by Alan Furst
When Kees returned, he had half the crew with him. Together they heaved and cursed until the first section of a tower rolled onto the truck bed. DeHaan, driving the backward-facing truck, didn’t get reverse on his first try, which caused a mass shout of alarm until he stamped on the brake. He got it right the second time and the two trucks crept through the broad doors at the end of the shed and moved slowly down the pier.
When he climbed down from the cab, Ratter was waiting for him. “Awake, O Lisbon,” he said, grinning.
“Can’t be helped,” DeHaan said.
“We’ll have police,” Ratter said. Then he peered into the darkness, nudged DeHaan with an elbow, and nodded back toward the cargo shed, where a lone figure stood in the shadows. “If that’s who I think it is,” he said, “you better go back there.”
It was loud and busy at the cargo shed, so DeHaan led her away, to the dark edge of the pier where the river current lapped at the pilings. “Forgive me,” she said. She was very tired, her voice soft with regret. “Maybe if I had waited for the night…”
“What happened?”
She took a deep breath, tried to steady herself. “They arrested me.” Of course, what else. “I never even got to street. Two men, in a car. Not the regular police, some other kind, the political kind, I think.”
“And?”
“And they took me to an office, and told me that I did not have visa for Portugal, so, if I choose to stay, I will be interned. They were polite, not angry-it is just the way their law is.”
“What does that mean, exactly? Did they explain it to you?”
“A camp, it means. Somewhere east of the city-they said the name but I forgot it. It isn’t like Germany, they said, but I would have to stay there until I could go somewhere else.”
“Where would you go?” DeHaan said.
“Back to Russia, they said. Or back to Tangier, if the Spanish would let me. Or wherever I could get permission to go. I could write letters, they said. All the internees write letters, although the mail is irregular.”
“But they let you come back here.”
“Yes, in time. They kept me in the office all day, brought me a sandwich, then they told me I could come back here-it would be as though I never entered the country, they said, if I returned to the ship.”
Was this, DeHaan wondered, Mr. Brown at work? He tried to figure it out, if this, then that, but it was a tangle of possibilities-including the possibility that he knew nothing about it. “Miss Bromen,” he said. “Maria. What we are going to do is very dangerous. You were on the ship when we repainted, and you know what that means.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Then you know it may not succeed, it may end in a bad way. If we’re caught, we’ll be taken under guard to a German port. Or sunk. So it’s possible that life in a Portuguese internment camp would be better, much better, than what can happen if you are aboard my ship. You would be alive, and then there is always hope. And they can’t keep you there forever. This war will end, sooner or later, they all do, and, even if the British capitulate, there would be some kind of settlement, treaties, arrangements.”
“I don’t think I can live in a camp,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “But that’s what you think I should do, isn’t it.”
“I don’t want you hurt, or dead. I don’t want you in a German prison.”
She shrugged and said, “I don’t care. If there is a chance to escape, to find a place where they will leave me alone, I will take it. There’s no time to explain, but I grew up in a country that was a prison, and it happened that I was one of the ones who couldn’t bear it. So I managed, with my work, to get away. Not far enough, but almost.” She looked at him. “Almost, right?”
“Yes, almost.” It surprised him, how angry he was. He wouldn’t let her see it, but to be this close, the lights of the evening city just beyond the wharf, made him angry. What difference would it make, if she were there?
“I know it is inconvenient,” she said. “To take me-wherever you are going. You can say no, I won’t argue. They are waiting for me, the two men in their car, out on the street. They expect me to return, that’s what they told me.”
“No,” he said. “I won’t send you back. But you may not thank me, later on, for taking you away.”
She raised a hand, as though to touch him, then didn’t. “Then I’ll thank you now,” she said. “Before anything happens.”
They walked back down the pier, toward the Noordendam, past the slow, rumbling trucks with a few sailors sitting on a long crate. At the ship, the bosun was directing the attachment of steel cables that hung down from the crane, and, as DeHaan and Maria Bromen went up the gangway, the first section of a tower rose slowly into the air.
11 June, 0240 hours. At sea.
“Steady on course three one zero.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
“We’ll bear northwest for an hour or so. And make full speed.”
The helmsman shoved the arrow to Full — Ahead, two bells sounded and, a moment later, the answering bells came back from the engine room. Behind them, the pilot boat, returning to port, and the fading lights of the coast. Cornelius came to the bridge with a mug of coffee and a can of condensed milk. DeHaan drank off some of the coffee, added the thick milk, and stirred it with the end of a pencil. “How’s everything below deck?” he said.
“We’re glad to be away, Cap’n.”
“Yes, me too,” DeHaan said.
Cornelius stood by his side for a time, watching the sea ahead of them. When he turned to go, DeHaan said, “Coffee’s good today, tell the cook I said so.”
Cornelius said he would, and left the bridge. DeHaan looked aft, at the Spanish flag flapping in the wind, and their wake, phosphorescent in the moonlight. An eight-day voyage lay ahead of him. According to Brown’s Almanac, Lisbon to a point due west of Glasgow was eleven hundred nautical miles, a hundred hours, four days at their speed of eleven knots. There were two routes to choose from, after that, Elsinore-by-Kiel Canal-Elsinore the British, rather Shakespearian form of the Danish port Helsingr, while the Kiel Canal ran through the northern heart of Germany. But that idea was beyond brazen. Instead, they would take Elsinore-by-Skaw, which meant the port of Skagen on the northern tip of Denmark. There was a shorter route, by way of what were called “the belts”-channels through the Danish islands-but the curve around to the Baltic would’ve swung them too close to the German coast. Going further east, down the three-mile pinchpoint between Helsingr and the Swedish coast, it was less than a day to Malm, and only a few hours east to the Smygehuk.
Back up to Malm for the sawn boards, he thought. And Kolb’s departure, then on to Ireland, in theory, and Maria Bromen’s departure. Another week, if they got there. So then, for two weeks, she would be in Ratter’s cabin.
1900 hours, dinner in the officers’ mess. All the officers, except for Kees on dog watch. Maria Bromen, back in dungarees, black sweater, and canvas deck shoes; and their traveling spy, Mr. Brown’s “meager little man.” He was certainly that-short and seedy, bald, with a fringe of dark hair, eyeglasses, and sparse mustache. And very diffident. He was, DeHaan observed, rather adept at diffidence. As everyone gathered for dinner, Kolb waited to see who went where, waited cleverly, shifting about, until all the others were seated, then took the remaining place. DeHaan said, “Miss Bromen has rejoined us for the voyage north, and we have one more passenger, Herr Kolb.” DeHaan went around the table with names, and Kolb nodded and mumbled, “Pleased to meet you, sir,” in heavily accented English.
“From where do you come, Herr Kolb?” Mr. Ali said.
“From Czechoslovakia,” Kolb said. “Up in Bohemia, where it’s German and Czech.”
“You are German, by birth?”
“Some part,” Kolb said. “It’s all very mixed, up there.”
“And your work?” Kovacz said.
“I am a traveler in industrial machinery,” Kolb said. “For a company in Zurich.”
“Business goes on,” Ratte
r said. “War or no war.”
“It does seem to,” Kolb said, not quite reluctantly-it wasn’t his fault. “War or no war.”
Cornelius served the dinner: barley soup, black sausage and rice, and Moroccan oranges. Maria Bromen, using a thumbnail, deftly carved the skin off her orange, then ate it in sections.
When dinner was over, and DeHaan headed for his cabin, Ratter caught up with him in the passageway. “Who is he, Eric?”
“A favor for the British, he’s going to Malm.”
“Is he dangerous?”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know. Is he?”
“He’s just a passenger. I didn’t really want to take him, but they insisted, so here he is.”
“Everybody’s been wondering, since yesterday.”
“Let them wonder,” DeHaan said. “One more unknown, leave it at that.”
“You’re aware that he toured the ship, this morning? He went everywhere, down to the engine room, crew’s quarters.”
“I didn’t know, but so what? What’s he going to do? Put it down to curiosity and forget it, we have more important things to worry about.”
12 June, 0510 hours. Off Vigo.
A hundred miles east of them, in the dawn mist. DeHaan had always liked the port-a huge bay, easy docking, a town that welcomed sailors. A Dutch fleet had taken Vigo, during one of the eighteenth-century wars, fighting alongside a British squadron. The instructor at the naval college had shown them an old map, drawn in the odd perspective of the period, a line of big ships riding little semicircle waves. Then, during the Napoleonic Wars, it had played some role, what? The British? The French fleet?
There was a knock on the port window of the bridge. Ruysdal, the lookout, was motioning for him to come out on the wing.
“Over there, Cap’n.”
Rising and falling on the low swell, a cluster of drifting shapes. DeHaan squinted through his binoculars. “Put a light on it,” he said.
Ruysdal worked the searchlight, and a yellow beam settled on the cluster. Bodies. Maybe twenty of them. Some of them in dark clothing, others wearing skivvy shorts-they’d been asleep when it happened, a few wore life jackets, and two of the men had roped themselves together at the wrist. DeHaan looked for insignia, for some identification, but, even with the searchlight, the gray dawn hid it from him. “Can you see the name of a ship? Anything?”
“No, sir.”
There was more; debris, pieces of wood, a strip of canvas, a white life preserver-but if there was a name on it, it floated face down.
“Stop the ship, sir? Put out the cutter?”
DeHaan watched, looking for a sign of life as the bodies lifted and turned in the ship’s bow wash and slipped away astern. “No,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do.”
Ruysdal kept the light focused on the bodies until they disappeared from the edge of the beam. “Damn shame, sir, whoever they are.”
“I’ll note it in the log,” DeHaan said, returning to the bridge.
13 June, 1920 hours. Off Brest.
The dinner conversation was in English, mostly, but sometimes German, for Kovacz and Poulsen. They managed-everybody helped their neighbor, it was better than silence, and better, come to that, than the smoked fish and beans.
“Where are we tonight, Captain?” Kolb said.
“Off Brest, approximately. Well off, about two hundred miles.”
“The minefields,” Ratter explained.
“Yes,” Kovacz said. “Big naval base at Brest.”
“And submarines,” Mr. Ali said.
“They come out of La Rochelle, I think,” Ratter said. “Not that it makes any difference, they’re all watching us.”
“Easy prey,” Kolb said. “But why bother?”
“They’ve sunk neutral ships, both sides have,” Ratter said. “Maybe somebody just wants to put another mark on their score, so they push a button.”
“Or, a bad mood,” Mr. Ali said.
“Yes,” Ratter said. “Why not?”
Nobody had a reason why not-such things did happen, and always would.
“It is vile, this war,” Maria Bromen said. “All of them.”
“It will end,” DeHaan said. “Some day.”
“War?” Kolb said.
“This war.”
“Have you heard the one about Hitler and the end of the war?” Kolb said. “He’s in his office and he’s looking at his portrait, and he says to it, ‘Well, they’re trying to get rid of me, but you’re still hanging there. What will become of us, when the war is over?’ And the portrait says, ‘That’s easy, Adolf-they’ll get rid of me and hang you.’”
A translation followed, with a few laughs. Mr. Ali gave a BBC report, and comment on that held out until dessert. More oranges, gratefully received, then Ratter went to the bridge to relieve Kees and the rest returned to their cabins. DeHaan and Maria Bromen were the last ones in the passageway, standing in front of their doors.
“So then, good night,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Sleep well.”
Claudine in Paris? DeHaan stood musing in front of his library and tried a paragraph. Long Atlantic rollers now, below him, the ship taking her time on the way up, engine at work, then down into the trough.
14 June, 0645 hours.
RAF skies, today. They’d crossed 50N latitude at dawn, if they were on schedule. The ship log seemed to think so, though he wouldn’t feel certain until Ratter shot the noon sunsights. Something of a border, fifty-north, France falling away to the south, the English Channel off the starboard beam as Noordendam swung away from the minefields that guarded the Western Approaches. Swung away, as well, from the lights of neutral Ireland, a safe haven. Better that they couldn’t see them, he thought-he’d certainly considered putting Bromen ashore there, before they curved over Britain into enemy waters, but they had no time to make port, couldn’t abandon her alone in the cutter, and, come to that, couldn’t afford to abandon the cutter either.
So she had to stay aboard. His passenger. Of course he’d hoped for more, but that hope had climbed some interior hill, then tumbled down the other side-the midnight knock at the midnight door to remain locked away in his imagination. Because she would say no. Say it tenderly, no doubt, but he very much didn’t want to hear her say it. And having her so near him made it much worse. Proximity. One of Desire’s great inventions, wasn’t it. Office partition, apartment wall, bulkhead-one would not, in fact, become a spirit and float through to the other side, but the thought was there.
A turn around the deck. He told the helmsman to stay on course and left the bridge. The sea had grown stronger overnight, Noordendam ’s prow nosing through heavy swells as spray flew high above the bow and sent up little puffs of steam as it hit the deck. DeHaan stood dead still. This couldn’t be what he knew it was. He trotted forward and knelt down, the salt spray stinging his eyes, and pressed a hand against the iron surface. Then he ran for the bridge.
The siren’s wail produced both fire crews, sprinting for their hoses, and Ratter and Kees. Shouting over the siren, he told them where it was. Ratter got there first, wrapped his hand in his shirttail and spun the wheel that opened the hatch to the number one hold. When he threw the hatch cover back, gray smoke poured up from below. “Get a hose over here!” Kees yelled. An AB poked a nozzle into the opening and DeHaan had to grab him as he pulled the lever back and the high-pressure stream whipped the hose and almost sent him into the hold. “Give me that,” DeHaan said and Kees handed him a flashlight. But, lying on his stomach and peering down into the darkness, he could see only a shifting cloud of smoke.
“What the hell is it?” Ratter said.
No answer. Hold fires were caused by spontaneous explosions, from dust, or slow combustion in damp fibers. “There’s ammunition in those crates,” Kees said. “Or worse. It’ll blow us open.”
Ratter put a foot on the first of the perilous steps, iron rungs, that descended into the hold. It was thirty feet, thr
ee stories, to the keel, sailors died when they fell down there, and the rungs extended only six inches-the shipyards didn’t sacrifice space needed for cargo. Ratter coughed as he climbed down and, as DeHaan followed, said, “I’ll thank you not to step on my fucking hands, Eric.”
“Sorry.”
Kees slithered backward off the deck and DeHaan watched his foot turn sideways, probing for purchase on a slippery rung. Above them, the AB adjusted the hose so that the white stream of water hissed past their heads-one slip of the hand and all three of them were finished. Someone on deck, maybe Kovacz, growled, “You’re too close.”
Some intelligent soul now turned on the lights-which meant the electrical system hadn’t burned, and revealed one of the trucks, with its hood and cab in flames. “Turn off the hose and hand it down,” Kees yelled.
“Don’t try it,” DeHaan shouted.
“Don’t worry about that,” Kees shouted back.
The light helped them go faster. Too fast, DeHaan’s foot skidded off a rung and he grabbed the one above him with both hands, the flashlight clattering as it landed below.
By the time they reached the bottom, all three were breathing through handfuls of shirt. Kees turned the hose on and played the stream over the burning truck. The fire in the cab went out immediately, but burning gasoline in the engine kept coming back to life. They moved forward, sloshing through an inch of brown water, finally lying down in it and sending the stream up into the engine from below. That did it. “Should I hit the crates?” Kees said.
“No, better not,” DeHaan said.
Standing in front of the charred, smoking hood, Ratter said, “Trucks catch fire by themselves. Happens all the time.”
“You didn’t drain the tank?” DeHaan said to Kees.
“I thought they’d need to drive it right away.”
DeHaan walked over to the crate nearest the truck, one of the eight-by-eights, and felt for heat. The wood was smoke-blackened and warm to the touch, but no more than that. “Would’ve caught, in time,” he said.
“Sabotage,” Ratter said.
“Maybe.”
“That little German.”
