Dark Voyage

by Alan Furst

  “Are there ship’s papers—for the Santa Rosa?” DeHaan said.

  “No point. You could only use them if you’re boarded and, if you are, the game is over. A merchant crew wouldn’t survive interrogation, and there’s too much on the ship that would give it away, under close inspection. However”—she reached behind the driver’s seat and retrieved a soft package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string—“here is my contribution.”

  She untied the string, turned the paper back, and handed DeHaan a ship’s flag—the heavy cotton fabric softened and faded by service in ocean weather. A Spanish flag, the monarchist version reintroduced by Franco in 1939. Two horizontal red bars—blood-red, and not subtle about it—held a wide band of yellow with a coat of arms: between columns, beneath a flowing pennant with motto, an eagle in profile is protected by a checkered shield. DeHaan, from northern Europe, the land of forthright stripes, had always thought it looked like a medieval war banner.

  “Seems well used,” he said.

  “It is.”

  “Did you buy it?”

  “Tried. But, in the end, we stole it. There was a message from Leiden, back in April, ‘Obtain a used Spanish maritime flag.’ Well, it wasn’t to be found in the local souks so we—me and a friend, a trusted friend—took the ferry over to Algeciras for a day. Not much you can’t find there, since the war ended—a single boot, sacred paintings marked with a hammer and sickle, old pistols—but they were fresh out of used flags. So we came back to Tangier, went to the chandler, and bought one. New and crisp, sharp, bright, and wrong.

  “I tried everything I could think of—washed it in lye, soaked it in seawater, left it in the sun for days—but this flag had its pride and it wouldn’t age. Finally my friend said to soak it in bath salts and bake it dry, which led to an amusing fire in the oven and a visit with the firemen. By the time they left, the flag was a little too used—which is to say, black.

  “Now Leiden had used the word obtain, which left us a certain, latitude, so my friend had a bright idea: yachts. Plenty of them stranded in Tangier and Casablanca, at the yacht clubs, and of course the people who own them, some of them anyhow, give parties. Well, we found the flag we wanted—on a huge motor yacht that belonged to the count of Zamora, known in Tangier as ‘Cookie,’ and pure Groucho Marx. Likely raised some hell in his day but it was probably nineteenth-century hell, because Count Cookie is an extremely old man and doesn’t give parties. But we did get ourselves invited to a cocktail Amricain, at a nearby slip, on a yacht called the Nride, owned by some Italian aristocrat. This grew into a real party, by the way; caviar in the piano, ice cubes down the cleavage, fan dancing with the drapes—a very sporty crowd and they didn’t miss a trick.

  “So, after midnight, I went up on deck for a breath of air, walked back to the pier, went three docks over, and out to the last slip. Only problem was, I had this idiot who’d followed me around all night and now he follows me out to the motor yacht. Definitely a Mitteleuropa type, but nave, or maybe just stubborn, because I’m the girl of his dreams. ‘Mademoiselle Wilhelm,’ he says, ‘you are lovely in moonlight.’

  “We’re standing at the foot of the gangway, at this point, and I flirt with him and tell him I want that flag. Must have it. Crazy Dutch artist, he thinks, drunk, sexy, has to have a Spanish flag. Well, why not. So we tiptoe across the gangplank and onto the deck, and lower the flag. And, lo and behold, it’s an antique—the old bastard must have had it from before the civil war. And, of course, he hears us, or someone in the crew does, because just about the time we get it unclipped, somebody yells in Spanish and we run like hell, laughing all the way.

  “Now this is a big flag, and, even folded, it can’t go back to the party, so we run to his car, a Lagonda, of course, put it in the trunk and he drives me back to my studio, an old garage, where I have a headache and get rid of him. An hour later my friend shows up, worried sick, thought I was in jail, but we drove right past the guard at the gate of the club.”

  It was dark on the hilltop and very quiet, a lean slice of waning moon had risen just above the horizon. New moon on the twelfth, DeHaan thought. Which was why the operation was planned for that night, and, if it didn’t go, would have to wait for June. “We shouldn’t stay here too long,” he said.

  “No, you’re right.” She set about starting the car.

  “I’ll send a boat for the paint,” he said. “Tomorrow morning.”

  “I’m in Room Eight.”

  DeHaan folded the paper back over the flag and retied the string as the engine started. “Thank you for this,” he said.

  “My pleasure,” she said. “Fly it, ah, proudly?”

  “I suppose,” DeHaan said. “Might as well.”

  0920 hours. Rio de Oro Bay, off Villa Cisneros.

  DeHaan used the chartroom as his office. A bank of teak cabinets filled one wall, with wide drawers that held charts for the seas of the world. Such seas might fold, in the right storm, but not the charts. There was desk space atop the cabinetry, with calipers, pencils, chronometer—all the paraphernalia of navigation. One door led to DeHaan’s cabin, the other to the deck.

  The AB Amado, prompt to the minute, knocked politely, two diffident taps on the door. “Yes?” DeHaan said.

  “Able Seaman Amado, sir.” This in English.

  “Come in.”

  He was a shaggy man in his late thirties, with a mustache and a slight limp. There were three Spaniards aboard the Noordendam—one was a fireman, and barely verbal, a second, eighteen years old, served as cook’s assistant and messroom boy. The third was Amado, formerly a ship’s carpenter on a Spanish tramp, who’d signed on as an AB in Hamburg in 1937. Which meant less status, and less pay, but this was a rescue and Amado was happy to be alive.

  “Please sit down, Amado,” DeHaan said, indicating the other high stool pulled up to the cabinets. “A cigarette?”

  “Please, sir.” Amado was sitting at attention.

  DeHaan gave him a Caporal and lit it, then lit one of his little brown North State cigars. DeHaan had boxes of them, but he could only hope they would outlast the war.

  “The speech yesterday,” DeHaan said. “It’s been explained to you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And that’s all right?”

  Amado nodded. He took a deep drag of the Caporal and let the smoke out slowly, turning one hand to an angle that meant he wanted to say much more than his English would allow. “Yes,” he said. “Very much.” DeHaan saw that he was one of those men whose fire had been banked to an ember, but that ember was carefully tended.

  Amado now told his story. DeHaan already knew most of it—from the bosun, who served as petty officer and father confessor to the deck crew—which was just as well, because the conversation was hard work for both of them, though the story was simple enough. When civil war came to Spain, it also, in time, came to Amado’s ship, a Spanish ore-carrier hauling chromite, from Beira, in Portuguese East Africa, to Hamburg. As they neared the German coast, somebody called somebody a name and a fistfight started, which grew quickly into a brawl between Republican and Falangist crewmen—red and black neckerchiefs appearing like magic—then spread to the officers, except for the captain, who locked himself in his cabin with a loaded shotgun and a demijohn of rum.

  In a matter of minutes, the weapons came out. “First knifes, later, ah, fusiles.”

  “Guns.”

  “Yes. So this.” Amado pulled up his pant leg and revealed the pucker scar.

  The Falangists held the radio room, the wardroom, and the officers’ mess, the Republicans had the bridge, the engine room, and the crew’s quarters, there were wounded on both sides, two seamen fatally stabbed, an officer shot dead. As night fell, the fighting subsided to a standoff—shouted insults answered by wild gunfire, then, at dawn, the Falangists sent out a distress call, which produced, a few hours later, two Kriegsmarine patrol boats. When Amado, who fought on the Republican side, saw the swastika flags, he knew he was finished.
/>   But he wasn’t. Not quite.

  Officers and crew were taken under guard, the wounded patched up, the ship herded into Hamburg harbor. The Falangists, as fellow fascists, were released immediately, while the Republicans—“Bolsheviks, they call us”—were held at the port. German officials then wired the owner of the ship, who wired back an hour later and objected to the arrests: where, he asked, was he to find a replacement crew? Thus, after a day of questioning and a couple of broken noses, they let most of the Republicans go. “But three,” Amado said, “not come back.”

  What the Germans wanted, in fact, was not a few new inmates for their prisons, what they really wanted was the chromite ore, used to harden steel in various war machines—the cargo in the hold of the Spanish ship, and more in the future, all they could get.

  But Amado—maybe a ringleader and maybe not, DeHaan wasn’t sure—was not going to board that ship ever again. Which sailed without him, while Amado stayed at a seamen’s hostel in the Altstadt district, where, two months later, DeHaan found him. “Very bad, Hamburg,” Amado said, his face hardening at the memory of it.

  From DeHaan, a sympathetic nod, then, “Amado, our ship will be a Spanish ship, for a time.”

  Amado looked lost.

  DeHaan went to his cabin and returned with the paper parcel. He opened it, and when he showed Amado what it held, the man stared for a time, then his eyes lit up with understanding. “Ah!” he said. “I know this . . .”

  Amado didn’t have much English, DeHaan thought, but he certainly knew deception when he saw it. “That’s right,” DeHaan said. “And you”—he pointed for emphasis—“the captain.” He took off his cap and placed it on Amado’s head. “On the radio, yes? Or, or, when we need you.”

  Amado returned the cap with a rueful smile. Not for the likes of me.

  “Can you do it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Amado said. “Con gusto.” With pleasure.

  The bumboat men arrived at dusk, pulling up to the ship’s side in an assortment of feluccas with striped awnings, and announcing their wares as they climbed up the steep gangway along the hull. Waiting for them on deck, Van Dyck, the bosun, and AB Scheldt, with folded arms and policeman’s clubs carried in loops on web belts.

  The bumboat men carried suitcases full of tobacco, matches, cigarette papers, French postcards, fruit, chocolate, chewing gum, buttons, thread, needles, writing paper, and stamps, which they spread out on blankets, everything just so. Then they squatted on their haunches and called out the great virtues, and demeaning prices, of their merchandise—these were not, and God was their witness, merely stamps. Business was brisk, DeHaan’s offer of money for small necessities had been enthusiastically taken up, and DeHaan himself, standing with Ratter and watching the show, felt compelled to buy a few things he didn’t need. He’d always liked Levantine bazaars—there was one in Alexandria where the stone corner at the base of a fountain had been worn to perfect roundness, over the centuries, by the brush of robes.

  When a young man with three women appeared on deck, Ratter said, “Never fails, does it.” One of the women was young, the other two ageless, all were unveiled, eyes dramatized with kohl, mouths painted carmine. “Tell him no, right? Back to the boat.”

  DeHaan shook his head. “Might as well get them laid.”

  “You,” Ratter said in his brutal French. “Come over here.”

  The pimp wore a sharp green suit. He hurried over to Ratter and DeHaan and said, “Sirs?”

  “Are the girls clean?” Ratter said. “Not sick?”

  “They are perfect, sir. They have seen the doctor on Monday. Dr. Stein.”

  Ratter stared at him with a cold blue eye. “God help you if you’re lying.”

  “I swear it, sir. Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “May one beg permission for use of your lifeboats? Under the tarpaulins?”

  “Go ahead,” DeHaan said.

  A crowd gathered, the girls smiled, blew kisses, fluttered their eyelashes.

  The twilight was long gone by the time the last two bumboats arrived. The early merchants had returned to shore, and most of the crew was on the mess deck, eating dinner, with oranges, the Hyperion Line’s contribution from the bumboat market, for dessert.

  The bosun and AB Scheldt had gone below, and DeHaan and Ratter waited as the men in djellabas struggled up the gangway. Twenty of them, at least, some carrying wooden crates with rope handles, and breathing hard by the time they reached the deck. One of them laid his crate down, then unbent, coming slowly upright with a shake of the head and a why me? grimace on his dark face.

  “Quite a long way, up here,” DeHaan said, sympathetically.

  The bumboat man stared for a moment, then nodded in agreement. “Like to broke me fookin’ balls,” he said.

  Commandos everywhere.

  Five in the first officer’s cabin, Ratter and Kees crammed in with the chief engineer on three-high bunk beds, a few more in the wardroom, sleeping on the floor and on the L-shaped banquette where the officers ate, the rest stashed here and there, with Mr. Ali moving to the radio room to free up the cabin he shared with his assistant. Once upon a time, in that prosperous and hopeful year 1919, at the Van Sluyt shipyards in Dordrecht, the Noordendam had been designed to carry four first-class passengers—wandering souls or colonial administrators—which was common for merchant ships of the day. She had, it was rumored, actually carried one, but nobody could say who it was or where he went, and in the end all it came to was mahogany trim and a bit more space for the ship’s officers who occupied the cabins.

  Major Sims, the unit commander, stood the midwatch, midnight-to-four, with DeHaan. Short and trim and, DeHaan sensed, taut with suppressed excitement, he was one of those men with skin too tight for his face and slightly protruding eyes, so that he seemed either irritated or astonished by life, an effect heightened, at that moment, by a deep-brown coat of camouflage cream. “It will wash off,” he said. “With soap and water.” By nature not particularly forthcoming, he did tell DeHaan, in the confidential darkness of the bridge, that he and his men were from “a good regiment, one you’d know,” and that he’d “been asking for a special operation for a long time.” Well, DeHaan thought, now you have it.

  A heavy sea, as they headed north, Noordendam rolling and pitching her way through the swells. DeHaan stood at ease by the helmsman, hands clasped behind his back in instinctive mariner’s balance, a posture that Sims soon enough discovered for himself. Some of the commandos would surely be feeling queasy by now, DeHaan thought, with worse to come, but Major Sims seemed, anyhow, to be a good sailor. The mess boy appeared on the bridge and DeHaan ordered two mugs of coffee brought up.

  “No change in the ETA, is there?” Sims asked.

  “Monday a week, the twelfth, off Tunisia—Cap Bon, just after dark. The estimate has us passing the French airbase, at Bizerta, an hour earlier. Of course, that is an estimate.”

  “Quite. When do we go through the Strait?”

  “After dusk, on Saturday.”

  Sims said “Hm,” in a way that meant he was pleased. “Better after dark, off Gibraltar, with the German coast watch.”

  DeHaan agreed.

  “When will you become the Santa Rosa?”

  “We’ll start rigging at oh-three-thirty, an hour before dawn, then anchor off a stretch of coast called Angra de los Ruivos, paint with the rising sun, and be on our way by ten hundred hours.”

  “What’s there?”

  “There is, Major, truly nothing there. A dry riverbed, Wadi Assaq, and that’s it.”

  They stood silent for a time, the throb of the engine hypnotic. “Five and a half hours, did you say, for painting?”

  “We think so. We’re painting directly over Hyperion Line colors, so no chipping or sanding. We’re using scaffolds and bosun’s chairs, hung over the side, and all our best hands—the whole crew will be involved in this—and we’ve got plenty of rope, cans, brushes, everything.”

  DeHaan had made a
point of that, planning logistics, with the bosun before they left the chandlers in Tangier. He had once, in some forgotten port, watched sailors in the Soviet navy as they smeared paint on with their hands.

  “We have only an hour for drying,” DeHaan went on, “and we’ll have to spray water on the stack to cool it down, and thin the paint so it seems faded. It will look awful, but, that’s no bad thing.”

  Sims’s silence implied satisfaction. The helmsman kept steady on 320 degrees, slightly west of north, and the quarter moon was fully risen, its light broken on the rough surface of the sea.

  “Our ETA,” Sims said, back again to what was really on his mind. “How close do you think we can come?”

  DeHaan’s voice was tolerant. “Seventeen hundred nautical miles to Cap Bon, Major, past Morocco and Algeria and much of Tunisia. We’re rated at eleven knots an hour, and we’re actually doing about that, so, by simple mathematics, it’s six and a half days. The weather forecast is fair, for the Atlantic, but once we enter the Strait of Gibraltar, we’re in the Mediterranean, where storms, you know, ‘come up out of nowhere.’ Well, they do, and there’s tons of Greek bones on that seafloor to prove it. But, the way we think in the trampship business, if not Monday, then Tuesday. All we can ever promise is not to be early.”

  “We have three nights,” Sims said. “For our little man to show a little light. Still, one is, understandably, concerned.”

  One is, terrified. Not of dying, DeHaan thought. Of being late. Rule Britannia.

  0420. Off Rio de Oro.