The Redbreast (Harry Hole)

by Jo Nesbo

  Field Hospital, Northern Sector, Leningrad. 17 January 1944.

  The hand-grenade that was thrown from the Russian plane hit Dale on the helmet and spun around on the ice as we tried to move away. I was closest and was sure all three of us would die: Mosken, Dale and me. It is strange, but my last thought was what an irony of fate it was that I had just saved Edvard Mosken from being shot by Dale, the poor man, and my sole achievement was to extend the life of our section leader by exactly two minutes. Fortunately, however, the Russians make terrible hand-grenades and we all survived with our lives intact. As for me, I had an injured foot and shrapnel had sliced through my helmet into my forehead.

  By a remarkable coincidence I ended up in Daniel’s fiancée’s ward, with Sister Signe Alsaker. At first she didn’t recognise me, but in the afternoon she came over and spoke to me in Norwegian. She is very beautiful and I know only too well why I wanted to be engaged to her.

  Olaf Lindvig is also in this ward. That white leather tunic of his hangs on a hook by his bed. I don’t know why – perhaps so that he can walk right out and back to the duties awaiting him as soon as his injuries have

  healed. Men of his calibre are needed now; I can hear the Russian artillery fire closing in. One night he was having nightmares, I think, because he screamed, and Sister Signe came in. She gave him an injection of something, morphine perhaps. When he went to sleep again, I saw her stroke his hair. She was so beautiful that I felt like calling her over to my bed and telling her who I was, but I didn’t want to frighten her.

  Today they said I was to be sent to the west because medicines were not getting through. No one said anything, but my foot is painful, the Russians are coming closer and I know this is my only hope for survival.

  Vienna Woods. 29 May 1944

  The most beautiful and the most intelligent woman I have ever met in my life. Can you love two women at once? Yes, you certainly can.

  Gudbrand has changed. That is why I have taken Daniel’s nickname – Uriah. Helena preferred it. Gudbrand was an odd name, she thought.

  I write poems when the others have gone to sleep, but I’m not much of a poet. My heart beats wildly when she appears in the doorway, but Daniel says you have to stay calm, well, almost cold, if you want to win a woman’s heart. It is like catching flies: you have to sit quite still, preferably looking in another direction. And then, when the fly has begun to trust you – when it lands on the table in front of you, goes closer and finally almost begs you to try and catch it – then you strike as quick as lightning, firm and sure in your convictions. The latter is the most important. It is not speed but conviction that catches flies. You have one chance – and you must be ready for it, Daniel says.

  Vienna. 29 June 1944.

  . . . freeing myself from my beloved Helena’s arms. Outside the air raid had been over for a long time, but it was the middle of the night and the streets were still deserted. I found the car where we had left it, beside the restaurant Zu den drei Husaren. The rear window was smashed and a brick had made a huge dent in the roof, but otherwise, fortunately, it was unscathed. I drove as fast as I dared back to the hospital.

  I knew it was too late to do anything for Helena and me. We were simply two people caught in a maelstrom of events over which we had no power. Her fears for her parents doomed her to marrying this doctor, Christopher Brockhard, this corrupt person who in his boundless selfishness (which he called love!) was an affront to the innermost essence of love. Couldn’t he see the love that drove him was the absolute antithesis of the love that drove her? Now I had to sacrifice my dream of sharing a life with Helena to give her a life, if not one of happiness, then at least of decency, free of the degradation that Brockhard would force her into.

  The thoughts raced through my mind as I sped along roads which were as tortuous as life itself. But Daniel was in command of my hands and feet.

  . . . discovered I was sitting on the edge of his bed and gave me a look of disbelief.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘Christopher Brockhard, you are a traitor,’ I whispered. ‘And I sentence you to death. Are you ready?’

  I don’t think he was ready. People are never ready to die; they think they will live for ever. I hope he got to see the fountain of blood stretching up towards the ceiling, I hope he got to hear the splash on the bedding as it came down again, but above all I hope he realised he was dying.

  In the wardrobe I found a suit, a pair of shoes and a shirt which I hurriedly rolled up and carried out under my arm. Then I ran out to the car, started it . . .

  . . . still asleep. I was soaked and cold from the sudden downpour and crept under the sheets towards her. She was as warm as an oven and groaned in her sleep as I pressed myself up against her. I tried to cover every centimetre of her skin with mine, tried to delude myself into thinking it was for ever, tried to avoid looking at the clock. There were just two hours until my train left. And just two hours until I would be a hunted murderer over all of Austria. They didn’t know when I would leave or which route I would take, but they knew where I would go – and they would be ready for me when I arrived in Oslo. I tried to hold her tight enough to last me a lifetime.

  Harry heard the bell. Had it rung before? He found the intercom and buzzed Weber in.

  ‘Right after sport on TV, this is what I hate most,’ Weber said as he stamped in fuming, and slammed a flightcase the size of a suitcase down on the ground. ‘Independence Day, the whole country off their heads with national fervour, roads closed so you have to drive all the way round the centre to get anywhere. Holy Jesus! Where shall I begin?’

  ‘There are bound to be some good prints on the coffee pot in the kitchen,’ Harry said. ‘I’ve been talking to a colleague in Vienna who is busy looking for a set of prints from 1944. You brought a scanner and a computer, did you?’

  Weber patted the flightcase.

  ‘Great. When you’ve finished scanning in the prints, you can connect my mobile to the computer and send them to the email address listed under “Fritz, Vienna”. He is sitting ready to compare them with his set of prints and let us know immediately. That’s basically it. I just have to read through a few papers in the sitting room.’

  ‘What’s the . . . ?’

  ‘POT stuff,’ Harry said. ‘Need-to-know basis only.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Weber bit his lip and gave Harry a searching stare. Harry looked him in the eye and waited.

  ‘Do you know what, Hole?’ he said finally. ‘It’s good that someone in this country still behaves like a professional.’

  96

  Oslo. 17 May 2000.

  Hamburg. 30 June 1944.

  After writing the letter to Helena, I opened my canteen, shook out Sindre Fauke’s rolled-up ID papers and replaced them with the letter. Then I carved her name and address on it with the bayonet and went out into the night. As soon as I was outside the door I could feel the heat. The wind tore at my uniform, the sky above me was a dirty yellow vault and the only thing to be heard above the distant roar of flames was cracking glass and the screams of those who no longer had anywhere to flee. It was more or less how I imagined hell to be. The bombs had stopped falling. I went along a street that was a street no more, just a strip of tarmac running through an open area with heaps of ruins. The only thing left standing in the ‘street’ was a blackened tree pointing up at the sky with witches’ fingers. And a house in flames. That was where the screams were coming from. When I was so close that my lungs were scorched by every breath, I turned and began to walk towards the harbour. That was where she was, the little girl with the terror-stricken black eyes. She pulled at my jacket, screaming her heart out as I passed.

  ‘Meine Mutter! Meine Mutter!’

  I continued on my way, there was nothing else I could do. I had already seen a human skeleton standing in the bright flames on the top floor, trapped with one leg on either side of the window ledge. But the girl continued to follow me, screaming her desperate pleas for me
to help her mother. I tried to walk faster, but her small child’s arms held me, would not let go and I dragged her with me towards the great sea of flames below us. We went on, a strange procession, two people shackled together on our way to extinction.

  I wept, yes, I wept, but the tears evaporated as soon as they had come. I don’t know which of us it was who stopped but I lifted her up, and I turned, carried her up to the dormitory and wrapped my blanket round her. Then I took the mattresses from the other beds and lay down beside her on the floor.

  I never found out her name, or what happened to her, because she disappeared during the night. But I know she saved my life. I took the decision to hope.

  I awoke to a dying city. Several of the fires were still ablaze, the harbour buildings were razed to the ground and the boats which had come with provisions or to evacuate the wounded stayed out in the Außenalster, unable to dock.

  It was evening before the crew had cleared a place where they could load and unload, and I hurried over. I went from boat to boat until I found what I was looking for – passage to Norway. The ship was called Anna and was taking cement to Trondheim. The destination suited me well since I didn’t imagine that the search papers would have been sent there. Chaos had taken over from the usual German order, and the lines of command were, to put it mildly, confused. The SS on my collar seemed to create a certain impression, and I had no problem getting on board and persuading the captain that the orders I showed him implied that I had to find my way to Oslo via the most direct route possible. Under the prevailing circumstances, that meant on Anna to Trondheim and from there by train to Oslo.

  The journey took three days. I walked off the boat, showed my papers and was waved on. Then I boarded a train for Oslo. The whole trip took four days. Before getting off the train I went to the toilet and put on the clothes I had taken from Christopher Brockhard. Then I was ready for the first test. I walked up Karl Johans gate. It was warm and drizzling. Two girls came towards me, arm in arm, and giggled loudly as I passed them. The inferno in Hamburg seemed light-years away. My heart rejoiced. I was back in my beloved country and I was reborn for a second time.

  The receptionist in the Continental Hotel scrutinised my ID papers before looking at me over his glasses.

  ‘Welcome to the Continental Hotel, herr Fauke.’

  And as I lay on my back in bed in the yellow hotel room, staring at the ceiling and listening to the sounds of the city outside, I tried out our new name on my tongue, Sindre Fauke. It was unfamiliar, but I realised that it might, it could, work.

  Nordmarka. 12 July 1944.

  . . . a man called Even Juul. He seems to have swallowed my story whole, like the other Home Front men. And why shouldn’t they, anyway? The truth – that I fought at the Eastern Front and am wanted for murder – would be even harder to swallow than my deserting and returning to Norway via Sweden. They have checked their information with their sources and have received confirmation that a person by the name of Sindre Fauke was reported missing, probably a defection to the Russians. The Germans have order in their systems!

  I speak fairly standard Norwegian, a result of my having grown up in the USA, I imagine, and no one notices that as Sindre Fauke I have quickly got rid of my Gudbrandsdal dialect. I come from a tiny place in Norway, but even if someone I met in my youth (Youth! My God, it was only three years ago and yet a whole lifetime away) were to turn up I am positive they would not recognise me. I feel so totally different.

  What I am much more frightened of is that someone should turn up who knows the real Sindre Fauke. Fortunately, he comes from an even more isolated place than I, if that is possible, but of course he has relatives who could identify him.

  I walk around chewing on these things, and my surprise was therefore immense when today they gave me orders to liquidate one of my own (Fauke’s) Nasjonal Samling brothers. It is supposed to test whether I have really changed sides or whether I’m an infiltrator. Daniel and I almost burst out laughing – it is as if we had discovered the idea ourselves. They actually asked me to get rid of the people who could blow the whistle on me! I’m well aware the leaders of these pretend-soldiers thought that fratricide was going a bit far, unaccustomed as they are here in these safe forests to the brutality of war. But I have decided to take them at their word before they change their minds. As soon as it is dark I will go down to the town and pick up my gun, which is hidden with my uniform in the left-luggage locker at the station, and take the same night train as I arrived on. I know the name of the closest village to the Faukes’ farm, so I have only to ask . . .

  Oslo. 13 May 1945.

  Another strange day. The country is still high on liberation fever, and today Crown Prince Olav arrived in Oslo with a government delegation. I could not be bothered to go to the harbour to see, but I heard that ‘half’ Oslo was gathered there. I walked up Karl Johans gate in civilian clothes today even though my ‘soldier friends’ cannot understand why I do not want to strut around in the Resistance uniform and be given the hero’s welcome. It’s supposed to be a huge turn-on for young women at the moment. Women and uniforms – if I’m not mistaken they used to love running after the green uniforms in 1940 just the same.

  I went up to the Palace to see if the Crown Prince would show himself on the balcony and say a few words. Many more had gathered there too. The guards were changing when I appeared. A pathetic display by German standards, but people were cheering.

  I have hopes that the Crown Prince will pour cold water on these so-called good Norwegians who have been sitting like passive spectators for five years without lifting a finger for either side and are now screaming for revenge on the traitors. In fact, I think Crown Prince Olav can understand us as, if the rumours are true, he was the only one out of the King and government who, by offering to remain with Norwegians and share their fate, showed a bit of spine during the capitulation. But the government advised against it. They knew very well that it would put them and the King in a very peculiar light, leaving him in Norway while they themselves made a run for it.

  Yes, I have hopes that the young Crown Prince (who unlike the ‘latter-day saints’ knows how to wear a uniform) can explain to the nation what the soldiers on the Eastern Front achieved, especially since he has seen for himself the danger the Bolsheviks in the east posed (and still do) for our nation. Back in early 1942, as we were preparing to be posted to the Eastern Front, the Crown Prince is said to have had talks with President Roosevelt and expressed concern about the Russians’ plans for Norway.

  There was some flag-waving, a few songs, and I have never seen the trees greener. But the Crown Prince did not come out on the balcony today. So I will just have to arm myself with patience.

  ‘They’ve just rung from Vienna. The prints are identical.’

  Weber stood in the doorway to the sitting room.

  ‘Fine,’ Harry said with an absent nod, immersed in his reading. ‘Someone has thrown up in the bin,’ Weber said.

  ‘Someone who is very sick. There’s more blood than vomit.’

  Harry licked his thumb and turned over the next page. ‘Right.’

  Silence.

  ‘If there’s anything else I can help with . . .’

  ‘Thanks very much, Weber, but that was it.’

  Weber inclined his head, but didn’t move.

  ‘Shouldn’t you radio an alert?’ he asked finally.

  Harry raised his head and gave Weber an absent-minded look.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Damned if I know,’ Weber said. ‘On a don’t-need-to-know basis.’

  Harry smiled, perhaps because of the older policeman’s comment. ‘No. That’s precisely why.’

  Weber waited for more, but it didn’t come.

  ‘As you wish, Hole. I brought a Smith & Wesson with me. It’s loaded and there’s an extra clip there. Catch!’

  Harry looked up just in time to catch the black holster Weber had thrown to him. He took out the revolver. It was oiled and there was a matt
shine on the newly polished steel. Of course. It was Weber’s own gun.

  ‘Thanks for your help, Weber,’ Harry said.

  ‘Take care.’

  ‘I’ll try. Have a good . . . day.’

  Weber snorted at the reminder. As he trudged out of the flat Harry was already deeply engrossed in the papers again.

  Oslo. 27 August 1945.

  Betrayal – betrayal – betrayal! Stunned, I sat there, well concealed in the last row as my woman was led in and sat down in the dock. She gave him, Even Juul, this fleeting but unambiguous smile. And this tiny smile was enough to tell me everything, but I sat there, nailed to the bench, incapable of doing anything except listening and watching. And suffering. The hypocritical liar! Even Juul knows very well who Signe Alsaker is. I was the one who told him about her. He can hardly be blamed. He thinks Daniel Gudeson is dead, but she, she swore fidelity unto death. Yes, I’ll say it again: betrayal! And the Crown Prince has not uttered a word. At Akershus Fortress they are shooting men who risked their lives for Norway. The echoes of the shots hang in the air over the city for a second, then they are gone and everything is quieter than before. As if nothing had happened.

  Last week I was told that my case was dismissed; my heroic acts outweighed the crimes I had committed. I laughed until the tears flowed as I read the letter. So they think the execution of four defenceless farmers in Gudbrandsdalen is a heroic act, one which outweighs my criminal defence of the home country in Leningrad! I threw a chair at the wall and the landlady came up and I had to apologise. It’s enough to drive you insane.