Dark Voyage (16 page)

“Commander Hallowes,” said a tall man, rising to meet him as the servant faded away. “I am pleased you could come.”

He had a smooth, youngish face and prematurely white hair, wore a coffee-colored linen suit and a striped tie, which likely indicated membership in something or other, and DeHaan sensed there was more to the name—a title, honorific initials—so much a part of him they did not require mention. He stood easily, relaxed, before a wall of cacti in glazed urns, gestured toward a pair of cane chairs and said, “Shall we sit here?” Next to DeHaan’s chair was a table where a drink awaited him, along with a dish of almonds.

“I’m over from Gibraltar,” Hallowes said as they settled themselves. “I’d have had you come there but it’s a difficult place to meet, anyone going in or out from the mainland is carefully watched, openly by the Spaniards, covertly by the Germans—they like to believe, so my friends allow me the use of their house.”

“One could do worse,” DeHaan said.

“Yes, quite.”

DeHaan had a sip of his drink, some kind of golden aperitif that tasted of herbs and secret recipes—the taste elusive, but very good.

“So,” Hallowes said. “Were you banged up on Crete?”

“Not too badly. Some damage to the hull, lost all our glass, but nothing we can’t fix. We had one AB knocked cold, two seamen deserted in Alexandria, when they saw the cargo, and our assistant cook was shot during the raid.”

“Morale good, even so?”

“Yes, even so.”

“Ready for more, then.”

“I’d say we are. Is it all over now, Crete?”

“Yes, all over. We evacuated everybody we could, but more than ten thousand were taken prisoner. However, they lost seven thousand men, so it was quite expensive for them. They took a chance, because they feared we’d use the airbases to raid the Roumanian oilfields, and they got what they wanted, but they did pay dearly. We hope that means they won’t try the same thing on Malta, because we really must have it—if we can’t disrupt their supply lines, there’ll be hell to pay in North Africa.”

Outside, a gardener in a straw hat began to sprinkle water on a potted geranium.

“Speaking of airbases,” DeHaan said, “we thought we’d have air cover, in Crete.”

“Yes, well, that’s the problem—the Mediterranean problem. It was difficult on Crete, but, frankly, it’s worse on Malta. All they had there, the first year, were three Gloster Gladiators, little biplanes, and much cherished, called
Faith, Hope,
and
Charity
. They’d been discovered in crates, in the hold of an aircraft carrier, and they were valiant. Unfortunately, only
Faith
survives.”

“Can you get a convoy in?”

“We’ve tried, and will again, but the rate of loss is fifty percent. In any event, that’s not where you’re going—we have bigger things in mind for you. To begin with, we plan to turn you back into the
Santa Rosa
. At the stroke of midnight, you know, abracadabra.”

It wasn’t much of a joke, but DeHaan managed a smile. “Isn’t somebody going to
notice,
one of these days? That there are two of us?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t concern myself about that,” Hallowes said. “Anyhow, this will be the
Santa Rosa
’s final voyage, and, when it’s over, well, then we’ll see. What comes next.”

Hallowes waited, but DeHaan just finished his drink. He had, for a moment, a whiff of dj vu, as though this had happened before, perhaps the Dutch captain of a seventy-four-gun ship-of-the-line meeting with a British admiral, as they laid plans to fight Germany, Spain, France, whoever it was that year. Finally DeHaan said, “This voyage, in the Mediterranean?”

“Baltic.”

“Up there.”

“Yes, that’s right. Part of our scheme of high-frequency direction finding, HF/DF, we say, or Huff-Duff, like the Americans. Silly sounding but very real, and crucial now, for my people. We can destroy them, if we can find them, and we’ve got to get better at that, and right away. The numbers are ‘most secret’—that’s always the way with numbers isn’t it—but I don’t mind telling you that we’ve lost over sixteen hundred merchant ships since 1939, half to submarines, and if we can’t get our fixes, on their planes, U-boats, warships, faster and better, we’ll starve as the guns go silent.”

Hallowes finished his drink and called out, “Escobar?”

DeHaan could hear him, shuffling through the adjoining rooms. Hallowes ordered two more aperitifs. “I mean, why not, right?”

When the servant had left, DeHaan said, “And the details?”

“Being made final, as we sit here. To be transmitted by courier—no W/T for this operation, so expect him. Meanwhile, make sure you’re well fitted out: oil, water, food, everything. And if the Tangier chandlers can’t help you, let us know about it.”

“We can top off. We will have to, for the Baltic, that’s thirty-five hundred miles, but they took good care of us in Alexandria, your people saw to that, Dickie, and so forth.”

“I’m sure they did,” he said, pleased. Then, “And so forth?”

“Well, the people at the base.”

“Oh.”

“Out of curiosity, why are you using a freighter? Isn’t this sort of thing done by airdrop?”

“What we’re moving is too big, Captain. Antenna masts, forty feet high, specially fitted trucks, and the reception equipment itself is delicate, and heavy, the worst of all combinations, so it can’t be trusted to parachutes. And, there is a lot of it—we want a coastal observation station, fully mounted. That means they’ll listen to all the frequencies, not only HF, but VHF, UHF—produced by sparks from spark plugs jumping to magnetos in aircraft engines, and the low end as well, because some German ships, disguised merchant raiders, are using Hagenuk radio, an ultra-shortwave system with a range of only a hundred miles, and, with our present stations, we can’t hear them. Anyhow, even at night, it would be difficult for intrusion aircraft. Big German radars, up in that part of the world, so what we need is the rusty old tramp, rusty old
neutral
tramp, helpless and slow, wandering the seven seas to make a few pesetas for the owner.”

DeHaan was silent for a moment, then said, “All right, the Baltic. Not a big sea, as they go, but it takes in quite a few countries.”

“It does, and all of them difficult, at the present moment.”

Yes,
DeHaan thought,
that’s the word
. The USSR, and Finland, a German ally, just defeated in a war with the Russians, who’d occupied Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia a year earlier, Sweden neutral, Denmark occupied, and Germany itself.
Difficult.

“But it’s wiser just now,” Hallowes went on, “not to give out coordinates. If I were you, I’d expect the courier in a week or so, then you’ll know. You may even be, surprised.”

And far enough away so that if I yell you won’t hear it.

The servant arrived with the drinks, and Hallowes said, “You’ll stay for lunch?”

“
Espadon,
they call it.”

DeHaan took a second helping—a sweet, white-fleshed fish. “Best I’ve had in a long time,” he said. “Though, when it’s fresh caught, there isn’t much in the Mediterranean that isn’t good.”

“No, not much. Do you care for sea bream?”

“It can be strong.”

“That’s polite, Captain. A woman friend of mine calls it ‘Neptune’s terrible secret.’”

“Well, after a couple of months of canned herring . . .”

They went on, from this to that, luncheon talk, until they’d made their way through the second glass of wine and started on the third, then DeHaan said, “When I was in Alexandria, in fact with your man there, I happened to meet a woman.” He paused, waited for Hallowes.

Whose “Yes?”—when it finally arrived—was a little ragged at the edges.

“Ah, nobody you know, I suppose. Know about.”

Hallowes was relieved, the subject was espionage, not, not God-only-knew-what. “No, Captain, not our style, but not a bad idea to wonder, the way the world goes these days.”

“Well, I did wonder.”

“Not German, was she? Russian? Hungarian?”

“Local, I believe.”

“Mm. Still . . .”

The ferry wasn’t in when DeHaan was driven back to Algeciras, so Hallowes’s driver left him at the Reina Cristina, the city’s good hotel, where he could wait in the bar. DeHaan would have liked to walk around, but the infamous Andalusian wind was swirling dust in the streets and the city was poor and grim and vaguely sinister, so, the barman promising to let him know when the ferry made port, he sat at the bar, ordered a beer, and lit up a North State.

It had been foolish to ask Hallowes about Demetria, he realized, on two counts. First of all, Hallowes could easily have lied, maybe had lied, and second of all, she was lost, no matter who she was or what he felt. Still, he would have liked to know, because the night they’d spent together had stirred him and he wanted more.

But she was in the past, now, would remain a memory. When they’d told him at Sphakia that he’d be in convoy back to Tangier, not Alexandria, he’d understood that he would never see her again. He might have found a way to get a letter to her, if he’d been clever and had eight weeks, but what would he have said? Book passage on a local destroyer and come see me in Tangier? No, their morning coffee in the room at the Hotel Cecil, when at last they’d had to admit to themselves that they’d made all the love they could, had been a last meal.

Like the one with Arlette. Late April of 1940, tragedy on the way, only a few weeks left but nobody knew that. “Our last night,” she’d said. “You will take me to dinner.” She chose the restaurant, the Brasserie Heininger, down by the Place Bastille, and DeHaan had known it was a mistake the moment they entered. It was much too splendid, white marble and red banquettes and gold mirrors, lavishly mustached waiters rushing past with platters of
langouste
and
saucisson,
the tables jammed with smart Parisians, laughing and shouting and flirting and calling for more wine, all of them wildly overheated with war-is-coming fever.

Not for us, he’d thought. She’d asked him to wear his uniform, hat and all, and he had, while she’d squeezed into an emerald dress from some earlier, leaner time. And, there they stood, behind a velvet rope, a rueful DeHaan now too well aware that they were meant for the bistro, not the brasserie. While they waited, a handsome couple swept in the door, said something clever to the matre d’, and seated themselves. The matre d’s look was apologetic, but these were people who did what they liked. DeHaan, battered captain’s hat hidden, he hoped, beneath his arm, just tried to look like he didn’t care.

Then the
propritaire
showed up. He could have been no one else, short and harassed, waiting uneasily for whatever would go wrong next. But this—this he could fix. “I am Papa Heininger,” he told them. He never said a word about it, but DeHaan knew it was the uniform, even a merchant captain’s uniform, which, to him, meant something. “Table Fourteen, Andr,” he said to the matre d’, shooing him off. Then, to DeHaan, “Our best, Captain, for you and madame.”

And so it was. Every eye followed the procession to the holy table—who are
they
? With a flourish, the matre d’ whipped away the
rserv
card, then seated Arlette with dramatic care, clasped his hands maestro-style and said, “To begin, I think,
les Kirs Royales
? And champagne to follow, of course, yes?”

Yes, of course, what else. And, after that, the perfection of excess.
Choucroute,
sauerkraut with bacon, pork, and sausage, again
Royale,
which meant more champagne, poured over the sauerkraut—the Roederer he’d ordered just wasn’t enough. And, when the old lady who sold flowers in the street came walking among the tables, he bought Arlette a gardenia. She put it in her hair, snuffled a little, kissed him, was laughing again a moment later, excited, happy,
triste,
drunk on champagne, all the things she liked best and all at once.

As they waited for their coffee, DeHaan nodded at the mirrored wall above the banquette. “I might very well be wrong,” he said, “but that hole in the corner looks as though it was made by a bullet.”

“It was,” she said.

“Wouldn’t they, repair it?”

“Never! It’s famous.”

Well,
he thought, in the dim light of the Reina Cristina bar,
there would be more
.

He looked at his watch, where was the ferry? The barman brought him another beer. At a nearby table, two men were talking German. He could see them in the mirror; hard-faced types, smoking hard, coarse and loud and serious. A strange conversation, how some people got in
over their heads,
in
hot water,
didn’t know
what was good for them
. Almost as though it were a scene played for his benefit—they talked to each other, but they were really talking to him. One of them met his eyes in the mirror, lingered, then looked away. No, he thought, it’s nothing. Just this damned city, its harsh wind and shadowed streets, which had overheated his imagination.

Arlette, the brasserie.
“Now, home,” she’d whispered to him as
l’addition
arrived on its silver tray. A particularly Gallic twist to this bill, in DeHaan’s eyes, because it was much too low, the
Kirs Royales
and champagne nowhere to be found. They had been, it seemed, honored guests, but not
too
honored—one didn’t eat for free, that wasn’t honor, that was decadence.

By then it was very late, the tables mostly deserted, and the
propritaire
opened the door for them as they left, letting in the cool April night. DeHaan thanked him, the
propritaire
shook his hand and said,
“Au revoir, bientt.”

Goodby, we’ll see you soon.

1 June. Rue de la Marine, Tangier.

DeHaan found the office in a fine old building off the Petit Socco. A cage elevator moaned softly as it climbed, one slow foot at a time, to the third, the top floor where, down a long hallway of trading companies and shipping brokerages, a glass door said
M. J. HOEK
and, below a black line,
COMMERCE D’EXPORTATION
. Hoek’s secretary, a Frenchwoman in her forties, knew exactly who he was. “Ah, here you are—he’s been waiting for you.” She led him briskly down a corridor, trailing a strong scent of sweat and perfume. “Captain DeHaan,” she announced, opening the door to an inner office. A large room, lit by grand, cloudy windows that looked across the street to the Compagnie Belge de Transports Maritimes building, its name carved across the limestone cornice.