The Fragile Hour

by Rosalind Laker

  Anna suffered a restless night. Whenever she dozed it was only to awake with an image of Gestapo interrogations in her mind that came vividly from all she had heard during her time in Norway. The beatings, the pulling out of fingernails, electric shocks, the sadistic means of keeping a captive’s sleep away, the burning with cigarettes and hot irons. Once she sat up on a scream and clapped her hands over her mouth in fear that she had been heard, but the hotel remained quiet and nobody stirred.

  She collapsed back on to the pillow and found release in tears. Only then did she sleep for a couple of hours until her alarm clock rang. It was like waking up in a wastepaper basket for, with bed-linen worn out and impossible to replace, many hotels had had to resort to paper sheets and pillowcases. Anna’s constant tossing and turning had caused hers to rip. She went to bathe and dry herself with the towels that were of paper too.

  Anna rode out of Bergen on a bicycle that Lars had brought to the hotel that morning. He gave her a message for London, which she was to send out later on the radio-transmitter that would be waiting for her at the cabin. The bicycle had wooden rims instead of tyres, for the enemy had long since taken those throughout the country in a shortage of rubber. It made a bumpy and uncomfortable ride, but it was her only means of transport to a small village not far from Bergen. There she went to the friendly house of a lawyer, Stein Holstad, who would pass any message received from her to the Resistance. He was not at home, having already left for his Bergen office in his wood-fuelled car, but Anna was greeted by his wife, Mary.

  She was a thin, energetic woman in her fifties, who was already dressed to accompany Anna to the mountains.

  “I’ll keep you provided with all you need, Anna,” she said. “My nephew will be your main contact. There’s a policeman in the area who always phones a warning if there’s any enemy activity around.”

  “So you’ve been involved with something like this before?”

  “We still are. With the help of several farmers in this valley we get food to three of our local lads hiding in the mountains from conscription by the Germans to the Eastern Front. Naturally it’s very basic fare, as yours will be. There’s an escaped Russian prisoner-of-war with them too, whom we were feeding on his own before that.”

  “Shall I be anywhere near them?”

  “No, I’m afraid life is going to be very lonely for you from now on.”

  “I’m prepared for it.”

  She and Mary left unobtrusively for the mountains. The Holstads’ house, surrounded by woodland, was on the outskirts of the village and there was nobody to see them go.

  The early November air was crisp and clear, the only snow in the heights. Anna found it invigorating to exert her energy in the climb and all the way and the going was comparatively easy. When the ground levelled out to a valley below two peaks, she saw the cabin that was to be her first retreat.

  Mary stayed only long enough to unload the food she had brought in her rucksack. When she had left, Anna took up the suitcase already deposited there and set it on the table to snap it open and reveal the short-wave radio transmitter inside. She had been assured by Mary that the Germans never came into these mountains, but if they picked up a persistent signal they would investigate, however much they disliked the high territories. For that reason she could only stay so long in this cabin before moving to another. Only Mary and others involved in helping her would know her whereabouts.

  Anna’s first task was to uncoil the wire attached to the transmitter and fix up the aerial outside. After checking that all was in order, she paid more attention to the cabin itself. It was typical in being much like the one in which she had stayed overnight with Karl. She guessed it was either Mary or her daughter who had filled a shelf with books. There were also a pack of cards with which to play patience and a delicately-carved chess set with a board if she wished to play against herself. Mary had told her that it had been made by the Russian prisoner-of-war, who also made wooden toys to pass the time. One of them lay on a cupboard. Anna picked it up by its handle and smiled as a circle of chickens with a hen pecked at the round board as a weight on strings was swung underneath. Putting it down again she wondered if the Russian had amused his own children with such toys.

  Beside it in ugly contrast was the revolver she had placed there. She turned from it and went into the bedroom to unroll the sleeping bag she had brought with her.

  Now she was ready to transmit the message that Lars had given her earlier that day. She sat down at the transmitter and put on her headphones. The next moment she was tapping out the communiqué in Morse, the tap-tap becoming the only sound in the room. She did not have long to wait before a brief acknowledgement of receipt of the communiqué came through.

  After washing the dye out of her hair she listened to the news from London on a little radio normally hidden in a toffee tin, which she would be able to take with her every time she moved to another cabin. She heard that the Allies had taken their first German city and there were advances on all fronts.

  Mary’s teenage nephew, Roald, arrived in the early evening and gave the pre-arranged knock on the cabin door. He was a strong-looking boy.

  “Do you have cats’ eyes?” she asked jokingly as she admitted him, for it was dark outside.

  “Only a thick mist or a blizzard can stop me getting about in these mountains,” he replied confidently. “I’ve been coming up here all my life. It’s our family cabin.” He was carrying a can by its handle and set it down on the table. “It’s milk for you. My dad is a farmer.”

  After that everything became routine. It was not every day that a communiqué was passed on to Stein Holstad, but whatever Anna received she transmitted at irregular times to avoid her signal being easily located. Sometimes urgent Resistance matters had to be passed to fellow radio-operators with whom she was in contact, but mostly it was about enemy shipping, particularly U-boats leaving their Bergen hideouts and aiming to add to the toll they had taken of Allied lives and shipping.

  The days passed slowly. Karl was constantly in Anna’s thoughts. As yet she could not hope to hear if he was in a camp or whether he was still under torture. She refused to believe that he might have died at the Gestapo’s hands. Surely she would know if he no longer breathed? How had he been betrayed?

  It was a puzzle she returned to time and time again, even though she realised the futility of it. Her thoughts kept going to the problem like the tongue to a rough tooth. Being unable to solve anything or find the answers to her own questions brought such a restlessness on her at times that she had to get out of the cabin, whatever the weather. It was either to walk or later, when the snows came, to take a turn on skis. If it kept her awake at night she would draw back the curtains and look out at the Aurora Borealis filling the sky with swirling patterns as if the old Norse gods still rode across it.

  Stein Holstad came himself on the evening that a detector van had been sighted in the valley. “It’s time for you to move on. Leave here at first light.”

  Anna was well-laden when she set out on skis at dawn the next day, for the transmitter, pushed into her rucksack, was a heavy weight. She had left no trace of her presence in the cabin and there would be no clue to help any search for her. A light snowfall did not trouble her and it gently covered her tracks as she followed her compass and memorised directions to her next destination.

  For the rest of the winter Anna moved from place to place in the mountains, and had begun writing short stories to pass the time. She had no high opinion of their merit and saw them only as a mental exercise. She burned them each time before moving on to another location. As with the first cabin she had occupied, all the rest were on slopes low enough to be easily accessible to her contacts in the valley.

  Once she received a short note from Lars with the latest communiqué. He had written that Karl was in the Horwitz concentration camp, but he knew nothing more. Before reading on, she closed her eyes briefly in overwhelming relief that Karl was still alive, no matter what his p
hysical condition might be. She willed him to hang on to life as she had done in her thoughts and heart and prayers throughout the long weeks of isolation. Only snowstorms forced her contacts to stay away, but usually it was never for more than two or three days.

  As spring came, bringing again cobalt blue skies and sun-sparkling snow, Anna knew from the BBC bulletins that it could only be a question of a short time before the Allies brought the war in Europe to a close, for the enemy was falling back on all fronts. How things would go in Norway she did not know, for it had been Hitler’s boast that he had turned it into a fortress and it could be defended from Allied attack for a long time.

  On the last day of April news came through on the toffee-tin radio that Hitler had committed suicide in a Berlin bunker. It meant that the war in Europe was virtually over. Only Japan remained to be defeated, and the fate of Norway was still in the lap of the gods.

  A few days later when Anna was back at the first cabin she had occupied, her replacement arrived. He brought her the news that she had to go down to the Holstads’ house where Lars would be waiting for her.

  After packing up her belongings and burning the last of her manuscripts she went back down the forested slopes to the valley. Among the trees the tiny wood anemones gave a new and tender whiteness to where the snow had lain and, below her, the fields were turning green.

  Mary Holstad welcomed Anna back again and left her on her own with Lars.

  “You’re wanted for the most important and dangerous venture you’ll ever have to do, Anna,” Lars said, after they had settled down to talk. “I told you once that the Resistance intended to keep you in mind for anything special and this is it with a vengeance.”

  She gave a slight smile. “What a relief! I won’t mind what it is after being cooped up all the winter. Shall I be alone or working with anyone?”

  “You’ll be partnering your friend, Nils. He’s ideal for the role as he speaks fluent German and we’re lucky to still have him. You haven’t heard, but just recently he had a narrow escape on his own in an air-crash near the coast when flying from Sweden to England. He still limps a bit, but that’s all to the good as far as the sortie is concerned. He’ll be masquerading as a top-ranking officer, wounded months ago on the Russian Front, who has been posted to take command of the Horwitz Camp.”

  She gasped. “Karl is there!”

  “That’s right.” Lars paused significantly. “If he’s still alive, Anna.”

  She nodded tautly. “I realise that. Where do I come in all this?”

  “You’ll be Nils’s mistress. At the rank he’s holding, nobody will dare question your presence. You’ll remember I told you that Commandant Horwitz had ear trouble? Our specialist in that field has falsely told him that he must have an immediate operation if his hearing is to be saved.”

  “But why?”

  “You’ll remember that I said Horwitz was a sadistic devil? He has had the whole camp set with explosives and has vowed that, if Germany surrenders, he will order the blowing up of the entire camp in a final show of Nazi power. As the surrender can happen at any time, it’s vital that we get him away from the camp. If not, it will cost the lives of eight hundred men.”

  She sat stunned. “Dear God!”

  “The second-in-command is no less a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi and we can’t count on his not carrying out the order in Horwitz’s absence. It’s taking too much of a chance for Nils to go it alone. He’ll need armed support if things shouldn’t go well and you’ll give him that.”

  “But Nils has moved so much in Nazi military circles that he could be recognised by someone. As for his speaking German, I know he used to spend some of his holidays in Germany, but he will still have a Norwegian accent to give him away.”

  Lars shook his head. “He’ll be disguised and he has no accent. Right from the start when he first volunteered for the Resistance, he gave his full background. He’s totally Norwegian in his loyalties and outlook, but he was born in Germany. When that country was starving after the Great War, he came to Norway with other children under the Nansen scheme for care in private homes until fit to go home again. His foster parents adopted him as he was an orphan, but those trips he made to Germany were to visit family.”

  “I never knew that,” Anna commented quietly.

  “Apparently his adoptive parents wanted him to grow up as a Norwegian boy, and that’s what he wanted too. They even moved from where they were living to Molde in order to give him a completely new start. It’s why he’s been such a useful agent, letting the Germans know his origins while working all the time with us. He could have been shot as a spy at any time. Now’s he putting his life on the line once again, as you are, and everything depends on complete cooperation between the two of you if a mass murder is to be averted.”

  Anna left on the Oslo train in a smart suit, a hat and a hip-length fox fur coat, all suitable attire for the mistress of a Nazi Generalleutnant. She had more such clothes in a suitcase, including two silk dresses that bore the label of Christina. She did not question where any of the garments had come from, for the Resistance seemed to be able to get whatever was required. They had even managed to get her a First Class seat on the train. The other occupants of the carriage were all officers except for one man in plain clothes who might have been of the Gestapo.

  There was some conversation until she pretended to bury herself in a book, but she scarcely took in anything from the pages. Instead she was mulling over why Nils had never confided in her about his origins. Naturally he wouldn’t have even thought about it when they were children, being her senior and paying her little attention, but she would have expected it during the time when they were both so close, sharing thoughts and hopes and love.

  Yet, looking back, she recalled how he had openly enjoyed being important among his friends, always the one whose company was most in demand on every occasion, ever the unchallenged leader of the pack. Maybe it was satisfaction in truly belonging, which was understandable in somebody orphaned young in violent times. Perhaps it was also why he had been driven obsessively to excel, needing to be the best and always to dominate. Even as he had dominated her, albeit in a loving way.

  She turned her gaze unseeingly out of the window at the passing scenery. More and more memories flooded into her mind and brought questions with them that she could not answer.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  It was mid-morning and raining when Anna arrived in Oslo. Carrying her suitcase and with an umbrella up, she walked to the Grand Hotel on Karl Johan Gate and on the way glanced up eagerly at the windows of her aunt’s apartment. To her concern she saw that all the blinds were drawn.

  Taking a cautious glance about her to make sure she was unobserved, Anna crossed the street and entered the building. She pressed the doorbell of Rosa’s apartment. If her aunt was unwell, it would not be fair just to walk in and give her too much of a surprise.

  Nobody answered the door. Anna inserted her key and let herself in. As soon as she entered she sensed that the place was empty. Going through the hall into the drawing-room she stopped on the threshold in dismay. It had been ransacked. The priceless ikon had gone from its case, the Antoinette clock, the rare ivory collection and all the other treasures had vanished. Dark squares and rectangles on the panelled walls showed where the paintings had hung.

  Darting into Rosa’s bedroom Anna saw that the safe was open and emptied. Her eyes went to the bed. It had not been made. Had Rosa risen to face the intruders or been dragged from it?

  She had begun to tremble so much that she scarcely knew how she reached Frida’s room, but that had not been touched. Here the bed was also unmade and so the raid must have taken place in the early morning. In her own bedroom nothing had been disturbed.

  Anna knew she must leave as quickly as possible. Until she saw Nils, there was nobody she could ask for any information without risk to herself and the task she had come south to carry out. Hastily she went on to the hotel.

  Nils arrived a
t noon and came up to Anna’s room. He was in the greenish-grey uniform of a Generalleutnant decorated with the Iron Cross. He had dyed his hair brown and was wearing dark horn-rimmed spectacles that quite changed his appearance. There was a long scar down his cheek from his air-crash. Heedless of his disguise, Anna threw herself into his arms, certain that never before had she been so glad to see him.

  “What happened to Aunt Rosa and Frida?” she cried in anguish.

  He held her close. “How did you find out?”

  “I went to her apartment this morning.”

  He sighed. “I’m sorry you had to learn about it that way. I’d hoped to break the news to you myself. Fritz gave me a full report. He’d been unable to prevent the arrests. It was found out that your aunt had been in contact with you, who are wanted for the train’s sabotage, and Christina. For all we know, Christina may have revealed that under Gestapo pressure.”

  Anna’s face whitened. “Aunt Rosa would be the last person to blame her in those circumstances.” She told him of the looting that had taken place.

  He shook his head slowly. “I didn’t know anything about that and neither did Fritz or he would have told me. It must have happened after the arrest and it doesn’t sound the work of a common thief.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe I can guess what happened.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know from Fritz that some of the Nazi officers are getting desperate with a German surrender drawing so near. They need money and plenty of it to get away and escape retribution. Quite a few of them have talked of keeping the flame of Nazism alive for time to come and they need funds for that too. Maybe some of them remembered the priceless contents of your aunt’s flat from a previous house raid. More than one person must have been involved to get so much away.”

  “When did Aunt Rosa’s arrest take place?”

  “A few days before I left for Sweden.”

  “Where did they take her and Frida?”