Kirsten stared across the gorge, then down at the houses below. “I don’t know the details, of course. But it has something to do with what the Germans are able to produce at the plant. Heavy water, they call it, with deuterium in place of simple hydrogen. It’s an isotope of hydrogen, with a neutron attached to the proton.”
“So why do we care about this water?”
“It’s used in research and experimentation for atomic power. The Allies are afraid the Germans want it to make a bomb.”
“And you were supposed to stop them.”
“I and thirty-four good men. I told you, some of them were killed in the crash, and others were captured. The British have no idea what happened to them, or me, so I need to inform them and to essentially report for duty.”
“I see. Well then, let’s stop chatting and start the climb down.”
They transferred the deerskins and other essentials into backpacks and abandoned the sled. With their skis now on their shoulders, they needed more than two hours to negotiate the slippery path from the plateau to the outskirts of Rjukan. Only the final kilometer was smooth enough to permit skiing.
The town was darker and more dismal than she remembered. No wonder she’d been so thrilled to arrive in London in the spring of 1920 when the entire day was light-filled.
“Do you suppose anyone will recognize you?” Maarit asked.
“Unlikely, after twenty years. And I won’t recognize them. Even if I did, I have no way to separate patriot from quisling.”
They dropped their voices as they passed a local policeman, who nodded perfunctorily, and again, when two German soldiers strode past them.
“Two Sami women in town to shop. I guess we’re convincing, which reminds me. What will you use for cash? We need to buy food and pay for a place to sleep. I don’t fancy curling up in the snow again.”
“Don’t worry.” Kirsten pointed with her thumb at her backpack. “I still have the cash they issued us for the initial operation. That should cover us for the first day or two. After that, I don’t know.”
“Where did you live?”
“In a nice house near the town hall. My father continued to live there after the divorce with his new wife, but now he’s fled. I’m sure the house was thoroughly investigated, maybe even seized. In any case, showing up there would get us into trouble immediately.”
“All right, then. So, what’s the next step?”
“The intelligence we received before our glider mission was that Milorg was active in Rjukan. They didn’t give us any names, though, since we weren’t supposed to be anywhere near here.”
“Finding them will be tricky, especially since you don’t want to approach anyone from the old days. Any ideas on how we can ask around without getting in trouble?”
“A few. A little farther along this street, we’ll find a public house. An old man called Torwald used to own it, though I’m sure he’s died by now. But he was a patriot, flew the Norwegian flag every Sunday and holiday. If anyone in the family is still running the place, I’m betting they’re patriots, too.”
Some hundred meters farther on, they passed a high stone wall, the rear of some sort of storage building. Hastily splashed on the gray stone, presumably in secret, the royal monogram stood four feet high in black paint. The tall capital H, with the number seven slashed diagonally down its center.
“For King Haaken the Seventh, head of the Free Norwegian resistance,” Maarit muttered. “Obviously, there’s at least one resistor here.”
“More than one, I’d say.” Kirsten pointed with her chin toward a fence post, where the same monogram appeared in miniature. “That’s good news. We just have to find one and work our way up to someone who has a radio transmitter.”
“First things first. Let’s find that public house and see what happened to Torwald. We might also have a good meal.” Maarit started off.
“Couldn’t agree more. Anything but reindeer chips in bark soup.”
“Oh, suddenly picky, are we?”
They arrived at the public house they were looking for, and Maarit glanced up at the sign over the door that read Varm Mat. “Warm food. Sounds promising,” she said as they unbuckled their skis, stepped out of them, and stood them against the wall.
The interior in unpainted pine held an iron stove at one end. Five small wooden tables revealed a very limited clientele, and the shelves behind the narrow bar held only bottles of beer and two kinds of aquavit. Of the five tables, the one closest to the stove was occupied by two old men playing cards. The men glanced up when they entered but seemed to lose interest quickly and returned to their game.
As they sat down, a woman, presumably the owner, approached them. She was tall and bony, but with the wiry musculature of a man. Her narrow skull, ice-blue eyes, and long, straight nose marked her as a perfect Nordic Aryan. But gray hair pulled back in a tight bun and a severe expression gave her the air of a schoolteacher, the kind that instilled terror in her pupils.
Wiping her hands on her apron, she asked, “What will you have?”
“What’s available?” Kirsten asked, trying to recall the flavors of all the meats she hadn’t tasted in months.
“Fish stew.”
“Is that all?”
“’Fraid so.”
“Then we’ll have two bowls of that.”
“And to drink? Coffee, tea, beer?”
“Do you have real coffee?” Kirsten asked hopefully.
The woman frowned, as if resenting the question.“Not unless you’re at least a major. For you, coffee and tea are ersatz. The beer and akvavit are the real thing.”
“Coffee,” Maarit said. Kirsten nodded.
While they waited, the door opened again, sending a blast of frigid air into the room. Kirsten turned to look at the cause, and her heart sank. Two German soldiers. From what she could remember, they looked like sergeants. She glanced away, trying to avoid drawing their attention.
Useless, for the Germans had no interest in the old card players so had nothing to look at but the two of them. The soldiers swaggered toward them.
“The skis outside. They belong to you two?” one of them asked in patchy Norwegian.
“Yes. They’re mine.”
“They’re really shit, you know. How do you get around on those things?” He chuckled at his own wit.
The representative of the master race had a strangely shaped head, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, like a half-filled balloon. His mouth was much too wide and seemed to run from ear to ear. She thought suddenly of Josef Goebbels, and then of the man Jova had described. Was this the same one, or did the Germans have an entire subspecies of such men?
“They’ve worked pretty well for a few hundred years,” Maarit said pleasantly. “It was the Sami who invented skis, back when Germans still plodded through snow up to their hips.”
The sergeant squinted, as if trying to determine if his race had been insulted, and went on the offensive. “Yeah, but we had houses while your lot lived in piles of dirt and crapped on the ground.”
Kirsten’s heart began to pound. Had Maarit’s boast started a confrontation, which could end in disaster?
But the other man, who hadn’t spoken, suddenly seemed annoyed. “Lass sie doch in Ruhe, Debus.” He stepped away toward one of the tables near the iron stove. With a look of contempt for them, the one called Debus sucked air through his front teeth and followed him.
When the soldiers were seated a few tables away, the owner quickly set two cups of coffee and a plate of dark bread in front of them. The soldiers seemed pleased at the rapid service and smiled up at her. As she strode back to her kitchen, her sideward glance toward Kirsten seemed to say, I’ve calmed them down, so don’t start any more trouble.
But the only sounds were the slurping of hot coffee and the murmurs of the old men playing cards, and in a few moments, the owner returned with their soups. As she bent over to set the bowls on their table, something hanging on her neck caught Kirsten’s attenti
on. A single krone, that bore the monogram of the king.
She raised her eyes and caught the woman’s glance. “I like your necklace. A patriot’s necklace,” she added softly.
The woman touched the coin at her throat and shot a quick look toward the Germans.
Kirsten pressed on. “We’re patriots, too, and need help.”
“Sorry. All I do is cook.”
“That’s too bad. A good man named Torwald used to own this place, and he would have helped us.”
The mention of Torwald seemed to change everything. The woman gave another glance over her shoulder at the soldiers, who were engrossed in their own conversation. The two old men were still playing cards. “Finish your soup and come back again in two hours? To the storeroom entrance in the alley.” She turned away abruptly and returned to her bar.
Having achieved both a hot meal and a possible contact, they placed a few kroner on the table and left. Outside, they buckled on their skis again and, during the two-hour wait, explored the town. Kirsten remembered it from early childhood, but under the occupation, it seemed quieter, more cowed. While German soldiers patrolled here and there, it was as if the town had drawn into its dark self and was waiting for it all to be over.
At the designated time, they arrived at the alley door and knocked. It opened immediately, and they stepped inside.
The storeroom was a spare, functional room with shelves on two sides, a narrow table with a bench on a third, and a small cast-iron stove in the corner. The shelves held several crates of beer and miscellaneous boxes marked as dry produce, but the café itself didn’t seem well supplied.
The woman closed the door behind them and locked it. “How do you know my father?” she asked coldly.
Kirsten had guessed correctly. “Ah, so you’re Torwald’s daughter. I’m glad to see that patriotism stayed in the family. But maybe you could tell us your name.”
She squinted at Kirsten, ignoring the question. “Your friend might be Sami, but you aren’t. Not with hair like that.” She gestured to the few loose strands that hung below Kirsten’s hat. “What are you doing showing up here dressed that way?”
“I’ll be glad to explain everything if you’ll let us warm up.” Kirsten nodded toward the bench in front of the iron stove. The warmth of the room indicated the stove held a fire.
“Sure. Go ahead, but then start talking.”
Kirsten and Maarit slid their rucksacks from their shoulders and sat on the bench with their backs to the stove. Kirsten savored the warmth for a moment, then faced their interlocutor.
“Good observation. My friend is Sami, but I’m Norwegian, and I lived here as a child. I remember your father, in fact, though not very well. My own father brought me here once, and I saw him. He had an odd white beard that was divided in the middle, which I found comical. And as I recall, he walked with a limp.”
“Yes, that was him, but just because you lived here twenty years ago still doesn’t prove I can trust you.”
Kirsten winced in frustration. “Look, the only newer reference I can give you is Leif Tronstad. I work indirectly for him and need to get word to him of my whereabouts. He doesn’t even know I’m alive.”
“Professor Tronstad? He left for London a year ago. Some people call him a traitor.”
“But we know he’s a patriot, don’t we?” She waited for the woman’s scowl to soften. “Anyhow, he thinks I’m dead. We’re hoping you can connect us with someone with a radio transmitter.”
The woman seemed to reminisce. “He was in here once. A handsome man, before he got that scar that he tries to hide with his beard.”
Kirsten frowned. “We’re not talking about the same man. Leif Tronstad has no scar on his face, and he doesn’t have a beard. Not when I saw him. And by the way, you still haven’t told us your name.”
The woman chuckled for the first time. “It’s Birgit. And you’re right, he doesn’t. I was testing you. You never know who to trust. Just last week the Germans put out a false air raid and forced the entire town of Rjukan into the shelters for fifteen hours so that they could search every house for radios. They found one of ours and arrested one of our men, Torstein Skinnarland. Everyone is nervous they’ll do it again.”
“Skinnarland. That was one of the men who was supposed to join up with us. And now the Germans have him. Damn. Obviously, it’s all the more important that I contact headquarters. We were hoping to track down someone who could send a message to London.”
Birgit frowned and shook her head. “London already knows about Torstein. As for your message, I’ll give it to our radio man, but it’ll have to be short. He won’t broadcast for more than a minute from any one place. Here, write it down.” She took a scrap of wrapping paper and a pencil from one of the shelves.
Kirsten thought for a moment, trying to reduce their situation to the minimum of words, then wrote.
Operation Freshman crashed. Others dead or captured. I escaped injured but now recovered. In Rjukan and await instruction. Chemist.
She handed the scrap to Birgit, who glanced at it, seeming puzzled. “Chemist?”
“That’s my code name. It’s best if that’s all you know. Don’t you agree?”
Birgit muttered agreement and shoved the paper into a pocket. “I’ll deliver it, but it’s already late. Come back tomorrow or the next day if you want a reply.”
Kirsten rubbed her neck as if to signal apology for asking. “Um, we’ve traveled a long way and don’t actually have a place to stay. Do you think you could put us up for the night?”
“I’d rather not. This is a public place, and the Germans barge through the door all the time.”
“I appreciate the danger, but we don’t have any other place.”
Birgit glanced with what might have been disdain toward Maarit. “Don’t your people camp out in the snow all the time?”
Maarit was quick to reply. “Yes, with a tent and a bonfire. Do you suggest we set that up in the square?”
Birgit lowered her eyes. “Oh, sorry. Didn’t mean to sound so heartless. It’s just that—” She interrupted herself. “All right. You can bed down here for the night.” She frowned again, evidently considering details, ramifications. “You’ll find horse blankets in a sack under the table. The outhouse is at the end of the alley. I store bread and a cheese in the cupboard so you can take some, but not too much. Our stock of beer is also there on the shelves, but please take only two. It’s damned hard to get these days. Make sure you keep the storeroom locked, and don’t go into the public room. Too easy to see inside through the window on the street.” She wiped her hands on her apron, ending the conversation, then turned away abruptly and left them to themselves.
Weary, they smiled at each other at their success. Then Maarit tugged off her heavy gakti. “I’d say we were damned lucky you remembered her father. We might not have convinced her to trust us otherwise.”
Kirsten did the same, then bent to untie her snow boots. “Yes, and lucky too that the old man had that funny beard. I might not have remembered him otherwise.”
Maarit laid out their reindeer skins near the stove and collected the food from the cabinet. “Not as cozy as our goahti,” she observed, laying out a small portion of cheese and slightly dry bread from the cupboard, together with their remaining travel rations. “But certainly warmer than our snow pit.”
Kirsten leaned against the wall and opened both bottles, handing one to Maarit. “Beer’s a nice touch,” she said, taking a long drink. She nibbled on some of the hard cheese. “It’ll be a relief to reconnect with headquarters.” She took another swallow of the beer and felt a wave of well-being. “I owe it all to you, of course. You saved my life, and I’ll be sure to inform London of what you’ve done.”
“Mmm,” Maarit murmured coolly, then leaned back on her elbow and stared at her beer bottle.
“Have I said something wrong?”
“No. Of course not. You shouldn’t treat me like a patriot. Really, I’m just being swept along by
it all. The war took away my most of my family, but it gave me you. That was something I didn’t expect.”
Kirsten’s face warmed. “Me? An invalid you had to take care of for months, who in the beginning couldn’t even pee without your assistance? Not exactly a gift.”
Maarit chuckled. “I forgot about that pee-moment. Yes, you brought some problems with you, but also something new. A sort of branch that falls in a stream and changes its course.”
“You being the stream? Sounds poetic, but I don’t see how I could have changed the course of anything. What did I do, other than your mending?”
“From your perspective, I was just another Sami, but I’m not at all. A Sami woman my age would already have married, had her own reindeer herd and a couple of babies by now. I’d already ventured outside the community, with a plan to study medicine. Your arrival reminded me of what I’d almost achieved before the occupation and my own cowardice beat me down.”
“Beat you down? How?”
“The Norwegians have no great love for the Sami. They’re not as bad as the Germans, but there are plenty of Norwegian nationalists, not to say quislings and collaborators, in Trondheim. In the hospital where I was a student, they made it clear that I, a Sami and a woman, was taking a place that should have gone to some Norwegian man. They more or less threw me out, or at least they made life so unpleasant that I left.”
Kirsten set aside the empty beer bottle and finished off the rest of the crumbs. “And you see me as a reason to go back and try again?”
“I…I don’t know. Maybe.”
Kirsten studied Maarit’s face, neither Sami nor Norwegian, but slightly triangular, with deep, dark, intelligent eyes that penetrated when they looked at you. It was hard to imagine her giving up anything. “Assuming the Germans are forced out, how do you envision life after that?”
“I have trouble envisioning anything. I love the reindeer and the purity of the Arctic, but I can’t see myself as a young Jova, crisscrossing the vidda year after year, endlessly baking bread. But maybe, if the Germans are forced out, along with the quislings and Sami-haters, I might finish studying medicine. The Sami do need doctors, so I’d have a foot in both worlds. What about you?”
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