“Do we know anything about the process? I mean, what are her chances?”
Red set aside his pipe for a moment. “That depends on what they’ve gotten out of her. If they find out she’s a spy, they’re not good.”
Sørlie tilted his head skeptically. “On the other hand, if they find out she’s Jomar Brun’s daughter, she might be more useful to them as a hostage. In that case, they might transport her to a German camp and hold her until the last minute.”
Maarit felt a surge of horror. “Germany! But couldn’t we rescue her somehow?”
“Maybe. But that’s at the end of a long string of uncertainties, so you mustn’t get your hopes up. We have limited resources and other, more urgent actions.”
Maarit slumped in her chair and listened dully as the men discussed moving the radio, obtaining arms, spotting quislings. How depressing to think she had joined the resistance only to learn the resistance had not joined her.
* * *
After the meeting, Maarit paused a moment at the doorway into Birgit’s storeroom that had taken on a sort of familiarity. It had been the scene of her first embrace with Kirsten, of the first hints of what might be possible between them. Now, under the light of a single overhead lamp, it was desolate.
Morose, she entered and knelt by her meager belongings, their tarp, four reindeer skins for sleeping, her skis, and a leather rucksack for provisions. As she began to roll up the skins, Birgit came in behind her holding two cups.
“Here. Have some coffee before you leave.” With one foot she slid an empty crate toward Maarit and sat down on it. She handed over one of the cups.
Sullen, Maarit held the cup to her chest, absorbing the warmth while staring at her feet.
“I’m sorry it’s turned out this way,” Birgit said. “I’ve grown fond of having the two of you pop in and out of the café.”
Maarit glanced up, astonished. “Really? I had the impression you didn’t much like us.”
“Strange you should think that. It was quite the opposite. I tried to keep you away because the café is so central to Milorg, and we were always careful to look ordinary, non-political. New faces, strangers, always aroused suspicion. But I knew you were making your own sacrifices, and after a while, you seemed a bit like daughters.” She snorted softly. “Though I suppose I don’t come across as terribly maternal.”
“Like daughters?” Maarit couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. “What a nice thing to say. You don’t have children?”
Birgit looked into the distance and ran her hand over her tightly bound hair. “I had a son. Killed in the Norwegian campaign in the mountains around Narvik.”
“Narvik? Really? So was my father.”
Birgit brightened. “Ah. Perhaps they knew each other. I had no idea that Sami fought in that battle.”
“I don’t think they did. My father was Norwegian. It’s my mother who was Sami.”
Birgit’s expression softened, revealing a side Maarit hadn’t seen before. “He’d be proud of you and your courage, I’m sure.”
“Oh, but my mother was courageous, too. She died trying to rescue my brother. A very strong woman. Her mother, too, tough as nails, who still keeps the herd with her husband. I get it from them.”
Birgit rubbed fatigued eyes. “They all sound like good people. I wish I knew more of you. We Norwegians have a lot to answer for regarding the Sami. Maybe one day we’ll rectify our mistreatment of them. What made you leave?”
Maarit took a long drink of the cooling coffee and decided she liked this woman after all. “Kirsten did. My family found her injured along the migration route. I helped her recover her health, and she helped me recover my conscience. I’d like to say I’m with the resistance because I want freedom and justice for Norway, but in fact, I’m here because I wanted to be with her.”
“You really care about her, then.”
“Yes, I do. And if she’s lost to Germany, I don’t know what I’ll do. Go back home again, I suppose, to fight another day on another front.”
Birgit shook her head. “It would be terrible to lose both of you, especially after you’ve proven yourselves at Vemork. Let me talk to the men again and try to convince them of your value and hers. I don’t know what our group can do with so little information, but at least I can get them to move her up higher on our crises list. Considering I’m the only one who can’t run and hide, I can make a strong case for us to get her away from the Germans before they pry my name out of her.”
Maarit leaned forward and hugged her warmly. “Thank you, Birgit. I won’t forget you for this.”
“Now don’t make a fuss.” Birgit backed out of the embrace. “Just get on over to Red’s place while they’re still waiting for you. You might even get some supper.”
Chapter Fourteen
Another day passed while Kirsten waited to be transported. Another day of failed hopes, of anxiety, and of simple hunger. The meals in the Rjukan jail consisted of little more than damp bread and a tiny portion of pickled fish once a day. She was ravenous and imagined it was even worse for the men.
On the third day, she received no breakfast at all, only the coat in which she was arrested and the notification that transport would take place that day.
By midday, the guard returned to lead her out of her cell and into a courtyard to wait for the transport bus. Dag was led out just behind her, and she was surprised at his appearance. The voice she’d heard through the ventilation hole had always been firm and clear, in spite of his depression at losing his family. Now she saw for the first time how small and frail he was. His face was skeletal, with sunken cheeks and a spotty two-week beard. He was clearly starved and abused, and if she had hoped to lean on his masculine strength during the move, it was clear the opposite would be the case. They seemed to be the only passengers to come from the Rjukan police station.
Finally, the bus pulled up. The door swung open, and under the cool glare of Deputy Chief Halvorson, a policeman urged them inside.
The bus was full, and in the rear some half dozen prisoners already sat on the floor. As the last to be added, she and Dag took their places in the aisle at the front.
In control were three SS men: two guards sitting at the front and the driver. She’d fantasized about escape while in transit but saw now how difficult it would be. Packed in as they all were, someone at the front would have to take the initiative to rush the guards and overpower the driver. Sitting directly in front of her, Dag coughed, and she wondered if he also saw the problem. They could overcome the two guards only if someone was willing to be shot. She glanced around, and the gray, sullen faces of the prisoners told her that no one was.
The guards, too, seemed to sense the docility of their prisoners and casually lit up cigarettes. It seemed an additional cruelty to smoke in a bus full of tobacco-starved prisoners, and she was relieved she didn’t have that craving. She listened to the soldiers talking openly, obviously not caring if anyone understood German.
One of them, plump and swarthy, blew out smoke. “You made this run before?” he asked his comrade. Bored soldier talk.
The other, pale and blond, who sniffed constantly as if to clear his sinuses, nodded. “Yeah, a few months ago. Pretty straightforward. Breaks the monotony.”
“They ever give you any trouble?”
Blondie snorted, temporarily reversing the direction of mucous in his troubled nostrils. “Never. Not a decent man in the pack of them. We slap them around, kick them like dogs, and they just take it.”
Swarthy man shook his head. “Mmm. Norwegians. Supposed to be as good as us, but in the end, they’re pathetic. What happens after we drop ’em off at Lysaker Station?”
“Train takes ’em down to Akershus, where the local police load them onto one of the troop ships—the ISAR, I think. I’m going along myself this time. I’ve got a two-week furlough, and my family’s in Potsdam. Maybe I can get rid of this damned cold.” He sniffed again, as if to make his point.
Swarthy ma
n glanced sideways at his colleague. “Lucky bastard. I had no idea they moved troops along with the prisoners. Big boats, eh?”
Blondie picked tobacco from the tip of his tongue. “Oh, yeah. This lot is just a part of the crowd they’re collecting at Akershus. Be a couple hundred in a few days. When the brass gives the order, we march ’em to the harbor and onto the ship, where they go into lockdown in the hold. Transport’s pretty quick, down the Skagerrak strait past Denmark to Kiel, where we load ’em out again into trains to the camps.”
Akershus. At some point, they’d have to be moved from the bus to a train, and from the train to Akershus. Two chances for escape.
They traveled in silence for some time, and the close, smoke-filled air made her drowsy. She rested her head on the side of one of the bus seats and began to doze.
A sudden bang startled her. Gunshot. A second bang, then a third. The bus fishtailed, careening wildly as the driver slumped over the wheel, blood streaming from his head. It skidded sideways toward a ravine and toppled onto its right side, blocking the exit door.
Kirsten tumbled back and forth among flailing arms and legs, anchoring herself on one of the seat legs.
“DON’T MOVE, ANYONE.” Braced against the front window of the bus, the swarthy guard shouted absurdly, as if the thrashing prisoners could do anything other than try to struggle upright. Both guards swept their rifles back and forth, holding them all at bay. Kirsten stayed on her knees, waiting for an opening. Perhaps she could bolt.
A shape shot up in front of her.
Dag threw himself with outspread arms at both guards. Startled, the swarthy guard fired. Grunting as the bullet tore into his chest, Dag dropped onto him, pinning him down. Still standing, Blondie now swung his rifle in a small arc, covering the remaining prisoners and repeated, “NOBODY MOVE,” while his colleague struggled out from under the dead man.
The standoff was agonizing, as a busload of trapped men waited for someone else to throw himself at the cornered guard. No one wanted to die, not even Blondie, who was about to be on furlough. He was wide-eyed with fear, clearly seeing the odds and grasping that the docility of the “pathetic Norwegians” was broken.
Glass shattered just over her head, and the rifle swung upward toward the sound. The rifle shot and the sudden blast of cold air caused her to jerk backward as a rifle barrel jutted downward through the broken window and fired twice. Blondie dropped forward, his furlough indefinitely postponed, and swarthy guard, still halfway covered by Dag, caught the next bullet.
Shards of glass dropped onto her shoulders, and the men sitting nearest the smashed window lurched upward through the jagged opening. Kirsten struggled against the arms and legs of the men climbing over her and was pushed forward by the panicked prisoners behind her.
As her head rose past the broken glass, Maarit’s face came into focus, then Sørlie, and someone’s hands hauled her by her coat up into the air. Vaguely aware of the men clambering from the crashed bus and fleeing in all directions, she labored to run alongside her rescuers. Maarit and Sørlie took hold of her arms and dragged her stumbling toward a woods.
“How did you…?” she asked into the air. No one answered. A few moments later, as they slowed, she asked, breathless, “Where are we?”
“A few kilometers outside Lysaker Station,” Sørlie said. “We have people in the next town who’ll hide you, but we have to get there before the Lysaker detachment notices the bus is late.”
They stumbled on to a thicket, where her rescuers abruptly stopped. Brushing away snow and rubble, Maarit uncovered three sets of skis. Each one buckled on a set without comment, and Maarit leaned toward Kirsten. “How are you holding up? Can you ski?”
Freedom. Kirsten was elated. Freedom and Maarit. “Yes, of course I can.”
They covered the three kilometers to the settlement in good time and skirted around the periphery to a small house at the edge. Kirsten smelled livestock, heard the mooing of cows, and the row of tall cans along the outside wall told her it was a dairy farm.
Sørlie signaled them to remove their skis and follow him into the barn. A double knock, followed by a triple one, obviously a signal, caused the door between the barn and the house to open. A woman stood in the doorway with a lantern and blankets over one arm.
“Under there,” she said, pointing toward the spot where a boy was already brushing away straw with his foot. A trap door came into view, which he raised, exposing a ladder into a chamber of some twelve square meters. Maarit took the lantern from her hand and led them to the edge of the pit.
They stepped down into the hole and sat on the ground with their knees drawn up as the trapdoor over their heads dropped, raining grit and straw dust on them.
Kirsten found the sudden darkness frightening, but Maarit took her hand, and Sørlie’s voice came as a comfort.
“By now the Germans will have sent out troops to round up the escapees, and we’re still pretty close. But it’ll take them days to examine every house and barn. When it’s dark, our friends will tell us so we can start the next leg, the twelve kilometers to Skilling.”
Kirsten needed to keep talking, to dispel the sense of suffocation in the pitch-black space. “Do I need to say it? Thank you for rescuing me.”
Sørlie answered. “You’re welcome. You weren’t our first choice, but Birgit convinced us to get you out, and Tronstad backed her up. I guess he didn’t want the Germans to boast they’d captured Jomar Brun’s daughter.”
“How’d you know where I’d be?”
Maarit’s voice right next to her in the dark was reassuring. “Miko reported what happened, so we knew the police had you. Even though we couldn’t get a message to you, we monitored the station. One of our Oslo connections informed us that Terboven had ordered a bus to round up certain prisoners for transport, and since one of the stops was the Rjukan police station, we knew we had a good chance of getting you. Even if we’d miscalculated, we’d still have liberated a lot of prisoners.”
“What about the others? What will happen to them?” She thought of Dag, the only fatality, for being the first.
She felt Sørle shrug next to her. “They weren’t part of our orders, so they’re on their own. But they’re Norwegians, after all. Most will be able to blend into the terrain.”
“Where are we headed? Obviously not back to Rjukan.”
“No. Of course not.” It was Sørlie’s voice. “We go through Skilling, by boat over to Vikersund, and then the sixty-five kilometers to Laufhøgdi, where we have a radio and can contact London. At that point, I’ll return to Rjukan.”
“Maarit and I, where do we go after that?”
Maarit leaned against her again from the other side. “That’s up to Tronstad, apparently. He’ll decide whether you return to Britain or stay in Norway.”
“I see.” Kirsten gripped Maarit’s hand and was ready to sink into the comfort of rescue when she realized that another question hovered in the darkness and only she could answer it.
“I didn’t tell them anything. Nothing at all.”
Maarit’s grip tightened. “I knew you wouldn’t.”
Chapter Fifteen
Once rested, they continued through Skilling and, in the still-long February night, were able to cover most of the sixty-five kilometers to Lauvhøgdi before daybreak. Even after the sun rose, an overcast sky and fog permitted them to risk the remaining distance.
At Lauvhøgdi they bypassed the scattering of houses and family farms, then climbed up to an isolated hunting cabin, as anonymous-looking as dozens of others that spotted the snowy hills. They thrust their skis into the snow and banged on the door.
The cabin door opened, and Einar Skinnarland stood in front of them, grinning. “Nice to see you again,” he said, grasping Kirsten’s hand.
“Nice to see you, too,” she answered, letting herself be pulled in. It was nice, for both the circumstances and Skinnarland himself had changed. He was still blond and square-faced, but he sported a beard a shade darker tha
n his hair, which softened his image, made him look hardier and less glamorous.
He gestured for them to sit on the various stools and crates while he collected cups from a shelf over the stove. “As soon as everyone’s warmed up, I’ll send out a message that you’ve arrived safely.”
Moments later, he handed around the four hot cups, then sat down in front of his radio. “Anything you’d like to add?”
Kirsten held her cup under her chin, letting the steam warm her badly chilled face. “No. Just keep it short. Something like ‘Chemist and Reindeer arrived safe. Await orders.’”
Skinnarland encrypted the brief message, then set on his earphones and tapped it out in Morse. As always, he disconnected again immediately to avoid detection.
“What’s the latest on Vemork?” Kirsten asked.
“Nothing specific. Our man there reported that the Germans have figured out the attacks will never stop, so are planning to move production. That’ll require a whole different strategy, of course, and London is working on that.”
Sørlie emptied his cup and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “More to the present, what’s that wonderful smell coming from the stove? We’ve been traveling on reserves and would really appreciate some…of whatever it is.”
It was the cheerful preliminary to the ritual of eating, pipe-smoking, and picking out places in the cabin to sleep.
The next morning, before sunrise, after handshakes and well-wishes, Sørlie departed for the trip southwest back to Rjukan, and an hour later, a radio message came in from Tronstad.
Glad you’re safe. Intel is Germans will move current juice to Ger. date unknown. Await details to plan next steps in some weeks. Stand down until then. Ch and R. will receive commend from King.
“Well done,” Skinnarland said. “You’ve both received royal commendations, along with the other Vemork saboteurs.”
“Glad to hear it. But what does it mean to ‘stand down’ anyhow? How am I supposed to do that? I’ve just escaped from prison, and I’m a wanted person.”
To Sleep With Reindeer Page 17