by James R Benn
Once the fire got going I undressed. They wrapped me in a blanket and sat me in front of the hearth. My clothes were hung to dry on wooden chairs they pushed close to the warmth.
“We sleep here, this night,” my talkative friend said. “Ferry to Nesna in the morning, yes? Is best.”
“Ferry is good?” I asked.
“No, ferry is not good,” he answered with what might have been a smile. Then he shrugged. “Is best.” He didn’t know many words of English, but the ones he knew, he seemed to know precisely.
They brought out bread, cheese, and dried fish. We ate in silence. We heard more planes overhead. They pointed out German patrol boats passing the island. I nodded. Is not good, I knew. It was nine o’clock at night and still bright outside. They kept the fire stoked to dry my clothes, and I stared into the flames, wondering. About Kaz, about Rolf, about Diana, her father, and Harry. About Uncle Ike and how I’d let him down, not even able to complete my first assignment without screwing up and disobeying orders. Hell, forging orders.
Finally the heat made me sleepy. There were wooden bed frames along the walls with feather mattresses on them. I flopped down on one and let my weariness take over. My last thought before I drifted off was that I didn’t want to dream. But I did.
There was smoke and fog, and Daphne was back. I couldn’t see her clearly and it was like slogging through molasses to get to her. We were on a boat and then we weren’t. It was all jumbled up. We were in a log cabin, then in my house back in Boston, in the kitchen. Daphne was sitting at the table, talking with Higgins. She looked up at me, placed a hand on Higgins’s arm, and said, “I didn’t ask for this, Billy. Why are you doing it?” Higgins looked up at me, too, a question forming on his lips. Thankfully, I woke up before he asked it. Or before I had to answer Daphne.
Two of the Norwegians were gone. The English speaker was still there. I tried to make conversation. “No names. No talk.” That was all I got. Well, I thought, they’re used to Englishmen, I can’t really blame them. He made some awful coffee and we ate bread and cheese. When I made a face after trying the coffee, they both laughed. “Ersatz.” The German word for a manufactured substitute for any item unavailable due to wartime shortages had become slang for anything fake. I didn’t ask what was in the brew.
There was a single knock at the door. They both grabbed their Sten guns and stood at the head of the stairs. A voice spoke to them in Norwegian. They answered and returned to the table frowning.
“No ferry today. Germans stop all boats. Search Nesna. Is not good.”
“Is not good for us?” I asked, wanting to know how serious this was.
“No. Good for us. Search Nesna for British fliers. Boat…” He tried to think of the right words in English.
“The fliers the boat was to pick up?” I asked slowly.
“Yes. Boat not pick up.”
“How do the Germans know about the fliers?”
He shrugged. “Someone talk too much. Maybe they have boat crew. They talk too much. Maybe.”
“Why is it good for us?”
“Germans will find British fliers. Eight men too many to hide. Then they stop search. Then we go. Easy.”
“Easy is good,” I said.
“Yes! Easy is good!” He smiled as if pleased with a new way to say “is good.” I didn’t. I thought about eight bomber crewmen who were going to spend the rest of the war in a POW camp, in the service of justice. My justice.
We sat around after breakfast. I cleaned my. 45 and dressed in dry clothes. That was the highlight of my day, until someone brought some more food, bottles of beer, and the news that the British fliers had been captured. The search was off. We drank a toast to our good fortune. For them, the war was over. Is good for us.
We took the ferry the next morning. There were German sentries at the ferry landing, but they were inattentive. Probably all searched out. There were other fishermen and locals on the ferry and we didn’t attract any attention. We walked through town and up a steep road to a farm-house. They stashed me in a hayloft, inside a long stone barn, above the cows. As hiding places go, I’d smelled better, but it was warm. My escorts brought me more bread and cheese from the house, and a bottle of apple juice.
“I must go fish,” my friend told me. “We go. Good luck.” We shook hands and he left me alone in the barn.
For the next four days, I was moved in small leaps westward, toward Leirfjord. Always by somebody different, sometimes through the woods, other times on the road, via horse cart or on foot. I didn’t see a single German. I didn’t make any more friends either, although one farmer lent me a razor and his wife heated water for a bath. That might have been in their own self-interest, though. Either way, it felt good. There was always enough to eat-plain food, usually dried fish, cheese, bread, a few eggs, and even butter. I walked so much that I sacked out easily enough each night, usually in a barn or a small cabin in the woods. Never in anybody’s home. They could always claim they didn’t know about the American gangster hiding in their barn, but if the Germans found me in a house, it meant a bullet in the head for the owners.
On the day before the planned meeting between Anders and Rolf, I found myself on a country road with an old Norwegian farm woman. Her horse cart was filled with milk cans, and we slowly clip-clopped through the town of Leirfjord before dawn, heading east. Without speaking a word, she pulled up on the reins and stopped her horse. She pointed in the direction of a well-worn dirt path that disappeared into a stand of pine trees. I got down, smiled, and waved. She shook her head and must’ve said “giddyup” in Norwegian, since the horse quickly started down the road. The creak of the wooden wheels, the sound of the empty metal milk cans clunking against each other, and the rhythmic sounds of the horses’ hooves faded as the road curved to the left, off into a deep pine forest. In a minute I was alone. It was quiet. I looked around. Green fields and meadows of wildflowers stretched out on either side of the road. Steep mountains rose up around the little valley. Pine forests climbed halfway up the mountains, then pale gray rock took over, jutting up into a beautiful clear blue sky with lazy white clouds drifting across it. The air smelled clean and fresh, the smell of the outdoors. A bird sang. I took a deep breath, turned, and began my hike up to the hut. To kill a man.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Jens had said it would take an hour to reach the hut. Well, maybe for him, but we didn’t have mountains in Boston and I wasn’t used to this. I had to stop a few times and catch my breath. It was pretty steep, with lots of switchbacks and boulders to scramble over. After about two hours I spotted the hut up ahead. By my count it was July 21st and Rolf wasn’t due to show up until the next day. I decided to play it safe, in case Rolf was early or Anders was trigger-happy. I watched the place for a while. Finally I saw Anders emerge and go around to the side of the hut. He was dressed in civilian clothes, dark green pants with suspenders over a heavy gray shirt. A woodman’s work outfit. I began to hear the sound of an ax hitting hard wood; he was splitting firewood.
I walked up to the hut, watching each step, trying not to make a sound. I reached the door, still hearing the sound of the ax, and of pieces of wood falling into a pile of kindling. Another swing of the ax, and I stepped around the side of the hut, my arms outstretched to show I wasn’t a threat.
“Anders-”
I stopped. A revolver pointed square at my chest. The ax was sunk into a stump that had a pile of wood next to it. Anders stood behind the stump, facing me, with two hands gripping the gun, knees slightly bent, in a classic shooter’s pose. I had as much chance as a paper target at ten paces, if he fired.
“Anders, don’t shoot. It’s me, Billy.” He didn’t speak or relax. But he didn’t shoot either, so I figured I was ahead of the game. A quizzical expression replaced the grim look on his face, as he tried to take in what he was seeing and hearing.
“Why are you here?”
“It’s a long story, Anders-”
“Who is with you?”
He looked skeptical. He also looked all around, resting his darting eyes on me every couple of seconds. I didn’t move a muscle.
“All right, you’re alone. Are you armed?”
Funny question, I thought.
“Not enough to suit me. Just my. 45.” I opened my jacket to show him. The gun stayed aimed at my chest.
“Let’s go inside.” He casually pointed at the hut with the revolver. It wasn’t aimed at me anymore, but it wasn’t back in his holster either. He let me precede him, opened the door and motioned for me to enter first. I didn’t think he was being polite. The hut was one open room, with a table and chairs, a bench in front of the hearth on the left where a woodstove served for cooking and heating, and a couple of beds along the other wall. There were windows on either side of the door and one at the back. It was a nice place in the mountains, except for the gun in my back.
“Have a seat, Billy.” I sat at one end of the table and he poured a glass of water from a wooden jug and placed it in front of me. One-handed, since the revolver dangled from his right hand. He walked to the other end of the table and sat down, placing the gun on the table. Within easy reach. I took a drink and put my glass down, within easy reach. It wasn’t as comforting as a gun. The cabin smelled of pine and ashes.
“Don’t get much company up here, Anders?”
He smiled. “I’m very careful about who gets invited here. And you are not on the guest list, Billy. Tell me why you are here, and how you know about this place.” Anders leaned forward, locking his gaze on to me. His arms were folded, his right hand just inches from the revolver.
I didn’t like the way this was going. I knew it would be tricky, coming up on Anders unexpectedly, but I thought that after he saw it was me, there’d be slaps on the back and old home week. Not the third degree, with a gun on the table.
“You could’ve killed me out there, you know.”
“Or you me. In my business, a man sneaking up on a secret location usually means trouble. For me, unless I make it trouble for him.”
“I can explain that. Rolf Kayser is due here tomorrow, right?”
“Yes,” Anders answered. “Why, and how do you know that?”
I relaxed a bit. He was curious-that was better than suspicious. “Jens told me. He told me about this place and how to get to it, and that Rolf Kayser was due to meet you here tomorrow.”
“Yes. The underground brought the message several days ago. I was surprised to learn Rolf himself was meeting me. I didn’t know he was in on this mission. What are you doing here, Billy?” His hand went up to rub his chin. Away from the revolver, a good sign.
“I’ve come because of the murder of Knut Birkeland. And the murder of Daphne Seaton.”
“What! Daphne? Who killed them? Was it Rolf?” Shock and surprise showed on his face, his mouth hanging half open as he tried to take in what I’d told him. Now he was hooked.
“Yes. He also tried to kill Kaz.”
“My God! But Kaz is alive?”
“Barely. Do you know much about the Kayser family?”
“No. What do they have to do with this? Slow down, please, and explain.”
I told him. About the pictures, the explosion, the family fish-oil business. I left out the part about Victoria Brey and how she had seen Anders early on the morning Birkeland had been killed. It didn’t seem necessary, especially with a loaded gun on the table.
“So you must have suspected me also?” Anders asked.
“I did, but I couldn’t see a motive for you. But Kaz found out about Kayser’s property from those propaganda photos.”
“Billy, propaganda is what the other side does. We do public relations. But what about the timing of the murder? Didn’t you say that it took place while Rolf was out shooting with the king?”
I told him my theory. He sat back and thought a while.
“Yes, it all fits, except for the note. How could Rolf have gotten Knut to write such a note? He was hardly the type of man to give in to intimidation.”
“I don’t know for sure, but I got an idea when Jens doctored my orders.”
I told him about how we had concocted a new set of orders authorizing this trip.
“So you are not here officially? Only Jens knows you are here, and he could be court-martialed if his collusion became known?”
I hadn’t looked at it that way before. I didn’t like the direction the conversation had taken.
“I’m sure he’s told Harding by now. Both he and Major Cosgrove must be aware of it.”
Anders spread his fingers on the rough wood table. It was marked with cigarette burns around the edges; a thin layer of varnish had long ago faded into the grain. He looked at the tabletop, as if it held an answer to a question. Then he looked up at me.
“Billy, you are playing a dangerous game. You are on a secret mission within a secret mission. You could be betrayed and no one would ever know.”
“Except my betrayer.”
“Yes. For some, that would be a burden. For others, a relief. Tell me, why have you come?”
“For Rolf Kayser.”
“I didn’t ask for whom. Why?”
“He’s a killer. A murderer. He killed for his own gain first, and then to cover it up, he killed Daphne. He’ll probably escape into a new identity and never be brought to justice if I don’t stop him.”
“Billy, people are being killed every day. Innocent or not. By accident or design. Bombs fall from the sky on cities all across Europe. Ships sink. Soldiers are shot, blown apart, maimed. Think how meaningless those two deaths are in the midst of all this killing.”
“They’re not meaningless to me. I knew Daphne. I know what she wanted out of life. What she’ll never have. What Kaz has lost. I don’t know all those other people. There’s nothing I can do about that. That’s war.”
“But justice for one person, that you can do something about?”
“Yes, I can. I have to.”
“Why? Why you?”
Fair question. One night, long enough after his shooting that we didn’t think about it all the time, I was having a beer with Dad down at Kirby’s. We were finishing up, about to head home for supper, when I blurted it out. I asked him what Basher had given him that day when they argued and he had thrown the package away. He knew I was asking a bigger question, but those were the only words I could get my mouth to utter.
“Too much,” Dad had said, as he started to slide out of the booth. Then he stopped and moved back.
“There’s a balance in life, Billy. There’s the law, and then there’s what people do every day, the rules that they live by. The two aren’t always the same, but they can’t run head-on into each other, or else everything falls apart. We enforce the law, and do a good job at it. We also do what we have to do to take care of our families and each other. In this world, son, no one else will. Basher didn’t understand that. He wanted everything, more than he needed. But he couldn’t do it alone. He needed others, and he was working his way through the force, looking for the right kind of partners. It was too much, Billy, it was pulling everything out of balance.”
“What was it in that package?” I’d asked. Dad had looked down at the table, drawing the flat of his hand across it, clearing something off that I couldn’t see.
“The truth is, Billy boy, I don’t know. He told me it was worth a fortune. I’m no angel, I know that. But I also know I wasn’t about to sell my soul for a fortune or for a plugged nickel. The package went out in the trash. Now let’s go home.”
We did. We had pot roast and never spoke about it again.
Anders’s hand was flat on the table, too.
“So everything won’t fall apart,” I said in answer to Anders’s question, feeling myself my father’s son.
Anders reached for his revolver. I held my breath for a second, the muscles in my legs and arms bunched, ready to upend the table and run for the door. He put it in his holster. I breathed out, relaxed, and
felt as if I had just passed a test.
“It will be difficult to take Rolf out of here as your prisoner.”
“I imagine it will be.”
Anders looked at me for a minute. I could see he was making up his mind about something.
“We need a plan,” he finally said.
The evening mountain air was cool. Anders and I sat on a rough wooden bench in front of the hut. He was reading a worn paperback book with a picture of three Viking warriors on the cover. I was smoking a Norwegian cigarette and thinking what a demand there would be for Lucky Strikes after the invasion.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The Edda. An ancient Norse poem. I studied it at university, and we had to read it in English as part of language class. I always enjoyed it, and picked up this copy in London. It seems to me to see into the future.”
“How so?”
He flipped through the dog-eared pages and began to read. The one who squats at the end of the sky is known as Engulfer of Corpses a giant in eagle form; they say from his wings comes the wind of the world.
Brothers will fight and kill each other, siblings do incest; men will know misery, adulteries be multiplied, an axe-age, a sword-age, shields will be cloven, a wind-age, a wolf-age, before the world’s ruin.