The Fragile Hour (28 page)

Nils
called frequently, always letting his officer acquaintances know afterwards that he had made another duty call on his aunt. He was a welcome link for Anna with the outside world, for, although she never tired of her aunt’s company, it was the incarceration that she found tedious. She had to disappear into her bedroom whenever the doorbell rang.

At
least she and Nils seemed to regain their old footing and she was always eager to hear the latest war news, which he also shared with Rosa and Frida. On the continent the Allies were continuing to advance, but he always emphasised any set-backs as if to quell their hopes that the war would be over soon. She concluded that his policy was to face one day at a time. After all, he never knew if the Germans would find out that they had a spy in their midst. He was living on a razor’s edge even more than she.

It
was from him that she and Rosa first heard of a new development in Norway itself. In Hitler’s desperate need for extra troops on the Eastern Front, Norwegian youths were being rounded up and sent there as untrained and unwilling recruits.

“
Hundreds of them have already fled into the mountains,” he added, “and with their ration books withdrawn its hard to get them fed.”

One
evening when they were on their own, Rosa having gone early to bed, Anna sat back in her chair as she challenged him sharply.

“
Frida saw you at the harbour yesterday. She said you were watching food supplies being loaded aboard a German ship. Couldn’t you have done something to prevent it?”

He
looked at her despairingly. “I could have stopped the supplies at source, but I can’t risk the Germans becoming suspicious about me. Do you think I like people going hungry? Rations have been cut to almost nothing in Germany too.” He let his head drop into his hands where he was sitting. “How is this whole mess to end?”

She
went went to drop down on her knees at his side and put her arms about him. “Don’t, Nils! I shouldn’t have said what I did. Especially when I’m leaving Oslo tomorrow. I don’t want us to part at odds with each other.”

He
raised his head, looking even more depressed. “Where are you going?”

“
Back to the west coast. A radio operator is needed.”

He
was startled. “Do you know what you’re saying? The German detector vans can pick up a signal in no time at all. It’s a cat and mouse existence.”

“
Not where I’m going.”

“
The mountains? No! You can refuse the assignment.”

“
But I want to go. I’ve been shut up here too long. Edvin got in touch with me yesterday. Karl has been in Oslo again and we’ll be travelling on the same train, but not together. I’ve been sent a bottle of brown hair dye and a fresh set of identity papers in another name. Luckily Aunt Rosa stored my ski-clothes and boots with all else I left here and so I’ll be well equipped.”

Her
satisfaction with the entire project exasperated him. Although Karl seemed to be constantly disrupting their lives, he had never stopped believing that it was only a passing phase for her. When it came to the crunch, she would be drawn back to him as if to her roots. His fear was of any harm coming to her, more than ever now with this new and deadly task she was undertaking.

“
I wish this bloody war was over!” he exclaimed bitterly.

“
That’s everybody’s dream at the present time,” she said sympathetically.

In
the hall before leaving, Nils made one last appeal to her. “Think this project over carefully,” he implored. “Let me find you still here when I come again.”

He
saw the answer in her eyes. Pulling her to him he kissed her with a desperate fervour as if it might be for the last time. For that reason she responded with affection, being as fearful for his safety as he was for hers.

Leaving
Rosa next morning was just as hard. After Frida’s tearful goodbye it was a relief that Rosa held back tears with a smile as she had always done. She had not been told why her niece was going away with dyed hair and darkened brows, clad in warm ski-clothes with her pre-war rucksack, but she knew it meant danger.

“
Farvel
, my dear Anna,” she said fondly as they embraced. “Keep safe and well.”

“
I will. You, too.” Anna gave her a final hug and paused again by the stairs to give a little wave. “I’ll be back.”

Rosa
remained by the door until her niece’s footsteps had faded away to be followed by the thud of the closing street door.

Chapter
Twenty-Five

Anna arrived in Bergen after a tiring journey of several hours. She had not seen Karl, who would be on another part of the train. As it came to a standstill she saw two SS officers on the platform and became anxious when they began scanning the disembarking passengers.

There
was no reason why they should be waiting for her, but it was impossible not to fear betrayal at all times. At the moment she was wedged in by passengers behind and those waiting to take their turn in getting off. It was not until the person in front of her alighted that the SS officers sighted their true quarry farther down the platform, and one shouted out as they moved swiftly in that direction.

“
Achtung
! Stay where you are!”

Anna
sprang down from the train in time to see Karl dashing across the platform to leap down on to the tracks. Immediately there seemed to be storm-troopers appearing from everywhere to swarm down after him, the officers in the lead, revolvers in their hands.

Swiftly
Anna edged her way across the platform, some passengers having begun to run in their haste to get away from this potentially dangerous situation. She was in time to see Karl bolting along at the side of another stationary train before disappearing between two wagons. In horror she heard gun-shots ring out.

A
departing businessman jostled her, muttering some advice. “It’s not wise to hang about,
fröken
. Keep going.”

Somehow
Anna forced herself to leave the platform with everyone else. In the station she pretended to be choosing a newspaper from a rack while waiting in an agony of mind to discover whether or not Karl had managed to get away.

Finally
bystanders began moving aside to let the returning stormtroopers through. Anna caught her breath in shock as she saw Karl in their midst, being prodded along by rifles. He was ashen-faced and supporting his limp left arm across his chest with his right hand, the sleeve blood-soaked. She thought he would not see her, but he must have been watching out, for he sent a single deep glance under lowered lids that conveyed a warning and his own farewell.

Afterwards
Anna remembered nothing of walking to the hotel where she and Karl had stayed when they had first come to Bergen together. She checked into the hotel room that had been booked for her, dropped her rucksack on to the floor and sat with her head in her hands. For the first time she felt close to despair.

When
a knock came on the door, Anna knew it would be Lars, whom she was expecting. She had not seen him since the last time she was in Bergen. He guessed at once by her lack of colour and strained expression, that she had bad news.

“
What’s happened?” he asked, closing the door behind him.

“
Karl was arrested after a chase at Bergen railway station. He was wounded.” She told him all she had seen.

He
shook his head gravely and swore, thumping a fist on the end of the bed by which he stood. “I never thought they’d get Karl! He’s evaded them so many times.”

“
Where do you think they’ll take him after the interrogation?” she asked tonelessly, refusing to consider that he might not survive it.

“
Who can say?” Lars went along with her wish to keep the worst at bay, although he knew that such a prize captive as Karl would be subjected to the most sadistic of treatments. “There are so many patriots confined in camps these days that a few months ago another was built not all that far from Oslo. Recently most of our men arrested have been sent there.”

“
I’ve heard of it,” she said tersely. “Already it’s becoming as notorious as Grini.”

He
hoped she had not heard much about its commandant, Oberst-Leutnant Horwitz, a brutal sharp-faced Nazi, who had openly expressed a wish for a proper concentration camp in Norway with a gas chamber in which to get rid of obdurate prisoners. “If Karl should survive interrogation and be sent there,” Lars said, wanting to do what he could for Anna in her distress, “I might be able to find out. The Resistance has a contact in an ear specialist at a nearby hospital. Horwitz has become his patient, hoping that damage to an ear-drum on the Russian Front can be corrected. The doctor keeps his own eyes and ears open when he visits Horwitz at the camp. He’s even come away with a message or two at times that are smuggled to him.”

“
Then I must hope for that.”

They
talked about Karl’s arrest for a while longer, trying to work out how he could have been betrayed. Anna wondered if he had been followed from Oslo by a Quisling, who had travelled in the same carriage and then identified him by a signal to the waiting enemy. “Otherwise how could he have been known to them?” she concluded.

Lars
nodded. “That’s possible. After all, if the Germans had been on to his whereabouts in Oslo they would have arrested him before he could board the train.” He regarded her sympathetically. “We shan’t discover the truth of it unless Karl knows and can tell us one day.”

She
was grateful that he was trying to boost her hopes for Karl’s survival. “You’re right, but that won’t stop me trying to remember anything that might give me a clue.” Taking a grip on herself, she took a deep breath. “Do I leave here tomorrow as planned?”

“
Yes. You’ll be OK?”

She
looked at him squarely. “I will.”

Anna
suffered a restless night. Whenever she dozed it was only to awake with an image of Gestapo interrogations in her mind that came vividly from all she had heard during her time in Norway. The beatings, the pulling out of fingernails, electric shocks, the sadistic means of keeping a captive’s sleep away, the burning with cigarettes and hot irons. Once she sat up on a scream and clapped her hands over her mouth in fear that she had been heard, but the hotel remained quiet and nobody stirred.

She
collapsed back on to the pillow and found release in tears. Only then did she sleep for a couple of hours until her alarm clock rang. It was like waking up in a wastepaper basket for, with bed-linen worn out and impossible to replace, many hotels had had to resort to paper sheets and pillowcases. Anna’s constant tossing and turning had caused hers to rip. She went to bathe and dry herself with the towels that were of paper too.

Anna
rode out of Bergen on a bicycle that Lars had brought to the hotel that morning. He gave her a message for London, which she was to send out later on the radio-transmitter that would be waiting for her at the cabin. The bicycle had wooden rims instead of tyres, for the enemy had long since taken those throughout the country in a shortage of rubber. It made a bumpy and uncomfortable ride, but it was her only means of transport to a small village not far from Bergen. There she went to the friendly house of a lawyer, Stein Holstad, who would pass any message received from her to the Resistance. He was not at home, having already left for his Bergen office in his wood-fuelled car, but Anna was greeted by his wife, Mary.

She
was a thin, energetic woman in her fifties, who was already dressed to accompany Anna to the mountains.

“
I’ll keep you provided with all you need, Anna,” she said. “My nephew will be your main contact. There’s a policeman in the area who always phones a warning if there’s any enemy activity around.”

“
So you’ve been involved with something like this before?”

“
We still are. With the help of several farmers in this valley we get food to three of our local lads hiding in the mountains from conscription by the Germans to the Eastern Front. Naturally it’s very basic fare, as yours will be. There’s an escaped Russian prisoner-of-war with them too, whom we were feeding on his own before that.”

“
Shall I be anywhere near them?”

“
No, I’m afraid life is going to be very lonely for you from now on.”

“
I’m prepared for it.”

She
and Mary left unobtrusively for the mountains. The Holstads’ house, surrounded by woodland, was on the outskirts of the village and there was nobody to see them go.

The
early November air was crisp and clear, the only snow in the heights. Anna found it invigorating to exert her energy in the climb and all the way and the going was comparatively easy. When the ground levelled out to a valley below two peaks, she saw the cabin that was to be her first retreat.

Mary
stayed only long enough to unload the food she had brought in her rucksack. When she had left, Anna took up the suitcase already deposited there and set it on the table to snap it open and reveal the short-wave radio transmitter inside. She had been assured by Mary that the Germans never came into these mountains, but if they picked up a persistent signal they would investigate, however much they disliked the high territories. For that reason she could only stay so long in this cabin before moving to another. Only Mary and others involved in helping her would know her whereabouts.

Anna
’s first task was to uncoil the wire attached to the transmitter and fix up the aerial outside. After checking that all was in order, she paid more attention to the cabin itself. It was typical in being much like the one in which she had stayed overnight with Karl. She guessed it was either Mary or her daughter who had filled a shelf with books. There were also a pack of cards with which to play patience and a delicately-carved chess set with a board if she wished to play against herself. Mary had told her that it had been made by the Russian prisoner-of-war, who also made wooden toys to pass the time. One of them lay on a cupboard. Anna picked it up by its handle and smiled as a circle of chickens with a hen pecked at the round board as a weight on strings was swung underneath. Putting it down again she wondered if the Russian had amused his own children with such toys.

Beside
it in ugly contrast was the revolver she had placed there. She turned from it and went into the bedroom to unroll the sleeping bag she had brought with her.

Now
she was ready to transmit the message that Lars had given her earlier that day. She sat down at the transmitter and put on her headphones. The next moment she was tapping out the communiqué in Morse, the tap-tap becoming the only sound in the room. She did not have long to wait before a brief acknowledgement of receipt of the communiqué came through.

After
washing the dye out of her hair she listened to the news from London on a little radio normally hidden in a toffee tin, which she would be able to take with her every time she moved to another cabin. She heard that the Allies had taken their first German city and there were advances on all fronts.

Mary
’s teenage nephew, Roald, arrived in the early evening and gave the pre-arranged knock on the cabin door. He was a strong-looking boy.

“
Do you have cats’ eyes?” she asked jokingly as she admitted him, for it was dark outside.

“
Only a thick mist or a blizzard can stop me getting about in these mountains,” he replied confidently. “I’ve been coming up here all my life. It’s our family cabin.” He was carrying a can by its handle and set it down on the table. “It’s milk for you. My dad is a farmer.”

After
that everything became routine. It was not every day that a communiqué was passed on to Stein Holstad, but whatever Anna received she transmitted at irregular times to avoid her signal being easily located. Sometimes urgent Resistance matters had to be passed to fellow radio-operators with whom she was in contact, but mostly it was about enemy shipping, particularly U-boats leaving their Bergen hideouts and aiming to add to the toll they had taken of Allied lives and shipping.

The
days passed slowly. Karl was constantly in Anna’s thoughts. As yet she could not hope to hear if he was in a camp or whether he was still under torture. She refused to believe that he might have died at the Gestapo’s hands. Surely she would know if he no longer breathed? How had he been betrayed?

It
was a puzzle she returned to time and time again, even though she realised the futility of it. Her thoughts kept going to the problem like the tongue to a rough tooth. Being unable to solve anything or find the answers to her own questions brought such a restlessness on her at times that she had to get out of the cabin, whatever the weather. It was either to walk or later, when the snows came, to take a turn on skis. If it kept her awake at night she would draw back the curtains and look out at the Aurora Borealis filling the sky with swirling patterns as if the old Norse gods still rode across it.

Stein
Holstad came himself on the evening that a detector van had been sighted in the valley. “It’s time for you to move on. Leave here at first light.”

Anna
was well-laden when she set out on skis at dawn the next day, for the transmitter, pushed into her rucksack, was a heavy weight. She had left no trace of her presence in the cabin and there would be no clue to help any search for her. A light snowfall did not trouble her and it gently covered her tracks as she followed her compass and memorised directions to her next destination.