Billy Boyle (39 page)

I
T
WAS LIKE JUMPING
into a barrel of ice. I went in deeper than I thought I would, then struggled to the surface, my arms flailing, panic just about to take over. The freezing water shocked me and I gasped for air. The Atlantic was cold along the North Shore back home, even in July, but it wasn’t anywhere near the Arctic Circle, like this water.

I kicked my feet as hard as I could, surfaced, and began to swim toward a line of rocks that jutted out from the shore. I heard the single working engine of MTB 718 resonate through the water and glanced back to see it disappear into its own smoke screen. I felt alone, abandoned. I knew that was irrational, as this was my own plan, but now that it was happening I would’ve given anything to be back on that boat.

The cold went right to my bones. My teeth were chattering and I had to work to keep my limbs moving, to remember to make each stroke. It was easy enough to float, but it was hard work kicking with those heavy combat boots. I wasn’t making much progress, and I started to worry, thinking I was about to go under and stay under. I felt my heart rate go up and knew I was afraid, and that fear could take over and kill me. I had to get up onto the rocks. I forced my legs to kick for all I was worth. I was breathing pretty hard and swallowed a bunch of water. Gagging, teeth chattering, I kept kicking. If I stopped I knew that I would die here.

Finally, my arms hit an underwater rock a few yards out from the first outcropping of rocks. I let my feet down to see if I could touch bottom. I could stand, but the water was up to my nose. I bobbed along, trying to walk, bounce, and climb the slippery underwater slope. Grabbing onto a jagged piece of rock, I pulled myself up. Cold water ran off me as I stumbled and tripped along the line of rocks that led toward shore. I made it to a gravel-strewn beach and fell to my knees, taking in big gasps of air as I pulled off the life jacket. I felt dizzy. A shudder ran through my chilled body and I doubled over and threw up seawater, the salty taste mixing with bile, the foulness staying in my mouth. After a few minutes’ rest, I found a large flat rock that I could move. When I lifted it a few inches above the wet gravel, small crabs darted out. Just like playing at the beach back home. I stuffed the life jacket underneath it and let it down with a wet
thump
before sitting on it, my clothes soaked and cold against my skin, shivering, but alive.

Then I heard the crunch of boots on the shingle. I tried to open my coat to get at my .45 but my fingers were too numb to work the buttons. I was still fumbling with them when four men came around a large boulder. They were dressed like fishermen, except for the British Sten guns they carried. The first one said something to me in Norwegian. He sounded angry.

“I don’t speak Norwegian.”

“Napoleon,” another of them said slowly. That was the password. They were waiting for my response.

“Waterloo,” I said. Some of the tension left their faces. I stood.

“Why have you come now?” the English speaker demanded. “In daylight, with much shooting?”

“We had to—” I tried to explain.

They cut me off, speaking to each other in Norwegian. Their spokesman turned to me and said, “Is not good. We must go. Quickly.” They turned and walked off at a fast pace. I followed. Welcome to Norway.
Is not good.

They took me to a rowboat, stowed their guns in a burlap sack, and rowed me to another island, Hugla, about one mile south of Tomma. I blew on my hands to warm them, but it didn’t help. They were red and raw from my cold scramble over sharp rocks. The icy water dripped from my clothes, making a dirty gray pool beneath my seat. As we beached the rowboat, I heard the drone of engines. From the south, coming from the mainland, a flight of three Bf 110 twin-engine fighter-bombers flew over us toward the ocean.

“Is not good,” my new best friend in Norway repeated. “Is not good for boat. Not good.” He shook his head. I didn’t want to think about that boat right now.

“Cold,” I said. “I am cold. Not good. Understand?”

“Yes. Come.”

We walked across the pebble beach to a path that led through scrub brush, up over boulders and into a forest of small firs. A half hour later we were at a log cabin, at what was probably the highest point on the small island. The roof was covered with dirt, and moss, grass, and even some small fir trees grew from it. The cabin had a very narrow first floor, which was entered through a doorway above three granite steps in the middle of a rough-hewn pine-log wall facing a small clearing. The second floor was wider and jutted out over the bottom floor. The entrance led into a single room with a stairway and benches along the wall. I followed my rescuers upstairs and one of them got a fire going in the large stone fireplace. There were chairs and a table near the hearth. It was rustic but very comfortable, the kind of place that would have been great for a fishing vacation, if you weren’t being hunted by the Germans. From the single window I could see across to the mainland. The town of Nesna hugged the opposite shore, with steep mountains rising above it on two sides. There was an inlet—a fjord, I guess—that went past the town and vanished around a curve in the mountains. Fishing boats and other small craft went back and forth. It looked very peaceful. I knew looks could be deceiving.

Once the fire got going I undressed. They wrapped me in a blanket and sat me in front of the hearth. My clothes were hung to dry on wooden chairs they pushed close to the warmth.

“We sleep here, this night,” my talkative friend said. “Ferry to Nesna in the morning, yes? Is best.”

“Ferry is good?” I asked.

“No, ferry is not good,” he answered with what might have been a smile. Then he shrugged. “Is best.” He didn’t know many words of English, but the ones he knew, he seemed to know precisely.

They brought out bread, cheese, and dried fish. We ate in silence. We heard more planes overhead. They pointed out German patrol boats passing the island. I nodded.
Is not good,
I knew. It was nine o’clock at night and still bright outside. They kept the fire stoked to dry my clothes, and I stared into the flames, wondering. About Kaz, about Rolf, about Diana, her father, and Harry. About Uncle Ike and how I’d let him down, not even able to complete my first assignment without screwing up and disobeying orders. Hell, forging orders.

Finally the heat made me sleepy. There were wooden bed frames along the walls with feather mattresses on them. I flopped down on one and let my weariness take over. My last thought before I drifted off was that I didn’t want to dream. But I did.

There was smoke and fog, and Daphne was back. I couldn’t see her clearly and it was like slogging through molasses to get to her. We were on a boat and then we weren’t. It was all jumbled up. We were in a log cabin, then in my house back in Boston, in the kitchen. Daphne was sitting at the table, talking with Higgins. She looked up at me, placed a hand on Higgins’s arm, and said, “I didn’t ask for this, Billy. Why are you doing it?” Higgins looked up at me, too, a question forming on his lips. Thankfully, I woke up before he asked it. Or before I had to answer Daphne.

Two of the Norwegians were gone. The English speaker was still there. I tried to make conversation. “No names. No talk.” That was all I got. Well, I thought, they’re used to Englishmen, I can’t really blame them. He made some awful coffee and we ate bread and cheese. When I made a face after trying the coffee, they both laughed. “Ersatz.” The German word for a manufactured substitute for any item unavailable due to wartime shortages had become slang for anything fake. I didn’t ask what was in the brew.

There was a single knock at the door. They both grabbed their Sten guns and stood at the head of the stairs. A voice spoke to them in Norwegian. They answered and returned to the table frowning.

“No ferry today. Germans stop all boats. Search Nesna. Is not good.”

“Is not good for us?” I asked, wanting to know how serious this was.

“No. Good for us. Search Nesna for British fliers. Boat.…” He tried to think of the right words in English.

“The fliers the boat was to pick up?” I asked slowly.

“Yes. Boat not pick up.”

“How do the Germans know about the fliers?”

He shrugged. “Someone talk too much. Maybe they have boat crew. They talk too much. Maybe.”

“Why is it good for us?”

“Germans will find British fliers. Eight men too many to hide. Then they stop search. Then we go. Easy.”

“Easy is good,” I said.

“Yes! Easy is good!” He smiled as if pleased with a new way to say “is good.” I didn’t. I thought about eight bomber crewmen who were going to spend the rest of the war in a POW camp, in the service of justice. My justice.

We sat around after breakfast. I cleaned my .45 and dressed in dry clothes. That was the highlight of my day, until someone brought some more food, bottles of beer, and the news that the British fliers had been captured. The search was off. We drank a toast to our good fortune. For them, the war was over.
Is good for us.

We took the ferry the next morning. There were German sentries at the ferry landing, but they were inattentive. Probably all searched out. There were other fishermen and locals on the ferry and we didn’t attract any attention. We walked through town and up a steep road to a farmhouse. They stashed me in a hayloft, inside a long stone barn, above the cows. As hiding places go, I’d smelled better, but it was warm. My escorts brought me more bread and cheese from the house, and a bottle of apple juice.

“I must go fish,” my friend told me. “We go. Good luck.” We shook hands and he left me alone in the barn.

For the next four days, I was moved in small leaps westward, toward Leirfjord. Always by somebody different, sometimes through the woods, other times on the road, via horse cart or on foot. I didn’t see a single German. I didn’t make any more friends either, although one farmer lent me a razor and his wife heated water for a bath. That might have been in their own self-interest, though. Either way, it felt good. There was always enough to eat—plain food, usually dried fish, cheese, bread, a few eggs, and even butter. I walked so much that I sacked out easily enough each night, usually in a barn or a small cabin in the woods. Never in anybody’s home. They could always claim they didn’t know about the American gangster hiding in their barn, but if the Germans found me in a house, it meant a bullet in the head for the owners.

On the day before the planned meeting between Anders and Rolf, I found myself on a country road with an old Norwegian farm woman. Her horse cart was filled with milk cans, and we slowly clip-clopped through the town of Leirfjord before dawn, heading east. Without speaking a word, she pulled up on the reins and stopped her horse. She pointed in the direction of a well-worn dirt path that disappeared into a stand of pine trees. I got down, smiled, and waved. She shook her head and must’ve said “giddyup” in Norwegian, since the horse quickly started down the road. The creak of the wooden wheels, the sound of the empty metal milk cans clunking against each other, and the rhythmic sounds of the horses’ hooves faded as the road curved to the left, off into a deep pine forest. In a minute I was alone. It was quiet. I looked around. Green fields and meadows of wildflowers stretched out on either side of the road. Steep mountains rose up around the little valley. Pine forests climbed halfway up the mountains, then pale gray rock took over, jutting up into a beautiful clear blue sky with lazy white clouds drifting across it. The air smelled clean and fresh, the smell of the outdoors. A bird sang. I took a deep breath, turned, and began my hike up to the hut. To kill a man.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE

J
ENS
HAD SAID IT
would take an hour to reach the hut. Well, maybe for him, but we didn’t have mountains in Boston and I wasn’t used to this. I had to stop a few times and catch my breath. It was pretty steep, with lots of switchbacks and boulders to scramble over. After about two hours I spotted the hut up ahead. By my count it was July 21st and Rolf wasn’t due to show up until the next day. I decided to play it safe, in case Rolf was early or Anders was trigger-happy. I watched the place for a while. Finally I saw Anders emerge and go around to the side of the hut. He was dressed in civilian clothes, dark green pants with suspenders over a heavy gray shirt. A woodman’s work outfit. I began to hear the sound of an ax hitting hard wood; he was splitting firewood.

I walked up to the hut, watching each step, trying not to make a sound. I reached the door, still hearing the sound of the ax, and of pieces of wood falling into a pile of kindling. Another swing of the ax, and I stepped around the side of the hut, my arms outstretched to show I wasn’t a threat.

“Anders—”

I stopped. A revolver pointed square at my chest. The ax was sunk into a stump that had a pile of wood next to it. Anders stood behind the stump, facing me, with two hands gripping the gun, knees slightly bent, in a classic shooter’s pose. I had as much chance as a paper target at ten paces, if he fired.

“Anders, don’t shoot. It’s me, Billy.” He didn’t speak or relax. But he didn’t shoot either, so I figured I was ahead of the game. A quizzical expression replaced the grim look on his face, as he tried to take in what he was seeing and hearing.