Alan Furst - Dark Voyage

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

“Not yet.”

“Good.”

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

“Never smelled a mushroom cellar, have you.”

“No.”

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

“I’ll never eat another mushroom.”

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

“You sleep down here?”

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

“And you have electricity? Out here?”

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

“Everything they shipped,” DeHaan said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You were there?”

“For a little, yes.”

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

“We’ll be then in Malm?”

“We should be. Waiting to load cargo.”

“How long, will we stay there?”

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

“Swedes don’t do that.”

“Not for a long time, no.”

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

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

Yes, maybe.

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

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

“It is. One should enjoy it.”

1220 hours. Off Falsterbo headland.

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

“What kind?”

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

Coming from the Danish coast?

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

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

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

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

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