Hornet Flight (17 page)

“We were at university together.” Gammel's voice was even, but there was just the suggestion of fear in his eyes.

Peter glanced at Tilde, and she gave a slight nod. She, too, had seen something in Gammel's reaction.

Peter looked again at the diary. There was no address for Kirke, but
beside the phone number was a capital
N,
written uncharacteristically small. “What does this mean—the letter
N?
” Peter said.

“Naestved. It's his number at Naestved.”

“What's his other number?”

“He doesn't have another.”

“So why do you need the annotation?”

“To tell you the truth, I don't remember,” Gammel said, showing irritation.

It might have been true. On the other hand,
N
might stand for Nightwatchman.

Peter said, “What does he do for a living?”

“Pilot.”

“With whom?”

“The army.”

“Ah.” Peter had speculated that the Nightwatchmen might be army people, because of their name and because they were accurate observers of military details. “At which base?”

“Vodal.”

“I thought you said he was at Naestved.”

“It's nearby.”

“It's twenty miles away.”

“Well, that's how I remember it.”

Peter nodded thoughtfully, then said to Conrad, “Arrest this lying prick.”

The search of Ingemar Gammel's apartment was disappointing. Peter found nothing of interest: no code book, no subversive literature, no weapons. He concluded that Gammel must be a minor figure in the spy ring, one whose role was simply to make observations and report them to a central contact. That key man would compile the messages and send them to England. But who was the pivotal figure? Peter hoped it might be Poul Kirke.

Before driving the fifty miles to the flying school at Vodal where Poul Kirke was stationed, Peter spent an hour at home with his wife, Inge. As he fed her apple-and-honey sandwiches in tiny squares, he found himself daydreaming about domestic life with Tilde Jespersen. He imagined himself watching Tilde getting ready to go out in the evening—washing her hair and drying it vigorously with a towel, sitting at the dressing table in her underwear polishing her nails, looking in the mirror as she tied a silk scarf around her neck. He realized he was yearning to be with a woman who could do things for herself.

He had to stop thinking this way. He was a married man. The fact that a man's wife was sick did not provide an excuse for adultery. Tilde was a colleague and a friend, and she should never be any more to him than that.

Feeling restless and discontented, he turned on the radio and listened to the news while he waited for the evening nurse to arrive. The British had launched a new attack in North Africa, crossing the Egyptian border into Libya with a tank division in an attempt to relieve the besieged city of Tobruk. It sounded like a major operation, though the censored Danish radio station naturally predicted that German antitank guns would decimate the British forces.

The phone rang, and Peter crossed the room to pick it up.

“Allan Forslund here, Traffic Division.” Forslund was the officer dealing with Finn Jonk, the drunk driver who had crashed into Peter's car. “The trial has just ended.”

“What happened?”

“Jonk got six months.”

“Six
months
?”

“I'm sorry—”

Peter's vision blurred. He felt he was going to fall over, and he put a hand on the wall to steady himself. “For destroying my wife's mind and ruining my life? Six months?”

“The judge said he had already suffered torment and he would have to live with the guilt for the rest of his life.”

“That's shit!”

“I know.”

“I thought the prosecution was going to ask for a severe sentence.”

“We did. But Jonk's lawyer was very persuasive. Said the boy has stopped drinking, rides around on a bicycle, is studying to be an architect—”

“Anyone can say that.”

“I know.”

“I don't accept this! I refuse to accept it!”

“Nothing we can do—”

“Like hell there isn't.”

“Peter, don't take any hasty action.”

Peter tried to calm himself. “Of course I won't.”

“Are you alone?”

“I'm going back to work in a few minutes.”

“So long as you have someone to talk to.”

“Yes. Thanks for calling, Allan.”

“I'm very sorry we didn't do better.”

“Not your fault. A slick lawyer and a stupid judge. We've seen that before.” Peter hung up. He had forced himself to sound calm, but he was boiling. If Jonk had been at large he might have sought him out and killed him—but the kid was safe in jail, if only for a few months. He thought of finding the lawyer, arresting him on a pretext, and beating the shit out of him; but he knew he would not do it. The lawyer had not broken any laws.

He looked at Inge. She was sitting where he had left her, watching him blank-faced, waiting for him to continue feeding her. He noticed that some of the chewed apple had dribbled from her mouth onto the bodice of her dress. She was not normally a messy eater, despite her condition. Before the accident she had been extraordinarily fastidious about her appearance. Seeing her with food on her chin and stains on her clothing suddenly made him want to weep.

He was saved by the doorbell. He pulled himself together rapidly and answered it. The nurse had arrived at the same time as Bent Conrad, who had come to pick him up for the journey to Vodal. He shrugged on his jacket and left the nurse to clean Inge up.

They went in two cars, standard black police Buicks. Peter thought the army might put obstacles in his way, so he had asked General Braun to detail a German officer to impose authority if necessary, and a Major Schwarz from Braun's staff was in the lead car.

The journey took an hour and a half. Schwarz smoked a large cigar, filling the car with fumes. Peter tried not to think about the outrageously light sentence on Finn Jonk. He might need his wits about him at the air base, and he did not want his judgment to be skewed by rage. He tried to smother his blazing fury, but it smoldered on under a blanket of false calm, stinging his eyes with its smoke, like Schwarz's cigar.

Vodal was a grass airfield with a scatter of low buildings along one side. Security was light—it was only a training school, so nothing remotely secret went on here—and a single guard at the gate casually waved them through without asking their business. Half a dozen Tiger Moths were parked in a line, like birds on a fence. There were also some gliders and two Messerschmitt Me-109s.

As Peter got out of the car, he saw Arne Olufsen, his boyhood rival from Sande, sauntering across the car park in his smart brown army uniform. The sour taste of resentment came into Peter's mouth.

Peter and Arne had been friends, all through childhood, until the quarrel between their families twelve years ago. It had started when Axel Flemming, Peter's father, had been accused of tax fraud. Axel felt the prosecution was outrageous: he had only done what everyone else did, and understated his profits by inflating his costs. He had been convicted, and had to pay a hefty fine on top of all the back tax.

He had persuaded his friends and neighbors to see the case as an argument about an accounting technicality, rather than an accusation of dishonesty. Then Pastor Olufsen had intervened.

There was a church rule that any member who committed a crime should be “read out,” or expelled from the congregation. The offender could rejoin the following Sunday, if he wished, but for one week he was an outsider. The procedure was not invoked for trivial crimes such as speeding, and Axel had argued that his transgression fell into that category. Pastor Olufsen thought otherwise.

This humiliation had been much worse for Axel than the fine with which the court had punished him. His name had been read to the congregation, he had been obliged to leave his place and sit at the back of the church throughout the service, and to complete his mortification the
pastor had preached a sermon on the text “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.”

Peter winced every time he remembered it. Axel was proud of his position as a successful businessman and community leader, and there could be no greater punishment for him than to lose the respect of his neighbors. It had been torture to Peter to see his father publicly reprimanded by a pompous, self-righteous prig like Olufsen. He believed his father had deserved the fine, but not the humiliation in church. He had sworn then that if any member of the Olufsen family ever transgressed, there would be no mercy.

He hardly dared to hope that Arne was involved in the spy ring. That would be a sweet revenge.

Arne caught his eye. “Peter!” He looked surprised, but not afraid.

“Is this where you work?” Peter said.

“When there's any work to do.” Arne was as debonair and relaxed as ever. If he had anything to feel guilty about, he was concealing it well.

“Of course, you're a pilot.”

“This is a training school, but we don't have many pupils. More to the point, what are you doing here?” Arne glanced at the major in German uniform standing behind Peter. “Is there a dangerous outbreak of littering? Or has someone been cycling after dark without lights?”

Peter did not find Arne's raillery very funny. “Routine investigation,” he replied shortly. “Where will I find your commanding officer?”

Arne pointed to one of the low buildings. “Base headquarters. You need Squadron Leader Renthe.”

Peter left him and went into the building. Renthe was a lanky man with a bristly moustache and a sour expression. Peter introduced himself and said, “I'm here to interview one of your men, a Flight Lieutenant Poul Kirke.”

The squadron leader looked pointedly at Major Schwarz and said, “What's the problem?”

The reply
None of your damn business
sprang to Peter's lips, but he was resolved to be calm, so he told a polite lie. “He's been dealing in stolen property.”

“When military personnel are
suspected
of crimes, we prefer to investigate the matter ourselves.”

“Of course you do. However . . .” He moved a hand in the direction of Schwarz. “Our German friends want the police to deal with it, so your
preferences
are irrelevant. Is Kirke on the base at this moment?”

“He happens to be flying.”

Peter raised his eyebrows. “I thought your planes were grounded.”

“As a rule, yes, but there are exceptions. We're expecting a visit from a Luftwaffe group tomorrow, and they want to be taken up in our training aircraft, so we have permission to do test flights today to make sure the aircraft are in readiness. Kirke should land in a few minutes.”

“I'll search his quarters meanwhile. Where does he bed down?”

Renthe hesitated, then answered reluctantly. “Dormitory A, at the far end of the runway.”

“Does he have an office, or a locker, or anywhere else he might keep things?”

“He has a small office three doors along this corridor.”

“I'll start there. Tilde, come with me. Conrad, go out to the airfield to meet Kirke when he comes back—I don't want him to slip away. Dresler and Ellegard, search Dormitory A. Squadron Leader, thank you for your help . . .” Peter saw the commander's eyes stray to the phone on the desk, and added, “Don't make any phone calls for the next few minutes. If you were to warn anyone that we're on our way, that would constitute obstruction of justice. I'd have to throw you in jail, and that wouldn't do the army's reputation much good, would it?”

Renthe made no reply.

Peter, Tilde, and Schwarz went along the corridor to a door marked “Chief Flying Instructor.” A desk and a filing cabinet were squeezed into a small room with no windows. Peter and Tilde began to search and Schwarz lit another cigar. The filing cabinet contained pupil records. Peter and Tilde patiently looked at every sheet of paper. The little room was airless, and Tilde's elusive perfume was lost in Schwarz's cigar smoke.