Silje sniffed and nodded. ‘I am sorry, Erik.’
‘Do you understand why I told you?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘And is there anything that you would—’
‘No.’
‘Then Silje Ohnstad, on the fifteenth of next month, I would very much like you to become my wife.’
Silje nodded and whispered ‘Yes’, even as every tendril of her soul raised itself to bind her.
Erik finally exhaled, with such force Silje wondered if he’d drawn breath since entering the loft. ‘That does not give us long to prepare.’
‘I have nothing to wear. My mother’s wedding dress is completely unsuitable.’
‘Freya can change it for you. Mrs Tufte says she can work miracles with a needle and thread, and I’m sure all you need do is… Are you all right, Silje? You’re shaking.’
A horn sounded from the street outside, and then sounded again, and again.
‘It is my father!’ Silje pushed herself free and ran downstairs, thinking perhaps fate disapproved of any attempt she made to be a human being. Someone had told her father where she was. Marit Ohnstad most likely, or perhaps Mrs Tufte.
She pulled open the front door and ran towards her father’s truck with a cascade of lies poised on the end of her tongue. ‘Father, it is not what you think!’
Her father looked at her, his face ashen. The door on the truck’s far side opened, and a tall, stooped figure uncoiled itself from the passenger seat.
Gunther, his face carrying the same gravity as her father’s.
Silje stopped in the middle of the street.
Magnus.
‘Where is Magnus!’
Gunther walked towards her, and Silje, in spite of herself, backed away. ‘No.’
Erik arrived at her side and demanded to know who this man was.
‘He has been taken,’ Gunther said. ‘The Germans have him.’
‘Where?’
‘Bergen. Along with scores of others.’
‘Silje, again, who is this man?’ Erik peered up at him. ‘I have seen you before, around the village. You were at the gathering today.’
‘Then we must go to him.’
‘That would be very unwise.’
‘I will go,’ Jon Ohnstad called out. ‘Everyone else will stay here.’
Silje was halfway to the truck before either Gunther or Erik could stop her. ‘You will do no such thing. I will go. I can talk to the General. I will make him—’
‘You cannot make him do anything!’ her father shouted. ‘You are his pet, Silje, his plaything!’ He started the engine. ‘It is your damned newsletter that has brought this down on us.’
‘Father!’
‘You have done his bidding against your people and your country, and this is your reward. Christ knows what he is waiting for; I wish he’d just fuck you and leave us in peace!’
He slammed the truck into gear and roared away, sounding the horn to clear the villagers from his path.
Silje stood in the street, unable to blink. She felt nothing, empty; her bones, her heart, scored clean of her flesh.
‘He did not mean it,’ Erik and Gunther said. They looked warily at one another.
‘Instead of going first to his son, he drove this way to spit on me,’ said Silje. ‘He meant it.’ She turned to Gunther. ‘Do you have transport?’
‘I have a motorcycle.’
‘That will have to do.’
‘I can find us a car, Silje,’ Erik said desperately. ‘I will only need a few—’
‘There is no time.’ She cupped his chin in her hand. ‘Find Freya, tell her what has happened, and whatever else make sure she does not try to follow us.’
‘She would not be so stupid. I will find a car and follow as soon as I can.’
‘No, Erik. Take care of Freya; that is all I ask.’
Chapter 30
In the spring, the snows melted from the mountain and ran in white streams through the rocks and trees, only to freeze again as darkness fell and the post-winter chill spread across the hills. It made the road from Fólkvangr to Bergen passable by day, hazardous at dusk and the taker of many a careless life at night.
Gunther Braithwaite fought to keep the motorcycle on both wheels as he careened down the mountain track with a terrified Silje clinging onto him.
Jon Ohnstad was more than a mile ahead of them.
‘If you try to catch him,’ Silje yelled over the roar of the engine, ‘you’ll kill us both and we’re no use to Magnus if we’re dead.’
Gunther did not reply but he did throttle back. Still, Silje reeled off the numbers of people killed on the mountain road every year since 1925. She reached 1939 before Gunther politely shouted, if one could indeed do such a thing, for her to shut up.
‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘When I am frightened I talk.’
‘You seem to talk whatever mood you’re in.’
‘Do not speak to me like that; I said I was sorry.’
Their journey continued in silence, Silje seeing the terrible things Magnus would endure at the hand of the General, while her father’s words pressed their way into her thoughts, in spite of her best efforts to smother them: I wish he’d just fuck you and leave us in peace.
‘What is Magnus doing in Bergen?’ she asked, more to drown the whispering inside her head than anything else.
Gunther said he did not know. Silje said that he did and after much cajoling he confessed. ‘You must not breathe a word of this to anyone.’
‘I am writing coded messages to the Resistance in a newsletter run by the Nazis. And you still think I cannot keep your secrets?’
‘I mean it, Silje; this must go no further. Do you understand?’
Silje thought, If I cannot even gain the trust of a spy… ‘Just tell me!’
‘Very well,’ he said reluctantly. ‘I received a message from my office in London, which in turn had received a note from our spies in the Resistance. There is to be an attack in Bergen today: an attempt to assassinate General Gruetzmacher.’
‘You are spying on the Resistance?’
‘We spy on everyone. It is our nature.’
‘But we are your allies.’
‘Especially our allies.’
‘And it seems to me that killing Gruetzmacher would serve both our countries.’
‘This plan has not been sanctioned. It is ill-conceived, doomed to fail and will, most likely, severely damage operations already in play.’
‘Dear Christ. Is that what Magnus is doing in Bergen?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘And you did nothing to stop him.’
‘I only found out this morning. Do you think I would let him throw his life away on something like this?’
‘Who is with him?’
‘I do not know. The message said there are ten men involved, perhaps more.’
‘You must ride faster,’ Silje said.
‘But you just told me to—’
‘I do not care what I just told you; now I am telling you to ride as fast as you can.’
She could not see tyre tracks ahead; her father must have taken the left-hand road at the fork. It was safer for trucks though far slower. They might meet with him before reaching Bergen.
‘You said that killing Gruetzmacher would interfere with other plans. What did you mean?’
Gunther hesitated.
‘Tell me,’ she growled, ‘or I will pitch you from this infernal machine and ride it to Bergen myself.’
‘Hah! You do not know how to ride a motorbike.’
This was of course true. ‘I can ride a horse without saddle, reins or stirrups,’ Silje said indignantly. ‘It cannot be harder than that.’
‘And I imagine you are stubborn and conceited enough to try.’ Gunther sighed. ‘There is a plan,’ he said, ‘a plan that will end the war in Norway before the Germans can gain a foothold.’
Silje wanted to say it was far too late for that, but for once she held her
tongue.
‘We are going to kill Vidkun Quisling.’
And still she held her tongue because now she wasn’t sure what she’d just heard.
‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘I think so.’
‘And you, of all people, have nothing to say.’
‘You are going to kill the First Minister.’
‘Yes.’
‘Hitler’s chosen traitor.’
‘That is the plan.’
‘And you say my brother is foolhardy.’
‘It will work, Silje. His popularity within his own party and the Norwegian people is at its lowest ebb so he will be touring the provinces to bolster support.’
‘To bolster his support, I would have thought he would need some to begin with.’
‘Quite.’
‘So when is this plan to be put into action?’
‘Soon. A few months from now.’
‘Where?’
He throttled the engine and rode high up on the rocks which Silje saw as an attempt to distract her.
‘Fólkvangr,’ she breathed. ‘He’s coming to Fólkvangr.’
‘Yes,’ said Gunther, ‘and he’s coming to see you.’
‘The Quisling Orchid. He’s coming because of the newsletter!’ Silje almost fell from the pillion. Gunther slammed his boot against the frozen ground and steered the bike into the skid. He had the motorcycle under control without even the lightest touch on the brake.
He is good at this, Silje thought, her heart in her throat. ‘I cannot meet him. Not Quisling. When were you planning to tell me all of this?’
‘When it was too late for you to refuse.’
‘You cannot assassinate him in the village. The Nazis will slaughter us in retaliation.’
‘He will not be in the village. You have my word.’
‘Then where? In the town hall? On the streets of Bergen? On this very road?’ She liked Gunther, perhaps more than she should. She’d watched him laugh and joke and drink ale from the same tankard as men who had not cleaned their teeth in weeks. But she had the notion he wasn’t making acquaintances so much as moving pieces on a chess board, and chess, she remembered, is a game of sacrifice. She wondered how much of Scandinavia Gunther would sacrifice in service to his King.
‘I looked into Iscariot for you,’ Gunther said.
‘Yes…?’
‘Well, for days after I was the laughing stock of Special Operations. Iscariot is something of a joke in intelligence circles. The name crops up from time to time, and is then filed away under “delusion”.’
‘So tell me; what is it?’
‘Hitler believes he can turn the Jews against one another by using his own brand of honest Nazi witchcraft.’
‘So Iscariot is an experiment in sorcery?’
‘I believe so. To be honest, we have not devoted any effort to investigating further. We could easily fill Parliament with what we hear of Hitler’s crackpot schemes.’
‘Don’t they worry you?’
‘Of course not. The more time he wastes on this sort of idiocy the quicker we will win.’
‘Hmm.’
Gunther tried to turn his head. ‘Do you believe in this nonsense?’
‘I just think you would be better served by taking everything he does seriously.’
‘We do take him seriously.’
‘If that were true, Gunther, then the world would not be at war.’
‘I feel you’re trying to make a point.’
‘I would like you to think on this: you spy on him; he spies on you. You send coded messages, perhaps he does the same. Perhaps all this talk of witchcraft is simply code for something else. Is there a better way to hide your true plans than disguising them as a “delusion”?’
They carried on, picking up speed as the frozen track became a road. They encountered trucks heading away from the town, back towards the mountains.
‘Something has happened,’ Gunther said. ‘We are too late.’
‘It is not too late,’ said Silje. ‘I would know if we were too late.’
The number of vehicles increased as they approached the town, clustering near the first checkpoint. As soon as Gunther was forced to stop, Silje jumped off the motorcycle and brushed the dust and snow from her dress. Gunther took hold of her arm as she tried to set off in the direction of the town hall.
‘Where do you think you are going?’
‘To get my brother. That is what we came here to do, isn’t it?’
‘We should stay together.’
She shook her arm free. ‘We stand a better chance if I go alone. Your accent is good and your mastery of our language is the best I’ve heard from any foreigner except Gruetzmacher himself. But if you make a mistake—’
‘I will not make a mistake.’
‘If you make a mistake and are taken, then Magnus, my father and myself will be lost.’
‘Silje—’
‘I have the General’s ear. I can do this on my own. You should find my father and make sure he dos not do anything foolish.’
She made her way through the trapped vehicles and swelling crowds. She had not seen so many soldiers on the streets since the early days of the invasion. They numbered in the hundreds, more than enough to keep the angry and desperate Norwegians pressed behind the barricades. There were people weeping in the streets, and despite her words to Gunther, Silje suddenly feared the very worst.
A soldier stepped forward to challenge her, and then just as quickly stepped to one side as soon as he recognised her. He patted his machine gun and told her that he very much enjoyed reading The Quisling Orchid. ‘All the men do,’ he added, ‘though we miss the recipes. Perhaps there will be room for them when all the Jews have been rounded up.’
Silje said she would ask the General and hurried on her way.
As she approached the town square she heard a sound like the wind drifting in from the sea. It grew louder as she walked on, becoming almost solid when the town hall came into view. It was not the wind; it was the sound made by a thousand Norwegians crowded outside the German HQ. It was the sound of anguish, a thousand Norwegians weeping in the cold. Silje pushed through them. They were in a daze, a trance, as though the horror they’d endured for so long had only now touched them. The soldiers, tasked with keeping them back from the fencing, looked bewildered, almost afraid.
Silje reached the barricade and looked to where thousands of other eyes looked also: to the courtyard beyond the iron gates and the barbed wire, where five posts stood with a bullet-riddled corpse tied to each one.
She commanded her feet to move, one weak and unsteady step at a time. The smell of cordite hung in the air, the same sharp tang that made her nose twitch after her father had used his shotgun. She peered closely at the corpses. They had been shot so many times they were barely recognisable as human, just slabs of meat hung out under the cold sun. One could have been Magnus…
‘You cannot go any further, Fräulein.’ An officer hurried over with his hand raised and his pistol drawn.
‘It is me, Gerbald. Where is my brother?’
‘Silje! You should not be here. It is not safe.’
‘What have you done here?’
Lieutenant Klein looked to the ground in shame but did not cast his eyes to the wooden posts. For that Silje would be grateful for all her days.
‘He is inside, being questioned.’ When he looked to her again she saw his eyes were red and swollen. He’d been crying. The General, she thought. If Magnus had succeeded then there was nothing she could do for him except beg the Germans for his swift and merciful execution.
‘Questioned? For what?’
Klein shook his head and said she should go home.
‘Not without my brother. Let me through. I wish to speak to General Gruetzmacher.’
‘There was an attack,’ Klein said. ‘An attempt was made on the General’s life. He is in the infirmary.’
Silje felt her mouth run dry. He was alive at least. �
�Still, I must speak with him.’
‘I cannot just allow you—’
Silje hitched her dress and began climbing the barricades.
‘Silje!’
She tore the dress, and the skin from her calf, and became trapped. Klein rushed forward to help her and two of his men followed, cutting away the barbed wire and moving the wooden stakes to make an opening in the barricade. The crowd looked on, puzzlement replacing grief which in turn was replaced by anger.
‘As I am here you can take me to him.’
Klein said, ‘You are the most infuriating woman I have ever known.’
‘I am the only woman you have ever known.’ Silje replied.
Nevertheless he took her hand and led her towards the steps of the town hall.
Exactly halfway between the barricade and the steps, the General’s staff car lay, its front crushed against a stone pillar. The windshield had been shattered and the seats were covered in blood.
‘A single shot,’ Klein said, without looking at the car. ‘The General saw your brother fighting those men for possession of a gun. Fortune was with him; he ducked down as the shot was fired. His injuries are minor.’
It occurred to Silje that there was too much gore for such a small injury.
‘Staff Sergeant Krause… Inge… was not so fortunate.’ His eyes reddened further and he angrily drew his sleeve across the bridge of his nose.
‘I am sorry, Gerbald.’
‘It is Klein, Lieutenant Klein.’
‘Yes, of course. I am sorry.’
‘She had an affection for me,’ he said. ‘She told me so once.’
‘Yes, I know. She was very fond of you.’
‘I spurned her, and I was unkind when I did it.’
‘I’m sure you did not mean to—’
‘I was cruel to her because she was not you. I was cruel to her because after you rejected me, you sent her to me as some sort of consolation. You were just as cruel to her, Silje, and she deserved better from both of us.’
They climbed the steps in silence. Two gun emplacements had been erected either side of the huge oak doors. Though not so much guns as cannons, Silje thought. To her left, one of the soldiers manning the gun eyed her and the Lieutenant as they walked past. He whispered something to his comrade who grinned and then turned his eye back to the gun sight trained on the crowd.
The Quisling Orchid Page 30
