Alan Furst - Dark Voyage

Both planes came down to five hundred feet and circled for a good look. Behavior anticipated by DeHaan who had his full cast on deck-the cook and his assistant, in their usual dirty aprons, peeling vats of potatoes, and three deckhands sitting in a circle on the hatch cover of the forward hold, playing cards. He’d had a laundry line strung between two cargo booms, with shirts and drawers flapping in the wind, and, according to instructions, all the men on deck looked up at the planes and waved. The French pilot waved back. Toward dusk, a column of smoke was sighted on the horizon but the ship, whoever she was, showed no interest in the Noordendam.

As night came on, DeHaan called for Dead Slow from the engine room. They were not far, he thought, from Cap Bon. Finding it would not have been a problem, in better days, when every point and cape, harbor and river delta on the merchant shipping routes showed identification lights, described in the almanacs, but war had turned the coasts to low, dark shapes at the edge of the sea-once again the sea of Homer. Ratter had taken bright-star sights the night before, and shot the sun at midday. He had the navigator’s gift, a mathematician by birth, and was formidably better than DeHaan, or anyone on board, at celestial dead reckoning. And, when a soft glow lit the landward sky, he said it was Bizerta.

On this night, the ship’s lights were never turned on, and they steamed along slowly, on calm waters, edging toward the coastal desert. At 2010, a flight of aircraft was heard above, headed due east. “Could be ours,” Sims said. They flew high above the Noordendam, a distant, steady drone, and their passage lasted thirty seconds. The ship was now at the geographical center of the Mediterranean war: Sardinia and Sicily to the north, British bases at Malta less than two hundred miles to the east, Wavell’s desert divisions, fighting in the Italian colony of Libya, another few hundred miles south, German-occupied Greece and British forces on Crete maybe eight hundred miles due east. Just after nine in the evening, DeHaan went down to the radio room to join Mr. Ali for the BBC news.

DeHaan enjoyed his visits with Ali, a sophisticated Cairene-cigarette in ivory holder and gold spectacles-highly educated and proud of it, who spoke British English, learned in colonial schools, and had been heard, more than once, to use the expression old boy. A good wireless operator, he spoke parts of many languages, and, by tuning in hourly to BBC broadcasts, had become the ship’s newspaper.

DeHaan had missed the first part of the broadcast, so Mr. Ali brought him up-to-date. The lead story reported fighting in Iraq, where British troops had occupied Basra and the southern oilfields. The Rashid Ali government was allied with the Axis powers, and sought German intervention, but, the broadcast said, nothing could stop the British advance on Baghdad.

“And then,” Mr. Ali said, “there has been the most terrible bombing of poor London. The British Museum, which I have visited, and Westminster Abbey.” This over the announcer’s voice reporting the flight of Rudolf Hess, third-highest official in the Reich, to Scotland, where he’d parachuted to earth and was “presently being questioned by government officials.” The announcer left the story rather abruptly, suggesting that neither the BBC nor anyone else knew what was really going on, and proceeded to the “Personal Messages,” coded communications to clandestine operatives all over Europe and North Africa:

“Mr. Johnson’s class, at the Preston School, is visiting the zoo. Mr. Johnson’s class, at the Preston School, is visiting the zoo.

“Gabriel, cousin Amelia has a bouquet. Gabriel, cousin Amelia has a bouquet.”

And on, and on, as DeHaan and Mr. Ali sat transfixed by words that had, to them, no meaning at all, except as poetry.

12 May, 2030 hours. Off Cap Bon.

“We’re turning around,” DeHaan told the helmsman. “Come hard left rudder to two seventy degrees.”

Ruysdal, at the helm, repeated the order, and they began the wide sweep that would send them back the way they’d come-the equivalent, for this five-thousand-ton monster, of pacing back and forth. They’d been cruising at slow speed since dusk, the atmosphere on the ship tight as a drum, with half the crew on deck, squinting out toward land, in search of Sims’s “little man with a little green light.” But life sometimes went wrong for such little men, and DeHaan wondered what Sims would do if he never turned up.

He wondered also about the possibility that the ship was “visible,” as Sims put it, to an observation point on shore. Thus their reappearance, after a twelve-mile run to the east, coming back the other way, would hopefully register as a second vessel, the two ships passing in the night, as it were, though for all DeHaan knew the people on Cap Bon with the demonic apparatus could figure out exactly what was going on and a largish artillery round was just now on its way to the bridge.

Waiting.

The commandos were assembled on deck amid their gear, faces blackened, their cigarettes red dots in the darkness. The bosun, with a crew standing by, ready to assist, paced the deck where the scramble nets had been slung over the side. DeHaan occupied himself by watching the sea, which stayed calm, only a light chop, fortuitous for men who had to paddle more than a mile in rubber boats. The northeast winds, for the time being, were off doing something else, but that, DeHaan knew, wouldn’t last.

Ratter was up in the bow, where an AB was casting a lead line-the Noordendam was in as close as DeHaan dared take her, with visibility, light rain, new moon, down to a mile or less. As for Sims, he was everywhere, sometimes on the bridge, the privilege of command allowing him the luxury of not sitting still.

2130. 2230. Maybe it wasn’t Cap Bon. On the bridge, Sims muttered under his breath, peered at the coastline, took five steps this way, five steps back. DeHaan wanted to help, to provide some distraction, but there was nothing to be done. Been in London lately? What did you do before the war? No, that was worse than silence. He looked at his watch, again, and saw that it was still 10:45, then thought about noting the change of course in the log, but clearly he couldn’t. He would falsify the day’s entry, though logs were sacred books and it went against deep instinct to write lies in them. His mind wandered here and there, Arlette, the girl in Liverpool. And what became, these days, of captains who lost their ships and survived? Join somebody’s navy, at best. Or take another merchant ship, to lead another lamb to another slaughter.

Then, hurried footsteps up the ladder to the bridge-one of Sims’s men, breathing hard with excitement. “Major Sims, sir, Smythe says he seen a light, and one of the sailors too.”

Sims cleared his throat and, perfectly calm for all the world to see, said, “Very well.”

“Good luck, Major,” DeHaan said. “See you in a while.”

Sims looked at him for a moment, then said, “Thank you,” turned, and followed the commando out the door.

Forward of the bridge, there was muted commotion, shadows moving about, something clattered to the deck, then the boats were lowered to the water and the commandos climbed down the nets and paddled away into the night. “Come right to three fifty, Ruysdal,” DeHaan said. Then, to the lookout on the wing, “Have Van Dyck prepare to drop anchor. In ten minutes or so.”

DeHaan went out to the wing facing the shore. Shapes in the darkness, almost the entire crew was ranged along the edge of the deck, watching the boats as they pulled away.

0115 hours. Off Cap Bon.

Noordendam swung slowly at the end of her anchor chain, DeHaan and Ratter had stationed themselves on the bridge wing and, sleep being out of the question, most of the crew remained on deck. From anchor, a mile or so out, Cap Bon was a span of gray beach that climbed to an empty horizon. Lifeless, it seemed to DeHaan, dead still. With the engines shut down, there was only the lap of the sea against the hull, rain dripping on iron, and the slow creak of the cargo booms. In the distance, a faint rattle, muffled by the weather, which stopped, then, an afterthought, reappeared for a brief encore. “They’re fighting,” Ratter said. Instinctively, they both raised their binoculars and focused on the horizon.