Dark Voyage

by Alan Furst

  What is this? Something sudden, was all he knew. Invasion? Political upheaval? The war is over. “Have you listened to the BBC?” he asked.

  “At midnight. But nothing new—fighting in the Lebanon, Mr. Roosevelt speaks. Then music for dancing.”

  DeHaan thanked him and hung the tube back on its hook. In the faint light of the binnacle lamp, 2:58.

  “Any idea why?” Ratter said.

  “No.”

  2:59. 3:00. “What do you make it, Johannes?”

  “Oh three hundred.”

  “Scheldt?”

  “Cap’n?”

  “Show two, three-second signals.”

  “Aye-aye, Cap’n.”

  A count of ten, no more, and the answer. DeHaan turned the engine telegraph to Full — Stop and told Ratter to drop anchor. As the chain began to run out, a familiar sound, echoing over the water from the east. Tonk. Tonk. Tonk. A sound he’d heard all his life—a fishing boat with a one-cylinder engine, the voice of its single stroke amplified by a long exhaust pipe run up through the roof of the wheelhouse, very resonant and loud, a Steamboat Willie cartoon honk. “Here she comes, sir,” Scheldt called out from the wing.

  “Have Mr. Kees get a line on her, and lower the gangway.”

  Ulla, she was called, maybe the captain’s wife or daughter, and when DeHaan climbed down to her deck he saw that she was a classic of the breed—fishy and smelly, nets hung everywhere, her scuppers, the vents that let water run out when she was hosed down, thickly crusted with a generation of dried scales. He counted eight in the crew, fishermen by the look of them, in overalls and boots and heavy beards. The captain, a hefty viking in a home-knitted blue-and-yellow watch cap, stood by the door of the wheelhouse, aloof from all these strange goings-on aboard his boat.

  Two of the others were armed fishermen—one with a Sten hung on a leather strap, the other with a big pistol in a shoulder holster. This was the leader, a young British naval officer, a Scot by his accent, who identified himself as the ARCHER of the NID orders, then stood back, obviously very relieved when DeHaan offered to have the Noordendam officers manage the cargo handling. DeHaan wasted no time—Van Dyck and a few ABs boarded the Ulla, then, with Kees running the cargo crew on the ship, they soon had the first truck lowered to the deck of the fishing boat.

  DeHaan and his crew stayed on for the one-mile trip to shore, where the Ulla was tied off to a piling and, after a lot of shouting and a few mashed fingers, the truck was pushed onto a ramp, then rolled down into the water sloshing at the tide line, where its engine was started and it was driven a few feet up the sand. “Well I’ll be damned,” one of the fishermen said to DeHaan. “This begins to look like it might actually work.” A rather donnish fisherman, this one, by the tone of his voice, arch, and faintly amused. He was tall and spindly, with thin red hair and beard, and tortoiseshell eyeglasses.

  DeHaan looked up into the night sky. “It will take some time,” he said. “We won’t get it finished by dawn.”

  “Our patrol comes a little after eight,” the man said, following DeHaan’s eyes. “He’s very regular—eight and ten-thirty and four-thirty. A Blohm and Voss spotter plane, a flying boat.”

  “Is he ever, ah, early?”

  “Never. Very punctual fellow, our German.”

  “That’s useful.”

  “It is, isn’t it. So we can work at night.”

  “And what do you do?”

  “Me? I’m the local boffin.”

  “Boffin?”

  “You know, the science chap.”

  “Oh, a professor.”

  “Used to be, but I’m in the navy now. It was the RAF came calling, originally, but they didn’t quite know what to do with me, so I was sent off to the navy, where they gave me a wee little rank and said, ‘Now you go to Sweden.’”

  The captain reversed his engine, came about, and the Ulla tonked back out toward the freighter. “Quite a noise, that,” said the professor. “If I had a drill with a metal bit, I could turn it into a calliope, but I don’t think Sven would care for it.”

  “No, I doubt he would. Is that your specialty?”

  “Sound, yes. Waves and UHF and whatnot. I spent twenty years in a basement laboratory—I’m not sure the university actually knew I was there. Then the war came, and no more pings and toots for me.”

  As they neared the Noordendam, Kees already had the second truck suspended from a crane. “I should tell you there’s a third truck,” DeHaan said, “but it burned up in the hold.”

  “However did that happen?”

  “We don’t know. Can you manage with two?”

  “Oh yes, I should think, it only has to haul the towers up. We’ve got a sort of ramp to climb—you’ll see.”

  “Use the burnt one for parts, maybe.”

  “We shall. If we last long enough to wear something out.”

  Along with the second truck, the Ulla was loaded with three of the long crates. It was well after four, by then, with summer dawn just getting started. Looking up at the sky, DeHaan saw fading stars and wisps of distant cloud to the west, with darkish, troubled sky beyond. Rain by midday. He’d know for certain as soon as he could check the barometer. Not good news, Baltic weather was famously treacherous—bad storms came suddenly, in all seasons.

  DeHaan sat in the back of the lead truck, with the professor, Van Dyck, and the front ends of the crates. Behind them, the second truck drove in reverse, the same system they’d used on the Lisbon dock. Their progress over the sand, then through low scrub, was, with the geared-down engines, very slow but very steady. Finally, some two miles inland, the driver signaled back to the second truck, they rolled to a halt, and the engines were turned off.

  They’d stopped at the front yard of what looked like an abandoned farmstead. DeHaan got down from the truck, took his hat off, ran his fingers back through his hair. Somebody’s dream, he thought, once upon a time. A burned-out cottage, the sagging remains of an old fence. There was nothing else, only the wind, sighing across empty fields and rustling the weeds of the dead garden.

  The British officer and one of the fishermen walked some way beyond the cottage, then rolled back a large camouflage net. DeHaan was impressed, he hadn’t seen it at all. “For the spotter planes,” the professor said. “What do you think of it?”

  “Well done.”

  “The best film company in England made that.”

  As they walked toward a squared-off entry to a tunnel, maybe twenty by thirty feet, the professor said, “Had your breakfast?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Good.”

  DeHaan soon enough understood why. As he entered the tunnel, the smell very nearly made him retch. “Damn, what is it?”

  “Never smelled a mushroom cellar, have you.”

  “No.”

  “We think this may have been a mine, a long time ago, though what they were mining remains a mystery. Then old somebody came along, built himself a little house, and decided to use the chamber for growing mushrooms. It’s the growing medium that smells—mushrooms feed on rot. Now, as to what the medium may have been, that’s a topic for discussion, and here we split into three camps: there’s the pig-manure faction, the rotten-potatoes crowd, and a compromise party—pig manure and rotten potatoes. What are your views?”

  “I’ll never eat another mushroom.”

  “Maybe get it from the woods, if you’re a fatalist. Come along, then.” They walked down the tunnel, then the professor took a lantern from a peg on the wall and lit it by flicking a match with his thumbnail. An immense gallery, like a great ballroom—its sides and ceiling braced with boards, extended far beyond the lamplight.

  “You sleep down here?”

  “Not in decent weather, but, when winter comes . . .” He shrugged, nothing to be done about it. “We’re working on our heraldic crest—a silver dragon rampant, holding his nose with thumb-claw and forefinger, below the scrolled motto, Phoo! Anyhow, you see how it works, we keep the towers flat in here, then
haul ’em out at night with trucks. Once we get them seated on cement pads and pulled upright, we can listen to Adolf’s submarine and ship transmissions. The whole band, everything, even the medium-wattage stuff, military housekeeping, mostly, but you get quite a lot en clair.”

  “And you have electricity? Out here?”

  “Oh no, that’s the beauty of it. We have generators, or, rather, you have them. You do have them, don’t you?”

  “Everything they shipped,” DeHaan said.

  They worked hard as a red sun came over the horizon and lit the sea. Loading the Ulla with more and more weight as she sank lower and lower and the captain glared at them through slitted eyes. But she had calm water and only a mile to go and, by 0650 hours, the Noordendam had offloaded the last of the cargo. “We’re grateful for your help”—a Scottish growl from the commanding officer, and a handshake, then DeHaan climbed back up the gangway. Most of the crew were on deck, watching as the Ulla made its final run to the beach. Some of them waved, and the fishermen waved back and made vee signs.

  Kees took the bridge and got them quickly under way—they couldn’t be seen to be anchored—while DeHaan and Ratter went down to the wardroom. Once they were seated at the table, Cornelius brought up a pot of coffee and what turned out to be toast. “If you have to be in a war,” Ratter said, “you might as well do this. Think it will matter?”

  DeHaan couldn’t say. It might, the NID thought it would, and Noordendam wasn’t the only freighter in the world that day, unloading God-knew-what cargo on a desolate shore. You had to add it all up, he thought, maybe then it meant something. He leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment, then took a North State from its packet and drew the ashtray to him, lit a match, lit the small cigar, then burned the NID orders.

  The Blohm and Voss flying boat appeared at 0810, heading east along the Swedish coast, so passing a few miles north of Noordendam. The plane never wavered from its course, the rough drone of its engines loud for a moment, then fading away into silence. And if the observers noticed them at all, they saw no more than an old Spanish freighter, making slow way beneath them, coming from Riga or Tallinn, going about its ordinary business.

  By then, DeHaan was in his cabin, sprawled on his bunk and sound asleep. He did not hear the German patrol, he barely—three hours later—heard the alarm clock, which jangled proudly for a time, then wound down to a tinny cough before it died. Normally, he would have reached over and shut the thing off, but he couldn’t move his hand. Slowly, the world came back to him, one piece at a time—where he was, what he had to do—and he forced his legs to swing over the edge of the bed, went to the sink, bathed his face with handfuls of warm water, decided not to shave, and shaved.

  Then he went looking for Maria Bromen, but she wasn’t in her cabin. Eventually he found her on the afterdeck, sitting with back braced against the housing of a steam winch, face raised to the sun. She opened one eye and squinted up at him, then said good morning. “I came to visit, earlier, but you slept like the dead.”

  “You were there?”

  “For a little, yes.”

  A smile of apology. “I could use some more,” he said. “After the noon watch.” If you’d care to join me for a sleep.

  “We’ll be then in Malm?”

  “We should be. Waiting to load cargo.”

  “How long, will we stay there?”

  “Two or three days, if they work straight through, but it’s different in every port—some fast, some not. There was one time, when we took on coal in Calcutta, we were loaded by bearers, hundreds of them, men and women, walking up the gangways with baskets of coal on their heads. That took two weeks.”

  “Swedes don’t do that.”

  “Not for a long time, no.”

  She was pensive for a moment, and he suspected that she was counting days, the days they had left. Two or three at Malm, maybe a week more as they steamed to Ireland.

  Finally she said, “Still, they might take their time.”

  Yes, maybe.

  Shtern and Kolb appeared, taking a turn around the deck together, hands clasped behind their backs, as though they were passengers on an ocean liner.

  “Good morning, Captain,” Kolb said. “Pleasant weather, today.”

  “It is. One should enjoy it.”

  1220 hours. Off Falsterbo headland.

  Course north-northwest, to swing around the peninsula that jutted south and west from the Swedish coast. Sky turning gray, with dark blue patches and low scud to the west. So, soon enough, rain, but not yet. DeHaan rubbed his eyes, smoked, and drank coffee to stay alert. From the lookout on the port wing: “Ship approaching, Cap’n.”

  “What kind?”

  “Small coal-burner, sir, from the smoke. She’s about three miles to port, on a course to meet us.”

  Coming from the Danish coast?

  DeHaan got her in his binoculars—black smoke from a stack behind the wheelhouse, aerials on the roof, single cannon mounted on the foredeck, M 56 painted on the bow, red and black swastika flying at the masthead. “Come to two twenty-five,” he told the helmsman. “Hard rudder left, and smartly.”

  “South to two twenty-five,” the helmsman said, spinning the wheel. They would, if they maintained this course, pass astern of her.

  Slowly, the Noordendam answered her rudder, swung her bow to port, then steadied as the helmsman brought the wheel back. After thirty seconds, an elated DeHaan thought the tactic had worked but then, punching through the low swell, the prow of M 56 shifted south—a sharp turn, that brought her image, in DeHaan’s binoculars, to a narrow, dead-on profile. From the wing, the lookout’s voice was tense and sharp. “Changing course, Cap’n. Meeting us.”

  DeHaan used the whistle to call down to the engine room. When Kovacz answered, DeHaan said, “Come to the bridge, Stas. Right away, please.”

  In less than a minute he came puffing onto the bridge, breathless from running up ladderways, his denim shirt sweated dark at the armpits and across the belly from the heat of the engine room. “Eric?” he said. “What is it?” DeHaan handed him the binoculars and pointed out to sea. Using his big thumb to adjust the focus, Kovacz tracked the approaching ship for a few seconds, then said, “Shit.”

  “What is she?”

  “Minesweeper, M class. Could be French or Norwegian, originally, an old thing, built just after the war, 1919, maybe 1920. They use them for coast patrol, mostly, but if there’s a mine they can take care of it.” He handed the binoculars back to DeHaan and said, “And they are going to challenge.”

  “Doing it now,” DeHaan said, looking through the binoculars. A sailor at the rail had an Aldis lamp going, blinking Morse at him, his hand fast and expert on the shutter. What ship? DeHaan kept the glasses trained. “But they’re not in any hurry,” he said, gauging the rate of closure between the two ships.

  “The hell they aren’t—she’s only got ten, maybe twelve knots in her and she’s using every bit of it.”

  “Stay at three-quarter speed,” he told Kovacz. “And we’ll see what happens.” Had they read his course change as evasion? Maybe he’d made a mistake.

  Kovacz went to the door, then stopped and turned back to DeHaan. “I won’t be taken prisoner, Eric.”

  DeHaan lowered the binoculars and met Kovacz’s eyes. “Easy does it, for now. All right?”

  “Just so you understand.”

  As he left, DeHaan called to the lookout on the starboard wing. “Have Mr. Ratter come to the bridge, and find AB Amado and bring him up here. Fast!” Sliding his hands down the railings, the AB went down the ladderway in three hops. Meanwhile, from the port lookout, “They’re signaling again, sir.”

  “Very well, get the Aldis lamp and make back, ‘Santa Rosa, Valencia,’ but take your time.”

  “Aye-aye, sir. I can’t go very fast.”

  “Good. And get the letters wrong.”

  “Count on me, sir.”

  Under a mile now, and closing. DeHaan looked at his watch. 12:48. On the
M 56, sailors moving around on deck, and an officer, sweeping his binoculars back and forth across the Noordendam. Full uniform for the crew—some of them in navy crew caps, almost berets, with ribbon on the back—and the officer, blue jacket and trousers, white shirt, black tie. On this chunky, coal-burning old pot? DeHaan didn’t like it. From the speaker tube to the radio room, three clicks from Mr. Ali. DeHaan picked up the tube and said, “Yes?”

  “Do I send anything?” Ali said.

  “No, stay silent.”

  As DeHaan returned the speaker tube to its hook, Ratter hurried through the door. He’d apparently been taking a shower; his hair was wet, his shirt was hanging outside his trousers, and he was barefoot. DeHaan found himself looking at the eye patch—was it dry? Did he take it off to shower? Ratter raised his binoculars, focused on the German ship, and swore under his breath. “They’ve run up a Stand To signal,” he said.

  DeHaan saw that he was right. “Go down to the chartroom, Johannes, and find the minefield maps, in the third drawer in the cabinet to the left, slipped into the chart for the Mozambique Channel.”

  “If we burn them we’ll never get out.”

  “I know. But put them somewhere—in a ventilator duct, somewhere like that.”

  “Aren’t we in Swedish waters?”

  “Would you do it now, please?”

  “Make a run for the coast—why not?”

  “Now?”

  As Ratter left, Kees appeared, followed by the AB and Amado, who looked pale and frightened. DeHaan turned the engine telegraph to Full — Stop. “Think he’ll challenge?” Kees said.

  “He already has. We’re waiting for him.”

  From Kees, the sigh of the man who’d known this would happen. The engine-room telegraph rang, confirming the order to stop, and DeHaan heard the engine shut down. Kees said, “So then, we use Amado.”

  “Give him some answers—we’ve got a few minutes yet. We’re steaming in ballast from Riga, where we delivered Portuguese cotton and bagged jute. And we’re headed up to Malm for sawn boards.”