The Unlikely Allies (17 page)

She climbed down the ladder and went back into the house to get dinner started. Thirty minutes later when Eva came in, she told her the bad news about Dunkirk.

“I know. It’s a bad day for France—and for the world.”

“Can nothing stop the Germans, Eva?”

“They will be stopped, but it will take time.” She had a worried look on her face. “We’ve got to get Sigrid out of here before she gets arrested for her writing.”

“Do you have any ideas?” Mallory asked as she cut potatoes into chunks. “Can I be of any help?”

“I don’t think there’s anything you can do. Rolf and Nils have a plan to take her to Sweden.”

“But Nils is only sixteen.”

“When there’s a war going on, a sixteen-year-old is a man, Mallory. Boys have to grow up quickly these days.”

“What a tragedy! He’s losing his youth.”

“We are losing everything, but our day will come.”

Mallory lit the burner under the pan of potatoes. “I moved all of my radio equipment out to the barn.” Mallory went on to explain what she had done.

“That was a good idea! We’ll be using that radio a lot.”

****

Four days after Mallory had moved the radio, a squad of four privates led by a huge, hulking sergeant searched the house. They roughly shoved Eva and Mallory aside as the sergeant directed the men to search everywhere. “Turn up anything you can find that’s against the Third Reich. We’ll hold these women responsible for whatever you find!” He came over and put his hand on Eva’s shoulder.

She slapped it away and turned to put her back against the wall. “Don’t you touch me!”

The sergeant laughed. “Well, aren’t you the high and mighty one! Maybe I’ll come back later and you and I can talk about it.”

The soldiers made a wreck of the house, and at one point the sergeant started to put his hands on Mallory, but she rebuffed him angrily. “You’re brave, aren’t you, with two women?”

“I’m a good man with women.” The sergeant winked.

Again he attempted to put his arm around Mallory, and she snapped, “Maybe I’ll have to report you to the American authorities.”

“American authorities? What do we care about them?” The sergeant’s round red face grew stern. “Do you have a radio in this house?”

“Yes, I do,” Mallory answered at once.

“Get it.”

Eva stared at her, but Mallory, followed by the sergeant, went to her bedroom and picked up a small receiving set she’d had for a long time.

“Radios are illegal,” the man barked. “Do you have any more radios in this house?”

Mallory was glad he had added
in this house,
for now she could honestly say, “No. There’s nothing like that.”

After the soldiers had left, Eva said, “It’s a good thing you hid the rest of your equipment. You’re good with radios, and we need help.”

“What can I do, Eva?”

“Lars and I are going to lead the resistance here in Oslo. We’re going to need to contact England often. Agents need to come here, and we have to get information out.” She collapsed onto the sofa. “None of us are good with such things.”

Mallory sat down beside her but did not speak for a moment.

“Of course, this is not your country.”

“It’s not that, Eva. I-I’m just not sure what to do anymore. Let me pray about it.”

“Pray quickly.”

“I will. Is there any news about Sigrid?”

“No. It will be difficult for her to escape. They have thrown up more guards around Oslo and all up and down the Swedish border. It’ll be awfully risky. They will all be shot if they’re caught. You know that.”

“I know. But it mustn’t happen.”

“It can happen, though. It’s already happening all over Norway. They’re
taking hostages and shooting them without trials.”

****

For several days Mallory struggled with the question of whether or not to help with the resistance. She had learned to love this country and the people in it, but she had not been able to reconcile serving in the resistance, which could mean violence. She firmly believed that her call was still to preach the Gospel to the Lapps. The problem perplexed her, and she prayed long and hard without arriving at a definite answer.

Finally she said one evening at supper, “I can’t decide what to do about helping you with the radio, but, Lars, I can train you to use it.”

“I am not good with such things,” he said. “Actually none of us in the group are. Mechanical things are difficult for us.”

“That’s true,” Eva agreed, “and you even make your own radio sets.” The solution Mallory had offered did not seem practical.

Mallory was preparing for bed that night when suddenly she heard voices in the living room. She put on her robe and went out to find Rolf speaking hurriedly with Lars and Eva. “Did you get Sigrid away all right?” Mallory asked. “I’m so glad you’re back.” The hard look on Rolf’s face made her ask, “What’s wrong, Rolf?”

“The Germans almost caught us.” His voice was spare, and anger glowed in his eyes. “We got Sigrid into Sweden, but coming back, we ran into a patrol. I got away, but they caught Nils.” He looked up to the ceiling and exhaled loudly. “He’s going to be shot in the morning, Mallory.”

“Oh no!” she whispered. “He’s only a boy.”

“They’re going to shoot him all the same.” Rolf quickly left the room but not before Mallory had seen tears glistening in his eyes. She turned to face Eva and Lars, who stood silently before her. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

“There’s no way to save him,” Lars said, his voice as hard as granite. “We’ll do the only thing we can.”

“What is that?”

“The Germans are going to make a public spectacle out of it. We’ll get as many people as we can to go.”

“You mean to witness the execution?”

Eva said in a tense voice, “It’s the only way we have to say good-bye to Nils.”

****

The square where the execution was to take place was filled. Lieutenant Stahl had arrived at the center court, where the firing squad was already drawn up. He looked around at the crowd and said, “I didn’t expect all these people here.”

“It’s good for them,” Colonel Ritter answered. “Apparently, the boy was popular. It will teach them that they can’t defy us.”

“Have your men ready. There could be trouble.”

“No, Colonel, they’ve got better sense than to attack us.”

Mallory stood across the courtyard beside Eva and Lars. Her head felt strangely light. She could not believe that the young boy so full of life and fun was going to die in a few moments.

“Bring the prisoner forward!” Colonel Ritter’s voice bellowed, and a thick silence fell over the crowd.

Mallory dropped her head, not wanting to watch, but Lars said, “We must honor Nils and let him know that he’s giving his life for his country.”

“He’s a Christian,” Eva said. “You know that. So he’s going to be with his God.”

Forcing herself to look up, Mallory saw a squad of six soldiers bringing Nils out of the building down the street. They had to half carry him, and she heard Lars say bitterly, “They tortured him! He can’t even stand up!”

“Tortured him? Why?” Mallory wailed.

“To try to make him tell who was with him, to give our
names. He must not have talked, or we’d be under arrest right now.”

Mallory watched as they tied Nils to a post. She heard Stahl ask him if he wanted a blindfold, but he said no.

Nils’s voice was weak, but he held his head up. As he looked around, he saw the massive crowd that had gathered, and despite his plight, he suddenly smiled.

The soldiers who had tied him up moved away, and Stahl ordered, “Firing squad, take your positions!”

Stahl had no sooner spoken than a woman started singing the national anthem of Norway in a powerful operatic voice. Instantly hundreds of voices joined in, filling the bright, sunshiny air of May with song.

Mallory joined in, and despite the grief she felt, a strain of pride came to her for these people.

Ritter shouted, “Quiet! Lieutenant, stop them!”

Stahl marched back and forth screaming until his face grew red, but he could not make himself heard.

Finally in a rage, he turned and caught Ritter’s nod. “Ready!” he screamed at the firing squad.

The voices in the crowd broke off as the rifles were aimed, and then Mallory heard Lars cry out loudly, “God be with you, Nils!”

“Aim!” Stahl cried out.

And then, with tears running down her cheeks, Mallory stared at the face of the young man. His face was pale, but he suddenly smiled and cried out in a loud, strong voice, “God bless Norway—Jesus Christ is Lord!”

“Fire!”

Mallory dropped her eyes so she would not see the bullets strike, but silence fell over the crowd, and then another voice cried out, “God bless Norway!”

As others took up the cry, Ritter shouted, “Disperse these people, Lieutenant!”

The crowd turned and began to leave as the soldiers approached, shoving those who hesitated.

As Mallory stumbled away, she felt Lars take her arm to steady her. She looked up at him and said, “I want to be part of the resistance, Lars. Just tell me what to do.”

Lars’s grip tightened on her arm, but his face, which was dark with the scene he had just witnessed, said, “You might end up like Nils, Mallory.”

She shook her head. “I must help in this work.” She looked back over her shoulder at the awful scene. “Maybe that’s one reason God brought me here to Norway.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Agent in Place

The Germans continued to sweep through France, and as they did, Mallory gave herself to the task of becoming an expert in radio communications. She was already skilled in the basics, but once she had made contact with England, she had to learn the codes that the resistance organization used. Information could never be given in common, ordinary language, for the Germans closely monitored the shortwave messages that could come from the resistance. They also monitored those that the resistance received that came from England and other places.

The codes were relatively simple, and Mallory mastered them quickly, winning the admiration of Lars, who shook his head with amazement. “I could not do that in a hundred years.”

One Thursday morning Eva and Mallory spent over an hour in the makeshift radio room. They made the effort to disguise the room even better so that anyone sticking his head up into the loft would think the space contained nothing more than a jumbled mass of old furniture and junk. They had enlarged the room itself so that it was spacious enough to hold three or four people comfortably, and from the window, they could see the road so that any Germans approaching could be quickly identified. After the two women had listened to the news from France, filled with gloom, Eva found an English newscast coming straight from London. The announcer said:

The two women discussed the situation in France, debating what could have been done differently to prevent the catastrophe.

“The more I think of what Hitler has already done, the harder I want to work for our cause,” Eva said. “I want you to try to get in contact with Ajax.” He was the British contact agent who directed all help that came to the resistance movement.

“I’ll try.”

“If you do get ahold of Ajax, tell him we need more arms immediately.” Eva went on to describe exactly what Mallory was to relay to their contact. “I’ve got to go to town.”

“All right, Eva.”

After Eva left, Mallory went out to the barn and began to call Ajax. As she did so, she wondered if the Germans were tracing her call. She had heard they had equipment that could trace a shortwave broadcast to its source, and the thought worried her.

Finally, after forty-five minutes, a voice clearly said, “This is Ajax speaking.”

“Ajax, this is Byron calling.”

“Go ahead, Byron. I can hear you.”

Byron was the code name Mallory used for her own signal. She had chosen the name in memory of Lord George Byron, the poet who had gone to Greece to fight for the independence of the patriots there.

For ten minutes, Mallory used code to give Ajax their request for more weapons. She also relayed some information that Lars and Eva had gathered that might prove useful to their English friends. She finally said, “Message complete.”

“Now I have a message for you, Byron.”

“Go ahead, Ajax.”

Mallory quickly scribbled down the message, transposing it from code to plain English. Finally Ajax said, “Do you copy?”

“I copy. Signing off.”

She immediately shut the radio down and left the barn. Glancing at her watch, she saw there would not be time to wait for Lars or Eva to come back. She got her bicycle and rode out of town, making her way down to the docks. She parked her bike and walked toward the ships at anchor. There were many of them, but she was looking for one man. It was late afternoon now, and for a time she grew frustrated. But finally she saw him—a man of medium height wearing a blue-and-white checkered shirt. He was sitting alone on the docks smoking a pipe, a small suitcase at his side.

She walked up and said, “Do you think it will rain tonight?” This was the test question, and the answer was important.

“It will always rain somewhere.”

This was the correct response, and Mallory said quickly, “What’s your name?”

“James St. Cloud.”

“I’m Mallory Winslow. Come with me.”

Without a word, the man picked up his suitcase, and Mallory went to get her bike. The two moved away from the docks, passing some German soldiers who were supervising the unloading of a craft. Mallory saw that the Englishman watched them carefully but said nothing.

When they cleared the dock area, she turned to him. “Did you have any trouble coming over?”

“No. They stuck me in the hole with a bunch of fish. I must smell terrible.”

“You are rather rank.” They walked down the road trying to look like they belonged there. “You’ll be staying with the Sorensens, Bernhard and Einer,” Mallory told him.