“Will that be all?” asked Per.
Erling wanted to ask if Per had seen Kari, but he didn’t want to raise any suspicion, so he just nodded.
“Thirty øre,” said Per.
Erling pulled out the only coin he had and gave it to Per. Per gave him his change, and after a long moment, Erling just blurted it out, unable to think of any other way to say it.
“Did Kari come by today?” he asked.
Per shook his head.
“I haven’t seen her,” he said.
Before Erling could reply, Heidrun spoke from the back of the store.
“She came by, all right,” she said.
Erling turned to look as Heidrun emerged from the back of the store.
“She bought bread and cheese, and she wanted to buy sausages, too,” said Heidrun.
“I asked her to get something for my cousin,” said Erling, saying the first thing that came to mind. “He’s coming from Eidum, to help with the lambing.”
“A bit early for that, isn’t it?” said Heidrun, questioning him with a glance.
“We mated early,” said Erling, returning her glance with a hard stare. Heidrun’s eyes narrowed again, but Erling took his things and left the store before it could go any further.
He made his way back across town, burning inside. Even though it was a small village, it felt like it took him hours to cross. He figured Kari must have been trying to make it to Sweden with the pilot. How much of a head start did she have? he wondered. An hour? Two, or three, or even four? He fought the urge to run, knowing it would only draw more attention.
Erling soon left the village. He went back behind the barn, untied his bedroll from the saddle, and slung it over his shoulder. Then he untied Loki from the fencepost and led him toward the road.
Once he reached the road, Erling mounted the mule and tugged sharply at the reins, and Loki trotted off. While Erling rode away, Sverre Hattestad approached the barn on a rusty old bicycle with thick rope in place of its tires, fighting his way through the snow. Scraggly and unkempt with snus-stained teeth and a patchy beard, he was little more than a sack of sinew and bone, chiseled lean from a lifetime chasing things he’d already lost and things he wouldn’t ever have. He pulled his bicycle over to the side of the road and watched Erling ride off on his mule, and he narrowed his gaze, suspicious.
Then he turned and looked back in the direction of the rådhus.
CHAPTER 6
A cow moose and its reedy calf wandered through the hills above Trondheim, chewing the bark and low branches off the trees at the outskirts of the city. Spotting some early fireweed emerging from a snowdrift, the calf stumbled toward the forest’s edge and gorged itself, oblivious to the houses nearby. Its mother trotted forward and nudged the calf back toward the tree line, and just as quickly as they’d appeared, they disappeared back into the forest.
Down in the center of Trondheim, Wehrmacht Oberleutnant Conrad Moltke stood at the window of his luxurious room in the Stiftsgården, frowning as he watched the activity on Dronningens Gate. It wasn’t the accommodations that made him unhappy, as the palatial rooms were by far the most luxurious lodging he’d ever had. It wasn’t the weather, either, which was no worse than the perpetual rain that drenched his home city of Berlin. It also wasn’t the duties that awaited him that morning, which could’ve been performed with ease by any of his junior, non-commissioned staff. What caused his disappointment was that he believed he should’ve been elsewhere by then, perhaps fighting with Rommel in North Africa, or with Manstein on the Eastern Front. The son of a Lieutenant Colonel who’d received the Iron Cross for his service at Gallipoli, and the grandson of a Field Marshall who’d received the Crown Order and the Pour le Mérite for his gallantry during the Austro-Prussian War, his only goal in life had been to follow in their footsteps and distinguish himself on the battlefield. His one mistake, however, had been hesitation—he’d wavered before joining the NSDAP, when far less-talented men like Josef Terboven, his superior and the Reichskommissar for Norway, had leapt at the chance. Even though he had joined in 1931, still two years before the NSDAP had come into power, his earlier hesitation would never be forgiven, so instead of getting the chance to prove himself in battle, Moltke had been relegated to babysitting duties at the far edge of the Reich.
He took a sip of the coffee that had been brought to him and winced. It tasted lousy, more like hot dish water than what he’d been accustomed to in Germany. He put it aside and approached his collection of records, which he’d brought from Berlin. Thank God for my music, he thought to himself. After browsing through them, he selected a recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-Flat major, performed by Edwin Fischer. Though the Nazis, who found it too cosmopolitan for their tastes, didn’t approve of Mozart, Moltke vastly preferred him to Wagner, Bruckner, and the rest of Hitler’s favorites, whom he found bombastic and trite.
He slid the gramophone from its dust sleeve and carefully placed it onto the Victrola’s turntable. Then he lowered the needle and waited for it to play. Before long, the opening notes of the andante movement tumbled forth from the Victrola’s speaker horn. Moltke closed his eyes and thought back to Berlin in the early twenties, after he’d graduated from the Preußische Kriegsakademie, when Elise was still with him. He’d felt like he had it all when he’d been out with her, walking the tree-lined Kurfürstendamm or having drinks at the Romanisches Café. If only things had gone differently, he thought to himself. If I’d only been more resolute, or if I’d been able to foresee what was coming.
After a moment, someone knocked on the door, shattering his fantasy. The colorful avenues of Charlottenburg fell away in his mind to reveal the dour, grey streets of Trondheim, and Elise vanished like smoke in the wind. A voice spoke out in the hallway, and Moltke opened his eyes, grimacing when he saw the amateurish oil painting of Queen Sophia above his bed.
“Herr Oberleutnant?”
He said nothing, hoping the man would just go away if he ignored him, but the man remained.
“I have a message for you,” said the man, knocking again.
Moltke continued to ignore him.
“Herr Oberleutnant?”
Moltke finally trudged over to the Victrola and lifted the needle from the gramophone, bringing the soothing music to a halt.
“Come in,” he said in a resigned voice.
The door opened, and Otto Blücher, an oafish corporal, burst into the room. He stumbled on the edge of a thick rug, bumping into a table and spilling Moltke’s coffee onto a sheaf of papers.
“Verdammte Scheiße!” said Moltke, grabbing the papers before the coffee ruined them.
“Sorry, sir—”
Moltke interrupted him.
“What do you want?” he said, using a handkerchief to wipe up the coffee.
“We just got word from command,” said Blücher. “They found a downed Allied plane nearby, in the mountains.”
“So go look at it.”
“The Major wants you to go,” said Blücher. “He said it’s urgent.”
Moltke groaned and closed his eyes again.
“Herr Oberleutnant?” said Blücher.
Ignoring him, Moltke tried to envision springtime in Charlottenburg once more, and Elise on his arm. But all he could see were thousands of smirking, goose-stepping Hitlers, marching up the Kurfürstendamm and saluting him as they went past.
They took a pair of half-tracks out to the crash site. There weren’t any paved roads after Hommelvik, and the Opel Blitzes they normally drove didn’t get far in the snow and mud. The half-tracks were slow, though, and they were barely capable of doing thirty kilometers per hour, even over flat ground. By the time they finally entered the Stjørdal forest, the sun was directly above them, though hidden behind a wall of clouds.
Blücher rode out front with three other enlisted men. Moltke rode behind in the second vehicle, preferring to bring up the rear in case they came across any land mines planted by the resistance. He was accompanied b
y his driver, Ulrich Schweitzer, a narcissistic Olympic swimmer more interested in deflowering locals than in the actual war, and Manfred Goetz, a whey-faced, alcoholic worm Moltke suspected of being a pedophile. Between the cloying sweetness of Schweitzer’s cheap 4711 cologne and the overpowering stench of Goetz’s body odor, Moltke had been fighting the urge to throw up since they’d left Trondheim. He sat as far back in the half-track as he could, chain-smoking and staring out at the landscape as it scrolled past.
They stopped about a kilometer from the crash site when it became impossible to proceed with the half-tracks. Then they set out on foot, hiking their way through the uneven country. Blücher took the point, bounding forward through the snow like a St. Bernard off its leash. Goetz and the other enlisted men followed, fingers resting above the triggers of their machine guns in case they came across the resistance or the Inter-Allied Commandos.
Moltke smoked another cigarette as he followed the column. He glanced around at their surroundings and couldn’t help but frown again. It was certainly beautiful, he had to admit; it even reminded him of the Arlberg, where he and his older brothers had spent their childhood winters skiing at Zürs and St. Christoph. But beauty wasn’t the point of war, and he wasn’t on a vacation, either. He needed to come up with a way to get to Kharkov, where they were fighting the Red Army, or the North African desert, to do battle on the roads Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great had once travelled—and he needed to do it soon, before it was too late.
After a while, Blücher broke into a trot when he saw the split tops of some trees in the distance. The others picked up their paces as well, and they soon came upon the rudder of the P-47. They followed the trail of wreckage until they reached the crash site, where a fresh-faced soldier wearing a trench coat two sizes too big for him sat shivering next to the plane’s fuselage. The boy jumped to his feet when he saw Moltke approaching and gave him an enthusiastic Nazi salute.
“Heil Hitler!” said the boy.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Moltke, responding with a half-hearted wave and glancing around. “So, where is he?”
“Who?”
“The pilot, you ass. Who do you think?”
“He must’ve bailed out, sir.”
“You don’t say?”
The boy shook his head, failing to register Moltke’s sarcasm. Schweitzer scanned their surroundings.
“He couldn’t have gotten far,” he said.
Moltke turned to his men.
“Search the area,” he said.
Blücher and one of the enlisted men headed west into the forest, while Goetz and another enlisted man went east toward a valley. Schweitzer went north toward the mountains with the last enlisted man, and Moltke lit another cigarette and followed them from a distance.
They walked through the untouched snow. After a while, Moltke’s stomach began to whine. He generally skipped the Norwegian breakfasts, which consisted of gamy goat cheese and dried fish, preferring to wait for his cook to make him a German meal, perhaps a schnitzel if they had any veal, or maybe some sauerbraten if they didn’t. Hopefully they’d find the downed pilot before long, and preferably dead, as that meant less paperwork, so Moltke could get back to his music. Maybe he’d even have a cigar and open the bottle of Hennessy he’d been saving, the one he’d confiscated from the textile importer in Bergen.
They soon came to a wooded hill, and after reaching its crest, they spotted the old hunting cabin. Seeing some recent footprints around the cleared-away cabin door, Schweitzer crept forward and looked through a frost-covered window. Then he gave a signal to the enlisted man, who kicked open the door and stormed inside with his machine gun raised.
Moltke waited outside and finished his cigarette as Schweitzer followed the enlisted man inside. He decided he’d write another letter to the Brigadier General when he got back to Trondheim, requesting a transfer to the front. It didn’t matter which one—any front would do. Then he changed his mind and decided to go straight to the General. It wasn’t an orthodox move, but it was time to take a risk, whatever the costs might be. Hoffen und harren macht manchen zum Narren, he thought to himself, which had been a favorite saying of his grandfather. He that lives on hope shall die fasting.
After a moment, Schweitzer and the enlisted man emerged from the cabin, shaking their heads. Then they lowered their machine guns and set off into the forest. Moltke dropped his cigarette butt to the snow and followed them. They trudged through the woods, down the other side of the hill and into another stretch of thick pines and birch trees.
They continued to scour the forest, but there were no tracks anywhere, and no signs that anyone had recently been there, either. After emerging from the forest and crossing a meadow, they reentered the wilderness and began to circle back toward the others. Before long, Moltke saw the cut parachute lines in the branches above them.
“Sir,” said Schweitzer.
Moltke turned and looked in the direction Schweitzer was pointing and saw two faint sets of tracks leading away from the area. One set was similar in size to their own tracks.
The other tracks were smaller, though, as if they’d belonged to a child.
CHAPTER 7
The Stjørdal River snaked its way westward through the hills and lowlands of the valley. A narrow dirt road trailed alongside it, following the river like a shadow. At times, the snow covering the road became crisscrossed with tire tracks, signs of the fleeing resistance or the Germans in pursuit. In other places, it was unmarked by wheel or hoof or even boot, and it became difficult to tell where the road ended and where the wilderness began.
Kari and Lance rode the rest of the morning without stopping, and they kept riding into the afternoon. She made them sandwiches as the sun began to drop toward the western hills, cutting the bread and cheese as thin as shingles so it would last. They didn’t stop to eat or rest, washing it down with handfuls of snow they scooped up along the way. Unused to the workload, Torden faltered at times, but Kari spurred him onward, tugging at the reins.
After making their way up a low rise, they pushed down into a valley. A blackened farmhouse stood at the edge of a field, an act of reprisal by the Germans and a warning against defiance. Most of the farmhouse’s roof was caved in and one of its walls had collapsed, and Kari could see into what looked like a child’s room, judging by some blackened wallpaper and a scorched crib. She wondered what had happened to the child who’d slept there and shuddered. Then she shook the thought from her mind as they continued on their way.
The road diverged from the river as it descended into the craggy bowl of the countryside. After the terrain evened out, the road twisted back toward the water as if somehow drawn to it, and the road and the river met up again in another broad valley. Soon, in the distance, Kari and Lance spotted a one-lane bridge spanning the water. Well before reaching it, they could see that half of it was missing; a few of the limestone piers that had supported it had been reduced to rubble, and some of its ironwork lay in pieces in the ice below.
Kari pulled up on Torden’s reins, and they came to a stop.
“Is there another place to cross?” asked Lance.
“There’s a bridge downriver at Mælen, but that’s at least a day out of the way.”
“What about upriver?”
Kari shook her head and looked toward the ice.
“Maybe we should try to cross here,” she said.
Before Lance could reply, Kari got down from the cart and approached the river. She tapped the ice with her foot a few times, and it felt solid enough, so she walked out a few paces. The ice held, so she tapped it again with her foot, harder and harder until she was practically stomping on it, but it remained firm.
“It feels all right to me,” said Kari.
Lance climbed down from the cart and walked onto the ice, testing it for himself. Kari walked past him and approached Torden, who shifted nervously from side to side. She patted his nose and whispered into his ear, a skill she’d learned from her father, and before lon
g, Torden ceased rocking. Kari then took the reins and led Torden to the riverbank, where Lance waited.
“One of us should go first and make sure it’s okay,” he said.
“You go,” she said, taking the coil of rope from the back of the cart and putting it over her shoulder. “I’ll follow with the horse.”
“You sure?”
She nodded. He took the rest of their items from the back of the cart to lighten its load, then slowly walked out onto the ice.
Lance walked a dozen paces, testing the ice after he got about ten meters out. The ice held. He looked back at Kari and smiled, and she followed him onto the ice, leading Torden with as much rope as the reins afforded. Torden stopped when he reached the river’s edge and hesitated, unsure, and Kari turned back to face him.
“It’s okay,” she said.
Torden snorted and shook his head, remaining where he was. Kari walked back toward him and patted him on the nose, whispering again into his ear. Then she turned around and walked out onto the ice, tugging gently at the reins.
Torden took a small step forward, following Kari, and when he realized the ice would hold, he took another small step, and then another. Just ahead of them, Lance continued to make his way toward the center of the river. He progressed carefully and deliberately, scanning the ice for thin patches or cracks. After a while, he turned around and looked back at Kari, grinning, and she forced an uneasy smile back. Then he turned around and looked forward again, toward the other side of the river. It seemed like it was a long way away, even though it couldn’t have been more than fifty meters.
A third of the way across the frozen river, Torden’s front right foot slipped as he stepped down onto the ice. Kari’s heart skipped a beat as Torden stopped short, snorting again and raising his ears. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, knowing that Torden could sense her fear, and that he’d panic if he thought she was afraid. She held the breath as long as she could and then slowly let it out, and after the feeling passed, she opened her eyes again and nudged him onward.
Land of Hidden Fires Page 4
