“That should have been your first question.”
Jens raises his hands. What else can he do? He’s not perfect; judging by what his wife said when he had to go underground he is quite far from perfect.
“Oh, that’s why you’re here.” Jens laughs. His big, round belly wobbles. “You figured I was the rat? Get a grip, young man.” The laughter comes to a sharp end. He leans forward, resting his hands on the table. “I know all of your real names. I know where you live—BB, you, and that hooker. If I was the informer, don’t you think the Germans would have showed up at your places? BB and I make up the core of this group. Remember that. Hell, if there’s anyone the Gestapo would love to get their hands on, it would be me!”
“I’m sorry,” Borge mumbles. “You’re right, of course.”
“Forget it.” The chair squeaks under his weight as he leans back. “We are all under pressure.”
“I’ve met a young man.”
“Oh, that’s your thing?”
Borge blushes. He flicks the ashes from his cigarette. “A smith apprentice. A smith could be of great use to us. We could make our own Sten guns. They do that in some of the other resistance groups … Holger Danske for instance.”
“A smith?” More schnapps.
“We need to test him, of course.”
“I’ve got a traitor who needs to be liquidated, a Hipo officer. I have done all the preparations. It could be an obvious way to test him.”
“He is very young.”
“Apprentices always are.”
“All right. I’ll take care of it.”
“No. It is better Alis K does that. Let me organize it with BB.”
4
Poul-Erik Smith gets up on the footstool and lifts the top off the stand drill. The noise inside the workshop is a constant pressure against his eardrums. In the back of the workshop one of the smiths is grinding welds, a couple of workmen are cutting thick iron plates with mechanical shears while the Master Smith and his oldest apprentice are hammering on a ventilation pipe made from two pieces of thin iron plate.
Every single thing you do inside a smith’s workshop is noisy. The eardrums are singing for a long time after the work day is done. Some nights, Poul-Erik can’t sleep from the humming and hissing in his ears.
He takes an angle iron off the wagon and switches on the stand drill. Behind him, the smith has started welding. Blue flashes like distant lightning illuminate the workshop.
Poul-Erik presses the drill down into the marked spot on the angle iron. The hot drill cuttings dance up from the hole as the drill pierces the iron. He swallows the pain, clenching the angle iron with his left hand as the drill cuttings burn the skin on his hand. If the drill gets stuck, he has to be able to hold onto the iron. If it slips, it can cut him in half. There is not time to use clamps or anything else to secure the piece. Besides that, nobody tightens anything just to drill with a tiny five millimeter drill according to the Master Smith.
There are two hundred angle irons to drill. Soon his thoughts start to wander while his hands do the job. New angle iron, drill a hole in one end, drill a hole in the other end, put it away, repeat.
Poul-Erik’s mother is more than happy for this apprenticeship. He should be glad to even have a job, she says. He could have been forced to go to Germany to get work, like his father. She also takes most of his salary—for the little ones. We all have to do our share; or else it won’t do.
However, Poul-Erik has too many thoughts inside his head. He can’t just stand here and drill holes as the world is fighting the Great War. He feels useless and misused at the same time. He needs more than a shitty job and a shitty paycheck and the constant beatings from the smiths.
The smith’s big hand slams the side of his head—he didn’t even hear him coming! The force from the blow causes him to stumble, the terror filling him, as the angle iron drops to the concrete floor.
“What are you doing?” the smith yells, eyes watery and furious.
“I drill holes—” Poul-Erik answers, bowing his head in expectation of the next beating. It comes, hitting him on the other cheek.
“You drill holes?” the smith screams. His breath stinks. It’s ten in the morning and he is on his fifth beer.
“Yes.” Poul-Erik turns off the stand drill. “A five millimeter hole in both ends at the spots you’ve marked yourself.”
“Are you blind, you little piece of shit? It said three millimeter holes on the note.”
Poul-Erik goes for the note in his pocket, trying to keep his hands from shaking too much as he reads the note. The smith’s handwriting is close to unreadable, but it clearly says five millimeter. “Look,” he says, holding the note so the smith can see it.
“It says three millimeter. And don’t you get smart with me. You get what I’m saying?”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”
“How many did you drill?”
“Those.” Poul-Erik points at the stack on the floor.
The smith sighs. “That was not good. Did you get my beer?”
“No, not yet. I wanted to drill…”
“You are one sad excuse for an apprentice. Go get those beers and then I’ll talk to Master Smith about this shit.”
“Thank you.”
“Get the hell out of here.”
One of the other smiths shakes his head at him as he goes out to get the beers. It is tough to be the youngest apprentice. The only thing that makes it endurable is that, in a few months, a new kid will start here, and then he’ll be the one who gets all the beatings, has to get beer and sweep the floor at closing time and such.
There is a woman waiting at the tram stop by the grocery store as he stops the carrier bicycle on the sidewalk. She is looking at him. He blushes, he can feel it. He is not good with women. He is struggling with the bicycle outrigger, pretending she isn’t there, isn’t looking; but he can feel her eyes following him all the way inside the grocery store.
“I was beginning to think you weren’t coming at all,” the shopkeeper laughs, going straight for the usual crate of beer. “You are usually like clockwork.”
The woman is standing by the carrier bicycle when Poul-Erik exits the grocery store carrying the wooden beer crate containing fifty bottles.
“Are you Poul-Erik Smith?” she asks.
Poul-Erik nods his head without looking at her. He puts the crate on the carrier platform.
“We have a friend in common,” she says quietly, glancing down the street. “Borge.”
“B-Borge?” Poul-Erik mumbles. “He said nothing about women.”
“Have you got any plans for the evening?”
“I don’t trust Borge.”
“Why not?”
“He said something would happen last night, but I went past the Super garage this morning…and it was still there.”
“He said that?”
“Sure did.”
She remains quiet for a long time; just standing there, looking at the tram rumbling by. Poul-Erik glances at her while she looks away. He can’t decide what to do—stay or get the hell back to the workshop with the beer for the smiths.
“Meet me tonight, six o’clock sharp, at the gates of the municipal hospital. It is very important that you are precise. Not five minutes early, not five minutes late. In case I’m not there, you leave straight away. Got it?”
“Sure.”
She walks away without saying any more. Poul-Erik stares after her until she turns the corner a block down the street. Then he gets on the carrier bicycle and heads back to the workshop where he is greeted by the Master Smith with a smack to the side of his head. Fortunately, he will not have to pay for the ruined angle irons with his own salary…this time.
5
Silently, the rain is falling from a dark, gray sky. Borge rushes down the sidewalk with his hands deep in his pockets and a nervous pain in his stomach. Living underground, even walking the streets gets nerve-racking. You try to make yourself invisible, especially around you
r hideout. The neighbors can’t be allowed to notice your comings and goings. Anybody might be an informer. It is getting even harder to find a safe place to hide out during the day. People are afraid. There is a death penalty for hosting a wanted saboteur.
Borge stays in the attic of a small villa in Vanlose. In a quiet suburban street like this, it is almost impossible to go out in daylight without being spotted; he has to be extremely careful leaving or returning to the hideout during the day. He is hungry all the time.
He has been living underground since last year when the Germans captured most of his comrades in the Communist resistance group of which he had just become a member. The villa in Vanlose is his twelfth hiding place since then. He’s seen his family only twice in that time. It is too painful. His mother’s repeated cries—praying for him to flee to neutral Sweden.
Borge buys half a loaf of bread at a bakery in Osterbro and walks the streets towards the harbor, ripping pieces off and eating them. A factory producing parts for the caterpillars on the German Panzer tanks is located just outside that harbor. It has to go. He pulls the cap down low; fooling himself into believing that the cap is making him look a little like Lenin.
Two men in dark SS uniforms riding a motorcycle with sidecar pass by in the street. Borge fights the urge to look at them. He is fully equipped with false papers, even a fake gun license. Right now, the gun license is back in his attic hideout along with his Sten gun. It is easier to get past a German street raid without weapons. License or no license.
He lights a cigarette, inhaling the smoke as he wanders along. Not much tobacco in that one. It tastes like old newspapers and saw dust.
He heads towards the factory. Barbed wire and guards in bunkers. Dogs. He passes by. No stopping here. No too-obvious glances. He is just a regular Dane out for a walk.
They can’t sabotage this one alone. One of the other groups has to come along—the Communist group Bopa, maybe. It will take at least ten men to waste that factory.
A taxi slows down and stops at the curb a few meters ahead of him. He stiffens for a second, but he can’t turn around here. Not in front of the German guards. There is nowhere to run. So, he continues towards the waiting taxi.
Through the rain that washes down the rear windshield of the taxi, he gets a glimpse of a figure moving in the back seat. The back door swings open just as he reaches the taxi. He steps to the side to get around the open door, his pulse hammering in his ears.
“Borge!” a voice calls from within the taxi. “Get in!”
He stops and looks inside. Alis K. A hand in her pocket pointing something at him.
“What’s up?” he asks.
“Get in!”
He gets in. No need for more words. Alis K tells the driver to go, and the cab slowly starts to move.
“We’ll talk when we get there,” she says, and Borge nods his head.
The taxi goes north on Strandvejen following the coastline. Through the windows, Borge is watching the wet city go by. The grand villas of the rich, and behind them, the beach and Oresound, the narrow sound between Denmark and Sweden. He smokes one more of his terrible cigarettes. Doesn’t offer any to Alis K. She has still got her hand inside her pocket. Borge doesn’t like this. If she thinks he is the rat, informing the Germans of the hit on Super last night, she will kill him.
They drive in silence. The taxi crawls along the streets. Downhill it tops at 40 kilometers per hour. It is a gas generator car driving on gasses made from kindling wood, and this is top speed. Only the Hipo, the Germans, and some rescue vehicles are allowed the use of gasoline.
The taxi halts at Dyrehaven, the old hunting fields of the Renaissance Kings. Alis K pays the driver as they exit the taxi.
“The rain’s stopped,” she says as the taxi puffs away. “Let’s go for a walk in the woods.”
“What’s all this about, Alis K? I want an explanation.”
“You are the one who’s got something to explain.”
“Me?”
A royal stag crosses the path up ahead. The deer in these woods are used to humans. Alis K stops to look at it. “I talked to the smith apprentice today.” Her voice is calm. She doesn’t look at Borge.
“Hm,” Borge says. “He’s a good boy.”
“Maybe so.”
“He will be able to make Sten guns,” Borge says, unable to stand the silence. “We are always in need of decent guns. We can all have submachine guns.”
“He doesn’t trust you.”
“What?”
“I’m not sure, I trust you.” She starts to walk again.
“Now, listen …”
“Somebody ratted us out last night.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“At first I figured, it could’ve been Jens…but BB says no way.”
“Stop it!” Borge grabs her by the shoulders. “Now, you listen to me! I’m not an informer. I waited the whole night out at Jens’s hideout because I also figured it could’ve been him ratting us out.”
“How much did you tell the smith apprentice?”
Borge staggers. Looking away. “Fuck.”
“I just can’t comprehend, that you, Borge, of all people, couldn’t keep your mouth shut.”
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
“He knew we were to hit the garage last night. He drove past it this morning to see the destruction, but there wasn’t any destruction. That’s why he doesn’t trust you.”
“Listen, Alis K, I’m sorry. Maybe I was a little too keen on getting him into our group. It won’t happen again. If he is the one who betrayed us, I’ll take him out myself.” He lights a new cigarette. His hands shake.
“I don’t think he’s the informer.” She snatches the cigarettes, pulling one from the package herself. “Thank you.”
“It could’ve been him. He knew we were to sabotage the Super garage last night, but he doesn’t know who we are, or where we live. I’ll handle him.”
“He’s not the problem. The problem is you, Borge.” She looks him straight in the eye, placing the cigarette between her full lips.
“I haven’t told anybody else, Alis K. I promise. It was a stupid thing to do. A mistake.”
“Are you still capable of getting guns?”
“Maybe. I know a guy. It’s pistols from the Danish Army stolen from a weapons stock on Amager a few weeks ago.”
“Get me one for tonight.”
“You’re not planning to…”
“Your smith apprentice has to be tested. He is to kill the Hipo bastard as arranged. I’m meeting him at six o’clock by the gates of the municipal hospital.”
“What if he refuses? We’ve never forced anyone to terminate a traitor.”
“Then he’ll refuse and we won’t have anything to do with him ever again.”
Borge is glancing at the tall trees. The gray trunks. The gray sky above. The brown, dead leaves on the ground. Alis K’s green eyes. “I’ll get you a gun.”
“All right. Then let’s talk no more.” She turns to the left, taking a shortcut through the forest. “Come along, we have to take the train from Klampenborg station.”
“What if there’s a Gestapo roundup? Do you have a license for the thing you pointed at me from inside your pocket?”
“A license for what? My finger?”
6
BB is sitting in his study, staring at the blank piece of paper in the typewriter. He bites his lip, typing a few words.
We are gathered here today to pay our last respects to William Birkegaard Hansen. He will be remembered and missed, not only as an enterprising businessman, but also as a loving
BB halts in the middle of the sentence, letting his head fall back. “I am a hooker,” he whispers to the stucco on the ceiling. “I’m a fucking whore!”
He slowly pulls the paper from the typewriter, letting it drop down into the trash can. He feeds a new piece, turns the reel until the paper is placed correctly, and starts typing.
There is hardly anybod
y who will miss William Birkegaard Hansen, as he was an asshole if there ever was one. How often have we who live in this neighborhood heard the fighting taking place in his house, only to see the marks on his wife’s face the day after?
“You can’t say something like that, Johannes!” BB’s wife, Grete, says, placing a tray with coffee and cookies next to the typewriter. “It is a funeral after all.”
“The man’s a bastard anyway.”
“Sure, he was.” She stands there looking at him. Touches his neck. “I worry about you.”
“About me?”
“I am not blind, you know. I can see what you are doing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sneaking out at night. You think you’re so clever, but you’re not.” She pours a cup of coffee, handing it to him. “Either you’re a saboteur, Johannes, or you’ve got a mistress.”
“I can’t sleep at night,” he lies, gently taking her hand. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Sometimes I get up and go for a walk. It helps most of the time. That’s all it is.”
“Even when there’s a curfew?”
He drums a finger at the typewriter. Looking down the coffee cup. She’s been a good wife to him for many years. She’s so thin. Always has been. But nice tits. Light, almost white hair. At night she looks like a ghost in her white nightgown. Once, he used to kid her about that. Her hands are beautiful, and she lights up when she smiles with those cute dimples. Johannes fell in love with those dimples back in the day. Back then she smiled all the time. The reverend’s daughter from Struer. So well-behaved and nice. Wild in bed, though…and in the hay…and in the forest. How many years have passed? BB lets out a deep sigh.
“Yesterday I heard you talking to a man down at the church. I was out in the back. You were both whispering, but I could hear every single word. You were talking about a garage called Super. You were going to sabotage the garage last night.”
“You must have gotten something wrong there. We were talking about a broken gas generator. He was thinking they might be able to fix it at that garage.” BB gets up and walks to the heater to stir up the fire.
The Informer (Sabotage Group BB) Page 2