by Alan Furst
DeHaan said, “Any ideas about them?” He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder.
“Call on the radio, tell ’em thanks for everything, we’re leaving.”
“Tell them we’re holding Schumpel and his men, and we’ll shoot them if they fire on us,” Kees said.
Ratter smiled a certain way—not worth an answer.
“That’s for later,” DeHaan said. “Now it’s the engine room.”
“Why not call them?” Ratter said. “See how they’re doing.”
Maybe not such a bad idea, DeHaan thought. He picked up the speaker tube and blew into it. When nobody answered, he used the whistle.
That produced a very hesitant “Yes? Who is it?”
“DeHaan, the captain. Feels like we’re losing way, is everything working, down there?”
A count of ten, then, “All is in order.”
“What about the engine? Working like it should?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, I know these engines.”
DeHaan hung the speaker tube back on its hook. “He knows these engines.”
“Not so different than what they’ve got on the minesweeper,” Kees said.
DeHaan held the Browning out in front of him, studied it for a moment, then worked the slide. “Time to go, gentlemen.”
When they entered the wardroom, Cornelius’s eyes glowed with admiration—his officers, armed and ready to fight. Ratter handed the German rifle to Poulsen. “Ever used one of these?”
“No. We shot at rabbits, when I was a boy, but we had a little shotgun.” He hefted the rifle and said, “Bolt action—the last war, looks like. Simple enough.”
Shtern rose to his feet, as though to join them.
DeHaan appreciated the gesture, but shook his head. “Better for you to stay here, I think.”
“No, I’m coming with you.”
“Sorry, but we can’t have you shot—people may get hurt, later on.”
“They’ll get hurt now.”
“Let him come, Eric,” Ratter said.
Then Cornelius stood up, followed by Xanos. DeHaan waved them back down. “You’ve done your part,” he said.
Single file, DeHaan leading, Shtern the last in line, they stayed tight to the outside bulkhead, moving quickly along the slippery deck to the midship hatchway, then descending to the deck where the crew lived. Ghostly and silent, once they got there, nobody in sight, the crew apparently locked up in their sleeping quarters. A second hatch brought them to another ladderway, a steep one, then to a heavy sliding door. On the other side, a metal catwalk, which ran twenty feet high around the perimeter of the engine room. The beat of the engine had grown louder as they descended until, outside the sliding door, it became a giant drum, riding over the steady drone of the boiler furnaces.
DeHaan beckoned the others to come close—even so he had to raise his voice above the din below them. “You slide the door open,” he said to Kees. “Just enough.” Turning to Ratter and Poulsen, he said, “You stay behind me. If you hear a shot, go out there and return the fire. But don’t hit the boilers.” They all knew what live steam could do to anybody standing nearby. He looked at each of them, then said, “Ready?”
Ratter raised and lowered a flattened palm.
“You’re right,” DeHaan said. Better to crawl, less of a target.
Kees slung the Enfield over his shoulder, took a tight grip on the steel handle, and slid the door open. DeHaan crouched, took a breath, then scuttled through the door onto the catwalk. He crawled a few feet, to where he could get a view of the engine room below, but he never saw a thing, because the instant his silhouette broke the plane of the catwalk, something hit the rim, inches from his face, and sang off over his head. DeHaan threw himself backward, into Ratter, as a hole was punched through the space where he’d knelt a second earlier.
DeHaan came up quickly, said, “Give me that goddamn thing,” and snatched at the submachine gun. Ratter handed it over, just as the voice of Kovacz came roaring up from below. “You dumb fucking idiot! That was the fucking captain you just killed.”
As DeHaan and the others climbed down the ladder to the engine room, Kovacz was waiting for them at the bottom rung, looking very relieved, his shirt and pants stained with black grease. “Where’ve you been?” DeHaan said.
Kovacz nodded toward a shadowed area beyond the boilers, pipes, and rusted machinery abandoned during one of the ship’s refittings. “Back there,” he said. “For a long time. But I got tired of hiding, so . . .” He glanced at his crew, two oilers and a fireman, who had gathered behind him, and shrugged—we did what we did.
DeHaan saw what he meant—one of the German sailors was sitting propped up against a stanchion, his ankles bound with wire, while the other lay nearby, flat and lifeless, his cap at an odd angle.
To Shtern, Kovacz said, “Take a look at him, if you want.”
Shtern walked over to the man and placed two fingers on his neck, where his pulse would have been.
“He turned around when I came out of there,” Kovacz said. “And Boda hit him.”
“I’ll say he did.” Shtern withdrew his fingers and stared down at the man, whose cap was now part of his head. “What with?”
Boda stepped forward. A massive fireman, wearing a flowered shirt with the sleeves torn off at the shoulders, he reached in his pocket and showed them a sock, stretched from the weight in its toe, which bulged with the round shapes of ball bearings. “The other one hid behind the workbench,” Kovacz said. “He had a rifle, but we talked to him a little and he gave up. He’s a Serb conscript. A Volksdeutsch, but he didn’t want to die for Germany.”
“Was that him, on the speaker tube?” DeHaan said.
Kovacz nodded. “I had him do it. When the signal came, I thought they still had the bridge.”
“And who was the marksman?”
“I went to free a valve,” Kovacz said, “so I gave the rifle to Flores.”
Flores gave DeHaan a hesitant smile—part apology, part pride. He was one of the Spanish Republican fighters who’d come aboard with Amado.
“You were in the war, Flores?”
Flores held up three fingers. “Three aos, sir. Ro Ebro, Madrid.”
A sharpshooter on board. He’d aimed and fired in a heartbeat, and come close.
“How’d you get free, up there?” Kovacz said.
DeHaan told him the story, then said, “It was Kolb who planned it. And I took the radio office, so that leaves two of them, guarding the crew.”
“They can wait,” Kovacz said. “For now, the patrol boat.” He looked at his watch, thumbing the grease off its face—every few minutes they were a mile closer to the German coast.
“What would you do, Stas?”
“Back in there, that’s all I thought about. And what I thought was, maybe we can run away. Walk away. The Serb was a storekeeper, but he says she does ten knots, which I think too. Of course if we put a weight on the safety valve and get thirteen, more maybe, they’ll shell us when they figure it out. Not right away, their people are on board, so they’ll use the W/T, loud-hailer, signal flags. It will take time, maybe too much time, because of the weather, visibility nothing, and because we have a trick.”
“What’s that?”
“Smoke.”
Of course. “You mean, close the air flaps on the furnaces.”
“They’ll smoke like hell—a lot of it, thick and black.”
Smoke had been an effective sea tactic all through the 1914 war—a destroyer with a smoke generator could lay down miles of it, then use it the way infantry used a wall; steam out to fire, then back in to hide.
Kovacz took a rag from his pocket and began to clean his hands. “So now we look at charts,” he said.
2235 hours. At sea.
They moved the three German sailors to the wardroom, with Poulsen on guard, while the signalman remained in the radio office with Mr. Ali. DeHaan returned to the bridge, stopping at the chartr
oom on his way, with Kees, Ratter, and Kovacz. Scheldt stayed at the helm, holding steady on the one nine zero course.
DeHaan propped the Baltic charts on the binnacle, and used the end of a pencil as a pointer. “We’re maybe here,” he said. “Southwest of Bornholm.” The Danish island held by Germany. “Johannes?”
“Close. The sea log says so, and we’re about five hours from our last position.”
“No stars to shoot.”
“No moon either, Eric. It’s black as a miner’s ass, out there.”
“They’ll expect us to run north,” DeHaan said. “To Sweden. We can’t go west to Denmark or south to Germany. So then, it has to be east. To Lithuania.” DeHaan spread his thumb and forefinger, marching east to the coast. “Oh, let’s say, about two hundred and forty nautical miles.”
“Seventeen hours, with safety valve down,” Kovacz said.
“We’ll blow the boilers,” Kees said.
“Maybe not,” Kovacz said. “But we can’t go to Lithuania. See here? That’s the German naval base, with minefields, at Klaipeda, or Memel, or whatever the hell they call it now. We’ll have to head north of that.”
“Liepaja.”
“Yes. First port in Latvia.”
“Soviet territory,” Ratter said. “Won’t they give us up to the Germans?”
“Not soon,” Kovacz said. “They will lock us up, ask questions, call Moscow—you know, Russian time.”
Ratter looked up from the chart and caught DeHaan’s eye. “What about, the passengers?”
“They’ll be all right,” DeHaan said. “And we don’t have a choice.”
“Patrol planes at dawn, DeHaan,” Kees said. “We’ll be about here, by then.” Not quite halfway.
“If they find us, we’ll fly a white flag.”
They waited, maybe somebody had a better idea, but nobody spoke. Finally, Ratter said, “What about the crew?”
“When the minesweeper fires at us, and they will, we’ll signal abandon ship, bells and siren. That’ll get the guards out of the crew quarters. So, you two”—he looked at Ratter and Kees—“with two men from Stas’s crew, will wait in the passageway, then take them as they come out. And, on your way down there, stop and tell Poulsen and Ali what’s going on.”
“When do we start?” Kees said.
“Now.”
He gave Kovacz time to get down to the engine room and close the furnace flaps, then went out on the bridge wing and looked up at the smokestack, where the smoke was its usual dirty white color against the night sky. There was a slight wind, blowing from the southwest, but that wouldn’t matter once they turned east. As he watched, the smoke grew a shadow, cleared, then turned gray. He walked to the end of the bridge house and looked aft at M 56, holding position, her running lights sharp yellow beams in the rain.
Back on the bridge, when he pushed the engine telegraph to Full — Ahead, Kovacz called from the engine room. “Safety valve off,” he said. “We’re trying for fourteen knots.” DeHaan waited, watching the M 56, and checking the time. 10:48. Beneath his feet, the vibration increased in the deck plate and he could feel the engine working, straining, as the pressure rose in the boilers and the pistons were driven harder, and harder. 11:15. Was M 56 farther away? Lights dimmer? Maybe. No, they were.
From the radio room, Mr. Ali came on the speaker tube. “A W/T message from the minesweeper, Captain. They wish to know if everything is all right.”
“Have the signalman send ‘Yes.’”
A minute later, Ali was back. “Now they ask, ‘Have you added speed?’”
“Tell them ‘No.’ Wait, cancel that, tell them ‘I will find out.’”
11:35. “They are asking, ‘Where are you?’”
“No answer, Mr. Ali. The signalman’s gone up to the bridge.”
11:45. DeHaan peered back at M 56—lights dim now, pinpoints. She was well behind them and the smoke was obscuring her view. Ali returned. “They want to talk to Leutnant Schumpel. On the radio, immediately.”
“Tell them Schumpel went down to the engine room. There’s some sort of problem.”
On the M 56, a searchlight went on and probed the smoky darkness, finally pinning Noordendam on her stern quarter. The powerful beam lit the smoke—a sluggish cloud, heavy, black and oily, drifting east in the wind, as the smell, burned oil, grew strong in the bridge house. Kovacz called from the engine room. “That’s all she’s got, Eric.”
“They’re falling behind,” DeHaan said.
Well aft of them, DeHaan could hear the loud-hailer. “Leutnant Schumpel, Leutnant Schumpel. Come to the stern. Immediately. This is Kapitn Horst.”
DeHaan thought about taking the role of Leutnant Schumpel, then called down to the radio room. “Tell them there’s a fire, Mr. Ali.”
“Is there, sir?”
“No, we’re making smoke.”
“Very well, sending your message.”
A minute later, he was back. “They’re sending ‘Stand to.’ Again and again, they’re sending it.”
“Acknowledge. Say you have to go up to the bridge to instruct the captain.”
After thirty seconds, Mr. Ali said, “They’re sending ‘go immediately.’”
DeHaan looked back. The Noordendam was really pounding now, and the lights of the minesweeper winked out for a moment, then reappeared. DeHaan glanced at his watch—almost midnight. When he looked up, the lights were gone. Only the searchlight beam remained, faded and gray as it lit up the smoke. DeHaan called down to the radio room. “Send, ‘Leutnant Schumpel acknowledges, ship standing to, he will call on the radio in ten minutes.’ You have that?”
“I got it!” Ali’s voice squeaked with excitement.
It took fifteen minutes. Which ended with a red flash from M 56, and a shell that whined over the ship and blew a spout of white water in the sea beyond their bow.
“Scheldt,” DeHaan said. “Come sharp to north-northeast, bearing zero five zero.”
DeHaan walked to the back wall of the bridge house and threw the switch that turned off the Noordendam’s running lights, then, as Scheldt swung the wheel over and the bow began to move, he heard a low drone in the sky. It grew louder and louder, passing far above them and headed northeast. These were heavy engines, bombers, dozens of them, no, more, many more, wave following wave. What the hell is this? It made no sense. Flying northeast, to Russia? Why?
DeHaan went back to the speaker tube. “Mr. Ali, tell them we’re on fire, going to abandon ship.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Send it a second time. Have the signalman stop in the middle.”
“Sending, Captain. They’re calling on the radio now, in clear. Shouting, sir, and rude.”
“Send this, Ali: ‘Sinking fast. Farewell to my family. Heil Hitler.’”
DeHaan looked at his watch, time had slowed to a crawl. Another flash from astern, the shell ripping the air and landing off their starboard beam. “Scheldt. Signal abandon ship, use the bells and the siren. I’ll take the helm.” They were at zero six eight now, almost on the new course. When DeHaan grasped the wooden spokes of the wheel, he could feel the driving pistons in his hands.
A third flash. Noordendam shivered and rocked forward as the shell tore into her stern.
As Scheldt took the wheel, DeHaan ran out to the bridge wing, heading for the stern, to get a look at the damage. Just let it be above the waterline. Then, from somewhere in the ship, gunfire, a series of muffled pops from down below. DeHaan froze—that was coming from the passageway outside the crew quarters. He listened hard, but all he heard was M 56, firing again. He had no idea where the shell went—somewhere in the smoke to their starboard he thought, where they would have been if they hadn’t changed course. Far to the stern, he could just make out the searchlight, desperate now, sweeping back and forth, blinded by the smoke.
He made a decision and ran aft, lying on his belly and hanging out over the deck in order to see the ship’s stern below him. Midway down the curve of the hull, he saw the h
ole, three feet across, smoke trickling from the ragged edge, gouts of water washing out as the ship rose and fell—the ballast in the aft hold. Nothing vital. The minesweeper fired again and again, he heard the reports, but couldn’t see the flashes.
As he got back up to his feet, Ratter arrived. “What happened?” DeHaan said.
“It’s done. But it wasn’t clean. Kees was shot—in the leg, not bad but bad enough, Shtern is with him now. And Amado was hit, in the throat. He’s unconscious.”
“Will he live?”
Ratter shook his head. “Shtern did what he could.”
M 56 fired once more, the shot far away and remote. Ratter stared back into the darkness. “Gone,” he said. “Now we have until dawn.”
Far above them, another flight of bombers headed east.
0230 hours. At sea.
Kovacz had readjusted the furnaces, so there was no smoke now. But they still ran hard, at fourteen knots, headed a few points north of east, to bypass the naval base at Memel and make port at Liepaja. Or Lipava—the merchant seaman’s name for it. DeHaan had been in and out of there over the years; Latvia shipped wood and imported coal, and that meant tramp freighters. To the Germans it was Libau. They’d owned the country for centuries, calling themselves Brothers of the Sword—in the Baltic Crusade, Teutonic Knights, the Hanseatic League, then came 1918, independence, and the name changed. Then came 1940 and everything changed—in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Latvia.
Russia. Where Maria Bromen had better not go, maybe others on board as well, he wasn’t sure. But then, there wasn’t a harbor in the world where they weren’t waiting to arrest somebody. Well, she wouldn’t set foot on a pier as her true self, he’d make sure of that. He’d found her, as Ratter walked him back to the bridge, waiting at the lifeboats as he’d asked. He’d told her where they were going, then sent her back to the cabin—they could scheme later, for now she might as well sleep. God, I wish I could. Not until 0400, when Ratter would relieve him. He yawned, raised his binoculars, and stared out into the empty darkness. He had a new helmsman now, Scheldt relieved and sent back to crew quarters. Poor Amado. They would bury him at sea at daybreak, along with the two Germans—if Noordendam was still afloat. Eight times, over the years, he’d led the burial service. The body in canvas laid on a bed of braced planks, which was held at the rail by six men, then tilted as the captain said, “One, two, three, in God’s name.”
