“Yes, a few. I had nine, two weeks ago, now I’m down to eight. One poor old bastard, that I used to play chess with, was run down by a truck as he was crossing the street. Either he was drunk, as he usually was, or he was murdered-how am I supposed to know? I’m an amateur, DeHaan, and this profession isn’t for amateurs. How long this war is going to last I don’t know, but I doubt I’ll see the end of it.”
“I think you will, Mijnheer Hoek, you are a very resourceful man. Which is why you were asked in the first place.”
“ I certainly thought I was, now I’m not so sure. Though we have made some progress. Mostly through the efforts of Wilhelm, who is magnificent, and three more women, two Dutch housewives and a Canadian nurse, all of them fearless.”
“What are they doing-if you can tell me that.”
“Why not? We spies can at least talk to each other, no? Here we’re in the real estate business-villas, coastal villas. We try to contact the owners, the agents, the servants, even the plumbers. Anybody who might know what goes on with the tenants. Who are sometimes German operatives, using the villas to keep watch on the Strait. They’ve got all sorts of infernal devices in these places, electronics, whatnot, telescopes that see at night. The trick is to get inside and look around, but it’s very difficult. These aren’t nice people, and they are suspicious-Mevrouw Doorn, the dentist’s wife, knocked on a door to ask for directions and got bitten by a guard dog. Still, they do have to leave, one can’t stay home forever, and, when they do, we watch them. Some of them wear Spanish uniforms, and they have Spanish friends. One thing I have learned is that old Franco isn’t as neutral as he likes to pretend.”
“And, once you know something?”
“We wire our friends, then it’s up to them. Last Wednesday, for example, the Chalet Mirador, out by the Cap Spartel lighthouse, just blew up-the whole thing went into the sea, and took a piece of the bluff with it.” Hoek paused, then said, “Probably not a kitchen fire.”
“No,” DeHaan said, “probably not.”
Hoek drummed his fingers on the desk blotter and turned his chair sideways so that he faced his wall of journals. “The things I never thought I’d do,” he said.
When he didn’t continue, DeHaan said, “You aren’t the only one, you know.”
Hoek turned his chair back to face DeHaan. “Yes,” he said, “I know.”
“There is something I need to do here,” DeHaan said. “What with the raid and the convoy, I’ve lost three people, so I have to hire crew in Tangier. And my way of being indirect, as you put it, will be to sign them on for a normal voyage and explain later, out at sea.”
“Cuts down on refusals.”
“That’s the theory.”
“Even so, it can’t be easy to hire people, these days.”
“It is not, but I have to try. Some of my crewmen are serving double watches, and that can’t go on indefinitely. Now as it happens, we may already have one replacement, because a day out of Sphakia we discovered we had a stowaway. He’d managed to sneak aboard, somehow, while we were unloading cargo, and hid in the paint locker, where a couple of my ABs found him. He tried to run away-where he thought he was going I can’t imagine- but they ran him down and tied him up with a rope.”
“A sailor?”
“Soldier. A Greek soldier. Somehow he got separated from his unit, or they were all killed-we’re really not sure what happened. He’s just a poor little man, half-starved. We can barely talk to him, because nobody speaks the language, but my engineering officer’s a good soul and he says he can make him an oiler. Otherwise, we’d have to turn him over to the police and there isn’t much to be gained, doing that.”
“A deserter,” Hoek said.
“Not everybody can face it,” DeHaan said. “He couldn’t. Anyhow, if I keep him, I need two more. At least that-I’d like five, but that’s not reality.”
Hoek thought for a moment, then said, “I might have somebody who can help you. He’s a young Moroccan, very sharp and ambitious. I suspect he’s mixed up with Istiqlal, but that might not be so bad, if you think it through.”
“What’s Istiqlal?”
“Our local Independence movement-out with the Spaniards and the French, then a free Moroccan state. His name is Yacoub.” He spelled it, then said, “Do I need to write it down?”
“No, I’ll remember. Yacoub is his first name?”
“Last. Say it anywhere on the waterfront and they’ll know who you mean. He works down at the Port of Tangier office, a clerk of some sort, but he knows everybody and gets things done. There are surely merchant sailors in Tangier-maybe they aren’t at the hiring hall-but if they can be found, Yacoub will find them. He’s a gold mine, and, according to the British, he can be trusted.”
“Thank you,” DeHaan said. “Now, about our courier.”
“Yes, the courier. He’s to be here for forty-eight hours-don’t ask me why because I don’t know-so he, or she, will need a hotel. Probably best not to be secretive-the local people seem to know everything, and that will only sharpen their interest-so, someplace busy, lots of coming and going, where they don’t think about the clientele too much as long as they overpay. In that case, it’s not a hard choice: the Grand Htel Villa de France, to give it its full name, which is that gaudy old whore up on the rue de Hollande. You know it?”
“I don’t.”
“Well you will. Probably you should take a room there, the night he arrives, because he can’t go anywhere near the ship-in fact, you can’t be seen together. Do ship captains do that? Take hotel rooms?”
“Sometimes, for a long stay in port.”
“That’s what I would do. Now I’ll take care of the reservation, once they wire me a name and a date, and then I’ll get the information to you.”
“By wireless?”
“No, by hand.”
DeHaan thought back over the details, then said, “All right, it sounds like it will work.”
“Yes, doesn’t it. It always does, until something goes wrong,” Hoek said, clearly amused by all the things that went, unforeseeably, wrong. “And now, Captain DeHaan, I must insist you take a coffee with me.”
“Well, I’d like some,” DeHaan said. Work on the Noordendam would go on without him, for the time being, and he’d never liked being on ships in port.
After Hoek sent his secretary out for coffee, DeHaan asked for news of home.
Hoek opened a drawer and handed him a long sheet of paper. At the top it said, in heavy black letters, Je Maintiendrai, “I will maintain,” the motto of the Dutch royal family. DeHaan knew what it was-a resistance newspaper. Printers had always flourished in Holland, so that aspect of the resistance, at least, was widespread and well rooted. “May I keep it?”
“Pass it along, when you’re done.”
“How did you get it?”
Hoek looked smug. “Oh, it just found its way,” he said. “They give the best news they can, which isn’t much. We’re not getting it like the Poles-the Germans want a quiet occupation, for their Aryan brethren, so sheep’s clothing is still the uniform of the day, but they are methodically destroying the country. All the food goes east, and, the way the Germans have things fixed, the money goes with it. Their attitude, when they win wars, has never changed- vae victis, they say, woe to the conquered.”
“I fear for my family,” DeHaan said. “It’s very hard to know about it, and to know there’s nothing you can do to help.”
“Yes, but ‘nothing’ is not quite what you’re doing, is it.” He leaned forward, and lowered his voice. “I have to tell you, Captain, that you should be careful, in this city. Because I believe they are in the early stages of knowing about us. Perhaps just bits and pieces, at the moment, a few papers on a desk somewhere and there are, no doubt, more pressing papers on that desk, but someone is working on it, and, when he’s satisfied, something will be done, and done quickly, and there won’t be time for discussion.”
“Months?”
“Maybe.”
“But not weeks. Or days.”
