by Andrew Gross
The rest of the Germans laughed at their rebuked colleague, which only urged him further on.
One of her party, an older woman in a black dress, took her by the arm and scolded her. “Hella, please.”
But the boorish officer kept at it. “I see you wear a ring, madame. So where is your husband? To allow such a beautiful woman out at night, unescorted…”
“And that would be none of your business,” the woman remarked defiantly. “And anyway, I am escorted, as you can see, quite happily.” As she looked across the room, her gaze happened to land on Nordstrum’s, who nodded back with just enough encouragement to convey his support for her bravery. Still, he knew she’d better not press her luck too far. Anything could happen with these bastards.
“Why so rude, madame?” The chastened officer now stood up with his drink and went over to their table with the slightest stumble. “Do you not know things are at a very sensitive time in this region? It doesn’t take much to end up in a jail for questioning these days. Even a pretty thing like yourself. Never a fun experience, I can assure you. Of course, we could easily look the other way, don’t you agree, gentlemen,” he turned back to his party who chuckled at his efforts, “if perhaps you’d agree to meet us for a drink later. We Germans are very forgiving types. And we know how to show it, trust me.”
At first the woman did not reply. Ignoring the slight would have been the best tack. But when he splashed a little of his drink on their table and stood there, drunken, seeming actually to be waiting for an answer, she finally looked at him.
“I would rather you put me in jail then,” she said, unable to back down. “And if you really must know where my husband is, I’ll tell you. He was a captain in the Free Norwegian Army. Sadly I have no idea where he is today. Captured or killed, I expect. Fighting the likes of you. So if you don’t mind, leave a woman alone who is merely here with her friends, celebrating a birthday, and go back to your table. I’ve committed no offense against you but trying to eat my meal in private.”
The rebuked captain stood there stiffly. Nordstrum saw his jaw tighten. “You should not be so bold, madame.” The captain took another gulp of his drink. “People have been brought in for questioning for far less offense. And then no one knows what they will find. There is always something.”
Every eye in the restaurant went to him.
“Come on, Hans…” His fellow officers waved their countryman back. “Leave the lady alone. She’s not worth it. There are others, be sure. Come, have another drink.”
The officer stared at her, granite-faced. No one knew what might happen. Then he merely bowed politely, gritting his teeth and saying, “My condolences, madame,” and finally retook his seat.
If there was some great victory won by her courage, the woman didn’t act it. She merely went back to her meal and her friends and resumed her conversation. Nordstrum gave her another smile and a nod at a point when their gazes happened to meet, to indicate he admired what she had done.
His fish arrived. The first real food he had had in weeks that wasn’t rations or what he had killed on his own and put over a fire himself. He ate it as if it came from a Cordon Bleu kitchen. All the while, he kept an eye fixed on the table of Germans, hoping their interest wouldn’t wander to him. And also wondering just what he would do should the drunken officer decide to renew his case with her.
Over coffee, the woman got up to go to the powder room in the small hotel’s lobby.
The officer knocked over a glass in a drunken manner, and stumbled clumsily out of the dining room too.
When she didn’t come back promptly, Nordstrum asked for the bill and got up to investigate. It wouldn’t be a wise thing for him to make trouble, but after the courage the woman had displayed, he wasn’t about to back down if the situation called for it.
To his relief, he spotted her outside smoking a cigarette, the German nowhere around.
He stepped outside.
“The air is a little thick in there for you as well?” she said, acknowledging she had recognized him.
“That was very brave,” Nordstrum said. “Not exactly wise, but my compliments nonetheless.”
“Wise hasn’t gotten us very far, has it?” she replied. He could see why the German was so intrigued. She would turn any head with her thick brown hair pulled back, large almond-shaped hazel eyes, and full lips with just the right amount of color on them. “Norwegians are always wise when it comes to history. And look at where we are.” She blew out a plume of smoke and looked at Nordstrum as if she was waiting for an answer. By any standards the woman was beautiful.
“Traveling…?” Nordstrum asked.
She looked at him and slowly edged into an amused smile. “The drunken German captain got shot down. So now, you’ll try your luck?”
“Not at all. I merely was thinking whether you had someone to accompany you home. In case Romeo in there has a desire to press his luck further.”
She looked at him and smiled, in apology now, and chuckled lightly at his remark. “I’m here with friends. My landlady’s birthday. I actually live a short ways away. They’ll take me home. I work in town. Everyone knows me here.”
“Everyone but me, then. I’m Knut,” he said, using the name on his false papers.
“Hella,” the woman acknowledged. “Amundson.”
“Hella, the unwise. But certainly courageous.”
“Hella, the fool, I suspect.” She laughed derisively and blew out another plume of smoke. “But someone has to stand up to them.”
“That was true?” Nordstrum lit up his own cigarette. “About your husband?”
“Almost two years. The last I heard he was in Tonneson.” She shrugged. “I suppose there’s not much hope I’ll ever hear from him again.”
“I knew an Amundson,” Nordstrum said. “Tall, dimple on his chin. Spectacles. He fought in the Gudbrandsdalen Valley.”
She looked up at him with surprise and a bit of hope. “You were there?”
“Yes. But I’m afraid I don’t know what happened to him. We were all kind of on our own by that point.”
“And now?”
“Now…? Now the fight is much different, of course.”
One of the Germans came out. A squat, heavyset man in a homberg and a thin mustache. Leather jacket. The look of the Gestapo. He nodded to her with a slight snicker, noticing them both as he passed.
Nordstrum said under his breath, “I may know how you can really do something, if that’s what you want.”
“How do you have any idea what I want?” she said with a bit of an edge.
“If that’s what you want, of course. I’m sorry for my unkempt appearance, but I’ve been on the vidda for a time. Perhaps we could talk.”
She looked at him, blew out a breath, and dropped her cigarette in the snow. “I think I’d better get back inside. I assume if I’m not already arrested they’ll let me finish my dessert,” she said, declining to pick up on his offer.
“Now that would be wise.” Nordstrum stamped his out as well.
“Tomorrow, maybe,” she said, surprising him. A look that was curious though not fully trusting. “Just a talk. I manage a small perfumery in town. On Princess Juliana Street. No one’s buying these days, other than the Germans and their whores. There’s a café next door. I always take my coffee there. Around ten.”
“Tomorrow, then. Around ten.” Nordstrum nodded.
“If I’m still around.” She smiled and went inside.
“And make sure your friends walk you all the way home,” he called after her.
50
The next morning, Nordstrum found Hella precisely where she said she would be. The café was more like a small indoor eating stand, with a counter, some local workers around, a few muffins and biscuits, the morning newspaper for sale, and three rickety-looking wooden tables.
Nordstrum caught her eye from the street. He went in, ordered a coffee at the counter, and pretended to borrow a sugar from her table. “Not here,” he
said.
“There’s the lake. It’s all frozen over. But we could walk along it.”
“My fiancée is in need of a new scent. Perhaps you can pick one out for me.”
She got up and took her coffee with her. “That would be my pleasure.”
* * *
Inside her shop, which also sold soaps and some inexpensive but tasteful costume jewelry, Hella brought out various scents for him to sample—from France, Italy, even Denmark, and placed them on the counter. She had her hair in a braid today that fell across one shoulder, long and brown. She wore a typical Norwegian sweater with a long wool skirt, but she still made it look stylish with a belt around her waist, and her figure was one that would attract any man. No wonder the German had been so intrigued. Nordstrum figured she was perhaps ten years older than him.
She said, “I don’t know her taste. Or how much you care to spend.”
Nordstrum picked up the French scent—Eau de Elyse—inspected the box for a moment, then placed it back on the counter and looked at her. “I’m in need of someone.”
“Would you like to smell the scent? I could put it on.”
“Of course. Why not?”
She went to the shelf behind her and took a small bottle from it. “You may go on. I’m listening.”
“Someone to operate a radio. It’s dangerous work. As you know, transmitters are expressly not permitted now. If you’re caught, there’s no guarantee I could protect you.”
“I don’t look for anyone to protect me these days.” She sprayed a quick dab on her wrist. “You’ve already seen that.”
“I have. It would be good, though, if you had the freedom to come and go without people watching. And a place from which to send the transmissions. Not in town. Town is far too dangerous. They have their W/T trucks patrolling everywhere. If you’re interested, of course.”
She waited a moment and put her wrist out for Nordstrum to smell. “Do you like?” He drew close and inhaled. “Transmissions to where?”
“It’s lovely. To England,” he said, looking back at her.
“England…” She let the word out like she was languorously blowing out a plume of smoke, a new appreciation in her eyes. “My father has a farm. In the Songvaln. It’s only twelve kilometers to the east. But twelve kilometers here might as well be the North Pole.”
“I wouldn’t want to put your father at any risk.”
“You wouldn’t be. He lives in Bergen now. With my aunt. He’s not so well and she can take care of him better than me. Every week or so, I ski out and look in on the place. Otherwise, it’s completely empty.”
Nordstrum nodded. “You’ll also need to learn code.”
“That should be no problem,” she said with a small smile that went straight to her brown eyes. “Math was always my strong suit.”
“And we would need some sort of system. So I can contact you. And you, me. When something comes in.”
She stared at him for a moment, in a loose, evaluating way. “So how do I know I can trust you? Knut, if that’s even your real name. So far all you’ve done is smile at me from across a room. I’ve already spoken too much about myself. You might well be an informer for all I know. NS. They’re all over. The Germans pay well.”
“Or you?” Nordstrum shrugged, and looked back at her.
“That’s true. But if I was, I certainly had an unusual way of displaying it last night. Not to mention…”
“Not to mention what?”
She placed the cap back on the perfume bottle. “That it was you who came out of the restaurant after me. Anyway, there’s something about you. Your face is hard, but you have trusting eyes.”
Nordstrum waited until she put the bottle back in the box, leaving it on the counter. “You’ve heard of a particular incident that took place a few weeks ago the Germans seem to be interested in?”
“You mean in Rjukan?” she said with a gleam of surprise. “It’s why the Germans are all over us up here. People say they were making arms. In a factory.”
“The Norsk Hydro factory,” Nordstrum said.
Her almond eyes widened with surprise. “That was you?”
“Now I’m the one who is compromised.” Nordstrum smiled. He picked up the perfume box again and tapped it on the counter while meeting her eyes. “Persimmon…?”
“Why would you even tell me such a thing? A person could trade that information for a lot of money.”
“It must be that you have something trusting about you as well.”
She took the perfume box from him and placed it back in front of her. “Yes, persimmon. You have a good nose. But I suspect you’re really not so interested in the gift after all…?”
“Another time. I promise.”
“Tell me…” She stacked the boxes back on the shelf. “Do you even have a fiancée?”
Nordstrum shrugged. “Sadly, no. Not any longer.”
She nodded with kind of a knowing smile, leaning back against the shelves, facing him, her palms wide on the counter. “Say I agree. No one can know who I am.”
“They won’t. Not even in England. I promise you. But I want to repeat, this is dangerous work. You have to be very careful. Far more careful than you were last night. The Germans have mounted W/T vehicles. If you’re discovered, it won’t be about pushing a drunken officer away from your table. You’ll be shot.”
Hella let out a pensive breath. “What am I going to do, sit out the war in this shop? My husband didn’t hesitate. It was a second marriage for me. It lasted only three years. The first…” She gave a scoffing laugh and shook her head, as if to say, a real pig. “Now … if the bastards win this, losing him, it will all be for nothing.”
“They won’t win,” Nordstrum said.
“You sound sure?”
“More than ever.”
“Maybe. But we’re still in for a long fight.”
“Then welcome to it, Hella Amundson.” Nordstrum smiled.
51
Over the next weeks, Nordstrum put his team in place. He instructed them both in the skills of transmission and code. He went from hut to hut, finding several burned to the ground—sometimes having to spend the night in his sleeping bag in the bitter cold under whatever makeshift shelter he could find. More than once he came within a hundred meters of German patrols, which were still blanketing the vidda, or barely avoided the reconnaissance of a low-flying Fokker, keeping a watchful eye over the most remote valleys. He felt hunted, like some lone, prized stag locals knew had broken from the herd. The only benefit to the Germans’ constant presence was that there were now so many tracks crisscrossing the wilderness, patrol after patrol, half-track after half-track, that his became impossible to follow.
He prayed that the rest of his mates were safely in Sweden by now.
He began to send a few trial messages back to SOE. About the increased German presence on the vidda. That martial law was continued in Rjukan. One reply came back through Ox. That his old friend Einar Skinnarland wanted to see him. He asked Nordstrum to meet him at the Swansu cabin near where his family had a farm in the mountains.
Einar’s brother’s family was there. Torstein was still detained, but his wife, Lise, had prepared a small meal for them.
Nordstrum and Einar exchanged happy hugs, as they hadn’t set eyes on each other since before the raid.
“Any news on my father?” Nordstrum asked.
“Yes.” Einar shrugged and looked away. “But bad, I’m afraid. I’m told he’s been arrested.”
“Arrested?”
“It’s Lund. Who I spoke of to you last time. He was rounded up after the raid. It was hard to get word to you. He’s in his jail.”
“My father cares as much about politics as a mule. It’s because of me, of course.”
“Because of all of us, Kurt.”
“Maybe.” Nordstrum picked up a loose branch. He traced the edge in the snow, then cracked it in half and flung it into the field. “I wonder if there’s a way to get him out?”
“Out? He’s locked up in the basement of the NS headquarters, Kurt. And in failing health. This Lund is not a man you can bribe.”
“I wasn’t speaking of bribing anyone, Einar.”
Einar looked at him. “Where would you take him, even if we could?”
“I made an oath on my mother’s deathbed to watch over him.”
“I think that oath has long run out, Kurt. Your father’s his own man. And the town is swarming with NS and Gestapo. Lund knows you. Don’t do something stupid, Kurt. People back in England are counting on you.”
“I won’t.” Nordstrum nodded. Still the urge rose inside him. “But my father’s counting on me too, Einar.”
52
On King Gustav Street in Rjukan, the birchwood-stave building that for fifty years had been home to the Seamen’s Guild now served as Gestapo and NS headquarters.
Both the German swastika and the Nasjonal Samling shield hung over the wood-carved entrance.
Nordstrum pulled his wool cap low over his eyes and hunched his collar. He had on a pair of wire spectacles and his beard had grown out in a week. He went up to a young SS guard positioned on the front steps. “Captain Lund, bitte?”
“Fragen innen.” The soldier pointed to the desk. Ask inside.
“Danke.”
The lobby was jammed, both with those in German uniforms and civilians, some seeking licenses that had to be approved by the German authorities, others petitioning about family members who were being detained there. On a bulletin board Nordstrum saw a poster with photos of those on the run. Of himself and Jens—both from far younger days and clean shaven, bold letters underneath. WANTED. FOR CRIMES AGAINST THE STATE. 5,000 KRONEN REWARD. But here it was clear that everyone was far too concerned about their own business to even be thinking of looking for a familiar face.
At the reception desk, a German clerk was doing his best, in broken Norwegian, to calm a woman who could not find a family member, a Hirden officer translating her rant as fast as he could. There was a broad, carpeted staircase that led to the higher floors—the building was only three stories, but still one of the most prominent in Rjukan. A red swastika banner hung boldly from the rafters. Up that staircase, Nordstrum knew, was where the real architects of all the reprisals and crimes against the state were: this Dieter Lund, whom Einar had spoken of, and whom Nordstrum recalled from his youth. And Muggenthaler, the chief of the local Gestapo.