“You’re a sergeant,” they told him. Mainly because Nordstrum, who’d grown up a hunter, could shoot with the best. And because he’d seen his share of bloodshed. He was tall and well built, with a high forehead and short, light hair, and a kind of purposefulness in his gray, deep-set eyes that from his youth people seemed willing to follow. His looks had hardened now. Two years of watching limbs blown in the air and a man next to you dropped by one to the forehead had made him appear ten years older.
But somehow, he was still alive. His ranks had long since splintered; most of his friends were dead. Now it was simply do whatever he could do. The king had made it to London. Nordstrum had heard they were forming some kind of Free Norwegian Army there. England … Maybe in ’40, it might have been possible to find your way there—250 kilometers across the vidda through blistering storms to Sweden and then hop a neutral ship. Today, it might as well be China. He’d made the trek to Sweden once, after fleeing Narvik, but, finding little support there, came back to resume the fight. And even if you made it all the way to England, and weren’t sunk to the bottom of the North Sea or handed back over by the Swedish police to the wrong people, yes, you could join up. And then what…? Sit the war out and train. The Free Norwegian Army … He had to admit, it had a nice ring. He knew there’d be a new front one day, the real one. In time, the Allies would invade. With its endless jagged coastline that in all of Europe was the hardest to defend, Norway actually made good military sense. And Nordstrum’s only remaining hope was to stick around long enough to be a part of it. To take his country back. In the distance, through the glare of the sun off the water, he spotted the port of Mael. He’d left Rjukan for the university some six years ago, still a boy. He wasn’t sure what he had come back as.
“Take a look.” Nordstrum elbowed his friend, Jens, a fellow fighter who was from the region as well, pointing toward the ring of familiar mountains. “Like an old friend, no?”
“An old friend if we were actually coming back to live,” Jens replied. “Now it’s more like some beautiful woman that you can’t have, who’s teasing us.”
He’d known Jens from their days in school. He was from Rauland, just to the north. Their fathers had been friends. As school kids they played football against each other; hunted and skinned deer together. Skied the same mountains.
“You sound like an old man,” Nordstrum said reprovingly. “You’re twenty-five. Enjoy the view.”
“Well, two years of war will do that to you.” Though through it all, Jens had somehow maintained his boyish looks. “I look forward to one day coming back here with no one shooting after me and—”
“Jens.” Nordstrum cut his friend off in mid-sentence. “Look over there.” This time, he indicated an officer in full gray Hirden uniform who had stepped out on deck like some preening rooster, as if the ribbons on his chest came from battlefield valor instead of from some political appointment. The Quislings were in control now, National Socialists who took over after the king had fled, and who happily had become the Nazis’ puppets. Traitors, collaborators, they stayed at home, spying on their townsfolk, making secret arrests, spouting propaganda on the radio, while all the brave ones fought in the mountains and died. Enough of Nordstrum’s friends had been put up against a wall and shot on information squeezed from informants by the Quisling police to make his stomach tighten in a knot at the sight of the traitor.
The officer sauntered toward them. He had a pinched-in face like an owl and beady, self-important eyes under his peaked officer’s cap, his chest puffed out by his meaningless rank. National Unity party, it was called. Unity in hell. Nordstrum would have gladly spit at his feet as he went by, if his journey here didn’t have some real importance attached to it.
“I see him,” said Jens. The Hird had a pistol in his belt, but they had a Bren at the bottom of their tool bag, and the will to use it. They’d taken care of many such traitors over the past year. “Just give me the word.”
“Why do you need my word?” Nordstrum said under his breath, nodding pleasantly to the officer as he approached. “Good day to you, sir.”
“Good day to you. Heil Hitler.” The Quisling raised his hand and nodded back.
Jens, who looked like he barely shaved, but had killed as many Germans as Nordstrum, merely shrugged as the man strode by. “Because you’re the sergeant.”
Sergeant … Nordstrum laughed to himself. Anyway, their outfit was now dispersed. His rank was meaningless, though Jens never failed to bring it up every chance he could. “Because we promised to meet up with Einar,” Nordstrum said. “There’s a reason, if we’re looking for one.” He held back his friend’s arm.
“You’re right, that is a reason,” Jens acknowledged with a sigh of disappointment. “Though not much of one.” They followed the Quisling as he made his way down the deck. “There’ll be other times.”
Einar Skinnarland had gotten word to Nordstrum in the mountains near Lillehammer that he needed to see him on a matter of the highest urgency. He couldn’t tell Nordstrum just what it was, but Nordstrum’s friend was not one to trifle with when he claimed something was urgent. Nordstrum had known him from youth as well, and they both had gone on to engineering school in Oslo, though Einar, two years older, had graduated before the war and now had a good job on the Mosvatn Dam, as well as a wife and son. Please come, the message read, so Nordstrum did. No questions asked. At considerable risk. They were to meet at a café on the wharf in Mael on the east end of the Tinnsjo, near where the ferry docked.
From there he and Jens had no idea where they would head. Likely search for some unit up in the mountains to join up with. He had some names to contact. One had to be very careful today about what one did. The Nazis had adopted a forty-to-one policy for all acts of sabotage, rounding up and shooting forty innocent townsfolk for every German killed. Protecting the home folk was vital to Nordstrum, as to all true Norwegians. What else were they fighting for? What did it really matter if it was forty soldiers killed in an effort to retake their country or forty innocents lined up against a wall and shot? Forty dead was forty dead. Nordstrum had seen this policy carried out firsthand, and still carried around the pain in his heart. He didn’t want to be the cause of it to others. It didn’t put them out of business; it only changed the rules a bit. And it made him loathe the bastards even more. They just had to be careful about what they did.
Farther down the deck, the Quisling came up to a young woman with a child by her side. She had dark hair and a swarthy complexion, and hid her eyes as the officer went by, which was like milk to a cat to these weasels.
“May I see your papers, please?” The officer stopped at her, putting out his hand.
“Sir?”
“Your papers,” the Hird said again, his fingers beckoning impatiently.
Frightened, the woman held the child with one arm while she fumbled through her bag with the other, finally producing her ID card.
“Kominic…” The Quisling looked at the picture on it and then back at her. “What kind of a name is that? Gypsy? Jewish?”