Alan Furst: Dark Voyage

Kees stood by DeHaan’s side as the men broke ranks and headed for their inspection stations. Taciturn and reflective by nature, he made no comment, but for a single interrogatory puff of pipe smoke whipped away by the wind.

“There’ll be an officers’ meeting in the wardroom, before lunch,” DeHaan said, answering the puff.

Kees nodded. Just not enough trouble for some people in this world, they have to go looking for more. He didn’t say it out loud but he didn’t need to-DeHaan understood him perfectly.

1830 hours, Villa Cisneros.

DeHaan had anchored Noordendam well out in the bay. She could have tied up at the deepwater pier but her master chose, perhaps, not to pay the dockage fee-penny-pinching always a credible motive in the world of tramp steamers.

“Ever been here?” DeHaan asked the AB steering the ship’s cutter. There was a chill in the desert air as night came on, and he pulled his leather jacket, sheepskin-lined, around him and held it closed.

“Can’t say as I have, sir.”

“Seems quiet,” the other AB offered.

Benighted, maybe, or, better, godforsaken. But seamen tended toward diplomacy with officers present. A thousand souls in the town, according to one of DeHaan’s almanacs. Well, maybe there were, hidden away in a maze of bleached walls and shadows, but, from just off the pier, the place was deserted. Not much of anything, in Rio de Oro. Four hundred coastal miles of sand and low hills, and abundant salt, which they sometimes exported-a last tattered shred of the Spanish Empire. But, a neutral shred, and that made it useful.

They tied up to a bollard on the pier and, as DeHaan climbed the stone stairway to the street, a desert wind, smelling of ancient dust, blew in his face. Eight months earlier, on a street in Liverpool, he’d discovered the same smell, had puzzled over it until he realized that it rose from the foundations of old buildings, newly excavated and blown into the air by Luftwaffe bombs.

It was only a minute’s walk to the Grand Hotel Cisneros-Leiden had told him where to find it-which turned out to be three stories high and two windows wide, a stucco building that had been white at the turn of the century. The lobby seemed vast-a high ceiling with a fan, black-and-white tile floor, dead palm tree in a yellow planter. The clerk, an elderly Spaniard with the face of a mole and a wing collar, stared at him hopefully as he came through the door. In one corner, Wilhelm, in Barbour field jacket and whipcord trousers, was reading a book.

He greeted her, his words echoing in the empty lobby. From Wilhelm, a crooked grin-clearly they couldn’t talk here. She rose and said, “My car’s just out the back.”

DeHaan didn’t envy much in this world but he envied Wilhelm her car. It was parked in a small square behind the hotel, between a 1920s moving-company truck and a Renault sedan, a flock guarded by a mustached shepherd in a sheepskin vest and hat, with a rifle slung diagonally across his back. Wilhelm handed him a few dirhams, which he tucked away as he inclined his head by way of saying thank you.

“It’s wonderful,” DeHaan said. A low, open sports car, weathered by sand and wind to the color of chromatic dust-probably green if you thought about it, with a tiny windscreen, a leather strap across the hood, bug-eyed headlights, and the steering wheel on the right. In British movies, the hero vaulted into cars like this but DeHaan took the traditional approach, snaking his way inside and settling into the leather seat.

“Yes,” Wilhelm said. “Mostly.” The shepherd stared thoughtfully as Wilhelm tried the ignition, which coughed and died. “Now, now,” she said. On the fourth try there was an ill-tempered snort, then, on the fifth, a string of explosions-full power. The shepherd broke into a huge smile, and Wilhelm laughed and waved to him as they went bumping off down the street.

“What is it?” DeHaan said.

“What?”

“What is it?”

“Oh, it’s a Morgan. There’s more to it, I think, letters or numbers, something.”

They were out of town and on a dirt road almost immediately. Past a field of green shoots and a blindfolded ox, harnessed to a wooden bar and walking in a circle around the stone rim of a well.

“It used to belong to a friend of mine,” Wilhelm said. “An American. He liked to say that back in the States he’d had all the Morgans-the horse, the car, and the girl.”

The dirt track began to narrow and it was almost dark. Then, suddenly, they climbed to the crest of a hill and the ocean appeared on the left. Wilhelm braked to a stop. “There you are,” she said.

Down below, the Noordendam at anchor, lights shimmering in the haze, a thin stream of smoke from the funnel as one boiler was kept running to serve the electrical system.

“Did you see that old truck? In the square?” Wilhelm said.

“Yes.”

“That’s your paint,” she said. “In metal drums.”

“Is somebody watching it?”

“The guard, of course, as you saw. And the driver isn’t far away.”

“How much do you have?”

“Two hundred gallons. They said at the ship chandler you need gamboge and indigo, and burnt sienna-they wrote the proportions on the drums-to make dark green. And white, for the striping. Of course it needs to be thinned, thinned way down, so there’s white spirit.”

Wilhelm handed him a sheet of paper with a description printed out in pencil, DeHaan could just barely read it in the failing light. “ Funnel: black with green band. Hull: Black with broad green band between narrow white bands.”

“Is that correct?” Wilhelm said.

“That’s the description in Lloyd’s Register. No boot-topping, thank God.” Merchant-company colors were often used for the latter-the space that showed when the ship was high in the water, without cargo.

“Then Santa Rosa, on the side,” Wilhelm said.

“On the bow, yes. And at the stern.”

The Noordendam was to become the Santa Rosa, of the Compaa Naviera Cardenas Sociedad Annima, with offices on the Gran Via in Valencia. As a ship steaming under a Spanish, a neutral, flag, she could go anywhere. In theory. According to Leiden, the real Santa Rosa was in drydock, with a serious engine problem that would require a new casting, in the Mexican port of Campeche.

Leiden, and Section IIIA, presumed that with the wartime suspension of the “Movements and Casualties” page of the maritime journal Lloyd’s List — daily intelligence on the world of six thousand merchant ships-hostile personnel, at sea or in port, would have at hand only the annual Lloyd’s Register, and the false Santa Rosa would conform to the description found in the section on Spain. That is, if they even bothered to look. It was further presumed that the newly confidential — limited-distribution-version of the shipping pages would not be available to enemy observers. On these presumptions, Section IIIA was betting forty-two lives and a ship.

Still, not such a wild bet. The Noordendam and the Santa Rosa were, if not twins, at least sisters. They were typical tramp freighters, picking up cargo anywhere and taking it to designated ports, as opposed to liners, which made scheduled trips between two cities. They’d both been built around 1920, five thousand gross tons, some four hundred feet long and fifty-eight wide, draft of twenty-five feet, single funnel, derricks fore and aft, blunt in the bow, round in the stern, carrying nine thousand tons of cargo-enough to fill three hundred boxcars-with a top speed of eleven knots. On a fair day with a decent sea. They were similar to the eye, and not unlike a thousand others.

“Are there ship’s papers-for the Santa Rosa?” DeHaan said.

“No point. You could only use them if you’re boarded and, if you are, the game is over. A merchant crew wouldn’t survive interrogation, and there’s too much on the ship that would give it away, under close inspection. However”-she reached behind the driver’s seat and retrieved a soft package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string-“here is my contribution.”