North Strike

by North Strike (retail) (epub)

  The Norwegian replaced the receiver and turned. ‘By which time,’ he added, ‘it will be too late.’ He managed an uncertain smile. ‘I think we are safe. All they have is a rubber dinghy and I don’t think they’ll attempt to paddle fifteen kilometres in that.’

  * * *

  Cuxhaven’s auxiliary engine was of German manufacture and it didn’t take long to work out how to start it. Letting go the buoy, as the tide carried them astern, they went ahead in a wide circle and, putting Cuxhaven’s bow to the jetty, put a rope ashore. With the tide carrying the stern round, they soon had her alongside facing down the fjord.

  ‘What time’s high tide?’ Magnusson asked.

  ‘Nine o’clock.’

  ‘Let’s have the sails set and furled.’

  There were so many men aboard now with a knowledge of sailing ships the job was quickly done. They spent the evening completing their plans. Once the submarine was immobilized, they were to send the vehicles to Marsjøen to ferry everybody who wished to leave to Fjållbrakka.

  The office and sheds of the timberyard were full of people now. Nearly the whole hamlet of thirty-three people wished to come with them; only the old people had decided to stay behind to look after their children’s properties. As they began to gather in the yard, Magnusson found himself standing next to Annie Egge.

  She was studying him quietly. He was tall and strong, with a good nose, eyes as blue as her own and the fair complexion that tradition ascribed to Norse pirates. There seemed to be the anticipation of a joke in his eyes and his mouth always looked ready to break into a smile, even at his own expense.

  ‘You have Norwegian eyes,’ she said, almost before she realized she had spoken.

  He looked at her, startled. ‘Shetland was Norse once,’ he said.

  ‘And Norwegian culture is Viking.’ She spoke as though all the others weren’t worth considering. ‘What is it like in your northern isles?’

  Magnusson stared at the high sides of Marsjøenfjord and glanced upwards at the sky, suddenly feeling an overpowering urge to see the low hills of his own islands.

  ‘What are they like?’ he said. ‘Remote. Desolate. Empty. You could say all that. But there’s something else. The sky’s clear – brilliant when the cloud lifts. And the wind blows as often as there are days and nights.’

  ‘Will you live there when you are old?’

  He smiled. Beyond her, he could see Atwood getting his men into a group, nagging at them quietly. Not for him a casual movement to the next battle. They were going to do it properly – by numbers and dressed by the right. Somehow, he even seemed to have got them to smarten themselves up.

  ‘God willing,’ he said. ‘Islanders always return. People get the wrong impression about them. They don’t dress smartly and they live in small houses. But they sometimes have big bank balances and they’re not as simple as outside people think. Most of them are sailors and many have visited the great ports of the world – New York, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Singapore, Cape Town, Vladivostok.’

  ‘They sound like Lofoten men,’ she said.

  Atwood was peering at his men now as if looking for dirty buttons and indifferent haircuts. What a pleasure it must be, Magnusson thought, to be so absorbed by your job that the idea of danger didn’t enter your head. Campbell had gathered the sailors together as well and they were stamping their feet in the slushy mud, a very different brand from Atwood’s soldiers, more easy-going, technicians and seafaring men all of them. He saw Annie looking at him anxiously. Willie John watched them quietly, shabby and stooped in the hideous checked windcheater.

  ‘You will go to sea again?’ she asked.

  He stared at her. This was no Wren Dowsonby-Smith wanting a glib answer. She knew the sea and she knew seafaring men.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  He remembered what Ek Yervy had said. ‘You just do,’ he said. ‘You come back and you go off again. The tide comes in and goes out. It’s like that.’

  She moved her shoulders. There was a suggestion of tiredness in the gesture. ‘My brother went to sea,’ she said. ‘His wife waited. She was never angry because she knew the sea was in him. I would never be angry if my man went to sea. I would like to see your islands some day.’

  * * *

  Willie John, four of the Norwegians and two of Atwood’s men had been left to guard the prisoners, and Magnusson heard Atwood whisper to the infantrymen. ‘Don’t trust no- body,’ he said, with a glance at Willie John. ‘Remember Rora. We ’ad it cut off the crusty part there. Any nonsense, let ’em ’ave it.’

  He faced his men and, just to make sure they were on their toes, gave them a rapid five minutes rifle drill. There was no question – despite their red noses, hungry looks and stained uniforms – but that they knew what they were about, and it was clear that Atwood had them well under control.

  They packed the first party into the lorry, along with the picks and shovels and weapons. Orjasaeter patted his pockets gently.

  ‘Detonators,’ he said.

  While they waited for the lorry to return, Magnusson noticed Annie Egge standing alone.

  ‘Aren’t you cold out here?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I am coming with you.’

  ‘We don’t want women on this job.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I am coming. I am a skilled nurse and you might get yourself hurt.’

  He looked quickly at her. ‘And would that matter?’

  She stared him straight in the face, her eyes honest. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Now.’

  Orjasaeter had already got his party digging when they arrived at Grude, burrowing away by the light of dimmed torches into the bank under the girders that held the logs. There was only the faintest click and scrape of shovels and spades as they worked and a radio was blaring through the hatch of the submarine to drown the sound. The last men arrived soon afterwards in the car and the van, all well briefed, tense and excited, and they had just parked out of sight when the look-out whistled and called out softly.

  ‘Two men! They’re coming up!’

  Hurriedly collecting their tools, they vanished into the trees. When the two Germans, both of them officers wearing submarine sweaters, appeared, there was no sign of what had been happening beyond the holes dug in the snow. The Germans walked straight past the turned earth, however, with no idea what it meant. They were deep in conversation and Magnusson watched them head slowly up the hill. As they crouched, not daring to move, the cold began to eat into his limbs.

  ‘Christ, why don’t they hurry?’ he heard Campbell mutter.

  The silence seemed so vast it was almost painful and the air was like frozen nectar, so cold it hurt the lungs when he breathed. His feet were icy; he couldn’t remember ever feeling the cold as much as he did at that moment. Below them the country lay still, harsh yet beautiful with its lakes and fjords, a fairy-tale world of snow, the setting for a Norse legend.

  The Germans returned a quarter of an hour later and headed down the hill. They watched the lights from inside the submarine vanish as the hatches were closed, only the one in the conning tower remaining open. By the fact that it was momentarily obscured from time to time, they guessed there was a man moving about on watch there. The radio still blared out the music.

  They started work again, whispering and muttering, pushing and thrusting at the hard earth, their breath heavy on the frozen air. Eventually, Orjasaeter decided they had sufficiently undermined the bank to do what he was after and began to stuff in his charges and lay his wire to the battery from the lorry.

  He gestured at the plunger. ‘When that goes down,’ he cocked a thumb at the banks and the logs, ‘those will go up.’

  * * *

  Atwood and his men were crouching over the parcels of plastic explosive, counting them again and again like misers with their money, muttering Orjasaeter’s instructions over and over so that they knew exactly what to do. Assisted by the Norwegian sailors, they were to slither down the bank to the submarine wh
en the logs had come to rest, and drop their charges through the hatches. It was going to be tricky, because some of the logs might well be lying in dangerous positions, and they’d been warned to take no risks.

  ‘It’s about time the watchman was brought away,’ Magnusson said to Marques. ‘Let’s go and get him.’

  They crept quietly down towards the loading quay. The watchman’s house was an ugly wooden structure only fifty yards from where they could see the loom of the submarine lying against the jetty. The door was locked when Marques tried it gently. It presented a problem until Marques discovered a sloping hatch at the side of the house leading to a cellar. Opening it softly, they crept inside, wondering at their luck. The cellar was small and contained a boiler and several old items of furniture, and when they climbed the half-dozen steps that led into the main part of the house they found the inner door was locked.

  ‘Can you break it down, Chief?’ Magnusson asked.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  As Marques’s big shoulders hit the panels, they heard the jamb splinter and they were through in a second. The Norwegian watchman was just leaping out of bed as they appeared, and his wife’s terrified face peered over the top of the bedclothes. Guns were thrust in their faces, with orders to keep silent, and Orjasaeter began to talk to them swiftly in their own language.

  Immediately, the woman shook her head. Orjasaeter spoke again and the two exchanged glances. Eventually, he made them realize they hadn’t much choice and they scrambled from the bed. The woman thrust her legs into a pair of ski trousers and stuffed her voluminous nightgown in with them. Grabbing heavy clothing, she began to push a few belongings into a small canvas bag.

  ‘Tell them to hurry.’

  The watchman hesitated and said something in Norwegian.

  ‘He wishes to get something from the living room.’

  As the Norwegian vanished, Marques glanced after him and they hardly noticed him leave the room until they heard a soft thump and a cry. They found Marques standing over the watchman who was sprawled on his face by the open front door.

  ‘The bastard decided to bolt,’ Marques said. ‘I bet he was going to tell the Jerries.’

  They got the watchman on his feet and bound his hands. Gagging him, they pushed him and his wife out into the frosty night air and prodded them up the road to where the others waited. Pushing them into the back of the lorry, they placed one of the sailors on guard, left another to watch the submarine and settled down to wait for the night to end.

  * * *

  Daylight came sheepishly, edging over the mountains to the east. The sky was clear and it looked like being a bright morning. One by one they stood up in the snow-covered undergrowth, stamping their feet and thrusting icy fingers deep into pockets. Rubbing frozen limbs, they passed cigarettes round, lighting them and taking quick puffs before handing them on to the next man. Orjasaeter had brought a flask of akvavit with him and he handed it quietly to Magnusson. As he swallowed from it, Magnusson felt the glow of the liquor moving through his body, pushing out small tendrils of warmth from his stomach into his frozen limbs.

  As the light grew stronger, they could see the look-out on the bridge of the submarine, leaning against the coaming with his hands in his pockets, half-dozing in the cold. The Germans had partly unshipped the attack periscope and ropes and wires lay along the deck; and they could hear the clink of tools from the open engine-room hatch.

  ‘They start work early,’ Atwood observed brightly. ‘Right little worriers, aren’t they? What’s the signal to go?’

  Magnusson smiled. ‘I shouldn’t think you’ll need a signal, Sergeant. When the logs stop bouncing, that’s the moment. And, for Christ’s sake, go steady with those charges. Don’t blow yourself up.’

  Atwood sniffed at the suggestion of inefficiency. ‘All attached to grenades,’ he pointed out. ‘Nothing can go off until the grenade goes off, and the grenades can’t go off until the pins is pulled.’

  As they spoke, they saw the forward hatch open, and a man climbed out and began to relieve himself into the fjord. Other hatches were thrown open one by one until there were several men on the casing smoking cigarettes.

  ‘Didn’t expect that, sir,’ Atwood admitted. ‘Makes it more difficult.’

  After a while they smelled coffee, and a man put his head out of the forward hatch and called something; the German sailors tossed their cigarettes into the water and began to climb back through the hatches, with the exception of the solitary man on the conning tower. For a moment, he stared round him; then he climbed down the ladder to the casing and went to the forward hatch. A head appeared and he was handed a mug that steamed in the cold morning air.

  ‘Anybody ashore?’ Magnusson asked.

  Campbell gestured. ‘One. A petty officer. He’s got what looks like part of a periscope and a handful of tools. He’s in the workshop.’

  ‘I don’t think we can wait any longer. Can you detail someone, Atwood, to attend to him?’

  ‘No sooner asked than done, sir,’ Atwood said. ‘We’ve got just the bloke for it – Taddy the Pole.’

  He jabbed Wolszcka with his elbow and pointed to where the German had disappeared into the hut. ‘See ’im off, kid,’ he said. He jerked the flat of his hand across his throat and Wolszcka grinned.

  ‘And make it bloody quick,’ Atwood added. ‘We can’t wait.’

  If Wolszcka could understand no one else, he seemed to understand Atwood. As he vanished, Atwood turned to Magnusson.

  ‘’E’ll see to it, sir,’ he said approvingly. ‘You’ll curl up laughin’. He’s a good boy, Pole or no bloody Pole. I wonder if ’e’d like to join the Koylis when we get ’ome.’

  After a while Wolszcka returned and spoke softly to Atwood. The sergeant turned to Magnusson.

  ‘Right, sir. Done. We’re all ready now. You’ve just got to give the word.’

  As he spoke, a man climbed out of the engine-room hatch, walked along the casing, crossed the little gangway to the quay, and headed towards the workshop. The man on the conning tower called to him and he turned and waved.

  ‘He’ll find the other one,’ Atwood whispered.

  ‘Where is he?’ Magnusson said.

  ‘Wolszcka said he left him on the floor.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘’E wouldn’t be daft enough to leave ’im any other way, sir.’

  Magnusson glanced about him. If the man now walking across the quay towards the workshop found the corpse, the alarm would be given at once.

  The Norwegians were watching, ready with Marques and the sailors to hurry after Atwood’s men. Orjasaeter crouched in the snow with the plunger. His face was pale and his nose was red. Just behind him, Annie Egge waited.

  She lifted her hand nervously as she saw Magnusson turn, and gave him a shy wave.

  The German sailor was just entering the workshop. Magnusson could see the light burning there and he knew it had to be now.

  He glanced at Orjasaeter and stuck his thumb up. Orjasaeter answered him with a wave and Magnusson made the motion of thrusting home a plunger. Orjasaeter nodded and waved again. Then Magnusson saw him throw his weight downwards.

  7

  The explosion came surprisingly loud in the silent fjord, echoing across the water and bouncing back from the cliffs at the far side.

  The flash came in a curious flicker of light that dazzled Magnusson for a moment, then he realized that what he’d seen was not one explosion but several. Trees on the edge of the clearing quivered in the blast, shaking veils of white to the ground and two separate clouds of brown smoke billowed up from the bank. Out of the smoke rocks and stones flew high above the fjord with a cloud of pulverized earth, before bouncing and rolling down the hillside.

  The German sailor standing on the casing had swung round, staring upwards, still holding the steaming mug of coffee, and they heard him shout and point; then Magnusson saw that the slope above the submarine was shifting.

  Orjasaeter had done his job well and
a whole section of the slope had vanished. With it went the bank in front of the logs, sliding away, slowly at first, then faster and faster down the hill towards the water, taking with it shrubs and small trees. A window in the watchman’s house shattered as a rock hurtled through it. Behind them the stand of logs was already on the move.

  The girders wrenched out by the explosions, the logs were falling and they saw the first of them bounce over the ledge of the slope where the lip of the bank had been torn away. The water all round the submarine was already pitted with ripples and splashes as debris bounced into it off the casing, and they saw the look-out drop his mug of coffee and bolt behind the conning tower for shelter. By now the whole mass of logs was rolling, and after another explosion that echoed like thunder against the slopes of the fjord they seemed to leap out from the bank and start bounding towards the water, pushing earth and small trees ahead of them.

  The man behind the conning tower stuck out his head, then withdrew it like a tortoise beneath its shell. The logs were going down now in a solid wall, flinging snow high as they began to turn end over end, digging in their tips and then leaping again to fling up the earth, like some enormous animal having a dust-bath. The man behind the conning tower was screaming now and, as he tried to run to safety along the deck, the first log caught him, striking him between the shoulders and flinging him into the water twenty yards away. He surfaced once, but made no attempt to save himself, and vanished again as if his back were broken.

  Another man had thrust his head and shoulders out of the engine-room hatch but he dropped out of sight again at once. As he reached up to close the hatch cover a log smashed down across it and even above the din they heard him shriek as his arm was crushed. More young trees went down, followed by more boulders plucked from the face of the slope, and the sailor who had gone into the workshop reappeared at a run. He was clutching the petty officer’s cap and it was obvious he had just found the dead man. For a moment he stood still, his jaw dropped open, his eyes dilated with horror. He stared upwards at the avalanche of logs, and Magnusson saw Atwood lift his rifle to shoot him. There was no need. One of the logs struck the bank, turned in its course and twisted like a living thing to strike the German as he bolted for safety. It lifted him thirty feet into the air, and, as he dropped to the ground, another great wave of logs roared down and he was lost to sight beneath them.