Free Dark Voyage by Alan Furst Page A

with your best oiler and fireman.”
    Kovacz nodded. “Boilers up full?”
    “Yes, ready to run for it.”
    “Run like hell,” Kovacz said with a grin. “Screw down the safety valve.”
    “Well, be ready to do it if you have to. Everything working?”
    From Kovacz, an eloquent shrug. “It works.”
    “Lifeboats in good shape?” DeHaan asked Ratter.
    “I’ll make sure of the water tanks. The chocolate ration’s missing, of course.”
    “Replace it. Davits, lines, blocks?”
    “I replaced a rotten line. Otherwise, all good.”
    The assistant cook knocked at the wardroom door, then entered. He was an Alsatian, short and plump, with a classic mustache, who looked, to DeHaan, like the dining-car steward he’d once been. “Patapouf,” DeHaan said, the word was French slang for
fatty
. “More coffee, please. Any dessert left from dinner?”
    “Some pudding, Captain.” A thick, potato-starch concoction with dried dates.
    “Anybody joining me?”
    There were no takers. “Just for me, then, Patapouf.”
    “Aye, Captain,” he said, and waddled off.
    The meeting lasted another twenty minutes, then DeHaan went back up to the bridge for a quiet watch. At 0400, when he returned to his cabin, he cranked the handle of his Victrola and put on his record of Mozart string quartets. He opened one of the drawers built into his bunk and, from beneath a sweater, withdrew a belt and holster, well spotted with mildew, which held a Browning GP35 automatic, made in Belgium. Firing a 9-millimeter Parabellum round, it was the standard-issue sidearm for the Dutch military, and served as the captain’s weapon, always to be found on a merchant ship. Three years earlier, when it had replaced an ancient revolver, DeHaan had thrown an empty tomato-sauce can off the stern and banged away at it until, evidently unharmed, it disappeared beneath the waves.
    He took a box of ammunition from the drawer, disengaged the magazine, and began pressing the oily bullets into the clip. Ratter had the other weapon on board—that he knew of, at any rate—a .303 Enfield rifle, which was kept in a locker in his cabin. When attacked by an enemy vessel, a freighter had only one tactic—to turn stern to, where it could accept the most damage without sinking, and try to run away. That, and the pistol and the rifle, completed the ship’s defensive array. Some British merchantmen were being outfitted with antiaircraft guns and small cannon but such martial measures were not for the likes of the
Noordendam,
and most certainly not for
Santa Rosa
. The Mozart, however, was scratchy but pleasant against the sound of the sea, and DeHaan found himself calm and contemplative as he armed for war.
             
    11 May, 2300 hours. Off Mostaganem, Algeria.
    DeHaan was sound asleep when somebody pounded on his door.
    “Yes? What?”
    A lookout opened the door and said, “Mr. Kees says for you to come to the bridge, sir. Right away, sir.”
    DeHaan managed to get his shirt and pants on, and went barefoot up to the bridge, the ladderway cold and wet as he climbed. Kees was waiting for him on the wing.
    “There’s some damn thing out there,” Kees said.
    DeHaan stared out into the rain and darkness, saw nothing. But, somewhere out to port, just astern, was the low rumble of an engine.
    “Smell it?” Kees said. “Diesel fumes, and no outline I can see.”
    A ship low to the water, with big engines that ran on diesel. DeHaan swore to himself—that could only be a submarine. Which could hide and fight beneath the sea but by preference attacked at night, at speed, on the surface, where it could run at sixteen knots instead of the underwater five. Kees and DeHaan walked to the stern and peered out into the gloom.
    “He’s stalking us,” Kees said.
    “We’re a neutral ship.”
    “He may not care, DeHaan, or maybe he knows better.”
    “Then he’ll demand surrender, and, if we try to run, he won’t waste a torpedo, he’ll sink us with his