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.”
“Go get a bottle from the chartroom, if you like.”
“I will, in a minute. For now, I’ll just bother you.”
“No bother, I’m just finishing up a wire for Terhouven.”
“Ah, if he could only see us now. He’d shit.”
“I expect he would. How’s the work?”
“Miserable. We broke a cable, dropped ten bombs down on top of everything else.”
“They go off?”
“Seem not to have. Give ’em time, though. And, the midnight-watch crew was short two men.”
“You look for them?”
“I did, and gone they are.”
DeHaan swore.
“One of the Spaniards, and AB Vandermeer.”
“No, Vandermeer?”
“Tough little guy was not so tough, turns out. By now, he’s getting himself screwed cross-eyed, and means to stay alive. Will you turn them in?”
DeHaan thought about it. “No. Let them live with themselves. What about our doctor?”
“Hard at work, and very eager. Bandages, Mercurochrome, splinted up a crushed finger. Glad to be rid of that, Eric?”
“Maybe a little.”
“One of the men called him ‘the rabbi.’”
“To his face?”
“No.”
“You stop it?”
“I said, ‘You can call him that when he sews up your worthless hide, but until then, shut your fucking mouth.’
