“It’s pronounced menn, Eric. But, yes, where those two roads intersect. He moved from Oslo when I was in school here. He was a horse trainer.”
“My mother’s family were horse trainers too!” Gutterson said, surprised. “Quarter horses. In Colorado.”
“Quarter horses?”
“They’re race horses. Bred to be very fast.”
“You mean like in the Kentucky Derby?”
“Derby horses run a mile and a quarter. These are bred for a quarter mile. Like a sprint in the Olympics.” He snapped his fingers. “Like lightning.”
Joaquim Poulsson kneeled next to Nordstrum and pointed across the valley too. “You see the tram?” Underneath it was the Ryes Road, zigzagging its way up the mountain, their planned route of escape.
“Of course.” Nordstrum had ridden it to the top many times.
“When we were kids, my friend Kjell and I snuck past the watchman and slept in one of the cable cars at night.”
“No kidding?”
“It was a dare. From Agnes Hovland. You remember her?”
“I knew Agnes. Or I knew her younger brother, Karl,” Nordstrum said. “We used to snowshoe together. She was a beauty. I probably would have done anything she dared me too.”
“Kjell said she let him have a feel. But all I got was a dance at the Telemark Fair.”
“A dance with Agnes Hovland wasn’t the worst of things.” Nordstrum shrugged. “Anyway, you got to spend the night in a cable car.”
Poulsson spat. “Actually we got caught by the night watchman and I wasn’t allowed to go out at night for a solid month. Pretty stupid, huh…?”
At precisely three minutes of midnight, two guards stepped out of the guardhouse and headed toward the sentries on the suspension bridge.
Nordstrum drew Ronneberg’s attention to them. “Look!”
They were way too far away to overhear, but he imagined the conversation going something like, “What the fuck took you so long? We’re freezing our asses off out here.”
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