2040 Hours

Eddie Brennan watched the crew of the Léopoldville leave at six twenty-five, from the deck, where he had come back between trips to the hatch, and at first he didn't understand what he was seeing.

Sailors in knit caps, in work blues, one of them in a white jacket, started running around the boats on the upper deck. They untied ropes, turned cranks. A ship's officer went by shouting in their language, then in French, and they moved faster. The boats went down along the hull, one, two, three, with the sailors in them. The soldiers watched. Nobody had called them. Nobody was telling them to get in.