“What’s going to happen to me if you get killed?” she asks with no emotion. “How am I going to manage on my own? Tell me, Johannes.”
“Grete …” What can he say? He waves his hands. “I have to finish this eulogy.”
She scans his face like she’s searching for something. He meets her stare. She’s got wrinkles around her eyes. He hadn’t noticed that before. Actually, he can’t seem to remember the last time he looked into her eyes. For a brief moment, he wants to kiss her…grab her around the hips and take her right there on his desk on top of William Birkegaard Hansen’s funeral eulogy. Then the moment passes.
“Suit yourself,” she says, closing the door as she leaves the room.
He stands there in the middle of the room, looking at the closed door. The paint is starting to peel off the top of the door. Everything decays. He pulls the chair to sit down in front of the typewriter, but instantly gets up again. He empties the cup of coffee in one big gulp. Ersatz coffee, tastes terrible, but at least it’s warm. He falls back into the chair, running his hands down his face.
Everything’s a mess. He’s losing his grip. His life’s a jigsaw spilled on the floor.
7
It is ten minutes to six. Riding her bicycle along the four lakes in central Copenhagen, the pedals scratching the chain guard, and the wind making it a struggle to get anywhere, Alis K knows, she’ll be at the hospital on time; she has to.
If you are not on time, you don’t come at all. Lingering at the gates for everyone to notice is far too dangerous. Someone might call the Hipo or the Gestapo, trying to make some easy money. You simply can’t let yourself be noticed. An assignment is instantly canceled if you’re not there on time.
Stopping at the back of the municipal hospital, she gets off her bicycle to avoid being a few minutes early. She pulls it down the side street along the wall surrounding the hospital, then heads towards the main gates on Oster Farimagsgade.
This will be her fourth termination. Her fourth kill. She’s calm, but excited—focused. It’s no game killing a Hipo officer.
Hipo is short for Hilfspolizei—the helping police. It is a Danish police force, formed to keep some law and order in the city, after the Germans discharged the entire Danish police force a few months ago. The original Danish police force had continued as the law enforcement of the country for the first four years of the German occupation. That ended september the 19th 1944, when the Germans rounded the Danish police force and almost two thousand police officers were straight to the German concentration camps. The Hipo HQ is located at the old central police station. Four men in each car and running on gasoline, the Hipo patrol the city in cars with the doors removed to let the officers disembark the vehicles quickly to return fire in the frequent event of an attack. Being a member of the Hilfspolizei, you’re automatically placed on the death lists of the resistance. The Hipo are feared and hated far worse than even the Gestapo and the SS.
At exactly 6:00 p.m. Alis K is leaning against her bicycle in front of the twin main gates of the hospital. The boy is not there. For a short moment she’s close to wishing he will not show up at all. She has no concerns whatsoever of killing a couple of Hipo herself. It’s a job that needs to be done. However, she is not all that excited about having to guide a big boy in the art of murder.
But no more than two minutes later, he halts his bicycle in front of her.
“My name’s Alis K,” she says. “From now on you will be Willy. Come on, let’s push the bicycles for a bit.”
He nods. His eyes sparkle. A little boy at Christmas. Starting to walk, she flashes him a smile.
“Your first assignment is tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.” Finding the pistol inside her purse, she slips it into his coat pocket. “Don’t!” She grabs him by the wrist, pulling his hand away from the pocket. “It’s a gun. Made in Denmark, it’s a very poor gun. However, it was the best I could get at this point. You can keep it, but try to get a better one.”
Now his eyes widen. He’s starting to get nervous. He is realizing this is for real. This is now; this is it.
“What’s the plan?”
Alis K starts walking again. The first man she killed was a pharmacist in the northern suburb Hellerup. Last year at springtime. Discovering his neighbor providing shelter for a wanted saboteur, he called the police. Jens, who was a police officer back then, managed to warn the saboteur before they came for him.
Handed a gigantic Belgian revolver, Alis K was ordered to kill the pharmacist the same night. She took the bus to Hellerup and shot him down at closing time as he left the pharmacy by the back door on his way home to his family.
The revolver was so heavy that she had to hold it with both hands. Nevertheless, the recoil almost tore it from her hands as the first shot failed to hit him. She remembers the way his double chin was shaking and his big, blue eyes went wide; holding his small, fat hands up in front of him like they could offer any protection against her bullets.
He dropped his bag and wet his pants, but he didn’t scream. He didn’t try to run. He just stood there with his hands in front of him, pissing his pants. Alis K didn’t have the strength to just pull the trigger. She had to cock the hammer before being able to fire the revolver again. It felt like forever to do so, and when she finally aimed the gun at the pharmacist the second time, he just mumbled: “Oh no!” Then she shot him right in the face, dropped the revolver, and walked away.
Even though the loss of the revolver made Jens furious, he did grow quite fond of using her as an assassin. Maybe because she went all numb in those violent situations. She was there, she acted, she did what needed be done, but she felt nothing doing it. You learn stuff like that being a prostitute.
“You are to shoot a Hipo,” she says to Willy. “We have to be at his place in an hour.”
Looking at her with saucer-like eyes, his hands start to shake. “I didn’t know…I have an appointment a quarter past seven.”
“You don’t have to be a part of this if you have any concerns about it. Nothing will happen; we won’t force you to do it. We just split up and go home. Like we never even met.”
“That’s not it.” He stops to look around. “I just need to cancel my appointment, that’s all. I’ll get in trouble if I … It’s my boss. I promised to renovate his garden shed. I’ll lose my apprenticeship if I don’t show up. I have to make a telephone call.”
Walking in silence for a while, Alis K glances at him. “Rule number one—”
“Always be on time. I know. It is dangerous to be noticed lingering in the streets.” He seems tense now. The nerves are building. It’s not good. It’s her responsibility to ensure this thing goes down as planned.
Smiling all warm now, she takes his head between her hands, caressing him. “Rule number two then: Never speak to anybody about what we are doing. Never. Never ever.”
“Good. Tell me, what are you are going to say to your boss?”
“I’ll tell him my mother’s had an accident and …”
“He knows your mother?”
“No. They met when I got the apprenticeship, but nothing more than that.”
“Anybody else in your family? Your father? He knows your dad?”
“No.” He looks away.
She tightens her hands around his head. “Any shared friends or acquaintances?”
“No.”
“All right. There’s a telephone booth at the corner over there. You can make the call from there. Hurry.”
8
“We’re ahead of schedule,” Alis K says, getting off her bicycle. They’d had a tailwind all the way. “Come, let’s go around the backyard.” Turning her bicycle around, she leaves it resting against the wall.
Following her example, the pulse singing in his ears, the pistol heavy inside his pocket, he places his bicycle next to hers and lets his hand slip down his pockets to feel the pistol. “This is where he lives?”
“Just around the corner. Are you ready?”
He looks at her. Shrugs.
“Have you ever fired a gun before?”
He shakes his head. “I guess you just have to pull the trigger?”
She frowns. “Might be a good thing we are a little early. Give me the pistol.”
Taking the gun out of his pocket, he can’t help staring at it. The magazine is an odd square block in front of the trigger. He hands the pistol to her reluctantly.
“You have to release the safety catch before you can fire the pistol.” She does so, moving on to loading the pistol. “Now it’s ready to fire. Be careful, it might go off if you handle it too roughly.”
Letting the pistol go back down his pocket, he nods again. He didn’t understand one word she was saying, but doesn’t question any of it. He is just standing there, unable to concentrate or even think, waiting to get started. All he wants to do is shoot the Hipo bastard and get out of there. Get it over with. He shifts his weight, unable to stand still. “When are we going to do it?”
“We should wait until seven o’clock.”
“Why?”
“That’s the plan. You always try to stick to the plan.”
“But it’s only us.”
Carrying a rag doll, a little girl steps into the gateway. “Good day.” She smiles, curtsying slightly before entering one of the stairways in the back house.
As the door closes behind her, Alis K takes the flowers from the front basket on her bicycle and turns to touch Poul-Erik’s shoulder.
“Usually he arrives home between six and a quarter past six. He should be home by now. Are you still up for it? No second thoughts?”
“No, no. I just want to get started.” His voice breaks. He clears his throat, trying to smile, but he can’t.
“Very well. He lives in number seventy-four, just around the corner. On the second floor. We go up the stairs. You squeeze tight up against the door of his neighbor, the pistol ready to fire. I ring the bell. I am there to deliver a bouquet of flowers for Einar Hovgaard personally. If he’s not the one to answer the door, I will ask to speak to him. When he shows, or if he’s the one answering the door, I’ll say: ‘Good day, a bouquet for Mr. Hovgaard.’ Then you shoot him. Understood?”
Poul-Erik nods his head.
“You’ll be very close to him when you shoot him. So shove the pistol in his face and pull the trigger instantly. He can’t be given a chance to react. I’ll have my pistol hidden inside the bouquet. If you can’t shoot him, or your pistol jams, I’ll shoot him.”
She looks at him closely, as if she is searching for something in his face. Poul-Erik’s mouth is dry. He nods again. Shifts his weight to the other foot.
“The moment he’s dead, we rush back here and get on our bicycles. Remember the wind. We can’t go back the way we came. The headwind will slow us down. We go the other way. Just follow me.”
Poul-Erik nods again. Moving his shoulders, they feel stiff and sore. He scratches his ear. He can’t keep still any longer. It boils inside of him in a weird, stunning way. He hears the sound of dishes clinking from an open window above them. A horse carriage in the street. A married couple fighting. The hissing of an alley cat. He sees the unevenness of the paint on the window frames at the porter’s apartment.
Alis K is quite relaxed. Taking a small, black pistol from her pocket, she swiftly cocks it before hiding it between the flowers. She sends him a crooked smile. “This is it.”
She leads the way through the gateway, Poul-Erik only a few steps behind. Down the street, very calm, no rushing. Looking at her feet, the small shoes, the heels in the thin stockings, Poul-Erik’s not daring to look anywhere else or at anybody else. His stare will betray him. He can feel it. He’s on his way to kill a man. He’s at war now.
There is a small grocery shop on the corner and a bookstore on the opposite side. A tram rattles by. A woman is struggling against the strong wind on an old bicycle with worn out tires.
Turning around the corner, out of the wind, Alis K stops dead in her tracks, Poul-Erik almost bumps into her.
“What is it?” he gasps.
She doesn’t answer. A small van is parked at the sidewalk a few steps down the street. The engine running.
Plumber Hansen.
Hesitating for only a second, Alis K walks on. The van is parked at number 74. There is no plumber to be seen anywhere.
“What?” Poul-Erik repeats his question, suddenly feeling the cold.
“Smell,” she says under her breath. “Gasoline.”
No plumbers drive on gasoline. That goes without saying. Nobody leaves the engine on a gasoline-fueled car running unless they have an extremely good reason to do so. And a leaking toilet is anything but.
Alis K turns to look in all directions. Poul-Erik can’t take his eyes away from the van. There is blue smoke coming out of the exhaust pipe. There are no windows in the back of the van—just two swinging doors. One is closed, the other left ajar. A movement in the side mirror catches his eye. Someone is sitting behind the wheel. Black uniform. No work clothes. Busy cleaning his fingernails.
By now, Alis K is down by the van. Throwing the flowers aside on the sidewalk, she steps out on the street aiming the pistol at the back of the van, ripping the doors open to show two Hipo sitting behind a mounted machine gun, looking astonished with open mouths.
One of them stutters, “N-n-no!”
Then she shoots.
9
Alis K turns to face the boy and finds him standing paralyzed on the sidewalk, gasping for air. She’s instantly at his side, pulling his arm. “Come on. We have to go. Now!”
Looking at her with blinking eyes, he nods his head.
Glancing back over her shoulder at the van and the two dead Hipo inside, she sees the door of number 74 slam open. Only glimpsing the black uniform, she starts shooting at the door. “Run!” she yells, pushing the boy. “Back to the bicycles!”
Firing another round, she follows Willy around the corner, only to see his flapping coat disappear inside the gateway down the street.
She is running for all she’s worth. A skinny woman with a hat and two small poodles on a leash comes out of a beauty shop. There is no time for Alis K to stop. She jumps over the dogs, the lady with the hat screams, yanking the dog leashes, making the little dogs fall over. Getting one foot tangled in the leashes, Alis K crashes to the sidewalk, losing her pistol, seeing it skip away as the taste of blood fills her mouth. The woman behind her keeps screaming.
Feeling her mouth and looking at the blood on her fingers, she is up on her knees when the first bullets hit the sidewalk next to her.
She scrambles for the pistol as the woman with the dogs makes a quick escape back into the beauty shop. Grabbing it, she rolls over to see the van rushing around the corner, tires squealing; one Hipo behind the wheel, another hanging out the side window clutching a big revolver. She aims her Walther and pulls the trigger.
Nothing happens. It doesn’t fire.
It only clicks. The spring inside the clip must have been damaged when she dropped it. Shit!
She throws the pistol aside, holding up her hands.
The van stops, tires screaming. Both Hipo are instantly out of the van. The first one collects the Walther while the other kicks her in the stomach. Bending over, she drops to her knees and falls on her side. She hardly feels the next kick. She doesn’t hear the Hipo shout as he throws her to the ground, kneeing her back, pushing her face into the sidewalk; he cuffs her hands behind her back.
He hits the back of her head then kicks her sides, before pulling her back onto her feet, and presses her up against the wall. The Hipo is yelling in her face. Nose to nose. He’s got a vein pulsating on his forehead. Pressing the revolver to her chin, he calls her a murdering bitch—those words she does hear. His eyes are gray and bloodshot.
The sound of a gunshot shatters the air, and for a second, she almost believes she’s been shot. Then the Hipo releases his grip. Behind him the other Hipo is lying on the street, writhing an
d grabbing his stomach; his fingers are red.
“Helge!” the Hipo, who seconds ago had his gun pressed to her chin, is shouting as he searches frantically in all directions at the same time. An instant later, he is lying next to his friend with a hole in his forehead.
Alis K spots Willy standing down by the gateway holding a smoking gun in his hand. “Hurry,” she yells. “I’m handcuffed. The fat one has the keys.”
He turns to look at her. “Keys?”
“Yes, goddammit. Hurry!”
He runs up to the two Hipo. The one called Helge is still lying on the street squirming and grunting in pain until Willy shoots him twice in the face. Kneeling by the fat one who is obviously dead, he finds the keys in the pocket of the Hipo’s trousers and moves over to Alis K to release the handcuffs.
“The bicycles. Hurry! This place will be crawling with more Hipo in a matter of minutes. We didn’t get the man we came for. He’s probably calling for help right now. Get moving!”
“The bicycles are gone,” Poul-Erik says.
“What?”
“They are just gone. Maybe someone stole them.”
“No!”
“It has to be somebody living nearby. We haven’t been away for more than ten minutes,” he says.
“Forget it. We don’t have the time. We’ll take the van.” She bends down to pick up her Walther, then continues over to get the guns from the two dead Hipo.
“Won’t they be looking for the van?”
“Sure, they will.” She gets in behind the wheel. “Get in!”
He’s only just inside the car when she slams it into gear and floors the accelerator. The first bystanders are already gathering at the intersection.
She suddenly remembers the two dead bodies in the back of the van. “Are the doors in the back closed?”
“Yes.”
“Positive?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She glances in the side mirror. Nobody is following. Going right at the next intersection, she heads for Norrebro. “Where did you learn to shoot like that?”
The Informer (Sabotage Group BB) Page 3
