I Can't Begin to Tell You (31 page)

‘A banquet.’ There was a pause. ‘Eva, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to send you out to make contact with the man with the boat.’

‘Of course.’ She looked around for a place to stow the milk. ‘Is there anything else?’

‘Nothing for you.’

She was pale and there was a suggestion of sweat glistening on her upper lip which made him feel extremely guilty. He gave her the instructions.

When she had gone, he eased aside the net curtain at the window. The street was less busy than he expected. Not for the first time, he realized that something had happened to the Danish. They walked around with their heads down. A German motor convoy eased down the street. No one paid it much attention.

He massaged his arm. A river of pain flowed up and down it.

Would they get out? Had Arne given the message to Freya?

Flexing and bending, his trigger finger needed exercise.

Could they still rely on the fact that the Germans – who were quartered there, for God’s sake – apparently never noticed
Danish boats slipping in and alongside the rubbish dump on Amager island?

Was the contact trustworthy?

Go deep inside yourself. There are deep places on which to call, sonny
.

The net curtain dropped back into place.

He set himself to wait.

Later, having got themselves through København, Eva and Felix were met by a man dressed in a thick fisherman’s jersey and rubber boots at the entrance to the harbour. ‘Call me Jens.’ He hustled them into the shadow thrown by the old fort which dominated the harbour. ‘Listen, we have a hitch. There’s a U-boat on the other side of the harbour. Turned up out of the blue. It’s either damaged, or it’s resting up from an operation. Either way, we didn’t get the intelligence in time to warn you. We can’t do it. It’s too dangerous. You must go back.’

Eva gave a little gasp.

Felix looked at her. In the darkness of the summer night, fractured by the searchlights and the lights strung along the quays, she appeared insubstantial.

Denmark’s ghosts were sleeping, hidden beneath a passive, cowed, splintered nation. He was going to do his best to wake them. He had also to look after Freya’s daughter.

With his good hand, Felix grasped at Jens’s jersey. ‘We’re going.’

‘Take your hands off me.’ Jens stepped back. He scuffed his rubber boot along the stones. After a moment, he said, ‘It’ll cost you.’

‘Fine,’ said Felix. ‘But we’re going. Do you understand?’

The tactic worked. Jens nodded, and handed over two navy wool balaclavas. ‘Put them on.’

An ominous breeze tugged at the pennants and Felix prayed it wouldn’t get any stronger.

Surefooted and silent, Jens led them through the network of crates, bales and canvas bags that littered the quay and halted
by a couple of trolleys stacked with boxes. ‘Sit behind those until we get the signal.’

The three of them crouched down.

The wind battered at the rigging, and the sea slapped against the stone quay.

Felix backed himself against a hawser coiled up by one of the trolleys, which gave him some support.

Jens licked his finger and held it up to the wind. ‘Stay here. Don’t move or say anything. Wait for the signal then make for the
Ulla Baden
over there.’

He padded back down the quay and they were alone.

Eva took hold of Felix’s good hand and placed her mouth against his ear. ‘There’s the
Ulla Baden
.’ She pointed to a fishing vessel moored almost directly in front of them. It was a no-nonsense-looking vessel which, no doubt, had done sturdy service.

Her breath filtered through the balaclava onto his cheek, and the fingers resting in his were damp. He held them fast. ‘
Lort!
She’s small.’

‘Bad sailor?’

‘’Fraid so.’

‘You’re no Dane.’

He managed a grin. ‘Hit a man when he’s down.’

Again, he heard her chuckle. She consulted her watch. ‘Two and a half minutes between each sweep of the searchlight. Is that going to be enough for you?’

‘Like I said, hit a man when he’s down.’

After an hour or so, the wind backed around and its full force hit them. Felix’s balaclava tasted of salt and the wool was stiff with it. Despite the late hour, it was still just light enough to make out the shapes of the boats in the harbour. Eva was pressed up close to him. ‘Storm,’ he said into her ear. ‘Just our luck.’

They sat out the waiting, listening to the waves rolling beside the quay, water slapping against fenders, the sighing and creaking of the pontoons as they bobbed up and down.

The
searchlight swept the quays. Round, dip, round …

It was after midnight when their contact zigzagged silently towards them. Stopping beside the trolleys, Jens pretended to check over a pile of fishing tackle close by. ‘Listen up. When a light shows on the
Ulla
, you run to her one at a time and the captain will hide you in the hold where the catch is put. He’ll pile the nets on top of you. A warning: it’s small.’

He dumped the tackle on top of the hawsers and vanished into the murk.

Crouching, tensed, they readied themselves. One minute. Two minutes. Five, six … ‘Get on with it,’ Felix growled. The searchlight directed its blinding arc down onto the quay and away, leaving pitch black behind.

At last, a pinpoint of light glowed on the
Ulla Baden
, and Eva was up and away.

Felix poised on the balls of his feet.

Again, the signal. He launched himself across the slippery stones, up the gangplank and onto the boat. His good elbow was seized and he was pushed down into the hold.

It was tiny, barely ten foot square, smelling of – oh God – rotten guts, fish and blood. This was no joke. Above their heads, a man issued a rapid command. Within seconds, the nets were piled on top and the hatch battened down.

The water slapped at the side of the boat. Felix retched noisily.

‘You can’t be sick yet,’ said Eva.

‘Yes, I can.’

Suddenly, there was noise: booted feet slapping onto the stones and running up the gangplank. Felix grabbed Eva’s arm.

Footsteps trampled the deck above them. These were followed by the skitter and patter of dogs’ paws.

Felix closed his eyes:
This is it, then
. Tension replaced his nausea. Eva clung to his good hand. He pulled her to him, buried his face in her neck and smelled flowers and spring and sun. All the things to live for.

Try
to keep silent for forty-eight hours if taken
.

‘If they get you, feed them as little as you can manage,’ he whispered, passing on the STS advice. ‘Tell them that I abducted you.’

But the dogs didn’t bark. Instead, they appeared to be running around in circles. Orders were issued. A bucket banged down. The wind sang through the ship’s rigging. There was a babble of male voices, orders in German.

Eva’s body moved within his clasp. He felt the curve of her waist and the slight swell of her hip. He felt that she belonged there and, even more curious, that he knew her, through and through. For the first time in his life, he experienced terror for someone other than himself, someone he wanted to protect.

If Eva was taken …? How would she have any idea of the protocols of interrogation? The games played by the interrogator? The techniques? Their objectives? The methodical deconstruction of an agent’s mind and body? Starvation. Darkness. Freezing temperatures. All the persuasive methods which were oh-so-creative.

He shuddered.

Eva pressed closer.

More orders in German. Again, a symphony of heavy boots. A voice screamed, ‘Go, go!’ to the dogs. The dogs whimpered and whined.

‘What are you doing?’ barked a voice with a German accent. ‘Who is he?’

There was a mutter. A scuffle. An oath.

‘Get off me, you bastard,’ screamed someone in Danish.

‘Your papers,’ roared the German voice. ‘Open the lockers.’

The skipper shouted in Danish: ‘This is my ship.’

‘Open the hatches.’

Eva’s nails dug into his hand. The lid was removed from the hatch above them. A tiny streak of light percolated down through the nets as something prodded at them.

Felix and Eva shrank back against the walls.

Jab.

Jab.

The dogs’ paws clicked on the wooden deck.

There was a whimper. A second. Then, nothing more.

The lid was shoved back onto the hatch.

To Felix’s astonishment, the only voices they could now hear were not German.

Engines wheezed into life. Orders were now being issued in Danish. ‘Cast off.’

The boat slipped its moorings and nosed out of the harbour. Immediately, a swell caught it up, slamming them from side to side.

‘This is hell.’ Felix tried not to groan as he retched into a tin he’d found rolling on the floor. ‘Don’t you dare laugh.’

‘Would I?’

At the best of times a smallish fishing boat on the Kattegat or Øresund was a hostage to fortune. With a wind, it was Thor’s plaything.

Felix spent the next hour or so heaving up his guts. Fetid already, the air in the tiny space turned rancid, but he was past caring. After a while, Eva prised the tin out of his grip and held it for him. That took something. Every so often she dabbed at his face with a handkerchief. That took something, too, given that he stank of vomit and infected wound.

‘Felix?’ Her voice was almost drowned out by the sea. ‘I’ve decided. When we get to Sweden, I’m coming with you to London.’

With difficulty, he raised his head. ‘No, you aren’t.’

‘I’m going to offer to work like you do.’

‘It’s too dangerous,’ he said.

‘That’s for me to decide.’

His thoughts were moving slowly. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

‘I know enough,’ she said urgently. ‘I know that we have to do something. It took me a bit of time, but I’ve got there in the end.’

She
was whispering this into his ear and he longed to gather her up. ‘It’s too big a risk. Stay quietly in Sweden until it’s all over. Then you can go back to your family.’

‘I’m ashamed that my mother got there first.’

Another spasm hit him. He was being dragged down into overwhelming weakness and despair.

Arms went round him. ‘Lean on me.’

‘I’m too disgusting.’

‘You
must
.’

Her cheek was against his, like a gentle pillow.

Do not go into death without remembering the things that matter. Do not go brutalized.

Memories he would never forget: Eva cradling him in the cottage; her semi-nakedness and the snatched, intimate glimpse of her femininity; her laughter in the drainage pipe; her embrace amidst the stink and offal; this moment.

No, he would not go brutalized.

She was his saviour, the other half of his soul. Greek philosophers wrote about that, the
eros
and
agape
. Sacred and divine.

He was gasping for air and for some respite.

‘Felix, this is my fault,’ Eva whispered. ‘You must forgive me.’

‘I want you to live,’ he said. ‘
Please
.’

The second’s silence which elapsed felt breathless.

‘And you, too, Felix.’

At last, the hatch was opened and he found himself downing great lungfuls of fresh air.

The skipper, a great bear of a man, stuck his head inside. ‘We’ve been blown off course and shipped water. Get up here and start bailing.’

‘How far are we from Swedish waters?’

‘Close. But there’s a minefield.’

Shivering, Felix wedged himself into the bow and bailed like there was no tomorrow. The water hissed past them and, every so often, he was drenched by a wave. Eva was up there with
him. Soaked to the skin, her hair plastered over her shoulders, she looked like a fallen angel and bailed like a navvy.

Jabbing a thumb in the direction of the hold, she grinned broadly. He understood her exhilaration and the pleasure of release because he felt it, too.

An ancient beret crammed down on his head, the mate was busy in the chart room. Every so often he poked out his head to take a look at the stars. On deck, the lookouts clung to the rails, scanning the waters.

‘Mine to port,’ screamed one. ‘Now.’

The skipper swung the wheel and the boat lurched to starboard.

There was an agonizing wait. Eva had dropped her bailer and hung over the side.

‘Get back,’ he yelled.

She straightened up. ‘Phew! That was close. The mine was this far away.’ She held up her hands and, incredibly, she was grinning.

Felix liked that, too. ‘Idiot,’ he said.

The
Ulla Baden
swung about and headed north, weaving and tacking as the lookouts called out warnings. An hour or so later the wind dropped to a breeze. Then it was gone. A faint, shadowy line of land appeared on the horizon. Out of the clear dawn sky, a couple of enemy planes rose like gulls.

The sight of them triggered hot anger in Felix. He hadn’t survived the fish hold just to die from a German fighter’s strafe.

‘Get down below,’ he called to Eva.

But she stopped, frozen, mid-deck.

The skipper shouted: ‘Run up the German ensign.’

On board there was a collective intake of breath before a frantic burst of activity got the ensign flapping at the top of the mast. The planes roared towards them, dipped their wings in salute and flew by.

Felix lurched over to Eva, who had sunk down onto the
deck. ‘In future, do as you’re told.’ Fury and fright made him extra brusque.

She huddled over and dropped her face onto her bent knees. Her shoulders shook.

‘Eva …’

‘This is my fault.’ She lifted a pale, tear-stained face. ‘I thought I knew my country, but I didn’t.
Mor
warned me people did strange things in war. But a doctor …’

He sat down beside her and used his good thumb to blot a tear. ‘I’m grateful, and your regrets are touching. But you’re not going to help by getting killed. Nor by going over and over what happened. That’s one of the things to learn. Regrets waste energy.’

‘But think of the people I’ve put in danger. My mother.’

‘You’re having a reaction to having been in danger,’ he said.