Alan Furst: Dark Voyage

“It has to be you, Stas.” With passengers everywhere on deck there would be panic, chaos.

Kovacz grumbled, then said he would be up in a minute.

False alarm? Out on the bridge wing, an AB worked the Noordendam ’s light, swinging it back and forth across an empty sky. Ratter was listening carefully to the distant drone, head cocked like a dog. “Are they circling us?”

DeHaan listened. Scheldt said, “That’s it, sir.”

At 10:20, Ratter said, “They’ve passed us by.”

“Going to hit Kronstadt,” DeHaan said.

“Or Leningrad.”

The others could hear it, their searchlights aimed forward of the Burya. “No,” DeHaan said. The sound swelled, east of them, then grew loud. From the radio room: “Attack will be…”

The lead bomber came speeding through the lights, head on to the Burya, then flew over it. In the light, they could see a round ball, suspended from a parachute, as it floated down toward the destroyer. “Dorniers,” Ratter said. “Parachute mines.”

Behind the first, seven or eight more, flying abreast. As the explosions began at the front of the convoy, a silhouette flashed over the Tsiklon and a string of mines chained together plummeted to its deck. One breath, then a hot blast of air hit the bridge, as a second plane, wings tilted, roared over the Noordendam.

There were screams from the deck, tiny balls of yellow fire flashed through the bridge house, and a flight of chained mines spun through the air as the plane roared away. Then a hatch cover blew up, boards soaring into the sky, and a great peal of thunder rang deep inside the Noordendam, which made her heel over and shudder. It knocked DeHaan backward and, when he scrambled to his knees, Ratter was sitting next to him, looking puzzled. “Can’t hear,” he said. Then he reached for DeHaan’s forehead and pulled out a triangle of broken glass. “Don’t want this there, do you?”

DeHaan felt the blood running down his face. “I can do without it.”

Ratter’s face sparkled in the light and he began to brush at it with his fingertips. Scheldt used the binnacle to haul himself upright, then took hold of the wheel. “Ahh the hell,” he said. DeHaan stood up, wobbled, steadied himself, saw that Scheldt was staring at the compass. “Two eight two?” he said.

“Back to zero nine five, south of east,” DeHaan said.

Scheldt shook his head, pulled down on one spoke of the wheel, which spun free until he stopped it. “Gone,” he said.

DeHaan looked out through the shattered windows. The Tsiklon had vanished, and in the light of the burning trawler he could see smoke pouring from the forward hold, an orange shadow flickering at its center. “Johannes, are we making way?”

Ratter went out to the bridge wing and looked over the side. “Barely.” From the radio room: “Are you alive, up there?”

“Yes.”

“We are on fire.”

“We are.”

From their port beam, the blast of a foghorn, then another. It was an icebreaker, its searchlight playing over the deck of the Noordendam, then a voice shouted Russian over a loud-hailer. DeHaan went out on the bridge wing, where the AB was staring open-mouthed at the approaching bow of the icebreaker. Which now began to move right as the captain figured out that the Noordendam ’s steering was gone. Some of the passengers were signaling with their hands, go around us. With a final angry blast on the horn, the icebreaker’s bow passed the freighter’s stern with ten feet to spare.

DeHaan turned to go back to the bridge, then saw Kovacz, staggering up the ladderway. “Damage report,” he said. “The engine-room people are done for. That thing blew in the bulkhead, two of the boilers exploded, the third is still working. We have dead and wounded, one of the lifeboats is gone, and I can’t find Kees.”

“And we’ve lost our steering,” DeHaan said. Up toward number three hold, he saw that Van Dyck had the fire crews working, which meant that steam from the remaining boiler was giving them pressure on the hoses.

What was left of the convoy was moving east. Searchlights on, antiaircraft firing as the Dorniers returned for a second attack. DeHaan looked down at his feet, money, bills he didn’t recognize, was blowing all over the place. The mustached men with the machine guns. Who had built a small fortress of stacked trunks on the hatch cover of the forward hold.

Kovacz said, “I’m going back to the engine room, Eric. I’ll get some help and do whatever I can. Is the rudder broken free?”

“Gear frozen in the steering tunnel,” DeHaan said. “I’d bet that’s what it is.”

“Can’t be fixed.”

“No.”

“So, we’re going wherever we’re pointed.”

“Yes, a point or two west of north.”

“Finland.”

The battle moved east, slowly, ships and planes fighting hard, until there were only sudden flares of fire on the horizon, distant explosions, a few last searchlights in the sky, then darkness, and the Noordendam sailed alone. Opinion on the bridge had it that the small fleet was finished off, sunk, but they were not to know that. And there was a lot to be done. They were getting maybe two knots from the poor broken Noordendam but the one boiler, with Kovacz coaxing it along, kept them under way, helped by a following sea. Shtern worked hard, the passengers and crew helped-the dead were moved up to the afterdeck and decently covered, the wounded wrapped in blankets and sheltered from the wind. They searched everywhere for Kees, two missing ABs, and two passengers, but they’d apparently gone overboard during the Dornier attack and nobody had seen them after that.

Then it was quiet on the ship, and dark, because they were running with lights off. DeHaan ordered the scramble nets and gangway lowered and the lifeboats readied, then assigned crews to help the passengers-wounded first, then women and children. When that was done, the officers and crew began to gather their possessions.

0300 hours. At sea.

At DeHaan’s direction, Mr. Ali made contact with some Finnish authority-at the port of Helsinki or a naval base, they never really discovered who it was. DeHaan got on the radio and told them they had dead and wounded aboard, and were headed for the islands west of Helsinki, on the south coast. There would be no question of resistance, the passengers and crew of the Noordendam would surrender peacefully.

And under what flag did they sail?

Under Dutch flag, as an allied merchant vessel of Britain.

Well then, he was told, the word wasn’t precisely surrender. True, Finland was at war with Russia, despite their treaty, and true, that made her an ally of Germany. Technically. But, the fact was, Finland was not at war with Britain, and those who set foot on Finnish soil would have to be considered as survivors of maritime incident.

Was Finland, DeHaan wanted to know, at war with Holland?

This produced a longish silence, then the authority cleared its throat and confessed that it didn’t know, it would have to look that up, but it didn’t think so.

0520 hours. Off the coast of Finland.

In the watery light of the northern dawn, an island.

A dark shape that rose from the sea, low and flat, mostly forest, with quiet surf breaking white on the rocks. It was not unlike the other islands, some close, some distant, but this one lay dead ahead, a mile or so away, this was their island.

DeHaan moved the telegraph to Done — With — Engines, the bells acknowledged, and, a moment later, the slow, labored beat stopped, and left only silence. He picked up the speaker tube and said, “Come up to the bridge, Stas. We’re going to beach on the rocks, so clear the engine room.”

On the bridge, Scheldt was still on watch, standing before the dead helm. “Go and get your things together,” DeHaan told him. That left Ratter, and Maria Bromen, who stood close by his side. DeHaan took the Noordendam ’s log and made a final entry: date, time, and course. “Any idea what it’s called?” he asked Ratter.