Dark Full of Enemies

by Jordan M. Poss

  Stallings and Graves laughed, and McKay opened his eyes. He checked the time. They had been in the basement of Petersen’s house for four hours. He sat back again and saw Ollila, now seated in the far corner, his arms around his rifle, watching.

  They sat in the basement eight hours before McKay decided to leave. Petersen might have been arrested. German troops, the Gestapo following like ravens behind a Viking army, could be drawing a cordon around the house as they sat idle.

  He stood, took off his pistol belt, and picked up the Welrod and its magazine. Stallings and Graves looked up. Ollila, who sat sleeping in his corner, opened his eyes.

  “What are you doing?” Stallings said.

  “Sir,” McKay said, and grinned. He seated the magazine in the Welrod’s ugly metal slot and slapped it home. “I’m going to take a look around. Graves, you’re in charge.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “I’ll knock three times, slow, when I come back.”

  “What’s going on?” Stallings said.

  “He worries,” Ollila said from his corner. They looked at him. He shrugged. “He thinks maybe Petersen is a Quisling, or is arrested. I wonder too.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “That’s enough, Grove,” McKay said. “Yes, I’m having a look around. I don’t like it down here.” He stuffed the Welrod into the front of his jacket. “I’ll be back shortly.”

  He let himself out and stood alone in the dark stairwell. It was dim in the basement, but he still needed to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Late afternoon, and pitch black. With the sliver of moon down, everything lay even darker than before. After several minutes he could see individual stones in the wall of the stairwell and, if he leaned close to the stack of firewood, the grain in the rough hewn logs. He started up the stairs.

  The village bells had stopped ringing hours before but the church spire still glowed in the darkness. He stopped and listened for noise, but heard only the fjord. He went up the few stairs to the back door of the house and peeked in the windows, but all was dark inside. He climbed down and continued around the way he had first come.

  He moved close along the dark wooden walls of the house to reduce the chance that, with snow between him and the house, he could be picked out by the casual observer. He reached the front of the house. The wharf stood empty, reaching out a hundred feet into the water, and where it met the land there stood two small toolsheds. Probably all for fishing equipment, he thought. He realized then that they had crossed not a yard to get from the wharf to the house, but a snow-covered road. He looked left and right—the road ran along the edge of the fjord as far into the darkness as he could see. He squinted at the distant houses, saw a few dim, flickering lights in windows—candles—and continued.

  He crossed the front of the house and looked around. Two larger outbuildings stood on the other side of some open space, a sloping yard between them and the house. He briefly imagined the two Petersens playing on this slope as boys, and moved up the side of the house again. He reached a point at which he was sure the house and outbuilding shielded him from view on the road, both coming and going, and dashed across.

  The buildings had no locks on the doors, and he carefully opened them—wary of squealing hinges—and peered into the gloom. He could make out nothing, but both buildings stank of cold fish, wet rope, and rust. More fishing gear.

  He had just closed the door of the second building when he heard cars on the road.

  They came from the direction of the larger fjord, from Narvik, a pair of long dark cars with blackout headlights. They came slowly, slowly enough for McKay to hear the crunch of snow below their humming Mercedes engines. As soon as he heard them, he moved carefully to the building farther uphill from the road and squatted in its lee. He drew the Welrod, worked the bolt, and waited.

  The cars were within one hundred yards of him when he heard snow crunch behind him. He spun, dropped his finger to the trigger, and stopped. Stallings.

  “I had to take a—”

  McKay grabbed him by the front of his coat and threw him bodily into the snow behind the nearest outbuilding.

  “What the—”

  McKay tried to whisper Shut up, but all that came out was hiss and spit. Stallings understood.

  The cars neared and slowed. McKay lowered himself to the snow and inched his face—one eye—around the corner. He watched.

  The cars rolled to a stop near the house. Their paint, the flat German Army grey, showed a lightless black. They sat there, engines running, for what seemed minutes but may have been ten seconds. At last, a door opened—front passenger side of the lead car. A German in wool cap and overcoat got out without closing the door and trotted to the front of the house. McKay waited for him to reappear. When he did, it was around the corner of the house, moving uphill toward the outbuildings. McKay’s grip tightened on the Welrod.

  The German stopped after a few steps and looked up at the dark windows in the side of the house. He glanced around, and McKay looked at his own footprints in the snow. He swallowed. The German looked up at the house again, turned, and walked back to the car. He shrugged at the driver as he walked through the headlights and said, just loud enough for McKay to hear, “Petersen. Not here.” He climbed in and the cars moved on.

  McKay exhaled and realized he had been holding his breath. He listened as the cars moved away, listened for a sudden downshift or stop, and was only satisfied that they had moved on when he could see their headlights play against the snow along the road far beyond the house.

  He turned on Stallings, grabbed him by the coat and shook.

  “Grove, what the holy hell—”

  “I had to—”

  “Get back in the fucking basement. What the—”

  Stallings slapped at his arms. His eyes were wide. “I hear something else.”

  McKay stopped and listened—the Germans had turned around, or troops approached now on foot, or a tank battalion groaned toward them. But instead he heard, faintly at first across the water, the tonk-tonk-tonk of the Hardråde.

  He stood cross-armed in Petersen’s kitchen, a cold wood-paneled room with a sink and wood-burning stove. It should have reminded him of home.

  Petersen sat at a table by himself, eating cold sausage, half a potato, and drinking whiskey from the bottle. Their only light came from a few candles on the table and countertops, and a dull red glow from the rim of the stove door.

  They had kept silent for some time. McKay had sent Stallings back to the basement—giving him just enough time to piss beside the woodpile—and waited for the boat to arrive. Then he had confronted Petersen on the wharf. Petersen had stood silent, inscrutable, and finally led McKay into the darkened house where he and his crew prepared food, took the first shares to the cellar, and devoured the rest. Now they slept comfortably belowdecks, in the ground floor, sharing a wall with McKay’s men but nothing more.

  “We need to talk.”

  Petersen chewed. “I have time now.”

  “Good.” McKay waited, but Petersen continued eating. “What were those Germans doing here?”

  “Fascism creates the police state,” Petersen said. “You know this.”

  McKay said nothing.

  Petersen looked at him, then looked at the plate again and forked a bite of sausage into his mouth. “They patrol occasionally, I mean. Had you remained in the cellar you would never have known.”

  McKay focused on remaining calm. He had lost his temper with Stallings again and felt guilty. Now he spoke with their contact in Norway, and despite his misgivings about everything so far, he could not risk a shouting match.

  “What happened in Narvik?”

  “Ah—that may have been why they came by. We were questioned, our papers checked, and the boat searched. Most thoroughly. And the Germans took their time about it.”

  That much is clear, McKay thought.

  “We had also to refuel,” Petersen said.

  “So you’d be ready for a trip to the
dam? Reconnaissance?”

  “Impossible.”

  “Why?”

  Petersen’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth, and he looked up. “Not possible.”

  “You know why I’m here,” McKay said. “I can’t do what I’ve been sent to do without intelligence.” Petersen snickered and McKay flushed for a moment at the pun. The man was mocking him now. He relaxed, loosened his arms from his chest, and tried again. “I understand that your crew needs rest. So does mine. But we’re here now and ready to go.”

  Petersen took his bite. McKay waited. He would say nothing else. When Petersen finally spoke, McKay marked a change in the man’s face. He looked ill.

  “All right,” Petersen said. “Tonight, 2200. But my men will not go ashore with you. Not again.”

  “Again?”

  Petersen flinched, as if he had bitten the inside of his cheek, but did not otherwise respond. “I will go with you—I know the ground—but no one else of my men. Is that clear?”

  “Outstanding,” McKay said. He sighed, satisfied. He did not feel triumph, but the dull gratification of one more obstacle out of thousands bypassed. He had not felt triumph in a long time. “I’ll bring one of my men. The other two will deliver the radio.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  “You have people for that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I figure you can make those arrangements. We’ll be ready at 2200.”

  Petersen had finished his meal and stood. He stared for a moment at the table, dabbing his mouth. McKay watched him.

  “I want you to remember,” Petersen said, “none of my men goes ashore with you.”

  “This is just a reconnaissance.”

  “I know, but remember that.” He looked hard at McKay, and pointed. “Not one.”

  McKay climbed down the stairs to the basement room. He had a lot to go over with the team before their departure in just a few hours. And he felt badly, for a moment, that he had lost his temper with Stallings again. He shook the thought away. Stallings could have gotten all of them killed. He had seen it happen before. Many times.

  He let himself into the basement. Only Ollila lay awake.

  “You did not knock,” he said, in German.

  McKay swore to himself. A smile flicked across Ollila’s face in the dim light and he closed his eyes.

  McKay sat. He still had the Welrod, now unloaded, in his coat. He took it out, removed the magazine entirely, and put it in its place. He looked at the team. Graves and Stallings had brought down two of the pallets and lay asleep on either side of the card table, which still sat on their bags. Ollila, it seemed, had not moved for hours, but lay sleeping, embracing his Mauser.

  McKay leaned back against the winerack, bit into the cold sausage, and thought ahead. He needed to wake them, give them orders, but he decided against it for the moment. Let them sleep, he thought. God knows I can’t.

  8

  He left Graves with Stallings for the delivery of the radio and chose Ollila to help reconnoiter the dam. At 2200, they parted ways, Stallings and Graves on foot with two Norwegians—neither known to them from Petersen’s crew—and McKay and Ollila aboard the Hardråde.

  He had had time to think about the German cars, about Stallings nearly getting them killed. He thought about the other concussions he had seen, about the strange behavior they had caused. He told Graves to keep an eye on Stallings, to report to him any oddities. Stallings was an electrical genius, he said, and any slips in the installation of the radio would be telling. If Stallings’s head trauma had been too severe, they would have to leave him out of the sabotage operation.

  McKay considered whether they should travel armed, and decided in favor of it. There was no reason for three people to be hiking the cliffs and mountains around the dam in the middle of the night. If caught, the Germans would know immediately why they were there. McKay brought his Thompson with one pouch of extra magazines, the Browning Hi-Power, the Welrod, and his ka-bar. Ollila brought his rifle and pistol. They left all other gear behind. Once on foot, they needed speed.

  The sky was clear, and the moon would wane into nothingness by the next night—the dark of the moon, the moment on the lunar calendar that all military planners hoped to begin assaults. He thought of the long foxhole nights on Guadalcanal, the kill zones that gradually filled with bodies in the dark, and thought about something else.

  They sailed slowly, taking their time, hoping to look unsuspicious. Grettisfjord reached ten miles south from Ofotfjord and lay about a mile across at its mouth. From there the mountains pressed quickly in on the fjord, narrowing it to a few thousand feet in places until reaching the neck where the dam stood, holding its tributary waters ransom for electricity. Beyond Grettisstad, there were no roads. Beyond Grettisstad, there were no more towns or villages. Beyond Grettisstad there was only the dam, the power station, the railway, and the garrisons that guarded them.

  At least, McKay had thought there were no villages. But only three miles up the fjord, on the western bank, opposite the one occupied by Grettisstad, lay a dark spot crumpled against the foot of the mountains.

  McKay stood on the deck with Magnus, Petersen’s mechanical expert, and Ollila. They had left their weapons in the wheelhouse so they could move freely about the boat. He squinted at the shore. He could see just well enough by the thin light of the moon to walk the deck without hurting himself, and to make out the mountains, the deep, black, still waters of the fjord, and the dark patch of land on the bank.

  He leaned toward Magnus and pointed. “What is that?”

  Magnus knew no English, so McKay tried German. Whether he understood or not, McKay could not tell. Magnus shook his head, turned, and looked for something to do.

  McKay looked at Ollila. Ollila said nothing

  McKay watched the dark place as they moved, the slow glide of the boat giving his perspective more depth in the darkness. He saw dark uprights among the mass, and for a moment thought it could have been the remains of a stand of trees, all burned. Rabun County had had its share of forest fires—he knew in his guts what the aftermath looked like. And then he recognized, among the rubble, the blackened jag of a church tower.

  “It’s a town,” he said to Ollila. He spoke softly, both afraid that his voice would carry across the fjord to unwelcome listeners and aware that he looked on something terrible.

  Ollila looked closely and said nothing.

  McKay brought out his binoculars and watched the burnt town as they passed it by. He could not be certain, but he counted ten or fifteen houses, a small clutch of buildings on a small square, and the church. All lay in ruins.

  He put his binoculars back in his case and climbed into the wheelhouse. Ollila followed.

  Jørgen stood at the wheel, smoking. He glanced at them when they entered. Petersen himself stood silent in the corner of the wheelhouse. McKay waited for Ollila to slide the door shut and removed his knit cap and gloves. He leaned against the bulkhead opposite Petersen. Petersen looked at them and said nothing.

  “There was a town,” McKay said, and pointed back with his thumb, “we just passed. Completely burnt out.”

  “Yes.”

  McKay noticed Jørgen look back over his shoulder and then concentrate hard on the wheel, as though navigating the Strait of Magellan. He sought, for a moment, the name of the Pequod’s helmsman and then shook off the distraction.

  “What happened there?”

  “Just a fire,” Petersen said, and righted himself from the wheelhouse bulkhead. “If you will excuse me, I must inspect the engine. I believe I saw Magnus climbing down to it a moment ago.”

  He left and shut the door.

  McKay looked at Ollila again, and the Finn, again, said nothing. He would have to find a way to make the man talk. He sat and decided to try Jørgen, whom he probably should have tried talking to in the first place.

  He regretted it almost immediately. The seminarian turned the conversation to theology, with occasional asides about the qu
ality of American women, and seemed content to smoke and talk predestination, election, Barth and St. Paul for the rest of the trip. McKay wearied quickly. What theology he knew he had absorbed from the low church enthusiasms of the congregations in his county and from the religion-heavy sources of his medieval histories. Anselm and Ockham, he thought, may well have driven him from graduate school to the Marine Corps. McKay sat with Ollila and stared at the back of Jørgen’s head, and out through the black square of window at the front of the cabin.

  Jørgen had ventured into another story about his time chasing tail in New York when McKay first saw the glow.

  He stood and moved beside Jørgen. He made blinders with his hands and leaned forward until they touched the window.

  “You see it, eh?” Jørgen said.

  McKay did not move, but watched the glow solidify into a broad grey shape growing on the surface of the waters. “Is that the dam?”

  “As my brother would say, yes.”

  The Germans had begun leaving all the lights on in the dam complex just a few weeks earlier, Jørgen said. McKay asked why, and Jørgen said nothing for a while. He finally said he did not know. McKay doubted that.

  He climbed down to the deck. The cold air was bracing. After the storm the winds had fallen and the temperature slowly risen. He stood on the deck with Ollila and heard nothing but the lap of the water at the prow and the engine, lightly echoed back to them by the walls of the gorge.

  The dam still stood at least three miles off, but brilliant under its lights. The big lamps at the top of the dam looked like a string of Christmas lights at this distance, and the lights of the buildings on either side put off the diffused light of a sentimental Christmas card. He exhaled and watched his breath cloud. Just enough humidity for his breath to freeze, and to interfere with visibility.

  The engine throttled back and the Hardråde slowed. The boat drifted almost carelessly to starboard, and McKay saw, not far off, an opening in the mountain wall. As they neared the moonlight and the dim but far-cast lights of the dam showed gaps in cliffs and mountains where the fjord widened into craggy coves and inlets. Jørgen piloted the boat into one of these, and dark mountains drifted over the dam. But McKay could still see his goal, his target—the jags between him and his target stood rimlit yellow in the night.