The Informer (Sabotage Group BB) Page 8

  “Well, I might. I had to go in to fix some stupid incident regarding a German agent who’d taken certain liberties with one of the maids. We can’t accept something like that. It’s a respectable hotel. I had to lay off the maid.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “I had to talk to all my employees to find out what’s up and down in that whole mess. The agent might have been after some of the other girls as well. I even got a few words with some of the agents. I was offered coffee, real coffee, by one of the superiors, an Obersturmbannführer, I think.”

  “I see.”

  “The poor man seemed to miss having someone to talk to. He’d hardly seen his family since the beginning of the war. Had a wife and two sons in some village down there. Stalzbürgerswingerwalsen or something like that. This is his fifth deployment. He’d been to Latvia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Holland, and now Copenhagen. He was a lonely man a long way from home.”

  Johannes smiles. The sad and lonely soldier far away from home. Women are so easy. “Poor fellow.”

  “He also told me a little about his assignment here in Copenhagen.”

  “Oh, he did?” Now it might get interesting. Iris was a little beauty, and if only she got to unfold a bit of her oral potential, any man could end up in trouble. “What did he say?”

  “I don’t really understand these things, you know. He did mention some group of saboteurs called BB. They were more like criminals than resistance, I guess. If your scared friend is a member of that group, he might want to get away. They have an informer inside the group telling the Germans everything the group plans to do.”

  “Did he mention the name of the informer?”

  “No.” She looks at him from the corner of her eye. “Are you a saboteur, Johannes?”

  He laughs. “Me? Could you imagine me running around in the middle of the night blowing up factories? Iris, you got to…”

  She just keeps looking at him.

  22

  “Do you have the money?” Jens looks at the man leaning against the wall with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. The shine from the full moon gives a cold and blue sense to the whole area. In the distance, on the other side of the sound between Denmark and neutral Sweden, the lights twinkle.

  “Is that really all you care about, copper?” He flicks the cigarette out into the water. “You’re a fucking capitalist.”

  “You got the money?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe’s not good enough.”

  “Oh, well,” he says, scratching his neck. “That’s all you get.”

  Jens stares at the man he only knows by his codename, Knud. Knud is the leader of a minor fraction of the major Communist sabotage and resistance organization called Bopa.

  “What are you saying?”

  “We can’t pay you at this point. We have a major sabotage operation in the making, and we need all our resources.”

  “I don’t give a fuck.”

  “You’re a saboteur yourself. The common cause. The common enemy.”

  “I still have my expenses. I delivered the goods almost a month ago. My suppliers do not give a shit about any common causes. If I don’t pay, I end up at the bottom of this harbor. Do I make myself clear?”

  “You are a real asshole, pig.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Listen, we’re planning a major act. More than fifty men. We could use your little group as well.”

  “What’s the target?”

  “The Torotor factory out in Ordrup.”

  “No kidding? Torotor produces components for the German V2 rockets. It might be the best guarded factory in all of Denmark. You don’t have a chance. It’ll be a suicide mission.”

  “We’ve managed several large actions before.”

  “Right.”

  “You’re not in?”

  “No way.”

  “Many of the other groups are in on it. Even the Conservative groups…Holger Danske and so on. We still need more men to pull it off, though.”

  Shaking his head, Jens finds his cigarettes and lights one up. He glances at a dead seagull sloshing at the edge of the water. A dog barks somewhere in the vicinity. Jens pulls hard on the cigarette.

  “Can you get me some pornography?”

  Lifting only the right eyebrow, Jens winks at him. “Pornography?”

  “You know. I’m a lonely man. Living underground eats on a man.”

  “Right. The moment you’ve paid what you owe, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I’ll get you the money soon enough, I promise.”

  “What kind of pornography do you want? I can get most of it.”

  “Lesbian.”

  “I’ll do my best. Next time we meet, you will bring me my money, you hear me? All the money. What you owe me and for the pornography.”

  “Deal.” Turning up his collar, he is about to leave when Jens grabs hold of his arm.

  “Look at the dark and murky water, Knud. The eels are big and fat here in the harbor. There won’t be that much left of a dead body after a few days in these waters. It goes very fast, I can tell you that much.”

  He pulls himself free, stumbling away. “Asshole!”

  “Just bring me the money.”

  23

  Borge is hiding in the dark of the gateway across the street as the boy leaves the workshop, waving to somebody still inside. Pulling down the front of his cap, the boy starts walking down the street. The dark is creeping in from the east. A working man doesn’t get to see much of the daylight during November. It is dark in the morning when he heads off to work, and it is dark in the evening when he goes home. Borge feels his chest swelling with solidarity for the working class. He had never had to do a day’s work himself, but he has been visiting quite a few workshops and factories (most of the time in order to plant explosives, but nevertheless), and they are dark and dirty places.

  He gets on the bicycle and goes after the boy. The chain guard rattles, klonk, klonk, klonk.

  “Willy!” he shouts, closing in on the boy; the boy does not react. “Willy!” He pedals harder, goes up on the sidewalk, blocking the boy’s path. “Willy! Are you deaf?”

  The boy starts in terror. Jumping back.

  “You have to learn to react on your codename, boy. This is stupid.”

  “Sorry. I was lost in my own thoughts.”

  “Let’s take a walk,” Borge says, getting off the bicycle.

  They start walking. For a while, neither says anything. Keeping his eyes on the road ahead, Borge can feel the boy glancing at him.

  As they turn around the corner, Borge says, “Alis K told me that you won two points the other night. Good job. You should be proud of yourself.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Someday this war will be over. A new order of the world will appear in its place. The idea of Socialism will prevail. In the future they’ll remember us as heroes.”

  The boy stares at him, eyes twinkling. “Heroes?”

  “Yes, heroes who fought for a better world. They might even make statues of us.”

  “We were betrayed. They were setting up a trap.”

  “I know. Informers and traitors are scum. They’re worse than the enemy. But don’t worry about that. We’re on to the informer, he’s about to be unveiled. It’s a matter of days before we get him.”

  They fall into silence again. Rubbing his face, Borge feels the stubble on his cheeks. It has been a couple of days since he has had the chance to shave. It is difficult to maintain any sort of personal hygiene living underground.

  “Brink’s Sewing Factory,” Borge says, as they pass under the viaduct. “It’s on Christianshavn. Do you know the place?”

  The boy nods his head. The excitement flickers inside the boy’s light blue eyes. “Down by the canal.”

  “Exactly. They make uniforms for the Hipo and the SS. Tomorrow night. We need someone to watch our backs. All you need to do is to stand guard and keep an eye out for somebody sneak
ing up on us while we go into the factory to place the explosives.”

  He nods again, this time eagerly. Just as Borge knew he would. “I’m in. When shall I be there?”

  24

  Later the same evening, Poul-Erik runs through the darkened city. Heavy clouds scud past, showing glimpses of the moon as they go by. The pistol is in his coat pocket, hitting his hip as he runs into the park, down by the lake. The trees are hanging out over the water like weird silhouettes of tired trolls.

  His heart is racing inside his chest, the blood rushing through his veins. He can’t keep from smiling; it feels like bubbles bursting inside of him. Trembling all over, he has to sit down in the grass. Gasping for air. Sweat dripping from his nose.

  A car passes by outside the park, tires screeching as it turns around at the intersection. Holding his breath, he listens in alert until he is certain the car is not stopping. Releasing his breath, he laughs out loud in the night. The sound scares up a duck on the lake, making it chatter out there in the dark. He goes quiet. Shaking his head. He has never felt this alive.

  Lying down on the grass, he feels the cold creeping in, but he doesn’t get up. Staring up at the clouds as they pass the moon, he thinks about Borge and the sabotage operation tomorrow. He wonders about the informer. The way Borge looked at him. Hoping Alis K will be there tomorrow, wanting so badly to see her again, wanting to make love to her again, he almost feels her soft body, as he’s lying there. Her scent. Her lips.

  Stirring at an unfamiliar sound, he gets up and rushes over to hide under some tall trees. The sound doesn’t reappear; still the park no longer feels safe and he soon exits through the opposite gate.

  He can’t wait for tomorrow to come. Brink’s Sewing Factory. Even if all they will let him do is guard the escape route. He had begun to worry he would never hear from them again, and now he is in on a new operation. They are going to blow up a factory. It is real sabotage. He is really one of them now.

  He slides into the dark of a gateway as a car comes down the street, the dim glow of the headlights sweeping the cobbles. Luckily, it is just an ambulance. He is back on the street the moment it passes him, watching the sole red taillight disappear around the corner.

  Later, as the noises from a party catch his ears, he looks up at the building from where the noises are coming. The blacked out windows reveal nothing but playful voices and laughter, a girl whining, and loud music.

  It is a noble building. Large residences. The living room at least twice the size of the apartment Poul-Erik’s family lives in. The young and the rich party their way through the war. They have never gone to bed hungry. Never seen dead babies.

  Just standing there on the sidewalk, looking up at the darkened house and the sandstone decorations, Poul-Erik listens to the noise of excited young people partying without a care in this world with a stinging feeling inside his chest. He will never be able to party like that. No matter what happens, he will never be able to enjoy life so carelessly, so painlessly. He wonders what they are celebrating. The twentieth birthday of some stupid executive’s daughter? Maybe they don’t need a reason to party; maybe they just party because they can?

  Suddenly, standing there in the moonlight he feels very lonely. He touches the pistol in his pocket. At that moment, it seems like a foolish thing, a meaningless thing. Now they are shouting hurrahs. The music has stopped.

  He should be heading home. It is late. He needs to get some sleep. Be ready for the operation tomorrow. But he can’t move. For some reason he has to stay, has to listen to all that joy.

  An idea pops up inside his head. He walks across the street towards the building and pulls down the handle to the gate. It swings open. He silently closes the gate behind him and sneaks through the gateway into the backyard. Only, it is not a backyard. It is a garden with grass, a huge oak tree, and white benches.

  He hides behind a bush, watching the back of the building. It is, of course, blacked out as well. The music is dim back here, the happy, laughing voices a distant hum. The clatter of glass. A guy singing so poorly it is almost painful to listen to.

  Not understanding his own feelings, Poul-Erik swallows, as his throat tighten with the urge to cry. He is paralyzed by a stream of emotions. Torn apart. His soul ripped to pieces. Envy, self-pity, inferiority, and a nasty sensation of having been cheated. Cheated like fuck. What did they do to deserve all that joy?

  He could take the pistol and go up there and shoot them all like dogs. They might not feel so important then, so goddamned happy. He should do it. He fucking should. But he doesn’t. He just keeps standing in the dark behind the bush, staring up at the back of the house.

  The backdoor swings open and a man and a woman exit the backstairs. She is wearing a light dress and long white stockings. A ribbon in her blond hair. The man has a pencil thin mustache, he is holding the door for her. Dark suit. Butterfly. Cigar. No more than twenty-four years old.

  He leads the way to one of the white benches They are both holding wine glasses in their hands. Cheering. Laughing. The woman says she is cold. The man pulls her close.

  Poul-Erik looks in all directions at the same time. What if they spot him there? But there is no escape. He has to stay put behind the bush. They will spot him the moment he starts to move. He swallows. Breathing through his mouth, trying to be silent.

  “No! Not here!” the woman gasps as the man slides a hand up her legs. Removing his hand, she pushes him away.

  The man takes both glasses, placing them on the ground.

  “What are you doing?” The woman asks.

  The man is smiling with glee. Poul-Erik is watching as the man’s hand returns to the woman’s legs, and this time she doesn’t push him away. Soon, she sighs out loud. Whining. The hand is moving back and forth under her dress. The woman grabs the man behind his neck. Removing the cigar from his mouth and throwing it down on the grass, she pulls the man down to her face.

  Having an erection in a not-so-comfortable angle inside his pants, Poul-Erik tries to shift it into a more pleasant position. He takes the pistol from his pocket, not knowing what to do. Looking up at the almost full moon. Looking back at the couple on the bench. The man is on top of the woman now, taking her roughly. His hair is a mess. One of the glasses has toppled. The man is still fully dressed. The woman arches her back. Whining, gasping.

  Then the air raid siren goes off.

  One by one, the sirens on the city roofs start howling their bleak song. Slowly rising and dropping through the scales. The music from the party is replaced by feet stumbling down the stairs.

  “Hey, remember to bring the wine, ha ha!”

  Still so full of joy. Still not having any worries at all. Of course their house won’t get hit by an English bomb. They have said their evening prayers as they went to sleep in their freshly made beds. None of them has ever slept on four dining chairs pushed together. God will look after them. Like always.

  The couple on the bench is busy with their buttons and smoothing down their clothes. Forgetting the wine glasses, they hurry to the backstairs and down to the safety of the raid shelter in the basement.

  Soon the place is all quiet. Walking with caution to the bench, purposely stepping on the glasses, Poul-Erik finds some relief in the sound of the breaking wine glasses. He spots something white lying on the ground. The woman’s panties. He picks them up, sniffs the smell, and shoves them down his pocket.

  He walks out the gate and down the street. He can hear the deep rumbling from the English bombers coming closer and watches as they fly past in the sky above him. Flying Fortresses. Huge airplanes. At least twenty. Flying low, real low. Barely over the city roofs. The thundering noise makes him smile. He can feel it vibrating in his legs. He salutes them. Waving his hand. He is fighting at their side. They are his allies.

  Only an instant later he hears the blasts from the German anti-aircraft guns.

  Running through the streets. Home. Stopping once in a while to listen, but the city is all quie
t now. The bombers were probably heading for Germany or Poland. They hardly ever bomb the city of Copenhagen.

  His hand is covered in something. He stops to smell it. The metallic smell can’t be mistaken. Blood. How could he not have noticed this earlier on? Spitting on his hand, he rubs the dried blood off using the woman’s white panties.

  Satisfied with the result, he throws the panties on the street, pulling down his cap as he hurries home, only stopping at the outhouse to hide the pistol under the roof.

  Everybody is asleep when he lets himself in the door. Lying awake on the four dining chairs, he stares at the ceiling for a long time, waiting for sleep to arrive.

  25

  “Can I see the reverend, please?” Alis K asks, trying to smile. The woman in the door—his wife!—is staring at her for a long time. The blond hair arranged at the top of her head. A single wrinkle on the forehead.

  “Of course.”

  Leaving Alis K standing in the rain, she goes to get her husband. Muffled voices reach her ears from inside the house. Alis K shifts the umbrella to her other hand. BB appears in the door.

  “What are you thinking, showing up here?”

  “It’s important.”

  “It’d better be. Come inside.” Turning around, he walks down the hallway. Alis K folds her umbrella and hurries after him into a small study. There is a desk in the center of the room and bookshelves along the walls. Carpet on the floor. Looking around, she touches the porcelain figure on the windowsill. An elephant. White.

  “Was that your wife?” she asks in a low voice.

  “Yes. She’s in the kitchen now. What do you want?”

  “Brink’s Sewing Factory tonight. Borge has convinced Jens that Willy’s the informer. It’s crazy. The boy saved my life. He shot and killed two Hipo scum! How could he possibly do that if he was the one who told them we were coming?”

  “Borge thinks the boy might have tricked you. Maybe he fired blanks at them.”

  “He shot one of them in the face, BB.

  Most of the cheek and one of his eyes were blown off right in front of me. It wasn’t just some ketchup or stage blood leaking from a hole in his chest. It was real. The other one shit his pants when he died. I could smell it. I was this close to him as I had to get his gun.”