The Last Pilgrim (2 page)

Division IV,
he thought. The G
estapo’s official name sounded innocent enough. So typically German to create a hell concealed by bureaucracy.

From farther up the valley came a powerful crash of thunder, unusual for late spring in Norway.

Kaj Holt carefully folded up the interrogation orders and put them back in his pocket. The heavy rain had already begun to soak through his uniform. He jogged toward the building in front of him, but instead of going inside he stopped on the steps under the eaves, wanting to postpone everything for a few more minutes. He fished out a Swedish cigarette from his breast pocket; soon almost everything he owned would be Swedish. The nicotine calmed him down, slowing his pulse, which had been pumping hard since he came through the gate.

Like a deluge,
Kaj Holt thought as he watched the torrents of water striking the hill and ricocheting back into the air, frothing and foaming. The sight reminded him that the Creator Himself had once wanted to drown them all for their sins, because no one, absolutely
no one
, was free of sin. Holt himself had killed people who still, even after it was all over, haunted him every night: young people, old people, parents, even a young mother who was only nineteen years old. Her baby had begun to scream as soon as Holt started down the stairs. He could still hear the crying through the flimsy door and down the stairwell; he could still see the baby lying alone in its crib, while the mother, still a child herself, lay in a pool of blood in the hall.

No one is free of guilt.

Isn’t that the truth?
he thought. He ought to jot it down on a scrap of paper and save it with all the other scraps he’d scribbled on over the last five years, saving them for what he imagined would become his memoirs, assuming anyone cared. If he even made it out alive—wasn’t that what he’d been thinking? And had he really left without taking all those notes with him? The thought hadn’t occurred to him until now. He had to get hold of those notes. He hadn’t planned that far ahead when he’d simply walked out on his wife and child and vanished out of their lives ten days ago, on the seventeenth of May too, the first Independence Day celebrated in freedom since 1939. He’d hidden the notes in a shoe box and put the box in an old “America trunk” full of discarded clothes in the attic of what had once been his home. And that was where all that stuff would remain if he never returned home.

Holt gave a start at the sudden sound of a jeep rounding the corner at terrific speed. It ground to a halt right in front of the stairs where he was standing. The young American driver leaned his head back, lost in his own world, as he chewed his gum.

When Kaj Holt had almost finished his cigarette, the door next to him opened. Two men stepped out and stopped short; they obviously hadn’t noticed the sudden change in the weather. One was American, a captain like Holt himself, and the other was in civvies. The civilian bumped into Holt as they passed and muttered “sorry” in Swedish. The American captain gave Holt a brusque nod before they went down the steps. The captain said “Get back in” when the driver jumped out to open the door on the passenger side. The civilian, who had a remarkably childish face, turned to give Holt a long look before he got in the car. A smile seemed to tug at his lips beneath the wet brim of his hat.

Holt watched the car as it vanished among the trees; he had a feeling he’d seen that childish face somewhere before.
No,
he thought. He must be imagining things. Usually he would have reacted to the fact that a Swedish civilian was here with an American officer, but today he thought no more about it. The liberation of Norway had created such chaos that almost nothing surprised him anymore.

He dropped the cigarette on the ground and turned around. The German imperial eagle above the wheel with the swastika inside was still imprinted on the wired glass of the entry door. The sight gave him a momentary jolt, and he stopped with his hand on the door handle.

The hair of the British lieutenant seated behind the improvised counter was thick, black, and shiny. He looked as if he’d sat behind a desk for the duration of the war and now had emerged to take over the country from the Germans. Beside him stood an armed British MP with a supercilious look on his face. The Englishmen had been here less than a month, but they acted like they owned the country, as did the Americans. He didn’t especially like the Yanks, but it was the English for whom he’d developed an odd distaste. They didn’t feel a need to proclaim to all the world that they were the victors—they just assumed everybody knew it. If anyone had told this to Kaj Holt just a few weeks ago—that he’d end up wishing the damned Brits would go home—well, he would have thought they were out of their minds. As crazy as a person got from lying mutely under the floorboards of a little girl’s room in an apartment on Valkyriegata in Oslo while listening to the Gestapo breathing across the room.

Holt pulled the interrogation orders out of his jacket pocket. A corner of the paper had gotten wet and ripped a bit. The British officer took the paper but kept his eyes fixed on Holt, as if he were some kind of idiot. Then he sighed in resignation and smoothed out the sheet of paper. Holt chewed on the insides of his cheeks, suppressing a stupid remark about the English. The lieutenant signed his initials and handed the orders back to him. A British MP corporal strode ahead of him down the basement stairs. A musty smell hovered over the dark basement corridor, causing Holt to gasp for air.

A young Milorg soldier was standing guard outside the room where Peter Waldhorst was being held. The young man snapped to attention, but Holt waved his hand dismissively, then grunted a few words to the corporal and watched him retreat the same way he had come. Holt turned around. The stairway at that end of the basement had been blocked off with wide, rough planks. He ran his hand through his hair and tried to ignore the fact that he was underground—confined in a dark, damp basement with only one way out—but the slight trembling of his hand gave him away.

He brushed past the Milorg youth and reached for the door handle. The light from the narrow basement window hurt his eyes, the stench assaulting him, and for a moment he couldn’t see what was in the room. After a few seconds he made out the contours of a man lying curled up in the corner by the window.

Holt stopped in the doorway, noting the surprise, even astonishment he felt at seeing a German lying on a rough concrete floor. He’d been beaten severely.

He glanced over at the young Milorg soldier, who was fiddling with the barrel of the Schmeisser MP 40 submachine gun he held in front of his chest. Holt noticed that his eyes had a panicked expression and his face was pale. The boy finally left, closing the door behind him.

When the German heard footsteps coming across the floor and drowning out the sound of the rain outside, he put his hands over his head, slowly. Clearly that was as fast as he could manage. One arm seemed to be painfully stiff. It was dark in the corner and hard to see clearly, but the German seemed to be weeping. Yep, no doubt about it.
You devil,
he thought.
You’re a damned bastard who deserves every single kick you get.
A moment later, his anger vanished, and Holt cursed himself for such thoughts.

“
Hauptsturmführer
Waldhorst?” he said quietly.

The German didn’t reply. He kept his hands over his head. If he covered his chest or groin, they would kick him in the head. And then he would definitely end up dead.

“Peter Waldhorst?”

A sound. A kind of yes.

“Möchten Sie nach Hause fahren?”
Holt asked.
Do you want to go home?

Peter Waldhorst gave a low laugh.

“I’m probably not going anywhere.”

“I have enough contacts to get you home,” said Holt. He wasn’t sure whether that was true. But Waldhorst didn’t have to know that. If the situation was bad enough, he would be shot.

Kaj Holt repeated the question that no one in Peter Waldhorst’s condition could resist.

“Do you want to go home?”

There was a long pause. The sound of the rain on the basement window had decreased somewhat, as though the clouds were about to lift.

“I have a little daughter,” said Waldhorst at last.

“Don’t we all have a little daughter?” said Holt.

“I’ve seen her only once.”

The rain began hammering on the little basement window again.

“Who are you?” Waldhorst asked.

Holt didn’t answer. The raw stench of the cellar threatened to overpower him for a few seconds, making him feel as though he were back under the floorboards on Valkyriegata. He dug his nails into his palm.

“Tell me who you are,” said Waldhorst again, this time in perfect Norwegian. Kaj Holt froze. For some reason he couldn’t stand hearing Germans speak Norwegian, especially when they spoke it as well as Waldhorst did. It was as if these Germans wanted to say, “We are like you, and you are like us, so let’s lay down our weapons and live as brothers.”

“Holt. Kaj Holt.”

Waldhorst made a sound.

“The man the angels protected,” he said in a low voice. “So that’s what you look like.”

Holt had heard that the Germans had nicknamed him the Angel. It didn’t matter. He didn’t believe in angels; he didn’t even believe in himself any longer. The Germans had tried to rip him apart for a week before they suddenly tossed him out on the street. Maybe someone was watching over him after all. Maybe he should have believed in something greater than himself. It didn’t matter anymore.

“Are you thirsty,
Hauptsturmführer
?”

“I can’t . . .” Waldhorst removed his hands from his face and spat a bloody clot onto the floor. “Drink . . .”

Holt went out into the hall. “Bring some water.” The Milorg soldier looked even more scared than he had a few minutes before. The sound of things breaking could be heard down the hall, behind a closed door. “Now!” Holt shouted, to snap the young man out of his unresponsive state. “And see if you can find some gauze bandages or a handkerchief, or some damn thing like that.”

Back in the room Holt fished a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He found two that weren’t soaked, lit one, and handed it to Waldhorst.

The German tried to raise himself up on his elbow, but gave up at once. His young face contorted in pain, but not a sound escaped his lips. Holt looked around the room. There were two chairs in one corner, one of which lay on its side due to a broken leg. Holt thought he ought to talk to the Red Cross representatives in the camp but quickly rejected that idea. Should he defend a German? A Gestapo officer?

He dragged over the chair that was still intact, pulled Peter Waldhorst up onto it, and stuck the cigarette between his lips. Waldhorst took a deep drag before he took out the cigarette with his left hand and touched two fingers to his bloody mouth. His right arm must have been dislocated or broken. Holt told himself to stop thinking about it. Waldhorst had only gotten what he deserved. He’d been given a good old-fashioned beating, and who hadn’t? The Germans had been no different. The first hours of an interrogation were nothing—if you didn’t know better, you’d almost think you’d wound up in some sort of coffee klatsch, but after a few hours of silence, they’d told Kaj Holt that his own mother wouldn’t recognize his body. “My mother’s dead,” he’d replied. That had made them as mad as rabid dogs. And now he stood here facing this young Gestapo officer, thinking what a waste it had all been. All those years, all the pain, his own meaningless survival. Holt had been tortured because a twist of fate had caused the Germans to mistake him for some other Resistance fighter. But torture wasn’t the worst of it. The worst thing was lying underneath the floor, as though in a coffin—a living corpse—unable to do anything but wait.

“So,” said Waldhorst, tossing his half-smoked cigarette to the floor. “Why are you being so friendly to me?”

Holt took the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket again, lit a new one off Waldhorst’s, and threw the butt on the rough concrete floor.

“As I understand it, you were in Oslo in 1940, right?”

“If you already know that, why do you ask?”

“I can’t find any documents confirming your presence there during that time. You worked in intelligence for the Abwehr?”

Holt interpreted Waldhorst’s grimace as confirmation.

“Who told you that?” Waldhorst asked.

“A man who’s not going to live much longer,” said Holt. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I stopped worrying a long time ago,” said Waldhorst.

“Well, if you don’t want to end up like him, I suggest you cooperate with me.”

The two men stared at each other for a long moment. Then Waldhorst shut his eyes and nodded.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” said Holt, taking a long drag on his cigarette. “And I think . . . you’re the only one who can help me with . . . this thing.”

“There’s always something a person can’t understand,” Waldhorst said softly.

“Autumn of ’42 . . .” Holt said, maybe more to himself than to
Hauptsturmführer
Waldhorst. Then he had to stop because his voice failed him for a moment. He cleared his throat once, then twice, but it didn’t help.

The two men stared at each other for what seemed an eternity.

“Not a good autumn,” Peter Waldhorst said at last.

Holt could see from Waldhorst’s expression that he knew what the question would be. And what the answer was. The mere thought of it was enough to make him weep. But not here, not now. What kind of a victor would he be if he started crying at the loser’s feet?

“We had a . . . serpent at our breast that fall, a traitor . . .” Holt said. “A young man named Gudbrand Svendstuen, I’m sure you know about that . . . but I think . . .”

He opened his mouth to ask the question, but then changed his mind.

“You think that Svendstuen was the wrong man?” Waldhorst asked, as if reading Holt’s mind.

Holt nodded.

“Was he?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Then I can’t help you either,” said Holt.