Master.
With his log entry completed, and Ratter taking the forenoon watch, DeHaan stood on the bridge wing with the AB lookout, who peered dutifully out into the gray mist through his binoculars, though he couldn’t see much of anything. DeHaan found his heart much eased, that morning-back at sea, back where he belonged, swaying with the roll of the ship, staring down at the foamy bow wave in gray Atlantic water. He didn’t mind the fog, which had its own smell, salty and damp-God’s own perfect air out here in the breeze. On the ocean liners, a few hours from landfall at the end of a voyage, passengers could always be counted on to ask the nearest steward about a certain unpleasant scent, decay perhaps, as the temperature climbed. “That’s land, sir,” the steward would say. “You can smell it long before you see it.”
From somewhere north of them, the low moan of a foghorn. On the other side of the bridge door, Ratter reached up and pulled the cord above his head and their own foghorn, just aft of the bridgehouse, gurgled for a moment, sent a steaming spurt of water onto the roof, then produced a great shuddering bellow that rattled the glass in the windows. DeHaan looked at his watch-a wardroom meeting, at nine, so he could stay on his bridge. The morning log entry was true enough, all was well on board as Noordendam, steady and determined, steamed west through the fog, easily making her knots with a following sea.
Maria Bromen was settled in Ratter’s cabin, next to his own, while his first officer had moved in with Kees. She’d taken a long shower the night before, DeHaan had listened to it through the bulkhead as he lay on his bunk and tried to read. A complicated story from Bromen, once she’d been seated in the cutter. She said that she and her refugee friend had returned to the shed just before eight o’clock, saw that someone had pried up the lock, and, without going inside, left in a hurry, going to the room of another refugee. There followed a nightmare-someone who had the use of a car would take her to the pier, but that someone, always at a certain caf, was not there, couldn’t be found, until it got so late he had to be found, and, finally, was, at last, though almost not in time.
But all’s well that ends well. In a few hours they would anchor for repainting, then, as Santa Rosa, dock at Lisbon on the evening of the ninth. For Bromen, a chance to slip away into the night. After leaving her at the coffee shop, the day before, he’d stopped at Barclay’s Bank and obtained a substantial packet of American dollars, so she would disembark with money to spend, and DeHaan could at least hope she would find a way to survive. It was possible, he thought. As Spain was technically neutral but slanted toward Germany, Portugal was neutral but a quiet ally of Britain, an alliance that went back to the fourteenth century. So Portuguese officials might look the other way, might not be so eager to please their German friends. Thus, with false papers and a little luck, she could wait out the war in Lisbon. As long as the Organyi didn’t find her. There he couldn’t be sure, because they were, it was said, everywhere, and relentless. Still, a chance. And maybe, with very good false papers and a great deal of luck, she might even get across the ocean. To a much safer place.
At 0900, a wardroom meeting. DeHaan presiding, with Ratter, Kees, Kovacz, Ali, Shtern, and Poulsen, the Danish fireman now serving as Kovacz’s provisional second engineer. Cornelius served coffee, it was almost like old times. Not like old times: a call at Lisbon for secret cargo-masts, lattice aerials, and three trucks, bound for Smygehuk, on the bare coast of southern Sweden.
“Past the German bases on the Norwegian coast?” Kees said. “Then the Skagerrak and the Kattegat? The Danish pinchpoint? Shit oh dear. Minefields and E-boats every inch of the way. Very well, let’s have a betting pool. I’m putting ten guilders we never see six-east longitude. Ratter? In?”
“Remember, we’re a Spanish freighter,” Ratter said bravely.
“And I’m Sinbad the Sailor.”
“It worked once.”
“By God’s grace and luck’s good hand, it worked. With Italians.”
“Please,” Shtern said, “what is the Kattegat?”
“The channel between Denmark and Sweden,” Kees said. “Kattegat means the cat’s hole-it’s very narrow.”
Under his breath, Ratter said, “And you would know.”
“Who’s waiting for us?” Kovacz said.
DeHaan shrugged. “A codename is all they gave me-could be anybody.”
“So the Swedes don’t know about it, right? Otherwise, we’d be hauling the stuff into Malm.”
“That’s how I read it,” DeHaan said.
“Or do they, perhaps, choose not to know,” Ali said.
“Neutral politics, Mr. Ali. Anything is possible.”
“When do we have to be off Sweden?” Kovacz said.
“Before dawn on the twenty-first.”
There was a pause while they calculated.
“We’ll just make it,” Kovacz said. “If we can get out of Lisbon by the eleventh.”
“It should be fast,” DeHaan said. “We’re supposed to pick up a manifest, for cork oak and whatnot, going up to Malm, but we don’t actually load anything.”
“After Sweden, what then?” Ratter said.
“Then we do go to Malm, for sawn pine boards headed down to Galway.”
After a moment, Ratter said, “Irish Free State, so, neutral to neutral, on a neutral vessel.”
“That’s the idea. But we get further instructions at sea-I would bet that means a British port.”
“And the end of the Santa Rosa, ” Kees said. “And then-convoys?”
DeHaan nodded. Bad, but no worse than what they’d been doing.
“Will we go down the Swedish side of the Kattegat?” Poulsen said.
“Of course,” DeHaan said. “I’m not sure it matters, but we’ll try.”
Kovacz said, “I can tell you it doesn’t matter. Not up in the Baltic-the Germans do whatever they like, and the Swedes don’t get in their way. Don’t dare. Otherwise, it’s blitzkrieg for them and they know it.”
Mr. Ali tapped his cigarette holder so that an ash fell into the ashtray. “He’s right.” And I can prove it. Clearly, from his expression, Mr. Ali had a story to tell, and they waited to hear it. “For instance,” he said, “just yesterday morning, there was a French ship, wiring back to the owner in Marseilles. In clear, this was-the two of them going back and forth. And, from what I could make out, they were taking wolframite ore up to Leningrad, but a patrol ran them into port and now they’re stuck there. Not allowed to leave.”
“Of course,” Ratter said. “That’s tungsten-armor plating, armor-piercing shells, very hard to get hold of, these days, so the Germans want it for themselves.”
“No doubt,” Kees said. “But the Soviets are supposed to be their allies.”
“Did the French ship give a reason?” DeHaan said.
“The owner asked, then the Germans cut them off. Jammed the frequency, and, when the French radioman moved up to another, they jammed him there.”
“That’s very strange,” DeHaan said. “If you think about it.”
“Not so strange,” Kovacz said. “They’re getting tired of each other.”
“Anything else on the radio?” DeHaan said. “BBC?”
“Not much new. The fighting in North Africa, and the death of the Kaiser, in Holland, after twenty-three years of exile.”
“Bravo,” Ratter said. “And may he roast in hell.”
“He never liked Hitler, you know,” Kees said.
“Said he didn’t. But his son’s an SS general-I’m sure he liked him.”
“Anything else, Mr. Ali?” DeHaan asked.
“Only the usual-Germans strengthening units at the Polish frontier.”
Kovacz and DeHaan exchanged a glance. “Here it comes,” Kovacz said.
5 June. Hotel Rialto, Tarragona.
S. Kolb lay on the tired old bed and tried to read the newspaper. A knowledge of French didn’t really help, with a Spanish paper, and the one he’d been given at the cinema was dense and difficult, just his rotten luck, with only a few photographs and no comics. Spain’s version of Le Monde, maybe, with long, thoughtful articles. He preferred being unable to read brief, sensational articles, in the working-class tabloids.
This might not have been such a bad hotel, he thought, once upon a time. Down on the nicer part of the waterfront, view of the Mediterranean, six stories high-the sort of place that might have been used by British
