The Informer (Sabotage Group BB)

by Langstrup, Steen

  “Get to the point.”

  “Take it easy.”

  “Verner, if this is some kind of subtle attempt to blame somebody else then…”

  “I am not an informer.”

  Draining his glass, Johannes stares in dread as Jens pulls a photograph from the envelope and hands it to him.

  “How did you get that?”

  “From a drawer in the Hipo’s desk. He had quite a collection, all with the same model. I only took this one.”

  “This…how did he get them? How?”

  “What do I know?”

  “But…” The photo shows a playful and very young Grete. It was shot in Odense. He recognizes the train station behind his smiling wife. You can see the smoke from a locomotive in the air above the station. Grete’s standing in the middle of the street, looking so young and happy. He flips the photo to find words written in blue ink on the back: Thinking of you…G.

  He drops the photograph, staring at Jens.

  “You might want to have a chat with your wife.”

  “Why haven’t you told me this before?”

  “Hell, why should I? It didn’t have to mean anything. The picture must be twenty years old.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Right.” He pours himself another schnapps. “You didn’t know about this?”

  “No.”

  “When did she find out about you being a saboteur?”

  “She… Oh no! This can’t be true!”

  “I am sorry, BB. I am really sorry.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Go home, talk to her.”

  “What if…”

  “Well, there’s always Sweden.”

  “Sweden? Hell, I forgot! I need to get the boy to Sweden tonight. I’m to meet him at half past six at the corner of Osterbrogade and Jagtvej.”

  “I’ll take care of that. Now, go home…talk to your wife.”

  Johannes nods his head. “I think I’d better.”

  A moment later, he is on his bicycle, heading home. The frost biting his cheeks. The clouds heavy and alive. Soon it will start snowing.

  39

  It is snowing. Big fluffy flakes of snow. This is how Christmas Eve should be. Johannes is pumping the pedals on his bicycle hard, close to his destination now. He rushes down the avenue, overtaking other cyclists, passing a tram. Snow is melting on his face, covering his eyelashes, but he doesn’t slow down, not even when turning around a corner. The front wheel slips at the corner and he has to put a foot down, cursing through clenched teeth.

  He is in such a hurry; he hardly recognizes the dark silhouette getting into a taxi further up the street as his wife, Grete. The only reason he does see her is the slipping front wheel makes him lose speed for a moment. He doesn’t see her face, but that woman is without any doubt his wife. The worn coat that should have been replaced years ago and the patterned scarf she is always wearing when she goes out. The way she moves, getting into the taxi. He would recognize her anytime.

  The taxi drives off, chugging down the street. Something turns deep in his stomach. Luckily, the taxi is an old Opel, rebuilt and fitted with a gas generator; cars like that rarely go faster than thirty kilometers per hour. It won’t outrun a bicycle easily, not even in this kind of weather.

  He tightens his grip on the handlebars, stomping the pedals. Doesn’t even realize that he is gasping and moaning out loud as he struggles to keep up with the sole red taillight of the taxi.

  40

  “Is it snowing?” Alis K asks, holding the door.

  The man smiles. “A bit.” He removes his cap, using it to brush snow off his black uniform.

  “You look like the abominable snowman.”

  He laughs as she takes his hand, leading him to her small room. The fireside has had plenty of time to heat up the room. The windows are steamy. She pulls the curtains and switches on the light.

  “Let me help you undress.”

  “Oh, never mind my clothes. Just take off your own.” The ambulance driver smiles, unbuttoning his wet uniform. He is from the rescue service Zonen and is one of Alis K’s best customers. All he wants is the missionary position real slow. He is a good man, but lonely. His wife died of cancer last year.

  Alis K puts one leg on the bed, rolling down her stockings. Then the other leg. Catching his glance, she smiles. His eyes go back to watch her hands. The fingers circling her inner thighs before she turns to unbutton her blouse.

  A gentle knock on the door stops her. Probably one of the other girls not knowing she has got a customer.

  “I’ve got a guest,” she yells, rolling her eyes.

  A new knock on the door. This time harder.

  “One moment!” She pushes the ambulance driver in behind the closet while she quickly buttons her blouse and straightens her skirt. She then opens the door ajar, looking out the crack.

  Out in the hallway stand four men wearing uniforms. One of them, a man with an eye patch and a nasty scar down his face, steps forward. “Gestapo, Fräulein. Are you Ingrid Norrestrand?” His Danish is not that well pronounced, and Norrestrand is almost incomprehensible, but Alis K understands far too well what he is saying.

  “That’s me.”

  She has been ratted out. She looks into the one eye the man has left and sees the pain, the torture, the humiliations that she will be put through the next several days. Will she break down? Of course she will. Everybody breaks down…everybody; but she will make sure to hand them Jens as the first. If she is lucky, they might settle for that.

  “Alis K, jah?”

  She swallows. Well, this might be the end of this life. A strange and heavy sensation fills her chest. She glances at the man’s polished boots. Will they kill her? They regularly execute saboteurs out in Ryvangen in Hellerup. Will they send her away to the concentration camps? You hear some terrible rumors from time to time.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know anybody by that name,” she says quietly.

  Why didn’t she bring the pistol when she went for the door? It is hidden in the secret compartment at the bottom of the closet. It might as well be on the moon.

  “There must be some kind of mistake. There is no Alis living here.”

  But she knows there is no way out of this. The Gestapo need no evidence. Suspicion is more than enough.

  41

  Poul-Erik is sitting on the quay, looking down into the water. Small, black waves are coming in. The snow is falling around him, landing on his head and shoulders. He trembles a bit. It is not from the cold.

  A German freighter is docked further down the quay, only visible as a black shadow in the falling snow. Sweden is so close. Just across Oresund. If the weather is clear, you would be able to see Sweden from here. Now, he can’t even see across the harbor to Amager.

  The water is alluring. He is feeling lost, staring at the waves hitting the quay below his feet. It feels like the water is sucking him down. He can feel it in his chest. The pull. The water will be ice cold this time of the year. He can’t swim; he never learned how. It doesn’t matter anyway, with all the clothes he is wearing, he would be dragged down instantly, even if he could swim. The cold would numb his senses; he would feel nothing at all. Drowning is a gentle death, like an embrace or a kiss he has been told. But, wouldn’t you panic being unable to breathe?

  He has still got splinters from the chair in his hands. The chair broke as he smashed it at his father again and again. He hasn’t removed the splinters. Hasn’t even looked at the damaged hand. It might have bled at some point. Now it is throbbing. It hurts to move the hand. So he keeps moving it.

  The hate in his father’s eyes as he came at him. Poul-Erik knew what would happen next. Didn’t fear the pain or the violence, only the humiliation. It was never about punishment, never about parenting. It was about power, and the humiliation had to be complete. There could only be one human being in the apartment: his father. Everybody else was nothing but things he could treat as he pleased. Nobody would ever come to th
eir rescue; they had no value at all. The violence was only to make them understand these simple facts of life. Poul-Erik knew the drill. Had learned not to feel the pain, not to shed his tears.

  Only this was as far as it went. Poul-Erik couldn’t surrender anymore, couldn’t accept the humiliation anymore. He had changed while his father was in Germany. It didn’t take long killing him. He didn’t even think, he just grabbed the chair and swung it at his father. It hit him at the side of the head, cleanly, and as he went down, Poul-Erik couldn’t stop hitting him.

  He remembers the expression on his mothers face. Even as he tries not to. She looked like a frightened animal. Like one of the rats down the backyard when the boys went at it with scissors. You could sell rat tails to the pest control—easy money for the boys from the slum. There were always plenty of rats around. Only, he supposed the pest control might have wanted them to kill the rats before cutting off their tails. The terror in his mother’s face. He actually saw real tears in her eyes. That finally made him drop the chair, wanting to say something, but he had no voice.

  “Out!” she hissed through her tears. “Get out, you filthy creep!”

  He remembers the expression on the face of BB’s wife as she opened the door. Contempt. Disgust. A child of the slum knows that expression far too well. He is alone. All by himself. Nobody will miss him. He is no soldier in any underground army. He is a killer. A murderer. They are not trying to help him by getting him to Sweden; they just want him gone.

  Of course, he’d seen BB and Alis K glance at each other. He thought they would love him for killing all those German soldiers. Instead: Sweden. Get him away. He is mad. We don’t want him anywhere near us. Borge died tonight. That too was his fault. He should have stayed at his post. If he had done so, Borge would still be alive, while he himself, Poul-Erik the Father Killer, he would be dead, lying in the gutter somewhere with a bullet hole in the back of his head like the rat they thought he was. The strangest thing, though, is that the more he shows his willingness to fight the Germans, the more he shows he is on their side, the more they want to get rid of him. It is like everything he does gets used against him. He can’t do well. He is cursed. He wasn’t put on this world to do good, he understands that now. He hasn’t got the ability.

  He is sitting there, quiet and trembling. Hunched over. Grinding his teeth. The cold from the quay stones hurts his legs and buttocks. It is hard to breathe.

  The waves are rolling. The giant, black cradling nothing. No pain, no blame, no condemnation, no nothing.

  Afterwards the snow keeps on falling.

  42

  The taxi pulls over in front of a small hotel in the Copenhagen suburb, Valby. The driver steps out and goes around the taxi to open the door. Grete exits, paying the driver, before entering the hotel.

  Johannes gets off his bicycle and places it against the wall a block away from the hotel. His fingers are red and swollen from the cold, but he doesn’t notice. Gasping for air, he stares at the hotel entrance. Even before the taxi is pulling away he hurries down the slippery sidewalk. Crashing through the door, not finding Grete in the lobby, he goes straight for the counter.

  “Where’d she go?”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?” The clerk shows exactly how well he masters that indifferent condescending glance only restaurant waiters and hotel clerks can manage.

  “Where’d she go?”

  “Who, sir?”

  “The woman who just entered!”

  “Oh, I see. I can’t give you that kind of information, but I can make a telephone call to the room, asking—”

  “No!” He grabs the clerk by the throat. “I need to know exactly where my wife went!”

  43

  Einar is sitting on the bed as she enters the hotel room. His black uniform is lying over the back of the chair. His shirt is open. He gesture for her to sit next to him on the bed, smiling with his eyes afire.

  Her Einar. It tickles and bubbles inside her. She didn’t realize she had never loved anybody else until he suddenly stood there right in front of her no more than a month ago. Sure, she cared for Johannes, she might even love him in some way, but that was nothing like what she felt for Einar. She knew that for sure. It was like they were teenagers again, like it hasn’t been fifteen years, like all the time between back then and now was nothing but a blink of an eye.

  All of a sudden, he had just been standing there. Right in front of her. Wearing his black uniform. A perfectly normal afternoon at the great square, Kongens Nytorv. The autumn wind stirring the trees. Turning her umbrella inside out. And there he was. “Grete, that’s really you?”

  Suddenly the wind was inside her, blowing away all kinds of things: reason, sense, order, obligations—blowing it all to pieces. She was lost again, like she had been lost when she was seventeen.

  She steps over to the bed. Melted snow drips from her hair as she removes the scarf. Grabbing her by the hips, he pulls her towards him.

  44

  Room 214. The door is the same as all the other doors in the hallway. Johannes hesitates and pulls out his pistol. A Walther P38 taken from a dead German soldier last year. He looks down the hallway. Nothing. He turns back at the door to room 214.

  The white paint is peeling off, and the brass handle could use some polishing. He carefully puts his ear to the door. He is unable to hear anything but his own breathing.

  At first.

  Then he does hear something. Quite clearly. Two people moaning. A bed squeaking. A woman whining in ecstasy, Grete. Then he is inside the room, bursting right through the door, shattering the frame, roaring like a furious bear.

  They are in bed. Grete on her back, the Hipo with a firm grip around her thighs while his huge, hairy ass is pumping away.

  Johannes fires the pistol instantly, fires and fires and fires and fires and fires and fires. He keeps pulling the trigger long after the magazine is empty and the pistol just clicks and clicks and clicks.

  The giant Hipo officer is sprawled dead on the bed, rolled halfway over to one side, his tongue sticking out.

  And Grete…Grete…

  Johannes gasps for breath.

  She has been shot twice in her chest. Small bubbles form in the blood oozing from one of the bullet wounds. Looking at him, she makes no effort to speak.

  He stares at the smoking pistol in his own hand and lifts it slowly to the side of his own head. Closing his eyes, crying, he pulls the trigger.

  Click.

  Followed by a deep sigh from Grete, her eyes go blank; the blood oozing from the wound in her chest stops bubbling.

  Johannes drops the pistol; it hits the floor with a distant sound that might as well come from another world.

  He turns and leaves.

  45

  A small fishing boat is pulled up onto the dark beach. It is still snowing, but now with tiny ice cold flakes that sting your face. A group of men rush toward the boat to help pull it out of the water. The waves hit the beach in slow and heavy bursts.

  The fisherman speaks Swedish, instantly demanding to be paid. A lot of whispering follows. Pointing at one of the large, darkened massive villas high on the dunes, one of the men runs back, crossing the beach.

  The Germans have seized all boats along the coast north of Copenhagen in an attempt to stop the illegal traffic between Denmark and Sweden. Even rowboats and dinghies have been seized. Now you will have to get a boat from one of the lakes or get a Swedish fisherman to risk his life. It is still possible to get over the sound; it’s just gotten way more expensive.

  “You ready?” Jens asks, holding Johannes by the shoulder. Johannes stares at him. Jens looks away unable to stand the look in his eyes.

  “I can’t cope,” Johannes says. He is so pale, his face seems to glow in the dark. “I’ll never be the same again.”

  Jens spits into the falling snow. “That’s war. It won’t let anyone get away unscathed. I’m sorry about Grete.”

  They are hiding behind a four-car garage alon
g with a small group of silent men. Jens recognizes one of the men, Ib from BOPA, standing by himself, cursing under his breath, while he sips from a hip flask. He has got a fresh bandage around his head.

  The man who ran back from the fishing boat enters the garden and hurries towards them. “The Swede wants his money before he’ll let you folks get aboard.”

  Everybody pays. Nobody objects. The Swede has got them by the balls. He can even demand more money if he feels like it, and maybe he will later on.

  “I don’t think I can live with this,” Johannes says.

  Jens is stomping his feet to keep them warm. “You know what, BB? We’ve got dark spots on our souls. We have to live with that. War is not about doing what’s right. War’s about surviving.”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For getting me to Sweden tonight.”

  Jens glances at him. “Willy didn’t show up as arranged. It’s his place on the boat you’re getting.”

  They are silent the next few minutes.

  “Do you think something has happened to him?”

  “No idea. I’ll try to find him. When you get to Landskrona, be sure to contact Astrid at this address.” He hands Johannes a piece of paper. “I might go to Sweden myself. But I’ve got some business I need to take care of first.”

  “This is it!” A man carrying a German submachine gun in a shoulder strap comes to them. “You need to get down to the boat…now.”

  Jens gives Johannes’s hand a firm squeeze, patting him on the shoulder. “Take care of yourself. I’ll come in a few days.”

  “Thank you,” Johannes says, following the man with the submachine gun down to the Swedish fishing boat.

  46

  Jens walks the city streets as the sun rises. He has been up all night. He is unshaven, tired, and a bit depressed. Lack of sleep always tends to make him depressed. He is cold.