“Who me?
“Yes, you.”
“I’ve never touched a pistol before.”
“Liar.”
“No!”
Glancing at him from the corner of her eye, she drums the wheel in silence. He’s pale…visibly shaken. “That pistol I gave you is a piece of crap. You can’t hit anything with it, not at that distance.”
Staring at her with tears in his blinking eyes, he says, “I did.”
Holding her breath, she spots a gray BMW with the SS license plates turning out on the street in front of them. She removes her foot from the accelerator to slow the van and get some space between the two cars. There are two men in the BMW. One is talking on the radio. She looks in the side mirror. Should she make a turn? In front of them the BMW’s now stopped at an intersection. She steps on the brakes, pulling up behind the SS car.
She glances at Willy. Sweat is dripping from his nose despite the cold. He is falling apart. Everybody has a point where they can’t take anymore—and he’s only sixteen years old. She drums the wheel with the tip of her fingers again.
She decides to make a turn at the next intersection, taking Falkoner Allé instead. She follows the BMW as it starts moving again. Feeling her heart pounding inside her chest, she makes the turn with one eye glued to the side mirror. The SS car seems to be heading straight ahead. Willy’s teeth start to chatter. Backing up, the BMW turns right. After them.
“Hold on,” she says to Willy as the BMW comes rushing up behind them. “I think—”
Then suddenly the BMW pulls over next to a tobacco shop and the two SS officers step out of the car.
Unable to breathe, she keeps staring in the side mirror for a long time.
“We better walk the rest of way,” she says, parking the van on a quiet side street.
10
Sitting under the floor lamp in the living room, Grete Bach Sørensen is sewing upholstery for a pillow when the telephone starts ringing. Putting the needlework aside, she goes out in the hall to answer the phone.
“At Reverend Sorensen’s.”
“Can I please talk to the reverend?” A woman’s voice.
“No. I’m sorry, he is busy at the moment. May I ask who is calling?”
“Please give him this message: The flowers not delivered. Infected by weeds. Four dandelions broken. All buds intact.”
“Is it the florist? We didn’t order any—”
“The flowers not delivered. Infected by weeds. Four dandelions broken. All buds intact.” The woman is gasping for breath.
“Well, if you say so. I’ll give him the message.”
“Please repeat the message.”
“What?”
“Repeat the message, please.”
“The dandelions need water. The buds are broken, but the flowers are intact.”
“No-no. Do you have a pen and paper?”
“I am a little busy myself. Can it wait?”
“Now listen! This is very important! I am a close friend of Johannes!”
“You—”
“Are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“The flowers not delivered. Infected by weeds. Four dandelions broken. All buds intact.”
Grete repeats the message without saying another word. The woman hangs up.
Staring at a spot on the tapestry for the next several minutes, Grete stands paralyzed beside the telephone. What is she going to do?
“Who was it?” Johannes is shouting from the toilet.
“Nobody,” she says.
She rushes back into the living room to continue sewing on her pillowcase. Working too quickly with the needle, she stabs her index finger. She wipes the tears from her eyes and licks the blood from her fingertip. She puts the needlework down on the table and heads out into the kitchen, where she moves some cans around before she goes to sit by the kitchen table, only to get up again instantly.
As she goes to the window to carefully lift the blackout curtains, she can hear the wind from outside. Unable to see anything but her own reflection, she lets the curtain fall back, and goes back to rearranging the cans.
11
Johannes can hear Grete rummaging about in the kitchen. The maid has the night off, so it can only be Grete.
He has had problems defecating for months, and he should, of course, see a doctor. However, it is too much of a risk to take. Having a collection of new scars on his body, he fears the doctor might start to wonder how he got them. If you are not sure whom you can trust, it is better not to trust anyone at all. The doctor could be an informer.
A fine scab has formed during the night on the gunshot wound from the hit on the Super garage. It has not bled that much. It is only a bit swollen and quite sore. It will be okay.
Careful not to touch the wound, he pulls up his trousers, fastens the belt, and flushes the toilet.
Grete is standing with her back to the kitchen sink looking at him as he makes his way into the kitchen. She’s crying. He halts, unable to decide what to do.
“Grete …” he says and stalls.
“Why is it we don’t have any children, Johannes?”
“That’s how the Lord wanted it to be.”
“The Lord?” She’s freezing. “I don’t believe in him anymore, Johannes. I just can’t.”
Unable to look at her, he scans the floor. There is a tiny bit of onion the maid must have dropped when she made dinner lying on the floorboards. He sighs deeply. Shrugs.
“I would have been so happy to give you children, Johannes.”
“I know. Don’t think about it. They make a mess and drag mud into the living room.”
She smiles, or at least tries. He puts his arms around her. Hiding herself inside his embrace, she starts sobbing like a baby.
Not understanding anything, he whispers, “Hush, hush,” into her hair.
“Do you remember the first time we met?” She untangles from his embrace to look at him.
“Of course I do.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Do you want me to tell you about it?” He frowns.
“Yes, tell me about the first time you saw me.”
“Grete …”
“Tell me.”
He thinks for a while. “Well, it was in Odense. You sang in the church choir. Your father had sent you off to serve in another reverend’s family. I studied theology at the university. I used to come to the church just to look at you. You were so beautiful. I felt all warm inside if I only got a glance of your smile. Those cute dimples.” He touches her cheeks softly.
“That wasn’t the first time.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No.”
“Oh, you’re thinking about the bakery. I remember your hands. You’ve always had beautiful hands.”
“I was there to pick up some bread for a funeral…” Even as she smiles, she looks tired, but the tears are gone. “Do you remember when it happened?”
“It must have been in the morning.”
“I meant the date.”
“Fall…definitely fall. I recall the yellowing leaves on the trees outside.”
“That was fifteen years ago last month.”
“Fifteen years?”
She goes to get the kettle. “Do you want a cup of coffee?”
“Sure.”
She lights a match and ignites the burners. “Fifteen years and no children, Johannes.” She fills water into the kettle and places it on the stove. Just standing there, she stares at the kettle.
“I haven’t finished writing my funeral eulogy for tomorrow,” Johannes says. “I’d better—”
“Johannes!”
“Listen, don’t think so much. It is not right for a woman. How is the pillowcase getting along?”
“The flowers not delivered. Infected by weeds. Four dandelions broken. All buds intact.”
“What are you saying?” He turns away to hide the expression on his face. This i
s not good. He is thinking faster than the German Messerschmitts can fly. Inside he’s shaking. He hopes it is only on the inside.
“A woman called on the telephone… She said she was a close friend of yours, Johannes.” She puts a hand on his shoulder. “What are you doing?”
He turns around. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“You were busy.”
“But this was important, goddammit!”
Stepping away from him, she turns to pour coffee into the coffee pot. “I’m so afraid,” she says. “I’ve got nothing left if I lose you.”
He’s getting a headache. Touches his forehead. “Sorry,” he mumbles.
“I know you too well,” she says without looking at him. “You can’t hide anything from me. You are involved with some kind of resistance group, and you have been for a long time. You think you’re so clever, but I can see right through you.”
He hides his shaking hands in his pockets. “I didn’t want to scare you. I was trying to protect you.”
The water boils. She kills the burner, lifting the kettle to pour the water into the coffee pot. “Now, you will tell me everything, Johannes,” she says calmly.
Shutting his eyes a couple of seconds, he fills his lungs. “That message you got for me was in code in case the operator was listening.”
She turns to look him in the eye. Strange as it might seem, she’s more beautiful than ever.
“Translated, it means, ‘The operation failed. The Germans or the Hipo was expecting them. Four bad guys dead, none of ours got hit.’”
She’s just standing there. He can see her throat move as she swallows something. Then she nods. “Continue.”
“It was the second time in a row they were expecting us. We’ve got an informer in our group.”
“Are the Germans coming here?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“There really aren’t that many people who knew about these two operations. It is only the inner circle. Myself, the woman on the phone, Jens—the man you overheard me having a conversation with yesterday in the church—and then another man. We all know the real identities of at least some of the others. It doesn’t add up.”
“What is the name of the woman on the telephone?”
“Alis K.”
“Is that her real name?”
“No.”
“Then what is her real name?”
“We don’t use real names. We only use our cover names, never the real names.”
“Do you know her real name?”
“Sure.”
“You’re not going to tell me?”
“It’s better if you don’t know.”
“What’s your cover name?”
“BB.”
“BB? What does that stand for?”
“Nothing. You can never tell anybody about any of this. Never ever. Promise me!”
“I’m your wife, Johannes. If you can’t trust me, who can you trust?” She finds two cups in the cabinet, placing them on the kitchen table. “Now, you sit down and tell me everything.”
“Everything?”
“When did it begin? What have you done? Everything.”
He sits down at the kitchen table, staring at his coffee cup. “It started last year. Jens was a police officer back then. He’d heard about the German plans to deport the Danish Jews to concentration camps in Poland, and he…came to me…”
“And you just said ‘yes’?”
“We could use the money.”
“Did you take money for saving the Jews?”
He sighs. “Sure. It was even quite expensive, but they had a lot of money, you know, and we did take a risk saving them.”
Pouring coffee into the cups, she goes to sit at the table herself, lifting an eyebrow.
“Jens knew a fisherman from Skane in Sweden who would anchor his boat on the coast near Charlottenlund up north. We saved the lives of a whole family that night. Children, parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, all sailed to safety in Sweden inside a little fisherman’s boat. Putting some pressure on the leader of a local smuggler gang, he made him lend us a small truck to transport the whole family of Jews to Charlottenlund.”
“Just the two of you?”
“No, there were four of us.”
“The other two were Alis K and that guy…you didn’t tell me his name?”
“Borge. No. It was another police officer and a porter from the state hospital.” He washes down the hot coffee, putting the cup down to touch his tongue. “I burned myself.”
She just stares at him. “Continue.”
“A few weeks went by, and Jens contacted me again. In the beginning, it was quite innocent, a guy from some resistance group needing to get away to safety in Sweden…that kind of thing. Later we started to blow up factories.”
“Have you killed anybody, Johannes?”
“Yes.”
“More than once?”
“Yes.”
“Oh my God.”
The kitchen is silent. You can hear the wind from outside. After a couple of long, quiet minutes, Johannes continues. “Just before Christmas last year, we were to sabotage a train for Norway carrying German weapons. The train was supposed to take the ferry from Elsinore, but the day before on the way to Elsinore, some wagons were to be detached at Svanemollen here in Copenhagen where the train would spend the night at a sidetrack. There were tanks, cannons, and different kinds of combat vehicles, all hidden under the green tarpaulins. We knew there would be guards, but …” Moving the empty coffee cup in circles, he looks at the lamp over the table. “We thought we would be able to outwit them.”
“I read about this in the newspaper,” Grete whispers. “Only two got away.”
“Jens and I.”
She takes his hand. “The porter from the state hospital and the other police officer …?”
“They died. Along with three other men who had joined our group. We were betrayed. The porter had told his girlfriend about the operation. They’d only just met each other. Jens shot her a week later.”
12
The darkness is complete and filled with strange noises. The wind bites through his clothes, numbing his ears.
Alis K sneaks up to monitor the street, pressing herself into the hedge as a motorcycle drives by.
Inside the garden, behind the hedge, Poul-Erik hides, his back against a tree. Shaking. The bark of the tree is rough and moist. The villa is a big, dark block in front of him. A car with a gas generator is parked in the driveway. He had never been to this part of the city before.
“Willy!” Alis K whispers. He follows her quietly out of the upper-class residential neighborhood, down dark side streets, through backyards, over wooden fences. He throws up in a basement shaft. Alis K lifts his head to look at him. “Are you okay?”
He nods.
“I think I’ll have to take you with me,” she says, half to herself. “You don’t look too good.”
Somewhere, a dog starts barking. She turns her head towards the sound. There’s a little blood under her nose. “Come on, I live just around the corner.”
Minutes later, Poul-Erik is sitting under a blanket on her big bed, holding a cup of warm tea in his hand. He is not shaking anymore.
Alis K has put her overcoat inside the wardrobe and is now inspecting her face in the mirror hanging over the small desk. The blackout curtains are stained by the steam from the cold windows. A fire is burning inside the small stove, but the room is still chilled. A red lamp is hanging from the wire under the ceiling. The walls are bare.
“Do you live here?” he asks.
“Sure do.” She dabs away the blood from under her nose with a piece of cotton. “We’re twelve girls living here in separate rooms along this corridor. It’s an old home for unmarried nurses.” She catches his eyes in the mirror and smiles. “Feeling better?”
He nods, but looks away.
She shakes her head, unwrapping her hair.
“I couldn’t sleep for three days after my first kill.” She walks to him. “You’re my hero now. You saved my life.”
His face gets all warm, and he bows his head, looking down into his tea. “I was so afraid,” he mutters. “I was so afraid.”
“Do you mind unhooking my dress?” She turns her back to him. Putting the tea cup down on the floor, he finds the hooks. “Everybody gets afraid,” she says, as he fumbles with the hooks. “You shouldn’t think like that.”
“I wasn’t even aiming. I just lifted the pistol and fired.”
She pulls the dress over her head. She has goose bumps on her arms and legs. Her nipples are hard under the thin fabric of her bra.
“But you didn’t shoot me! Don’t waste your time thinking about it.” She takes the duvet from the bed, wraps it around her body. “Let me have a sip of that tea.”
Silence fills the room as she drinks. A door slams in the corridor. A woman laughs.
“Did you tell anybody about the hit tonight?” she asks.
“No.”
“Not a single word? Not even by mistake?”
“No.”
“What about the hit last night?”
“The Super garage?”
“Yes. Did you tell anybody?”
“No.”
“It was a setup. It was a trap. They were expecting us. In the van. They knew we were coming. Only we got there a little early and took them by surprise.” She pulls a bent pack of cigarettes out from under the mattress. Lights one. “We would be dead by now if it hadn’t been for the tailwind we had on the way out there.”
Poul-Erik turns to look at her. It is hard for him to believe that this is real, that he just shot and killed two people, that he is a member of the underground resistance, that he could be dead now, that he is sitting next to an almost naked woman.
“Smoke?” She hands him the cigarette. The duvet falls down, and one of her breasts is showing all too clearly through the thin fabric of her undergarment. Snatching the cigarette from her fingers, he turns away, pulling hard on the cigarette. He feels a tickling inside his pants.
“I had my first cigarette when I was five,” he says, making rings of smoke. “With my mother.”
“You’re so cute.” She caresses the back of his neck. “You just killed two Hipo pigs. You’re one of us now. That calls for a celebration.” She puts a hand beneath his blanket and starts to unbutton his pants. He sits there stiff as a poker, letting her do so. Unable to breathe. She slowly pulls his cock out of his pants. And then he comes. Making the blanket wet and sticky. And still he just sits there.
The Informer (Sabotage Group BB) Page 4