The Informer (Sabotage Group BB) (6 page)

“You don’t know?”

“There really aren’t that many people who knew about these two operations. It is only the inner circle. Myself, the woman on the phone, Jens—the man you overheard me having a conversation with yesterday in the church—and then another man. We all know the real identities of at least some of the others. It doesn’t add up.”

“What is the name of the woman on the telephone?”

“Alis K.”

“Is that her real name?”

“No.”

“Then what is her real name?”

“We don’t use real names. We only use our cover names, never the real names.”

“Do you know her real name?”

“Sure.”

“You’re not going to tell me?”

“It’s better if you don’t know.”

“What’s your cover name?”

“BB.”

“BB? What does that stand for?”

“Nothing. You can never tell anybody about
any
of this. Never ever. Promise me!”

“I’m your wife, Johannes. If you can’t trust me, who can you trust?” She finds two cups in the cabinet, placing them on the kitchen table. “Now, you sit down and tell me everything.”

“Everything?”

“When did it begin? What have you done? Everything.”

He sits down at the kitchen table, staring at his coffee cup. “It started last year. Jens was a police officer back then. He’d heard about the German plans to deport the Danish Jews to concentration camps in Poland, and he…came to me…”

“And you just said ‘yes’?”

“We could use the money.”

“Did you take money for saving the Jews?”

He sighs. “Sure. It was even quite expensive, but they had a lot of money, you know, and we did take a risk saving them.”

Pouring coffee into the cups, she goes to sit at the table herself, lifting an eyebrow.

“Jens knew a fisherman from Skane in Sweden who would anchor his boat on the coast near Charlottenlund up north. We saved the lives of a whole family that night. Children, parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, all sailed to safety in Sweden inside a little fisherman’s boat. Putting some pressure on the leader of a local smuggler gang, he made him lend us a small truck to transport the whole family of Jews to Charlottenlund.”

“Just the two of you?”

“No, there were four of us.”

“The other two were Alis K and that guy…you didn’t tell me his name?”

“Borge. No. It was another police officer and a porter from the state hospital.” He washes down the hot coffee, putting the cup down to touch his tongue. “I burned myself.”

She just stares at him. “Continue.”

“A few weeks went by, and Jens contacted me again. In the beginning, it was quite innocent, a guy from some resistance group needing to get away to safety in Sweden…that kind of thing. Later we started to blow up factories.”

“Have you killed anybody, Johannes?”

“Yes.”

“More than once?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my God.”

The kitchen is silent. You can hear the wind from outside. After a couple of long, quiet minutes, Johannes continues. “Just before Christmas last year, we were to sabotage a train for Norway carrying German weapons. The train was supposed to take the ferry from Elsinore, but the day before on the way to Elsinore, some wagons were to be detached at Svanemollen here in Copenhagen where the train would spend the night at a sidetrack. There were tanks, cannons, and different kinds of combat vehicles, all hidden under the green tarpaulins. We knew there would be guards, but …” Moving the empty coffee cup in circles, he looks at the lamp over the table. “We thought we would be able to outwit them.”

“I read about this in the newspaper,” Grete whispers. “Only two got away.”

“Jens and I.”

She takes his hand. “The porter from the state hospital and the other police officer …?”

“They died. Along with three other men who had joined our group. We were betrayed. The porter had told his girlfriend about the operation. They’d only just met each other. Jens shot her a week later.”

12

The darkness is complete and filled with strange noises. The wind bites through his clothes, numbing his ears.

Alis K sneaks up to monitor the street, pressing herself into the hedge as a motorcycle drives by.

Inside the garden, behind the hedge, Poul-Erik hides, his back against a tree. Shaking. The bark of the tree is rough and moist. The villa is a big, dark block in front of him. A car with a gas generator is parked in the driveway. He had never been to this part of the city before.

“Willy!” Alis K whispers. He follows her quietly out of the upper-class residential neighborhood, down dark side streets, through backyards, over wooden fences. He throws up in a basement shaft. Alis K lifts his head to look at him. “Are you okay?”

He nods.

“I think I’ll have to take you with me,” she says, half to herself. “You don’t look too good.”

Somewhere, a dog starts barking. She turns her head towards the sound. There’s a little blood under her nose. “Come on, I live just around the corner.”

Minutes later, Poul-Erik is sitting under a blanket on her big bed, holding a cup of warm tea in his hand. He is not shaking anymore.

Alis K has put her overcoat inside the wardrobe and is now inspecting her face in the mirror hanging over the small desk. The blackout curtains are stained by the steam from the cold windows. A fire is burning inside the small stove, but the room is still chilled. A red lamp is hanging from the wire under the ceiling. The walls are bare.

“Do you live here?” he asks.

“Sure do.” She dabs away the blood from under her nose with a piece of cotton. “We’re twelve girls living here in separate rooms along this corridor. It’s an old home for unmarried nurses.” She catches his eyes in the mirror and smiles. “Feeling better?”

He nods, but looks away.

She shakes her head, unwrapping her hair. “I couldn’t sleep for three days after my first kill.” She walks to him. “You’re my hero now. You saved my life.”

His face gets all warm, and he bows his head, looking down into his tea. “I was so afraid,” he mutters. “I was so afraid.”

“Do you mind unhooking my dress?” She turns her back to him. Putting the tea cup down on the floor, he finds the hooks. “Everybody gets afraid,” she says, as he fumbles with the hooks. “You shouldn’t think like that.”

“I wasn’t even aiming. I just lifted the pistol and fired.”

She pulls the dress over her head. She has goose bumps on her arms and legs. Her nipples are hard under the thin fabric of her bra.

“But you didn’t shoot me! Don’t waste your time thinking about it.” She takes the duvet from the bed, wraps it around her body. “Let me have a sip of that tea.”

Silence fills the room as she drinks. A door slams in the corridor. A woman laughs.

“Did you tell anybody about the hit tonight?” she asks.

“No.”

“Not a single word? Not even by mistake?”

“No.”

“What about the hit last night?”

“The
Super
garage?”

“Yes. Did you tell anybody?”

“No.”

“It was a setup. It was a trap. They were expecting us. In the van. They knew we were coming. Only we got there a little early and took them by surprise.” She pulls a bent pack of cigarettes out from under the mattress. Lights one. “We would be dead by now if it hadn’t been for the tailwind we had on the way out there.”

Poul-Erik turns to look at her. It is hard for him to believe that this is real, that he just shot and killed two people, that he is a member of the underground resistance, that he could be dead now, that he is sitting next to an almost naked woman.

“Smoke?” She hands him the cigarette. The duvet falls down, and one of her breasts is showing all too clearly through the thin fabric of her undergarment. Snatching the cigarette from her fingers, he turns away, pulling hard on the cigarette. He feels a tickling inside his pants.

“I had my first cigarette when I was five,” he says, making rings of smoke. “With my mother.”

“You’re so cute.” She caresses the back of his neck. “You just killed two Hipo pigs. You’re one of us now. That calls for a celebration.” She puts a hand beneath his blanket and starts to unbutton his pants. He sits there stiff as a poker, letting her do so. Unable to breathe. She slowly pulls his cock out of his pants. And then he comes. Making the blanket wet and sticky. And still he just sits there.

Alis K smiles. “You’re fast on the trigger tonight.”

“I’ve never been with a…” he mumbles, pulling hard on the cigarette.

“There’s a first time for everything,” she whispers, pushing him back on the bed. “Think you’re man enough to fire two rounds?”

***

Later, when he is lying on his back, letting his eyes follow the cracks in the ceiling, he can still feel the recoil from the pistol in his hand, still see the two Hipo fall every time he closes his eyes. But he is feeling relaxed in a strange way now.

Alis K is all dressed again. She seems kind of busy—sitting in front of the mirror, powdering her face.

“Who was the guy I should’ve shot?” He sits up, finding his shirt on the floor.

She goes to the wardrobe. Opening it, she pulls a tiny latch at the bottom. She takes a blurry photograph and a small note from the secret compartment and hands him both. The man on the photograph looks really big, maybe even two meters high. Large hands, blonde hair. Black uniform.

“That the guy?”

“Right.”

The note is covered in words written in pencil. The guy’s name and address. An order to kill him. His rank in the Hipo.

“Einar Hovgaard,” Poul-Erik reads out loud.

“A real bastard,” she says, fixing her hair. “Give it back to me.” She puts the picture and the note back inside the secret latch in the closet. Looks at her watch. “Get dressed, I’ve got an appointment coming up.”

“Are you my girlfriend now?”

She almost starts to laugh. “You wouldn’t want me as your girlfriend.”

“Why not?”

“Because.” She claps her hands. “Get moving.”

He gets dressed in a blur. Taking the pistol from the coat pocket, he hands it to her. “Thanks for lending me this.”

“Keep it. It’s yours. Hide it where nobody will find it. And now you really have to get moving.” She pushes him out in the hallway as the doorbell starts to ring. “You’ll have to go out the back.” She shoves him through the shared kitchen, pointing his way to the door and the back staircase. “Go that way!”

“Goodbye,” he says, but she is already gone down the corridor to get the door. Puzzled, he stares after her as she goes down the hallway to open the door. Exchanging a few words, she moves aside to let a man all dressed in black into the hallway.

Poul-Erik hurries down the stairs. Two steps at a time. Between the second and third floor a fat, tired and sweating maid comes up the staircase.

“Watch it, young man,” she says harshly. “Are you trying to scare the life out of me, rushing down the stairs like that?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, stepping to the side to let her pass him on the narrow staircase.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, sending him a suspicious glance. “There are criminals everywhere these days, you know. One might end up missing the police! Who would have thought that possible?”

“I have been paying a visit to the nurses on the fourth floor,” he answers politely.

The big maid lifts both her eyebrows and starts to laugh so hard her gigantic breasts almost spill out. “Well, you do look a little frail, my boy.” She pets his cheek. “Nurses? Ha! You are some character.”

She squeezes past him. He can still hear her laughing as he reaches the ground floor and goes out the back door.

He steals a bicycle and rides it downtown. Over Queen Louise’s Bridge, down Gothersgade. Into the slum. Home.

Leaving the bicycle by The King’s Garden, he walks the rest of the way. Afraid to go home. Scared they might see the difference in his face.

That he’s no longer the same.

13

Jens is gasping for air. Fighting his way out of the dream into a daze where echoes of the nightmare make him quiver; he is still hearing the sound of stomping boots. Covered in sweat. Clothes clinging to his body. He curses under his breath. Pulling the revolver out from under the pillow and releasing the safety, he runs the other hand over his face. Listening. Switching the safety back on, he slips the revolver back under the pillow.

“Just a nightmare,” he whispers to the dark inside the allotment house as he grabs the bottle of schnapps by the bed, unscrewing the cap to drink from the bottle.

The cold hits him nonetheless—makes him shiver in the sweaty clothes. He puts the bottle back under the bed and pulls up the covers. He sleeps fully dressed under two duvets and a couple of old, worn blankets. There is a small stove inside the allotment house, but he can’t risk making a fire. Smoke from the chimney of an allotment house at this time of year? He might as well put up a sign saying:
Something sneaky is going on right here, please contact the Gestapo immediately
. It would only be a matter of days before he was given a not-so-private berth in the Kz-Buchenwald. He would take the cold and freezing nights over that any day.