Dark Voyage by Alan Furst Read Free Book Online

weapons came out. “First knifes, later, ah,
fusiles
.”
    “Guns.”
    “Yes. So this.” Amado pulled up his pant leg and revealed the pucker scar.
    The Falangists held the radio room, the wardroom, and the officers’ mess, the Republicans had the bridge, the engine room, and the crew’s quarters, there were wounded on both sides, two seamen fatally stabbed, an officer shot dead. As night fell, the fighting subsided to a standoff—shouted insults answered by wild gunfire, then, at dawn, the Falangists sent out a distress call, which produced, a few         hours later, two
Kriegsmarine
patrol boats. When Amado, who fought on the Republican side, saw the swastika flags, he knew he was finished.
    But he wasn’t. Not quite.
    Officers and crew were taken under guard, the wounded patched up, the ship herded into Hamburg harbor. The Falangists, as fellow fascists, were released immediately, while the Republicans—“Bolsheviks, they call us”—were held at the port. German officials then wired the owner of the ship, who wired back an hour later and objected to the arrests: where, he asked, was he to find a replacement crew? Thus, after a day of questioning and a couple of broken noses, they let most of the Republicans go. “But three,” Amado said, “not come back.”
    What the Germans wanted, in fact, was not a few new inmates for their prisons, what they really wanted was the chromite ore, used to harden steel in various war machines—the cargo in the hold of the Spanish ship, and more in the future, all they could get.
    But Amado—maybe a ringleader and maybe not, DeHaan wasn’t sure—was not going to board that ship ever again. Which sailed without him, while Amado stayed at a seamen’s hostel in the Altstadt district, where, two months later, DeHaan found him. “Very bad, Hamburg,” Amado said, his face hardening at the memory of it.
    From DeHaan, a sympathetic nod, then, “Amado, our ship will be a Spanish ship, for a time.”
    Amado looked lost.
    DeHaan went to his cabin and returned with the paper parcel. He opened it, and when he showed Amado what it held, the man stared for a time, then his eyes lit up with understanding. “Ah!” he said. “I know this . . .”
    Amado didn’t have much English, DeHaan thought, but he certainly knew deception when he saw it. “That’s right,” DeHaan said. “And you”—he pointed for emphasis—“the captain.” He took off his cap and placed it on Amado’s head. “On the radio, yes? Or, or, when we need you.”
    Amado returned the cap with a rueful smile.
Not for the likes of me.
    “Can you do it?”
    “Yes, sir,” Amado said.
“Con gusto.”
With pleasure.
             
    The bumboat men arrived at dusk, pulling up to the ship’s side in an assortment of feluccas with striped awnings, and announcing their wares as they climbed up the steep gangway along the hull. Waiting for them on deck, Van Dyck, the bosun, and AB Scheldt, with folded arms and policeman’s clubs carried in loops on web belts.
    The bumboat men carried suitcases full of tobacco, matches, cigarette papers, French postcards, fruit, chocolate, chewing gum, buttons, thread, needles, writing paper, and stamps, which they spread out on blankets, everything just so. Then they squatted on their haunches and called out the great virtues, and demeaning prices, of their merchandise—these were not, and God was their witness, merely
stamps
. Business was brisk, DeHaan’s offer of money for small necessities had been enthusiastically taken up, and DeHaan himself, standing with Ratter and watching the show, felt compelled to buy a few things he didn’t need. He’d always liked Levantine bazaars—there was one in Alexandria where the stone corner at the base of a fountain had been worn to perfect roundness, over the centuries, by the brush of robes.
    When a young man with three women appeared on deck, Ratter said, “Never fails, does it.” One of the women was young, the