Dark Full of Enemies(51)

“The Germans on the path spotted us somehow—I do not know how, it was so dark—and fired at us. But we ran into the trees and made our way down to the fjord. The boat was waiting. Lars—the captain—had come round to shore immediately he heard the shooting. We boarded and escaped. All but one of us, you see.”

McKay’s stomach knotted. No story in which a man was lost ever ended well. He thought of Guadalcanal, of missing men rediscovered days later, tortured and mutilated by the Japanese…

“God,” he said.

“The Germans had shot one of our men, the youngest of us. Gunnar was his name. Keener’s team had hidden in his family’s home before the attack. Only when we were returning on the boat did we find him missing. The Germans caught him.”

“Then what?”

He did not need to ask—he could have guessed.

Petersen waved a hand. “I don’t know. They tortured him, probably. The Gestapo. The Gestapo were involved, I know, but no more. They had him, they had Keener and his squad—however many of them survived—and there was no hope of… of anything. Of rescuing them, or helping them escape. Nothing.”

Petersen said no more for a while. McKay thought of Keener—bright, enthusiastic Keener, the perfect recruiter, who had found him in hospital with malaria and a wound only beginning to close into a scar. He thought of mountaineering with him, of being caught by an afternoon thunderstorm on the open rock of Rabun Bald. Keener had insisted they never attempt a climb again without consulting a barometer. He thought of Keener, who disliked Stallings but remained a friend, at least until Stallings’s end. Keener, probably dead.

“How well did you know this Keener?”

“We went to college together. Us and Stallings—the radio man.”

“I see.”

“I’m sorry about your man Gunnar. I know what that’s like.”

Petersen looked at him. The eyes had frozen again, hardened almost to stone. His next question came flat, barely audible above the Hardr?de’s engine and the creak of the wheel as J?rgen gently piloted them up the fjord. “You have lost men before?”

“Yes.”

“In battle?”

McKay thought of the Canal, Edson’s Ridge. “Yes.”

Something new edged Petersen’s voice. “And your family—have you lost family.”

“No.”

Petersen moved quickly, sprung from where he leaned against the bulkhead and struck out across the wheelhouse, opened the door, and began to climb down. “Follow me.”

McKay, after a moment, did.

Petersen led him to the bow of the boat. They stood in the dark and cold for a time as the mountain shores moved past. McKay felt his tiredness again, as a distraction. His eyes burned, his brow knitted until his head ached. His body numbed at the joints, as if trying to force him to a position of rest. He grew angry again—Petersen was trying to tell him something, dammit—and fought the exhaustion. He could sleep again when they had returned to Grettisstad, and once he had constructed and detailed a plan.

Petersen pointed to one dark wall hemming the fjord. “There.”

McKay looked into the dark and saw. Petersen pointed at the ruins they had passed on their way to the dam. Suddenly, McKay knew.

“That is Hallensnes, Gunnar’s village. Look at it.”

McKay did. He could not look away.

“Gunnar was my sister’s son, my nephew. When the Germans captured him, they tortured him—I assume, you see, but it is a safe assumption. He was a boy in civilian clothing, caught fighting with American commandos in civilian clothing. You know what the Germans do to those they capture so?”

“Yes.”

“When the Nazis came, I was captured. They released me, told me to go and be a fisherman again. Forget fighting. But I and others sailed across the sea to fight. You know about this—the men in Shetland.”

“Yes. We came from there.”

“I was a leader in that. The Nazis knew but could not stop us. They did not know who we were. So they came to Lofoten. They burned down houses, sank boats, and sent men to the camps, whether they were guilty or not. And the Allies did nothing. In the south the Nazis did the same. They destroyed an entire village, killed the men and sent the rest into the camps. Still I led, I sailed back and forth and risked everything. Three months ago the English came in one of their bombing raids, and they bombed and sank a cargo ship, a Norwegian ship, clearly marked. They killed some Germans, yes, but also fifty Norwegians. Why? After that I nearly gave up hope, but then Keener came, and I continued as I had—I led. Which brings us here.”

McKay looked at the ruins of Hallensnes, still fire-blackened and sooty despite the frail shroud of snow.

“Well,” Petersen said, “after they captured him they found where Gunnar lived, and where Keener and his men had got shelter before their raid. They came two days after the raid, the two Gestapo men—Flesch, one of Terboven’s men, sent up from the south just to oversee this case, and F?nger, both Nazi pigs. They brought soldiers from Narvik and even some of the dam’s soldiers.

“They gathered everyone in the village in the square before the church, then separated the men, all men above fifteen. They turned their lorries on them to provide light. The soldiers from the dam went down the line to see if they could identify other criminals, as they said. They could not—of course. But the Gestapo did not need to do this. It was a cruel game. They knew who Gunnar’s family were and while all the people of the village stood in the snow in the square, the Gestapo searched Gunnar’s house. They found what they needed to.”