The Informer (Sabotage Group BB)

by Langstrup, Steen

  Alis K smiles. “You’re fast on the trigger tonight.”

  “I’ve never been with a…” he mumbles, pulling hard on the cigarette.

  “There’s a first time for everything,” she whispers, pushing him back on the bed. “Think you’re man enough to fire two rounds?”

  ***

  Later, when he is lying on his back, letting his eyes follow the cracks in the ceiling, he can still feel the recoil from the pistol in his hand, still see the two Hipo fall every time he closes his eyes. But he is feeling relaxed in a strange way now.

  Alis K is all dressed again. She seems kind of busy—sitting in front of the mirror, powdering her face.

  “Who was the guy I should’ve shot?” He sits up, finding his shirt on the floor.

  She goes to the wardrobe. Opening it, she pulls a tiny latch at the bottom. She takes a blurry photograph and a small note from the secret compartment and hands him both. The man on the photograph looks really big, maybe even two meters high. Large hands, blonde hair. Black uniform.

  “That the guy?”

  “Right.”

  The note is covered in words written in pencil. The guy’s name and address. An order to kill him. His rank in the Hipo.

  “Einar Hovgaard,” Poul-Erik reads out loud.

  “A real bastard,” she says, fixing her hair. “Give it back to me.” She puts the picture and the note back inside the secret latch in the closet. Looks at her watch. “Get dressed, I’ve got an appointment coming up.”

  “Are you my girlfriend now?”

  She almost starts to laugh. “You wouldn’t want me as your girlfriend.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.” She claps her hands. “Get moving.”

  He gets dressed in a blur. Taking the pistol from the coat pocket, he hands it to her. “Thanks for lending me this.”

  “Keep it. It’s yours. Hide it where nobody will find it. And now you really have to get moving.” She pushes him out in the hallway as the doorbell starts to ring. “You’ll have to go out the back.” She shoves him through the shared kitchen, pointing his way to the door and the back staircase. “Go that way!”

  “Goodbye,” he says, but she is already gone down the corridor to get the door. Puzzled, he stares after her as she goes down the hallway to open the door. Exchanging a few words, she moves aside to let a man all dressed in black into the hallway.

  Poul-Erik hurries down the stairs. Two steps at a time. Between the second and third floor a fat, tired and sweating maid comes up the staircase.

  “Watch it, young man,” she says harshly. “Are you trying to scare the life out of me, rushing down the stairs like that?”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, stepping to the side to let her pass him on the narrow staircase.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks, sending him a suspicious glance. “There are criminals everywhere these days, you know. One might end up missing the police! Who would have thought that possible?”

  “I have been paying a visit to the nurses on the fourth floor,” he answers politely.

  The big maid lifts both her eyebrows and starts to laugh so hard her gigantic breasts almost spill out. “Well, you do look a little frail, my boy.” She pets his cheek. “Nurses? Ha! You are some character.”

  She squeezes past him. He can still hear her laughing as he reaches the ground floor and goes out the back door.

  He steals a bicycle and rides it downtown. Over Queen Louise’s Bridge, down Gothersgade. Into the slum. Home.

  Leaving the bicycle by The King’s Garden, he walks the rest of the way. Afraid to go home. Scared they might see the difference in his face.

  That he’s no longer the same.

  13

  Jens is gasping for air. Fighting his way out of the dream into a daze where echoes of the nightmare make him quiver; he is still hearing the sound of stomping boots. Covered in sweat. Clothes clinging to his body. He curses under his breath. Pulling the revolver out from under the pillow and releasing the safety, he runs the other hand over his face. Listening. Switching the safety back on, he slips the revolver back under the pillow.

  “Just a nightmare,” he whispers to the dark inside the allotment house as he grabs the bottle of schnapps by the bed, unscrewing the cap to drink from the bottle.

  The cold hits him nonetheless—makes him shiver in the sweaty clothes. He puts the bottle back under the bed and pulls up the covers. He sleeps fully dressed under two duvets and a couple of old, worn blankets. There is a small stove inside the allotment house, but he can’t risk making a fire. Smoke from the chimney of an allotment house at this time of year? He might as well put up a sign saying: Something sneaky is going on right here, please contact the Gestapo immediately. It would only be a matter of days before he was given a not-so-private berth in the Kz-Buchenwald. He would take the cold and freezing nights over that any day.

  When he had had nightmares as a child, it was always his dad who came to comfort him. He would sit on the bed and talk Jens back into a calm sleep with his deep voice. It was also his dad who cared for him when he was sick. He was a big man with a beard and dark eyes.

  A businessman to the tip of his toes, he had an almost instinctive sense for the future. He would build companies from scratch, run them a few years, and then sell them to make fortunes. Buy other companies; sell the machinery, the buildings, the patents, only to shut them down when there was nothing left to sell. “Never let your emotions get involved in business. You always have to sell in time,” he would say, handing his son a bag of hard candy, “or else you’ll end up with a bunch of trash, nobody wants to buy.”

  Jens was an only child. Something went wrong during his birth, making his mother linger between life and death for several days. She recovered, but was unable to bear another child. Might be the reason she never really connected with Jens. She was just a thin and pale shadow moving around the home. She hardly ever spoke to him.

  Jens was twelve years old when his father was run down by the tram and suffered major brain damage, placing him like a shrunken man drooling in the rocking chair in front of the fireplace for the next four years. Then he died.

  All his mother was concerned about was keeping up appearances. This was a prosperous family, and nobody could be allowed to see that the family wealth was disappearing. She fought a fierce battle to keep the family dignity intact while Jens was left alone. She married a banker only a year after Jens’ dad had finally passed away. Jens was sent away to join the army—to become a real man.

  He curls up under the covers to let his breath warm up the duvets. The damp clothes are uncomfortable. He can smell his own sweat. He hasn’t showered for three weeks now.

  He thinks about his wife for a moment—that angry bitch. He does not miss her at all, but he sure as hell could use some of her domestic skills around here. He doesn’t miss his children either. He wonders if they miss him? Who cares?

  The rain drums on the roof. The wind makes the branches of the lilac tree rub against the small house. He wonders what time it is as he shifts sides under the cover, letting cold air seep in under the duvets.

  He has got a sore feeling in his back. He grinds his teeth. The schnapps bites his stomach. He doesn’t want to go back to sleep. The nightmare feels like a curse.

  He met Magda when he was around twenty-five years old. It was back in the late Twenties, and he was making good money delivering illegal porn shots on behalf of an ‘art’ photographer. Magda was seventeen—pretty even with her glasses—and very quiet. She worked at the bakery where Jens bought his bread every morning. When he asked her out for a movie one day, she just nodded her head without looking at him. Then she got pregnant, and that would of course have been her problem had she not been the daughter of a high-ranking police investigator. He came by one night to explain in every detail what prospects of a future life Jens had to choose between.

  A month later, they got married. Walter was born and named after Magda’s grandfather to appe
ase family traditions. Magda’s silence was by then long gone, now she complained about everything. If she didn’t get her way, her dad would show up to make sure she did.

  There were a lot of traditions in that family, and Jens had better stick by all of them. All the men in the family were police officers, and so Jens had to join the force as well. Fortunately he’d never been busted so that wasn’t too much of a problem. In the years following, Ole and Erna were born. Magda got varicose veins and stretch marks, her eyesight got worse, and her glasses got thicker and thicker. Along with all that, she got meaner and meaner. Jens began working extra shifts just to keep out of the house.

  He lets a hand slide inside his shirt to scratch the hairs on his big belly. Maybe he’d gotten fleas? The thought alone makes him itch all over his body. He turns in the bed.

  He knows for a fact that Alis K isn’t exactly fond of him. Hookers have always hated cops. That is just the way it is. You don’t have to put that much pressure on a hooker to get a free blow job. And who wouldn’t? There was one particular redhead out on Jagtvej he had been keen on. She couldn’t have been much older than sixteen, but she had been a quite experienced girl. He moves his hand further down, making the memory come alive. Masturbation has always had a calming effect on his nerves. He used to fuck her with his police stick while she sucked his cock. He remembers her tiny, firm breasts. Those tiny, pale tits. Oh, she was something.

  Afterwards he wipes himself with a handkerchief and stares at the ceiling for a long time. His real name is Verner Hansen. He is forty-three. Too old for this shit. If the world hadn’t lost its mind and started this insane war, he would have been a detective in only five more years. He had all the right connections. He only needed to get a foot inside the Freemasons, and he could have gone all the way to the top…and the higher the rank, the better the bribe. But now, the police had been sent to the concentration camps as prisoners of the Third Reich, counting his father-in-law and the rest of the men in the Saeby family. The Schalburg Corps have taken over the house of the Freemasons at Blegdamsvej, and the Hipo use the main police station as HQ.

  Suddenly, the mechanical howling of the air raid sirens cuts through the night, sending the whole city on its nightly tour down the basement shelters where they will all be buried in rubble if a bomb were to hit their houses. Jens doesn’t move. There’s nowhere for him to take shelter from the war.

  “It’s all a pile of shit,” he whispers to the darkness around him. “It’s all just one big pile of shit.”

  14

  Inserting a new sheet of paper into the typewriter, Borge drums his fingers on the top of the desk, which is in fact nothing but a door on top of two sawhorses. He is hungry, hasn’t had anything to eat since lunch yesterday.

  The typewriter is placed on a pillow to dim the sound of its constant click-click. The gray morning light comes through the sloping ceiling windows above him. There are boxes and old furniture everywhere. His bed is an old, worn mattress on the floor. There is no insulation under the red tiled roof, making the attic boiling hot in the summer and freezing in the winter.

  In the inevitable socialist world order that is sure to follow this imperialist war, the brave members of the Danish resistance will be honored and remembered as the true heroes they indeed were. The socialist world will not forget those who fight the evil of fascism. Comrades, have no fear! The future belongs to us!

  Ejecting the paper from the typewriter, he rolls it along with the rest of the article for the illegal newspaper, The Red Banner, into a tight roll. Tying a string around the roll, he lets it slide down the lining of his old jacket. It’s not the best hiding place in the world, but it might survive a sloppy body search.

  He ties his shoes and pulls on his jacket. Puts a cap on his head and a scarf around his neck. He hides the Sten gun behind some boxes over by the chimney, before opening the hatch to let the ladder slide down the hallway below. He has to be extremely careful not to make a single sound. There is a small dental clinic located in the villa. The waiting room is like the rest of the clinic at the ground floor, but unfortunately right under this hallway. If he makes a sound, someone might wonder …

  He gets down, pushing the ladder back up and shutting the hatch carefully before he sneaks down the stairs all the way to the basement. Through the clothes drying from a line under the basement ceiling and out the basement door. Up the back stairs leading to the garden at the back of the villa. He makes his way through the scrub at the end of the garden to the railroad behind it.

  An hour later, he knocks on a back door of a one-bedroom apartment in Vesterbro.

  Borge’s birth name is Thorkild Holm. He is a twenty-seven-year-old son of a highly regarded manufacturer in upper-class Hellerup. Before the war began, he was studying literature at the university—Shakespeare interpreted through Marx and his theories about the nature of the capitalist world order. All of that ended when he had to go underground. The soles on his shoes are extra thick to hide the fact, that he’s not much higher than 1.70 m.

  The door opens a crack and an eye appears.

  “It’s just me,” Borge says.

  The door opens just enough to let him in and is closed and locked behind him before anybody says anything.

  “Do you have the article for me?”

  A young man. Blonde hair and that good, clean, brave Danish twinkle in the eye. The dream of every mother-in-law.

  Borge pulls the article from the lining of his jacket and hands it to the man. “We need to talk, Jorgen.”

  “Oh,” Jorgen says, skimming the text. “This is good work, you know. Can we talk some other time? I’m a little busy today.”

  “You never used to be busy before.”

  “No, but I am now.”

  “Jorgen, goddammit!” Borge says, grabbing hold of his shoulders. “Look at me! What happened to us? I miss you. Can’t you understand that?”

  Jorgen places a hand on Borge’s chest, pushing him back, making him stumble into the door. “Stay away from me. There isn’t any us. Get it?”

  “But Jorgen…”

  “There’s an informer in your group. One of the comrades who was arrested by the Germans a couple of weeks ago managed to get a letter smuggled out of the Gestapo prison at the old Shell house. Do not come here anymore.”

  Borge is paralyzed. “Did he write anything about who the informer was?”

  “No. Beat it!”

  “But I love you …”

  A deep sigh. His hands at his sides. “Goodbye, Borge.”

  He heads straight into the first pub he sees and buys himself a red Tuborg. He can’t afford anything stronger. Sits in a dark spot. Grinds his teeth. He won’t cry. He won’t. He won’t.

  15

  The backyard is dark; however Poul-Erik’s eyes have had plenty of time to adjust to the darkness on the long walk home from work. Ice cold rain drizzling from a pitch black sky, makes his cheeks and ears so cold, they hurt. His hands are deep inside his pockets. His clothes are wet and heavy. He looks up at the dark windows of the back building, looking for the two windows of his home. It is where his mum and siblings will be. They are probably going to bed right now. It is that late. He has been working long hours.

  A rat scurries over the cobbles and down the stairs to the basement. There are three rows of back houses behind the building facing the street. Every time you pass through a gateway, arriving at a new backyard, you go one step deeper into poverty. Poul-Erik is the eldest of six siblings. The whole family lives in a two-bedroom apartment in the second back house.

  He doesn’t go up. Instead, he heads for the outhouses. His one ear is humming. He’s been working by the circular saw most of the day. You don’t hear how much noise it makes before you turn it off and your ears start to ring.

  He bangs the privy door hard using his fists to scare off the rats before he opens the door and slips in. There is no light in there. You have to do your thing in utter darkness. The stench is intense. He shuts the door behind
himself and locks the bolt. The floor is rotten wood covered in piss. He doesn’t sit down on the seat; instead he takes a box of matches from his pocket. The box is wet and the first match fails to ignite. He throws it down the loo and takes another one. This one lights up, making the shadows dance on the wooden walls. There are words like cunt and pussy carved into the walls. He steps up on the seat groping under the roof until he finds the pistol. He lets the match fall and closes his eyes just standing there, holding the pistol. He has shot two men with this gun. Two Hipo. After that, he made love to Alis K. He is a man now. More than that. He is a warrior. The pistol is cold in his hands. He lets the barrel touch his cheek. His heart is beating fast. He can’t wait for the next hit.

  Ten minutes later, he puts the gun back. He could use a better place to stash it, but where would he find that? With seven—sometimes even eight—people living in a two-room apartment you don’t get that many secret hiding places.

  The rats are fighting violently over something down the basement shaft, when he leaves the privy and walks to the stairway. The door to the stairway has been broken for years. It is impossible to close it properly. The green paint is coming off the crumbling wood. When it rains, the alley cats take shelter there, making the whole place reek with cat piss. Some steps on the stairs are broken, and somewhere between the second and the third floor, a piece of the railing is missing.

  He finds his mother sitting in the small kitchen with a fag in her mouth breastfeeding the baby. “So, the master finally arrives?” She speaks quietly so as not to stir the sleeping children, but there’s danger in her voice.

  I had to work late,” Poul-Erik whispers, looking into the dark living room. He only gets a glimpse of his two smaller brothers, Bjarne and Knud, sleeping on blankets on the floor. “Then I had to walk all the way home.” He takes off both his jacket and pants and hangs them to dry in the kitchen.