It was true Lund knew little about classical music. It had never been something that had interested him much in his youth. Or that he’d had the time or the inclination for since then. And now that he served the Germans, he tried to stay out of those conversations when they turned to culture or the arts.
But one thing he did know was that he had never seen anyone quite as beautiful as the cellist’s granddaughter who had accompanied him to Norway. During the concert, he could not take his eyes off her, seated in the balcony above them. He had met her as part of the delegation upon her arrival in Rjukan and offered to make her and her grandfather’s stay as pleasant as possible. Perhaps even a private tour of their beautiful region, he proposed.
Staring up at her, his eyes flitting between Ritter and the occasional, perfunctory smile at his wife, he couldn’t believe the wild thoughts that were dancing through his head.
Later, he was among those invited to dine with August Ritter and his granddaughter at the Prinzregent Hotel. It was an honor, he knew, to even be included. Among the dignitaries were Gestapo chief Muggenthaler and Josef Terboven, the German civilian attaché in Norway, and the heads of the German cultural legation. Trudi was not asked to attend, as none of the other officers had their wives, which was fine with Lund. And when he saw Natalie Ritter come down the street from the concert hall at the hotel, he felt goose bumps on his arms in the greeting line. He thought and thought about what he would say. She had several days to fill here. He chastised himself that he had let such an unlikely fantasy interfere with his thoughts of the real work that needed to be done.
As she arrived he noticed a man, maybe twenty yards up the street, heading back up the hill. There was a momentary familiarity about him and then he was gone. And she was here, radiant as ever, distracting his attention.
“Fraulein Ritter…” Lund took her hand. Then just as quickly the dignitaries swallowed her up and escorted her to the dining room for dinner.
After dinner, the thought still nagging him, he took her aside. “If I might ask, Fraulein, who was that man I saw you with as you arrived at the hotel?”
“Merely a friend,” Natalie Ritter replied. “I met him on our journey here.”
“And does your friend have a name?” Lund pushed, traversing the delicate boundary between politeness and insistence that was his learned terrain. “Perhaps we can invite him along for our ride.”
“Do the police always inquire so boldly of personal things here in Norway, Captain…?” she said back.
“Lund.” He bowed again as he reminded her.
“Yes. Captain Lund. Leave it that he is simply a friend. I met him in my travels. If the police require more, I’m sure my grandfather would be happy to accompany me to your headquarters.”
Lund smiled. This girl had a resiliency beyond her young looks. “That will hardly be necessary.” He took a step back. “I merely thought he looked familiar. My apologies, Fraulein, if in any way I have—”
An SS major stepped up, his gushing captivation diverting her attention, and then Lund was left standing by himself, a familiar hole of feeling ignored expanding in his chest, and then a face coming into his mind, like a dark cloud sweeping over the mountains, foretelling rain on even the brightest of days. Someone I met on my travels. A face he pushed back, distracted by the toast taking place now, and he looked at her surrounded by fawning officers, convincing himself that no, of course, it could not be.
62
Having agreed to meet Einar the next day, Nordstrum spent the night in the custodian’s room at a warehouse in Rjukan. In the morning, he got on the bus to Vigne, which was filled with people on their way to work. Einar met him in his car on his way to work in Mosvatn.
They hadn’t seen each other for months, since the day Nordstrum had tried to free his father. “How have you been, Kurt?” his friend asked. “The work must be appealing, you look a little different than I’ve seen you.”
“Different?” Nordstrum was groomed. His beard was trimmed a bit.
“I don’t know.…” His friend took a long look at him. “Happy, somehow.”
“Who knows? Must be all the good weather lately.”
“Well, I’m afraid what I have to tell you will make you anything but happy. I’ve heard from inside the plant that the Germans are planning on moving their stocks of heavy water back to Germany.”
“To Germany?” Clearly that meant they’d made enough to do the job. “When?”
“Soon. A week, maybe. My man wasn’t sure.”
“A week? You’re sure of this?” In such a short time, it was virtually impossible to organize anything with England to stop it.
“He said they’ve shut down the compressors and are in the process of draining the cells. So far, it seems they’ve built up an inventory of around eleven thousand pounds.”
“The people at SOE won’t be very happy to hear this,” Nordstrum said.
“They should have thought of that possibility when they recklessly bombed the plant. What other option was there for the Germans to do? We forced their hand.”
Nordstrum nodded and blew a blast of air out his cheeks. “The place is overflowing with SS. The new security measures make it almost impossible to get a team back inside. Even if we could get one together…”
“Yes, I advised them of that,” Einar said.
“And what was the reply?”
“Here…” Einar reached in his pocket and handed Nordstrum the handwritten message, from Tronstad himself.
It read, Under no circumstance must the shipment be allowed to leave. Organize a local team and carry it out. All good luck.
“All good luck…” Nordstrum gave a cynical chuckle and handed it back to Einar.
“You’re the only trained operative in the area, Kurt. Who else is there? I’ve never pulled a trigger in my life.”
A week? A team of thirty to forty trained commandos might be able to fight their way into the high-concentration room now. Two or three, they’d be cut down before they even got inside. Of course, there was the route back to Germany. There could be many points along the way that were vulnerable. “Do we have any idea how it’s being shipped?”
“That’s all a big secret, as is the exact date. But we both know there is one person inside we can go to who would have to know those things.”
Einar stopped the car in front of the bus stop that headed back to Rjukan. Nordstrum knew precisely whom he meant.
It was Tuesday. Tomorrow was chocolate day.
“I think it’s time to see just how far the good engineer’s loyalties are prepared to go.”
63
In the late afternoon that day, the phone rang at Alf Larsen’s desk at the plant. With all the preparations under way to transfer the heavy water stocks, he’d barely left it in the past two days.
“Chief Larsen…?”
“Who is this?”
“I’m wondering if you are up for a night of bridge? I told you I’d be calling soon if I found the right game. There’s one planned for tonight.”
“Tonight? Tonight, I’ll be working,” the engineer replied, his heart leaping up with nerves. He knew precisely who it was. His Gestapo overseer, Captain Stauber, peered up from his desk across the room.