“I realize that. But I also know these mountains better than any of them. That’s why they chose me. Now, go on. All of you. Look, it’s snowing again. I told you, Jens, the trolls are with us.”
Jens put down his skis and removed his rucksack defiantly. “Then I’ll stay with you. We’ve been together a long time.”
“I told Colonel Wilson you’d likely say just that. It’s not a request, I’m afraid, Jens. It’s an order. Remember, I still outrank you. What I have to do will only bring more attention to it if it’s more than one man.”
Jens stared at him with bitter disappointment. “We’ve fought together for three years.”
“And we will again. But when I see you all next, hopefully we’ll be on the side doing the routing.”
Ronneberg stepped up to him and put out his hand. “When we see you again, I hope it’ll be over a beer and herring. We’ll have much to share.” He gave Nordstrum a hug. “You be safe, Kurt. We could never have done this thing without you.”
“And you. All of you,” Nordstrum said, as they all came up and, one by one, embraced him.
“You helped me through,” Gutterson said, taking off his cap. “I hate to leave you behind.”
“You earned your place.” Nordstrum gave him his hand. “As well as anyone here. Consider yourself a fucking Northman now. The rest of us do.”
The young American grinned with pride and strapped his pack on his back. “I hope to see you again.”
“We did something good,” Nordstrum said. “All of us.”
“Yes.” Olf Pedersen nodded. “We did. I owe you my life up on that ridge.”
Jens was the hardest to leave. His friend’s boyish good looks and innocent blue eyes had weathered into the features of a hardened soldier now.
“When this is over, we’ll meet at the Gunwale on Lake Tinnsjo,” Nordstrum said. “Where we met with Einar, before we took the boat to England.”
“It’s a date. Just no Germans this time, if you can work that out. Or Hirden, for that matter.”
“Yes, I make a solemn promise not to toss anyone overboard ever again.” Nordstrum laughed. “That is what got us into this mess. And a little matter about reappropriating a coastal steamer. Yes, we’ve been through a lot.” Nordstrum held out his hand.
Jens took it and looked at him with tears in his eyes. “I meant what I said last night. Before the raid. If anything happens to you, you do have those who would care. Like family. It would be a real loss for me.”
“And the same for me, Jens. You take care.” Nordstrum pulled his friend close. “Now let’s get on with it before we end up blubbering into our ski masks.”
The rest had buckled into their skis. In a sign of providence, the snow had started up again, as Nordstrum had observed. Their tracks would be covered. Putting out his palm, Jens laughed. “And don’t give me any business about the trolls. Though I admit, I’m maybe starting to come around just a bit.…” He skied over and joined the team.
“You all take care.” Nordstrum put up his hand as they headed off in single file along the shore of the frozen lake. East. In the direction of Sweden. “Yes, we did do something good,” he said to himself, when they were well out of earshot.
Maybe a hundred meters out, Jens stopped a last time and waved to him.
Within minutes, the men were merely specks against a vast sea of white, gliding and shushing around the perimeter of the frozen lake. Nordstrum knew there was no lonelier feeling than watching your comrades skiing off. Men you fought with side by side. Who did their jobs when called upon and held their nerve.
Men who had gone twice as far.
He pushed his arms through his own rucksack and clipped on his skis. Now it was just him and the mountains. The way he liked it. Yes, they had done something good. He looked back once and took off, heading away from the lake.
West.
Deeper into the sea of white and the valleys of the vidda. The wind picked up. Slanting snow knifed at his face. Soon his beard was covered with it.
Jens was right, in hours the place would be swarming with Germans, looking for the team who had dealt them a blow right under their noses. He’d better put as much distance between himself and them as he could.
There was much more to do.
He looked again toward the hut. His friends had disappeared.
And the fresh snow had covered his tracks.
PART TWO
Tracks in the Snow
48
General Wilhelm Rediess, Obergruppenfuhrer of all the Gestapo and SS battalions in Norway, stared in anger at the mangled heavy water compressors in the basement of the Norsk Hydro factory.
He was one of the few people in Norway who knew the true importance of the precious liquid being secreted there. He had sped to Vemork from Oslo that Sunday morning as soon as he’d received word of the raid. News he could not believe, since only three months before, he and General Falkenhorst, the supreme military commander in Norway, had upgraded the security measures for the plant after the failed glider attack.
And now they lay in ruin—twisted shards of metal, pipes, and valves. Canisters that once contained the most valued military secret in the Reich toppled like bowling pins, the trail of their irreplaceable contents a slow drip down the drain.
Before him, those responsible stood stiffly, awaiting his reaction.
“You are absolutely certain,” Rediess grilled the night watchman, an aging fool named Gustav, clutching his cap, “that these four saboteurs were British?”
With the watchman was his foreman from the previous night, as well as the chief engineer of the plant, named Larsen. And the overall director of the Norsk Hydro facility himself, Nilsson, a heavyset, nervous businessman who saw this only in terms of profit and loss and not the strategic value to the Reich; also the military officer in charge at the plant that night, a Lieutenant Frisch, who stood sweating at attention but who in a matter of days would be freezing in the snow a thousand miles east of here. The local head of the Gestapo, Gruppenfuhrer Muggenthaler, stood by silently, as did Colonel Rausch, in charge of the local garrison in Rjukan, and the head of the local NS police in the region, a Captain Dieter Lund.
“They certainly appeared British.” The watchman nodded nervously. It was as if he had a practiced speech. “They wore green-gray uniforms; they spoke in English mostly. They even said they were British. You heard them, didn’t you, Gunnar?” he said to his foreman. “They said, ‘Tell them British officers wouldn’t take a Norwegian life.’”
“I did hear them,” the foreman said, but he was clearly not happy to be brought into the conversation in front of the senior Gestapo officer from Oslo.
“But they spoke Norwegian as well, I heard you say?” the Gestapo chief pressed further.
“Yes, a little,” the watchman admitted. “When one has a gun trained on you it’s not great for the ears.”