The Fragile Hour

by Rosalind Laker

“They didn’t take Fru Johansen anywhere.” He kept her in his arms as he leaned back to look sympathetically into her agonised face. “She collapsed and died within minutes of the intrusion.”

  She stared at him, her eyes dilated with grief. “I should have been there!”

  “You would only have been arrested too without being able to help her. Be thankful that, unlike Frida, she escaped the miseries of Grini.”

  Anna buried her face into his shoulder and her voice was torn. “I don’t know how to bear this.”

  Nils cupped her head in his hand. “If it’s any comfort to you, I arranged a funeral and burial just as you would have wished it. You’ll be able to take flowers to her grave one day.”

  “Thank you!” Anna folded her arms tightly around his neck, pressing her cheek to his. “I’ll always be grateful to you for that,” she declared emotionally.

  He kissed her brow. For the first time in his life he had been patient and it had paid off. She was returning to him at last.

  A military car was waiting outside. When Anna and Nils came out of the hotel, her suitcase had been stowed away, and a sergeant saluted as he held the car door for them. When he was back behind the wheel, he glanced at her in the mirror. “Hello, Anna, remember me?”

  “Yes, of course, Olav,” she replied. “You were at my first briefing in Bergen just after I’d arrived.”

  “That’s right.” He was driving the car out into the traffic. “Horwitz went into hospital three days ago, which was when we had to move in. About now he’s on the operating table, although nothing will be done to him. I’m driving you to the camp now.”

  “Are you fluent enough in German to convince everybody there?”

  “No, but all has gone well so far. I told them I was a Czech conscripted into the German Army, and some barbed wire pronunciation covers my own accent. That convinced them.”

  Anna turned to Nils with what was uppermost in her mind. “Have you seen Karl?”

  “No, but I found his name on the list of prisoners marked for the most severe treatment. Even worse was a letter from the Gestapo headquarters in Oslo ordering his execution tomorrow. I cancelled that immediately.”

  “What reason did you give your second-in-command?”

  “I said that I still believed it possible to get information out of Karl by my own methods, but not if he kept passing out through weakness. He was to be given medical treatment to get back his strength.”

  She nodded gratefully. Olav spoke up from the driver’s seat. “If the worst happens and Reichskommissar Terboven decides to carry on the war from here after the German surrender, we’ll still get Karl away with us somehow.”

  “What do you think will happen?” Anna asked.

  Olav answered thoughtfully. “It’s impossible to guess. He has a large territory that hasn’t been overrun by an Allied advance and half a million battle-ready men under his command. As a violently-minded Nazi, it might be a matter of pride that he’ll choose to fight on. We’ll just have to hope for the best.” He changed the subject. “What do you think of Nils as a Generalleutnant? His scar makes everyone think he was at Heidelberg.”

  Nils laughed. “It’s too recent for that, but it’s taken as a war wound. I’m only thankful that I escaped serious injuries in the air-crash or, what was worse, meeting a watery end by going down through the ice with my aircraft. It disappeared in minutes. Fortunately I was alone.” His expression became bitter. “But I had important cargo aboard and there was no chance to save it.”

  “What brought you down? Engine trouble?”

  “No. Normally the homeward run to England is made over the Baltic, but if there are rogue German patrols in the area or bad weather conditions, an alternative route is taken back over Norway and the west coast. I ran into some unexpected anti-aircraft fire and managed the landing on the lake, but that was it.”

  “What happened then?”

  “One of the young men hiding from the German recruitment drive heard the Mosquito come down and came from a cabin to look for me. I know there are many of them in the mountains, but I could have been a hundred miles away from any help.”

  There was much else to talk about and Nils prepared her for what to expect at the camp. “Our quarters are outside the perimeter, but we’re getting near now and you will see the camp as we pass by. It’s not a pretty sight.”

  “I’ll be prepared,” she said.

  Yet, when they came upon it in the depths of a forest, it was even worse than she had expected. It covered a large area with many rows of long, grey huts, a bleak obscenity of a place with a large courtyard, surrounded by high wire fences and tall lookout towers in which she could see guards with machine-guns. As Olav drove past she caught sight of a large courtyard, in which about thirty prisoners were lined up, all in dark loose shirts and trousers, some with drooping heads, others swaying on their feet with weakness. Pity overwhelmed her.

  “That’s a returned work-party,” Nils said, following the direction of her gaze. He did not add that they had been digging graves for those who had died in the past twenty-four hours or that the forest around was full of the graves of patriots who had been shot. But she guessed.

  Ahead lay the barracks, the officer’s mess and other military buildings. Olav drew up outside Horwitz’s quarters. There was a great deal of saluting and clicking of heels from officers and other ranks in the vicinity when Nils got out of the car. He returned the salutes as he escorted Anna into the building and past the guards at the entrance.

  “I want to show you the layout here first of all, Anna,” Nils said, giving his hat and gloves to an orderly. As he led the way, she saw through a doorway that Horwitz had enjoyed comfort during his stay. There were large leather-upholstered chairs, some antique furniture and bright woven rugs on the pine floor. Crystal decanters full of various wines and spirits stood on a side-table.

  In contrast the office was totally functional with the usual large desk and filing cabinets with a Nazi flag draped across one wall and a coloured photograph of Hitler on another. A door on the far side led to the outer offices. Nils took her across to a table in front of a window facing the camp. On it stood two acid batteries with a firing switch.

  “As you can see,” he said, “everything is set up and connected to the charges laid throughout the camp. The guards have orders to run for their lives if a klaxon gives a certain series of signal blasts.”

  Anna gave a nod, knowing that for safety’s sake the two batteries had to be connected to each other with a short length of zigzag wire before the firing-switch was pressed. “Couldn’t you get rid of this now?” she asked, flicking her hand towards the batteries. “You could say that you’ve decided to counter-command Horwitz’s plan.”

  Nils shook his head. “I can’t do anything that might arouse suspicion. I’ve already gone against the Gestapo in ordering that Karl’s execution be postponed. When I arrived unannounced the second-in-command here, Oberleutnant Ulman, found it difficult to accept that Horwitz hadn’t mentioned that somebody else would be taking over. I had to say it was a last-minute decision from the High Command.”

  “When shall I meet him?”

  “I’ve invited him to dinner with us this evening. He’s a dangerous man and I need to keep an eye on him.”

  “Be careful then. Shall we get a chance to talk again privately? There’s so much I want to ask you.”

  “Why not now?” he suggested. “After you’ve seen your room we’ll have a drink together.”

  An orderly showed her upstairs. Her room was very military and spartan. It reminded her of her WRNS quarters after she was commissioned. Hurrying to the window she saw the view was of the forest and not of the camp. She pressed her palms against the pane and rested her forehead against it. All she wanted was to run to the camp’s wire fence and shout to Karl that she was here, but that was impossible.

  Downstairs again, she went to the room with the leather furniture. Nils was waiting for her, a glass in his hand. “Wh
at would you like to drink?” he asked, indicating the decanters on the side-table. “I’m having a whisky. It’s Scotch. God knows how it came here, but I suppose Horwitz must have confiscated a good hoard of it some time ago. From what I’ve seen of his style of living, he has a taste for the luxuries of life.”

  Anna thought it obscene that Horwitz could have considered his own comfort when prisoners in his charge were starving and dying. “I don’t want anything of his.” She sat down in one of the leather chairs and looked straight into Nils’s eyes. “Lars told me about your German origins. Why did you never tell me?”

  Nils looked surprised, but not in the least disconcerted. Casually he perched his weight on the arm of another chair. “I wanted to many times, Anna. Not when we were children, of course, but later when we became inseparable. But by that time Germany was out of favour everywhere outside its own territories, and Britain and France were facing the possibility of war. You wouldn’t have been able to understand how I could still love the country of my birth without it in any way affecting my loyalty to the land of my adoption.”

  “You should have tried me!” she protested.

  “I didn’t want to risk any divisions between us.” He shrugged ruefully. “I didn’t know then that war itself would keep us apart for a time.”

  “I hadn’t expected it either,” she said in a quieter tone, able to accept that he had wanted no dissension between them. “Tell me about those visits to Munich in your school holidays. The rest of us were always told it was to improve your knowledge of the language and that you stayed with a schoolmaster and his wife and family.”

  “That was correct, but it wasn’t known that he was my late father’s brother. The reason was that my adoptive mother wanted nobody to know I was not her own child, but then she was a very possessive woman. Her husband understood and he knew I needed to grow up free of maternal manacles. He also thought I had a right to know my own people.”

  “Early on you used to bring back snaps you’d taken with your box camera,” she said reminiscently, remembering how she had envied those who had been with him. “Mostly of children of about your own age swimming or diving or on picnics. There were lots of their pets too. There was one of you with a parrot.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You remember that? Yes, there were plenty of good times. My uncle was a beer-swilling, humorous man and I liked him. I suppose I knew from what was said that he was in the Nazi Party, but it meant nothing to me then. It was the same with his sons being in the Hitler Youth, which seemed no different to me from the Boy Scout Movement. My German origins enabled me to take part with my cousins in the competitive sports, and sport was everything to me as you know.”

  Anna nodded. “I can see how it must have seemed all right to you when you were a boy. After all, the rest of the world didn’t sound any alarms at first, but what about later on?”

  “I’d come through it all unscathed, although by that time all my German friends were Nazis and I had begun to see what was really happening there. It made me realise the urgent need for a stronger government here that would be prepared for whatever might come in the future. That was when I began to have political aims myself and, of course, I was outspoken with my radical ideas, which didn’t please a lot of people, including Fru Johansen.”

  Anna experienced a renewed stab of grief at her aunt’s name. “I think you made amends for that in what you did for her recently.”

  “I hope so. Perhaps she would have been more tolerant in the past if she’d understood my concern that Norway had continued too long following its own ways on the fringes of world affairs. Not that I had foreseen the violence that was to come, the King’s defiance or the bloodshed. As soon as the Resistance was formed I volunteered and told them everything, just as I’ve told you.” Nils put aside the glass he was holding and leaned towards her. “You and I belong to two nations, but,” he added vehemently, “Norway will always come first with me.”

  “I think I’ll always be equally divided,” Anna answered, as she stood up. “I’d better dress for dinner as if this were an evening like any other for the officers of this camp.”

  “But it’s already been different for us in more ways than one. We’ve had a talk that we should have had a long time ago.” He rose to put his hands on her shoulders and kiss her lips softly, restraining himself from taking her mouth as he would have wished. As he drew away from her, he saw that her eyes were closed and her lashes wet with tears.

  He kissed her lids. “What’s the matter?” he asked tenderly.

  She looked up at him. “Being here. Our talk. Karl in that dreadful place. Losing Aunt Rosa.” Her voice was choked. “For a moment I felt lost.”

  “You can never be that with me.” He went with her to the door, his arm about her waist, and watched her go upstairs before returning to his whisky. He felt anxious about her.

  At the head of the stairs and out of Nils’s sight Anna had halted, gripping the newel post as if her legs might give way. A dreadful suspicion had laid hold of her while Nils had been talking and she could not drive it away. When he had kissed her she had felt as if she were saying farewell to all the dreams and joys she had shared with him in the past.

  Drawing herself up, she went into her room and closed the door, leaning back against it for a few moments. She had unpacked when up here before and spread on the bed was the black georgette dinner gown with a Christina label that she had put ready to wear. Going across to it she pushed it aside and sat down, trying to cope with everything that seemed to be falling into place.

  She herself had sparked it off unwittingly by remembering his collection of childhood snaps. It had led in her own mind to others he had taken as a young man of harbours and inlets of the coast and fjords with an expensive German camera he had brought back with him. All of them would have been helpful to those planning the invasion that had come from every vital point along the whole coastline.

  There was so much more coming back to her now. She recalled how she would have been caught in that first Bergen sortie if Nils had not seen her with Karl and feared that she might be involved in it. He had been able to warn them of the German guards being trebled at the factory only because he had alerted the enemy to the forthcoming sabotage raid in the first place!

  Then there was the time she had met him in Tresfjord Church. He had said he was hiding after an act of sabotage had gone wrong, but most surely he had been responsible for that failure or else the Germans would not have released him so quickly. All of it had been planned carefully to avoid his becoming suspect to the Resistance.

  Her thoughts raced on. He had waited until she had left the Alesund hotel before giving away her friends to the enemy. Again to protect her he had tipped off the Gestapo about the patriots at the next hotel with whom she was to have carried out further Resistance work. Finally she herself had told him that Karl would be on the Oslo to Bergen train! Involuntarily she pressed the back of her hand against her mouth as if it were still possible to hold back that deadly information that had been given on trust. She had thought she knew Nils through and through, but she had never known him at all.

  Automatically Anna went through the procedure of getting ready for the evening, which she dreaded now more than ever. She almost wept with angry frustration, her nerves strained, when she found the back of the dinner gown almost impossible to hook up.

  Nils’s voice came from outside the door. “Are you all right, Anna? You’ve been a long time.”

  “I can’t fasten my dress,” she answered fiercely through her teeth, wanting him to keep away, but he came into the room.

  “I’ll do it.”

  She was already turned away from him, the ivory ‘V’ of her back exposed, her shining hair white-gold in the light. His ever-present desire for her gripped him. Instead of hooking up the dress, he slid his hands into it, cupping her firm round breasts and rediscovering her responsive nipples as he kissed the nape of her neck lovingly.

  “I’ve waited
so long for us to be close again as we were before.” His voice was heavy with need. “We’re together again, my darling. I couldn’t live without you. You’re in my blood, my bones, my very guts! How lovely you feel!” A groan of yearning escaped him. “I want to kiss your breasts and every part of you.”

  “No, Nils!” she protested sharply, wanting to scream at him in her rage at all he had done to betray a country that had made him one of its own. His breath was warm as he nuzzled her neck, one of his hands sliding further down her body to hold her between her legs. She tried to jerk away. “Let me go!”

  He was deaf to the warning in her taut voice, elated that she was in his embrace, knowing her sensuality and confident that she would melt under his caresses as she had always done, now that they were alone and beginning again. “I love you more than ever!”

  He swept her round and his mouth drove passionately into hers as he held her arched against his demanding body. With his free hand he pulled her gown to her waist and tugged it over her hips until it tumbled about her feet. As he caught her about the thighs to carry her with him to the bed, she resorted to methods she had not wanted to use.

  He released her instantly with a shout of excruciating pain and staggered back to thump against the wall. “Why the hell did you do that?” he yelled furiously, shock and disbelief on his agony-contorted features.

  She went to rescue the gown from the floor. “I didn’t want to hurt you!” she gave back, her fury equal to his, “but it’s time you faced facts. I don’t know any more than you if Karl will live after all he’s been through, but even if I lose him I’ll go on loving him for the rest of my life! Neither you nor anyone else can ever take his place! Now leave me alone!”

  He glared at her in his rage before he went, slamming the door behind him with such force that the whole building seemed to shake. She stared at her own stark, white face in the mirror. He had finally accepted that he had lost her.

  Anna waited until she heard the dinner guest arrive before going downstairs. She had not attempted to hook up the dinner gown again and had put on a short green dress that was easy to fasten. In her fish-skin handbag she had her gun, never knowing when she might have to use it in an emergency.