The Yank shrugged. “If anyone would, it would be him. You know that.” But in his heart, he knew he wouldn’t be seeing the Northman again. It was a whim for him to have gone back like he had. Everyone’s luck runs out in the end.
“We’ll go to the hut and wait?” the engineer said, holding out hope.
“Yes, of course, we’ll wait.”
They started off again. Climbing the ridge in a herringbone pattern. Ahead, he saw clouds form in the distance. A storm, perhaps. A good sign. It would cover their tracks. It would be a long journey to Sweden.
Yes, they’d wait.
But in his heart, Gutterson knew what Nordstrum himself would say.
Yes, we’ll wait—but not too long.
EPILOGUE
On February 20, 1944, thirty-nine drums of enriched heavy water on their way to Germany, over 162 gallons, enough to support all its atomic fissile experiments, sank to the bottom of Lake Tinnsjo, over a thousand feet below. Twenty-six passengers and crew aboard the ferry died in the sabotage, as well as many uncounted German soldiers.
Only a small trace of the Norsk Hydro heavy water was ever recovered. Four barrels did ultimately surface, containing eighty-seven kilograms, but of the lowest concentration, which explained why they did not fully sink. Gone as well were the German efforts to create an atomic weapon. After the war, speaking on the fate of the German uranverein research project and the sinking of the Hydro, Kurt Diebner, an atomic expert and head of the German Army Ordnance, said in an interview:
When one considers that right up to the end of the war in 1945, there was virtually no increase in our heavy water stocks in Germany … it will be seen that it was the elimination of German heavy water production in Norway that was the main factor in our failure to achieve a self-sustaining atomic reactor before the war ended.
Nine months later, the high-concentration plant at Vemork was disassembled in secrecy and shipped to Germany. It was discovered in the village of Hechtingen in Bavaria by English and American intelligence officers. An atomic pile was found in nearby Haigerlock with uranium and heavy water that was on the brink of going critical.
All it lacked was about seven hundred liters of additional heavy water.
One could look no further than to the brave men of Freshman and Gunnerside for why those experiments came up short. It’s been written: “Strong tough men who pushed themselves to the limits of human endurance and courage for the liberation of their country. During the hardest times, their focus was on the destruction of the heavy water plant. But they had another, even more important objective: they wanted their country back.”*
And on the Tinnsjo, as their lifeboat filled with survivors waited for sailors and fisherman to come rescue them amid the debris from the sunken Hydro, Natalie Ritter wept on her grandfather’s shoulder. She wept with biting tears for all the horrible deaths she had just witnessed. And for the man she knew nothing about, who had saved them. Who she would never see again, but still felt something for, something so deep and aching she knew she would carry it the rest of her life.
If you could truly love someone, she thought, knowing nothing of him—who he was, only what was in his heart, and just for a brief moment—then she did love that person with every part of her being.
Boats were coming out to meet them. The crewman on their lifeboat rowed toward them. Everyone sat, silent. Until someone pointed to the lake and cried out, “Look!”
Bobbing on the surface a ways away was a black case. An instrument case.
“Oh my God, Papa!” Natalie’s heart suddenly lifted. “It’s your cello!”
It was like a gift of life and hope amid all this carnage. They’d picked up whoever they could. Now there was only silence out there.
“My cello! You must get it, please,” August Ritter begged the crewman. “It’s been with me forty years.”
“Leave it, old man,” one of the Hirden scoffed. “It’s just a fucking piece of wood.”
“No, there might as well be some good that comes of this,” the ferry crewman said, overruling him and picking up the oars.
They rowed toward it, maybe thirty meters away. It was just a black shape bobbing up and down on the black, oil-slick surface, not far away from the final eddy where the ferry had gone down. As they got close, the crewman leaned forward and attempted to fish it out, when, to his shock, he saw what he first thought was merely a piece of wood attached to it, but then, as he rowed closer, realized was an arm. An arm straining to hold on. And he turned to Natalie jubilantly, and shouted, “My God, miss, there’s a man attached to it.”
“A man?” Natalie stood up, feeling her heart quicken, hesitating a moment before allowing her faintest, deepest hopes to rise.
“Yes,” the crewman said. “And he seems to be alive!”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is a novel, of course, but a novel based on true events, and out of respect for the heroic men who participated in them, I have done my best to keep the two principal military events in the story—the raid on the heavy water facility at the Norsk Hydro factory and the sabotage of the Hydro ferry—as loyal as I could to what actually took place.