by Alan Furst
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.
On this night, the ship’s lights were never turned on, and they steamed along slowly, on calm waters, edging toward the coastal desert. At 2010, a flight of aircraft was heard above, headed due east. “Could be ours,” Sims said. They flew high above the Noordendam, a distant, steady drone, and their passage lasted thirty seconds. The ship was now at the geographical center of the Mediterranean war: Sardinia and Sicily to the north, British bases at Malta less than two hundred miles to the east, Wavell’s desert divisions, fighting in the Italian colony of Libya, another few hundred miles south, German-occupied Greece and British forces on Crete maybe eight hundred miles due east. Just after nine in the evening, DeHaan went down to the radio room to join Mr. Ali for the BBC news.
DeHaan enjoyed his visits with Ali, a sophisticated Cairene—cigarette in ivory holder and gold spectacles—highly educated and proud of it, who spoke British English, learned in colonial schools, and had been heard, more than once, to use the expression old boy. A good wireless operator, he spoke parts of many languages, and, by tuning in hourly to BBC broadcasts, had become the ship’s newspaper.
DeHaan had missed the first part of the broadcast, so Mr. Ali brought him up-to-date. The lead story reported fighting in Iraq, where British troops had occupied Basra and the southern oilfields. The Rashid Ali government was allied with the Axis powers, and sought German intervention, but, the broadcast said, nothing could stop the British advance on Baghdad.
“And then,” Mr. Ali said, “there has been the most terrible bombing of poor London. The British Museum, which I have visited, and Westminster Abbey.” This over the announcer’s voice reporting the flight of Rudolf Hess, third-highest official in the Reich, to Scotland, where he’d parachuted to earth and was “presently being questioned by government officials.” The announcer left the story rather abruptly, suggesting that neither the BBC nor anyone else knew what was really going on, and proceeded to the “Personal Messages,” coded communications to clandestine operatives all over Europe and North Africa:
“Mr. Johnson’s class, at the Preston School, is visiting the zoo. Mr. Johnson’s class, at the Preston School, is visiting the zoo.
“Gabriel, cousin Amelia has a bouquet. Gabriel, cousin Amelia has a bouquet.”
And on, and on, as DeHaan and Mr. Ali sat transfixed by words that had, to them, no meaning at all, except as poetry.
12 May, 2030 hours. Off Cap Bon.
“We’re turning around,” DeHaan told the helmsman. “Come hard left rudder to two seventy degrees.”
Ruysdal, at the helm, repeated the order, and they began the wide sweep that would send them back the way they’d come—the equivalent, for this five-thousand-ton monster, of pacing back and forth. They’d been cruising at slow speed since dusk, the atmosphere on the ship tight as a drum, with half the crew on deck, squinting out toward land, in search of Sims’s “little man with a little green light.” But life sometimes went wrong for such little men, and DeHaan wondered what Sims would do if he never turned up.
He wondered also about the possibility that the ship was “visible,” as Sims put it, to an observation point on shore. Thus their reappearance, after a twelve-mile run to the east, coming back the other way, would hopefully register as a second vessel, the two ships passing in the night, as it were, though for all DeHaan knew the people on Cap Bon with the demonic apparatus could figure out exactly what was going on and a largish artillery round was just now on its way to the bridge.
Waiting.
The commandos were assembled on deck amid their gear, faces blackened, their cigarettes red dots in the darkness. The bosun, with a crew standing by, ready to assist, paced the deck where the scramble nets had been slung over the side. DeHaan occupied himself by watching the sea, which stayed calm, only a light chop, fortuitous for men who had to paddle more than a mile in rubber boats. The northeast winds, for the time being, were off doing something else, but that, DeHaan knew, wouldn’t last.
Ratter was up in the bow, where an AB was casting a lead line—the Noordendam was in as close as DeHaan dared take her, with visibility, light rain, new moon, down to a mile or less. As for Sims, he was everywhere, sometimes on the bridge, the privilege of command allowing him the luxury of not sitting still.
2130. 2230. Maybe it wasn’t Cap Bon. On the bridge, Sims muttered under his breath, peered at the coastline, took five steps this way, five steps back. DeHaan wanted to help, to provide some distraction, but there was nothing to be done. Been in London lately? What did you do before the war? No, that was worse than silence. He looked at his watch, again, and saw that it was still 10:45, then thought about noting the change of course in the log, but clearly he couldn’t. He would falsify the day’s entry, though logs were sacred books and it went against deep instinct to write lies in them. His mind wandered here and there, Arlette, the girl in Liverpool. And what became, these days, of captains who lost their ships and survived? Join somebody’s navy, at best. Or take another merchant ship, to lead another lamb to another slaughter.
Then, hurried footsteps up the ladder to the bridge—one of Sims’s men, breathing hard with excitement. “Major Sims, sir, Smythe says he seen a light, and one of the sailors too.”
Sims cleared his throat and, perfectly calm for all the world to see, said, “Very well.”
“Good luck, Major,” DeHaan said. “See you in a while.”
Sims looked at him for a moment, then said, “Thank you,” turned, and followed the commando out the door.
Forward of the bridge, there was muted commotion, shadows moving about, something clattered to the deck, then the boats were lowered to the water and the commandos climbed down the nets and paddled away into the night. “Come right to three fifty, Ruysdal,” DeHaan said. Then, to the lookout on the wing, “Have Van Dyck prepare to drop anchor. In ten minutes or so.”
DeHaan went out to the wing facing the shore. Shapes in the darkness, almost the entire crew was ranged along the edge of the deck, watching the boats as they pulled away.
0115 hours. Off Cap Bon.
Noordendam swung slowly at the end of her anchor chain, DeHaan and Ratte
r had stationed themselves on the bridge wing and, sleep being out of the question, most of the crew remained on deck. From anchor, a mile or so out, Cap Bon was a span of gray beach that climbed to an empty horizon. Lifeless, it seemed to DeHaan, dead still. With the engines shut down, there was only the lap of the sea against the hull, rain dripping on iron, and the slow creak of the cargo booms. In the distance, a faint rattle, muffled by the weather, which stopped, then, an afterthought, reappeared for a brief encore. “They’re fighting,” Ratter said. Instinctively, they both raised their binoculars and focused on the horizon.
“See anything?”
“No.” Then, “I see that.”
A flare burst red against the sky, sputtered as it floated toward the earth on its parachute. A second followed, both well east of where DeHaan thought they’d be. On deck, the crewmen called out to one another in low voices. The second flare was almost gone when there was an orange flash, with a low crump that came rolling out over the water seconds later. Then another. Ratter counted out loud, as though calculating the distance of a storm by the interval between lightning and thunder.
“They’re really at it, now,” DeHaan said, listening hard. He heard the fight as a series of brief stutters, whispery and dry, the volume climbing and falling. Joined by a louder version, deeper, not so fast, which went on for a long time, then ended with another flash. So much for silent assault. DeHaan had seen the knives, and assumed their use would lead to a quiet conclusion, but it hadn’t. The heavy machine gun returned, and this time it continued, and, through the binoculars, he could see what looked like lines of flying sparks. DeHaan glanced at his watch, where seconds turned into minutes. And, at eleven minutes, more or less, the battle ended.
0305. Kees had joined them, they were all in oilskins now, with hoods up, as much against the wind as the rain. No whitecaps yet, but the waves were slapping hard against the hull and the rain blew sideways.
“Back any time now,” DeHaan said. The planning said three hours, then they would return to the shore and show a signal light.
“An hour overdue,” Kees said. “And soon enough it’ll be dawn, and we’ll be sitting out here. For no particular reason.”
“If somebody shows up,” DeHaan said, “we’re repairing a valve.”
“Or the J-40,” Ratter said. This was meant as a joke. The J-40 Adaptor was an old navy story: a small steel box with a handle, nobody knew what it was for, eventually a cook put a carrot in it and cranked the handle and it came out the other end shaped like a tulip.
“You think they know what’s going on, at Bizerta?” Kees said.
“They’d be here if they did,” Ratter said.
“They could’ve seen the flares, or maybe had word on a telephone, or a radio.”
“So, where are they?”
“Well, with the French, you never know.”
It was 0335 before they saw the light. DeHaan breathed a sigh of relief. “Finally,” he said.
After a moment, Ratter said, “What’s he doing?”
They stared through their binoculars. The light was yellow, with a powerful beam blurred by the haze, on and off, on and off. Ratter said, “That’s no recognition signal, that’s Morse.”
“Three short, three long, three short,” Kees said. “Where I come from that’s an S, an O, and another S, and, the way I learned it, it means save our souls.”
“I’ll want the rifle,” DeHaan said to Ratter. And, to Kees, “Boat Four—get the crew up here and prepare to launch.”
“You shouldn’t be the one to go,” Ratter said.
DeHaan knew he was right, and pretended to think it over. “No, it’s for me, Johannes. And right away. Get the signalman to make back Confirmed. Help coming.”
DeHaan went quickly to his cabin, snatched the Browning in its holster and worked on buckling the belt, beneath his oilskin, as he ran back up the ladderway. On deck, organized confusion. The number four lifeboat—Santa Rosa painted on its bow, for which he silently thanked Van Dyck—was swung out on its davits, ready to lower. Of the three-man crew, the AB Scheldt was already aboard, settling the oars in the oarlocks, and AB Vandermeer was trotting from the forecastle. The signalman was standing by the boat, working the shutter on the Aldis lamp, and Ratter was just emerging from below, Enfield in hand. “It’s loaded,” he told DeHaan. “Eight rounds on the clip.” He handed DeHaan extra clips, which he stuffed in the pocket of his oilskin. Meanwhile, Patapouf, the assistant cook, was running toward the boat. What now? Cocoa?
DeHaan grabbed Ratter by the sleeve, pulled him close and said, voice low and tense, “What the hell is he doing here?”
Kees, standing by the winch a few feet away, saw what was going on. “Braun’s got a sprained ankle,” he said in an undertone. “Patapouf’s the listed replacement.” DeHaan grimaced, nothing to be done about it, and climbed into the boat.
The boat swayed as Patapouf struggled over the gunwale, then settled himself on the bench, chin held high with bruised French dignity. He’d seen the officers squabbling and knew that it was about him. Turning to DeHaan he said, “I served in the army, Captain.”
Rifle in hand, heading for God only knew what on the beach, DeHaan was embarrassed, and nodded that he understood. Ratter put a flashlight on the seat next to DeHaan. “If you need help, two short, one long.”
“Lower away,” Kees said, as the winch engine produced a squirt of steam and began to grind.
At the oars, Scheldt and Vandermeer worked against the heavy sea as the boat rode up the waves and smacked down in the trough, and, even with DeHaan and Patapouf bailing away, the water rose to their ankles. When they were halfway to shore, the man on the beach started signaling again, which gave them a position fix, a few hundred yards east of where the tide was driving them.
“Signal back, Cap’n?” Vandermeer said. He was a tough kid, short and skinny, with fighting scars on his face, who’d been hired off the dock in Shanghai.
“No,” DeHaan said. “We don’t know who else is out there.”
A fast ride in, once they hit the shoreline, and they vaulted over the side and ran the boat up the gravel shingle, then dragged it higher, into the dune grass, safe from the tide. It was raining harder now, and their oilskins snapped in the wind. DeHaan took the flashlight, and handed the Enfield to Patapouf. “Know how to use it?”
“Yes, sir. I think so.”
“What’d you do, in the army?”
“Cook, sir, during the war, but they taught us how to shoot.”
DeHaan handed him the extra clips.
They headed east, footsteps crunching on the shell litter. Ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. Then, an English voice, somewhere above them, almost lost in the rumble and crash of the surf. “Who are you, then?”
“From the boat,” DeHaan said. “Captain DeHaan.”
They saw him as he rose, silhouetted against the sky, Sten gun pointed at them, then swung aside. “Glad you came. It’s a fucking horror up there.”
“Where?”
“Few hundred yards inland.” He joined them, looping the Sten’s strap over his shoulder. “I’ll take you,” he said. “If I can find it—should’ve left fucking breadcrumbs.” Was it Sims’s sergeant major? DeHaan wasn’t sure, the man’s watch cap was pulled down over his forehead, and he was limping. “Stepped in a hole,” he said.
“Who are you?” DeHaan said.
“Aldrich. Sergeant Aldrich.”
They set off along the beach. After a few minutes, DeHaan said, “What happened?”
“Christ—what didn’t!” They crunched along for a time. “We left one guard and our Arab with the boats—ahh, skyline here, gents.” He bent low to the ground, scurried up the dune, over the top, and down the other side, to a twisting, stony path flanked by broken boulders. “Bloody fucking thieving bastard, turned out. He ran off with them. Or someone did. Or who fucking knows. Anyway, we couldn’t find Wilkins and we couldn’t find him.”
“And Major Sims?”
“C
ouldn’t find him either.”
They trudged on in silence, the path turned to dreamscape—low canyons of splintered rock shining wet in the rain, scrub trees and brush, terrain that forced a tack every few yards, over ground which rose and fell so that, with a blank horizon, it seemed as though the land had closed behind them. “He took two men,” the sergeant said, “and they went to circle round the flank, and that was that. When we finally got those bastards to give up, we went looking for him, but . . .” DeHaan felt his foot slide, tried to catch himself, then fell flat on his back. “Careful, there,” the sergeant said—a comic line, now that it was too late to be careful. “The whole bloody mess was more than we bargained for,” he went on, as DeHaan got to his feet. “You’ll see.” When they were again on their way he said, “We called out to them, whistled, flashed a light, but they were just, well, gone. It ain’t all that rare y’know, I was with the expeditionary force, May of ’40, up by the Dyle River in Belgium, and it happened all the time.”
A rock wall appeared from the darkness, the sergeant stopped and said, “Ahh, this bugger.” He stood still, looked to one side and the other, then said, “It goes to the right here, doesn’t it. Yes, right.” Down a narrow defile into a valley of rocks, then up a steep slope, some kind of flint, where DeHaan tried to use his hands but it was like broken glass. Lost in this place, he thought, you would give up. A few minutes later they came to a wadi with a foot of fast water rushing through it—so fast they had to fight to keep balance as they crossed. The sergeant worked at climbing the bank on the far side, sand crumbling away as he tried to get a foothold, then hauled himself up on the third try and extended a hand to help the rest, saying, “Come on now, Mabel.”
“Do you think they were taken?” DeHaan said.
