Alan Furst: Dark Voyage

She untied the string, turned the paper back, and handed DeHaan a ship’s flag-the heavy cotton fabric softened and faded by service in ocean weather. A Spanish flag, the monarchist version reintroduced by Franco in 1939. Two horizontal red bars-blood-red, and not subtle about it-held a wide band of yellow with a coat of arms: between columns, beneath a flowing pennant with motto, an eagle in profile is protected by a checkered shield. DeHaan, from northern Europe, the land of forthright stripes, had always thought it looked like a medieval war banner.

“Seems well used,” he said.

“It is.”

“Did you buy it?”

“Tried. But, in the end, we stole it. There was a message from Leiden, back in April, ‘Obtain a used Spanish maritime flag.’ Well, it wasn’t to be found in the local souks so we-me and a friend, a trusted friend-took the ferry over to Algeciras for a day. Not much you can’t find there, since the war ended-a single boot, sacred paintings marked with a hammer and sickle, old pistols-but they were fresh out of used flags. So we came back to Tangier, went to the chandler, and bought one. New and crisp, sharp, bright, and wrong.

“I tried everything I could think of-washed it in lye, soaked it in seawater, left it in the sun for days-but this flag had its pride and it wouldn’t age. Finally my friend said to soak it in bath salts and bake it dry, which led to an amusing fire in the oven and a visit with the firemen. By the time they left, the flag was a little too used-which is to say, black.

“Now Leiden had used the word obtain, which left us a certain, latitude, so my friend had a bright idea: yachts. Plenty of them stranded in Tangier and Casablanca, at the yacht clubs, and of course the people who own them, some of them anyhow, give parties. Well, we found the flag we wanted-on a huge motor yacht that belonged to the count of Zamora, known in Tangier as ‘Cookie,’ and pure Groucho Marx. Likely raised some hell in his day but it was probably nineteenth-century hell, because Count Cookie is an extremely old man and doesn’t give parties. But we did get ourselves invited to a cocktail Amricain, at a nearby slip, on a yacht called the Nride, owned by some Italian aristocrat. This grew into a real party, by the way; caviar in the piano, ice cubes down the cleavage, fan dancing with the drapes-a very sporty crowd and they didn’t miss a trick.

“So, after midnight, I went up on deck for a breath of air, walked back to the pier, went three docks over, and out to the last slip. Only problem was, I had this idiot who’d followed me around all night and now he follows me out to the motor yacht. Definitely a Mitteleuropa type, but nave, or maybe just stubborn, because I’m the girl of his dreams. ‘Mademoiselle Wilhelm,’ he says, ‘you are lovely in moonlight.’

“We’re standing at the foot of the gangway, at this point, and I flirt with him and tell him I want that flag. Must have it. Crazy Dutch artist, he thinks, drunk, sexy, has to have a Spanish flag. Well, why not. So we tiptoe across the gangplank and onto the deck, and lower the flag. And, lo and behold, it’s an antique-the old bastard must have had it from before the civil war. And, of course, he hears us, or someone in the crew does, because just about the time we get it unclipped, somebody yells in Spanish and we run like hell, laughing all the way.

“Now this is a big flag, and, even folded, it can’t go back to the party, so we run to his car, a Lagonda, of course, put it in the trunk and he drives me back to my studio, an old garage, where I have a headache and get rid of him. An hour later my friend shows up, worried sick, thought I was in jail, but we drove right past the guard at the gate of the club.”

It was dark on the hilltop and very quiet, a lean slice of waning moon had risen just above the horizon. New moon on the twelfth, DeHaan thought. Which was why the operation was planned for that night, and, if it didn’t go, would have to wait for June. “We shouldn’t stay here too long,” he said.

“No, you’re right.” She set about starting the car.

“I’ll send a boat for the paint,” he said. “Tomorrow morning.”

“I’m in Room Eight.”

DeHaan folded the paper back over the flag and retied the string as the engine started. “Thank you for this,” he said.

“My pleasure,” she said. “Fly it, ah, proudly?”

“I suppose,” DeHaan said. “Might as well.”

0920 hours. Rio de Oro Bay, off Villa Cisneros.

DeHaan used the chartroom as his office. A bank of teak cabinets filled one wall, with wide drawers that held charts for the seas of the world. Such seas might fold, in the right storm, but not the charts. There was desk space atop the cabinetry, with calipers, pencils, chronometer-all the paraphernalia of navigation. One door led to DeHaan’s cabin, the other to the deck.

The AB Amado, prompt to the minute, knocked politely, two diffident taps on the door. “Yes?” DeHaan said.

“Able Seaman Amado, sir.” This in English.

“Come in.”

He was a shaggy man in his late thirties, with a mustache and a slight limp. There were three Spaniards aboard the Noordendam — one was a fireman, and barely verbal, a second, eighteen years old, served as cook’s assistant and messroom boy. The third was Amado, formerly a ship’s carpenter on a Spanish tramp, who’d signed on as an AB in Hamburg in 1937. Which meant less status, and less pay, but this was a rescue and Amado was happy to be alive.

“Please sit down, Amado,” DeHaan said, indicating the other high stool pulled up to the cabinets. “A cigarette?”

“Please, sir.” Amado was sitting at attention.

DeHaan gave him a Caporal and lit it, then lit one of his little brown North State cigars. DeHaan had boxes of them, but he could only hope they would outlast the war.

“The speech yesterday,” DeHaan said. “It’s been explained to you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And that’s all right?”

Amado nodded. He took a deep drag of the Caporal and let the smoke out slowly, turning one hand to an angle that meant he wanted to say much more than his English would allow. “Yes,” he said. “Very much.” DeHaan saw that he was one of those men whose fire had been banked to an ember, but that ember was carefully tended.

Amado now told his story. DeHaan already knew most of it-from the bosun, who served as petty officer and father confessor to the deck crew-which was just as well, because the conversation was hard work for both of them, though the story was simple enough. When civil war came to Spain, it also, in time, came to Amado’s ship, a Spanish ore-carrier hauling chromite, from Beira, in Portuguese East Africa, to Hamburg. As they neared the German coast, somebody called somebody a name and a fistfight started, which grew quickly into a brawl between Republican and Falangist crewmen-red and black neckerchiefs appearing like magic-then spread to the officers, except for the captain, who locked himself in his cabin with a loaded shotgun and a demijohn of rum.

In a matter of minutes, the weapons came out. “First knifes, later, ah, fusiles.”

“Guns.”

“Yes. So this.” Amado pulled up his pant leg and revealed the pucker scar.

The Falangists held the radio room, the wardroom, and the officers’ mess, the Republicans had the bridge, the engine room, and the crew’s quarters, there were wounded on both sides, two seamen fatally stabbed, an officer shot dead. As night fell, the fighting subsided to a standoff-shouted insults answered by wild gunfire, then, at dawn, the Falangists sent out a distress call, which produced, a few hours later, two Kriegsmarine patrol boats. When Amado, who fought on the Republican side, saw the swastika flags, he knew he was finished.