Six of them.
Quicker and lighter than their German counterparts, who, spotting them on their tails in the midst of their attack and suddenly realizing they were now at a clear disadvantage, pulled off the attack and angled sharply up as the Brits swept down on them, pairing off two to a German plane. Outnumbered and outflanked, the Messerschmitts climbed back up into the clouds and continued away from the ship toward the horizon.
“See! So what do you think of my escort now?” Einar shouted to the captain with an ecstatic whoop, shaking the old seaman by the shoulders. The Germans gone, the Brits streamed directly over their bow and dipped their wings. Passengers rushed back out on deck, waving their arms in triumph, cheering.
The captain looked at Nordstrum with a relieved, bewildered smile, the color slowly returning to his face, a pallor that spoke of just how close they’d come to their graves. “You were damn lucky, son, whatever your name is.”
“It’s Nordstrum.” It hardly seemed to matter now. “Tell me, Captain, is there any champagne on board?”
“Champagne? You must be joking. We’re a coastal steamer, not the Queen Mary. Aquavit, maybe.”
“Then break it out.” The color returned to Nordstrum’s face as well. “I think we’ve earned a toast.”
“To the Brits,” Einar said with a gleam in his eye. A gleam of their good fortune.
Nordstrum picked his Colt back up. “Yes, to the Brits. Reverse course, Captain. Due west, once more, in case you’ve forgotten,” he said, patting the old seaman on the back. “The same rules apply.”
It would be clear sailing all the way to Scotland now.
7
At the office of the Nasjonal Samling police in Rjukan, Captain Dieter Lund paged through the police report.
Two days ago, a fellow NS officer named Oleg Rand had disappeared between the ferry terminals of Tinnoset and Mael, on his way to Rauland. Not just an NS officer, Lund was quick to note. A fellow Hird like himself, one of the Quisling government’s most trusted brigade. As NS prefect over the Telemark region, under the local Gestapo, it was Lund’s job to investigate the disappearance, since the missing person was of Norwegian origin. Rand was last seen by the ticket master in Tinnoset as he boarded the ferry there. Then it was as if he had simply vanished into thin air. The missing officer was a decorated lieutenant in an elite guard, on a personal mission from General Amundson in Oslo, hardly someone who would suddenly abandon his duties on a whim or go AWOL. Clearly something had happened. But two days had passed and still no one was talking. Not any of the ferry passengers Lund had been able to round up after the ship landed, nor the crew. In fact, to his amazement (and his deep suspicion, as well), no one seemed to recall even seeing the man. A conspicuous figure in a gray Hirden uniform, by all accounts a committed and decorated officer. Lund knew, of course, no one liked helping the NS, who were looked at as turncoats who had knuckled under and were happily doing the bidding of the Nazis, traitors to the king. But still, he had his ways. Double the ration card of a soul in need or arrange for the procurement of needed medication. Assist a citizen whose wife’s cousin had perhaps run into a bit of trouble with the law. And in spite of the held-in disdain that Lund felt every day, from the eyes of those in this region he had grown up with and who he’d known for close to thirty years, a good policeman always knew ways to pierce the public silence.
Surely Lund had his.
One of the crew, whose cousin was in jail on a petty vandalism charge, finally admitted under questioning that the NS officer had indeed been on the boat and had drowned on the crossing.
“Drowned?” Lund finally felt he was getting somewhere. “How?”
“They said he had gone in for a swim. But it was clear. They threw him. Over the side.”
“What are you saying?” Lund’s blood snapped to attention. This was murder. A crime against the state. “Who?” he demanded.
“Two of the passengers.” The crewman gave a hapless shrug. “Dressed as workers. But they surely didn’t act the part.”
“Workers…?” There were not many workers with the nerve to do something that brazen and rebellious. “I have some photos I’d like you to take a look at,” Lund said. He opened his desk drawer and took out a file.
The crewman muttered that that was all he could say now and had to go. He got up to leave.
“Of course. I understand your hesitation completely.” Lund nodded, feigning sympathy for the crewman’s position and placing the album of photographs pointlessly on his desk. “Unless, of course, you want your cousin to be taken out and put against a wall and shot, for simply smashing a store window while drunk. That would be a shame. It’s almost out of my hands.”
His color blanching, it was like the strength went out of the crewman’s legs and he sat back down.
“Good.” Lund opened the book of photographs. “Please take your time.”
Ashen, the man leafed slowly through the pages of faces. It was clear he was going against all his inner conviction in betraying a countryman. No matter, he was here. One that he seemed to pause on just a moment too long was a boyish-looking fellow from Vigne, a nearby village, who was known to be among those who had joined the Free Army. Strollman was the rebel’s name. Jens. Lund stopped the crewman, putting a hand on his arm when he saw the man’s hesitation, his eyes beading on him sharply as if to say: Was it him? This one?
The crewman finally lifted his gaze slowly. “That’s one.”
Lund’s blood surged. He had him. “And now the other…?” He put the file back in front of the ferry crewman. The other could be anyone, he knew. Any of a thousand who fought with this man in the resistance. Not even necessarily from around here. But as the man looked on, Lund already had framed an idea.
If one was this Strollman, the other might well have been a friend of his. There was one Lund knew who was known to have been among the fighters. The two had grown up together. Lund went to his drawer and dug through his files. He came back with another photo, an old one. Taken from their school yearbook, the only one he had of the man. He pointed to the face. “Look here,” he said to the seaman. And waited.
Slowly, the crewman let out a breath and shrugged almost imperceptibly. “Yes. Him too.”
“The two of them only?”
Another breath out the crewman’s nostrils. “Yes. Them only.”
“Thank you.” Lund closed the book and smiled. “I think the evidence against your cousin has been misplaced somewhere.”