I think he got the idea. What are you telling Terhouven?”
“We’re now in British hands-the dark side of the navy.”
“Not this convoy.”
“No, but if we don’t blow up, we will go places and do things.”
Ratter shook his head. “Stranger and stranger, isn’t it.”
DeHaan read back through the wire, and printed EMD at the bottom.
“But,” Ratter said, “now that I think about it, the last time I went to a Gypsy, she said something about mysteries. Shadows? Darkness? Something.”
“Did you, really?”
“You know, I actually did. In Macao, years ago. She was Russian, a redhead.”
“And?”
“She told my fortune. I thought maybe there would be more, but there wasn’t.”
DeHaan folded the paper in half. They would have to keep radio silence, once they were under way, so Mr. Ali would send it before they sailed. “We’re due to refuel, in a few hours,” he said. “Food and supplies, everything.”
“Until then, did you say something about a bottle?”
“Left-hand cabinet, third drawer down. Bring it in here, I’ll join you.”
23 May, 0300 hours. Port Administration Building.
In a small room in the basement, a briefing by the captain of the HMS Ellery, the destroyer that would lead the convoy. The masters of the four merchant ships took notes-key signals to be made by Aldis lamp or flag, zigzag course to make life harder for enemy submarines, meteorological report. The captain paced back and forth, sometimes pausing to scribble a number or a diagram on a blackboard, bits and pieces of chalk flying off as he wrote. Now and then, the two Greek captains looked at each other-what did he say? The first time it happened, the Canadian master of the Maud McDowell, a fat, white-haired old rogue, glanced over at DeHaan and cocked an eyebrow.
“The situation on Crete,” the destroyer captain said, “turns on the battle for the airfields, Maleme, Heraklion, and Retimo. The Germans have taken Maleme, and paid dearly for it, and continue to do so, under counterattack by a New Zealand division. We hold the port of Sphakia, on the south side of the island. It’s been a very hard fight, we’ve lost ships, and aircraft, but we’ve sunk one of their troop convoys-five thousand men-so the thing’s a long way from being over, and this convoy could make all the difference. Understood?”
The captains nodded.
“So then, to conclude, let me remind you again that the important thing is to keep your station-if you lag behind, we can’t help you. Understood?”
They understood.
“Very well, H-hour is oh-four-hundred, and off we go. Last chance for questions-anybody?”
No questions.
The captain laid down his chalk, picked up an eraser, and began to clean the board. When he was done, he turned and, for a moment, looked at them. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said.
0520 hours. At sea.
They sailed in a diamond pattern: the Ellery protected the left flank, the two Greek ships led, side by side, followed by Maud McDowell and Noordendam, the destroyer HMS Covington on the right. With Kees at the helm, DeHaan stood below the bridge and watched the Covington as she maneuvered.
She was, to DeHaan’s eye, a handsome thing. Long and gray, in the gray light of dawn, trailing white gulls as she slid through a gray sea studded with whitecaps. The canvas covers were off her guns and, from time to time, he could hear the sharp bark of an announcement over the Tannoy speakers. Restless, she altered course, angled a point or two east of the convoy, then, a minute later, swung back to the west. This in response, he supposed, to the ASDIC system, pinging away, searching for the echoes of submarines beneath the water. With thirty-four knots of speed to their eight, she was not unlike a border collie, patrolling back and forth, guarding her four fat sheep.
DeHaan was, that morning, particularly tuned to his engine, its pitch, its vibration in the deck beneath his feet. Now, even at eight knots, a speed dictated by the ancient Triton, it was laboring. Because Noordendam was clearly overloaded-holds full to the hatch covers with bombs and mines, the foredeck carrying the four tanks and the Hurricane fighter planes, the wind sighing, a strange, ghostly hum, as it blew across their wings.
Then, suddenly, the engine slowed. DeHaan froze for an instant, then ran up the ladder to the bridge, where Kees was already shouting down the voice tube. “What are you doing?” DeHaan said, taking the tube from Kees. Before he could answer, DeHaan heard Kovacz say, “.. get it done as soon as we can.” He didn’t wait to hear more, handed the device back to Kees, and headed for the engine room, four decks below.
He skidded down the ladderways, as various crewmen turned to look at him, eventually reaching the grilled platform at the top of the final ladder, thirty feet above the engine room. From there, he peered down through a haze of oily smoke, tinted red by the engine-room light. Below, a forest of pipes, three giant boilers, auxiliary engines, condensers, generators, pumps, and, its giant brass pistons now rising and falling at slow speed, the engine itself. It hurt to breathe down here, there was no air, only fumes-steam, singed rags, burning oil, scorched iron. Hot as hell, and louder, the noise of running machinery swelling to fill the huge iron vault and echoing back off the hull.
As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he saw the firemen and oilers gathered around the number three boiler, with Kovacz at the center, wielding a four-foot wrench. As DeHaan watched, Kovacz set the wrench on a thick pipe, a fireman grabbed the handle beside him, and together they hauled, trying to break the pipe loose from an elbow joint. DeHaan ran down the ladder.
Kovacz’s denim shirt was black with sweat, and a bright red scald mark ran up the inside of his forearm from wrist to elbow. In order to be heard, DeHaan had to shout. “Stas, how bad is it?”
Kovacz nodded toward the pipe and said, “Blew a fitting, so number three is shut down.” From a crack in the elbow joint, a plume of steam spurted ten feet in the air.
“Can we make eight knots?”
“Better not-we’ll have hell to pay with the other two.”
“How long, Stas?”
Kovacz didn’t bother to answer. Using a wet rag, which steamed as he grabbed the wheel on the head of the wrench, he tried to force it tighter on the pipe, then took hold of the handle. “On three,” he told the fireman, counted, and growled with effort as he thrust his weight downward. For a moment, his feet left the deck. “Psia krew,” he said in Polish. Dog’s blood.
An oiler appeared with a steel mallet and looked inquiringly at Kovacz. “Yes, try it.” The oiler swung the hammer back, paused, then banged it hard on the elbow fitting, trying to break the rust in the threads. Kovacz and the fireman tried again, but the pipe wouldn’t give. Kovacz left the wrench in place, put his hands on his knees and lowered his head. “All right,” he said, voice just rising above the din, “somebody go and get me the goddamn saw.” He stood back up, wiped some of the sweat off his face, and met DeHaan’s eyes. Sorry.
“Polish navy was never like this,” DeHaan said.
“The fuck it wasn’t.”
On deck, the AB serving as signalman was waiting for him. The rest of the convoy had moved away, but the Covington was standing close off their beam. From the wing of the destroyer’s bridge, an expertly operated Aldis lamp was flickering at them. “They want to know what’s wrong,” the signalman said.
“Make back, ‘Mechanical problem.’”
The signalman began to work the shutter on the lamp. When he was done, the Covington ’s signaller responded. “He says, ‘How long?’ sir.”
“I wish I knew,” DeHaan said.
“‘Unknown,’ sir?”
“Yes.”
As the message was completed, the Covington abruptly changed course and circled away from Noordendam, gaining speed as she moved.
The signalman said, “What’s she doing, sir?”
