sailed away, and we surrendered. We were humiliated, and, if we didn’t believe that, the British found ways to let us know it was true. In their eyes, we stood with the French, the Belgians, and the Danes-not the ‘brave but outmanned Greeks.’
“So now, in London, we are left to simmer in the exile stew-de Gaulle demands this, the Belgians want that, the Dutch navy turns the heat down and wears sweaters, because gas is expensive. Thank God, is all I can say, for our tugboat rescue service and for the ships of our merchant fleet, which sail, and are too often lost, in the Atlantic convoys. But Britain needs more-she needs America is what she really needs but they’re not ready to fight-and now she has decided, and we may have given her a little help in seeing it, that she needs us, D’Arblay Street, thus we need our friend Terhouven here, and we need you. Special missions, Lieutenant Commander DeHaan, at which you shall succeed. Thereby casting some very timely glory on Holland, the Royal Navy, and its beloved Section IIIA. So then, will it be ‘yes’ or ‘no’? ‘Maybe,’ unfortunately, is at present not available.”
DeHaan took a moment to answer. “Is the Noordendam to be armed?”
This was not a bad guess. Germany had armed merchant freighters and they’d been more than efficient. Sailing under false flags, with guns cleverly concealed, they approached unsuspecting ships, then showed their true colors, took the crews prisoner, and sank the ships or sent them off to Germany. One such raider had recently captured an entire Norwegian whaling fleet, which mattered because whale oil was converted to glycerine, used for explosives.
But Leiden smiled and shook his head. “Not that we wouldn’t like to, but no.”
“Well, of course I’ll do it, whatever it is,” DeHaan said. “What about my crew?”
“What about them? They serve on the Noordendam, under your command.”
DeHaan nodded, as though that were the answer. In fact, such business as Leiden had in mind was first of all secret, but sailors went ashore, got drunk, and told whores, or anybody in a bar, their life story.
Leiden leaned forward and lowered his voice- now the truth. “Look,” he said, “the fact is that all Dutch merchant ships that survived the invasion are to come under the control of what’s called the Netherlands Ministry of Shipping, and most will then be under the management of British companies, which would put the Noordendam in convoy on the Halifax run, or down around the Cape of Good Hope and up the Suez Canal to the British naval base at Alexandria. But that won’t happen because the Royal Dutch Navy has chartered her from the Hyperion Line, at a rate of one guilder a year, with a Dutch naval officer in command.”
DeHaan saw that Leiden and Terhouven were looking at him, waiting for a reaction. “Well, it seems we’ve been honored,” he said, meaning no irony at all. They truly had been, to be chosen in this way, though he suspected it would be honor bought at a high price.
“You have,” Terhouven said. Now live up to it.
“It’s not final,” Leiden said, “but there’s a good possibility that your sister ships will be run by British companies.”
“Lot of nerve, they have,” Terhouven said. “What’s the old saying-‘nation of pirates’?”
“Yes,” DeHaan said. “Like us.”
They all had a laugh out of that. “Well, it’s just for the duration,” Leiden said.
“No doubt,” Terhouven said sourly. The Netherlands Hyperion Line had come into existence in 1918, with Terhouven and his brother first chartering, then buying, at a very good price, a German freighter awarded as part of war reparations to France. Governments and shipowners, over the centuries, forever had their noses in each other’s business-bloody noses often the result.
“You’ve been at this a long time,” DeHaan said to Leiden.
“Since 1916, as a young ensign. I tried to get out, once or twice, but they wouldn’t let me go.”
This was not necessarily good news to DeHaan, who’d taken some comfort in Leiden’s being, from the look of him, an old seadog. But now Leiden went on to describe himself as “an old deskdog,” waiting a beat for a chuckle that never came.
“Haven’t been to sea all that much. Not at all, really,” Leiden said. Then smiled in recollection and added, “We never got out of Holland-six of us from the section-until August. Snuck down into Belgium one hot night and stole a little fishing smack, in Knokke-le-Zoute. Hardly any fuel in the damn thing-that’s how the Germans keep them on the leash-but there was a sail aboard and we managed to get it rigged. All of us were in uniform, mind you, because we didn’t want to get shot as spies if they caught us. We drifted around in the dark for a time-there was a good, heavy sea running that night-while our two amateur sailing enthusiasts had a, spirited discussion about which way to go. Then we realized what we looked like, ‘bathtub full of admirals’ somebody said, and we had to laugh. Office navy, that’s us.”
DeHaan glanced at Terhouven and saw that they’d both managed polite smiles-Leiden may have been “office navy” but they were not. Terhouven said, “Might as well kill this,” and shared out the last of the gin, while DeHaan fired up one of his cigars.
“All right,” Leiden said, acknowledging a comment that had not actually been spoken, “maybe we better get down to business.”
It was after two in the morning when they left the little room and walked back down the rue Raisuli, which had grown steeper during dinner. Terhouven and Leiden were staying at a private home near the Mendoubia gardens, while DeHaan was headed for the waterfront. It was a warm night, a spring night, with a breeze off the water and a certain lilt to the air, well known to the town’s poets but never named. Anyhow, the cats were out, and the radios turned down-likely out of consideration for the neighbors.
A man in a doorway, the hood of his djellaba up so that it shadowed his face, cleared his throat as they passed by and, when he had their attention, said, “Bonsoir, messieurs,” his voice cheerful and inviting. He hesitated a moment, as though they knew who he was and what he was there for, then said, “Messieurs? Le got franais, ou le got anglais?”
It took DeHaan a moment to think that through, while a puzzled Terhouven said, “Pardon?”
“Le got,” DeHaan said, “means taste, preference, and franais means that it is a woman you have a taste for.”
“Oh,” Terhouven said. “I see. Well, gentlemen, it’s on the Hyperion Line, if you care to make a night of it.”
“Another time, perhaps,” Leiden said.
They came, a few minutes later, to the rue es Seghin, where they would part company. Terhouven said goodby, adding that they might be able to meet the following day. Leiden shook hands with DeHaan and said, “Good luck, then.” He held DeHaan’s hand a moment longer, said, “We…” but did not go on. Finally he said, “Well, good luck,” and turned away. He was, as he’d been all night, bluff and brisk, professional, yet just for an instant there’d been an edge of emotion to him, as though he knew he would never see DeHaan again, and Terhouven’s glance, over the shoulder as he walked off, confirmed it.
DeHaan headed for the Bab el Marsa and the port. Le got hollandais, he thought. Drunk and lonely and sent off to die at sea. But he found that thought offensive and made himself take it back. In the North Atlantic, and everywhere in Europe, all sorts of people had their lives in their hands that night but there was always room for one more, and as to who would see the end of war and who wouldn’t, that was up to the stars. When DeHaan was fifteen, his father, captain of the schooner Helma J., had gone copra trading in the Celebes Sea, taking rafts up the jungle rivers, buying at native villages, bringing the copra out in burlap sacks. Then one day he went up the wrong river and was never seen again and, for a horribly awkward half hour, the head of the Helma J. syndicate had sat in their parlor in Rotterdam, staring at the floor, mumbling “poor man, poor man, his luck ran out,” and leaving an envelope on the hall table. One year later, through floods of his mother’s tears, DeHaan had gone to sea.
It was almost three in the morning by the time DeHaan reached the dock. The port launch was long ago tied up for the night but his chief mate had sent the Noordendam ’s cutter for him, crewed by two ABs, who wished him good evening and started the engine. DeHaan sat silent in the bow as they chugged off through the harbor swell, past dead fish and oil slicks lit by moonlight.
0800 Hrs. 4 May 1941. 3512? N/610? W, course SSW. Low cloud, light NE swell, w/wves 4/6 feet. No vessels sighted. All well on board. J. Ratter, First Officer.
For the time being, he thought, reading the first officer’s entry as he began the forenoon watch, which ran from eight to twelve in the morning. A traditional captain’s watch, like the four-to-eight, and the dreaded midwatch. Midnight to four, which called for endless mugs of coffee, as one stared into the night and waited for dawn, but he’d never sailed on a ship where it was any other way. At “the hour of the wolf,” when life flickered, and sometimes
