Cook, B. E. "Emergency Assignment."

World War 2 convoy tale. An F.B.I. agent is posted aboard a merchant vessel — the fictitious freighter ANDELMANN — in an attempt to learn why the vessel has successfully made it through convoy after convoy when a great many other vessels in the convoys have been sunk. While waterfront spies had been initially suspected by the F.B.I., it turns out that actually “a nest of Axis” spies are aboard the ship and are gleaning vital information from her skipper’s personal diary. The captain’s codebook soon goes missing, and shortly thereafter the ANDELMANN is sunk. Happily for Cook’s plot, all of the suspects end up in the lifeboat in which the F.B.I. agent has taken charge (he had a Master’s license, you see, and had been acting as Third Officer aboard the freighter; yes, I’m sure there were lots of dual track F.B.I./ship’s officer agents in World War 2!). After a harrowing several days at sea in the small lifeboat — surprisingly well described by Cook — the agent collars the “Axis nest,” retrieves the stolen documents and kills the nest’s ring leader — the ship’s cook (an allusion to the author’s surname?).