I Can't Begin to Tell You (30 page)

That was nothing.

It was impossible to tell Bror that Kay would never forgive herself.

A little while later they were in the dining room making a pretence of eating. From the lakeside, the barking of the dogs increased to maddened frenzy.

She glanced at Bror. As she had instructed, he was eating steadily, but with a heightened colour.

Thank God the Gottfrieds had gone. With piercing gratitude she thought again of Anton’s forethought. No telephone meant they would be out of contact.

The barking reached a crescendo, followed by gunshots.

‘Oh my God …’ Kay couldn’t help herself.

She closed her eyes and felt the blood drain from her face. When she opened them, Bror was staring at her.

‘Are you all right?’

She shrugged. ‘You know I never like to hear guns going off.’

‘This is a manhunt, Kay,’ said Bror – and she detected a menace which she had not heard before. ‘Think about it.’

Silence fell. Bror had lit up his post-breakfast cigarette when Sergeant Wulf shuffled into the dining room.

‘I’m so sorry … I’m so sorry …’

A drumming mounted in Kay’s ears, and her head swam.

Bror rose to his feet. ‘What is it, Wulf?’

Wulf had gone a pale green colour. ‘Your dogs,’ he said. ‘They’ve been shot. By mistake.’

Bror was on his feet roaring with anguish and anger. ‘My dogs … my dogs.’

Refer pain on. Or divert it
.

Had those STS instructors ever experienced pain? Of course they had. Some of them were tough to the point of inhumanity, and a couple had operated in China in terrible conditions. No, the answer was that you, the sufferer, had to find your own individual way through pain.

He had dealt with it.

He seemed to have been dreaming a great deal, especially in the cottage. Colourful fantasies which he imagined were the result of his fever. At a point when he felt as if his body was melting with heat, he dreamed a woman was bathing his face. Freya? Then he realized he was being tended to by a younger version.

‘Name?’ he’d muttered. ‘But not your real name.’

‘What would you like it to be?’

Man and woman … Adam and Eve …

‘Eva,’ he said.

She pushed back a mane of hair. ‘Eva, it is.’

It was Eva bathing his face and lying beside him. Or was that a dream, too? One memory was clear enough. It was of Eva sitting bolt upright, with her hair tumbling over her shoulders. She had taken off her trousers and put them under his head as a pillow. Underneath she wore wide-legged knickers and he caught sight of the top of her thigh, a red stain and a suggestion of blonde hair. The sight worked powerfully on him but not in the way he would have expected. It had made him feel unbearably, awkwardly tender – and protective.

Perhaps it was lust, which Felix welcomed. Despite the state
he was in, he wanted to feel lust, satiation, hope – all the things that proved you were alive.

Eva had brought him food and water, but he wasn’t sure when. A strawberry? Honey? He recollected her telling him that her parents were giving dinner to a German general and his wife, and that she was supposed to be up at the house entertaining them.

At first, he had reckoned she was joking.

The night was a terrible one. Very early, he had managed to manoeuvre himself upright and move over to the window to keep watch. Eva was sleeping, curled gracefully on one side.

Tousled blonde hair, a strong chin, long limbs … it was a sight to make him feel better. When she woke, she rolled over, looked up at Felix in a puzzled way and reached for her trousers. When she was dressed, she felt his forehead and made him take more painkillers and drink a mug of water.

It was then she’d confessed her misgivings about Dr Hansen.

Someone was shaking Felix and he awoke with a groan.

It was Eva. ‘Get up. The police and the SS have arrived at the house. They’re hunting you, and want to talk to me.’

In a flash, he was on his feet. Pain sliced through his arm, followed by a wave of nausea. The blood drained from his head. He swayed and fell against the wall. Eva pushed his head down on his chest. He gagged, and bile and saliva dripped onto his shirt.

At last he managed to ask: ‘Do they know who they’re looking for exactly?’

‘A man with an injured arm.’

‘The doctor?’

‘Stop talking, Felix. Freya … Freya says to leave the wireless set.’

Christ.
The wireless
. His head felt as if someone had taken an axe to it and his mouth was as rough as a quarry. ‘Have they got dogs?’

‘Yes.’

Fieldcraft. The hunters would use something of Eva’s for the scent.

‘Is there a river or a ditch near here?’

‘Yes.’

All at once, he felt steadier. Propping himself against the wall, he said, ‘You’re in it now, Eva. Be prepared. We’ll have to get out of Denmark. We must get ourselves to the harbour at Gilleleje and make contact with Sven. If we pay him enough he’ll take us across to Helsingborg.’

Eva was moving around the room, smoothing away signs of recent occupation. She attempted a joke: ‘So that’s easy, then.’

‘Not quite. The Germans have laid minefields in the Sound and the Allies have dropped magnetic mines. Between them, they are giving the fishermen grief. So he might not be too keen. But he might be persuaded to transfer us to a boat just inside Swedish waters. Could be tricky, boarding in a bad sea. You’d have to climb a ladder.’

‘Do I look as though I can’t?’ She sounded almost offended. ‘Well, I’ve heard the Swedes are opening up the bonded warehouses and whoever goes in can help themselves. Everyone gets disgustingly drunk.’ She picked up the bottle of water and handed it to him. ‘Meanwhile, here’s an alternative.’

She bundled up the blankets. There was nowhere to store them and she looked questioningly at Felix.

‘They’ll have our scent on them – we’ll have to take them with us and get rid of them somewhere.’

Together, they left the cottage and headed for the tree cover.

It was hard going. The nausea came and went and his legs felt like putty. The adrenalin should kick in eventually but, until then, he concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other.

Press the heel down, follow it with the toe.

Have we forgotten anything? There is something missing …

Don’t think about the arm.

Referred pain.

At
the road, he made Eva stop while still under the tree cover. ‘Which way?’

She pointed to a large field in the distance. ‘Big drainage ditch at one end. With a drainage pipe.’

‘We’ll make for that.’

The drainage pipe was only just big enough, but they crawled into it. The bottom was an inch or so deep in water but they had no choice other than to lie in it.

‘Could be worse,’ said Eva.

Quiet
.

Stay absolutely quiet.

Some time later Felix checked his watch but the dial swam in and out of focus.

‘Eva, how long have we been in here?’

Her voice sifted back to him. ‘A couple of hours?’

Freya may be in danger.

‘You know you can’t go back?’

She took her time to answer. ‘I know.’

‘I meant you cannot go back to the house.’

‘I know. I’m coming with you to Sweden.’

There was a lilt in her voice, an excitement. Unbelievably, their hiding place was filled with a wildly inappropriate gaiety that tore at his conscience. Eva was Freya’s daughter, a responsibility that he had never envisaged and did not want. Yet here she was, jammed into a drainage pipe with her head up against his feet.

They were silent. After a while, she asked, ‘Felix, how are you feeling?’

‘Terrific,’ he answered. ‘I love having a shot-up arm.’

He heard her laugh.

‘There’s a message from my mother which I must tell you in case we split up.’ There was a pause. ‘I must this get this right. This General Gottfried is Abwehr and commands the signals unit but
Mor
thinks he’s got a long finger in Intelligence, too. Does that make sense?’

‘Yes,
it does.’

‘Listen, resistance in the Aarhus area is getting torn up by the Gestapo, who are using the university as a headquarters. There’re reports that Gestapo archives are being stored there. She says to tell London that the archives need to be destroyed.’

‘Simple,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll get on the phone to the British RAF.’

‘Can you remember that?’ She nudged his foot gently. ‘I’ll remember it for you, if not. Oh, I almost forgot – she said something about vinegar, but I didn’t understand what she meant.’

Felix dropped his head onto his good arm. Jumbled images chased through his mind …

The containers from the drop. Are they still sitting in the wood? Who checked?

I must manage my arm.

Messages? How to contact London?

Freya says that a general may be running one of our wireless sets.

Mustard is wiped off plate.

Kill him. Kill Erik, too.

Their blood is on my hands.

Vinegar? Were they running him?

Organize. Talk to the communists. Talk to the nationalists. Stockpile arms and explosives. Fashion an underground army out of a population who prefer it to be quieter.

Which wireless is being run?

Stop talking.

Do something.

I wish I didn’t feel so sick.

Crazy, it’s all crazy …

He dozed.

Prodded awake by the cold and damp, he realized that important political and military considerations required his attention. Item: how was Denmark going to manoeuvre itself out of the reach of the Third Reich? Item: were the communists
going to be the ones who called the shots? Item: when would the Allies come? Item: how was he going to survive?

The war was too big. How could a bunch of resisters possibly imagine they could create a running sore in Hitler’s hide? Certainly not he – powerless and wounded – a Dane dreaming of victory but only running on the spot.

Denmark. What was it doing to itself?

‘Eva, you’re in danger.’

‘So?’ She actually chuckled.

‘Are you very wet?’

‘Soaking. But I’ve never felt better.’ Her hand rested on his ankle, an infinitely comforting contact.

He licked his bottom lip and squared up to his weakness. ‘I don’t think I’ll make Gilleleje at the moment. So, change of plan. We’ll head for the rubbish dump at Amager harbour. We can get a boat from there.’

‘Amager! That’s in the middle of København.’

‘That’s the point,’ said Felix with a touch of smugness. ‘Under the nose of the enemy. They would never expect it so they wouldn’t look for it. You’d be surprised. Quite a lot of people traffic goes in and out. We’ll have to hide up in København while we make the contacts.’

‘And you get your strength back.’

‘That, too.’ He gave her the address of a safe house, and made her repeat it twice.

Eventually, Eva said: ‘I can’t hear any dogs. I’m going to get help.’

He felt a deep reluctance to let her go, fearing the absence of her physical warmth in their inhospitable lair. More worryingly, at this moment of profound frailty, he didn’t want to be alone.

The training had taught him that weaknesses would surface at just this point and he had been warned of their insidious effects.

But you put your head down, sonny, and tread on through
.

He
concentrated on planning the next move.

Yet again, he fell into a doze, and woke to find Eva crouched down by the entrance to the pipe. ‘Felix, get up. I’ve got Arne with the pony trap. He’s going to take us to the station at Vallø. We’re too well known at Køge.’

He snapped into wariness. ‘Who’s Arne?’

‘I trust him with my life.
Come on
.’

He emerged to find that she had changed into trousers and a jacket. A bag was slung over her shoulder and her hair was brushed, her mouth lipsticked. She held out a pair of workman’s overalls. ‘I’m going to help you into these.’

He was stiff from his incarceration and his arm was awkward. ‘How long have you been gone?’

‘An hour or so. They seem to have given up and driven back into town.’

‘They’ll be watching. You went back to the house?’

‘If I can’t get back into Rosenlund without anyone noticing,’ she was helping to fasten the overalls, ‘then I don’t deserve to inherit it. We needed clothes and money, and I needed to look tidier.’

She was right.

He remembered something important. ‘
Lort!
The pistol.’

Every bloody rule of training … broken.

‘Aren’t we better without it? If we are caught with it … ?’

He summoned his energies. ‘That’s one way of looking at it.’

Arne was waiting with the trap on the road. Felix gave him the once-over. A big man with greying hair, he had the air of someone accustomed to taking charge. Prudently, he avoided looking at Felix.

‘You’re to lie down in the back,’ said Eva. ‘Oh, wait.’ She produced a bottle of schnapps out of the bag, unscrewed the top and sprinkled him with it. ‘Just so you know, you’re drunk. Try to act it.’

Slumped in the back, he spent the journey nursing his arm.
At one point, he overheard Eva say, ‘Tell my mother I’m fine. Tell her not to worry.’

There was the bass note of Arne’s reply that Felix could not make out. Eva replied, ‘How can I thank you?’

Just before Vallø, they ran into a roadblock, manned by a couple of Danish policemen. Arne brought the cart to a halt.

The younger-looking, more nervous-looking one of the pair stepped forward. The weapon in his belt had a dull gleam. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Taking this man home,’ replied Eva. ‘He’s supposed to have been working for us but has proved … unreliable.’

‘Where?’

‘Slotskro. His wife is waiting.’ Eva was deliciously charming and polite. The policeman’s eyes travelled from Eva to Felix.

Eva looked at her watch. ‘I’m going to be late.’

A hint of steel crept into her voice which Felix could only admire: it suggested that she was not used to obstacles being put in her way.

It worked.

The policeman stood back and they were on their way. The castle, surrounded by cobblestone streets and houses painted in yellows and ochres, came into view. Beyond these lay the station and, once there, he knew the watching and the waiting would begin in earnest.

He was frightened and hated to admit it. Yet he was determined to savour these last moments of fresh air and to fight his weakness. Remember, remember the point of what they were doing – which was to get his country out of its mess. As they trotted past the gardens rustling with trees and plants, the message written in his fear and pain was: We must not fail.

So be it if he died.

They travelled in separate train compartments and in København Felix went on ahead. Check right, left. Don’t hurry. Stay
upright. It was strange, but he felt safer in the city, even in a debilitated state.

The safe house which he made for had been a doctor’s surgery before the war and the doctor’s brass plaque was still screwed into the gate. Inside, it was similar to many of the abandoned houses, with an air of despair and neglect. In this one, though, there was evidence the doctor had prospered for there were several pieces of good antique furniture and a handsome eighteenth-century French clock.

He was tempted to wind it up. It would have seemed right – a gesture of defiance.

Not long afterwards, Eva arrived. She dumped packages on the kitchen table. ‘Bread, butter and milk. Couldn’t get any cheese, but I got hold of some sausage. The milk looks terrible. All watered down.’