I Can't Begin to Tell You (22 page)

She forgot her wavering, confused politics, the fears for her
mother, her
anger
with her mother, the plans for the future.
What future?
Just for those moments nothing mattered except this stranger’s lips on hers. Nothing at all.

She could tell that he was taken aback.

For the first time, his smile was genuine. ‘Sorry about this but you’ll have to kiss me again.’

Better. Much better. When it was over, she murmured: ‘Who are you and why are you seeing my mother?’

‘Do you imagine I am going to tell you?’ His mouth rested by her ear.

She drew back in order to look into his eyes – as intently as a true lover.

Felix locked his gaze with hers. ‘Not bad.’ He kissed the base of her neck – and a sweet and wild music struck up in Tanne’s head. ‘We have to get out of here. Put your arm round me.’

Tanne got to her feet, pulled Felix upright and said gaily: ‘Let’s go,
elskede
.’

Entwined, they left the café and walked down the street. At the junction, Felix halted. ‘Sorry about that. I thought I had shaken off the tails.’

She kept her arm round Felix. ‘I don’t know anything about you, or where you come from. Certainly not your name. But please tell me what’s happening.’

He placed his hands on her shoulders. ‘Listen to me. Do not get tangled in this. Do not.’

How strange. Her mother had talked of the step by step. The tiny incremental changes. Of the waters washing over the head.

Recklessness, a wanton exhilarated recklessness, had Tanne in its grip. She reached up and kissed Felix again on the lips. ‘But I am.’

The dentist’s surgery off the Strøget, København’s main pedestrian street, had the advantage of a basement room, plus a door opening into the garden where a couple of scrubby laurel bushes offered sanctuary to the birds recovering from the winter.

Wearing headphones, Kay crouched over a dummy transmitter key, her finger tensed so tightly that the joint had whitened. With her was ‘Johan’, an employee of Bang & Olufsen, who was instructing her in the mysteries of Morse. A burly, balding, middle-aged man, with an unhealthy mottled complexion and customarily wearing a jacket and frayed bow tie which had seen better days, he was a good, patient teacher.

She had been at it for several weeks. It was now April and the learning process hadn’t been easy.

The room was crammed with dentist materials: small boxes of cement, a discarded hand drill, mouthwash and, arranged on the shelves, row on row of plaster-of-Paris denture moulds. Every so often Kay looked up and encountered their macabre grins.

Upstairs, the dentist’s drill stopped and started.

Dot dash dash, Freya tapped: W.

The drill fell silent. Johan held up his hand. They had agreed it was safer to wait for its whining cover.

Kay slipped the headphones round her neck. ‘I’m sorry I’m not a natural, Johan.’

‘I’ve had worse, my dear.’

The flutter and whirr of the birds busying themselves in the laurels was, she decided, delightfully reassuring.

The gnat-like whine recommenced. ‘Go,’ said Johan.

Replacing
the headphones, Kay reapplied herself to the transmitter key. With a grinding effort, she translated another letter into dash dot dot dash: X. This was followed by dash dot dash dash.

‘Y … good,’ said Johan, ‘and now Z.’

Dash dash dot dot.

‘Not so bad,’ was the verdict.

She felt as exhausted as if she had run a race. ‘It was dreadful.’

Being versed and skilled, Johan could have been superior about Kay’s stumbling progress. But, natural teacher as he was, he offered up useful pointers instead. ‘Listen to the sound combinations, as you would do to music.’

‘And I thought I was musical.’

Kay tried to stand up but Johan pushed her down. ‘The only way forward is to keep going.’

She laughed and reapplied herself.

‘Listen for the melody of the letter rather than counting the dits and dahs,’ he said, tapping out air-rhythms. ‘The human brain learns a language much more easily when meaning is attached to the sounds. Without it, the brain has no handles to make that attachment. So … if you take the letter D in Morse, it might be more readily remembered as “dog did it” instead of “dash dot dot”. Imagine a picture of your favourite dog and, hey presto, the symbol becomes part of the mental furniture.’

A figure slipped through the garden and let itself into the room.

‘Felix.’

‘Johan.’

Kay did not look up.

He observed Kay’s halting efforts. ‘Progress?’ he asked.

Johan leaned over Freya and adjusted her keying finger into a more natural arc. ‘By and large, yes.’

Kay finally met Felix’s eyes. ‘I’m trying,’ she said.

Despite
looking grim, Felix flashed a smile. ‘We got you the best instructor in the country.’

Kay redoubled her efforts while Felix and Johan exchanged the latest information on the progress of the new, portable wireless sets which were being secretly developed.

‘It’s risky, really risky,’ said Johan. ‘We are forced to keep moving locations and it’s difficult to transport and hide the components. But when we’re done,’ he said, with justifiable pride, ‘you’ll be able to carry a set in something as small as a briefcase.’

‘Any idea when?’ Felix eased into a chair. ‘God, I’m stiff.’

Johan shrugged. ‘Who knows? Tell the Nazis to go home and I could do it tomorrow.’

‘I’ll have to give London some sort of steer.’

‘Oh, London …’ Johan’s tone was becoming familiar to Kay – that of the Dane who didn’t much care for British interference. ‘Word has it they’re hostile to us training our own radio operators here. Tell them from me to stuff it, and tell them we need the crystals. Soon.’ He sighed. ‘Before soon.’

Oh, London
… Kay’s instinct was to spring to its defence, but she kept quiet.

Johan picked up a briefcase which was stuffed with papers. At the door, he turned and said to Felix, ‘We do
need
the crystals.’

After he had gone, Felix slumped back in the chair and closed his eyes.

‘Are you all right?’ Kay touched his shoulder.

His eyes flicked open. ‘We need guns, we need explosives, we need money and recruits …’ He grabbed her arm. ‘And getting them depends on this fragile wrist tapping out the messages.’ He ran a finger over the junction where the veins rose over the swell of the thumb. ‘And mine.’

Felix’s guard was down. Kay rubbed her keying finger, which had swollen. ‘Is it something in particular?’

Various
expressions chased over his features, mostly caustic. ‘It’s a piece of cake to run an underground network.’

Kay had never seen this side of Felix. Was he frightened? Exhausted? Or, God forbid, ill? ‘Talk to me. I’m here.’

He stared out into the garden. ‘Sweet of you, Freya. But I can’t tell you anything you don’t need to know.’

‘They must have discussed with you in London that the mind can only take so much stress?’ She was sounding very maternal. ‘You’re under appalling strain.’

‘I’ll manage, but thank you.’

How much could one person cope with on his own? It was a question which, no doubt, she would explore.

‘Actually,’ she said. ‘I want to ask a favour. Would it be possible to get a letter out to Sweden, where it could be posted on?’

‘Probably.’

‘It’s my mother. She’ll be worrying and I want to reassure her. She’s quite elderly and not in good health. If she died … What I mean is that I don’t want her to die without hearing that I’m fine.’

‘What will you say?’

Would she tell her secrets to her mother … about Bror? Felix? Bloody Morse code?

My Darling Mother,

I hope above everything that you and the sisters are well. I have no idea where you are but I imagine you are at home.

This is to tell you that we are all well. Would you believe it, life is almost normal and the war has hardly touched us? In fact, we have had parliamentary elections so democracy is alive and well here. Bror is busy with the house and the estate. I help him as much as I can. Tanne is here with us, but goes to and from Copenhagen to see her friends. Nils is busy with his research at the university. So, you see, our life under the Germans is boring and uneventful …

I think of you often …

‘You
won’t mention that the Germans have imposed the death sentence for sabotage?’

‘No.’

‘Or the suicide of a wireless operator, one of ours, when
Danish
police tried to capture him?’

‘No.’

‘Or that the election was a complete farce and we now have a puppet government?’

‘Isn’t truth the first casualty of war?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ll do what I can.’

Kay picked up her bag. It was happening slowly but their minds were beginning to mesh. She had become better at anticipating what was needed, at understanding the disciplines and demands of deceiving on a grand level. It was a question of perception, and the way her mind worked these days was changing. For one thing, she knew lies were necessary. So was questioning every move. Whom did one trust? Where were the safety nets and the escape routes?

Reaching for her lipstick, she made up her lips. ‘Have I smeared any?’

‘It’s perfect.’ Felix barely glanced at her, and mooched over to the door. ‘Did I ever tell you I saw a photograph of you in the paper when I was hiding? After I first came in.’

‘That must have cheered you.’

‘You were wearing a lot of jewels at some function.’

‘Ah, the jewels.’ She put the lid back on the lipstick and dropped it into her bag. ‘I’ll be wearing those tomorrow. It’s the dinner for the Knights of the Silver Sword.’

‘Grown men dressing up?’

‘The women are dressed up, too.’ His reaction amused Kay. ‘A lot of people who matter will be there. Also some Germans. What should I be listening out for?’

‘Troop movements.’ Felix snapped to attention and explained that intelligence was revealing the Germans had a big problem. Hydro-electric power sites were being sabotaged daily by the
Resistance all over the Reich, so they were forced to rely on aluminium to get their electricity. ‘But they need bauxite to make aluminium and guess where that comes from?’

Kay knew that. ‘Norway.’

‘So, anything about ship and troop movements which would indicate where it might be coming in,’ he said. ‘You never know, Jacob might get lucky and be allowed to blow it all sky high.’ He laughed – but not with any humour.

The sound shivered down her spine. It was getting to Felix: the anxiety, the paranoia, the simple fact that you stood a good chance of not being there the next day.

‘Something
is
wrong. I’m not leaving until we have it out.’ She pointed to the grinning plaster casts. ‘Deaf as posts.’

Her new assertiveness was pleasing to Kay but she also cared about Felix. Caring would make her vulnerable but there were limits to an agent’s detachment.

‘The agent on Jutland. The drinking one. We talked about him before.’

‘It’s still going on?’

Felix looked grim. ‘He promised his leader that he would reform. He did for a while. But he’s back on the booze and it’s got the better of him. Reports have come in that the stupid bugger was overheard boasting about his training.’

‘It must be so hard,’ she said. ‘To know yourself.’

‘You watch them –’ Felix spoke more to himself than to Kay ‘– they watch you. Day after day, week after week, it’s cat and mouse. At first the body takes the brunt of the strain … aches, indigestion, stiffness, the need for a drink. Then the mind begins to play tricks. Holed up, you think you’re safe. There is a knock on the door, a bullet’s crack. They take someone else and your nerves snap with terror and … a terrible thankfulness. It isn’t you this time. But next time?’

There was a silence and her thoughts went this way and that.

The need for a drink
…

‘How did London miss it?’ she asked.

He
shrugged. ‘It happens. No one can predict what life in the field will do to you.’

‘Get him out to Sweden.’

He looked at her as if she didn’t know what she was talking about – which she didn’t. ‘Try persuading a full-grown recalcitrant drunk to do what he doesn’t want to do. So …’

What exactly?

Reading what was written on his face, she felt a hard, sharp shock. ‘We can’t do that …’ She noted she used ‘we’. ‘That’s not justice. I mean due process.’

Before the words left her lips, she knew they were redundant.

Therein lay another, less specified, kind of danger.

‘We’re not in the playground, Freya.’

‘We are fighting this war so we don’t end up like the murderers and thugs, too. You can’t put us on the same level.’

He cut through. ‘This is war, Freya. You want to live. I want to live … and we could all end up dead. The point is that we might have to do things that put us on a level with them. It’s debatable, morally speaking, but simple in practical terms. Who do you want to survive? Them? Or us?’

She thought about London and the little she knew about Felix’s organization. Putting together a bunch of tricks, training agents, parachuting in weapons, planning sabotage, recruiting an army to create a resistance with bite … was it possible for London to understand what it entailed? Not really. It was Felix, she and the others who were the here-and-now … the watchers, the doers. Yes, even she, grafted-on Dane – Tanne’s words – as she was.

‘Did you think like this before … in the other life?’

‘Of course not. Stupid question.’

He sounded sad.

‘Then we can’t do what I think you’re thinking,’ Kay said.

‘It’s him or us. Probably. You want to survive, don’t you?’

Yes
, yes
.

It
was as if she was physically stepping over a line. And she knew she could never go back. ‘What can I do?’

He barely moved a muscle but she knew he was relieved.

‘Contact Jacob. Tell him Holger Danske must act. That’s all you need say.’

She had one last stab. ‘And if I don’t?’

‘Then …’ He was almost tender. ‘You’re no use to me, Freya.’

She turned away and encountered a grinning plaster-of-Paris upper and lower jaw that was out of alignment.

‘I’d have to kill you, too.’

Joke.

Footsteps could be heard clattering down the stairwell. In a flash, Kay had packed the dummy transmitter key into a box labelled Periodontal Extractor. She pushed Felix into a chair. ‘Open your mouth,’ she whispered. ‘Pretend you’re a patient.’

But it was Lars, the dentist. He put his head round the door and said, ‘The lookouts are signalling trouble. Get out the back.’

They fled.

The Knights of the Silver Sword held two dinners a year, in spring and autumn. The order dated from the Middle Ages and the reasons for its founding had almost certainly been forgotten by the influential guests who were there solely to promote their own interests. Some years back, Bror had been elected onto the committee, pleasing him greatly. He never missed a dinner and Kay was expected to be on his arm.

It involved dressing up, which – however democratically minded they were – the Danes liked to do. White tie, medals, long gowns, jewels … the lot.

A couple of days previously, Bror had cornered Kay at Rosenlund. ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Of course.’

They hadn’t spoken properly for weeks – only the necessary exchanges of information and detail for day-to-day arrange
ments. Bror remained in the spare room. A great silence lay between them.

‘The dinner,’ he said.

She scanned his face. Blue, stormy eyes. ‘I’d rather not come this year,’ she said.

‘You will, Kay.’ She raised an eyebrow and he modulated his tone. ‘Please. Whatever is happening, whatever you decide, I ask you to be there.’