The Valkyrie Directive

by Peter MacAlan

  It was a while before the three modern Valkyries heard the despatcher speaking to the pilot and he turned to them with a reassuring grin.

  ‘Norwegian coast to port!’

  They peered forward. Away in the darkness they caught a glimpse of white breakers far below and the broken dark shadows of an irregular coastline. Then, through the clouds, came the white glow of moonlight on snow-capped mountains. White lights flickered here and there, and jewel-like clusters of lights shone from inhabited regions. The Germans had not been able to enforce blackout regulations as yet.

  ‘Ten minutes to target!’ cried the despatcher.

  Sweeny acknowledged and turned to the others.

  ‘Okay?’

  Inge smiled and Woods raised his thumb. They began to check their harnesses, and then the despatcher made a second check before they climbed towards the hatch. The despatcher bent forward and opened it and an icy blast blew up through the hole. Below them the mountains and dark valleys slid by, jagged, repellent and cold.

  ‘Hook up!’

  The despatcher now ensured that each of their parachutes was linked to the static line which would automatically jerk open the thirty-two foot diameter of silk on which their lives depended. Each parachute was capable of bearing a maximum weight of 225 pounds.

  Sweeny was the first to jump. He adjusted his equipment, swung his legs over the side of the hole and held himself ready. Below he could see the contours of the mountains and valleys and then a broad stretch of water lit by the moon. Byglandsfjord! Sweeny glanced up to the despatcher’s face. The man’s eyes were on the little light above the hatch, which was still showing red. The aircraft was following the banks of the fjord now, weaving a little, rising and sinking with the force of the wind. The light blinked from red to green.

  ‘Go!’ screamed the despatcher, at the same time slapping Sweeny on the shoulder.

  Sweeny flung himself forward and began to drop, the wind howling in his face. He felt himself stopped short in a sudden jerk. He was buffeted by the wind, but above him the dark canopy was open and he was floating gently downwards. He adjusted his straps, easing himself in the harness, and examined his surroundings. He could hear the drone of the Blenheim moving away, a small dark shadow in the sky. And there were two other shadows. Woods and the girl. They were floating above him but fairly close. Below lay the waters of the fjord reflecting the silvery moonlight. He was drifting towards the lower slopes of the snow-capped mountains, near to the edge of a dense fir forest.

  He looked round, searching the dark terrain for a good landing place.

  The roar of an aero engine caused him to stare up in astonishment. What was the Blenheim pilot doing? The fool! Flying back over the dropping zone would draw attention to them. But the dark shape of the aircraft which sped close by was not that of the Blenheim. Sweeny went cold as he recognized the silhouette of a Heinkel and then realized that it was climbing swiftly after the disappearing Blenheim. He heard the staccato chatter of its guns, and before he could even register the meaning of it in his mind there was a loud explosion above the far side of the fjord, a sudden burst of flame in the sky and then the Blenheim, from which they had dropped only moments before, was plunging earthward in several flaming pieces. The dark silhouette of the Heinkel, now framed by the moon, was performing a climbing turn towards them.

  Sweeny supposed the others had seen it too. He hung helplessly in his harness watching the black shape reach the apex of its turn. It was still a few miles away across the fjord but it would only be a few seconds before … He glanced down as something brushed his leg. To his surprise he saw a stand of conifers rushing at him. He had been so busy watching the Heinkel that he had failed to keep an eye on the approaching ground. There was a crash of breaking branches as he hit the trees and went plunging through them with a ripping of parachute silk. He swung violently against the trunk, the impact knocking the breath from his body. A moment later he was cutting away the parachute straps with his knife and slithering down the remaining few feet of the trunk to the foot of the tree.

  He was conscious of the roar of the Heinkel now. He slid off his back pack, grabbed his Webley revolver from his flying suit pocket and ran swiftly to the edge of the trees. A few yards away the forest opened onto a clear slope of mountainside which ran down to the shores of the Byglandsfjord. About a hundred yards away he saw Michael Woods struggling to gather in the white canopy of his ’chute.

  ‘Leave it!’ Sweeny shouted. ‘Take cover!’

  The roar of the Heinkel’s engine was ominous. Where the hell was the girl?

  The third parachute was just landing further along the slope, about fifty yards from where Woods had now given up the struggle with his ’chute.

  ‘Get down!’ cried Sweeny, flinging himself back into the cover of the trees as he heard the chatter of the aircraft’s machine guns. Even as Sweeny flung himself down he saw Woods take off at a loping run in the direction of the girl, who was struggling to free herself from the ’chute. Bullets created little explosions of dirt across the slope all around Woods. He reached the girl in a diving rugger tackle and they went sprawling. By then the Heinkel had sped overhead. Sweeny saw it climbing for another run.

  ‘Get in the trees!’ he yelled. ‘This way!’

  Woods sprang up and hauled the girl to her feet. Together they began to race up the slope towards Sweeny. The scream of the Heinkel grew louder again. Once more they flung themselves to the ground, almost trying to burrow into the earth. Then the aircraft was gone again. The Heinkel circled and flew over them for a third time, but this time it did not open fire. It climbed and flew southward.

  Sweeny rose and brushed himself down.

  ‘Welcome to Norway,’ Woods said cynically.

  The girl was white-faced as she stood up, gazing across the waters of the fjord to where what seemed to be a small bonfire was burning.

  ‘Should we try to see if they are alive?’ she whispered.

  ‘No one would have survived,’ snapped Sweeny. ‘Besides, we have a job to do.’

  ‘Someone might be alive …’

  ‘No one is alive. And we won’t live long either if we don’t move from here very quickly. What do you think our friend in the Heinkel is doing right now, if he has not done so already? He will be on the radio to his base telling them that three parachutists have landed and to send the nearest troops to pick us up. Troops may be on their way already.’

  Woods sighed. ‘He’s right.’

  Inge compressed her lips.

  ‘Those poor young men.’

  ‘A lot of poor young men and women, and old men and women, have already died in this goddam war. A lot more will die, no doubt,’ Sweeny said.

  Woods helped Inge retrieve her’chute, gathered his own and the remains of Sweeny’s, and hid them in the middle of a thorn bush together with their flying suits.

  Sweeny glanced at his compass and then at the map. ‘I make the village of Bygiand a few kilometres south of us. We won’t use the main road in case we meet Germans searching for us. We ought to be able to get a bus to Kristiansand from there.’

  They took to the forest, keeping roughly parallel to the road to Bygland. The area was one of the principal forest regions of the country and the forest presented plenty of shelter, a thick mixture of conifers, birch, dwarf birch and black alder. Now and again, as they passed through small clearings, they saw a few fjeldrype, or field grouse, indulging in breakfast among the bilberries. Sweeny felt a surge of homesickness as he took deep draughts of crystal air scented with the perfume of reindeer moss and fir. It was still April, he reflected. The cod shoals would still be spawning on the coastal banks and the small whales would be following the cod to their grounds off Stavanger. He thought about old Tenvig and all that the old man had taught him about the seas; about the capelin off Finnmaken which could be fished at ease during April and May.

  A twig cracked somewhere in front of them and halted them in their tracks.

  Sweeny�
��s hand came up with the service Webley clasped in it.

  ‘Who is there?’ he demanded sharply.

  Something was moving under the shade of a dwarf birch. Sweeny aimed his automatic.

  An elk rushed abruptly into the clearing with a rustling of leaves, stared for a moment at the three of them and then bounded away. Woods chuckled. ‘We nearly had a fine meal for the cooking.’

  Sweeny swore softly.

  ‘Let’s move on. It’s dawn now and I want to be in Bygland by breakfast.’

  It was nearly eight o’clock when they came to the outskirts of the village. By gland stood by the banks of the fiord at the foot of the Lysheia, a mountain that was nearly 3,000 feet high. It was an old place, occupied even in the misty times of prehistory. Sweeny halted them on the edge of the forest.

  ‘I’ll go into the village alone,’ he said. ‘There might be Germans about. I’ll check things and find out about transportation to Kristiansand.’

  He was back within half-an-hour.

  ‘There’s no Germans about and there’s a bus from Austad due shortly which comes across the Storestraum Bridge through Bygland to Evje and then to Arendal. We don't have to go into Kristiansand because we can catch a train from Arendal directly to Oslo.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘The bus is due to arrive within ten minutes so I’ll go down to the Storestraum Bridge first. You two follow me. It’ll be best if we travel separately to Arendal.’

  They watched Sweeny move off.

  ‘Damned self-opinionated bastard,’ breathed Woods.

  ‘You don’t like him?’ asked Inge.

  ‘He’s certainly not overly sensitive about the feelings of others,’ replied Woods. ‘We’re supposed to be working together. Sweeny has apparently placed himself in command.’

  The girl sighed. ‘Let’s go,’ she said, adding, ‘personally, I don’t care who’s in charge so long as we complete this job successfully.’

  The village was still fairly deserted as they strolled down the street to the crossroads near the bridge which connected Bygland with the road from Austad on the far side of the fjord. There was a bench there on which they saw Sweeny sitting, apparently relaxed, smoking his pipe. Next to him sat an old woman, who was knitting, and beyond her a middle-aged man.

  ‘God morgen,’ greeted the man as they came up. The old woman smiled and nodded.

  ‘God dag, ’ returned Inge.

  Woods gave a vague nod, sat down and pulled out an old Norwegian magazine which Wallace had supplied and pretended to lose himself in it.

  ‘Nice weather for April,’ the man said.

  ‘Very nice,’ agreed Inge.

  ‘You are not from these parts?’

  Woods glanced at the man suspiciously.

  ‘How can you tell?’ Inge smiled. ‘I am from Oslo.’

  The man smiled. ‘Oh, I have an ear for accents. Besides, I know most of the people in these parts. It is not often we get strangers through here except during the hunting season. I knew you were not from here.’

  There was an unspoken question directed towards Woods. Inge covered for him.

  ‘You’re right. We have been on a trekking holiday in the mountains for the last three weeks.’

  The sound of a motor vehicle caused them to glance up.

  ‘Ah, the old bus is on time,’ the man said, standing up.

  An ancient omnibus came wheezing across the bridge and halted before them. There were a dozen or so people inside, mainly farm workers and a few foresters judging by their clothes. There were also some old women who were obviously taking farm produce to the villages. Woods was thankful that the garrulous middle-aged man had only come to the bus to meet someone, one of the women, and the two went off up the road chatting. The old woman climbed into the bus first, paid her fare to Evje and took the nearest seat.

  Sweeny climbed in next, and while he was getting his ticket Woods whispered to Inge: ‘It’s best if we travel separately, too. You never know.’

  He stood aside and allowed her to climb up. She asked for a ticket to Svenes. She had worked out that at Svenes she would pretend to change her mind and go on to Arendal. She took a seat on the left-hand side of the bus three seats down from the driver. Sweeny had already seated himself in the rear seat. Woods bought a ticket to Arendal and seated himself next to an old farm worker who was dozing in his seat on the right-hand side of the bus.

  The vehicle wheezed into motion, skirting the shores of the fjord. It was a fine bright morning now and the sun was quite warm as it shone through the dirty windows of the bus. The heavily wooded slopes of Lysheia looked like a picture-postcard rising above them. They moved southwards through some sections of the roadway which had been blasted from the rock of the mountain as it swept down into the lake. At the southern end of the lake, from which the River Otra began to flow due south into the sea, the small village of Evje constituted the next stop for the bus. It halted by the boatyards and the old woman, with her knitting, alighted while two or three other people climbed on board. Once more the vehicle set off, following the road down the Saeterdal valley and across the wooded heathlands.

  Woods was relaxing and nodding slightly. The previous night without sleep and the warmth of the sun was making him very drowsy.

  The squeal of brakes and the motion of the bus threw him forward in his seat. The farm worker, in the next seat, had awoken and was scowling through the window.

  ‘De grønne!’ he spat in annoyance.

  Woods frowned, not understanding the man’s reference to ‘the greens’.

  ‘Se der, tyskere!’ the man grunted.

  Woods peered through the window. A German road block.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The door at the front of the bus was swung open and two German soldiers in green uniforms climbed aboard. They carried Schmeisser machine-pistols hung on straps and held casually at their sides, but ready for instant use. Both men carried the single Gefreiter chevron on their left arms, denoting them to be military police corporals, and each had a ceremonial dagger hung in a scabbard above his left hip. The farm worker next to Woods cursed under his breath.

  The leading corporal gazed down the bus.

  ‘This is a Field Security Police check,’ he said in German. ‘Ausweiss bitte!’

  No one moved. The corporal’s face reddened. Woods, who understood some basic German, knew that a lot of Norwegians had a working knowledge of the language, but no one was responding to the corporal.

  ‘Geheime Feld Polizei! Ausweiss bitte!’ snapped the man again.

  When no one moved he issued another sharp command over his shoulder. Another man climbed into the bus, a thin, lanky youth in a uniform Woods had never seen before. His appearance was greeted with an angry muttering from those on the bus, which died away when the leading German swung his machine-pistol upwards.

  ‘The swine,’ whispered Woods’ neighbour. ‘One of Quisling’s Hird traitors.’

  Woods glanced down the bus to the young man. So this was one of Quisling’s stormtroopers? In ancient times the Hird had been the royal bodyguard of the Viking kings. Quisling had adopted the name for his party’s stormtroopers.

  ‘Papers,’ snapped the youth. ‘All identifications cards and documents.’

  One of the Germans remained next to the driver while his companion and the arrogant-looking young Hird man moved down the aisle checking papers. Inge, sitting forward in the bus, had her papers swiftly glanced at and handed back immediately. Woods felt his muscles tighten as the German and his companion came closer. His Norwegian might be good enough to fool a German but if the Hird man asked questions his accent would be spotted within moments.

  ‘Können Sie sich ausweisen?’

  Woods found himself gazing into the pale eyes of the policeman. The Hird man was passing some papers back to a woman on the other side of the aisle and Woods prayed he would be asked no questions as he pressed his identification card into the German’s hand.

  ‘Doktor Bryn Poulsson,’ read the German.
‘Welche Staatsange hörigkeit besitzen Sie? Norwegish? ’

  ‘Ja. Ich bin norwegisch,’ replied Woods, thankful he knew enough German to answer the man in kind.

  The Hird man suddenly turned and scowled across the shoulder of his German companion.

  ‘Hva he ter du?’

  Woods summoned his best accent: ‘Jeg er skipslege. Jeg skal til Oslo for å skaffe meg hyre.’

  ‘You are not a local man, doctor,’ pressed the Hird man.

  ‘No.’

  ‘From where do you come?’ demanded the Hird man suspiciously.

  ‘From Alta near Hammerfest,’ lied Woods, trying to think of the most remote part of Norway he could. ‘I’ve been abroad a lot working on ships.’

  ‘You are no Norwegian!’ the young fascist yelled abruptly.

  The German soldier’s Schmeisser came up to cover Woods as the Norwegian repeated it in German.

  ‘Aus welchem Lande kommen Sie?’ snapped the soldier.

  ‘I am a Norwegian. A ship’s doctor,’ Woods insisted.

  ‘Lügner! Sind Sie Fallschirmjager!’

  ‘Of course I am not parachutist.’

  There were some sympathetic murmurings from the people on the bus. Inge was white-faced. Woods couldn’t see Sweeny at the rear of the bus. All he saw now was the taut mask of the German soldier’s face. The man was nervous. Abruptly he grabbed Woods by the front of the jacket and yanked him upright.

  ‘Raus!’

  There was nothing for it. Woods could not endanger his two companions. He allowed himself to be pushed down the aisle of the bus. The soldier gave him a sharp thrust which sent him staggering down the steps of the vehicle into the roadway. Two more green-uniformed Geheime Feld Polizei stood covering the bus with their Schmeissers. The Hird man followed the two Germans from the bus, smiling maliciously.

  ‘I think the man is English from the way he pronounces Norwegian,’ he told the German with undisguised glee in his voice.

  The soldier who had questioned him told him to raise his hands and move to the side of the road. Another of the Germans moved to a small wooden sentry hut where Woods could see a field telephone. He bit his lip. He knew the whole venture had been so bizarre that it was not surprising that it should end like this. He hoped the Germans would allow the bus to move on; be content with his capture and let Inge and Sweeny alone. He must not betray them. The German military policeman stood staring at him unblinking, the Schmeisser levelled at his chest.