“Can that actually be done?”
“Apparently it can. We suspect they’re using infrared searchlights, which can ‘see’ the heat of ship engines.”
DeHaan knew the span of nautical technology-there was hardly any aboard the Noordendam but it was still his job to know what there was. Even so, he had never heard the expression infrared. “What kind of searchlights, did you say?”
“Infrared. An invisible barrier, like a curtain, projected from both shores. Bolometers, Captain.” Sims almost smiled. “Sorry you asked?”
“I know about radio waves, radars, but, after that…”
“Goes back to the Great War, in Germany, they’ve been playing with it for a long time. But, now that I’ve told you, here’s my end of the bargain. If we manage to get technical equipment back to your ship, and something happens, to me, and my lieutenant, be a good fellow and make damn sure the thing finds its way to a British base. Will you do that?”
DeHaan said he would.
“There,” Sims said. “You see? All you needed was something more to think about.”
On the tenth of May, in the early evening, they passed through the Strait of Gibraltar. The mist and rain continued, but they steamed with running lights on, as a devil-may-care neutral ship would, and DeHaan could feel the telescopes and binoculars of the shore watch, British and German, French and Spanish, as they entered the Mediterranean.
DeHaan did not remain on the bridge for his midnight watch, instead, after a look at the charts, he left the helmsman to work alone and met with Ratter, Kees, and Kovacz in the wardroom. Ratter had the assistant cook produce coffee and a can of condensed milk, which he poured liberally into his mug while repeating the time- honored quatrain “No shit to pitch / No tits to twitch / Just punch a hole / In the sonofabitch,” then stirred it in with the end of a pencil.
“It looks like we’re going to be on time,” DeHaan said. “The twelfth, just before midnight. Sometime after that, the commandos go ashore. We’ll run them in as close as we dare, then drop anchor about two miles out, ship dark, and there we wait. The signal for return is two flashes of a green light, so we’ll have deckhands standing by to lower scramble nets.”
“And the gangway?”
“Might as well.”
“What if they don’t show up?” Kees said.
“We wait. For three days.”
For a moment, no one spoke. Then Ratter said, “Three days? Anchored off Tunisia?”
“We’ll be boarded,” Kees said.
DeHaan nodded.
Finally Kees said, “What about the weather?”
“Last report from Mr. Ali, the meteorological forecast for allied shipping, says that this system has settled in all over southern Europe, and is likely to continue.” The forecast came in code-the weather-report war one more small war within the big war.
“We want that, right?” Ratter said.
“I suppose we do. Anyhow, we’ll need to rework the watch list, so we have the best people at the helm, and on deck.”
“Vandermeer at the helm?” Kees said.
“No, on watch. Young eyes are better.”
“Schoener, then,” Ratter said.
“A German, for this?” Kees said.
“He’s right,” DeHaan said. “Use Ruysdal. He’s older, and steady.”
“Mr. Ali in the radio room?”
“As usual. But I want a good signalman, maybe Froemming, on deck with the Aldis lamp.” He meant the hand-operated, shuttered light that flashed messages.
DeHaan turned to Kovacz. As with many Poles, Kovacz’s second language was German, sufficiently fluent so that Dutch, the nautical part of the language at any rate, came easily to him. He was a little older than DeHaan, stooped and bearlike, with thinning curly hair and sunken, red-rimmed eyes. His speech, always deliberate, came in a deep, gravelly bass thickened by a heavy accent.
“Stas,” DeHaan said. “You take the engine room, with your best oiler and fireman.”
Kovacz nodded. “Boilers up full?”
“Yes, ready to run for it.”
“Run like hell,” Kovacz said with a grin. “Screw down the safety valve.”
“Well, be ready to do it if you have to. Everything working?”
From Kovacz, an eloquent shrug. “It works.”
“Lifeboats in good shape?” DeHaan asked Ratter.
“I’ll make sure of the water tanks. The chocolate ration’s missing, of course.”
“Replace it. Davits, lines, blocks?”
“I replaced a rotten line. Otherwise, all good.”
The assistant cook knocked at the wardroom door, then entered. He was an Alsatian, short and plump, with a classic mustache, who looked, to DeHaan, like the dining-car steward he’d once been. “Patapouf,” DeHaan said, the word was French slang for fatty. “More coffee, please. Any dessert left from dinner?”
“Some pudding, Captain.” A thick, potato-starch concoction with dried dates.
“Anybody joining me?”
There were no takers. “Just for me, then, Patapouf.”
“Aye, Captain,” he said, and waddled off.
The meeting lasted another twenty minutes, then DeHaan went back up to the bridge for a quiet watch. At 0400, when he returned to his cabin, he cranked the handle of his Victrola and put on his record of Mozart string quartets. He opened one of the drawers built into his bunk and, from beneath a sweater, withdrew a belt and holster, well spotted with mildew, which held a Browning GP35 automatic, made in Belgium. Firing a 9-millimeter Parabellum round, it was the standard-issue sidearm for the Dutch military, and served as the captain’s weapon, always to be found on a merchant ship. Three years earlier, when it had replaced an ancient revolver, DeHaan had thrown an empty tomato-sauce can off the stern and banged away at it until, evidently unharmed, it disappeared beneath the waves.
He took a box of ammunition from the drawer, disengaged the magazine, and began pressing the oily bullets into the clip. Ratter had the other weapon on board-that he knew of, at any rate-a. 303 Enfield rifle, which was kept in a locker in his cabin. When attacked by an enemy vessel, a freighter had only one tactic-to turn stern to, where it could accept the most damage without sinking, and try to run away. That, and the pistol and the rifle, completed the ship’s defensive array. Some British merchantmen were being outfitted with antiaircraft guns and small cannon but such martial measures were not for the likes of the Noordendam, and most certainly not for Santa Rosa. The Mozart, however, was scratchy but pleasant against the sound of the sea, and DeHaan found himself calm and contemplative as he armed for war.
11 May, 2300 hours. Off Mostaganem, Algeria.
DeHaan was sound asleep when somebody pounded on his door.
“Yes? What?”
A lookout opened the door and said, “Mr. Kees says for you to come to the bridge, sir. Right away, sir.”
DeHaan managed to get his shirt and pants on, and went barefoot up to the bridge, the ladderway cold and wet as he climbed. Kees was waiting for him on the wing.
“There’s some damn thing out there,” Kees said.
DeHaan stared out into the rain and darkness, saw nothing. But, somewhere out to port, just astern, was the low rumble of an engine.
“Smell it?” Kees said. “Diesel fumes, and no outline I can see.”
A ship low to the water, with big engines that ran on diesel. DeHaan swore to himself-that could only be a
