‘British Intelligence has sent me to instruct the Resistance in advanced cryptography,’ Gunther said. ‘We’re going to make the Nazis work damn hard to break the codes, and so save the lives of your brave fighters. Do you understand so far?’
Silje said that she did. ‘Though I do not understand why the British have sent us teachers instead of soldiers and guns.’
‘Silje, please…’
Gunther raised his hand. ‘No Magnus, it is a fair question. The Allied withdrawal was unfortunate, but necessary. The Germans took us by surprise, forcing us to regroup. There is politics in war, Silje, politics and scarcity. But know this: even if you believe the Allies care little for the Norwegian people, then you must believe that Norway and her waters are strategically vital to the European war effort. That is why we will do what we can to aid you.’
‘Aside from sending soldiers and guns.’
‘We will send guns.’
‘Good. Then tell me what I must do to help.’
Gunther chanced a look at Magnus, who gave his permission with a slight nod of his head.
‘From now on, messages transmitted by the Resistance will require a key to decode them.’
Silje realised that she must have looked puzzled because Gunther scratched at his whiskers and tried a different path. ‘What is a map, Silje?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Just tell me, what is a map?’
Silje answered without thinking. ‘It is a picture of the land that tells you how to get from one place to another.’
‘No,’ said Gunther. ‘It is a picture of the land, but it does not tell you how to get anywhere.’
‘Yes, it does.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘It does,’ said Silje, thinking Gunther had so far shown very few signs of ‘British Intelligence’.
‘It is the list of directions that tell you how to get from one place to another. Without directions, a map is just a picture of the landscape.’
Silje, begrudgingly, admitted she understood.
‘And that is what we are planning to do with Resistance communications. We will send a map, that will require directions to interpret it.’
‘Directions?’
‘We call it a key.’
‘A key?’
‘Yes.’
Her brow furrowed. ‘A map is sent with directions. If you send the directions along with the map then the Germans will know how to reach the destination if the map is captured.’
Gunther smiled. ‘That is why we do not send the directions with the map.’
‘Then how will the Resistance follow the… How will the Resistance translate the message?’
‘Because the key to reading it will be broadcast freely and openly, right under the nose of our enemy.’
Silje’s eyes grew wide. ‘The Orchid.’
‘Silje, you do not have to do this,’ Magnus said.
Gunther ignored him. ‘We can embed the key in your editorial. It will change every fortnight, with each edition of the newsletter.’
‘The Area Commander sometimes changes the editorial before The Orchid goes to press.’
‘We shall give him no cause to. I shall write a section for you. The key will be hidden in the text.’
‘This will never work,’ said Magnus. ‘And I told you, Gunther, it is far too dangerous.’
‘And the Germans will not see the key when they read the editorial?’ Silje asked.
‘The less you know of the technical aspects, the better. It is for your own safety as well as ours.’
‘You speak as though she has already agreed to this!’
Silje told Magnus to be silent. ‘If I am to do this, then I wish to know everything.’
Magnus was finally left speechless, so Gunther hurried on: ‘Within the text, the position of words will be used to generate a mathematical sequence that, in turn, will be used to generate a key for our decoding machines, but the key will only work until—’
‘The next newsletter. And how will the decoders know which words to look for?’
Gunther beamed. ‘You are more clever than you pretend to be, Silje Ohnstad.’
Silje swelled with pride, in spite of herself.
‘Each message decoded will carry the words to look for in the next newsletter. There will be no reference as to where the words will be found; it will be completely safe.’
‘Nothing is completely safe,’ Magnus rumbled. ‘Why are you doing this? This will not benefit you, or me or Father or the village. It will bring the Nazis down on our—’
‘When do we start?’
‘Silje!’
‘As soon as we can,’ said Gunther.
‘One newsletter goes to press tomorrow, the next one is being edited by the Germans. It will have to be one after that.’
‘Can we not submit a new editorial?’
‘No, it will make them suspicious. If this is going to work then we must not give them cause to look too carefully.’
Gunther nodded.
‘Silje, think about this,’ said Magnus. ‘When you are found out, there will be no mercy. You will be tortured, executed, and the village destroyed. And you will be found out, Silje. It is only a matter of time before the Germans discover what you are doing.’
‘Then let us hope the war is over before they do,’ she said, hoping she sounded much braver than she felt. ‘There is something else, Gunther. I dined with the General this evening, and he mentioned something called Iscariot. Do you know what that is?’
‘I have never heard of it.’
‘It was some kind of plan to fight Jewish magic.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘That’s what he said.’
Magnus laughed in a way Silje thought false and very unpleasant. ‘I’m sure he said nothing of the sort.’
‘He was quite drunk,’ she said, doubting herself.
‘I’ll check with London,’ said Gunther. ‘Maybe they have—’
The door to the parlour sprang open; Freya burst through, her eyes red and streaming, Mrs Tufte holding her by both arms. ‘You are mad,’ she cried. Silje could not think when she’d ever seen her so angry. ‘They will kill you.’
‘I am sorry.’ Mrs Tufte abandoned her struggle to restrain her. ‘I do not know what came over the child.’
‘It is all right, Mrs Tufte,’ said Silje. ‘Freya does not need to stand with her ear to the door to hear what is being said in the next room.’
‘You cannot do this, Silje. They will kill you! Magnus, tell her!’
‘Freya, I have tried.’
Freya snatched Silje’s hand. ‘I would speak with you.’
‘Again?’
‘Yes, again.’
She pulled Silje into the parlour and shut the door. ‘Why would you do this? You risk yourself, your family, your village… You risk me.’
‘Because I am a collaborator. I have helped the Germans further their cause in Norway, and unless I do this then I will be a collaborator until the day I die.’
‘That is not true! You have saved the village. You have kept the Germans from—’
‘No, I have saved myself,’ Silje whispered, ‘and unless I do otherwise I am not worthy of this village, or my family, or the memory of my mother. Until I do this, Freya, I am not worthy of you.’
Chapter 27
The first time I saw her I cried, and when I tried to stop I couldn’t.
From her hospital bed, Monica watched me for one minute and then said, ‘If I could move, I’d slap you.’
The minute rule. Even now…
‘Tissues on the window sill. No idea which moron left them there. How am I supposed to reach them? I’m not a fucking orang-utan.’
I took a handful and placed the box on the cabinet next to the bed.
She said, ‘I don’t need them now.’
We didn’t speak for the first day. Her doctor – a rather stout lady in her early forties with large green spectacles and a fixed s
mile – told me I shouldn’t do or say anything that might ‘excite’ her.
I said that would be difficult where my mother was concerned.
The doctor tightened her smile and said, ‘Quite.’ She explained everything to me as if I were an idiot, which I did appreciate. I only caught snatches, and my eyes stayed on my mother through the soundproof glass. Her hair was still thick, but showing grey at its roots. I realised she’d been colouring it and wondered how she’d done that without me knowing. Her eyes had sunken deep into her skull and her skin looked white and as thin as mist. The veins beneath her flesh glowed blue. Her lips were thin and dry.
I heard the words ‘ovarian’ and ‘just in time’ and looked back to the doctor who’d paused, waiting for me to catch up.
‘As I was saying, she was found unconscious at a bus station near—’
‘I know where it is.’
‘Right.’ The doctor pursed her lips for a moment; she’d already had enough of the Fossens for one lifetime. ‘Anyway, it appears that she’d been ill for some time. I take it she didn’t mention it to you.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘she didn’t.’
‘And you didn’t see any signs of stress, discomfort?’
‘We’ve been separated.’
‘I’m sorry. I’d read somewhere that you always travel together.’
‘Not anymore.’
‘Right, right.’ She looked at her clipboard, just so she didn’t have to look at me.
‘Is she going to die?’
Her eyes returned to mine and she took another moment before she answered. ‘Eventually, yes.’
I said I wasn’t sure what that meant.
‘Had she sought treatment sooner, then the prognosis would have been more in her favour. Unfortunately, we are already looking at secondaries in her liver and spine. We have drugs and treatments that will slow the progression, but I’m afraid that her—’
‘How long?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘How long does she have?’
The doctor rested the clipboard against her hip and removed her spectacles. ‘Are you always this blunt?’
‘It’s the way I was raised.’
She returned to the comfort of her clipboard before answering. ‘A year, maybe eighteen months, that is if she sticks to the treatment regime like glue. If it reaches her brain then her time will be significantly reduced.’
‘I’ll make sure she stays on the drugs.’
The doctor’s smile returned; it made her look as though she were in pain. Her eyes said, I don’t think you can. I narrowed mine: We’ll fucking see about that.
When I went back to her room, my mother appeared to be asleep. Her right eye was only half-closed and seemed to follow the shadows I made as I walked across the room. Remembering I wasn’t supposed to upset her, I said nothing. She didn’t say anything to me until the late afternoon.
‘The police had a hell of a job finding you.’
‘I was trying to stay out of sight, just like you taught me.’
‘You think that reporting a dead body is staying out of sight?’
‘I didn’t have a choice. They would have found out I knew him. His neighbour had seen—’
‘And you think hanging around a convicted Nazi is the best way to keep yourself safe?’
Exasperated, I asked her how she’d found out.
‘The police told me. You see this is exactly what I said would happen if you tried to run on your own.’
‘I was trying to stop running.’
She didn’t hear me, or she wasn’t listening. ‘Did they question you about Klein? Did they want to know how long you’d known him?’
I shook my head. ‘No, they just picked me up and brought me straight here.’
She stared furiously at the ceiling, searching for conspiracies that weren’t there.
‘I’m not a suspect, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
‘Who else have you been speaking to?’
‘No one,’ I lied. I was not supposed to upset her. Telling her I’d been kidnapped by a man who’d made a career of butchering collaborators would definitely fall under ‘upsetting’.
She looked at me sideways with one eyebrow raised.
‘I’m not lying.’ It wasn’t getting easier and I wasn’t getting any better at it.
I returned to the hospital the following day. There were a handful of reporters camped in the car park. They didn’t even notice me as I went inside. Later I learned that the Minister for Education was having her appendix removed. She’d collapsed after a press conference. I didn’t know her name; I didn’t know Norway had a Minister for Education. There was a police officer stationed on the fifth floor. He was sitting in a chair a few doors down from Monica’s room.
I asked him if he was here to protect my mother.
‘Sort of,’ he said. The hospital had put my mother and the Minister on the same floor so the police could watch both rooms. Apparently, the Minister wasn’t very happy about it.
The day after that, I brought some of the notes I’d taken from Mr Klein’s apartment. I sat in the chair at the end of Monica’s bed, listening to the pumps and the monitors. Nothing changed after an hour, so I started to read. I’d barely reached the end of the first sentence when my mother asked, ‘What have you got there?’
I told her, and she said, ‘Let me see.’
‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea.’ I looked at the mound of bedding raised above her stomach, a frame keeping pressure from her abdomen. She saw me staring at it.
‘Ovaries and womb,’ she said, smiling. ‘So I can kiss goodbye to my childbearing years, and I was so good at it. I’m lucky they let me keep my bladder, though that’ll go soon.’
I hoped selfishly she wasn’t always going to be like this. ‘If you’d told me at the bus station, I would have stayed.’
‘I didn’t want you to stay.’ She tried to sit up, winced and surrendered. ‘You wanted to go, so I said “go”.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘Then it’s like life, isn’t it?’
‘So what was your plan? Just ignore it until you dropped dead?’
The fires lit, bringing her eyes back to life; she lurched forward, pulling the drip feeds from her arms and the oxygen tube from her nostrils. The frame crashed to the floor, taking a jug of water and a vase of flowers with it.
Her medics were through the door so quickly I would have sworn they were standing outside waiting for me to screw up. They pushed me out of the way and tried to calm her down. Her doctor, the woman I’d met days before, finished restoring her apparatus, pushing tubes into her nose and needles into her arms. A patch of blood appeared on the bedclothes just below Monica’s stomach. It quickly spread.
‘Shit,’ the doctor said. ‘She’s pulled her stitches.’ Then she turned to me. ‘I think you’d better leave.’
‘I’ll just stay over there. I won’t get in your way.’
‘Wait outside. I’ll come speak to you in a minute.’
She came out of the room about half an hour later. Before the door closed I snatched sight of the nurses feeding my mother. One of them was tying back her hair, while a third was holding her hand. My mother was crying. I wondered how long for.
‘She’s having a hard time processing,’ the doctor said.
It occurred to me that I didn’t know her name. I squinted at her ID badge.
‘Just call me Dagrun.’
I thanked her and sat down. I thought it would be okay to cry now, and so let the tears run freely. Dagrun sat down and put her arms around me. My arms reached around her, pulling her close and holding her so tightly she gasped. When I finally let her go, she was bright red. She fixed her hair and fiddled with her name badge. She cleared her throat and told me I was very thin. I ignored the urge to tell her she was quite fat.
‘You haven’t been eating properly, that much is clear. How old are you?’
I had to think about it. ‘Twenty-thr
ee.’
‘You look much older, if you don’t mind me saying so.’
‘Actually, I think I do.’
‘And what happened to your nose? Did someone punch you?’
‘Look, do you really have to—?’
I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. What I’m trying to say is that whatever lifestyle you and your mother have chosen for yourselves, it isn’t agreeing with you any more. You are malnourished; your fingernails clearly demonstrate a lack of vitamins in your diet; you have the most dreadful halitosis; you look ten years older than you are. Where are you staying?’
‘A hotel,’ I said, ‘about ten minutes from here.’ I wondered what halitosis was and if it was serious.
‘And you don’t have a shower in your room?’
‘Yes, I do.’ I said icily. ‘I haven’t had time to—’
‘Halitosis is foul breath,’ she said. ‘And yours is particularly bad. Not the worst I have ever come across by a long way, but certainly enough to cause me concern for your general health.’
I cupped my hand over my mouth and huffed into my palm.
‘I’ve shocked you. That’s good, because polite explanations don’t seem to carry much weight with your family.’
I couldn’t smell anything, but I didn’t doubt her; she wouldn’t lie about something like that. I mean, why would she?
‘Your mother has ovarian cancer, and she’s lucky to have survived it this far. So now, I’m worried about you.’
‘I feel fine,’ I said, breathing into my palm again.
‘You are fine for now. I want to admit you, get you thoroughly checked over. It’ll only take a day at most.’
‘You think I have cancer?’
‘I think it would be foolish not to give you a full once-over while you’re here. I take it you’re planning to stay.’
I said I didn’t know. ‘She thinks I abandoned her; I’m not sure she wants me here.’
‘Well, she has a lot to deal with right now, but at the moment, we’re talking about you.’
Me. She was worried about me. I’d only ever thought in terms of us. Monica and I, alone against the world.
The Quisling Orchid Page 26
