by James R Benn
About a half hour later Kaz and I were sitting in Knut Birkeland’s office on the third floor, where most of the government offices were. There were stacks of papers everywhere. Birkeland looked as disheveled as his room. He pushed aside the open books and folders in front of him, leaned his heavy frame back in his chair, and raised his bushy black eyebrows.
“What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” There was gruff suspicion in his voice.
“I just wanted to apologize, sir. I didn’t mean to upset people at lunch by asking about the gold.” I put on my meekest voice and enjoyed the look on Kaz’s face. He’d obviously hoped I’d pull out some brass knuckles.
“Well, it doesn’t bother me, but I don’t like it being brought up in front of the king. This is a very delicate time.” He stared at me with those dark eyes, and didn’t even try to hide the fact that it really did bother him.
“You mean because of the pending appointment of a senior adviser?”
“You ask a lot of questions, young man, especially for someone who just apologized for it.”
“I’m sorry, sir. It’s just that I was a policeman before the war, and it seems that asking questions is a hard habit to break. I don’t even realize I’m doing it.” He seemed to accept my humble apology, and relaxed a bit.
“Well, no matter. I have nothing to hide. I didn’t take any gold, and I do want the position of senior adviser. If only to keep it from Skak!” He punctuated that statement by pounding his fist on the desk. I could tell he wouldn’t mind the next question at all.
“What’s wrong with Vidar Skak?”
“He’s a coward and a liar! He claims two cases of gold coins went missing while they were in my possession, with no other proof than his own books! He never spent a night standing guard in the snow over that gold or bent his back loading case after case onboard a ship with German planes dropping bombs all around!”
“Why would he blame you for the missing gold? What has he to gain?” asked Kaz, taking on some of the questioning himself.
“Gain? Why the senior adviser job, that’s all! Can’t you see that? If he discredits me in the king’s eyes, then the job is his, and the worse for Norway.” Birkeland’s eyes slid sideways, as if envisioning a dark future with Vidar Skak whispering in the king’s ear.
“Seems to me he just wants to fight back against the Germans.” I congratulated myself on avoiding a direct question.
“Neither of you strike me as fools,” Birkeland said. “You can see that Skak wants to use the Underground Army to support his own aims. The more glory for him, the better. He can be a hero in Norway after the war, when we lay wreaths on the monuments to the dead.”
“There’ll be plenty of death to go around before this war is over. Sacrifice can’t be avoided.” Geez, I sounded like Harding.
“Skak is willing to accept the sacrifices of others. He has lost nothing himself. I’ve had to watch newsreels of my own fishing boats being destroyed by the commandos, some of them Norwegian! I have a fishing fleet in Nordland, and when the commandos destroy one of those fish oil-processing plants to keep the Germans from producing nitroglycerin, my boats go up in flames. I’m watching my own business, which I’ve built for twenty years with my bare hands, go up in smoke. But, by God, I’ll put the torch to the whole damn thing myself if it will keep the underground from going into battle! We would gain nothing, and the reprisals would be terrible.”
The wind went out of him and he sank back into his chair. “Terrible,” he repeated quietly. “Let the British destroy our industry if it will hurt the Nazis. But let our people live.”
We left soon after that. On the theory that a guy who would rather see his own property destroyed than lose innocent lives would make a lousy candidate for a thief or traitor, I decided it was time to move on to greener pastures. I said as much to Kaz as we walked to our rooms, and to my surprise he responded like a cynical desk sergeant.
“How do we know he really owns a fishing fleet, and that it’s being destroyed in commando raids?” Ah, cynicism, the first dawning sign of a rookie cop learning the ropes.
“All right, let’s think it through. Skak and the king would know. Hard to believe he could be lying about it.”
“Yes, but the key point is his willingness to sacrifice his fortune. We have no confirmation of that.”
I thought about that for a minute. It seemed harmless enough, and who knew what the little guy might find out?
“OK Kaz, here’s your first assignment. Ask around and see if anybody else knows about it. Ask the Three Musketeers. That Rolf guy is with the commandos; he might know. Just act like you’re interested.”
“I will be the soul of unoffending curiosity.”
“Just remember the cat. He didn’t offend anyone either.”
I left Kaz to his junior G-man investigation and went up to my room on the top floor. I was tired, the alcohol drifting through my system and weighing down my eyelids, making me think about catching a few z’s before the evening festivities. The king had invited our group to some sort of state dinner he was throwing in the main ballroom. It sounded boring, and I knew I needed my beauty sleep so I wouldn’t nod off during the third speech.
Evidently, all the big rooms were taken. Mine had a double bed, a bureau, one straight-back chair, and an armoire, with just enough space to walk around the bed if you kept your elbows tucked in. The furniture looked a little worse for wear, the kind of stuff that was too sturdy to throw out but too scruffy to show off. The room did have its own bathroom, and I liked that, a step up from the attic of the Dorchester. Kaz had told me a lot of these old castles and mansions never got around to upgrading the plumbing, but that the Beardsleys were very modern for their day, and each room had hot and cold running water and the usual facilities. I kicked off my shoes, tossed my jacket onto the chair, loosened my tie, and closed my eyes for about a half hour. Catnaps and spy chasing are my specialties.
I woke up two hours later from a dead sleep. It had only been a few days since that flight across the Atlantic, and I guess I wasn’t over it yet. I yawned, stretched, and decided I had time for a soak in a nice hot tub before dinner. Maybe it would wake me up and help me decide what to do next. Always thinking of the war effort, that’s me. I turned on the hot water and was greeted by clanging and thumps as the pipes summoned up the strength to deliver a lukewarm trickle of water. I was familiar with the sounds of overtaxed plumbing from my parents’ house. Everyone probably had the same bright idea I had-take a nice hot bath before dinner. I tried the cold water. Plenty of that. I soaked my feet in the tub, washed up in the sink, and cursed the plumbing that had robbed me of a plan.
Jolted awake by the cold water, I went downstairs and joined the crowd gathered in the ballroom. Two long tables took up half the room. Chandeliers lit the room and candles burned along the length of the tables, their light reflecting off the gleaming silver. I had thought lunch was fancy, but this was hoity-toity. There was the head table with seats on one side, and another table at a right angle to it with seats along both sides. There were little cards with names to let you know where to sit. I didn’t bother looking for mine up at the head table. I was down at the end, surrounded by names I didn’t know. Harding and Cosgrove had seats at the head table, along with Daphne and Baron Piotr Augustus Kazimierz. I guess that showed me. I was fingering my place card when Kaz came over. He was wearing a British dress uniform with a gleaming leather belt and a big grin. He handed me a glass of champagne.
“Rank, royalty, and beauty all at one table, Billy. I will be certain to come down here to visit you!”
“I’m sure the other peasants will be honored, Baron.” We clinked glasses and drank. The room was filling up with all sorts of uniforms. Mostly British types with “Norway” on the red shoulder flash. A few naval officers and a couple of old Home Guard officers and their wives, from the local village, probably. Harding and I were the only Americans.
Daphne entered, and the room fell silent. In the midst of
browns, dark blues, and khakis, she was dressed in a bright green gown that was like a shimmering fountain of color, sparkling off the candlelight in the room. It was tight and low cut, and she wore a matching short jacket that accentuated the whiteness of her bare skin.
“I marvel every time I see her,” Kaz whispered reverently as several senior offices elbowed each other on their way to greet her.
“Shouldn’t you go rescue the fair damsel from that mob?” She was now being besieged by Norwegians and Englishmen, including a Home Guard captain who was going to be sleeping on the couch tonight by the look on his wife’s face.
“No, certainly not! That dress was her doing, and she’ll have to put up with it. Let’s go talk to Rolf Kayser.”
We found Rolf hoisting drinks with his musketeer pals. Rolf was big, muscular, and about six feet tall, square jawed and tanned, probably as much from the wind off the Norwegian coast as the sun. His hair was dark brown and so were his eyes, deep set beneath bushy eyebrows. He stood still, as if he were conserving energy for what lay ahead, watching everyone move around him. Standing next to Jens Iversen, he looked immense, a giant oak tree rooted to the spot. Jens, barely up to Rolf’s shoulder, looked like he was using up his energy all at once, shifting back and forth on his heels, turning this way and that, surveying the room, pointing out the top brass as they filtered in. Arnesen stood with one hand in his pocket, a drink in the other, watching both his friends with a calm smile, obviously enjoying their company. They were an unlikely trio, of different sizes and shapes, but thrown together by chance and now good pals with the king, all in top posts. Security chief, commando leader, brigade commander. Kaz introduced me to Rolf and we grabbed some fresh champagne as another white-coated enlisted man came by with a tray.
“ Fortell meg, Loytnant Boyle,” Rolf asked, “is the American Army involved with this ultimatum about the underground? I understand you met with Knut Birkeland this afternoon.” News traveled fast. I guess this guy hadn’t taken a nap today.
“Not at all. Just chatting with Mr. Birkeland. I was very curious about how he got that gold out of Norway. Quite an accomplishment, for all of you.”
“We only helped a little, really,” said Anders Arnesen. “Just some heavy lifting aboard the Glasgow. There were many Norwegians who did much more, at greater risk.”
“Well, Rolf did almost get himself killed,” chimed in Jens Iversen, and they all laughed at what seemed to be an inside joke. He waved his hands to get the others to stop laughing.
“When we were loading cases of gold coin on board from a fishing ship, the rope slipped and the cases nearly knocked his brains out. They broke open and Rolf was buried in gold coins, very hilarious!”
“Druknet i gull!” said Arnesen, and they all laughed again. I didn’t ask; it was obviously an inside joke.
“Well, it wasn’t funny to me at the time,” Rolf said with a smile, “especially with Tysk bombers coming after us, but it is a good story. I just wish I still had my souvenir.”
“What do you mean?” asked Kaz.
“One coin got stuck in the folds of my uniform somehow. When I changed later that night it rolled out.” He looked at us somewhat sheepishly. “I thought it would make a good souvenir. What difference would one gold coin make? Well, after we got to England it began to bother me. Finally, I decided to give it back. I was going to send it to the king on his birthday, hoping that he would appreciate it and not be angry.”
“Was he?” I asked.
“It was stolen from my barracks locker before I could give it to him. I told him about it though, and he wasn’t too hard on me.”
“It probably helped that you told him right after a very successful commando raid,” said Jens with a grin, looking up at his friend. Jens spoke in bursts of energy, his eyes always moving, watching everyone in the room. Rolf looked like he could stand in one place all day while Jens danced around him. Anders was right in the middle, of average height and weight, but he carried himself with the self-assured authority of a professional soldier.
After a little more chitchat the group broke up and we headed to our seats. Vidar Skak came in and stopped to talk with Rolf and Major Cosgrove, pointedly turning his back on Birkeland, who was standing nearby. I bet their place cards weren’t next to each other.
I sat with the Home Guard officers and wives and spent most of my time listening to complaints about the Americans overrunning their village. A newly arrived division had just been based nearby, and to listen to this group they were all girl-crazy cowboys who should never have been let off the base. They were probably right but I said nice things about my countrymen anyway.
The food was bland-more fish and boiled potatoes. Servers brought out plates with the fish already doled out, still piping hot. Bowls of potatoes and turnips appeared, followed by brussels sprouts and cabbage. There was food rationing here and it probably wasn’t easy to put on a feed like this, but the local victory gardens must have been overflowing with brussels sprouts.
“Used to love them,” said a woman next to me as she passed the bowl, “on Sundays, with a nice roast beef. But every day, it does wear one down.”
A basket of bread came from the other direction, but no butter. Even gold couldn’t buy butter with U-boats sinking freighters every day in the Atlantic. The speeches were thankfully short, and there were enough toasts to Allied unity to keep my wineglass permanently in motion.
“To the Americans,” a Home Guard colonel opposite me said, offering a toast to our group at the end of the table. “May they arrive in sufficient numbers to defeat Jerry, but not so many as to take up all the room in the village pub!”
“Hear, hear,” went around the table, and the colonel winked at me, having his bit of fun. He was gray at the temples, and by the lines around his eyes, over fifty.
“Oh dear, Maurice,” his wife said, “what terrible manners! Please excuse my husband, Lieutenant, he had to wait fifteen minutes for his pint recently and hasn’t been the same since.”
“That’s all right, ma’am, I understand it must be difficult having so many GIs around. If I remember my history lessons, we had the same problem in Boston a while ago, until the redcoats left.”
“Touche,” said the colonel. “I deserved that. Don’t think we don’t appreciate America coming into the war, we do. It’s just that, for my generation, having gone through the First World War, and now this, it’s all so damned repetitive. And here we are, too old to serve… .”
“The Home Guard is service, and important service too,” his wife said. “Why, after Dunkirk, you were all that was left to stand up to the Germans if they invaded. And a good account you would have given of yourselves, all of you!”
There was silence around the table, and I watched their faces. Older men, lost in memories of battles past and opportunities lost to prove themselves once again. Maurice patted his wife’s hand, and she placed her other hand on top of his and squeezed. There were a lot of jokes about the Home Guard, old men drilling with broomsticks, and all that. Looking at them, I had no doubt that these gray-haired, middle-aged retreads would have gone down fighting if it had come to that. It must be hard keeping their spirits up when the U. S. Army showed up, rich in supplies, arms, cash, and optimism, eliminating the very need for a local guard just by their presence. And not understanding how close things had been for them. I raised my glass.
“To the Home Guard,” I said, surprised at the lump I felt in my throat.
“To the Home Guard,” came back at me from up and down the table, and I watched the colonel puff out his chest a bit as he raised his glass and basked in the smile his wife gave him, her moist eyes lingering a little as she watched him.
I realized the talk about Americans all around me was uneasy. I was one of the thousands from across the sea, easy with money, informal beyond the bounds of their polite society, a threat and a salvation wrapped up in one. Their young men were spread out across the globe, fighting in North Africa, in the jungles of Burm
a, sitting in German POW camps, and we were here, well fed and feeling our oats. They scrimped along with food rationing while your typical U.S. Army base probably threw away more than their whole village ate every day. I wondered how we’d react if the tables were turned.
After that toast, the mood lightened a bit. We talked about the last war, in which all of them had fought, and this war, in which their sons were fighting now and, for some, in which their daughters were taking part, too. The colonel and his wife had lost their oldest son on the Hood, sunk last year by the Bismarck. Their youngest was a pilot in the RAF.
“Fourteen hundred men on the Hood, including Michael,” said the colonel. “Only three were picked up out of the water.”
“At least you sank the Bismarck,” I said, offering what feeble comfort I could.
“I didn’t mind hearing that news, not at all,” the colonel said, taking his wife’s hand.
“What was it, Maurice?” she said. “Over two thousand on the Bismarck, and only a hundred survived. The numbers of war are so horrible. We say two ships sank, but that’s over three thousand men as well.”
The table fell silent.
“They are more than numbers.”
“Your Highness!” None of us had noticed the king standing just behind me, making his way down the table to greet his guests. Everyone started to rise.
“No, please, stay seated,” King Haakon said, gesturing with his arms, palms down, for everyone to stay in their seats. “I am sorry for your loss, for all the deaths in this war. There are no words worthy of such a loss.”
“God bless you, Your Highness,” said the colonel’s wife. The king walked around the table and stood at her side, reaching down from his height to take her hand.
