Dark Full of Enemies(30)

He had made a mistake about the grey-bearded Norwegian. Two, actually. The first was that he was an average sized man. He was wrong. And the second mistake was about the man’s beard—he had assumed his counterpart in the transfer of the gear from sub to fishing boat was an old man, a salt, the boat’s owner or a senior member of Petersen’s resistance group. He was wrong. This was Petersen, his beard frozen solid.

“Bid them farewell,” Petersen said. He spoke perfect English, and McKay realized he was speaking normally, not shouting above the wind. He wondered at being able to hear him. When McKay did not respond, he lifted a hand toward the darkness. McKay turned.

The Viking lay across the widening waves, disappearing into the dark. He saw two officers on the conning tower and deckhands scaling the metal rungs to disappear below. He waved. Neither officer waved back, and the submarine was gone.

Petersen looked at him a long time. At last, he extended his hand.

“Welcome to Norway.”





He had been welcomed a lot of places the last few days, and cared about none of them now. He felt most welcome—happy to feel at all—in the wheelhouse, wrapped in a blanket. He had a cup of coffee in one hand and with the other rubbed his chest. Warmth returned from the inside out. He had never cared much for coffee, even prided himself on being able to do without, but clung to this bitter black cup. Petersen stood across from him in the little room, leaning against the bulkhead, arms crossed.

“Good?” he said.

“Outstanding,” McKay said. “Thank you.”

Petersen nodded. He released one arm and slapped the helmsman across the back.

“My brother J?rgen does the brewing. Thank him. I do, often.”

McKay laughed and raised the cup. “Thank you.”

The other Petersen, certainly the younger of the two, looked back from the wheel for a moment and grunted.

His body returned bit by bit to life. As a child he had often rolled onto his arms in his sleep, only to wake up and try to shake the blood and feeling back into them. His whole body felt like that now, only clammy and wet to boot. He drank of the coffee again, and thanked Petersen again. This time Petersen only nodded.

His beard now showed light brown. The photo in his file did him no justice. The real Petersen looked younger, sharper, and like Goliath. He stood at least six and a half feet tall—he had seven inches or more on McKay. The bull neck McKay had noted in the photo had told him nothing, either. Petersen was… big. Big all over, proportioned powerfully, not like the occasional lanky, six-foot-three oafs McKay had played basketball against. And above all, Petersen’s hard eyes stared. He looked like a man who missed nothing. McKay sensed that a great career in the Norwegian navy had been cut short.

He finished the coffee and lifted the cup. “Mind if I get some more?”

“That’s the last of it, I’m afraid,” Petersen said.

They sat in silence again. He heard the boat’s engine, tonk-tonk-tonk, as tinny and weak-sounding as Jack Benny’s Maxwell.

“How fast can you make way with that engine?” McKay said.

“Ten knots in good weather. Slower in—this.”

McKay laughed. Petersen did not.

“How far to Narvik?”

“We are not sailing to Narvik, but to my village, near there. We have to stay out of Narvik.”

“Germans?”

Petersen nodded. “I have a wharf. We will hide there until you return to the submarine.”

“Outstanding. How far again?”

“From here, about one hundred and thirty miles.”

McKay blinked and looked into his empty tin cup. “So I guess we’d better get comfortable.”

“Yes.”

He had known Lofoten lay a good distance from Narvik, across the sheltered waters leading into the fjords around the city, but had not counted on thirteen hours of further sailing simply to reach their hiding place. He checked his timepiece. They had slipped away from the Viking a little after 2000. It was now 2032. They would arrive at Narvik between 0900 and 1000.

He laughed, and Petersen looked at him.

“Caught myself worrying about landing in occupied territory in broad daylight.” He looked out the wheelhouse window. “Don’t have to worry too much about that.”

“No,” Petersen said.

After a moment, Petersen leaned away from the bulkhead and pulled on his peacoat, still sodden and until then steaming on a peg. “I have to see to my boat.” McKay nodded, and Petersen went out.

“I appreciate you picking us up,” McKay said to J?rgen. “Especially since it’s such a long haul.”

“No problem,” J?rgen said. His English was more heavily accented than his brother’s, but at this rate already more colloquial.

McKay sat, silent again. He was no good at smalltalk of any kind, and decided to give it up. He had much to say, but could hardly collect his thoughts. He at least felt normal again. The numbness, the wind, and the final shock of dropping toward the sea had had a druglike effect he had only felt in combat before. Everything had become horribly clear and sharp, but simultaneously confusing. He imagined the brain, drowning in adrenaline, had opened his senses to everything while making no provision for sorting the detail. Now, his brain fatigued, he had the blessing of distraction. He mostly watched the ice melt from the men’s eyebrows and caps. And he wondered, in one of his first coherent thoughts, why the Norwegians had been so late.