Dark Full of Enemies

by Jordan M. Poss

  The darkness had begun to bother even him.

  McKay said nothing for some time. He had forgotten his sodden clothes, aching eyes, and exhaustion. Petersen spoke quietly as Jørgen piloted them toward the village. McKay listened.

  “We collected Keener and his men in the same fashion we collected you, the rendezvous with the submarine. There were more of them than of you. He brought a squad of six, half American and half English, I think. They did not—” Petersen paused. McKay waited. “They did not wear uniforms,” Petersen said. He took a breath. “They brought explosives and weapons, machine pistols like yours. This Keener, he was eager to begin. We brought them to their hiding place and secreted them there. We gave them time to plan and prepare. Keener asked me to bring him to the dam, for a reconnaissance, like now. I could not, but… another fisherman did. He went to the dam three times as he prepared, and planned along with us.

  “At last the day came. He had his six, and he had ten more of our men—good men—to help him. They planned to sneak in the way we did tonight. Keener and his men would attack the dam, and our ten would stand watch in the hills. If the Germans came from the lower camp, by the railway, we would fight them off. If Keener was discovered, we would fire on the dam from above and so help Keener to escape.”

  McKay did not like that. He had thought of a plan along similar lines—the geography itself seemed to suggest it.

  “We loaded into the boat and sailed up the fjord,” Petersen said. “We landed and did exactly—exactly as we had planned. I was with them. I led our men, you see. In the hills.”

  “Yes,” McKay said.

  Petersen ran his hand over his head and rubbed his eyes. He sighed and pulled at his beard, as if in growing frustration. McKay knew something about bad memories. “What happened?” he said.

  Petersen raised his hands. “I don’t know. We did not see it, but suddenly there was shooting all around the dam. I was watching the lower camp when it happened, and when I crossed over the ridge to look at the dam I saw two dead men near the dam and more running away from it, toward the path up the mountain. The Germans chased them, and shot at them. When they shot one man, he exploded. It must have been the explosive he carried, but it astonished us. We opened fire, but it was dark and we could not tell who the Germans were and who our allies were. We fired at the men along the top of the dam, but that accomplished…” Petersen waved a hand and looked away. “The Germans began to shoot at us as well. We were in little danger—there were few of them, and they had only rifles and were shooting into the dark. But more left the lower camp immediately and rushed up the path toward us. I tried to see if Keener or any of his men were near, if any of them had made it, but I could see nothing. All I could see in the dark were the dam and the Germans and the two bodies in the snow, which I saw the Germans dragging away.

  “I told the men to fall back to the boat. We had to save ourselves. The mission had failed, you see? It was clear to me.”

  “I agree.”

  Petersen nodded. “We left in the—the nick of time.” Jørgen nodded at the wheel and McKay assumed this was an idiom the elder had learnt from the younger. “The Germans from the camp had almost reached us, they were very swift. I have thought that perhaps they were already on the path when they heard the shooting. I do not know.

  “The Germans on the path spotted us somehow—I do not know how, it was so dark—and fired at us. But we ran into the trees and made our way down to the fjord. The boat was waiting. Lars—the captain—had come round to shore immediately he heard the shooting. We boarded and escaped. All but one of us, you see.”

  McKay’s stomach knotted. No story in which a man was lost ever ended well. He thought of Guadalcanal, of missing men rediscovered days later, tortured and mutilated by the Japanese…

  “God,” he said.

  “The Germans had shot one of our men, the youngest of us. Gunnar was his name. Keener’s team had hidden in his family’s home before the attack. Only when we were returning on the boat did we find him missing. The Germans caught him.”

  “Then what?”

  He did not need to ask—he could have guessed.

  Petersen waved a hand. “I don’t know. They tortured him, probably. The Gestapo. The Gestapo were involved, I know, but no more. They had him, they had Keener and his squad—however many of them survived—and there was no hope of… of anything. Of rescuing them, or helping them escape. Nothing.”

  Petersen said no more for a while. McKay thought of Keener—bright, enthusiastic Keener, the perfect recruiter, who had found him in hospital with malaria and a wound only beginning to close into a scar. He thought of mountaineering with him, of being caught by an afternoon thunderstorm on the open rock of Rabun Bald. Keener had insisted they never attempt a climb again without consulting a barometer. He thought of Keener, who disliked Stallings but remained a friend, at least until Stallings’s end. Keener, probably dead.

  “How well did you know this Keener?”

  “We went to college together. Us and Stallings—the radio man.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m sorry about your man Gunnar. I know what that’s like.”

  Petersen looked at him. The eyes had frozen again, hardened almost to stone. His next question came flat, barely audible above the Hardråde’s engine and the creak of the wheel as Jørgen gently piloted them up the fjord. “You have lost men before?”

  “Yes.”

  “In battle?”

  McKay thought of the Canal, Edson’s Ridge. “Yes.”

  Something new edged Petersen’s voice. “And your family—have you lost family.”

  “No.”

  Petersen moved quickly, sprung from where he leaned against the bulkhead and struck out across the wheelhouse, opened the door, and began to climb down. “Follow me.”

  McKay, after a moment, did.

  Petersen led him to the bow of the boat. They stood in the dark and cold for a time as the mountain shores moved past. McKay felt his tiredness again, as a distraction. His eyes burned, his brow knitted until his head ached. His body numbed at the joints, as if trying to force him to a position of rest. He grew angry again—Petersen was trying to tell him something, dammit—and fought the exhaustion. He could sleep again when they had returned to Grettisstad, and once he had constructed and detailed a plan.

  Petersen pointed to one dark wall hemming the fjord. “There.”

  McKay looked into the dark and saw. Petersen pointed at the ruins they had passed on their way to the dam. Suddenly, McKay knew.

  “That is Hallensnes, Gunnar’s village. Look at it.”

  McKay did. He could not look away.

  “Gunnar was my sister’s son, my nephew. When the Germans captured him, they tortured him—I assume, you see, but it is a safe assumption. He was a boy in civilian clothing, caught fighting with American commandos in civilian clothing. You know what the Germans do to those they capture so?”

  “Yes.”

  “When the Nazis came, I was captured. They released me, told me to go and be a fisherman again. Forget fighting. But I and others sailed across the sea to fight. You know about this—the men in Shetland.”

  “Yes. We came from there.”

  “I was a leader in that. The Nazis knew but could not stop us. They did not know who we were. So they came to Lofoten. They burned down houses, sank boats, and sent men to the camps, whether they were guilty or not. And the Allies did nothing. In the south the Nazis did the same. They destroyed an entire village, killed the men and sent the rest into the camps. Still I led, I sailed back and forth and risked everything. Three months ago the English came in one of their bombing raids, and they bombed and sank a cargo ship, a Norwegian ship, clearly marked. They killed some Germans, yes, but also fifty Norwegians. Why? After that I nearly gave up hope, but then Keener came, and I continued as I had—I led. Which brings us here.”

  McKay looked at the ruins of Hallensnes, still fire-blackened and sooty despite the frail shroud of
snow.

  “Well,” Petersen said, “after they captured him they found where Gunnar lived, and where Keener and his men had got shelter before their raid. They came two days after the raid, the two Gestapo men—Flesch, one of Terboven’s men, sent up from the south just to oversee this case, and Fänger, both Nazi pigs. They brought soldiers from Narvik and even some of the dam’s soldiers.

  “They gathered everyone in the village in the square before the church, then separated the men, all men above fifteen. They turned their lorries on them to provide light. The soldiers from the dam went down the line to see if they could identify other criminals, as they said. They could not—of course. But the Gestapo did not need to do this. It was a cruel game. They knew who Gunnar’s family were and while all the people of the village stood in the snow in the square, the Gestapo searched Gunnar’s house. They found what they needed to.”

  Petersen fell silent. McKay looked at him, and then back at the village. He said nothing.

  “You know what they do in the east, in Poland, the Ukraine.”

  “I’ve heard stories.”

  Petersen did not reply for a moment. “They are not stories.

  “In the lamps of the trucks they shot all the men of the village. Twenty in all. Not with a volley, but with pistols, in the head. They shot them in front of the women. They left the bodies there and marched all the women and children out of the village before putting them on the lorries. They took all the livestock and food, everything they could use. Then they burned everything. The church and all the houses. They set the fishing boats alight and pushed them out into the fjord. They put bombs in some of the houses to make sure they left only ash and rubble. The ruins smoked and glowed for a week. I could see it, always, from my house. The Nazis announced that—” Petersen assumed a stilted, official voice, remembering the decree “—access to the former site of the village Hallensnes is strictly forbidden.” He looked at McKay. “Anyone caught in the ruins would be shot.”

  McKay said nothing. He waited.

  “They put the women on trains at the Grettisfjord dam railhead. I am not sure, but—I think they were sent into camps, in Germany.

  “My nephew is dead, you see? His father as well. My sister I cannot hope to see again. And I had many friends in Hallensnes. And what, Captain McKay—”

  But Petersen said nothing more.

  The village had passed them by, silent on the strand, as Petersen spoke. McKay had watched it go until it lay astern, and then he stared out over the fjord and listened. Neither said anything for a while, and finally Petersen turned and walked back to the wheelhouse, climbed up, and shut the door. McKay stood alone.

  He watched the water glide up to them and the prow part and turn it like furrows. He wondered idly how deep the black water plunged at this spot, how far down the Hallensnes fishermen’s boats sank once their heathen pyres had destroyed the decks and gunwales and welcomed the water.

  Ollila was beside him. It did not surprise him.

  “How long you been there?”

  “Not long.”

  “Sure.” McKay ached all over. “You hear any of what Petersen told me?”

  “No,” Ollila said. “I heard you talking, but heard none of it.”

  “That village—”

  “Yes. The Nazis burned it.”

  McKay looked at Ollila. Ollila shrugged.

  “I guessed.”

  McKay looked ahead. The lights of Grettisstad, visible as a glow against the mountains from a long way off, had hardened into shapes and motes of yellow. They would be back at Petersen’s soon.

  “We have to get this job done somehow,” McKay said. “And if the Norwegians won’t help us…”

  “I can march,” Ollila said.

  McKay grinned. “We need more men like you.”

  “What about the sick one?”

  “Who? Stallings?”

  Ollila took out and lit a cigarette. He paused a moment, and finally spoke in German. “He is not as well as you think. I am sure of it.”

  “We could leave him with Petersen.”

  “We may never come back for him—you know this.”

  Stallings posed a problem. Even without him, setting out overland from Grettisstad for the dam would prove difficult. McKay imagined them captured by the Germans at any stage of the raid—before, in the act, afterward, during the escape—and the consequences, not just for the team but for Stallings, and for Petersen, from whose basement the Germans would drag the concussed American. Then he imagined Stallings with them in the assault—passing out, collapsing, lapsing into the thousand-yard stare or simply standing up and walking around like some shellshocked Marines he had seen.

  McKay tried to rub the burning from his eyes. For a moment, he wished he drank.

  “I must talk with Petersen again.”

  Ollila returned to English. “Good luck,” he said.

  McKay waited in the cold below the wheelhouse door. They had nearly reached the Petersens’ wharf when the door opened and Petersen descended, without looking at him.

  “Hey,” McKay said.

  Petersen stopped and turned.

  “We can’t do this without you.”

  Petersen looked at him, leaned forward, and said, “I know.”

  He turned and walked toward the bow, where Magnus stood holding a line, awaiting the bump against the pier. McKay followed. He fought the tiredness, fought to stay calm, and felt himself losing.

  “What does that mean? ‘I know’?”

  “I was unclear?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  Jørgen cut the engine, and the boat glided toward the dock. Magnus swung the rope low on his arm, judging the distance.

  “No, you made it clear you won’t help.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re abandoning your duty.”

  Petersen spun on one heel and McKay cocked his arm—then stopped. Petersen looked at him, at the fist frozen beside his right ear, at him again.

  “Yes,” Petersen said. “No more of my men. No more Norwegians.”

  The boat came to rest against the piles, the old man tied them off, and Petersen raised himself from the gunwale to the planks of the pier. McKay took a breath and lowered, unstrung his arm. He flexed the fingers. His head ached. He needed rest. Perhaps, when he had slept, he could try Petersen again.

  Petersen, from the dock, said, “You might consider abandoning your duty yourself. Look what it has done to you.”

  McKay jumped up beside him. Somehow, Ollila appeared between the two, stepped in as smoothly as the Hardråde gliding powerless over the fjord. McKay stopped. He was furious, more furious than even a martinet like Commander Treat had made him. Ollila did not look at him, but made it clear he would not move until McKay had cooled. McKay took a breath again and pointed at Petersen.

  “You watch your goddamn mouth.”

  He stepped back, and Ollila handed him his pack and Thompson. Petersen stood, sphinx-like, watching. McKay slung his Thompson and started for the house, Ollila beside him. As they stepped off the dock, he called back to Petersen without turning.

  “Somebody’s got to fight this war.”

  Petersen did not respond, but McKay did not notice. He had spotted Stallings.

  Stallings stood in full view in front of the house, at the edge of the shore road. His arms hung limp. His face, in the darkness, was a mask, unreadable. McKay crossed the road at a trot.

  “Grove?”

  Stallings looked at him.

  “What’s going on?”

  Graves appeared from the deeper dark around the house and took Stallings’s shoulder.

  “Sorry, sir—we’ve been having a word with some of the lads inside and he stepped out for a piss. We’ve only just missed him, sir.”

  They slipped into the shadows and Graves led them up the back entrance into the kitchen. Two Norwegians sat at the table. They looked as grim as McKay felt. Now in the light, he marked Graves’s face, and Stalli
ngs’s as he sat and came around. Both looked worried.

  “What’s going on?” McKay said. He looked at Ollila. As before, the Finn seemed to have divined the dire news before anyone had spoken. “Graves?”

  Graves started to speak, but turned to the kitchen door. Petersen and Jørgen had stepped in. Jørgen sat at the table and would not look up. Petersen leaned against the doorpost and watched.

  “Graves,” McKay said. “What happened?”

  “Aye, sir. We—we went with the Norwegians here to set up the radio, right? We got it working all right. We made contact with the sub.”

  “And?”

  “Something’s gone tits up,” Graves said. “The blokes aboard the sub are spooked. They’re giving us twenty-four hours to finish the job, then they’re leaving.”

  10

  Something was up. Graves and Stallings, even during their escort to and from the house outside Narvik where they delivered the radio, had noted the activity in the channel. The Germans appeared to be on high alert, trembling with activity, preparing something big. The English-speaking Norwegian who greeted them in the tiny closet, waiting for Stallings’s training on the new equipment, confirmed—something had happened, or was happening, to the north, off the North Cape, even deeper into the arctic darkness than Narvik. The Germans were scrambling everything they had northward. But first, it would have to pass out of Ofotfjord, into the Vestfjorden, and either through or around Lofoten, joining vessels from farther south already underway. The Viking would be sitting, waiting, as an entire fleet steamed by.

  McKay did not swear—he was too tired. He thanked God, halfheartedly, that he had twenty-four hours and that Treat had not simply sailed away. He could thank Treat for that much, at least.