Dark Voyage -- Alan Furst

<b>"In the first nineteen months of European war, from September 1939 to March of 1941, the island nation of Britain and her allies lost, to U-boat, air, and sea attack, to mines and maritime disaster, one thousand five hundred and ninety-six merchant vessels. It was the job of the Intelligence Division of the Royal Navy to stop it, and so, on the last day of April 1941 . . ." <p/></b>May 1941. At four in the morning, a rust-streaked tramp freighter steams up the Tagus River to dock at the port of Lisbon. She is the <i>Santa Rosa</i>, she flies the flag of neutral Spain and is in Lisbon to load cork oak, tinned sardines, and drums of cooking oil bound for the Baltic port of Malm . <p/>But she is not the <i>Santa Rosa</i>. She is the <i>Noordendam</i>, a Dutch freighter. Under the command of Captain Eric DeHaan, she sails for the Intelligence Division of the British Royal Navy, and she will load detection equipment for a clandestine operation on the Swedish coast-a secret mission, a dark voyage.<br><i>A desperate voyage</i>. One more battle in the spy wars that rage through the back alleys of the ports, from elegant hotels to abandoned piers, in lonely desert outposts, and in the souks and caf s of North Africa. A battle for survival, as the merchant ships die at sea and Britain-the last opposition to Nazi German-slowly begins to starve. <p/><i>A voyage of flight</i>, a voyage of fugitives-for every soul aboard the <i>Noordendam</i>. The Polish engineer, the Greek stowaway, t