McCutchan, Philip Convoy North

McCutchan sets this Commodore Kemp novel on the Murmansk Run, with Kemp directing his convoy's action from the bridge of the freighter S.S. HARDRAW CASTLE. Set in Dec. 1941, it becomes Kemp's unpleasant duty to pick up a captured German intelligence agent off the coast of Norway and then transport the agent to Russia -- an unpleasant task for Kemp because the Commodore had known the man socially before the war and Kemp also knows the fate awaiting his former acquaintance once the man has been turned over to the Soviet secret police.