The Saboteur

by Andrew Gross

  The two relieved sentries clapped their hands to get the blood going and picked up their pace back to the hut. Maybe one of them had been holding back a pee. The two on the bridge then looked out into the valley; one spit over the edge as if cursing his luck to be out there, then they started to cross the bridge at a deliberate pace, to the Rjukan side of the gorge, rifles on their shoulders.

  “Another half hour,” Ronneberg said. “To give the men relieving them some time to relax.”

  As these final minutes passed, everyone’s nerves finally did come to the surface, and the men were quiet. All there was to do was wait. Everyone’s thoughts seemed to take them somewhere. Oddly, Nordstrum’s roamed to his mother. When her leukemia got worse she was taken from Rjukan to a private clinic in Oslo. Once, when he went to visit her near the end, she took his hand in hers, bony and withered, her face deathly pale. “You’ll have to be the man now, Kurt,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper, but yet firm. “You’ll see. He’s no angel. He will need you.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Nordstrum had said. “It’s still your job, Mom. We’ll keep it open for you. You’ll be home soon.”

  She’d tightened her grip on him. “Promise me, Kurt. He plays so tough and thick-skinned. But this will kill him, you can be sure. It will kill him.”

  “I will, Mother,” he had to promise before she let go.

  A week later she was gone.

  As he stood there, he wasn’t really sure if he had done his job well.

  They heard a rumble. From across the gorge, a truck came over the bridge. It looked like more workers coming up from Rjukan. It stopped at the gate. The guards came up to it. There was no way to hear what was said, but one of them opened the gate as the other waved the truck through. It drove in and wound around to Building Number Two.

  Twenty after twelve.

  Jens came up, looking out at the bridge. “Remind me again why I’m about to get my ass shot off for a few liters of fucking water that costs more than champagne?”

  Nordstrum shrugged. “Maybe because you like playing the hero?” He kept an eye on the two German sentries pacing back and forth on the bridge.

  “If I just wanted that, I should have stuck with football.” In school he’d been a promising player. A coach even came to look at him to train for the national team.

  “You really weren’t so good at that either,” Nordstrum said with a straight face. “Who knows, maybe it’s just because you’re a Northman. And because no one else would.”

  “A Northman…?” Jens gave him a snort. “I guess that explains it.”

  “You know, I’ve been thinking…” Nordstrum rested his tommy on the shed. “If I die here, there’s not a single person in the world who would really miss me. My mother’s dead. My father’s in failing health and might end up in jail; he can’t last long. Anna-Lisette … The truth is, I don’t have a single lasting attachment in the world.”

  “Yes, you did, Kurt. The war took it.”

  “I’m not so certain the war is an excuse.”

  “Well, I’d miss you, Kurt,” Jens said. “Look around, we’re all in the same boat.”

  “You would, huh?”

  “Sure.” Jens grinned. “And sorry to tell you this, but I don’t intend on dying.”

  The American came up to stand beside them and looked down at the bridge. “I’m actually a little scared, if I can say. You men have all seen some action. This is my first.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Nordstrum said. “Just do what you’re trained to do. The mind follows. Look around, we’re all a little scared.”

  Ronneberg put his gun over his shoulder and announced, “Twelve twenty-seven. It’s time. Remember, if the explosive team goes down, the covering team takes up their place. At all costs.”

  Quietly now, everyone gathered up their equipment. Poulsson stamped out his cigarette. Nordstrum strapped his pack of explosives on his back.

  Ronneberg went in front. “All I can say is, if there was any team I could have chosen to be with on this job, you’d all be on it. Even you.” He grinned at Gutterson. “Despite the accent.”

  Snow had begun to fall. Nordstrum put out his hand. Large, soft flakes fell into his palm. Snow was always a good sign. Like most of the men who’d grown up here, he’d been on skis before he’d learned to ride a bike.

  “See, the trolls are smiling on us.” He elbowed Jens.

  “I can’t say I believe in the trolls,” Jens sniffed back.

  “You don’t?”

  “All right, on my signal…,” Ronneberg whispered down the line. “Covering team, take the lead.”

  As the guard on the bridge headed back toward the far gate, the lieutenant lowered his arm.

  One by one they stole away from the shed, Poulsson in the lead, then Helberg, Storhaug, Kjelstrup, Gutterson, and Pedersen. Watching them go, Jens turned back to Nordstrum. “And I’ve known you a long time, Kurt. And neither do you.”

  38

  At STS 61, near Cambridge, Colonel Jack Wilson was about to pack it in for the night.

  Gunnerside had been back in Norway for nine days. For the first six, until the team met up with Grouse, they hadn’t had word from them. Whether they were alive or dead. Finally, Knut Haugland, the Grouse radioman, in his understated way, messaged in: “All parties together. Good to see the mates and building ourselves back up. Will advise on future preparations.”

  Since then, it had been quiet again.

  The last thing Wilson wanted to do was flood them with questions. German wireless antennas were desperately trying to narrow in on anyone transmitting in the area. It was best to keep traffic low. Still, they were aching for some news. Major General Gubbins checked in every day, with entreaties from Lord Mountbatten. “Winnie wants to stay informed.” Which only went to show the importance behind this mission. Wilson would be on that vidda himself, he knew inside, if only he was twenty years younger and could ski.

  Still, the silence was like a prod that kept him awake most nights. On his way out that night, out of sheer frustration, he stopped in on Tronstad, who was in the midst of drafting a letter to his family, sipping a whisky, his ubiquitous pipe in a bowl on his desk.

  “Colonel.” The scientist looked up. “Drink…?”

  “I wouldn’t turn one away.” Wilson pulled up a chair.

  Tronstad opened a drawer and took out a half-finished bottle of eighteen-year Aberlour. “Picked this up in Scotland,” he said. “Made all that damn waiting a bit more worthwhile.” He poured one out for Wilson.

  “How do you keep it together?” Wilson asked, tilting his glass in salute.

  “I’m Norwegian. Give us a little wind and rain, we don’t worry about much else.”

  “You don’t?” Wilson took a long sip and nodded. “To our success.”

  The scientist smiled. “At least, on the outside. On the inside we’re just as riled as—”

  There was a knock and the door sprang open. It was Corporal Finch, out of breath, who had come after Wilson from down the hall. It was his job to field the wireless traffic from Norway. “I’m glad I caught you, sir.”

  Wilson put down his drink and stood up. “What is it, Corporal?”

  “This just came in. From Grouse.” He handed the message to Wilson.

  Tronstad stood up too.

  It was from Haugland. He and Einar Skinnarland had broken away from the main group, as it was vital that information be sent back to England, and God forbid the only person capable of transmitting it was killed in the raid.

  “What’s it say, Jack?” Tronstad stood waiting.

  “It says, ‘Everything ready. Festivities set for tonight. Will advise upon completion.’”

  Wilson looked up. “So it’s tonight, then.” His ruddy face grew bright with excitement. “Corporal, see my car is canceled. Looks like I’ll be spending the night.”

  It was going to be a long one, Wilson knew. Ten brave men were about to put their lives on the line. The funny thing about br
avery, sometimes it was no more than people being afraid to shrink from doing the right thing. When the story of this war was written, he reflected, the outcome might well rest on a team of ordinary Norwegians pulling off what the best-trained troops of the British army were unable to do.

  “To my boys, then,” Tronstad said, tipping his glass toward Wilson.

  “Yes, to your boys.” Wilson clinked glasses, and they both threw back a gulp. “And I’m sure Winnie will want to know as well.”

  * * *

  An ocean away, an aide slipped into the Blue Room next to the Oval Office, which Franklin Delano Roosevelt used as a greeting room, interrupting a reception between the president and a group of female volunteers from Indiana who had won a contest for outstanding results under the War Bonds program.

  “I have to excuse myself for just a moment,” Roosevelt informed the group’s headmistress, a Mrs. Lois Ingram. “Please be assured I will return as soon as I can.”

  In the adjoining office, Henry Stimson, his secretary of war, was waiting for him. “We just received a cable from Whitehall, Mr. President. The prime minister thought we’d like to know that that effort to derail the Nazi heavy water facility in Norway we all spoke of back in June last year—”

  “Yes, up in New Hyde Park.” The president nodded. “I recall.”

  “That’s correct. Anyway, they want us to know, it’s scheduled for tonight,” said the secretary of war.

  “Tonight?” The president wheeled himself to his desk. “After that last fiasco, they actually threw more Brits on it. I’ll be damned.”

  “Not Brits.” Stimson handed him the transmission. “A bunch of Norwegians, it seems.”

  “Norwegians…?” Roosevelt read over the cable. “I’ll be damned.”

  Ever since Albert Einstein had first alerted him to the prospect that a nuclear chain reaction might be used to create bombs of unimaginable destruction, it had become a race that would decide the war. The ultimate race, he knew. An outcome determined by a clear, harmless liquid fit for even a child to drink, where the world’s total supply lay in ten small drums held at the most-guarded scientific facility in the world.

  “Inform General Groves,” the president said. The military head of the Manhattan Project. “And let me have a few minutes, if you would, Henry.”

  “Of course, Mr. President.” Stimson went to leave the room.

  Roosevelt sat back and closed his eyes. He remembered Churchill’s worry on this matter, and anything that could make that man worry must be quite a scare. Hell, he recalled Albert Einstein’s worry, and that’s what really troubled him.

  He laughed.

  “Sir?” Stimson turned at the door. “Something struck you as funny.”

  “Nothing, Henry.” He shook his head. Other than the fate of the world now resting in the hands of ten bloody Norwegians, there was nothing funny about it at all.

  In fact, it was the most serious damn thing Roosevelt had had to ponder as president since the attack on their navy at Pearl Harbor had brought his country into the war.

  39

  The ten crept silently along the tracks and came upon another shed, this one a tool shed, no more than a hundred yards from the wire gate. It was all that barred the way to one of the most important military sites in Europe. It was dark, and other than the whir of the giant turbines the place was deathly quiet.

  Nordstrum checked along the perimeter of the wire. There was no sign of anyone around.

  “Arne.” Ronneberg called Kjelstrup forward. “I think this is your moment.”

  “Aye, Lieutenant.” Kjelstrup grinned. He reached into his rucksack and took out the wire shears he’d lugged all the way from England. “I told you these would come in handy.”

  Ronneberg motioned him forward to the gate. “Be careful. And watch out for any guards. Good luck.”

  In a crouch, Arne followed the railway tracks directly up to the rear gate. The moonless night hid his approach. With the precision of an expert plumber, which was what he was before the war, he examined the wire mesh for a weak spot and found the perfect point, where he executed a single, well-placed snip. He pulled the wire back and stretched it wide, making a gap. Then he turned back and waved everyone forward.

  One by one, the covering team headed off in the darkness to meet him, their footsteps muffled by the constant whoosh from the factory’s dynamos and the steady westerly wind. Nordstrum and the demolition team followed closely behind. At the gate, there was barely a moment’s hesitation. Ronneberg held it wide for the rest and one by one they scurried through. Poulsson and Gutterson continued straight to the front of the building where the high-concentration tanks were located, taking cover behind a group of storage drums, not twenty yards from the guard hut. With its flimsy wooden walls, the structure would offer only scant protection against the hail of automatic weapons should they have to open fire. Kjelstrup continued farther down to a thatch of bushes to keep watch over the two guards on the bridge. Storhaug and Pederson slipped around to the north side of the building to keep an eye out for the sentry patrolling the penstocks. Helberg remained at the gate, covering the escape route for when they all had to beat a hasty retreat.

  It appeared that not a single guard, German or Norwegian, patrolled the upper grounds.

  The Norsk Hydro factory, which looked like a brightly lit, impregnable fortress at every point of their approach, now loomed even larger directly in front of them. Its massive, humming turbines, swallowing an endless flow of water from the vidda, gave off a sensation of awe and dread for what they were tasked with pulling off.

  “Jens, Kurt.” Ronneberg waved his fellow team members forward. “This way.”

  The four-man demolition team split into two pairs—Nordstrum and Stromsheim, and Ronneberg and Jens—each team with enough explosives to accomplish the job in the case that the other unit didn’t make it in.

  They both scrambled silently across the grounds to the steel door that led to the basement, the fastest and most direct point of access.

  So far, it was all working like clockwork.

  At the door, Ronneberg tried the handle, pushing his shoulder against it.

  It didn’t budge.

  “Shit,” he whispered, and tried again.

  It was locked.

  That left the other door on the north side of the building that led to the first floor. Much faster than the duct Tronstad had spoken of, with an opening only wide enough for a single person at a time.

  “Kurt, Jens and I will go around the side and check out the other door,” Ronneberg whispered, pointing to the other side of the building. “You and Birger search for that pipe duct.”

  Three minutes had gone by. Now it was all about the time.

  Hugging the exterior, Ronneberg and Jens disappeared around the side into the darkness.

  “Let’s go.” Nordstrum waved to Stromsheim. They ran off the other way, the giant factory whooshing and belching so loudly the building seemed to vibrate.

  Next to a closed, corrugated metal service door, Nordstrum spotted a small wooden ladder, only three rungs tall. It was perched in the snow under some kind of opening covered over by a wooden door fastened with a cheap lock.

  “This has to be it.” Nordstrum pried the doors open, busting the flimsy latch, the sound covered by the building’s noises.

  It led to a long, dark chasm, narrow as a cave. “This is it!” The passage was narrow and unlit, and seemed to have various things blocking the way: hoses, cables, pipes.

  “Should we wait for Joachim and Jens?” Stromsheim asked. He removed the pack from his back.

  “You heard him.” Nordstrum shook his head. “We’re each on our own. There’s no time to find them now. We go right in.” He handed Stromsheim his gun, then hoisted himself up into the narrow opening and wedged himself inside. It was barely wide enough for him to fit. Ronneberg, who was even taller, would have even greater difficulty, if he had to enter this way.

  “C’mon, let’s go.”
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  Nordstrum went forward on his hands and knees. He had to remove his explosives pack, as the passage wasn’t large enough for it to fit through on his back, so he put it in front of him and nudged it forward with his knees. Stromsheim climbed in after him.

  The passage was dark and they had to push hoses and heating cables out of their way as they crept along. The only light in there was a small flashlight that Nordstrum trained ahead of him, while feeling for metal pipes, ducking, pushing along their equipment and weapons. The duct gave off of a musty, metallic smell. Like the blind leading the blind, they crawled slowly along, doing their best not to make any noise.

  According to Tronstad, the duct took a direct route over the basement to the heavy water processing room, the very place they were trying to reach. He had told them it was about fifty yards long, but in the dark, inches at a time, the distance was hard to gauge. It took a lot of time, and they had no idea where Ronneberg and Jens were; there was no sign of them behind them. Nordstrum kept his ear pitched for the sound of gunfire, knowing, if he heard it, he would likely never leave the building alive.

  “Look.” He pointed up ahead. He saw a light. There was a small opening, no more than six inches wide, where some pipes passed through into the basement. As he reached it, he stopped, his heart picking up with nerves for the first time, and put his face through the small opening to take a look.

  They were over a corridor. Ahead, he spotted a locked door with the sign NO ADMITTANCE EXCEPT ON BUSINESS. That had to be it.

  The high-concentration room.

  “We’re in luck. It’s just ahead.” Nordstrum pointed forward. “Just a few meters more. Watch out for all these pipes.” He went on, having to duck and twist himself around to get past them.

  They were only a few yards away.

  Suddenly he heard a loud, metallic clang on the floor.

  Behind him, Stromsheim dropped his head and groaned. “Shit.”

  In trying to avoid the pipes, his knee had sent his Colt through the opening in the duct. It was now sitting in the open for anyone to see. The sound of it landing seemed to reverberate down the entire floor. Nordstrum and Stromsheim had no choice but to remain precisely where they were, not daring to move a muscle, fearing that the door below them would open any second and a guard would peek outside, spot the gun there on the floor, and look upward.