The Unlikely Allies

by Gilbert, Morris

  Afterward he rose and said, “Let’s take a walk, and you can explain your sermon to me.”

  “All right. It’s too early to go to bed.”

  They walked through the reindeer herd, and he commented, “They’re domesticated, aren’t they?”

  “I suppose that’s all they’ve known all their life.”

  “It’s amazing how the men can lasso them. They’re better than wild west cowboys in America.”

  As they reached the outer edge of the herd, the sky suddenly lit up with brilliant waves of colors—blues, greens, and reds. “What is that?” Derek asked as he stared in wide-eyed amazement.

  “It’s the northern lights. I never saw them in Africa, of course, but I’ve seen them several times when I’ve been staying with the Lapps.” A curtain of yellow blazed across the sky. “Isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”

  “It certainly is! I guess I’ve heard of northern lights before but never imagined it would look like this.”

  They watched for several minutes, until the display faded.

  “I wanted you to know your sermon touched me tonight, Mallory.” He hesitated, then said, “I want to serve Jesus Christ . . . but I don’t see how I can.”

  “God knows all about you, Derek. He knew about you before you were born. He’s brought you out of a terrible way of life, and He has a plan for you.”

  “I hope so, for I don’t have one for myself.”

  “You’re not out of trouble yet. Did you ever hear the story of Joseph?”

  “Yes, of course. In the book of Genesis.”

  “You remember, then, how everything seemed to go wrong for him? His brothers sold him for a slave, and when he made a good place for himself in Potiphar’s house, that went wrong too.”

  “I remember that woman who tried to seduce him. I’ve always admired Joseph. It takes a strong man to run away from a beautiful woman like that.”

  Mallory stared at him. “Have you done that?”

  “Why . . .” He could not answer. “I haven’t always led a pure life, Mallory. I wish I had.”

  “Did you love those women?”

  “I loved Rachel,” he said simply. As always, when he spoke her name, a sadness crossed his face and touched his eyes.

  “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad,” she said, “but Joseph came out of it all right. God used him to save His people. God’s going to use you too, Derek.”

  “I don’t know how, but I hope so.”

  “God will help you, and I will help you.”

  He turned and reached out his hands. When she put her hands in his, he said, “We’ve become good friends, haven’t we?”

  “Very good friends indeed.”

  An impish light touched his eyes, and Mallory knew he was up to mischief. “Don’t you think that good friends should express their relationship . . . in some sort of physical way?”

  She could not help smiling at his foolishness. She had seen this side of him before and loved it. “I think that might be good.” She lifted her head, and he bent over and kissed her. A warmth lay between them, strong and unsettling, but at the same time with a goodness and a sweetness in it. His mouth was firm, and he held her gently. When he lifted his lips, he said simply, “I love you, Mallory.”

  To her own surprise, Mallory knew the truth and spoke it. “I love you too, Derek,” she whispered.

  “I don’t know what our future holds, but whatever happens, I’ll carry this love I have for you always.”

  They stood there in the silence enjoying it, and finally he said, “There are only a few passes into Sweden, even this far north, and they may be closely guarded.”

  “I’m going to try the radio.”

  “It’s such a small one. Do you think it’ll pick anything up?”

  “It’s the best one I’ve made. We’ll put up an antenna. Maybe it’ll pick up something.”

  They went back to the tent, and she got the radio. It was indeed small, but the batteries were large. She had hated having to add it to her load, but she knew they would need it.

  Moving outside, she attached a wire, and he spread it out, looping it over the branches of some trees.

  Mallory worked with the radio for some time. The batteries were very weak, but finally a voice crackled. “This is Ajax. I read you, Byron.”

  “We need to be taken out,” Mallory said quickly.

  “What is your location?”

  Mallory gave their location and voiced the plans they had made earlier. “We will be at Angel Fjord just off North Cape.”

  The voice came back faintly, “The submarine will be offshore in four days, the first of December at exactly oh two hundred. You must be quick. When you get a signal, answer it. We’ve made arrangements for a local fisherman to leave a small boat there that you can row out to the sub.”

  The two were straining to hear, and they barely heard the last instruction before the signal faded completely.

  “The battery’s dead,” she said.

  “That’s okay. We got all the information we need,” Derek said with a glad voice. “We’d better write it down. Angel Fjord off North Cape.”

  “I’m sure we aren’t too far from there. Lorge will guide us. We’re going to be all right.”

  He reached out and put his hand on her cheek. “Yes,” he whispered, “we’re going to be all right.”

  ****

  Adolf Moltmann quickly scribbled the radio message. Jumping up, he found his lieutenant and shared the call he had just picked up.

  “I must take this to Colonel Ritter!” he exclaimed.

  Leaving the radio room, he went at once to Ritter’s office. “Colonel, we just picked this up on the radio. It was very faint, but I think I got it all.”

  Ritter read the message the radio man had written. “Excellent,” he said. “Very good indeed! We have them now!”

  Ten minutes later Lieutenant Uldrich Stahl was listening to Ritter, who was walking around the room waving his arms, his eyes glittering with excitement. Berlin had been furious over Grüber’s defection and had given Ritter a hard time for letting him escape. Now Ritter said, “We have all we need. We must have a force there to capture them.”

  “My colonel, let me lead the expedition. It would give me great satisfaction.”

  “Very well, Stahl. You will be in charge of the team. Make no mistakes. We must capture them. We’ll make an example of Grüber. As for the American woman, she’ll have a public trial.” He laughed aloud. “She’ll be found guilty, of course. It will make the Americans look bad.” Then his eyes narrowed, “I will enjoy her execution!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Dangerous Rendezvous

  Captain Franz Ubel, captain of the destroyer Eagle, fixed his gaze on the visitor to his ship. Ubel was a successful naval commander, having received commendations from no less than the führer himself for his successful action against the British navy. He looked very much like the ideal Aryan warrior—tall and broad-shouldered with gray eyes and a hardbitten aspect.

  As the Eagle nudged through the cold gray waters off the coast of Norway, he wished he could pick up Lieutenant Uldrich Stahl and throw him overboard! The man is an idiot! Command must have lost its mind sending a clown like this on an important mission!

  Lieutenant Stahl had similar feelings about Captain Ubel—and had not attempted to conceal them. He was proud of his assignment and felt that Ubel and the crew of the Eagle were nothing but a means of transportation—and a difficult bunch to deal with!

  The two men were standing in the wheelhouse of the destroyer. The only light was a pale green glow coming from the instruments and gauges. A helmsman faced straight ahead, trained to ignore the conversation of his betters. From time to time he moved the wheel, keeping to the course his captain had given him and listening to the conversation while appearing to be deaf. He was already composing a letter in his head that he would write to his mother as soon as his shift was over, and he knew he would claim mor
e for himself in the action than was true.

  “You cannot seem to understand, Captain Ubel,” Stahl said, speaking slowly as if to a slow-witted child. “I want to do two things. First, we must capture the woman and Grüber alive.” He waited for the captain to answer, but Ubel simply stared at him without changing expression. “It is important that we do this, for the high command intends to make a public example of them both. Imagine a German officer, a highly decorated one such as Grüber, defecting to the enemy. Oh, we will make an example of him!”

  “What part does the woman play in all of this?”

  “That’s not for you to know, Captain, but I will tell you off the record that she will be tried as a spy and publicly executed. The story will appear in newspapers all over the world.”

  Stahl had planned the mission down to the last detail. He had argued long with Colonel Ritter about the size of the team he would take. Ritter was in favor of a very large number, but Stahl had finally won out, emphasizing that there were only two of them. “Give me six expert commandos, and I will take them with no trouble.” He had argued that it was simpler to move with a small group and had not spoken aloud his real reason for taking such a small crew—he didn’t want any more people than necessary to receive the accolades for their success. Stahl had already mentally prepared the speech for the newspapers, telling how he had captured the hated defector and the depraved woman and brought them to justice.

  “The second thing we must do is destroy the submarine.” This also had been Stahl’s idea. The submarine would be a sitting duck when it surfaced, and he could see no reason why a competent German naval officer could not sneak in and accomplish that mission.

  “It will be difficult to do both.” Franz Ubel’s voice was hard and spare. He had dealt with army officers in the past, and their heads seemed to be packed with cement. They simply could not understand that war at sea was different from battle on land. And this fellow Stahl—he was even more stupid than most soldiers! Captain Ubel had checked his record and discovered that Stahl had no combat experience at all, and he felt nothing but contempt for him. “If I understand you correctly, you want me to be absolutely sure that the two are captured before I attack the sub?”

  “That is correct, Captain.”

  “You don’t seem to grasp how quickly these submarines can move. They can dive while my ship is making a single turn. These British have become quite adept at that.”

  “I fail to see the problem,” Stahl said stiffly.

  “Have you looked outside?”

  “Outside? Why, of course.”

  “Have you noticed that it’s a moonless night and even the stars are blotted out by those clouds? In other words, it’s as dark as pitch out there. Look for yourself.”

  Stahl peered outside, and sure enough he could see absolutely nothing, but he would not have his plan interfered with, and he said stiffly, “You have the position of the submarine. You know the exact time, two o’clock, that they will be there. Surely you can find something as big as a submarine.”

  “As big as a submarine! Have you noticed how large the sea is? On a summer day with the bright sun, it would be simple, but trying to sneak up on a submarine in the dark, we’ll have all hands out watching for an enemy it will be almost impossible to see.”

  Stahl waved his hand impatiently. “That is a technical problem. I was assured you were a capable naval officer, and you have your orders to do exactly as I said in this matter.”

  “Yes, I have them, Lieutenant.” Captain Ubel gritted his teeth. To put his ship under the command of a mere army lieutenant was galling to say the least, but the orders were clear, and he had little choice. “All right. We won’t argue about that, but we can’t guarantee our success. Too many factors are unstable.”

  “What’s unstable about it?” Stahl barked. “We want this pair alive. The propaganda will be priceless, and surely you want to add a sunken sub to your record, Captain Ubel.”

  This was true enough. Ubel was proud of his record, and like all other officers, he sought a promotion. There would surely be great credit in sinking a sub while attempting to take these two off.

  “Let me go through the plan one more time, Captain,” Stahl said, speaking again as if to someone with a feeble mind. “You will put me and my team ashore in a small boat. We know that they will be in the cape, and they will have to signal the sub. As soon as we see the light, we will go ashore and capture the pair.”

  “That may not be so easy. These are rough waters, and the coast is jagged. There are very few landing harbors in the fjords.”

  “I will take care of that. Now, as soon as we capture the pair, we will send you a signal by light, and you can sink the submarine.” Captain Ubel saw that further argument was useless. He looked at his watch, holding it up to the green light and said, “It’s fifty-four minutes until two. We’re very close to Angel Fjord.”

  “Do you know these waters at all, Captain?”

  “Of course. There’s actually only one location in the fjord accessible by small boats. The fishermen often land there. They’ll have to leave from there. The rest of the fjord has steep walls. A picturesque place, but only one spot for a landing.”

  “There. You see? We understand each other. You can assume the British submarine will be right off of that harbor in Angel Fjord.”

  Captain Ubel thought hard, then said, “You have a small force, only six men.”

  “Yes, but they’re all experts. We want to take these two alive, and they will have no guards, we assume. It’s not a military force. These operations are always as secret as possible.”

  Ubel shook his head. “If you make a signal to us with a light, the captain of that submarine will see it. You don’t know their code and neither do I.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” Stahl reconsidered and then said, “Look, Captain, we will see the signal from Grüber and go ashore at once. It will be a simple matter, since they won’t be expecting a land force. We’ll take them prisoner. From the time we leave until the time we capture them should be no more than thirty minutes. Give us that much time and then move in and sink the sub.”

  Captain Ubel could think of half a dozen things that could easily go wrong. He had been involved with complicated missions before, but apparently Stahl had not. “I hope all goes well, Lieutenant,” he said, shaking his head. “But we have no emergency plan.”

  “We will not need one, Captain,” Stahl said firmly. “Now, I will go give my men their final orders.”

  Stahl left the wheelhouse, and Ubel stared out at the darkness. “It’s a bad plan,” he said under his breath.

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “Never mind, Schultz. Just keep on your course.”

  ****

  “I can’t see a bloody thing.” Captain David Bishop was scanning the shoreline through the periscope. “Take a look,” he told his second-in-command.

  Lieutenant Charles Moore peered at the shore. “No moon and no stars. I’m not even sure we’re in the right spot.”

  The captain and the first lieutenant of the British submarine Tiger were both apprehensive. They had brought the Tiger into the North Cape, and both of them knew its waters well. They had come early enough to make sure they were in the proper location, but now that the time of the rendezvous was approaching, both officers were unhappy about the situation. “I wonder what genius thought this up,” Captain Bishop murmured.

  “I’m sure they have plenty of those at Naval Command.” Moore was a young man, short and compact and always cheerful. “Don’t worry, Captain. It’ll be a piece of cake.”

  “You said that when we had to go in to pick up that Dane, and we nearly lost the boat.” Captain David Bishop was too tall for the submarine service, but he loved it. He towered over every other member of the crew and was continually banging his head on the low compartments. Still, now that he had his own boat, life felt good to him. He looked around at the other members of the crew, who were busy about their
work. “Charlie, this thing has to be timed exactly right. We can’t stay on the surface any longer than necessary.”

  “You’re right about that, Captain. There have been reports of a pair of heavy German cruisers in these waters. If they catch us, we’re finished.”

  The two men talked quietly, both of them keeping their eyes on the water. Finally Moore said, “This should be pretty simple, Captain.”

  “Things are never simple.” This summed up Captain Bishop’s philosophy. He ascribed to the theory that if something can go wrong, it will. He had stayed alive by virtue of the fact that he was a smart, cautious man who knew every boat and his submarine. He also had a healthy fear, which did not keep him from doing his duty but often had warned him in time to take evasive action. As he stooped over in the sub, he had an uneasy feeling. “I think something’s wrong with this operation.”

  “What could be wrong? It’s simple enough.”

  “You keep saying that, but you don’t know what’s out there. There could be a battleship, for all we know.”

  Moore laughed. “You worry too much, Captain. Who are these people anyway? They must be important.”

  “I have no idea. You know how Command is. They like to keep us in the dark.”

  “You’re right about that. Sometimes I think the Krauts know more about our plans than we do.”

  The two men fell silent, and from time to time, one of them took a look through the periscope.

  Captain Bishop checked the time. “We’ll surface in eight minutes. We give the signal, and if we don’t get an instant response, Lieutenant, we don’t wait.”

  “I’m sure they’ll signal. They’re bound to be waiting. Any other orders?”

  “Yes. Send everybody you can topside. It’s black as pitch out there, but they’ve got ears. If anything’s creeping up on us, they’ll hear it. Be ready to dive quicker than you have in your life, Charlie!”

  ****

  “There’s Angel Fjord.”

  Lorge had guided Derek and Mallory from the Lapp camp to the sea. He knew the area well, and although he was young, he was serious-minded and understood the dangers.