shipping newspaper published in Odessa, as well as for Ogonyok, the illustrated weekly, sometimes for Pravda, and occasionally for the European communist dailies. This was not conventionally a job for a woman, and Bromen was young, in her thirties, but she was, it turned out, determined and serious and knowledgeable about the shipping trade. DeHaan, too well aware of the Comintern-the agency in charge of subversion in the seamen’s unions, probably would not have met with her, but she’d found some way to get at Terhouven and he’d asked DeHaan to go ahead with it. “Tell her Hyperion is an enlightened employer,” he’d said. “We don’t ignore the welfare of our crews.” DeHaan had done his best. And, formal and rigorous at first, she’d relaxed as the interview proceeded, was, he realized, simply intent on doing her job, and not at all the Soviet sourpuss he’d expected. In the end, DeHaan was honest with her and, though he never saw the article, Terhouven had, and declared it “not so bad.”
DeHaan looked up from the letter and saw the rust-streaked hull of his ship, looming above the launch. Hallowes, he thought, the Germans at the Reina Cristina bar, his conversations with Hoek and Yacoub, now this. Why don’t you all go to hell and let me sail the seas.
The launch sounded two blasts on its horn and, eventually, the Noordendam ’s gangway was lowered a few feet, froze, was taken back up, then lowered again.
Over the next three days, business as usual. The crew was paid off and, after dire warnings from the officers to keep their yaps shut, went ashore and raised the usual hell, found the offerings on Tangier’s sexual bourse more than equal to their imaginations, then drifted back to the ship in twos and threes, pale and placid and hungover. At least they all came back, and DeHaan and Ratter were spared visits to the local jails. Shtern diagnosed an oiler’s fever as malaria, patched up two ABs after a fight in a bar, and treated their Greek soldier, Xanos, after he managed, while tending the lone active boiler, to have his shoe catch fire. “Don’t ask me,” Kovacz growled, “because I don’t know.” DeHaan granted himself leave, stayed in his cabin, read his books, played his records, and tried to keep the world on the other side of the door.
Where it stayed until the afternoon of the fifth, when Yacoub appeared with the news that Hoek wished to see him, and was waiting at his office. DeHaan knew what that meant, allowed himself one deep breath, then dog-eared the page in his book. Since the launch was already waiting, they returned to Tangier together.
In Hoek’s office, the windows rattled as the chergui, the local wind, blew hard from the east. After polite conversation, Hoek said, “Well, he’s here. Checked into the Villa de France last night. In Room Thirteen.”
DeHaan and Hoek exchanged a glance, but let it lie.
“Tonight, then,” DeHaan said.
“Yes. He’ll be waiting. According to my source at the hotel, he’s young, English, and carries only a briefcase. In short, he looks like a courier.”
“I guess they know what they’re doing.”
Hoek’s expression meant they’d better.
“As long as I’m here,” DeHaan said, “what do you think of this?” He handed Hoek the note from the Russian journalist.
“Christ, just what we needed,” Hoek said. “Russians.”
“Any chance it’s innocent?”
“Hardly. What’s she doing here?”
“They’re everywhere, in the ports. Just keeping up with the maritime news, is the way they put it.”
“In other words, spies.”
“Yes. What’s your opinion? I’m inclined to do nothing.”
Hoek thought it over, then said, “I’d see her.”
“You would?”
“To find out what it’s about, yes. If she’s trying to confirm something she’ll have to ask you-maybe over the river and through the woods, but she’ll get there.”
“Well,” DeHaan said. Why court trouble?
“Not responding is a kind of answer, you know.”
DeHaan nodded, still reluctant.
“It’s up to you,” Hoek said, “but if you see her, could you send a note with Yacoub?”
DeHaan said he would.
“Has he been any help?”
“He suggested a sailors’ bar-l’Ange Bleu. Maybe I’ll try it.”
“Might as well,” Hoek said. From the outer office came the sound of a teleprinter, tapping out a long message with a chime at the end of every line. Hoek looked at his watch. “So then,” he said, “you’ll be sailing right away.”
“In a few days, unless they’ve called it off.”
“They haven’t.”
DeHaan stood, and said, “I’d better walk over to the hotel. While they still have rooms.”
“Oh, it’s a big hotel,” Hoek said. “Of course, you know,” he paused, then said, “we may not see each other again.”
DeHaan didn’t answer, then said, “Not for a while.”
“No, not for a while.”
“Maybe when the war is over, I’ll be back. We’ll have another dinner,” DeHaan said. “With champagne.”
“Yes, a victory dinner.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“Oh, I expect we’ll win, sooner or later.”
“A lot to do, in the meantime.”
From Hoek, a very eloquent shrug, and the smile that went with it.
Then they said goodby.
At three in the afternoon, DeHaan checked into the Grand Htel Villa de France. It was, as Hoek had put it, a gaudy old whore-green marble lobby, bright rosy fabric on the furniture, gilt torchres on the walls by paintings of desert caravans. But it was also, unexpectedly, a quiet old whore. In the vast lobby there was only a single guest, an Arab in robe and burnoose, rattling his newspaper. And in the courtyard, when DeHaan got to his room and opened the French door, there was that curious hush of provincial hotels in the afternoon, broken only by twittering sparrows.
DeHaan tipped the bellboy, who’d carried his small canvas bag, waited a few minutes, then took the staircase to the floor below, and, down a long carpeted hallway, found Room 13. He knocked, discreetly, then, after a minute, knocked again. No answer. He returned to his room, hung his jacket in the closet, lay on the bed, and stared at the ceiling. Four o’clock, five. Tried again. No response. Was this the right room? He looked around, saw only closed doors up and down the silent corridor. Maybe the courier had other business in Tangier. DeHaan went back to the room.
By seven, the hotel had come to life. A piano, downstairs in the tearoom, began playing what sounded like songs of the Parisian boites, bouncy, almost marchlike. In the courtyard, doors opened and closed, somebody coughed, lights went on behind the drawn curtains. DeHaan, meanwhile, despite his status as clandestine operative, wanted dinner. But he had no intention of appearing in the dining room, so tried Room 13 once more, and, after listening at the door and hearing only silence, set off to find l’Ange Bleu. A more productive way to spend his time, he thought, than waiting in his room.
He had to ask directions but, in the heart of the medina, he eventually discovered the rue el Jdid, a street of wide steps, and, near the top, a bar with no sign. He entered, sat on a wooden stool and waited for the Moroccan barman, busy with a couple of patrons on the neighboring stools. The barman glanced at him, raised a finger, back in a minute, and came over to DeHaan, who ordered a beer and asked if there was anything to eat. No, nothing to eat, but the beer, a Spanish brand called Estrella de Levante, was dark and filling.
The barman returned to his other customers-sailors, DeHaan thought, one of whom resumed the telling, in English, American English, of what seemed to be a long and complicated story. “Now nobody on the ship knew what the cushmaker did,” he said, “but they didn’t want to let on, so they asked him what he needed, and he said he needed a metal shop and a lot of tin. Well they had that so they gave it to him and he seemed happy enough. Worked away in there day after day, welding that tin together. If anybody asked about it, they said ‘Oh, he’s just the cushmaker,’ but day after day they wondered, what’s he doing? Weeks went by, the whole ship waited. Finally, they saw he’d built a big ball of tin, all the seams welded real good, flat, you know? So next thing the cushmaker
