Dark Voyage

IN ADMIRALTY SERVICE

20 May. Alexandria.

Room 38 in the Hotel Cecil, on the Ras el Tin seafront.

Demetria. She was, she said, Levantine, of Greek origin, and, hair, eyes, and spirit, dark in every way. By day, the headmistress of a school for young women, “very prim and decorous, with uniforms.” But-she’d looked at him a certain way-she wasn’t really like that. The look deepened. Not at all.

True. Freed of her daily life, and a stiff linen suit, her underwear buried somewhere in the tumbled sheets of the hotel bed, she lay back in her flesh, luxuriant, legs comfortably apart-the color the French called rose de dessous casually revealed-and smoked with great pleasure. Black, oval cigarettes with gold rims, and heavy perfume. Idly, she played with the smoke-let it drift from her mouth, then, with little puffs, sent white whorls rolling up to the plaster medallion on the ceiling. “It shames me to say it,” she said, “but I smoke only in secret.”

Something shamed her? DeHaan lay at her feet, across the bed, propped on an elbow. “I won’t tell,” he said.

Her smile was tender. “I was truly proper, you know, once upon a time. Then, my husband went and died on me, poor soul, when I was thirty-eight.” She shrugged, exhaled, puffed at the smoke. “These Greek communities, Odessa, Beirut, Cairo, are very straitlaced, if you are of a certain class. So, wickedness is a problem. Which is strange in this city-it’s very free here, for certain people, but not for someone like me. I did have a few, suitors, for a time, even a matchmaker. Oh Demetria, for you this gentleman of decent means, completely respectable, la-la-la. No, no, not for me.”

“No,” he said, “not for you.”

“It’s better with the war, God forgive me for saying it, live tonight for tomorrow you die, but, even so, chri, that moment just now was my first petit mort in a long while.” She sighed, and stubbed the cigarette out in an ashtray on the night table.

It was quiet in the room, the wash of the sea on the wall of the Corniche very faint and distant. She lay back on the pillow and raised her heels, inviting him into the parlor. DeHaan slid himself up the bed until he was close to her. From here, a better view, one that proved to be of heightened interest as the seconds ticked by. So, closer still.

“Yassou,” she said.

What? No matter, he couldn’t answer.

Gently, she wove her fingers into the hair on the back of his head. “Oh my dear”-meant to be insouciant but her breath caught on the word-“there too.”

He stared up at the medallion on the ceiling as she snored beside him, one heavy leg thrown over his. Nymphs up there, two, three-five! Should he turn off the lamp? No, darkness woke people up. And he was content to lie still, pleasantly sore, and a little light-headed, as though cured of a malady he didn’t know he’d had. Petit mort, she’d said, the little death, a polite French euphemism for it. Yes, well. A few days earlier, steaming away from Cap Bon, he’d been close to the grand mort, not at all polite.

Headed for the British naval base at Alexandria, over a thousand nautical miles to the east, a four-day voyage, with luck; they would move from the air shadow of the Axis bases to that of the RAF, so the greatest danger lay in the first forty-eight hours. But it was only an hour after daybreak, as he was beginning to think that maybe they’d gotten away with it, that the French showed up. Late, but with panache. A patrol boat, sleek and steely, a handsome bow wave telling the world how fast she was.

A long way from help, they did what they could. The lieutenant had Mr. Ali send a cluster of ciphered numbers, while the commandos, with two Brens and a scoped rifle, waited just below deck. Vain hopes, DeHaan knew, a sea battle didn’t work like that. Amado was readied, sober as could be and scared witless, but the French were in no mood for dithering. Coming up astern of the Noordendam, they ran up the signal flag SN-international code for “Stop immediately. Do not scuttle. Do not lower boats. Do not use the wireless. If you disobey I shall open fire on you.”

Well, that was clear. “Ignore them,” he told the lookouts.

The engines stayed on Full — Ahead while the lookouts swept the forward horizon, but such petulance was not to be taken seriously. There was a snarl from the French loud-hailer, thirty seconds allowed for compliance, then the slow, heavy drumming of a big machine gun and an arc of red tracer that curved gracefully a foot over the bridge. a va?

“Stop engines.”

The patrol boat, bristling with aerials, carrying a cannon on the foredeck and paired machine guns, moved cautiously to come up beside them. “To port, Cap’n.” The lookout sounded puzzled. “At ten o’clock. Some kind of… it’s a seaplane.”

DeHaan used his binoculars. It was big and ungainly in the gray sky, cabin hung below a broad wing with fat pontoons, the whine of its engine rising above the bass rumble of the freighter. Friend or foe? An AB came charging up the ladderway onto the bridge. “The lieutenant wants to start shooting.”

“Tell him ‘not yet.’”

As the AB ran off, the patrol boat accelerated to full power, and DeHaan turned to see it making a wide sweep, heeled over with the speed of its turn and, plainly, running away. From what? Not a French plane, a British Sea Otter, a graceless workhorse but armed with. 303 machine guns, and more than a match for the patrol boat, now seen as a white wake in the distance. The Sea Otter did not pursue-shooting up the patrol boat would have produced fighter planes from Bizerta, and that was a battle no one, at least that morning, wanted. So then, let us agree to disagree.

Instead, the Sea Otter circled above the Noordendam and, clumsy as it was, tilted itself left and right, which at least suggested, to the waving crew below, a jubilant waggle of the wings. As it left, flying due north, DeHaan understood that it could only have come from a destroyer, watching them on radar from over the horizon, and receiving their radio signal. A poor man’s aircraft carrier-lowering its seaplane to the water for takeoff, then hauling it back up after a landing at sea. DeHaan ran his binoculars across the northern horizon. Empty, nothing to be seen. Still, they were out there somewhere, the Royal Navy, themselves in dangerous waters, keeping watch on their boxes and wires.

She woke, slightly damp, and sent him to open the window. A warm night, the sea dead calm, some cloud, some stars, and the silence of a darkened city in time of war.

“What time is it?” she said.

He went to look at his watch on top of the bureau, said “Ten after three,” and returned to the window, conscious of her eyes following him as he walked across the room.

“How lovely, I was afraid I’d slept too long.” She leaned over and turned off the lamp, got out of bed and came up behind him, skin lightly touching his, and reached around his waist.

“In front of the window?”

“Why not? Nobody can see me.”

Everywhere, her touch was light as air, and he closed his eyes. “I don’t think you mind being teased,” she whispered. “No, I don’t think you do. Of course, if you do, you must tell me. Or, even, if you don’t mind, you may tell me that. May say, ‘Demetria, I like you to do this to me,’ or maybe there are other things, you need only say them, I am a very understanding sort of person.”

Later, back in bed, he asked, “What did it mean-the Greek word you said?”

“Yassou?”

“Yes.”

“Means ‘hello.’”

“Oh.”

They were quiet for a time, then she said, “Are you married, Eric?”

“I’m not,” he said. “I almost was, when I was twenty, just out of the naval college. I was engaged, to a nice girl, very pretty. We were in love, most of the way, anyhow, enough, and she was willing to be the wife of a sailor-never at home, but… I didn’t.”

He’d grown up amid the families of merchant officers, the wives eternally alone, raising children, knitting miles of sweaters. He was often in their homes-perfectly kept, the air thick with the smells of wax and cooking, and thick also with sacrifice, absence, clocks ticking in every room. And, in the end, though he couldn’t say what else he wanted, he knew it wasn’t that.

“And your family?”

“In Holland, my mother and sister. I can only hope they are surviving the occupation. I can’t contact them.”

“Can’t?”

“Mustn’t. The Germans read everything, and they don’t like families with relatives in the free forces. Better, especially for someone like me, not to remind them you exist. They are vengeful, you know, will bring people in for questioning, lower their rations, force them to move.”

“Still, at least they are in Holland. The Dutch are decent people, I think, with sensible politics.”

“Most, but not all. We have our Nazis.”

“Everyone has some, chri, like cockroaches, you see them only at night. And, if they come out in daylight, then you know you have to do something about it.”

“More than some. There is a Dutch Nazi party. Its symbol is a wolf trap.”

She thought about it, then said, “How utterly horrible.”

He nodded.

“And you? Perhaps a bit to the left?”

“Not much of anything, I’m afraid.” This was no time to talk about the unions, the Comintern, the brutality-the knives and iron pipes-of politics on the docks. “I believe in kindness,” he said. “Compassion. We don’t have a party.”

“You’re a Christian?” she said. “You seem to, ah, like the bed a little too much for that.”

“Small c perhaps. Actually, as master of a ship, I have to give a sermon on Sunday morning. Pure agony, for me, telling people what to do. Be good, you evil bastards, or you’ll fry in hell.”

“You actually say such things?”

“I’d rather not, but it’s in the book we use. So, I mumble.”

“You have a good heart,” she said, “God help you.” She put a hand on his face, turned it toward her and kissed him, a warm kiss for being who he was, and for what would become of him.

He wondered, later on, about this conversation. Was it just conversation, or something more? Interrogation? Of a sort? Bare-assed, perhaps, but, even so, revealing. His life, his politics, who he was. That did hurt him, that idea, since for a time, while she was asleep, his heart ached because dawn would turn them into pumpkins. Why could not this be his usual life? People did live such lives, why was his fate different? Because it was, period. And not so bad; there was, at least, the occasional amour, the chance encounter. But was it chance? Stop, he told himself, you think too much. Lovers ask questions, nothing new there. But meeting her was, well, fortuitous, and he had come to understand, after only a few weeks and the barest touch of experience, that a clandestine world was corrosive in just that way. It made you wonder.

And it was certainly true that, only an hour after he docked at the port of Alexandria, they were after him. First a staff intelligence officer, a captain, sweating in a little office. Thanking him for what he’d done, then asking him to write out a description of what had happened, a report. This was conventional, the captain said, and, if he didn’t mind, he could do the bloody thing right now and they’d chat about it and that would be that.

But that wasn’t that. Because just as they finished, there appeared a sort of Victorian apparition, a phantom materialized from the halcyon days of the British Empire. Heavy and red-faced, with china-blue eyes and an enormous, white, handlebar mustache, and even a hyphenated name-Something-Somethington-followed by “Call me Dickie, everybody does!”

Dickie had heard all about the Noordendam mission-“But must say Santa Rosa, eh?”-and wanted to shake DeHaan’s hand, which, heartily, he did. Then insisted on drinks, and more drinks, at a rather sinister bar buried in the backstreets behind the waterfront, then “a damned nuisance of a tea,” at the khedivial yacht club, founded, he told DeHaan, when the Turkish viceroys ruled the city. The tea was offered by the British overseas arts council, or something like that-so very many drinks-where he was introduced to Demetria. Who stood close to him, with lavish glances, and put a hand on his arm while they talked and, eventually, mentioned supper. So it was off to a restaurant, where nobody ate much, and then, soon enough, the dear old Cecil, DeHaan feeling, somewhere in his astrology, the pull of exceptional stars. Or, put another way, too good to be true.

But so good he didn’t care if it was true. And, he reasoned, she could have done what she needed to do in the little Greek restaurant-table chat would’ve sufficed, it didn’t really need to be pillow chat.

Did it?

The daylight Noordendam, when night finally had to end in Room 38, was not easy on DeHaan. To technicolor memories and a head throbbing with Dickie’s drinks, the freighter added its scent of burnt oil and boiled steam, fresh paint cooking in the sun, fierce clanging and shouting, gray ducts and bulkheads, and the whole thing, topped off by a plate of canned herring in cold tomato mush, pretty well did him in. “I’m going to my cabin,” he told Ratter. “If the ship sinks, don’t call me.”

Ratter didn’t, but Mr. Ali did. With a discreet but persistent tapping at DeHaan’s door. Go to hell, DeHaan thought, rolling off his bunk. And whatever it is, take it with you.

“Forgive me, please,” Mr. Ali said. “But a most urgent message for you, Captain. Most urgent.”

He handed DeHaan a W/T message in plain text, which required his presence at a certain room in Building D-9, “this A.M., at 0900 hours.” DeHaan swore, dressed, and set off down the gangway to find Building D-9. Everywhere in the harbor was the British Mediterranean fleet, countless ships of every sort, all of them, that morning, doing work that needed jackhammers. The sun blazed down, DeHaan wandered among a forest of low buildings and quonset huts, where nobody seemed to have heard of D-9 until a Royal Marine guarding a barracks said, “Are you looking for the registry people?”

“D-9, is all I know.”

“They’re in Scovill Hall, some of them anyhow, temporarily. It’s the Old Stables building.”

“Stables? For horses?”

“Well, fifty years ago, maybe.”

“Where is it?”

“Quite a way, sir. Down this road a quarter mile, then turn left at the machine shop. Then, ah, then you’d best ask. For Scovill Hall, sir, or the Old Stables.”

“Thank you,” DeHaan said.

“Good luck, sir.”

It took a half hour, by which time his head ached miserably and his shirt was soaked through, to find Scovill Hall, and several false trails before he reached the right room where, in the outer office, three WRENs were talking on telephones. One of them put a hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Sorry, rotten morning, you’ll have to wait.” He sat next to an officer from the Royal Greek Navy, based in Alexandria, along with the government in exile, since the fall of Greece at the end of April. “Very hot, today,” DeHaan said to the officer.

Who raised his hands helplessly, smiled, and said, “No speak.”

They waited together while the phones rang relentlessly-came back to life almost immediately after the receiver was put back in the cradle. A messenger hurried in, then another, cursing under his breath. “Be nice, Harry,” one of the WRENs said.

For forty minutes, it never slowed.

“Sorry, he can’t come to the phone.”

“He’ll call you back, sir.”

“Yes, we’ve heard.”

“No, their number is six forty, we’re six fifty… No, it’s another building, sir… Sorry, sir, I can’t. I’m sure they’ll answer when they can.”

“Captain DeHaan?”

“What? Oh, yes, that’s me.”

“He’ll see you now, Captain, that door to the left… No, that’s the loo. There you are, Captain, that’s him, just go right in.”

Behind a gray metal desk, a naval lieutenant: university face and white tropical uniform-open collar, knee-length shorts, and high socks. Not yet thirty, DeHaan thought. The lieutenant, trying to finish up a phone call, pointed to a chair without missing a beat. “We really don’t know much over here, it’s coming in a little at a time. Total confusion, since yesterday… I certainly will…. Yes, absolutely. Must ring off, Edwin, try me after lunch, will you? Count on it, goodby.”

When he hung up, the phone rang again but he just shook his head and looked at DeHaan. “Not going well,” he said.

“No?”

“Surely you’ve heard. They’re on Crete, since yesterday, an air assault. Thousands and thousands of them, by parachute and glider. We got a lot of them before they hit the ground but still, they’re holding. Extraordinary, you know, never been done before. Anyhow, you are?”

“Captain DeHaan, of the Dutch freighter Noordendam.”

“Oh? Well, congratulations then.”

He went to an open safe, and began to page through a sheaf of papers. Didn’t find what he was looking for, and tried again. “Right,” he said, relieved, “here you are.” He had DeHaan sign his name in a book, with the date and time, then handed him a single sheet of yellow teleprinter paper.

MOST SECRET

For The Personal Use Of The Addressee Only

NID JJP/JJPL/0447

OAMT/95-0447

R 01 296 3B — 1600/18/5/41

From: Deputy Director/OAMT

To: E. M. DeHaan

Master/NV Noordendam

Most immediate

Subj: Hyperion-Lijn NV Noordendam

Amendment to status: All cargos, routes and ports of call to be directed henceforth, as of the date above, by this office

0047/1400/21/5/41+++DD/OAMT

“All clear?” the lieutenant said. The phone rang, then stopped.

“The message, yes. The rest”-DeHaan shrugged. “Who, exactly, is telling me this?”

“Well, NID is Naval Intelligence Division.”

“And OAMT?”

“OAMT. Yes, certainly, that’s an easy one.” He pulled out the extendable shelf below the edge of the desk and ran a finger up one side of a list. “That is”-he hunted-“why that’s the good old Office of Allied Marine Transport, that is. Fine chaps, over there.”

This was very dry, and DeHaan, despite everything, almost laughed. “Who?”

“Can’t say more. Now logically, Captain, you’d belong to the Ministry of War Transport, the convoy people, but logic’s taken a hell of a beating since ’39, so you’ll just have to make do with those OAMT rascals.”

“Ah, any particular rascal, that you know about?”

“I suspect there is, and I’m sure he’ll be in touch with you. Meanwhile, anything you need, I’d suggest the people at the port office.”

He came around the desk, DeHaan stood, they shook hands, and the lieutenant said, “Well, success, they say, always brings change, right? So, all for the best. Right?”

22 May. Campeche, Mexico.

A quiet port, on the northern coast of the Yucatn peninsula, looking out over the Gulf of Campeche. Not much happened here-now and then the local revolutionaries shot up the bank, and the occasional freighter called, but there was never very much money in the bank, and a high sandbar and the temporales, autumn storms, sent much of the merchant trade elsewhere, to Mrida or Veracruz. Otherwise, the region was known for fearsome vampire bats and tasty bananas, and that was about it.

But there was some considerable excitement on the night of the twenty-second, which drew a crowd to the waterfront, which in turn drew a mariachi band, so the evening, despite the disaster, was festive. And the presence of a certain couple, vaguely middle-aged and well dressed, of obscure European origin, was noted, but not much discussed. They sat at an outdoor table at the Cantina Las Flores, on the leafy square that opened to the quay, the man tall and distinguished, with silvered temples beneath a straw hat, the woman in a colorful skirt and gold hoop earrings. They were from Mexico City, somebody said, and had made their way to the town by train and taxi, arriving two days before the excitement, before the Spanish freighter, called the Santa Rosa, caught fire at the end of the pier.

The Santa Rosa, having delivered drums of chemicals and crates of bicycles and sewing machines at Veracruz, had taken on a cargo of henequen-sisal hemp, raw cotton, and bananas, bound for Spain, then broken down, one day out of port, and put in to Campeche for repairs. This was nothing new to Campeche, everything broke down here, why not a freighter? The ship had docked in early April, which became May as the crew worked below deck and at a small machine shop ashore to repair the engine, while they waited, and waited, for parts. And-once again the local fate behaving as it usually did-the job was very nearly done when a cargo hold filled with henequen caught fire. The crew did what it could, the local firemen were called out, but the fire made steady progress, something blew up, and the crew left the ship and stood around on the dock, hands in pockets, wondering what came next.

At the foot of the pier, people drank beer and talked and listened to the band as night fell, bright yellow flames danced above the deck and the air was fragrant with the aroma of roasting bananas. It was a patient crowd, watching as the ship listed slowly to port, and waiting for it to roll over and disappear so they could go home.

The couple watched with them. Plenty of Europeans in Mexico City, what with war and politics in Europe, but one rarely saw them here. Actually, there’d been two more, a pair of young men, explosives experts generally employed by the Communist party in Mexico City, though at times willing to provide services on a freelance basis if the money was right. They were not, however, in Campeche that night, were on their way somewhere else by the time the fire drew a crowd. That left the couple, drinking red wine at the Cantina Las Flores.

“Really,” the man said, “I only spent ten minutes with her.”

“More like twenty,” the woman said.

“Well, a party, you know, one talks to people.”

“Oh don’t be so innocent, please. She looks at you a certain way, people notice.”

“She does not, mi querida, appeal to me. All those teeth.”

At the end of the pier there was a soft whump as a gust of yellow flame flared high above the ship and the crowd said “Ahh.”

The woman looked at her watch. “How long must we stay here?”

“Until it sinks.”

“It’s finished. Anyone can see that.”

“Oh you never know-a sudden miracle.”

“Unlikely, I would say. And I’m tired.”

“You can go back to the hotel, you know.”

“No, I’ll stay here,” she said, resigned. “The boys are gone?”

“Hours ago.”

“So, should there be a miracle, as you say, what could you do?”

“I could, attend it.”

She laughed. He was, had always been, a lovable bastard. “You,” she said, shaking her head.

22 May. Port of Alexandria.

DeHaan was called to the port office at noon and told what the Noordendam had to do-preparation to begin immediately. “This is an emergency,” the officer, a captain, told him. “So it’s you, the Maud McDowell, from Canada, and two Greek ships, Triton and the tanker Evdokia. We need you, laddie,” the captain said. “You’re volunteering, right? I mean, you know what’s involved-they’re running out of everything. And it’s only three hundred and seventy miles to Crete, maybe a day and a half. You make eleven knots, don’t you?”

“We try.”

“ Triton may be a bit slower, but you’ll be escorted, two destroyers, anyhow, and maybe some air cover. Good company. After that, you can go back to doing whatever it is, but we need everybody we can put our hands on, right away. So?”

“We’ll go, of course. You can start loading whenever you want.”

“We’ve already started, as it happens, trucks on the dock. And, something extra, we’re going to repaint you, so you’re back to being the Noordendam.”

DeHaan nodded. He wasn’t surprised-this was a full-scale invasion, and resupply was everything.

“We’ll get it done,” the captain said. DeHaan thought he might be a naval reserve officer, a merchant captain drafted into the Royal Navy, which made him, for some reason, feel better. “So, the best of British luck to you. And”-a mischievous smile-“no smoking.”

DeHaan asked to use the telephone in the port office and called the number Dickie had given him. A woman with an Oriental accent answered, took his number and, fifteen minutes later, Dickie called him back. “Good to hear from you, DeHaan,” he said, but his normal bluster was undercut by a worried note-what the hell does he want?

DeHaan told him about the orders from the port office.

From Dickie, a brief silence, only an airy hiss on the line. “Hm. Damned inconvenient, I’d say. But…”

Did he know?

“It would appear,” he said, gaining momentum, “that the war has interrupted our war, but, nothing to be done, eh?” Meaning surely you aren’t asking me to get you out of this.

But DeHaan was himself at war-they could do with him what they wanted, but he would, in return, have what he needed. Or else. “There is one condition.”

“Oh?”

“The Noordendam must have a medical officer, a doctor. We won’t sail without one.”

More hissing. “Really.” He didn’t care for DeHaan’s tone.

Too bad. “Yes, really.”

“Well, I see your point.”

“I’ll be aboard, third slip, Pier Nine, all day, likely two or three days. Sailing time is secret, of course, but it isn’t far off.”

“Right, then, I’ll have a go. Best I can do, I’m afraid.”

“Find him, Dickie.”

“Right.”

DeHaan hung up. The curse of the trampship captain was that he had to serve as shipboard doctor, a medical manual provided for his use. And every time a seaman reported sick with a bellyache, DeHaan, reaching for the epsom salts, could think only one thing- appendicitis. Freighter captains had performed appendectomies at sea, the manual showed you how to do it, and, sometimes, given the extraordinary constitutions of merchant sailors, the patient actually recovered. To date, DeHaan had set broken bones, stitched up gashes, and treated burns, but the idea of surgery made him shudder.

Then, a few days earlier, he had determined that his doctoring days were over. It was daylight when they reached the ship off Cap Bon, and DeHaan realized that the sergeant who’d led them back to the beach, who’d explained his limp by saying he’d stepped in a hole, had lied. Walking across the deck, he left a bloody footprint with every step. Apparently, one of the surviving commandos served as corpsman, because DeHaan heard no more about it, but he believed that the sergeant had been shot, and had sworn to himself that he would not again take men into danger without a medical person to treat the wounded.

As he hung up on Dickie, none too gently, he thought, “Right,” yes, right is what you are; hardheaded, stubborn Dutchman, better give him what he wants.

No smoking. Well, he guessed not. DeHaan returned to his ship to find a very hardworking crew, a very quiet crew. Cargo hatches off, winches grinding and steaming, booms swinging left and right, Van Dyck in charge. In the Egyptian heat the bosun had taken his shirt off, his torso thick and smooth, not a muscle to be seen. Van Dyck was the strongest man he’d ever known-DeHaan had seen him, on a bet, tear a deck of cards in half. But strength didn’t matter that afternoon, Van Dyck was working with a delicacy worthy of a jeweler, not a bump, not a brush, not a hitch, as the cargo was lowered slowly, slowly, into the hold. First the crates, with stenciled markings: land mines, 75-millimeter tank shells, 303 ammunition, then the bombs, 250- and 500-pounders, stacked laterally all the way to the top of the hold. Five thousand tons of it, and more to be carried on deck. Along with four tanks, lashed down forward of the bridge and, up at the bow, two Hurricane fighter planes.

“Christ,” Ratter said quietly, when DeHaan joined him on the bridge. “Anything happens, we won’t come down for days.”

They were at it all night, the piers floodlit despite the possibility of German air raids. Alexandria had been bombed, and would be again, but the convoy had to be loaded, and that meant working straight through until the job was done. On the Noordendam, they worked twelve-hour shifts with four hours’ sleep and sandwiches for every meal. DeHaan was on deck, kneeling next to Van Dyck-who wore gloves to handle the hot steel-as he replaced a broken gear, when his doctor showed up.

He hadn’t really known what to expect. Retired medical officer maybe, living with his wife in cheap and exotic Alexandria. But no such person stood at the foot of the gangway, where a Royal Marine guard shouted up, “Says he’s here to see the captain.”

“Send him up.”

The man, a hesitant smile on his face, climbed the gangway slowly, carefully, hand white on the rope that served as a railing, lest he go flying off into the water and be swallowed by a sea monster.

“Are you Captain DeHaan?” he said, consulting a scrap of paper. “Am I on the right boat?”

And what language was this? Not Dutch, and not quite German. Yiddish, then, and DeHaan saw exactly what Dickie had done and, despite himself, felt a surge of admiration.

The man was in his twenties, wore a baggy black suit, a narrow black tie, a white shirt-now gray, from months of washing in hotel sinks-and a black hat, perhaps a size too large. He had a high forehead, and anxious, inquisitive eyes-a hopeful face, prepared for disappointment, with shoulders already hunched in the anticipation of it. “My name is Shtern,” he said.

Working around the open cargo holds, the crew was too attentive to the visitor for DeHaan’s taste, so he took him off to the chartroom, where they sat on stools by the sloping map table.

“Dr. Shtern, welcome to the Noordendam, ” DeHaan said in German, “though she is called the Santa Rosa just now.”

“Doctor? Well, almost.”

“You’re not a doctor?”

“Formerly a medical student, sir, for three years, in Heidelberg.”

“You are German?”

“Not really anything now, sir. We came from the Ukraine, originally, a small place.”

“Three years,” DeHaan said. “But you can do everything a doctor does, no?”

“On cadavers, I have worked extensively. Unfortunately, they made us leave Germany, so I could not continue.”

“You came to Alexandria, from Germany?”

“Well, first to Antwerp, for a time, until we tried to go to Palestine. We saw it, from the boat, but the English arrested us and we were put in a camp, on Cyprus. Then, after a few months, they let us come here.”

“What we need on this ship, Herr Shtern, is a doctor, so from now on you’ll be Dr. Shtern, if you don’t mind.”

“Anything, sir, as long as money can be sent to my wife-it’s been very hard for us. We are Jews, sir. Refugees.”

“We?”

“My wife, and three children, little ones.” Proudly, he smiled.

“Merchant crews are usually paid off at the end of a voyage, whenever that is, but if you’ll give us the particulars, we can arrange for the money to be wired to your wife.”

“You have a dispensary, sir? Instruments?”

“We’ll get you whatever you need. Today, Dr. Shtern.”

“And, sir, may I ask, about the money?”

“As an officer, you’ll earn thirty British pounds a month-about a hundred and fifty dollars.”

Shtern’s face lit up. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “Thank you so much.”

“You can thank me, Dr. Shtern, but what we do here is dangerous,” DeHaan said, thinking of the little ones. “Especially now. I hope you understand that.”

“Yes, I know,” he said quietly. “I read the papers. But I must find something to do.”

“I’m going to send you off with my first officer, he’ll make sure you get everything you want-we have some medicines, take a look at them, but our inventory is primitive. Also, we’ll buy you clothes, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

Shtern nodded. “It will all be new for me,” he said, “but I will do my best, sir, you will see.”

It was after eleven that night when DeHaan finally got around to doing what he’d been putting off for days. He sat at the table in the wardroom, drinking coffee, and working on a wireless message to Terhouven. Outside, the loading continued, a symphony of whistles, bells, and drumming machinery, but DeHaan, concentrating hard, barely heard it. The commercial code used by the Hyperion Line was likely no mystery to the British-or anybody else, he assumed, so he had to write as elliptically as he could, and trust that Terhouven would read between the lines.

The first part was easy, a monthly salary to be paid, to a bank in Alexandria, for a recently hired medical officer. Next-now it grew difficult-the new cargo, “designated by local authorities for a Mediterranean port.” And if Terhouven, following the war in the London papers and knowing the origin of the transmission, thought that meant a load of figs to Marseilles, then so be it. For the last, the hardest, part, the best DeHaan could do, after a number of false starts, was “You will be aware of changes in our administrative status.” This puzzle Terhouven could work out, if he didn’t know already: so much for Section IIIA of the Dutch Admiralty’s General Staff and Commander Leiden, they were now under new ownership. And, as to who exactly that might be, well, it was those people to whom one referred elliptically.

Not that Terhouven could do anything about it but, far away in the land of paper, life did go on-with war-risk insurance held by so-called “clubs” of shipping lines, money changing hands, lawyers, and, in general, all the byzantine apparatus of vessel ownership. Did their change in status affect any of this? DeHaan didn’t know-maybe all it meant was that Terhouven could now worry in new and interesting ways.

Ratter entered the wardroom, collapsed onto the banquette, took his hat off, and ran his fingers through his hair.

“Johannes.”

“Eric.”

“Coffee?”

“Something.”

“Go get a bottle from the chartroom, if you like.”

“I will, in a minute. For now, I’ll just bother you.”

“No bother, I’m just finishing up a wire for Terhouven.”

“Ah, if he could only see us now. He’d shit.”

“I expect he would. How’s the work?”

“Miserable. We broke a cable, dropped ten bombs down on top of everything else.”

“They go off?”

“Seem not to have. Give ’em time, though. And, the midnight-watch crew was short two men.”

“You look for them?”

“I did, and gone they are.”

DeHaan swore.

“One of the Spaniards, and AB Vandermeer.”

“No, Vandermeer?”

“Tough little guy was not so tough, turns out. By now, he’s getting himself screwed cross-eyed, and means to stay alive. Will you turn them in?”

DeHaan thought about it. “No. Let them live with themselves. What about our doctor?”

“Hard at work, and very eager. Bandages, Mercurochrome, splinted up a crushed finger. Glad to be rid of that, Eric?”

“Maybe a little.”

“One of the men called him ‘the rabbi.’”

“To his face?”

“No.”

“You stop it?”

“I said, ‘You can call him that when he sews up your worthless hide, but until then, shut your fucking mouth.’ I think he got the idea. What are you telling Terhouven?”

“We’re now in British hands-the dark side of the navy.”

“Not this convoy.”

“No, but if we don’t blow up, we will go places and do things.”

Ratter shook his head. “Stranger and stranger, isn’t it.”

DeHaan read back through the wire, and printed EMD at the bottom.

“But,” Ratter said, “now that I think about it, the last time I went to a Gypsy, she said something about mysteries. Shadows? Darkness? Something.”

“Did you, really?”

“You know, I actually did. In Macao, years ago. She was Russian, a redhead.”

“And?”

“She told my fortune. I thought maybe there would be more, but there wasn’t.”

DeHaan folded the paper in half. They would have to keep radio silence, once they were under way, so Mr. Ali would send it before they sailed. “We’re due to refuel, in a few hours,” he said. “Food and supplies, everything.”

“Until then, did you say something about a bottle?”

“Left-hand cabinet, third drawer down. Bring it in here, I’ll join you.”

23 May, 0300 hours. Port Administration Building.

In a small room in the basement, a briefing by the captain of the HMS Ellery, the destroyer that would lead the convoy. The masters of the four merchant ships took notes-key signals to be made by Aldis lamp or flag, zigzag course to make life harder for enemy submarines, meteorological report. The captain paced back and forth, sometimes pausing to scribble a number or a diagram on a blackboard, bits and pieces of chalk flying off as he wrote. Now and then, the two Greek captains looked at each other-what did he say? The first time it happened, the Canadian master of the Maud McDowell, a fat, white-haired old rogue, glanced over at DeHaan and cocked an eyebrow.

“The situation on Crete,” the destroyer captain said, “turns on the battle for the airfields, Maleme, Heraklion, and Retimo. The Germans have taken Maleme, and paid dearly for it, and continue to do so, under counterattack by a New Zealand division. We hold the port of Sphakia, on the south side of the island. It’s been a very hard fight, we’ve lost ships, and aircraft, but we’ve sunk one of their troop convoys-five thousand men-so the thing’s a long way from being over, and this convoy could make all the difference. Understood?”

The captains nodded.

“So then, to conclude, let me remind you again that the important thing is to keep your station-if you lag behind, we can’t help you. Understood?”

They understood.

“Very well, H-hour is oh-four-hundred, and off we go. Last chance for questions-anybody?”

No questions.

The captain laid down his chalk, picked up an eraser, and began to clean the board. When he was done, he turned and, for a moment, looked at them. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said.

0520 hours. At sea.

They sailed in a diamond pattern: the Ellery protected the left flank, the two Greek ships led, side by side, followed by Maud McDowell and Noordendam, the destroyer HMS Covington on the right. With Kees at the helm, DeHaan stood below the bridge and watched the Covington as she maneuvered.

She was, to DeHaan’s eye, a handsome thing. Long and gray, in the gray light of dawn, trailing white gulls as she slid through a gray sea studded with whitecaps. The canvas covers were off her guns and, from time to time, he could hear the sharp bark of an announcement over the Tannoy speakers. Restless, she altered course, angled a point or two east of the convoy, then, a minute later, swung back to the west. This in response, he supposed, to the ASDIC system, pinging away, searching for the echoes of submarines beneath the water. With thirty-four knots of speed to their eight, she was not unlike a border collie, patrolling back and forth, guarding her four fat sheep.

DeHaan was, that morning, particularly tuned to his engine, its pitch, its vibration in the deck beneath his feet. Now, even at eight knots, a speed dictated by the ancient Triton, it was laboring. Because Noordendam was clearly overloaded-holds full to the hatch covers with bombs and mines, the foredeck carrying the four tanks and the Hurricane fighter planes, the wind sighing, a strange, ghostly hum, as it blew across their wings.

Then, suddenly, the engine slowed. DeHaan froze for an instant, then ran up the ladder to the bridge, where Kees was already shouting down the voice tube. “What are you doing?” DeHaan said, taking the tube from Kees. Before he could answer, DeHaan heard Kovacz say, “.. get it done as soon as we can.” He didn’t wait to hear more, handed the device back to Kees, and headed for the engine room, four decks below.

He skidded down the ladderways, as various crewmen turned to look at him, eventually reaching the grilled platform at the top of the final ladder, thirty feet above the engine room. From there, he peered down through a haze of oily smoke, tinted red by the engine-room light. Below, a forest of pipes, three giant boilers, auxiliary engines, condensers, generators, pumps, and, its giant brass pistons now rising and falling at slow speed, the engine itself. It hurt to breathe down here, there was no air, only fumes-steam, singed rags, burning oil, scorched iron. Hot as hell, and louder, the noise of running machinery swelling to fill the huge iron vault and echoing back off the hull.

As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he saw the firemen and oilers gathered around the number three boiler, with Kovacz at the center, wielding a four-foot wrench. As DeHaan watched, Kovacz set the wrench on a thick pipe, a fireman grabbed the handle beside him, and together they hauled, trying to break the pipe loose from an elbow joint. DeHaan ran down the ladder.

Kovacz’s denim shirt was black with sweat, and a bright red scald mark ran up the inside of his forearm from wrist to elbow. In order to be heard, DeHaan had to shout. “Stas, how bad is it?”

Kovacz nodded toward the pipe and said, “Blew a fitting, so number three is shut down.” From a crack in the elbow joint, a plume of steam spurted ten feet in the air.

“Can we make eight knots?”

“Better not-we’ll have hell to pay with the other two.”

“How long, Stas?”

Kovacz didn’t bother to answer. Using a wet rag, which steamed as he grabbed the wheel on the head of the wrench, he tried to force it tighter on the pipe, then took hold of the handle. “On three,” he told the fireman, counted, and growled with effort as he thrust his weight downward. For a moment, his feet left the deck. “Psia krew,” he said in Polish. Dog’s blood.

An oiler appeared with a steel mallet and looked inquiringly at Kovacz. “Yes, try it.” The oiler swung the hammer back, paused, then banged it hard on the elbow fitting, trying to break the rust in the threads. Kovacz and the fireman tried again, but the pipe wouldn’t give. Kovacz left the wrench in place, put his hands on his knees and lowered his head. “All right,” he said, voice just rising above the din, “somebody go and get me the goddamn saw.” He stood back up, wiped some of the sweat off his face, and met DeHaan’s eyes. Sorry.

“Polish navy was never like this,” DeHaan said.

“The fuck it wasn’t.”

On deck, the AB serving as signalman was waiting for him. The rest of the convoy had moved away, but the Covington was standing close off their beam. From the wing of the destroyer’s bridge, an expertly operated Aldis lamp was flickering at them. “They want to know what’s wrong,” the signalman said.

“Make back, ‘Mechanical problem.’”

The signalman began to work the shutter on the lamp. When he was done, the Covington ’s signaller responded. “He says, ‘How long?’ sir.”

“I wish I knew,” DeHaan said.

“‘Unknown,’ sir?”

“Yes.”

As the message was completed, the Covington abruptly changed course and circled away from Noordendam, gaining speed as she moved.

The signalman said, “What’s she doing, sir?”

DeHaan wasn’t sure. Thirty seconds passed, the Covington now heading due east, then her bow came over hard in a very sharp change of course. Now DeHaan knew exactly, and took great care that the AB saw no sign of what went on inside him.

From the Covington, a double bleat on its klaxon. A slow count to six, then the hull of the Noordendam rang, a brief, dull note, as though it had been hit with a giant rubber hammer. And, a few seconds later, twice more.

The AB’s eyes were wide.

“Depth charges,” DeHaan said.

0700. The Covington sailed away, and Noordendam was alone on the sea.

The destroyer’s attack had lasted twenty minutes, the ship quartering above the suspected submarine and, as the freighter crew watched, deploying its barrel-shaped depth charges in groups: three rolled over rails at the stern, two fired outward by deck mortars-a traditional pattern called the five of clubs. Years earlier, when DeHaan was still serving as a second mate in the Dutch East Indies trade, his first officer had explained the principle of depth charges in a way he never forgot: water had its own physics, especially where explosions were concerned. “If you’ve decided to end it all,” he’d said, “and you want to make sure, fill your mouth with water and put the muzzle of the gun in there-you’ll blow the back of your head off.”

The Covington ’s attack had evidently not succeeded-assuming it was a submarine in the first place, ASDIC was known to discover phantoms of its very own-because no oil, no debris, rose to the surface. And no giant bubbles, though German subs could, and did, send up Pillenwerfers, false bubbles meant to deceive their attackers. Therefore, likely having lost contact, the destroyer could not stay long as nursemaid to the Noordendam, so wished her well and disappeared over the horizon. The freighter was kept just under way, as Kovacz and his crew struggled in the engine room, and everyone else waited for the torpedo.

Still, the day turned out to be nice.

Not too warm, thanks to a sharpening breeze, and mostly sunny, except for some heavy cumulonimbus clouds in the southern sky. Pretty ones-thick and gray at the bottom, white and sharply curved as they rose, and wispy on top against a rich blue sky. Oh, Kees kept grumbling about a falling barometer, but trust him to see the dark side. “It’s going to blow seven bells of shit all the way up to Genoa” was the way he put it to DeHaan. But not much the captain could do about that, was there, and the Noordendam lay low and heavy in the sea, certainly a plus when iffy weather was expected.

For DeHaan, there wasn’t much to do. He wandered here and there, at one point stopping by the radio room to see if Mr. Ali had heard anything new on the BBC. As DeHaan opened the door, Ali was bent over his table and very concentrated, one hand holding a headphone to his ear, the other teasing the dial. When he saw DeHaan, he offered him the headset, saying, “We’re getting somebody’s radio-on the high-frequency band.”

Noise was all it was, initially, a transmission well beyond its calculated range, though signals were known to wander great distances if they reached the open sea. After a moment, DeHaan realized the noise was a heavy drone-interference? No, it changed octaves, then fell back, faded away to silence, but returned. With a voice, which called out “… south of you!” and sounded as though the speaker had been running. Then the signal broke up.

DeHaan started to take the headset off but Ali held up a hand, wait. He was right, the drone came back, for a moment perfectly clear. Airplane engine. “Nine-forty! Nine-forty! He’s…” Lost. A sharp burst of static, maybe static, or something in the plane. Then, seconds later, “Oh bloody hell,” said quietly, to himself. Again, the signal broke into snips of noise, then faded out. DeHaan held the headset away from his ears and said, “Where is it coming from?”

“On Crete, I think. An airplane. Working with armor perhaps, nine-forty the number on a tank.”

“Can’t really hear much,” DeHaan said. In fact he could, but didn’t like doing it, and handed the headset back to Ali. “You’ll try for the BBC?”

Ali glanced at the clock on his panel. “A few minutes yet, Captain,” he said.

By 0850, Kovacz had the engine back up to full steam. DeHaan calculated that the convoy had gained, in three and a half hours, twenty-one miles, which the Noordendam could make up-eleven knots to the convoy’s eight-in seven hours. For that time, they would sail alone. An inviting target, for anybody who happened to be in the neighborhood, but if they hadn’t been attacked by now, DeHaan guessed, they were probably safe. Either Covington ’s ASDIC sounding had been a false contact-a sunken ship, perhaps-or the submarine had been driven off. Meanwhile, the storm was gaining on them; heavy clouds turned the morning dark, and a curtain of rain spanned the southern sky where dazzling forks of lightning fired off two and three at a time, with distant claps of thunder. The wind was rising, but they had also a following current, which added speed as they chased the convoy.

DeHaan, unable to fight Germans or weather, and running as fast as he could, had to do something, so turned his attention to morale. They’d taken on fresh beef at Alexandria, and he ordered it served for lunch, with mustard sauce-the cook’s one good trick-and potatoes, a double beer ration, and fresh pineapple for dessert. Then he had the officers rounded up for coffee.

Kees had to remain on forenoon watch, as did the Danish fireman, Poulsen, now serving as apprentice second engineer, but Ratter, Kovacz, Ali, and Shtern-the creases still evident in his work shirt and trousers, a blue officer’s cap set squarely on his head-all gathered in the wardroom.

When they were settled, DeHaan announced that by 1600 hours they should be rejoining the convoy.

“Didn’t you tell me,” Ratter said, “that we would have air cover?”

“I did. But, as you see…”

“They’re in trouble,” Kovacz said. “We’re lucky to have anything.”

“True,” Mr. Ali said. “The eight o’clock BBC had that certain sound to it.”

“What sound?” Shtern said.

“The sound of losing. ‘Enemy attacks in great strength.’ ‘British forces making a stand.’ What they said about France in ’40.”

“What if they lose Sphakia?” Ratter said.

“They’ll let us know,” DeHaan said.

Ratter’s grin meant are you sure?

“Better be ready for it,” Kovacz said. “What they have on Crete are British and Greek troops evacuated from the Peloponnesus, three weeks ago. Some of them ran all the way from Albania, and you know what retreat is, it’s chaos, lost weapons, missing officers, busted vehicles-this isn’t a stand on Crete, it’s a last stand.”

“You saw it, Mr. Kovacz, in ’39?” Shtern said.

“Some of it, yes. All I wanted.”

“They might hang on,” DeHaan said. “ They don’t think they’re finished. More coffee, Dr. Shtern?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“There’s cream and sugar-better enjoy it while it lasts.”

Shtern took a spoonful of sugar. DeHaan asked Ratter how Cornelius was coming along-the mess boy had replaced Patapouf as assistant cook.

“Can’t say. The cook mumbles to himself all day, but then, he always did. Food’s the same.”

“This cook,” Shtern said, then wasn’t quite sure how to put it.

Mr. Ali laughed. “May I smoke?” he said.

“Below deck, certainly,” DeHaan said.

Ali fitted a cigarette into his holder. “Life at sea, Dr. Shtern, you’ll get used to it.”

A knock at the wardroom door produced one of the AB lookouts, binoculars around his neck. “Mr. Kees wants you, Captain.”

The AB was badly shaken, and everyone looked at DeHaan. Who wanted to sigh, but couldn’t, so said, “I’ll be back,” and put his saucer on top of his cup. Rising, he checked his watch-life had returned to something like normal for one hour, no more.

On deck, a dozen crewmen stared silently out to sea, where a tower of black smoke rose two hundred feet in the darkened sky, thick smoke, stronger than the wind, driven by heavy orange flame that boiled and rolled at its base. DeHaan held out his hand and the AB gave him the binoculars. It was the Greek tanker Evdokia, down at the stern.

When he reached the bridge, Kees said, “That was our torpedo, you know. I’ve been wondering where it was.”

“Any survivors?”

“Haven’t seen any. Navy would’ve picked up what was left.”

Fourteen thousand tons of oil, aviation gas, whatever they had. The sea around Evdokia was covered with burning oil.

“They’ll always take a tanker, if they can get one,” Kees said.

That was true. DeHaan had heard of convoys where a tanker was literally roped between two destroyers. He raised the binoculars and swept them across the burning sea, but all he found was an upside-down rubber raft, its fabric stained with age.

He gave the binoculars back to the AB. “There might still be someone in the water,” he said.

“Aye-aye, sir,” the AB said. He swallowed once, then turned to keep watch.

DeHaan headed for the wardroom.

Later, he took the four-to-eight, and worked Noordendam through the storm. She rode like a pig, with all her weight, wallowing in the valleys, nosing up the oncoming wave and hauling herself over. As Ratter came up to relieve him they sighted the Ellery, a mile or so behind the convoy, and the destroyer changed course in order to guide them in. As they fell into line behind the Maud McDowell, they saw her hit by lightning, and, for an instant, a ball of blue fire danced on the lightning rod at the masthead. Which worked, apparently, guiding the charge down to the sea, and not into the holds. Had that happened, they would have known.

As the storm passed over them, DeHaan returned to his cabin, where he tried to sleep. He was desperately tired, down to nothing-the other sense of exhausted, and various parts of him throbbed and ached. So, sleep, he told himself. But he couldn’t. In fact, insomnia was nothing new. As a child, he’d nightly tricked himself to sleep by imagining that he was on a train, the last car of a train, which was filled with beds, where everybody he knew lay safe and asleep, where it was up to him to close the door at the back of the car, and, making sure it was closed, he could then climb into the last bed, and go to sleep.

But that was a long time ago.

So he turned on the lamp and stood before the forty-book library. Who wants a job? France, war, the travails of the Van Hoogendams, dog-eared at page 148. A legacy, a sinister uncle, the beauteous Emma, and, then, oblivion.

25 May, 1830 hours. Port of Sphakia.

It had been lovely here, once upon a time. A Mediterranean fishing village, with tall, narrow houses jammed together in a circle around the port, their peeling, sun-bleached walls ochre or Venetian red, apricot or pastel green, nets hung to dry over rough cobbles, fishing boats bobbing in cerulean water. You can only get fish-the travelers would say, returning to a cold summer in Rotterdam-bread and figs and goat cheese and wonderful bad wine, and the mail comes once a week if it comes at all but the sun shines and the sky is blue.

Now, one of the houses had lost its front wall, you could see old wallpaper and unmade beds, while its neighbors were missing the glass in their windows, and the one over the taverna had a charcoal-colored blast pattern on the third floor.

At the western end of the little bay they’d handled cargo. One tall derrick was bent in the middle, and from another came showers of blue sparks as the welders worked in the dusk. But it was, at least, deep. Enough so that the freighters could tie up to the pier, as camouflage-painted trucks arrived to take the cargo away. DeHaan counted four cranes that looked like they still worked, and a tender was attempting to fix a line to a small trawler, floating hull up where the wooden timbers of the dock had burned for a time before they were extinguished. Out in the bay, the Ellery and the Covington joined a heavy cruiser, and various corvettes and minesweepers, all of them guarding what DeHaan suspected might be the last usable port on Crete.

Moments after they tied up, a naval warrant officer, who looked like he’d been awake for days, came aboard and found DeHaan. “We’ll unload the Greek ship first,” he said, “except for your planes, we’ll want those right away.”

“Are we under fire here?” DeHaan asked him.

“Now and then,” the officer said. “It’s been, in general, pretty thick.”

From the mountains behind the port, DeHaan could hear artillery exchanges, the echoes bouncing off the slopes before they reached the harbor.

When the planes came, a few minutes later, it turned out that the town of Sphakia was the proud owner of a siren. It wasn’t much of a siren, some tired old thing the mayor bought, that climbed up and down in a bass voice, cracked and hoarse, and got the dogs barking. The alarms from the warships in the bay were far more convincing, klaxons sounding a series of shrill bleats as the sailors ran for their battle stations.

DeHaan had, at that moment, walked the warrant officer to the gangplank and waited courteously until he reached the dock. He was a fair-skinned man with reddish hair, not placid but steady, and surely hardened to mishap, and he seemed, as he turned and searched the sky, more than anything else, annoyed. Not frightened, not furious, it was simply that what was coming his way would cause him work and irritation, was the last straw, and he pressed his lips together and slowly shook his head, then strolled off down the dock toward the Maud McDowell.

The planes were Junkers 87s-Stukas, single-engine dive-bombers with fixed wheels in curved wells on wide struts. Three of them, coming in from the north, from Maleme, maybe twenty miles away, skimming over the treetops at five hundred feet and clearly headed for the port. By then, the navy had been radioed by British troops on the front lines so, from the cruiser, from both destroyers and the smaller ships, came a blizzard of antiaircraft gunnery. Oerlikon guns, firing at a rate of five hundred rounds a minute-eight-second bursts from sixty-round drums, changed quickly by the loader-and Bofors guns, a hundred and twenty rounds a minute, but with heavier shells. Every fifth round, on both weapons, was a tracer, so the fireworks were spectacular, dozens of long red streams flowing over the Noordendam, then tracking downward as the planes dove. DeHaan stood transfixed, tracer whizzing above his head, lower, and lower.

The bombers attacked three abreast, and the one in the middle blew up right away, the second crashed into the forest on the lower slopes, setting the resinous pine trees ablaze, while the third pilot veered, too much fire in his face, got rid of his bomb-which blew up a stable behind the town-slanted over the water to the east of the ships, trailed smoke for a moment, and cartwheeled into the sea.

The second wave did better. Following the curve of the mountain, then turning sharply over the port. One bomb raised a giant waterspout between the Triton and Maud McDowell, a second, hit by gunfire, blew up its plane a hundred feet above the Noordendam, showering the deck with burning metal, and the third-well, nobody saw what happened to the third.

Where’s the RAF? Not here. Except for the two Hurricanes on the Noordendam, tied down with steel wire. Otherwise, only a new set of Stukas. But the navy was doing well, the hammering and drumming was frantic, and constant, though some of it hit the houses in the port, white puffs of plaster blowing off the walls.

DeHaan scrambled up the ladderway to the bridge, where Kees and an AB were watching the show. Then he was on his back, the AB lying across his legs, both of them covered with glass, while outside it was raining iron, first a light patter, then a heavy downpour. As DeHaan tried to free himself, he realized he’d gone deaf in one ear and shook his head like a dog, but it didn’t help. Then Kees appeared, blood running from his nose and flowing down either side of his mouth, and, once he managed to get DeHaan stood upright, he cupped a hand beneath his chin and spit out the stub of his pipe.

Looking around, DeHaan realized that there was no glass in the windows, which made it easier to see flames, up by the bow, and, as he watched, a bright yellow flash. So, they were on fire. And that’s that. He tried to run, but he was very wobbly, and staggered like a drunk out onto the bridge wing. Somebody had set off the fire siren, and he could make out dark figures dragging a hose toward the bow. Going forward, he met Van Dyck, who led one of the firefighting crews, hanging on to a high-pressure hose, which sent a thick stream of water onto one of the tanks, which was burning, and periodically firing a shell into the sky from a hole in its front deck.

“ Maud McDowell, ” Van Dyck shouted.

DeHaan looked for it but he couldn’t see it. He saw the Triton, but not the Maud McDowell, because it wasn’t there. It wasn’t burning, it wasn’t sinking. It wasn’t.

30 May. Port of Tangier.

Wilhelm made tea with a flourish, raising and lowering the kettle as the stream of water splashed onto the mint leaves packed in the bottom of a glass. “My tea ritual,” she said. “This time every day.”

The sun was setting in the window of her studio. Lying back on a divan, her model, wearing only a blanket with tiny silver mirrors hanging from threads, smoked a cigarette and watched like a cat.

“Right, Leila?” Wilhelm said in French. “Time for tea.”

“Is it always poured like that?” DeHaan said.

“It cools the water,” Leila said. “So you don’t break the glass.” She was beautiful, strangely so, and though she’d covered herself modestly with the blanket, Wilhelm’s easel revealed what lay beneath it. In heavy pencil shaded with scribbles, her hip curved as she reached for an orange in a bowl beside the divan. DeHaan looked for the bowl, but there was only a stack of books.

“We wondered when we would see you again,” Wilhelm said, now in Dutch. DeHaan turned his head as she spoke-only some of his hearing had returned on one side.

“You almost didn’t see me at all,” he said. “She doesn’t understand Dutch, does she?”

“No.” The idea was faintly amusing. “I wouldn’t think so.” She finished pouring the tea and left it to steep, an oily cloud rising from the leaves in each glass. From the pocket of her faded cotton shirt she took a cigarette. “Care for one?”

It was a Gauloise-what British seamen called a golliwog — and DeHaan lit it with particular pleasure. “And life here?” he said.

“We are, how to say, fully engaged — is that the military term?”

“Yes.”

“Leila dear,” Wilhelm said, “I think there’s hot water now.”

Leila put out her cigarette, gave Wilhelm a complicit smile- very well, I’ll leave you alone with him — and padded off into the other room. A moment later, the sound of a shower.

“Anyhow, it’s good to see you,” Wilhelm said.

“I had to get away from that damn ship,” DeHaan said. “We’re ordered to anchor here, for the moment, but I expect we’ll be off again soon enough.”

“Was it terrible?”

DeHaan was surprised, but apparently it showed. “We were in the war,” he said. “A few close calls. Other people had it much worse, but it was bad enough. We had a tank, deck cargo, catch fire-we weren’t sure how that happened, maybe an antiaircraft round-and we had two hoses on it, a lot of water, but every time we stopped it glowed red. The people in Alexandria had loaded it fully armed, a crazy thing to do, and the ammunition kept going off. It should’ve gone over the side, but we couldn’t get near it, and it was too heavy anyhow. The deck got very hot, and we had bombs under there.”

“Was anybody hurt?”

“Earlier, we lost a man.”

“I’m sorry, Eric.”

“Yes, I am too, but we were lucky not to lose more.” He believed in the modern idea that it was good to talk about bad experiences but now he saw that it wasn’t really so, not for him. “What do you mean, ‘fully engaged’?”

“Oh, something big’s going on here, we’re only a small part of it, but we’ve bribed half the clerks at the electric company.” She paused, then said “Who knows” in a dark, ironic voice, as though she were telling a ghost story.

“This is coming from Leiden’s office?”

“No, it’s the British now. We’ve either been promoted, or demoted, or maybe just under new management, it’s hard to know. Whatever it is, it’s grown, and they ask all the time, in that crusty way they have, if we can get help. Which isn’t so easy, but we’ve tried. And been turned down, more than once, which makes poor Hoek furious.”

“Can I do something?”

“I doubt they’d like that. Maybe lucky for you, because the police have been around. Someone’s not happy.”

“Moroccan police?”

“Spanish. Anyhow, they say they’re police, show you a badge, but..”

“What do they want?”

“They ask about so-and-so, who you’ve never heard of. I get the feeling they just want to get in the house and have a look, and maybe scare you a little.”

“Does it work?”

“Of course it does, these men in their suits, very serious, it makes you wonder what they know.” She shrugged.

In the other room, the shower was turned off. “So, then,” Wilhelm said, “the price of cheese.”

30 May. Baden-Baden.

For S. Kolb, the nightmare continued.

Now in a nightmare spa town, amid crowds of SS officers dripping hideous insignia-skulls, axes, god-awful stuff-chins held high, girlfriends hanging on their arms. Their left arms-the right was reserved for saluting, for heilhitlering each other, every thirty seconds. Nazi heaven, he thought.

Three weeks earlier, he’d been marooned in Hamburg, waiting for his case officer, the Englishman who called himself Mr. Brown, to find him a way out of nightmare Germany, as the ship he was to take to Lisbon had been inconveniently sunk. There he’d moldered, in a sad room on a sad street near the docks, waiting for the agent Frulein Lena to return, and, alone for days with only newspapers for company, had been overwhelmed by fantasies about this woman-stern, middle-aged, corset-bound, but more wildly desirable lonely hour by lonely hour. She only seemed to be a stuffy doughmaiden of the Mittelbourgeoisie, he decided. Beneath that whalebone-clad exterior, banked fires smoldered, secret depravities lurked.

And, lo and behold, they did!

Dangling helplessly between caution and lust, he’d broken to the latter, and, when Frulein Lena finally knocked at his door, long after midnight, he had invited her to share his bottle of apricot brandy. So thick, so sweet, so lethal. And, she agreed. It was quite some time before anything happened, but, when they reached the last quarter of the bottle, a polite conversation between strangers was ended by a big apricot kiss. God, she was as lonely as he was, soon enough strutting around the room in those very corsets-pink, however, not black-that had set his imagination alight. And, he did not have to dismantle them, as he’d feared, she did that herself and took her sweet time doing it as he watched with hungry eyes. And, soon enough, he was to learn that secret depravities did lurk-the same ones shared by humanity the world over but never mind, they were new and pink that night, and slowly but thoroughly explored. Even, at last, that final depravity, the most secret of them all, which lay hidden beneath the seventh veil, so-called, which is archetypically never dropped.

Well, she dropped it.

And betrayed him.

She’d met him, a few days after their night together, in a tearoom-bright yellow, with doilies and frilly curtains and everything too small, and she’d brought good news from Brown. This involved former Comintern operatives on a Latvian fishing trawler that would make an unscheduled call at the city on the twenty-seventh. He was to be spirited away by these men, ethnic Russians from the Latvian minority, and left at an Italian port-Nice, formerly French, lately Italian, and reputedly flexible for suspicious passengers, coming or going, who traveled with money. And, she was eager to report, she had a fresh, new identity for him, that old S. Kolb was getting a little shopworn, nicht wahr? These papers she would present to him, in his room. And this would take place tomorrow afternoon. At which time, her look said it all, unspeakable delights awaited him.

And, then, he knew. She’d sold him, or was about to, or was thinking about it. What, exactly, was he reading? Her eyes? Voice? Soul? He couldn’t say, but his antennae blazed, and that was all it took. And, an experienced operative, he’d learned that in the matter of flight sooner was always better. So he took her hand above the bundt cake, told her he could barely wait, might they go somewhere right away, and be, together? It took a fraction of a second before she reacted, and in that instant he shivered as though the Gestapo had stepped on his grave. “Tomorrow, my sweet,” she said.

He said he would be right back, then it was off to the toilet, lock the door, out the window, and up the alley. Maybe they were waiting for him but he didn’t think so. They would be at the hotel, tomorrow afternoon, or when he got back. Why? But he had no time for that-he scuttled up the street and ducked into an office building, where he hid in the office of an insurance brokerage-a potential client concerned that his heirs should not suffer penury. Thirty minutes later he was on his way out of town, possessions easily abandoned, as they had been in countless other hotels. In his profession, one didn’t keep things.

But really, why? He didn’t know. Maybe she’d been theirs from the beginning, maybe it was just that day, maybe because of the weather, maybe because he’d led her into sin. Poor, helpless Frulein Lena, tempted, and seduced. He’d certainly been told and told, don’t ever do that. Well, he had, too bad, and now began a new nightmare, the nightmare of the local trains. All aboard for Buchholz, Tostedt, Rotenburg. Always locals-trolleys, if he could get them-never an express, never first-class, these were subject to constant passport controls. He slept standing up, or sitting in the corridor, packed into crowds of sweaty bodies, soldiers, workmen, housewives, Germans who, despite war and bombs and Adolf Hitler, had to go to Buchholz, or Tostedt, or Rotenburg.

Was he on a list? What had she done? Hard to betray him without betraying herself, so it had to be managed anonymously. “I think the man who calls himself S. Kolb is a spy. He stays at this address.” Well, if that was the case, he wasn’t on an important list-these we want-he was perhaps on a long list-these we want to talk to. A sea of denunciations in a state like Germany, Frulein Lena’s would be one more. Still, he couldn’t register at a hotel, he couldn’t cross a border, so he had to live on the trains. And, in time, if he were lucky, he would arrive at Stuttgart, his last-chance city.

His arm’s-length contact, for emergencies only, please. He’d memorized the wording, which had to be exact, and the procedure, which had to be scrupulously observed. So, reaching Stuttgart at last, he began:

For sale: a woman’s bicycle and a man’s bicycle, one is red, one is green, 80 reichsmarks for both. Goetz, Bernstrasse 22.

The day the listing appeared, he was to go to the local art museum, climb to the third floor and there, at twenty minutes past two in the afternoon, contemplate Ebendorfer’s Huldigung der Naxos-Homage to Naxos, a hideous, romantic rendering of a Greek shepherd, who sat cross-legged before a broken column, played his pipe, and gazed at the snowcapped mountains in the distance.

Spend ten minutes, no more, no less. Did they know, he wondered, how long ten minutes, in the company of Ebendorfer, could be? In the event, no spies came. Only two well-dressed women, who glanced at him and spoke briefly, commenting, no doubt, on his execrable taste. Poor S. Kolb; filthy, smelly, hungry, frightened, and, now, ridiculed. By three, he was on the sweet little train that chuffed its way to Tbingen.

He paid homage to Naxos again, the following day, and, once more, as a museum guard terrified him with a friendly nod, the day after that. Then, just as he was about to abandon the shepherd, a well-dressed gent appeared at his side.

“Do you admire Ebendorfer?”

“Well, I know the one in Heidelberg.”

Rescued! The two-part protocol completed. Then his savior said, “Wretched thing,” stood for a moment in perverse admiration and added, “It really is perfect, you know.”

The next day they took him to Baden-Baden, where he slept on a cot at the back of a shop. Forty-eight hours, he spent there, listening to the little bell that rang every time the door opened, to the chatter between customer and clerk, to the assertive ring of the cash register. Finally, the man from the art museum reappeared, wheeling a bicycle, and told S. Kolb he would be riding to the village of Kehl, where he was to visit a certain house near the bridge over the Rhine, and someone would take him out of Germany.

Thus, Baden-Baden. A bald little man with a fringe of hair, glasses, a sparse mustache, a tired suit, walking a bicycle through the immaculate streets-surely he did not belong in the same world with these splendid SS gods. Could he be, um, a Jew? A few irritated looks suggested precisely that but nobody said anything. Baden-Baden was for health, for vitality, for cleanliness of body and mind, by day, and gymnastics at night- Yah! — so nobody wanted to bother with scruffy S. Kolb. As long as he didn’t enter a hotel or a restaurant, he could be allowed to walk his bicycle down the street. One of them waved him along, hurry up.

This made him so nervous he climbed on the bicycle and tried to ride it. But the seat was too low and his knees stuck out, and he veered right, then left, as they laughed at him-big, hearty SS laughs. Of course he would kill most of them, in time, by means of one paper or another, but this was obviously not the moment to remind them of that. He fell only twice on the road to Kehl, where a surprise awaited him.

An eighty-year-old woman, at least that, who dressed him in the uniform of a zoo guard, hat and all, put his suit in a small valise, gave him some papers with passport photographs-close enough-then took him across the bridge into Strasbourg. She could barely walk, held on to him with one hand while the other gripped a cane, and was so bent over he had to lean down to hear her when she spoke. “They don’t bother me at the border, and they won’t bother you.” And they didn’t, as he helped mother cross into France. Still, his heart fluttered as they waited on line, the old woman knew it, and squeezed his arm. “Oh calm down,” she said.

Once past the control-very casual, for them, she said she would take the train back, and he tried to thank her for what she’d done but she wasn’t interested in gratitude. “The bastards killed my son,” she said, “and this is my way of thanking them.” He saw her off on the train to Kehl, then went looking for his sort of hotel.

It was different here, he always noticed it right away, it smelled different. Because, here in Strasbourg, it was still France-despite the decrees that followed the surrender of 1940, the province of Alsace returned to German statehood. Still France-despite occupation, despite Vichy, despite its own police, who could be as bad as the Gestapo and worse. Still France-where escape was always possible. That’s what made it France.

31 May. Algeciras, Spain.

It took three hours to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, Tangier to the port of Algeciras. The current was stiff here, running through the narrow passage into the Mediterranean-submarines, once in, could not get out unless they surfaced-and this, at times, made for a memorable crossing. But not that day; the sun sparkled on the water, the Arab and Moroccan passengers sheltered beneath the canvas awning, while DeHaan managed to get off by himself, found a private length of railing, and watched the African coast as it fell astern.

He’d been directed to this meeting by a second wireless message from the NID, deciphered and handed to him by Wilhelm. It was much like the earlier one, arcane ranks of numbers and letters embracing a brief message, dry as a bone, in fact an order, with no room for discussion or dissent. “They seem to want you in Spain,” Wilhelm said, in her studio.

Ice cold, but, at least, efficient. A plain Citron picked him up at the Plaza de la Victoria-Franco’s victory, that year-on the Algeciras waterfront and took him out a white, dusty road, very nearly a car width wide, through pasture occupied by long-horned red cattle, then an endless forest of cork oak. Someone’s estancia, the naval intelligence people apparently lived well, or had friends who did, and that turned out to be the case.

A servant in a white jacket waited at the door of a vast Edwardian house-a triumphantly English presence, with its battery of chimneys, in the Andalusian landscape-and led him through a grand entry hall-DeHaan looked for the suit of armor but it wasn’t there-through a library and a red plush parlor to a tile-floored conservatory on a garden, with a view of shrubs and parterre which could survive the arid climate only with the attention of a platoon of gardeners. The house and grounds seemed untouched by the guerra civil, which implied considerable political skill on the part of the owners, who’d had to deal, in the midst of war and chaos, first with the Republicans and their communists, then with the Nationalists and their fascists. And not a brick out of place.

“Commander Hallowes,” said a tall man, rising to meet him as the servant faded away. “I am pleased you could come.”

He had a smooth, youngish face and prematurely white hair, wore a coffee-colored linen suit and a striped tie, which likely indicated membership in something or other, and DeHaan sensed there was more to the name-a title, honorific initials-so much a part of him they did not require mention. He stood easily, relaxed, before a wall of cacti in glazed urns, gestured toward a pair of cane chairs and said, “Shall we sit here?” Next to DeHaan’s chair was a table where a drink awaited him, along with a dish of almonds.

“I’m over from Gibraltar,” Hallowes said as they settled themselves. “I’d have had you come there but it’s a difficult place to meet, anyone going in or out from the mainland is carefully watched, openly by the Spaniards, covertly by the Germans-they like to believe, so my friends allow me the use of their house.”

“One could do worse,” DeHaan said.

“Yes, quite.”

DeHaan had a sip of his drink, some kind of golden aperitif that tasted of herbs and secret recipes-the taste elusive, but very good.

“So,” Hallowes said. “Were you banged up on Crete?”

“Not too badly. Some damage to the hull, lost all our glass, but nothing we can’t fix. We had one AB knocked cold, two seamen deserted in Alexandria, when they saw the cargo, and our assistant cook was shot during the raid.”

“Morale good, even so?”

“Yes, even so.”

“Ready for more, then.”

“I’d say we are. Is it all over now, Crete?”

“Yes, all over. We evacuated everybody we could, but more than ten thousand were taken prisoner. However, they lost seven thousand men, so it was quite expensive for them. They took a chance, because they feared we’d use the airbases to raid the Roumanian oilfields, and they got what they wanted, but they did pay dearly. We hope that means they won’t try the same thing on Malta, because we really must have it-if we can’t disrupt their supply lines, there’ll be hell to pay in North Africa.”

Outside, a gardener in a straw hat began to sprinkle water on a potted geranium.

“Speaking of airbases,” DeHaan said, “we thought we’d have air cover, in Crete.”

“Yes, well, that’s the problem-the Mediterranean problem. It was difficult on Crete, but, frankly, it’s worse on Malta. All they had there, the first year, were three Gloster Gladiators, little biplanes, and much cherished, called Faith, Hope, and Charity. They’d been discovered in crates, in the hold of an aircraft carrier, and they were valiant. Unfortunately, only Faith survives.”

“Can you get a convoy in?”

“We’ve tried, and will again, but the rate of loss is fifty percent. In any event, that’s not where you’re going-we have bigger things in mind for you. To begin with, we plan to turn you back into the Santa Rosa. At the stroke of midnight, you know, abracadabra.”

It wasn’t much of a joke, but DeHaan managed a smile. “Isn’t somebody going to notice, one of these days? That there are two of us?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t concern myself about that,” Hallowes said. “Anyhow, this will be the Santa Rosa ’s final voyage, and, when it’s over, well, then we’ll see. What comes next.”

Hallowes waited, but DeHaan just finished his drink. He had, for a moment, a whiff of dj vu, as though this had happened before, perhaps the Dutch captain of a seventy-four-gun ship-of-the-line meeting with a British admiral, as they laid plans to fight Germany, Spain, France, whoever it was that year. Finally DeHaan said, “This voyage, in the Mediterranean?”

“Baltic.”

“Up there.”

“Yes, that’s right. Part of our scheme of high-frequency direction finding, HF/DF, we say, or Huff-Duff, like the Americans. Silly sounding but very real, and crucial now, for my people. We can destroy them, if we can find them, and we’ve got to get better at that, and right away. The numbers are ‘most secret’-that’s always the way with numbers isn’t it-but I don’t mind telling you that we’ve lost over sixteen hundred merchant ships since 1939, half to submarines, and if we can’t get our fixes, on their planes, U-boats, warships, faster and better, we’ll starve as the guns go silent.”

Hallowes finished his drink and called out, “Escobar?”

DeHaan could hear him, shuffling through the adjoining rooms. Hallowes ordered two more aperitifs. “I mean, why not, right?”

When the servant had left, DeHaan said, “And the details?”

“Being made final, as we sit here. To be transmitted by courier-no W/T for this operation, so expect him. Meanwhile, make sure you’re well fitted out: oil, water, food, everything. And if the Tangier chandlers can’t help you, let us know about it.”

“We can top off. We will have to, for the Baltic, that’s thirty-five hundred miles, but they took good care of us in Alexandria, your people saw to that, Dickie, and so forth.”

“I’m sure they did,” he said, pleased. Then, “And so forth?”

“Well, the people at the base.”

“Oh.”

“Out of curiosity, why are you using a freighter? Isn’t this sort of thing done by airdrop?”

“What we’re moving is too big, Captain. Antenna masts, forty feet high, specially fitted trucks, and the reception equipment itself is delicate, and heavy, the worst of all combinations, so it can’t be trusted to parachutes. And, there is a lot of it-we want a coastal observation station, fully mounted. That means they’ll listen to all the frequencies, not only HF, but VHF, UHF-produced by sparks from spark plugs jumping to magnetos in aircraft engines, and the low end as well, because some German ships, disguised merchant raiders, are using Hagenuk radio, an ultra-shortwave system with a range of only a hundred miles, and, with our present stations, we can’t hear them. Anyhow, even at night, it would be difficult for intrusion aircraft. Big German radars, up in that part of the world, so what we need is the rusty old tramp, rusty old neutral tramp, helpless and slow, wandering the seven seas to make a few pesetas for the owner.”

DeHaan was silent for a moment, then said, “All right, the Baltic. Not a big sea, as they go, but it takes in quite a few countries.”

“It does, and all of them difficult, at the present moment.”

Yes, DeHaan thought, that’s the word. The USSR, and Finland, a German ally, just defeated in a war with the Russians, who’d occupied Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia a year earlier, Sweden neutral, Denmark occupied, and Germany itself. Difficult.

“But it’s wiser just now,” Hallowes went on, “not to give out coordinates. If I were you, I’d expect the courier in a week or so, then you’ll know. You may even be, surprised.”

And far enough away so that if I yell you won’t hear it.

The servant arrived with the drinks, and Hallowes said, “You’ll stay for lunch?”

“ Espadon, they call it.”

DeHaan took a second helping-a sweet, white-fleshed fish. “Best I’ve had in a long time,” he said. “Though, when it’s fresh caught, there isn’t much in the Mediterranean that isn’t good.”

“No, not much. Do you care for sea bream?”

“It can be strong.”

“That’s polite, Captain. A woman friend of mine calls it ‘Neptune’s terrible secret.’”

“Well, after a couple of months of canned herring…”

They went on, from this to that, luncheon talk, until they’d made their way through the second glass of wine and started on the third, then DeHaan said, “When I was in Alexandria, in fact with your man there, I happened to meet a woman.” He paused, waited for Hallowes.

Whose “Yes?”-when it finally arrived-was a little ragged at the edges.

“Ah, nobody you know, I suppose. Know about.”

Hallowes was relieved, the subject was espionage, not, not God-only-knew-what. “No, Captain, not our style, but not a bad idea to wonder, the way the world goes these days.”

“Well, I did wonder.”

“Not German, was she? Russian? Hungarian?”

“Local, I believe.”

“Mm. Still…”

The ferry wasn’t in when DeHaan was driven back to Algeciras, so Hallowes’s driver left him at the Reina Cristina, the city’s good hotel, where he could wait in the bar. DeHaan would have liked to walk around, but the infamous Andalusian wind was swirling dust in the streets and the city was poor and grim and vaguely sinister, so, the barman promising to let him know when the ferry made port, he sat at the bar, ordered a beer, and lit up a North State.

It had been foolish to ask Hallowes about Demetria, he realized, on two counts. First of all, Hallowes could easily have lied, maybe had lied, and second of all, she was lost, no matter who she was or what he felt. Still, he would have liked to know, because the night they’d spent together had stirred him and he wanted more.

But she was in the past, now, would remain a memory. When they’d told him at Sphakia that he’d be in convoy back to Tangier, not Alexandria, he’d understood that he would never see her again. He might have found a way to get a letter to her, if he’d been clever and had eight weeks, but what would he have said? Book passage on a local destroyer and come see me in Tangier? No, their morning coffee in the room at the Hotel Cecil, when at last they’d had to admit to themselves that they’d made all the love they could, had been a last meal.

Like the one with Arlette. Late April of 1940, tragedy on the way, only a few weeks left but nobody knew that. “Our last night,” she’d said. “You will take me to dinner.” She chose the restaurant, the Brasserie Heininger, down by the Place Bastille, and DeHaan had known it was a mistake the moment they entered. It was much too splendid, white marble and red banquettes and gold mirrors, lavishly mustached waiters rushing past with platters of langouste and saucisson, the tables jammed with smart Parisians, laughing and shouting and flirting and calling for more wine, all of them wildly overheated with war-is-coming fever.

Not for us, he’d thought. She’d asked him to wear his uniform, hat and all, and he had, while she’d squeezed into an emerald dress from some earlier, leaner time. And, there they stood, behind a velvet rope, a rueful DeHaan now too well aware that they were meant for the bistro, not the brasserie. While they waited, a handsome couple swept in the door, said something clever to the matre d’, and seated themselves. The matre d’s look was apologetic, but these were people who did what they liked. DeHaan, battered captain’s hat hidden, he hoped, beneath his arm, just tried to look like he didn’t care.

Then the propritaire showed up. He could have been no one else, short and harassed, waiting uneasily for whatever would go wrong next. But this-this he could fix. “I am Papa Heininger,” he told them. He never said a word about it, but DeHaan knew it was the uniform, even a merchant captain’s uniform, which, to him, meant something. “Table Fourteen, Andr,” he said to the matre d’, shooing him off. Then, to DeHaan, “Our best, Captain, for you and madame.”

And so it was. Every eye followed the procession to the holy table-who are they? With a flourish, the matre d’ whipped away the rserv card, then seated Arlette with dramatic care, clasped his hands maestro-style and said, “To begin, I think, les Kirs Royales? And champagne to follow, of course, yes?”

Yes, of course, what else. And, after that, the perfection of excess. Choucroute, sauerkraut with bacon, pork, and sausage, again Royale, which meant more champagne, poured over the sauerkraut-the Roederer he’d ordered just wasn’t enough. And, when the old lady who sold flowers in the street came walking among the tables, he bought Arlette a gardenia. She put it in her hair, snuffled a little, kissed him, was laughing again a moment later, excited, happy, triste, drunk on champagne, all the things she liked best and all at once.

As they waited for their coffee, DeHaan nodded at the mirrored wall above the banquette. “I might very well be wrong,” he said, “but that hole in the corner looks as though it was made by a bullet.”

“It was,” she said.

“Wouldn’t they, repair it?”

“Never! It’s famous.”

Well, he thought, in the dim light of the Reina Cristina bar, there would be more.

He looked at his watch, where was the ferry? The barman brought him another beer. At a nearby table, two men were talking German. He could see them in the mirror; hard-faced types, smoking hard, coarse and loud and serious. A strange conversation, how some people got in over their heads, in hot water, didn’t know what was good for them. Almost as though it were a scene played for his benefit-they talked to each other, but they were really talking to him. One of them met his eyes in the mirror, lingered, then looked away. No, he thought, it’s nothing. Just this damned city, its harsh wind and shadowed streets, which had overheated his imagination.

Arlette, the brasserie. “Now, home,” she’d whispered to him as l’addition arrived on its silver tray. A particularly Gallic twist to this bill, in DeHaan’s eyes, because it was much too low, the Kirs Royales and champagne nowhere to be found. They had been, it seemed, honored guests, but not too honored-one didn’t eat for free, that wasn’t honor, that was decadence.

By then it was very late, the tables mostly deserted, and the propritaire opened the door for them as they left, letting in the cool April night. DeHaan thanked him, the propritaire shook his hand and said, “Au revoir, bientt.”

Goodby, we’ll see you soon.

1 June. Rue de la Marine, Tangier.

DeHaan found the office in a fine old building off the Petit Socco. A cage elevator moaned softly as it climbed, one slow foot at a time, to the third, the top floor where, down a long hallway of trading companies and shipping brokerages, a glass door said M. J. HOEK and, below a black line, COMMERCE D’EXPORTATION. Hoek’s secretary, a Frenchwoman in her forties, knew exactly who he was. “Ah, here you are-he’s been waiting for you.” She led him briskly down a corridor, trailing a strong scent of sweat and perfume. “Captain DeHaan,” she announced, opening the door to an inner office. A large room, lit by grand, cloudy windows that looked across the street to the Compagnie Belge de Transports Maritimes building, its name carved across the limestone cornice.

Hoek’s kingdom was crowded but comfortable-wooden filing cabinets topped by stacks of unfiled correspondence, a black monster of a nineteenth-century safe, commercial journals and directories packed together on shelves that rose to the ceiling, where an immense fan turned slowly, with a gentle squeak on every revolution. All of this ruled from a massive desk between the windows, where Marius Hoek sat in a swivel chair. His face lit up when the door opened and he wheeled himself around the desk to greet DeHaan. “Best office furniture they ever invented,” he said. The wheelchair, DeHaan saw, had been pushed into a corner.

“So,” Hoek said, moving back behind the desk, “the sailor home from the sea. Shall I send out for coffee? Pastry?”

“No, thank you,” DeHaan said, taking the chair on the other side of the desk.

They were silent for a time. It had been a long month, for both of them, since they’d met for dinner, and that was acknowledged without a word being spoken. Finally, Hoek said, “They wired us that you’d be coming, something to do with a courier.”

“Yes-plans for his reception. Though it could be ‘her,’ now that I think about it.”

Hoek nodded- always the unseen possibility. “Details, details,” he said, almost a sigh. “You know, DeHaan, I had no idea…” He took off his glasses and rubbed the dents on the bridge of his nose. “Well,” he said, putting the glasses back on, “let’s just say it’s more work than I imagined.”

DeHaan was sympathetic. “And complicated.”

“Hah! You don’t know. Well, maybe you do. Anyhow, I barely have time to earn a living.” After a moment he added, “Supposing that I could-because the business has gone to hell all by itself, never mind this other nonsense.”

“No customers?” DeHaan said, incredulous.

“Oh, plenty of customers, customers crawling up the walls. The whole world wants the minerals, now more than ever, and they bought like crazy in the thirties, what with all the rearmament. ‘Strategic materials,’ that’s the gospel, and they’ll take whatever you have. Cobalt and antimony. Phosphates. Asbestos. Lead and iron ores. Turns out that anything you can dig from the earth either blows up or keeps you from being blown up, starts fires or stops them. So, there isn’t much you can’t sell, but just try shipping it. And, if you can, it’s torpedoed, or bombed, or hits a mine, or just disappears. Peace was a much better arrangement-for me, anyhow. But not for everybody, I’ll tell you that. They’re getting rich in Switzerland, the greedy bastards, because they’re buying for Germany.”

“And you won’t ship to Germany.”

“I never would have, believe me. But now I do, sometimes. Never direct, always to a third country, a neutral, but it’s no secret, no matter what the manifest says. I do it because I’ve been told to, by our imperious friends, in order to seem neutral. It makes me sick, but who cares.”

“They’re not wrong, you know,” DeHaan said.

“Maybe not, but, if that weren’t bad enough, suddenly I’m fighting for the British! Bless their valorous hearts and all that, but I signed up to fight for Holland.”

“We both did.”

“And now, it’s the same with you.”

“It is, and they didn’t ask. What happened to Leiden?”

“Shoved aside, I assume. ‘There’s a war on, sonny.’” Hoek spread his hands- the way of the world. “So now, they’re in charge of my life, as well as all the others who’ve joined up, though I can’t tell them that.”

“Still you’ve managed, to recruit.”

“I’ve tried. Too often-made a total ass of myself in the expatriate community. Which is small, and incestuous, and lives on gossip. I’m very indirect, but in the end you have to ask, and some of them are horrified. ‘Keep it to yourself,’ I tell them, but they won’t, not for long.”

“But, surely, a few…”

“Yes, a few. I had nine, two weeks ago, now I’m down to eight. One poor old bastard, that I used to play chess with, was run down by a truck as he was crossing the street. Either he was drunk, as he usually was, or he was murdered-how am I supposed to know? I’m an amateur, DeHaan, and this profession isn’t for amateurs. How long this war is going to last I don’t know, but I doubt I’ll see the end of it.”

“I think you will, Mijnheer Hoek, you are a very resourceful man. Which is why you were asked in the first place.”

“ I certainly thought I was, now I’m not so sure. Though we have made some progress. Mostly through the efforts of Wilhelm, who is magnificent, and three more women, two Dutch housewives and a Canadian nurse, all of them fearless.”

“What are they doing-if you can tell me that.”

“Why not? We spies can at least talk to each other, no? Here we’re in the real estate business-villas, coastal villas. We try to contact the owners, the agents, the servants, even the plumbers. Anybody who might know what goes on with the tenants. Who are sometimes German operatives, using the villas to keep watch on the Strait. They’ve got all sorts of infernal devices in these places, electronics, whatnot, telescopes that see at night. The trick is to get inside and look around, but it’s very difficult. These aren’t nice people, and they are suspicious-Mevrouw Doorn, the dentist’s wife, knocked on a door to ask for directions and got bitten by a guard dog. Still, they do have to leave, one can’t stay home forever, and, when they do, we watch them. Some of them wear Spanish uniforms, and they have Spanish friends. One thing I have learned is that old Franco isn’t as neutral as he likes to pretend.”

“And, once you know something?”

“We wire our friends, then it’s up to them. Last Wednesday, for example, the Chalet Mirador, out by the Cap Spartel lighthouse, just blew up-the whole thing went into the sea, and took a piece of the bluff with it.” Hoek paused, then said, “Probably not a kitchen fire.”

“No,” DeHaan said, “probably not.”

Hoek drummed his fingers on the desk blotter and turned his chair sideways so that he faced his wall of journals. “The things I never thought I’d do,” he said.

When he didn’t continue, DeHaan said, “You aren’t the only one, you know.”

Hoek turned his chair back to face DeHaan. “Yes,” he said, “I know.”

“There is something I need to do here,” DeHaan said. “What with the raid and the convoy, I’ve lost three people, so I have to hire crew in Tangier. And my way of being indirect, as you put it, will be to sign them on for a normal voyage and explain later, out at sea.”

“Cuts down on refusals.”

“That’s the theory.”

“Even so, it can’t be easy to hire people, these days.”

“It is not, but I have to try. Some of my crewmen are serving double watches, and that can’t go on indefinitely. Now as it happens, we may already have one replacement, because a day out of Sphakia we discovered we had a stowaway. He’d managed to sneak aboard, somehow, while we were unloading cargo, and hid in the paint locker, where a couple of my ABs found him. He tried to run away-where he thought he was going I can’t imagine-but they ran him down and tied him up with a rope.”

“A sailor?”

“Soldier. A Greek soldier. Somehow he got separated from his unit, or they were all killed-we’re really not sure what happened. He’s just a poor little man, half-starved. We can barely talk to him, because nobody speaks the language, but my engineering officer’s a good soul and he says he can make him an oiler. Otherwise, we’d have to turn him over to the police and there isn’t much to be gained, doing that.”

“A deserter,” Hoek said.

“Not everybody can face it,” DeHaan said. “He couldn’t. Anyhow, if I keep him, I need two more. At least that-I’d like five, but that’s not reality.”

Hoek thought for a moment, then said, “I might have somebody who can help you. He’s a young Moroccan, very sharp and ambitious. I suspect he’s mixed up with Istiqlal, but that might not be so bad, if you think it through.”

“What’s Istiqlal?”

“Our local Independence movement-out with the Spaniards and the French, then a free Moroccan state. His name is Yacoub.” He spelled it, then said, “Do I need to write it down?”

“No, I’ll remember. Yacoub is his first name?”

“Last. Say it anywhere on the waterfront and they’ll know who you mean. He works down at the Port of Tangier office, a clerk of some sort, but he knows everybody and gets things done. There are surely merchant sailors in Tangier-maybe they aren’t at the hiring hall-but if they can be found, Yacoub will find them. He’s a gold mine, and, according to the British, he can be trusted.”

“Thank you,” DeHaan said. “Now, about our courier.”

“Yes, the courier. He’s to be here for forty-eight hours-don’t ask me why because I don’t know-so he, or she, will need a hotel. Probably best not to be secretive-the local people seem to know everything, and that will only sharpen their interest-so, someplace busy, lots of coming and going, where they don’t think about the clientele too much as long as they overpay. In that case, it’s not a hard choice: the Grand Htel Villa de France, to give it its full name, which is that gaudy old whore up on the rue de Hollande. You know it?”

“I don’t.”

“Well you will. Probably you should take a room there, the night he arrives, because he can’t go anywhere near the ship-in fact, you can’t be seen together. Do ship captains do that? Take hotel rooms?”

“Sometimes, for a long stay in port.”

“That’s what I would do. Now I’ll take care of the reservation, once they wire me a name and a date, and then I’ll get the information to you.”

“By wireless?”

“No, by hand.”

DeHaan thought back over the details, then said, “All right, it sounds like it will work.”

“Yes, doesn’t it. It always does, until something goes wrong,” Hoek said, clearly amused by all the things that went, unforeseeably, wrong. “And now, Captain DeHaan, I must insist you take a coffee with me.”

“Well, I’d like some,” DeHaan said. Work on the Noordendam would go on without him, for the time being, and he’d never liked being on ships in port.

After Hoek sent his secretary out for coffee, DeHaan asked for news of home.

Hoek opened a drawer and handed him a long sheet of paper. At the top it said, in heavy black letters, Je Maintiendrai, “I will maintain,” the motto of the Dutch royal family. DeHaan knew what it was-a resistance newspaper. Printers had always flourished in Holland, so that aspect of the resistance, at least, was widespread and well rooted. “May I keep it?”

“Pass it along, when you’re done.”

“How did you get it?”

Hoek looked smug. “Oh, it just found its way,” he said. “They give the best news they can, which isn’t much. We’re not getting it like the Poles-the Germans want a quiet occupation, for their Aryan brethren, so sheep’s clothing is still the uniform of the day, but they are methodically destroying the country. All the food goes east, and, the way the Germans have things fixed, the money goes with it. Their attitude, when they win wars, has never changed- vae victis, they say, woe to the conquered.”

“I fear for my family,” DeHaan said. “It’s very hard to know about it, and to know there’s nothing you can do to help.”

“Yes, but ‘nothing’ is not quite what you’re doing, is it.” He leaned forward, and lowered his voice. “I have to tell you, Captain, that you should be careful, in this city. Because I believe they are in the early stages of knowing about us. Perhaps just bits and pieces, at the moment, a few papers on a desk somewhere and there are, no doubt, more pressing papers on that desk, but someone is working on it, and, when he’s satisfied, something will be done, and done quickly, and there won’t be time for discussion.”

“Months?”

“Maybe.”

“But not weeks. Or days.”

Hoek shrugged. How would I know?

2 June. Office of the Port Administration, Tangier.

DeHaan knew who Yacoub was the moment he saw him. He belonged to a certain tribe, native to the port cities, to Penang and Salonika, to Havana and Dar es Salaam. It was a tribe of young men, young men of humble origin who, with only their wits to help them, meant to rise in the world, and, to that end, had obtained a suit.

They wore it all day, every day, and, because they were rarely the original owner, worked hard to keep it looking the best it could. Next, with help from an old book or an old man, they taught themselves a foreign language, maybe two or three, and practiced at every opportunity. Then, at last, to go with the suit and the language, they learned to smile. How glad they were to see you! What did you need? Where did you want to go?

In the port office, hidden away in a maze of piers and drydocks, Yacoub’s suit was gray, his smile encouraging, his English good, his French better. He looked at the clock, and hoped DeHaan would not mind waiting for him at the small souk just off the corniche for, say, twenty minutes? Not too long? His apologies, but he did have some work that had to be finished.

A small souk, but crowded-stalls packed together in a narrow alley, where a thin stream of black water ran down a drain in the pavement, and the smell, aging goat hide and rotten fruit, was almost visible. A good place for the ancient flywhisk, DeHaan thought, brushing at his face, and a good place for recalling the time-honored clichs about the eyes of veiled women. He bought an orange, and enjoyed it almost as much as the act of dropping the peels in the street, according to local custom. When he’d finished it, and found the water pipe and rinsed his hands, Yacoub fought free of the crowd.

He led DeHaan from stall to stall, from camel saddle to copper pot, as though he were a guide and DeHaan a tourist. They spent a minute on the weather, then DeHaan asked about hiring crew. Yacoub was not optimistic. “They have vanished, sir. The war has taken them.”

“And the hiring hall?”

“You may visit, and see for yourself.” What he would see, according to Yacoub, were a few murderers and thieves, and a one-legged drunk with one eye-“Formerly a Lebanese pirate, some say”-if he hadn’t already shipped out.

This was highly embroidered, but DeHaan got the point. “There must be a few,” he said. “Not quite murderers and thieves. War or no war, men leave ships.”

“Not many, these days. And often enough they don’t go back to sea. This is, after all, Tangier; here you can hide from the war, find a woman, find a way to make a little money-sailors are good at many things, as you know-in a city that doesn’t care what you do.”

“But, surely not all of them stay ashore.”

“Never all. But, of those few who leave, fewer still wish to change ships, and they don’t last long. The blackboard at the hiring hall is covered with jobs, Captain, top to bottom.”

DeHaan declined to offer on a wellworn prayer rug. The merchant looked up to heaven and lowered the price, then Yacoub hissed a few words under his breath and the man went away.

“I will ask my friends,” Yacoub said. “My friends who know things, but there is perhaps one other possibility. Tangier has many sailors’ bars, all sorts, the famous Chez Rudi, for example, and various others, some of them dangerous. But there is one, in a small street in the medina called rue el Jdid, that is known as l’Ange Bleu, the Blue Angel, though it has no sign. Sometimes sailors go there to look for old friends, if they see their ship in port, and sometimes they go to look for a new berth. Quietly. And if the master of a ship were to offer good money, it’s said, the man might be interested. And, even if he’s not, he will tell his friends about it.”

They walked out of the shadowed souk and onto the corniche. A fine morning in June, the wind soft and suggestive, legions of strollers out to faire le promenade. For that moment, at least, the romantic soul who’d called the city “the white dove on the shoulder of Africa” had got it right. And Yacoub, inspired by the day, now began a discourse on the local gossip-rich Englishmen and Americans, lovers in love with the lovers of their lovers, poets and lunatics, intrigues at the sultan’s court. And scheming pashas, who conspired with foreigners in their reach for power.

“Always foreigners,” Yacoub said. “Perhaps we deserve our history, but heaven only knows the blood we’ve spilled, trying to stop them from coming here. Spanish armies, French legions, German agents, British diplomats-since the turn of the century, fighting us and each other. And then, at last, that special curse all its own, French bureaucrats, so in love with power they made rules for snake charmers.”

“It is their nature,” DeHaan said. “Nobody really knows why.”

“I believe that Holland, also, is a colonial nation.”

“Yes, in the East Indies, we are.”

“And South America as well, no?”

“There too-in Suriname, Dutch Guiana.”

“Do you think it just, Captain?”

“It began a long time ago, when the world was a different place, but it can’t go on forever.”

“So we believe, and some of us hope that Britain will help us, if we help them to win this war.”

“Nobody can see the future,” DeHaan said, “but promises are sometimes kept, even by governments.”

“Yes, now and then,” Yacoub said.

Politics, DeHaan thought. Too often the destiny of Yacoub’s tribe. Because, with the suit, and the language, and the smile, they had turned themselves, unwittingly, into perfect agents. Knowing everyone, going everywhere, they were recruited for this scheme or that, for national independence or foreign ambition, given money, made to feel important, and then, all too often, sacrificed.

Yacoub was silent for a time, as they walked past the Club Nautique and the ship chandlers’ warehouses, headed for the pier that led to the Port Administration building. When they paused at the foot of the pier, he said, “If you would care to accompany me to the office, Captain, I believe there is mail being held for you.”

On the harbor launch that took him out to the Noordendam, at anchor a mile offshore, DeHaan had time to read, and consider, two letters. The first was a copy of a bank draft, sent to him from the Tangier branch of Barclay’s Bank, received by wire from their office in London. The draft, from the Hyperion Line, with a London address, could be read as a response to his earlier wire to Terhouven, informing him of the ship’s change of administration. A substantial amount, a number familiar to DeHaan, it was sufficient for refueling and stores, as well as the paying off of the crew.

Crews were traditionally paid off at the end of a voyage-formerly that meant Rotterdam but those days were gone-so Terhouven had chosen a call at a Moroccan port as a substitute. What else did it mean? He wondered. His next destination was an unnamed port in the Baltic, pending the arrival of the courier, but it seemed he would be going north in ballast-except for the secret apparatus-so, logically, he would be taking on cargo in the Baltic, then heading he knew not where.

But, now that the crew was to be paid, it would not be their new home port-which he assumed was London, maybe Liverpool, or Glasgow. They had to be going somewhere, once their mission was completed, but Hallowes had not been specific, saying only that it would be the final voyage as the Santa Rosa. He hadn’t meant that it was to be the Noordendam ’s final voyage, had he? No, they would never do that. Britain, desperate in the grip of the U-boat blockade, needed every merchantman afloat. So DeHaan told himself.

The second envelope bore no stamp. It was addressed to Captain E. M. DeHaan, NV Noordendam, with By Hand written in a lower corner. This was in typescript, produced, it appeared, by an old portable machine that lived a hard life-the ribbon had not much ink left to it, the top of the a was broken, and the t had lost its bottom curl. Inside, a sheet of cheap lined paper, not folded but very carefully torn off, saving the other half for later use. The language was English-the Russian version.

1 June, 1941

Captain DeHaan: As you are in port, could you grant me interview? I talked with you in Rotterdam, in 1938, for newspaper article. Thank you, I am at Hotel Alhadar.

Best wishes,

Then, signed in pencil, Maria Bromen.

He remembered her well enough, a Russian maritime journalist who wrote for Na Vakhte, On Watch, a shipping newspaper published in Odessa, as well as for Ogonyok, the illustrated weekly, sometimes for Pravda, and occasionally for the European communist dailies. This was not conventionally a job for a woman, and Bromen was young, in her thirties, but she was, it turned out, determined and serious and knowledgeable about the shipping trade. DeHaan, too well aware of the Comintern-the agency in charge of subversion in the seamen’s unions, probably would not have met with her, but she’d found some way to get at Terhouven and he’d asked DeHaan to go ahead with it. “Tell her Hyperion is an enlightened employer,” he’d said. “We don’t ignore the welfare of our crews.” DeHaan had done his best. And, formal and rigorous at first, she’d relaxed as the interview proceeded, was, he realized, simply intent on doing her job, and not at all the Soviet sourpuss he’d expected. In the end, DeHaan was honest with her and, though he never saw the article, Terhouven had, and declared it “not so bad.”

DeHaan looked up from the letter and saw the rust-streaked hull of his ship, looming above the launch. Hallowes, he thought, the Germans at the Reina Cristina bar, his conversations with Hoek and Yacoub, now this. Why don’t you all go to hell and let me sail the seas.

The launch sounded two blasts on its horn and, eventually, the Noordendam ’s gangway was lowered a few feet, froze, was taken back up, then lowered again.

Over the next three days, business as usual. The crew was paid off and, after dire warnings from the officers to keep their yaps shut, went ashore and raised the usual hell, found the offerings on Tangier’s sexual bourse more than equal to their imaginations, then drifted back to the ship in twos and threes, pale and placid and hungover. At least they all came back, and DeHaan and Ratter were spared visits to the local jails. Shtern diagnosed an oiler’s fever as malaria, patched up two ABs after a fight in a bar, and treated their Greek soldier, Xanos, after he managed, while tending the lone active boiler, to have his shoe catch fire. “Don’t ask me,” Kovacz growled, “because I don’t know.” DeHaan granted himself leave, stayed in his cabin, read his books, played his records, and tried to keep the world on the other side of the door.

Where it stayed until the afternoon of the fifth, when Yacoub appeared with the news that Hoek wished to see him, and was waiting at his office. DeHaan knew what that meant, allowed himself one deep breath, then dog-eared the page in his book. Since the launch was already waiting, they returned to Tangier together.

In Hoek’s office, the windows rattled as the chergui, the local wind, blew hard from the east. After polite conversation, Hoek said, “Well, he’s here. Checked into the Villa de France last night. In Room Thirteen.”

DeHaan and Hoek exchanged a glance, but let it lie.

“Tonight, then,” DeHaan said.

“Yes. He’ll be waiting. According to my source at the hotel, he’s young, English, and carries only a briefcase. In short, he looks like a courier.”

“I guess they know what they’re doing.”

Hoek’s expression meant they’d better.

“As long as I’m here,” DeHaan said, “what do you think of this?” He handed Hoek the note from the Russian journalist.

“Christ, just what we needed,” Hoek said. “Russians.”

“Any chance it’s innocent?”

“Hardly. What’s she doing here?”

“They’re everywhere, in the ports. Just keeping up with the maritime news, is the way they put it.”

“In other words, spies.”

“Yes. What’s your opinion? I’m inclined to do nothing.”

Hoek thought it over, then said, “I’d see her.”

“You would?”

“To find out what it’s about, yes. If she’s trying to confirm something she’ll have to ask you-maybe over the river and through the woods, but she’ll get there.”

“Well,” DeHaan said. Why court trouble?

“Not responding is a kind of answer, you know.”

DeHaan nodded, still reluctant.

“It’s up to you,” Hoek said, “but if you see her, could you send a note with Yacoub?”

DeHaan said he would.

“Has he been any help?”

“He suggested a sailors’ bar-l’Ange Bleu. Maybe I’ll try it.”

“Might as well,” Hoek said. From the outer office came the sound of a teleprinter, tapping out a long message with a chime at the end of every line. Hoek looked at his watch. “So then,” he said, “you’ll be sailing right away.”

“In a few days, unless they’ve called it off.”

“They haven’t.”

DeHaan stood, and said, “I’d better walk over to the hotel. While they still have rooms.”

“Oh, it’s a big hotel,” Hoek said. “Of course, you know,” he paused, then said, “we may not see each other again.”

DeHaan didn’t answer, then said, “Not for a while.”

“No, not for a while.”

“Maybe when the war is over, I’ll be back. We’ll have another dinner,” DeHaan said. “With champagne.”

“Yes, a victory dinner.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“Oh, I expect we’ll win, sooner or later.”

“A lot to do, in the meantime.”

From Hoek, a very eloquent shrug, and the smile that went with it.

Then they said goodby.

At three in the afternoon, DeHaan checked into the Grand Htel Villa de France. It was, as Hoek had put it, a gaudy old whore-green marble lobby, bright rosy fabric on the furniture, gilt torchres on the walls by paintings of desert caravans. But it was also, unexpectedly, a quiet old whore. In the vast lobby there was only a single guest, an Arab in robe and burnoose, rattling his newspaper. And in the courtyard, when DeHaan got to his room and opened the French door, there was that curious hush of provincial hotels in the afternoon, broken only by twittering sparrows.

DeHaan tipped the bellboy, who’d carried his small canvas bag, waited a few minutes, then took the staircase to the floor below, and, down a long carpeted hallway, found Room 13. He knocked, discreetly, then, after a minute, knocked again. No answer. He returned to his room, hung his jacket in the closet, lay on the bed, and stared at the ceiling. Four o’clock, five. Tried again. No response. Was this the right room? He looked around, saw only closed doors up and down the silent corridor. Maybe the courier had other business in Tangier. DeHaan went back to the room.

By seven, the hotel had come to life. A piano, downstairs in the tearoom, began playing what sounded like songs of the Parisian boites, bouncy, almost marchlike. In the courtyard, doors opened and closed, somebody coughed, lights went on behind the drawn curtains. DeHaan, meanwhile, despite his status as clandestine operative, wanted dinner. But he had no intention of appearing in the dining room, so tried Room 13 once more, and, after listening at the door and hearing only silence, set off to find l’Ange Bleu. A more productive way to spend his time, he thought, than waiting in his room.

He had to ask directions but, in the heart of the medina, he eventually discovered the rue el Jdid, a street of wide steps, and, near the top, a bar with no sign. He entered, sat on a wooden stool and waited for the Moroccan barman, busy with a couple of patrons on the neighboring stools. The barman glanced at him, raised a finger, back in a minute, and came over to DeHaan, who ordered a beer and asked if there was anything to eat. No, nothing to eat, but the beer, a Spanish brand called Estrella de Levante, was dark and filling.

The barman returned to his other customers-sailors, DeHaan thought, one of whom resumed the telling, in English, American English, of what seemed to be a long and complicated story. “Now nobody on the ship knew what the cushmaker did,” he said, “but they didn’t want to let on, so they asked him what he needed, and he said he needed a metal shop and a lot of tin. Well they had that so they gave it to him and he seemed happy enough. Worked away in there day after day, welding that tin together. If anybody asked about it, they said ‘Oh, he’s just the cushmaker,’ but day after day they wondered, what’s he doing? Weeks went by, the whole ship waited. Finally, they saw he’d built a big ball of tin, all the seams welded real good, flat, you know? So next thing the cushmaker goes to the captain and says, ‘Captain, now I need a derrick and a blowtorch.’ Captain says okay, and, next morning, the cushmaker gets a couple of guys to help him and they roll that tin ball, it’s big, maybe ten feet around, out of the shop and onto the main deck, where the derrick is. Next he hitches the ball to the derrick cables, and has it swung out just where he can reach it, but it’s over the water.”

The barman looked around, checking on his other customers, then leaned his elbow on the bar. The story had apparently been going on for quite a while. “Over the water, see?” the man continued. “Then he takes this blowtorch and he begins to heat the ball, it’s big, like I said, but he doesn’t quit, just keeps that blowtorch going. By now, the whole ship is watching-guys up from the engine room, guys who just happen to have something to do on deck, everybody. Finally, the tin ball begins to glow, a little bit at first, then bright red. The cushmaker stands back and rubs his chin, like this. Is it hot enough? Is it ready? Yeah, he thinks, it’s just right. He puts the blowtorch down and he signals the guy on the derrick, let go! The derrick man pulls the release lever, and the ball drops right into the sea.”

The barman waited. Then said, “And?”

“And it went cushhhhh.”

Both sailors grinned, and, after a moment, the barman managed a laugh.

“Cushhh, yes, it’s funny,” he said, and went off to see another customer.

The storyteller turned to DeHaan. “I don’t think he got it.”

“No,” DeHaan said. “He thought you were making fun of him.”

“Jeez,” the man said.

“It ain’t a Moroccan joke,” his friend said.

“I’m Whitey,” the storyteller said. “And this is Moose.”

The nicknames were a good fit, DeHaan thought. Whitey had long, pale hair, combed straight back, and Moose was broad and thick. “My name is DeHaan,” he said. “Captain of a ship out there.” He nodded toward the bay.

“Oh yeah? Which one?”

“ Noordendam. Netherlands Hyperion Line.”

“Dutch.”

“That’s right.”

“What do you do?”

“Dry cargo tramping.”

Whitey nodded. “You in to bunker?” That was the old term, for the bunkers loaded with coal, still used for refueling with oil.

DeHaan said he was.

“We’re off the Esso Savannah, so maybe it’s our oil.”

“Could be. Actually, I’m in here to hire ABs.”

“Oh yeah? Well, that’s us, but we’re happy where we are.” He turned to his friend. “We like Standard Oil, right?”

“Yeah sure, we love it,” Moose said.

“No, really, it’s okay,” Whitey said. “Some guys always think it’s better somewhere else, but it’s all about the same. In the U.S., anyhow.”

“You’d be surprised, what we pay,” DeHaan said.

“On a Dutch tramp?”

“When we’re short crew, yes.”

“Well,” Moose said, “we won’t be on the Savannah too much longer.”

“No?”

“What he means,” Whitey said, “is that as soon as old Rosenfeld gets us into this war, we’re gonna go regular navy.”

“Are you sure they’ll let you?”

“Sure, why wouldn’t they?”

“Because, if the U.S. gets in, they’ll need every tanker they can get.”

A brief silence. The two sailors would be, in DeHaan’s version of the future, at sea in an enemy tanker, no longer protected by American neutrality. Finally Whitey said, “Yeah, may-be.” Then he downed the last of his beer and said, “Have one on us, Captain-boilermaker, shot’n-a-beer, okay?”

DeHaan would have preferred to stay with beer alone, but Whitey was too quick for him, and called out, “Hey, Hassan, three more down here.”

The shot was rye, sticky sweet, and bottled in Canada, according to the label. But DeHaan was too well aware that imported whiskey was an iffy proposition in foreign ports, and he could only hope that it hadn’t been brewed up in some garage in Marrakesh. Still, no matter what it was it worked, and, by the third round, DeHaan knew he would stagger when he got off the stool. Good for comradeship, though. Whitey and Moose let him know in no uncertain terms how sorry they felt for the people locked up in occupied Europe, and how they were itching to get a crack at the Nazis. They’d seen British tankers ablaze off the beaches of Miami, where the local citizens, excited by the idea of U-boats right out there, came down to the water to watch the show.

By eight-thirty, the bar was crowded and noisy, and DeHaan, despite the boilermaker fog, knew he had to go find his courier. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I believe it’s time I was on my way.”

“Nah, not now. You ain’t hired anyone yet.”

DeHaan looked around. A barful of drunken sailors, likely the most he’d manage was to get his nose broken. “I’ll try another night,” he said, swaying as he stood up. He reached in his pocket for money, but Whitey peeled a few dollar bills off a roll and tossed them on the bar. “That’s too much,” Moose said, as DeHaan said, “No, let me.”

Whitey waved them off. “Make it up to Hassan,” he said. “Cushhh.”

DeHaan laughed. He couldn’t wait to tell this joke-maybe the courier would like it. Moose looked dubious, but said, “Well, okay, I guess.” Then, to DeHaan, “Where you headed, pal? Down the port?”

“No, no. You fellows stay.”

“What? You gotta be kiddin’,” Whitey said. “Let you go out there alone? Us?” He shook his head, some people.

And he wasn’t wrong. They came out of the bar into a warm night, carefully descending the steps of the rue el Jdid. And Whitey, in a mellow tenor, was just getting started on his repertoire, having reached “Finally I found one, she was tall and thin/Goddamn, sonofabitch, I couldn’t get it in,” when two men stepped out of an alley. Hard to know who they were. They wore dark shirts and trousers and straw hats with the brims down over their eyes. Spaniards? Moroccans?

The two sailors didn’t like it. They turned around and stood still, while the two men took a few steps, then stopped, ten feet above them.

“You want something from us?” Whitey said.

DeHaan sensed they didn’t speak English. One of them put a hand in his pocket.

“He’s mine,” Moose said. “You take the other one.”

Whitey put his index and pinky fingers into his mouth and gave a sharp, two-note whistle. This produced a few silhouettes from the doorway of l’Ange Bleu at the top of the street, and a shout, “Somebody need help?” For a long moment, a stalemate, then, from the doorway of the bar, the sound of a bottle broken off at the neck.

That did it. The two men walked slowly down the steps, past DeHaan and the sailors. They were leaving, not running away. One of them looked DeHaan in the eye, then angled his head sideways, down and back, an appraisal. If it was just you. “And fuck you too,” Moose said, taking a juke step toward the men. One of them said something, the other laughed. They continued down the steps, fading into the darkness, their footsteps audible until they turned a corner at the bottom of the street.

5 June, 2105 hours. Room 13, Grand Htel Villa de France.

DeHaan caught the smell of burning while he was still out in the corridor, and it was strong in the room. “You’re DeHaan?” the courier said, closing the door.

“That’s right.”

“Where’ve you been?” He’d hung his jacket over the back of a chair and loosened his tie. A briefcase, straps unbuckled, lay on the bed by a few stapled booklets with green manila covers, an address book, and a service revolver.

“I did try earlier,” DeHaan said.

The courier was as Hoek’s man at the hotel had described him-young, and English. In fact, very young, and very tense, his face pinched and white. “Well, I had other business,” he said. He looked DeHaan over for a time, then said, “I believe you met a friend of mine the other day, over in Cadiz.”

DeHaan’s mind was not working at full speed, but eventually he realized what was going on and said, “No, not Cadiz. Algeciras.”

That satisfied the courier. “All right, then,” he said. “Been out celebrating, have you?”

“I had business in a bar. So, a bar.” Where he’d drunk a fair amount of beer. “Excuse me a minute,” he said.

The burning smell, he discovered, was coming from the bathroom. When he came out, he looked quizzically at the courier and said, “What the hell did you do in there?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

The courier’s face reddened. “One’s told to destroy papers by flushing them, or burning them. I thought to burn first, then flush. Both, you see, to make sure.”

“And set the toilet seat on fire.”

“Yes. You won’t tell Hallowes, will you?”

“No, I won’t tell anybody.” He covered his face with his hands, as though tired.

“I know,” the courier said.

“I’m sorry,” DeHaan said. He had to wipe his eyes.

The courier turned away and began to sort through his papers. Finally he found what he wanted and handed DeHaan a yellow slip with numbers on it, three groups of three, and a megahertz frequency.

“You’ll keep radio silence, of course, but we’ll find ways to contact you, if we need to. You must under no circumstances attempt to contact us-with one exception. The line of code I’ve given you should be sent to that frequency, any time of day or night, and sent twice, if your ship is attacked or boarded, or if you believe the operation is going to be exposed. We would always help you, if we could, but it isn’t really for that, you see. It’s for other people, put in harm’s way if you are compromised. Quite clear, Captain?”

“Yes.”

“Then here are your orders.” He handed DeHaan a brown envelope. “I will wait while you read them.”

DeHaan took a single sheet of paper from the envelope and read it over, knowing he couldn’t really absorb the information until he’d had a chance to spend time on it. When he looked up, the courier was holding the address book open with one hand, and had a pen in the other. “You’ll sign for the codes and the orders, Captain.”

DeHaan signed. “What if I have questions?”

“I don’t answer questions,” the courier said. “I only place the documents in your hands.”

“I see,” DeHaan said.

“And there shouldn’t be questions,” the courier said. “It’s all quite specific.”

He went upstairs to his room and opened the door on the courtyard. Had he closed it, when he left? He didn’t remember, evidently he had. Down in the tearoom, the piano had become a quartet, with a saxophone. They were playing, with more enthusiasm than grace, a song he knew, a Glenn Miller song, “Moonlight Serenade.” Across the courtyard, a woman was sitting at a table and putting on makeup. DeHaan took off his jacket and shoes, lay down on the bed, and slid the sheet of paper out of the envelope.

MOST SECRET

For The Personal Use Of The Addressee Only

NID JJP/JJPL/0626

OAMT/95-0626

R 34 296 3B — 0900/2/6/41

From: Deputy Director/OAMT

To: E. M. DeHaan

Master/NV Noordendam

Most immediate

Subj: Hyperion-Lijn NV Noordendam

To sail 0400 hrs 7/6/41 port Tangier to anchor at pos. 3832?#8242; N/911?#8242; W to convert to steamship Santa Rosa. Thence to port Lisbon, 4.3 miles up river Tagus to wharf at foot rua do Faro marked F3. Contact shipping agent Penha, rua do Comercio 24, to load special cargo and receive manifest for cooking oil, tinned sardines and cork oak bound port Malmo. Sail port Lisbon 0200 10/6/41 for pos. 5520?#8242; N/1320?#8242; E one mile off Swedish coastal region Smygehuk. At 0300 21/6/41 await two green flashes, confirm two green flashes, for boarding of ARCHER to direct offload special cargo. Sail Smygehuk by 1800 21/6/41 to port Malmo pier 17 for cargo sawn pineboard bound port Galway. Sail port Malmo 27/6/41. While at sea, receive further instruction.

0626/1900/5/6/41+++DD/OAMT