Dark Voyage (12 page)

The
Santa Rosa,
having delivered drums of chemicals and crates of bicycles and sewing machines at Veracruz, had taken on a cargo of henequen—sisal hemp, raw cotton, and bananas, bound for Spain, then broken down, one day out of port, and put in to Campeche for repairs. This was nothing new to Campeche, everything broke down here, why not a freighter? The ship had docked in early April, which became May as the crew worked below deck and at a small machine shop ashore to repair the engine, while they waited, and waited, for parts. And—once again the local fate behaving as it usually did—the job was very nearly done when a cargo hold filled with henequen caught fire. The crew did what it could, the local firemen were called out, but the fire made steady progress, something blew up, and the crew left the ship and stood around on the dock, hands in pockets, wondering what came next.

At the foot of the pier, people drank beer and talked and listened to the band as night fell, bright yellow flames danced above the deck and the air was fragrant with the aroma of roasting bananas. It was a patient crowd, watching as the ship listed slowly to port, and waiting for it to roll over and disappear so they could go home.

The couple watched with them. Plenty of Europeans in Mexico City, what with war and politics in Europe, but one rarely saw them here. Actually, there’d been two more, a pair of young men, explosives experts generally employed by the Communist party in Mexico City, though at times willing to provide services on a freelance basis if the money was right. They were not, however, in Campeche that night, were on their way somewhere else by the time the fire drew a crowd. That left the couple, drinking red wine at the Cantina Las Flores.

“Really,” the man said, “I only spent ten minutes with her.”

“More like twenty,” the woman said.

“Well, a party, you know, one talks to people.”

“Oh don’t be so innocent,
please
. She looks at you a certain way, people notice.”

“She does not,
mi querida,
appeal to me. All those teeth.”

At the end of the pier there was a soft
whump
as a gust of yellow flame flared high above the ship and the crowd said “Ahh.”

The woman looked at her watch. “How long must we stay here?”

“Until it sinks.”

“It’s finished. Anyone can see that.”

“Oh you never know—a sudden miracle.”

“Unlikely, I would say. And I’m tired.”

“You can go back to the hotel, you know.”

“No, I’ll stay here,” she said, resigned. “The boys are gone?”

“Hours ago.”

“So, should there be a miracle, as you say, what could you do?”

“I could, attend it.”

She laughed. He was, had always been, a lovable bastard. “You,” she said, shaking her head.

22 May. Port of Alexandria.

DeHaan was called to the port office at noon and told what the
Noordendam
had to do—preparation to begin immediately. “This is an emergency,” the officer, a captain, told him. “So it’s you, the
Maud McDowell,
from Canada, and two Greek ships,
Triton
and the tanker
Evdokia
. We need you, laddie,” the captain said. “You’re volunteering, right? I mean, you know what’s involved—they’re running out of everything. And it’s only three hundred and seventy miles to Crete, maybe a day and a half. You make eleven knots, don’t you?”

“We try.”

“
Triton
may be a bit slower, but you’ll be escorted, two destroyers, anyhow, and maybe some air cover. Good company. After that, you can go back to doing whatever it is, but we need everybody we can put our hands on, right away. So?”

“We’ll go, of course. You can start loading whenever you want.”

“We’ve already started, as it happens, trucks on the dock. And, something extra, we’re going to repaint you, so you’re back to being the
Noordendam
.”

DeHaan nodded. He wasn’t surprised—this was a full-scale invasion, and resupply was everything.

“We’ll get it done,” the captain said. DeHaan thought he might be a naval reserve officer, a merchant captain drafted into the Royal Navy, which made him, for some reason, feel better. “So, the best of British luck to you. And”—a mischievous smile—“no smoking.”

DeHaan asked to use the telephone in the port office and called the number Dickie had given him. A woman with an Oriental accent answered, took his number and, fifteen minutes later, Dickie called him back. “Good to hear from you, DeHaan,” he said, but his normal bluster was undercut by a worried note—what the hell does
he
want?

DeHaan told him about the orders from the port office.

From Dickie, a brief silence, only an airy hiss on the line. “Hm. Damned inconvenient, I’d say. But . . .”

Did he know?

“It would appear,” he said, gaining momentum, “that the war has interrupted our war, but, nothing to be done, eh?” Meaning
surely you aren’t asking me to get you out of this
.

But DeHaan was himself at war—they could do with him what they wanted, but he would, in return, have what he needed. Or else. “There is one condition.”

“Oh?”

“The
Noordendam
must have a medical officer, a doctor. We won’t sail without one.”

More hissing. “Really.” He didn’t care for DeHaan’s tone.

Too bad.
“Yes, really.”

“Well, I see your point.”

“I’ll be aboard, third slip, Pier Nine, all day, likely two or three days. Sailing time is secret, of course, but it isn’t far off.”

“Right, then, I’ll have a go. Best I can do, I’m afraid.”

“Find him, Dickie.”

“Right.”

DeHaan hung up. The curse of the trampship captain was that he had to serve as shipboard doctor, a medical manual provided for his use. And every time a seaman reported sick with a bellyache, DeHaan, reaching for the epsom salts, could think only one thing—
appendicitis
. Freighter captains had performed appendectomies at sea, the manual showed you how to do it, and, sometimes, given the extraordinary constitutions of merchant sailors, the patient actually recovered. To date, DeHaan had set broken bones, stitched up gashes, and treated burns, but the idea of surgery made him shudder.

Then, a few days earlier, he had determined that his doctoring days were over. It was daylight when they reached the ship off Cap Bon, and DeHaan realized that the sergeant who’d led them back to the beach, who’d explained his limp by saying he’d stepped in a hole, had lied. Walking across the deck, he left a bloody footprint with every step. Apparently, one of the surviving commandos served as corpsman, because DeHaan heard no more about it, but he believed that the sergeant had been shot, and had sworn to himself that he would not again take men into danger without a medical person to treat the wounded.

As he hung up on Dickie, none too gently, he thought,
“Right,” yes, right is what you are; hardheaded, stubborn Dutchman, better give him what he wants.

No smoking.
Well, he guessed not. DeHaan returned to his ship to find a very hardworking crew, a very
quiet
crew. Cargo hatches off, winches grinding and steaming, booms swinging left and right, Van Dyck in charge. In the Egyptian heat the bosun had taken his shirt off, his torso thick and smooth, not a muscle to be seen. Van Dyck was the strongest man he’d ever known—DeHaan had seen him, on a bet, tear a deck of cards in half. But strength didn’t matter that afternoon, Van Dyck was working with a delicacy worthy of a jeweler, not a bump, not a brush, not a hitch, as the cargo was lowered slowly, slowly, into the hold. First the crates, with stenciled markings: land mines, 75-millimeter tank shells, .303 ammunition, then the bombs, 250- and 500-pounders, stacked laterally all the way to the top of the hold. Five thousand tons of it, and more to be carried on deck. Along with four tanks, lashed down forward of the bridge and, up at the bow, two Hurricane fighter planes.

“Christ,” Ratter said quietly, when DeHaan joined him on the bridge. “Anything happens, we won’t come down for days.”

They were at it all night, the piers floodlit despite the possibility of German air raids. Alexandria had been bombed, and would be again, but the convoy had to be loaded, and that meant working straight through until the job was done. On the
Noordendam,
they worked twelve-hour shifts with four hours’ sleep and sandwiches for every meal. DeHaan was on deck, kneeling next to Van Dyck—who wore gloves to handle the hot steel—as he replaced a broken gear, when his doctor showed up.

He hadn’t really known what to expect. Retired medical officer maybe, living with his wife in cheap and exotic Alexandria. But no such person stood at the foot of the gangway, where a Royal Marine guard shouted up, “Says he’s here to see the captain.”

“Send him up.”

The man, a hesitant smile on his face, climbed the gangway slowly, carefully, hand white on the rope that served as a railing, lest he go flying off into the water and be swallowed by a sea monster.

“Are you Captain DeHaan?” he said, consulting a scrap of paper. “Am I on the right boat?”

And what language was this? Not Dutch, and not quite German. Yiddish, then, and DeHaan saw exactly what Dickie had done and, despite himself, felt a surge of admiration.

The man was in his twenties, wore a baggy black suit, a narrow black tie, a white shirt—now gray, from months of washing in hotel sinks—and a black hat, perhaps a size too large. He had a high forehead, and anxious, inquisitive eyes—a hopeful face, prepared for disappointment, with shoulders already hunched in the anticipation of it. “My name is Shtern,” he said.

Working around the open cargo holds, the crew was too attentive to the visitor for DeHaan’s taste, so he took him off to the chartroom, where they sat on stools by the sloping map table.

“Dr. Shtern, welcome to the
Noordendam,
” DeHaan said in German, “though she is called the
Santa Rosa
just now.”

“Doctor? Well, almost.”

“You’re not a doctor?”

“Formerly a medical student, sir, for three years, in Heidelberg.”

“You are German?”

“Not really anything now, sir. We came from the Ukraine, originally, a small place.”

“Three years,” DeHaan said. “But you can do everything a doctor does, no?”

“On cadavers, I have worked extensively. Unfortunately, they made us leave Germany, so I could not continue.”

“You came to Alexandria, from Germany?”

“Well, first to Antwerp, for a time, until we tried to go to Palestine. We saw it, from the boat, but the English arrested us and we were put in a camp, on Cyprus. Then, after a few months, they let us come here.”

“What we need on this ship, Herr Shtern, is a doctor, so from now on you’ll be Dr. Shtern, if you don’t mind.”

“Anything, sir, as long as money can be sent to my wife—it’s been very hard for us. We are Jews, sir. Refugees.”

“We?”

“My wife, and three children, little ones.” Proudly, he smiled.

“Merchant crews are usually paid off at the end of a voyage, whenever that is, but if you’ll give us the particulars, we can arrange for the money to be wired to your wife.”

“You have a dispensary, sir? Instruments?”

“We’ll get you whatever you need. Today, Dr. Shtern.”

“And, sir, may I ask, about the money?”

“As an officer, you’ll earn thirty British pounds a month—about a hundred and fifty dollars.”

Shtern’s face lit up. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “Thank you so much.”

“You can thank me, Dr. Shtern, but what we do here is dangerous,” DeHaan said, thinking of the
little ones
. “Especially now. I hope you understand that.”

“Yes, I know,” he said quietly. “I read the papers. But I must find something to do.”

“I’m going to send you off with my first officer, he’ll make sure you get everything you want—we have some medicines, take a look at them, but our inventory is primitive. Also, we’ll buy you clothes, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

Shtern nodded. “It will all be new for me,” he said, “but I will do my best, sir, you will see.”

It was after eleven that night when DeHaan finally got around to doing what he’d been putting off for days. He sat at the table in the wardroom, drinking coffee, and working on a wireless message to Terhouven. Outside, the loading continued, a symphony of whistles, bells, and drumming machinery, but DeHaan, concentrating hard, barely heard it. The commercial code used by the Hyperion Line was likely no mystery to the British—or anybody else, he assumed, so he had to write as elliptically as he could, and trust that Terhouven would read between the lines.

The first part was easy, a monthly salary to be paid, to a bank in Alexandria, for a recently hired medical officer. Next—now it grew difficult—the new cargo, “designated by local authorities for a Mediterranean port.” And if Terhouven, following the war in the London papers and knowing the origin of the transmission, thought that meant a load of figs to Marseilles, then so be it. For the last, the hardest, part, the best DeHaan could do, after a number of false starts, was “You will be aware of changes in our administrative status.” This puzzle Terhouven could work out, if he didn’t know already: so much for Section IIIA of the Dutch Admiralty’s General Staff and Commander Leiden, they were now under new ownership. And, as to who exactly that might be, well, it was those people to whom one referred elliptically.

Not that Terhouven could do anything about it but, far away in the land of paper, life did go on—with war-risk insurance held by so-called “clubs” of shipping lines, money changing hands, lawyers, and, in general, all the byzantine apparatus of vessel ownership. Did their change in status affect any of this? DeHaan didn’t know—maybe all it meant was that Terhouven could now worry in new and interesting ways.

Ratter entered the wardroom, collapsed onto the banquette, took his hat off, and ran his fingers through his hair.

“Johannes.”

“Eric.”

“Coffee?”

“Something.”