with my first officer, he’ll make sure you get everything you want-we have some medicines, take a look at them, but our inventory is primitive. Also, we’ll buy you clothes, so you don’t have to worry about that.”
Shtern nodded. “It will all be new for me,” he said, “but I will do my best, sir, you will see.”
It was after eleven that night when DeHaan finally got around to doing what he’d been putting off for days. He sat at the table in the wardroom, drinking coffee, and working on a wireless message to Terhouven. Outside, the loading continued, a symphony of whistles, bells, and drumming machinery, but DeHaan, concentrating hard, barely heard it. The commercial code used by the Hyperion Line was likely no mystery to the British-or anybody else, he assumed, so he had to write as elliptically as he could, and trust that Terhouven would read between the lines.
The first part was easy, a monthly salary to be paid, to a bank in Alexandria, for a recently hired medical officer. Next-now it grew difficult-the new cargo, “designated by local authorities for a Mediterranean port.” And if Terhouven, following the war in the London papers and knowing the origin of the transmission, thought that meant a load of figs to Marseilles, then so be it. For the last, the hardest, part, the best DeHaan could do, after a number of false starts, was “You will be aware of changes in our administrative status.” This puzzle Terhouven could work out, if he didn’t know already: so much for Section IIIA of the Dutch Admiralty’s General Staff and Commander Leiden, they were now under new ownership. And, as to who exactly that might be, well, it was those people to whom one referred elliptically.
Not that Terhouven could do anything about it but, far away in the land of paper, life did go on-with war-risk insurance held by so-called “clubs” of shipping lines, money changing hands, lawyers, and, in general, all the byzantine apparatus of vessel ownership. Did their change in status affect any of this? DeHaan didn’t know-maybe all it meant was that Terhouven could now worry in new and interesting ways.
Ratter entered the wardroom, collapsed onto the banquette, took his hat off, and ran his fingers through his hair.
“Johannes.”
“Eric.”
“Coffee?”
“Something.”
“Go get a bottle from the chartroom, if you like.”
“I will, in a minute. For now, I’ll just bother you.”
“No bother, I’m just finishing up a wire for Terhouven.”
“Ah, if he could only see us now. He’d shit.”
“I expect he would. How’s the work?”
“Miserable. We broke a cable, dropped ten bombs down on top of everything else.”
“They go off?”
“Seem not to have. Give ’em time, though. And, the midnight-watch crew was short two men.”
“You look for them?”
“I did, and gone they are.”
DeHaan swore.
“One of the Spaniards, and AB Vandermeer.”
“No, Vandermeer?”
“Tough little guy was not so tough, turns out. By now, he’s getting himself screwed cross-eyed, and means to stay alive. Will you turn them in?”
DeHaan thought about it. “No. Let them live with themselves. What about our doctor?”
“Hard at work, and very eager. Bandages, Mercurochrome, splinted up a crushed finger. Glad to be rid of that, Eric?”
“Maybe a little.”
“One of the men called him ‘the rabbi.’”
“To his face?”
“No.”
“You stop it?”
“I said, ‘You can call him that when he sews up your worthless hide, but until then, shut your fucking mouth.’ I think he got the idea. What are you telling Terhouven?”
“We’re now in British hands-the dark side of the navy.”
“Not this convoy.”
“No, but if we don’t blow up, we will go places and do things.”
Ratter shook his head. “Stranger and stranger, isn’t it.”
DeHaan read back through the wire, and printed EMD at the bottom.
“But,” Ratter said, “now that I think about it, the last time I went to a Gypsy, she said something about mysteries. Shadows? Darkness? Something.”
“Did you, really?”
“You know, I actually did. In Macao, years ago. She was Russian, a redhead.”
“And?”
“She told my fortune. I thought maybe there would be more, but there wasn’t.”
DeHaan folded the paper in half. They would have to keep radio silence, once they were under way, so Mr. Ali would send it before they sailed. “We’re due to refuel, in a few hours,” he said. “Food and supplies, everything.”
“Until then, did you say something about a bottle?”
“Left-hand cabinet, third drawer down. Bring it in here, I’ll join you.”
23 May, 0300 hours. Port Administration Building.
In a small room in the basement, a briefing by the captain of the HMS Ellery, the destroyer that would lead the convoy. The masters of the four merchant ships took notes-key signals to be made by Aldis lamp or flag, zigzag course to make life harder for enemy submarines, meteorological report. The captain paced back and forth, sometimes pausing to scribble a number or a diagram on a blackboard, bits and pieces of chalk flying off as he wrote. Now and then, the two Greek captains looked at each other-what did he say? The first time it happened, the Canadian master of the Maud McDowell, a fat, white-haired old rogue, glanced over at DeHaan and cocked an eyebrow.
“The situation on Crete,” the destroyer captain said, “turns on the battle for the airfields, Maleme, Heraklion, and Retimo. The Germans have taken Maleme, and paid dearly for it, and continue to do so, under counterattack by a New Zealand division. We hold the port of Sphakia, on the south side of the island. It’s been a very hard fight, we’ve lost ships, and aircraft, but we’ve sunk one of their troop convoys-five thousand men-so the thing’s a long way from being over, and this convoy could make all the difference. Understood?”
The captains nodded.
“So then, to conclude, let me remind you again that the important thing is to keep your station-if you lag behind, we can’t help you. Understood?”
They understood.
“Very well, H-hour is oh-four-hundred, and off we go. Last chance for questions-anybody?”
No questions.
The captain laid down his chalk, picked up an eraser, and began to clean the board. When he was done, he turned and, for a moment, looked at them. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said.
0520 hours. At sea.
They sailed in a diamond pattern: the Ellery protected the left flank, the two Greek ships led, side by side, followed by Maud McDowell and Noordendam, the destroyer HMS Covington on the right. With Kees at the helm, DeHaan stood below the bridge and watched the Covington as she maneuvered.
She was, to DeHaan’s eye, a handsome thing. Long and gray, in the gray light of dawn, trailing white gulls as she slid through a gray sea studded with whitecaps. The canvas covers were off her guns and, from time to time, he could hear the sharp bark of an announcement over the Tannoy speakers. Restless, she altered course, angled a point or two east of the convoy, then, a minute later, swung back to the west. This in response, he supposed, to the ASDIC system, pinging away, searching for the echoes of submarines beneath the water. With thirty-four knots of speed to their eight, she was not unlike a border collie, patrolling back and forth, guarding her four fat sheep.
DeHaan was, that morning, particularly tuned to his engine, its pitch, its vibration in the deck beneath his feet. Now, even at eight knots, a speed dictated by the ancient Triton, it was laboring. Because Noordendam was clearly overloaded-holds fu
ll to the hatch covers with bombs and mines, the foredeck carrying the four tanks and the Hurricane fighter planes, the wind sighing, a strange, ghostly hum, as it blew across their wings.
Then, suddenly, the engine slowed. DeHaan froze for an instant, then ran up the ladder to the bridge, where Kees was already shouting down the voice tube. “What are you doing?” DeHaan said, taking the tube from Kees. Before he could answer, DeHaan heard Kovacz say, “.. get it done as soon as we can.” He didn’t wait to hear more, handed the device back to Kees, and headed for the engine room, four decks below.
He skidded down the ladderways, as various crewmen turned to look at him, eventually reaching the grilled platform at the top of the final ladder, thirty feet above the engine room. From there, he peered down through a haze of oily smoke, tinted red by the engine-room light. Below, a forest of pipes, three giant boilers, auxiliary engines, condensers, generators, pumps, and, its giant brass pistons now rising and falling at slow speed, the engine itself. It hurt to breathe down here, there was no air, only fumes-steam, singed rags, burning oil, scorched iron. Hot as hell, and louder, the noise of running machinery swelling to fill the huge iron vault and echoing back off the hull.
As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he saw the firemen and oilers gathered around the number three boiler, with Kovacz at the center, wielding a four-foot wrench. As DeHaan watched, Kovacz set the wrench on a thick pipe, a fireman grabbed the handle beside him, and together they hauled, trying to break the pipe loose from an elbow joint. DeHaan ran down the ladder.
Kovacz’s denim shirt was black with sweat, and a bright red scald mark ran up the inside of his forearm from wrist to elbow. In order to be heard, DeHaan had to shout. “Stas, how bad is it?”
Kovacz nodded toward the pipe and said, “Blew a fitting, so number three is shut down.” From a crack in the elbow joint, a plume of steam spurted ten feet in the air.
“Can we make eight knots?”
“Better not-we’ll have hell to pay with the other two.”
“How long, Stas?”
Kovacz didn’t bother to answer. Using a wet rag, which steamed as he grabbed the wheel on the head of the wrench, he tried to force it tighter on the pipe, then took hold of the handle. “On three,” he told the fireman, counted, and growled with effort as he thrust his weight downward. For a moment, his feet left the deck. “Psia krew,” he said in Polish. Dog’s blood.
An oiler appeared with a steel mallet and looked inquiringly at Kovacz. “Yes, try it.” The oiler swung the hammer back, paused, then banged it hard on the elbow fitting, trying to break the rust in the threads. Kovacz and the fireman tried again, but the pipe wouldn’t give. Kovacz left the wrench in place, put his hands on his knees and lowered his head. “All right,” he said, voice just rising above the din, “somebody go and get me the goddamn saw.” He stood back up, wiped some of the sweat off his face, and met DeHaan’s eyes. Sorry.
“Polish navy was never like this,” DeHaan said.
“The fuck it wasn’t.”
On deck, the AB serving as signalman was waiting for him. The rest of the convoy had moved away, but the Covington was standing close off their beam. From the wing of the destroyer’s bridge, an expertly operated Aldis lamp was flickering at them. “They want to know what’s wrong,” the signalman said.
“Make back, ‘Mechanical problem.’”
The signalman began to work the shutter on the lamp. When he was done, the Covington ’s signaller responded. “He says, ‘How long?’ sir.”
“I wish I knew,” DeHaan said.
“‘Unknown,’ sir?”
“Yes.”
As the message was completed, the Covington abruptly changed course and circled away from Noordendam, gaining speed as she moved.
The signalman said, “What’s she doing, sir?”
DeHaan wasn’t sure. Thirty seconds passed, the Covington now heading due east, then her bow came over hard in a very sharp change of course. Now DeHaan knew exactly, and took great care that the AB saw no sign of what went on inside him.
From the Covington, a double bleat on its klaxon. A slow count to six, then the hull of the Noordendam rang, a brief, dull note, as though it had been hit with a giant rubber hammer. And, a few seconds later, twice more.
The AB’s eyes were wide.
“Depth charges,” DeHaan said.
0700. The Covington sailed away, and Noordendam was alone on the sea.
The destroyer’s attack had lasted twenty minutes, the ship quartering above the suspected submarine and, as the freighter crew watched, deploying its barrel-shaped depth charges in groups: three rolled over rails at the stern, two fired outward by deck mortars-a traditional pattern called the five of clubs. Years earlier, when DeHaan was still serving as a second mate in the Dutch East Indies trade, his first officer had explained the principle of depth charges in a way he never forgot: water had its own physics, especially where explosions were concerned. “If you’ve decided to end it all,” he’d said, “and you want to make sure, fill your mouth with water and put the muzzle of the gun in there-you’ll blow the back of your head off.”
The Covington ’s attack had evidently not succeeded-assuming it was a submarine in the first place, ASDIC was known to discover phantoms of its very own-because no oil, no debris, rose to the surface. And no giant bubbles, though German subs could, and did, send up Pillenwerfers, false bubbles meant to deceive their attackers. Therefore, likely having lost contact, the destroyer could not stay long as nursemaid to the Noordendam, so wished her well and disappeared over the horizon. The freighter was kept just under way, as Kovacz and his crew struggled in the engine room, and everyone else waited for the torpedo.
Still, the day turned out to be nice.
Not too warm, thanks to a sharpening breeze, and mostly sunny, except for some heavy cumulonimbus clouds in the southern sky. Pretty ones-thick and gray at the bottom, white and sharply curved as they rose, and wispy on top against a rich blue sky. Oh, Kees kept grumbling about a falling barometer, but trust him to see the dark side. “It’s going to blow seven bells of shit all the way up to Genoa” was the way he put it to DeHaan. But not much the captain could do about that, was there, and the Noordendam lay low and heavy in the sea, certainly a plus when iffy weather was expected.
For DeHaan, there wasn’t much to do. He wandered here and there, at one point stopping by the radio room to see if Mr. Ali had heard anything new on the BBC. As DeHaan opened the door, Ali was bent over his table and very concentrated, one hand holding a headphone to his ear, the other teasing the dial. When he saw DeHaan, he offered him the headset, saying, “We’re getting somebody’s radio-on the high-frequency band.”
Noise was all it was, initially, a transmission well beyond its calculated range, though signals were known to wander great distances if they reached the open sea. After a moment, DeHaan realized the noise was a heavy drone-interference? No, it changed octaves, then fell back, faded away to silence, but returned. With a voice, which called out “… south of you!” and sounded as though the speaker had been running. Then the signal broke up.
DeHaan started to take the headset off but Ali held up a hand, wait. He was right, the drone came back, for a moment perfectly clear. Airplane engine. “Nine-forty! Nine-forty! He’s…” Lost. A sharp burst of static, maybe static, or something in the plane. Then, seconds later, “Oh bloody hell,” said quietly, to himself. Again, the signal broke into snips of noise, then faded out. DeHaan held the headset away from his ears and said, “Where is it coming from?”
“On Crete, I think. An airplane. Working with armor perhaps, nine-forty the number on a tank.”
“Can’t really hear much,” DeHaan said. In fact he could, but didn’t like doing it, and handed the headset back to Ali. “You’ll try for the BBC?”
Ali glanced at the clock on his panel. “A few minutes yet, Captain,” he said.
By 0850, Kovacz had the engine back up to full steam. DeHaan calculated that the
convoy had gained, in three and a half hours, twenty-one miles, which the Noordendam could make up-eleven knots to the convoy’s eight-in seven hours. For that time, they would sail alone. An inviting target, for anybody who happened to be in the neighborhood, but if they hadn’t been attacked by now, DeHaan guessed, they were probably safe. Either Covington ’s ASDIC sounding had been a false contact-a sunken ship, perhaps-or the submarine had been driven off. Meanwhile, the storm was gaining on them; heavy clouds turned the morning dark, and a curtain of rain spanned the southern sky where dazzling forks of lightning fired off two and three at a time, with distant claps of thunder. The wind was rising, but they had also a following current, which added speed as they chased the convoy.
DeHaan, unable to fight Germans or weather, and running as fast as he could, had to do something, so turned his attention to morale. They’d taken on fresh beef at Alexandria, and he ordered it served for lunch, with mustard sauce-the cook’s one good trick-and potatoes, a double beer ration, and fresh pineapple for dessert. Then he had the officers rounded up for coffee.
Kees had to remain on forenoon watch, as did the Danish fireman, Poulsen, now serving as apprentice second engineer, but Ratter, Kovacz, Ali, and Shtern-the creases still evident in his work shirt and trousers, a blue officer’s cap set squarely on his head-all gathered in the wardroom.
When they were settled, DeHaan announced that by 1600 hours they should be rejoining the convoy.
“Didn’t you tell me,” Ratter said, “that we would have air cover?”
“I did. But, as you see…”
“They’re in trouble,” Kovacz said. “We’re lucky to have anything.”
“True,” Mr. Ali said. “The eight o’clock BBC had that certain sound to it.”
“What sound?” Shtern said.
“The sound of losing. ‘Enemy attacks in great strength.’ ‘British forces making a stand.’ What they said about France in ’40.”
“What if they lose Sphakia?” Ratter said.
“They’ll let us know,” DeHaan said.
Ratter’s grin meant are you sure?
“Better be ready for it,” Kovacz said. “What they have on Crete are British and Greek troops evacuated from the Peloponnesus, three weeks ago. Some of them ran all the way from Albania, and you know what retreat is, it’s chaos, lost weapons, missing officers, busted vehicles-this isn’t a stand on Crete, it’s a last stand.”
