“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.”