by Bonnie Toews
Despite Quinn’s professional aloofness when they worked together through Germany, Poland and Russia, she had entrusted her soul to him. They had been as one mind and one spirit devoid of physical coupling, and in leaving him behind, she had left a part of herself with him. That part she expected to recover when they were reunited. Instead, his apparent indifference trapped her in limbo and tripped old feelings of abandonment. What had changed?
No, she corrected herself, what had hardened him so? He had become a finely honed guerrilla fighter, a killing instrument. Somewhere, during the depersonalizing process, he had lost the will to connect to his emotional center.
The tapping of Sir Fletcher’s pointer drew her attention back to the map. Directing the pointer tip, he circled the Kjolen range of mountains near Rjukan in Norway.
“Here,” he said. “The Norsk Hydro Electric Plant.”
Sir Fletcher turned to face them. “Rolf Haukelid, as you know, has been inside Norsk since 1938 as its chief engineer. When we’ve needed him to frustrate the Germans’ atomic research, he has performed annoying sabotage tricks.”
“Like what?” Lee asked without thinking.
Rolf lifted an eyebrow to Sir Fletcher for permission to speak.
“By all means,” he relented.
“Well, one of the things I’ve done is drop a cup of cod liver oil into an electrolytic tube. This jams up their whole process and makes the heavy water they ship to their experimental labs useless when the researchers try to restart it.”
“You’re kidding! Cod-liver oil?” Lee laughed. “What it loosens for humans it constipates for science. How ingenious!”
She openly admired the strapping six-footer. Rolf was a Norwegian-American engineer in his mid-thirties. Because of his ethnic background, he could speak Norwegian fluently and was slipped into Norway before the German occupation to build up credentials as an electronics expert and a Nazi sympathizer at Norsk. When the Nazis took over the plant, they unwittingly put in place one of Project Amanita’s most strategic agents.
Lee had met Rolf before, briefly, in Berlin, at one of Goring’s Karinhall banquets. There she had passed a hidden message to him. A spark between them had caught fire, but then it was neither the time nor the place to fan the flame, so they had let it fizzle. His peculiar contradiction of robust gentleness, rather like a Norse mythical god turned cowboy, was what originally drew Lee to him.
Now his refreshing openness in contrast to the closed Quinn stirred her again. Sparse strands of sandy fluff sprouting from his shiny dome were just too cute to resist. She engaged his eyes, which reminded her of an iceberg’s glacial green except for the gold glints twinkling back at her. Her cheeks warmed and her pulse quickened.
“… Scientists at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin have split the uranium atom, but they don’t know how to control the resulting chain reaction. Dr. Nielsen does.”
The mention of Dr. Nielsen aroused Lee to listen attentively. The man seemed a frustrating liability.
“Dr. Nielsen is far ahead of the German scientists in his search to find a suitable moderator,” Sir Fletcher went on. “In fact, the sum of our nuclear team here can’t equal the value of his knowledge. He’s convinced the moderator everyone is seeking is deuterium oxide. In other words, heavy water. We think he’s right. It’s got a double hydrogen nucleus, which, in uranium fission, is a neutron slower.”
Lee stiffened and glanced at the others leaning forward in their seats.
“I want you to get used to addressing each other by your code names,” Sir Fletcher directed. “I am Leon.”
Self-conscious of his likeness to the cartoon character Leon, a walrus with a big droopy mustache, Sir Fletcher licked the shaggy tips of the red bush brushing his upper lip and decided to give in.
“Churchill picks names he thinks fit the person.”
Everyone chuckled. He gestured to Lee to carry on.
“Ester,” she introduced herself.
“Trudi,” Grace said next.
“Hawk.”
“Corvine,” said Quinn last.
“Hawk and Corvine,” Sir Fletcher addressed the men first, “Ester is your conducting officer. Through her you make all your arrangements—supplies, equipment, identity papers, transportation, personnel—whatever you need. Hawk, your radio operator is Trudi. You two will practice transmitting to each other until you know the fist of the other intimately.”
Lee caught Rolf’s smirk and Grace’s blush at Sir Fletcher’s emphasis on the last word. By the end of an hour, Sir Fletcher’s objectives seemed more and more suicidal to Lee. Periodically she glanced at Quinn, sick at heart. Once, his gaze caught hers. Orbs of hammered steel peered back at her.
“Do you all understand everything so far?” Sir Fletcher questioned.
“No,” Lee said, venting her frustration.
“What’s bothering me is Nielsen’s relentless refusal to defect. He’s as volatile as the research he’s doing. He calls himself a pacifist, yet he keeps on experimenting with a power that could destroy the world under the protection of a mad man, who wouldn’t hesitate to use it. He isolates himself in his lab and pays no attention to the atrocities happening around him. As far as I’m concerned, the worst kind of traitor is the one who fools himself. I think we would ultimately save more lives if we just executed the man.”
Sir Fletcher scowled. “You’re out of line, lass. Way out of line.”
“Lee, you don’t know the whole picture,” commented Quinn.
His cool gaze steadied her, as always when she became upset on their assignments together.
“We have a job to do. To do it well, we can’t let sentiment stand in the way of our judgment or our action. Can we?”
Everyone’s attention gravitated to her. Lee hesitated, still wrestling with her unresolved feelings, but then decided it was more pragmatic to comply. She shook her head.
Sir Fletcher accepted her decision. “We’ll forget you made those remarks. Now, please, let’s get back on track, shall we?”
“If I have it straight…” Quinn dribbled the tip of his pencil on the table, while he organized his notes.
“From Rolf’s architectural plan of the plant, our people are going to build us a scale model of Norsk. After Rolf completes a crash course here on how to use our sabotage devices along with more fieldwork training, he jumps back into Norway and returns to Norsk. He gathers the intelligence we need for our mission … deployment of guards, their schedule, inside security systems, access routes, and so on … and transmits this all back to Amanita. He operates out of a mountain village above Norsk. Because the region isn’t policed, you say that SS watchers can’t triangulate on his radio. Back here, you reconstruct the conditions he reports to my commando team and me to help us prepare. We parachute into Norway, into the mountains above Rolf’s village, meet up with him, and he escorts us inside Norsk. We deposit explosives in strategic locations, get out and detonate them. Norsk blows up. What could be simpler than that? Right, Rolf?”
“It’s suicide!” Lee protested again. “How can a handful of men be expected to get inside a concrete monster like that and effectively blow it up without killing themselves?”
“Lee,” Rolf reproached her, “we are talking about something far beyond individual survival. If the Germans learn the atom’s secret before we do, we are allowing a colossal power to fall into the hands of the Nazis. Hitler will be able to hold the rest of the world hostage to his whims. That’s not a world I want to live in. I accept responsibility for the risk we’re taking. Besides, you underestimate us, old girl. We can do the job the man wants. Scout’s honor,” he assured her.
“Good,” Sir Fletcher pronounced. “The code name for this operation is Firebug.”
He gave them a moment to collect themselves before he lifted up a box to the desk and opened it. When he pulled the contents out, Grace gasped.
“It looks like horse manure!”
“Aye, lassie, it’s meant to. Only this dung wi
ll blow you to kingdom come.”
TWENTY-ONE
Wednesday, March 3rd, 1943
Lee hadn’t sought to be alone with Quinn, but it happened during their break in the galley kitchen. As she finished pouring herself a cup of black coffee, she looked up and found Quinn staring at her. He seemed to be measuring her but, for what, was beyond her.
She dropped her eyes and mumbled, “I don’t like the idea of Norwegians dying in this plan of Sir Fletcher’s.”
“Neither does he.”
Quinn leaned his elbow on the countertop. His eyes continued to hold her.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered.
His mouth pursed and his jaw tensed, while his unwavering concentration began to unnerve her.
“How was it over there after I left?”
Quinn ignored her question. “What about the radio show you and Grace concocted for transmitting coded messages?”
“Grace still works it.”
“Has she given up all concert performances?”
Lee studied him. “You know she has.”
Quinn’s intent gaze dropped, and he handed her his empty mess cup. “Take care of this, will you?”
This gesture of dismissal carried her beyond hurt. She retaliated.
“That’s not part of my patriotic duty… SIR!” she hissed just as Rolf appeared in the doorway.
Quinn sidestepped the tall Norwegian and disappeared down the corridor before she could pitch the tin cup at him.
She slammed it down on the counter.
“I thought we were going to be one big happy family,”said Rolf.
“You thought wrong,” she snapped.
It wasn’t Rolf’s fault, she reminded herself, but when she looked into his green-flecked eyes that at the moment were like calm reflections of the Mediterranean Sea, she didn’t see a reaction to her sting. She saw something else, something she only experienced with Grace. Acceptance. It was in such contrast to Quinn’s rejection that, for an instant, she froze, unsure of what to do next.
“Tell me,” she said, switching subjects in a determined effort to forget Quinn. “How did you manage to get away from Norsk without arousing suspicion?”
He grinned. “My family lives in the mountains, you see, and we have no phone. I’ve been struck with an illness, which unfortunately takes a turn for the worse …”
“Something like pneumonia,” added Lee, trying to pick up on the spirit of the ploy.
“… And I have no way of getting a message to my boss except by hand delivery,” he continued. “In a few days, he will receive a troubled note from my mother explaining how ill I am. She promises I will return to work as soon as I am well enough. Since I have always been a reliable worker, they will believe the note.”
“Sent by the Underground, of course.”
“Of course.”
“After twelve days training with Quinn, you’ll look the part.”
“That bad.” The corners of Rolf’s eyes crinkled in mock disbelief.
“Worse,” Lee confirmed.
“Will you be attending training camp with us?”
Interest warmed his sea-green eyes, and she felt an answering tingle of excitement, but she dampened her reaction. He needed to understand they had a job to do.
“This IS training camp.” Her voice was cold.
Just then Grace entered the galley kitchen. “Any chance you’re serving tea?”
Lee glanced at her. “Nope. Just coffee.”
“Ugh!” Grace grimaced after she looked into Lee’s cup.
“Look’s like tar. Sir Fletcher doesn’t need me for the rest of the day so I’ll be on my way.”
She switched her attention to Rolf. “Get lots of sleep tonight, Hawk. I want you sharp for keyboard practice tomorrow.”
Rolf raised his eyebrows. “Keyboard practice?”
“Di-di-di-DA,” sang Grace.
“Oh, I get it.”
“Surely you haven’t forgotten I am your godmother already!” Grace winked at Lee. “If it’s a choice between the wind and the willow, I’d pick the willow.”
A grin spread across her face as she left Lee to invent an explanation to Rolf about what she meant.
On Friday night of the ninth day, Lee returned from her shift to find the weather report she had requested on her desk. She read it one word at a time, not wanting to accept the decision she knew she must make. For the first time in her life, a man made Lee feel loved.
She paced with the report in her hand. Even when Rolf Haukelid teased her, she felt his respect. There was no time to develop a relationship. They were souls drifting through a war. No one knew if they would survive. Her foot hesitated. She stood frozen in thought. She couldn’t let him go, not without…
She reread the report. It gave her no choice. She sat down and held her head between her hands. They deserved a little more time. She sighed. But, they weren’t going to get it. She stiffened and raised her head. Just get on with it.
She dialed the number and gave the dreaded directions. Once completed, she replaced the receiver on the cradle. It was her job to tell him. She squared her shoulders and stood.
He bunked in a cramped sleeping pod, in a section of sliver-like cells set aside as Amanita’s sleeping quarters for transient agents. She marched out of her office and down a corridor towards his room.
He immediately answered her light tap on his door. She walked in. They stared at each other. She handed him an envelope.
“This is from the president’s advisor, Harry Hopkins. Though you’ve been serving British Intelligence at Norsyk, Hopkins wants to make you an official representative of American interests in this joint mission. You’ve been transferred to the OSS with quite a hike in pay.”
She could not look away from his sweet face and mesmerizing eyes. She memorized each freckle, each precious line, the dimple in his chin.
He looked back at her not comprehending. “The OSS?”
“I forgot. You don’t know what’s going on back home. Roosevelt’s been working with Churchill’s master spy in New York and MI6 in London to form his own spy organization, separate from U.S. Military Intelligence and the FBI. He calls it the Office of Strategic Services— OSS. Your new boss is Bill Donovan. Donovan reports directly to the president through Hopkins. Sir Fletcher has code-named him, wild card. To shut down opposition from either Hoover or the military, Roosevelt has given him the rank of Major-General.”
“You’re American. Could you not transfer to the OSS as well?”
She smiled. “I suppose I could. Pay like yours makes it tempting.”
They fell silent, locked in a desire to freeze the moment.
She blurted, “You fly tonight.”
“When?”
“Midnight.”
“That doesn’t give us much time, does it?”
His question disarmed her.
“No, it doesn’t.”
He reached for her and she rushed into his arms. He rocked her gently. “I’ve never felt like this before. Have you?”
When she buried her head into his shoulder and didn’t answer, he pulled back and tipped her head so he could see into her eyes. She cupped his face with her hands.
“I don’t want you to go. I could send the other agents, but not you.”
“I have a job to do,” he told her gently. “So do you. When it’s all over, I’ll come back.”
She clutched him. “You promise?”
In answer, he kissed her.
Their lips sealed their deep yearning. His touch aroused a subconscious memory of security inside her mother’s womb, to the caresses of the soothing embryonic waters washing over her, reminding her of warmth and safety. She felt as if she had come home. Eventually they paused to drink in air.
“I want to remember this night,” she whispered in his ear.
He wrapped her in his arms and rocked her. “Oh, we will.”
“I want us to make love.”
He hesitated. The gold flecks i
n his eyes danced as he peered into her face. “The real question is … will you wait for me?”
“Oh yes,” she breathed softly and nestled her head against his chest. “I’ve waited my whole life for you. What’s a little longer?”
“That’s all I need to know,” he said, gathering her close again. “When I return, we’re getting married. Then we will have all the time in the world to make love, again and again. For now, I just want to hold you.”
Bundled in Rolf’s arms, her fear fell away, and a contented grin curled her lips. In their few hours left, they talked… about their lives, about their dreams, about their future together. And in their talking, Lee discovered unconditional acceptance, respect and love.
Rolf didn’t expect her to succumb to his life. Instead, he asked to share hers.
TWENTY-TWO
Saturday, March 13, 1943
As the sun crept up over the mountains the next day, Rolf Haukelid parachuted into Norway sixteen miles above the Norsk Hydro Station.
Within four days, he sent signals back to Amanita according to the timetable he and Grace had drawn up in advance. His messages passed on the routine intelligence they expected:
WATCH CHANGES IN TWO SHIFTS INSIDE PLANT, 0800 AND 2000 … DRAW BRIDGE GUARDED BY SENTRIES WITH DOGS… GUARDSMEN GARRISONED BETWEEN ELECTROLYSIS PLANT AND ENGINE HOUSE … ONLY ROADWAY INTO PLANT ELECTRONICALLY CONTROLLED … ALARM SIGNAL TRIGGERS FLOODLIGHTS…
For the next twelve days, while Lee reconstructed the conditions Rolf reported to Grace, Quinn trained his commandos for the Firebug mission set for April Fool’s Day. The ironic significance of the date delighted his sense of humor.
At dawn on the morning of the thirteenth day, Rolf signaled off the regular schedule. Grace transcribed the code for Sir Fletcher, Quinn and Lee and read it to them in the briefing room.
