Dark Voyage ns-8

by Alan Furst

  “Never. But the first mate found this in Tangier.”

  After a moment, she said, “The English is difficult, for me.”

  “James Cagney has trouble with his wife, but Joan Blondell, his secretary, is secretly in love with him.”

  “Ah, of course.”

  Then, a little later, “What happens now? He’s a sailor?”

  “Plays a sailor, in the production number.”

  “So. He fights!”

  “Well, sailors in a bar.”

  After the fight, a song:

  Here’s to the gal who loves a sailor.

  It’s looking like she always will.

  She’s every sailor’s pal.

  She’s anybody’s gal.

  Drink a gun to Shanghai Lil.

  10 June, 0300 hours. Port of Lisbon.

  They had to have a pilot, entering the Tagus River, picked up off the town of Cascais, in order to cross the sandbars that built up at the mouth of the river. Pilots tended to be outgoing and talkative, seemed to enjoy that part of the job, and this one was no different. To DeHaan, he spoke English. “War has slowed down,” he said. “Except for Libya, and that goes nowhere. Advance, retreat, advance.”

  DeHaan agreed. From the last newspaper he’d seen, and Ali’s reports of the BBC, it certainly seemed that way.

  “It may be the time for diplomats, now,” the pilot said. “Hitler has what he has, and the British and Americans will find a way, with Japan. Is this how you see it?”

  “One could say that.” DeHaan was being polite. “But the occupation is a hard thing, for Europe.”

  “For some, yes. But it was not good before the war, with the communists, and men who could not find work.” He paused, then said, “You are not Spanish, are you.”

  “Dutch.”

  “I thought you could be German. How does it happen that you are captain of a Spanish ship?”

  “The last captain quit, without notice, and I was what they could find. Likely it won’t last, though.”

  “Crew is Spanish?”

  “Some. You know how it is with the merchant tramps, everyone from everywhere.”

  “Truly. And there is a lesson for the world, no?”

  DeHaan agreed, and busied himself with the log, then spoke back and forth with the engine room. When they were safely in the Tagus, made fast to two tugboats, and the pilot boat came alongside, DeHaan wasn’t sorry to see him go.

  Four in the morning, DeHaan on the bridge. With the tugs fore and aft, the Noordendam made slow way upriver, past pier after pier, while the city beyond lay still and silent, the final hour of its darkness broken only by streetlamps and a few lights dotted across the hills. Always, a part of him came sharply alive at these moments. To be awake while the world slept was a kind of honor, as though command of the imaginary night watch fell, for just that moment, to him.

  By 0530 they had, as promised by the tugboat captain, tied up to the pier at the foot of the rua do Faro, a white F 3 painted on the side of the cargo shed. DeHaan, in normal times, would have left the bridge for his cabin, but these were not normal times, and he stayed where he was. As the first light of dawn settled on the city, the waterfront came to life: stevedores, lunch boxes in hand, heading for a shape-up on the neighboring wharf, the night’s last whore going slowly home on her bicycle, the local seagulls coming to work, a sun-bleached black Fiat pulling up in front of the cargo shed, an army truck arriving next, a few yawning soldiers, lighting cigarettes and chatting among themselves, forming a ragged line at the foot of the pier, followed by an elderly couple with a suitcase, who stood back from the soldiers and settled in to wait. As DeHaan watched, more civilians arrived, until he’d counted forty or so, then stopped counting as the crowd grew.

  At 0750, Kees showed up for the forenoon watch. “What goes on, out there?”

  “I’m not sure. A crowd of refugees, it looks like.”

  “I thought this was all a secret.”

  “Well, keep an eye on it,” DeHaan said, heading for his cabin, anxious for a few hours of dead sleep.

  But this was not to be, not right away. In the corridor that led to his cabin, the chartroom door stood open and Maria Bromen was seated on a stool. She stood when she saw him. “I came to say goodby.”

  She had repaired herself as best she could-her suit and shirt pressed, sensible shoes polished, hair pinned up. “They loaned me the iron,” she said. “It looks right?”

  “Oh yes, looks perfect. But I thought you would leave at night.”

  “Don’t you sail today?”

  “We’ll try-we’re a few hours late, but there are things that have to be done, so it will be after midnight.”

  “Still, I will go now, and I wanted to thank you. There is more I want to say, but I think you know. So, thank you, and I wish you safety, and happiness.”

  “There’s some kind of commotion out there,” DeHaan said. “Maybe you’d better wait for a while.”

  “Yes, refugees, I saw them. They want to get on your ship, to leave this city, but the army won’t let them. It has nothing to do with me.”

  “They have no idea where we’re going.”

  “They don’t care. There will be rumors-South America, Canada-and they will offer money, jewelry, anything.”

  After a moment he said, “Well, good luck, and be careful. Is there anything you need?”

  “I have everything, because of you. I will be richest Russian girl in Lisbon.”

  DeHaan nodded and met her eyes, he wanted to keep her. “So then, goodby.” He extended his hand and she shook it, formally, Russian-style. Her hand was ice cold.

  “Perhaps we will meet again,” she said.

  “I would like that.”

  “One never knows.”

  “No.” Then, “You will be careful.”

  “I must be, but, now that I am this far, I think it will turn out well. I know it will.”

  “You don’t want to wait for night.”

  She didn’t.

  Stubborn. But it had kept her alive, waiting for luck. “At least let me take you past all that on the dock.”

  “Alone is better. I will go right by the soldiers, they won’t care, their job is only people who want to leave.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” DeHaan said.

  They shook hands once more and she left. Halfway down the corridor she turned toward him, walked backward for a step or two, her face closed, without expression, then turned again and walked away.

  DeHaan left the ship at 1030, headed for the rua do Comrcio, the office of the customs broker. At the end of the pier, the soldiers made a path for him through the crowd of refugees, shooing people aside, barring their rifles and pushing when they had to. They were not brutal, only doing what they’d been ordered to do, and there was a certain practiced feel to the way they went about it. It took no time at all, his passage, but long enough. Voices called out to him, in this language or that, someone offering a thousand dollars, someone else holding a diamond ring above the heads of the crowd. I can’t take you. Maybe he could, after a battle with the port officers, but he secretly agreed with Kees, that they’d never see longitude six-east, so where he would take them, more than likely, was to the bottom of the sea, or into a German camp.

  “Is something wrong?” Penha, the customs broker, asked when he arrived. So, it showed.

  DeHaan just shook his head.

  Penha was short and dark, well dressed, and very nervous. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “I was here very late, last night.”

  “We lost time,” DeHaan said. Their ship’s log instrument-a line run from a gauge in the chartroom into the water that calculated miles gained-had showed them losing way to strong current on the voyage to Lisbon.

  “Your cargo is in the shed on the wharf. I’m supposed to let you in, and to give you this.” He had the false manifest on his desk, and gave it to DeHaan immediately, glad to be rid of the thing. “You are not what I expected,” he said.

&nb
sp; “What did you expect?”

  Penha shrugged. “Buccaneer-of some sort.” He used the French word, boucanier, oddly romantic, the way DeHaan heard it.

  “Captain of a Dutch freighter, that’s all.”

  Penha lit a cigarette. “This is not what I do, ordinarily.”

  “No, I’m sure it isn’t,” DeHaan said. “And a month ago I would’ve said the same thing. And a year ago, my country just went about its life, but everything changed.”

  Insufficient reason, from the look on Penha’s face. “This is a business where honor matters-trust, personal trust, is all there is. That is my signature, on that piece of paper in your hand.”

  Shall I apologize? Penha was not acting out of conviction, he realized, had apparently been forced to do this. “There’s no plan to show this to anyone, Senhor Penha,” he said. “It’s a form of insurance-and likely will remain a secret.”

  “A secret. Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I would say I am.”

  “Because I’m not so sure.”

  After a moment, DeHaan said, “Why not?”

  A long silence. Only sounds of the street outside the quiet office as Penha tried to decide what to do, went back and forth-tell, don’t tell-then caution won out. Finally he said, “There are reasons.”

  DeHaan gave him time to change his mind, time to say more, but the battle was over. “I should be getting back to my ship,” he said, as he rose to leave.

  “You will have to load tonight,” Penha said. “And I’m supposed to be there.” Unless you say otherwise.

  “Is nine too early?”

  “It will do.”

  “I have to sail, as soon as possible.”

  “Yes,” Penha said. “You should.”

  It was a fifteen-minute walk, back to the pier at the rua do Faro. An unremarkable walk, through the commercial district behind the port, on the way there, but different on the way back. For whatever ailed Penha, DeHaan discovered, turned out to be contagious. For instance, the man idling in front of a shop window on the corner of the rua do Comrcio. Or the couple looking out over the river, who glanced at him as he passed. And, on the street side of the cargo shed, the Peugeot sedan, parked by the road that allowed trucks to drive down the pier. Behind the wheel, a plump, middle-aged man, smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper, spread out across the steering wheel. To DeHaan he seemed particularly content, perfectly at peace with the world, as though this was the best, really the only, way to read a newspaper, parked in one’s car by a cargo shed. As DeHaan came even with the car, the man looked up, stared at DeHaan for a few seconds, then rolled his window down. “Captain DeHaan?”

  “Yes?”

  The man leaned across the seat and opened the passenger door, then said, “Can you join me for a minute?”

  What was this? When DeHaan hesitated, the man added “Please?” Not the polite version of the word, something less. The man put the pipe back in his teeth and waited patiently. Finally, DeHaan went around the front and climbed in the passenger side. Sweetish smoke filled the car, which had a fancy interior, with soft leather seats. “Much appreciated,” the man said. “If I say the name Hallowes-does that help?”

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  “My name is Brown,” the man said. “I’m at the embassy, here in Lisbon.”

  “The naval attach office?”

  “Mmm, no, not really. But what I do isn’t so different from your friend Hallowes. Same church, different pew, eh?”

  “He asked you to speak with me?”

  “Oh no, he didn’t do that. But we’re all on the same side, in the end, aren’t we. You understand?”

  After a moment, DeHaan nodded.

  “Good, best to have that out of the way. Now Captain, I’m here because I have a small problem, and I need your help.”

  DeHaan waited. Inside, rising apprehension.

  “The, ah, Santa Rosa sails tonight, I believe, for Sweden. Do I have that right?”

  “For Malm, yes.”

  “Of course, the official version. And very discreet, to put it that way.”

  “Mr. Brown, what do you want?” This was blunt and direct and had no effect whatsoever.

  “A friend of mine needs passage, up to Sweden. I was hoping you might do me the favor of taking him along.”

  “I don’t recall that being in my orders, from the NID.”

  “Oh, the NID, ” Brown said, deeply unimpressed. “No, probably it wasn’t. Nonetheless, it’s what I’m asking you to do, and the NID needn’t know about it, if that’s what concerns you. He’s just a meager little man, you won’t even know he’s aboard.”

  “And if I say no?”

  “Is that what you’re saying? Because I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not,” Brown said, as though to himself. “Have you noticed a Fiat automobile, parked on the pier?”

  “Yes, I saw it.”

  “Inside the car are two Portuguese men. Plain enough, nothing special about them, except that they are important. Powerful, that’s the better word. They can, for example, impound your ship and intern your crew, but neither of us would want that, would we, what with the war effort and all. You really must go to Sweden, but one extra soul on board will make no difference, certainly there’s room for him.”

  Certainly there was. But if he did what Brown wanted, once, he had a feeling it might be twice, and that it wouldn’t end there. And Brown wouldn’t dare to impound his ship, his job wouldn’t survive doing something like that. All right then, get out of the car.

  “You aren’t averse to taking a passenger, are you?”

  The current running beneath his words had stiffened-this was barely a question, almost a statement, and DeHaan realized it was a reference to Maria Bromen.

  “And I expect the welfare of, um, any passenger, would mean something to you, no?” And, in Lisbon, because I can do it, I will, friend.

  “Yes, it would,” DeHaan said.

  “Ah then, we have no problem at all.”

  It took DeHaan a moment longer, then he said, “No.”

  Brown nodded- this always works. “You are helping to win the war, Captain. Even if very little is explained, even if you don’t care for the way things are done in my part of the world, you are. We must all lend a hand, if we’re to prevail, isn’t that so?”

  “When does he arrive?”

  “Oh, that’s up to you, Captain. When do you want him?”

  “Before nine, we’ll be busy after that.”

  “I’ll have him here. And we’re both very grateful, believe me. And, I should add, any difficulties here in Lisbon, you need only get in touch.” He reached into the pocket of his jacket and handed DeHaan a blank card with a telephone number written on it. “That’s the British Embassy-they’ll know how to contact me.”

  It occurred to DeHaan, as it was meant to, that he was now owed a favor, and he wondered if it could be used to help Maria Bromen-it might even get her to Britain. But he sensed that would open a certain door, in her life, to what Brown called his world, a door that didn’t open from the other side. DeHaan put the card in his pocket and got out of the car.

  “Goodby, Captain,” Mr. Brown said. “And thanks again.”

  2035 hours.

  A pair of headlights turned the corner of the cargo shed, then went off as the car drove slowly to the end of the pier.

  2130 hours.

  The cargo shed was vast, seen from the inside, its ceiling thirty feet high. DeHaan, accompanied by Kees and Kovacz, followed Senhor Penha past mountains of stacked drums and bales until he found their consignment-an island of raw wood crates circled by a wire with a metal seal. Without ceremony, Penha took a wire cutter from a leather case and snipped off the seal. “Now it’s yours,” he said. He produced a paper for DeHaan to sign- cork oak, sardines, cooking oil — and departed, his hurrying footsteps receding down the length of the shed, followed by the emphatic slam of a door.

  “Not muc
h, is it,” Kees said, squatting to inspect one of the crates. By freighter standards, hardly anything at all. The twenty-footers were no doubt sections of tower, the lattice aerials flat, and ten feet across. There were also a dozen square crates, eight by eight, and three flatbed trucks, painted matte black.

  “We’ll have to manhandle this stuff to the end of the dock,” DeHaan said. “Our crane will get it aboard from there.”

  “The trucks, for the twenty-footers,” Kees said. “The one on the end facing backwards, and driving in reverse. We’ll need crew to get them on there.” He put a hand on one of the eight-foot squares. “What’s in here?”

  “No idea,” DeHaan said. “Supplies, maybe.”

  Kees took a prybar from his belt, the nails squeaked as a board came free and a hard-edged shape in oiled paper bulged through the opening. “Smell the cosmoline?” he said. He opened a clasp knife, slit the paper and peeled it back, revealing gray steel shining with lubricant. “This will be a submachine gun, I think, if you can find the magazine.”

  “I’m sure it’s packed, in there somewhere,” DeHaan said.

  “That’s what my wife used to say,” Kovacz said.

  “Go get help,” DeHaan said to Kees, as he hammered the board back on.

  As Kees left, Kovacz climbed into the nearest truck. “I wonder if they drained the tank,” he said. He felt around for the ignition switch, then the engine came to life with a huge hammering roar that echoed off the high ceiling. “Christ, what’s in here?” he shouted over the noise. He shifted into first gear, there was a loud metallic bang as it engaged, then the truck crept forward, a slow foot at a time. “That’s all of it. I bet it’ll do fifteen, downhill.”

  “Regeared,” DeHaan yelled back. “All torque, no speed.”

  Kovacz drove a few feet more, then stopped and turned the engine off. “My uncle Dice has a farm in Leszno, he’d love this thing.”

  “He’ll have to wait,” DeHaan said.