Kurt Nordstrum.
Lund had known him as well. Lund had been a year older in school, but in the classrooms here, small as they were, one knew everyone. Even those you watched from the back of the room and secretly despised. Nordstrum and his friends were known to have fought with the king’s army, or what was left of it. A ragtag resistance. At first, they had created a lot of mischief for the Germans in the mountains, as far away as Lillehammer and Voss. Lund stared at the ruggedly handsome face. He was always the ringleader, he recalled. The kind that everyone admired. Catching a slippery eel like that could easily mean another bar on his lapel.
In school, Lund had always sat in the back of the class and watched all the girls and the attention go to people like this, people who skied effortlessly and were quick with the answers. To people like Nordstrum, everything seemed to come easily and naturally. Still, they had no understanding of what it was like to have to earn what they had. To have had to hunger for it. That was how it was for Lund, for whom nothing had ever come effortlessly or without careful plotting.
Years ago, he was convinced the path he had taken was a way to rescue Norway from the trap of liberalism and debt. He knew that he served a puppet government that simply did the bidding of the Nazis. He knew he was despised by most of his fellow countrymen; even those who fed him information were usually paid off or merely collected some favor, as the ferry crewman just had. Trudi, his plump, ambitious wife, had always pushed him in that direction. “You’ll amount to nothing in this war. The Germans will win, you’ll see.” She’d made this case from the start. “They have the will to fight. And they’ll look around for the ones who have similar backbone. Who have helped them, Dieter. And what will you be doing when this all happens?” She cast her eyes on him with a knifing disdain. “Stamping identity papers and processing visas. For once, Dieter, you have to be on the side that triumphs. Do you understand?” Then she would soften her tone and lovingly stroke his scalp, and place his head softly to her breast, and his dick would get hard. “Otherwise, what is the point of all this?” she would say. “All this terrible bloodshed. It will lead to no good end.”
But now, all the lofty ideas that were there at the beginning had long since faded. Instead, he was sucked into a maelstrom of dark deeds: Young men, boys really, taken from their homes in the middle of the night; interrogations in which the normal procedures were not effective; incarcerations that ended up at the concentration camp at Grini, where no one was ever heard from again. Lund couldn’t help but notice the averted eyes and spiteful glances he received when he walked the streets of his hometown. Though in truth, no one had ever even noticed him before, not until he put on his gray Hirden uniform. “Someone must keep the order,” he would say to those who questioned why he served them. “No matter, ultimately, whom it is for.”
But now, two years into the war, things were slipping away. Trudi had been wrong—the Germans were not winning. It seemed they were losing their grip. They were having a hard time holding on to the territory they had seized. Both here and in the east, they heard, where things were going badly. Yet in spite of it all, Rjukan, it turned out, contained a silver lining. “The golden goose,” it was called by his Gestapo overseer, Muggenthaler. “The goose that will win us the war. In spite of how things progress on the ground.” Whatever they were producing at the Norsk Hydro plant up on the mountain, Lund knew it must be defended and protected at all costs. That was the one path still open for him. How he would turn this whole ugly enterprise to his and Trudi’s gain.
And it had fallen right into his lap, in this remote pinprick on a map where he had had to grow up in the shadows. Now he was put in charge. In truth, he had no idea exactly what was going on up there—at the plant. Only that it was whispered to have the highest military value. And he had made his bed in life, and now his career depended on maintaining that magic elixir’s orderly production. Otherwise, he’d be dragged out and shot himself one day—if not by the Germans, surely by his fellow townspeople if the Allies were allowed to win.
The very people this Kurt Nordstrum and Jens Strollman were helping to succeed.
Lund placed the two photos on his desk, side by side. This wasn’t just the murder of a fellow officer. A crime against the state. For Lund, it was a matter of self-preservation. It challenged the most clear and precious commitment he had made with his life.
But what were these two even doing back here? After two years of war.
Perhaps Nordstrum had come to see his father? The old man still lived here, alone, though his men kept a watch on him and it was known he was not in the best of health. The attack on the Hird on the ferry was likely not something they had planned, only a temptation that presented itself, one they could not resist. And that was the weakness in these men. They were reckless. Their actions were not tempered with control. That was what would one day bring them down.
No, Lund began to feel sure, if they had come back here, to this place with its hidden significance, it was far more likely it had something to do with what was going on up at the plant.
Yesterday a report had crossed his desk of a coastal steamer that had been hijacked on its way to Stavanger and which he heard was now in the open sea. Presumed to be making a beeline for England, it was reported. An act of piracy, Lund first said to himself, but not without some bravery as well, he had to admit. And will. It took a certain type to possess that kind of boldness.
And now he was certain he knew the two behind it.
He would take his findings down the hall to Muggenthaler. Along with the two photographs. The parts all fit. But why…? A coastal steamer. Why the need to take such an audacious risk?
To flee to England. That had to be why.
Maybe Nordstrum was lost to him for now. But he’d be back for sure. A man like that always came back. Not just because there was a fight to wage and he had the will. But because a man like that always believed in his heart in what was right, not simply prudent. And what drove them wasn’t the urge for self-preservation or to get others to notice their actions. Lund chuckled; that was for people like him.
What drove men like them was duty. The sense that they believed in something they imagined to be larger than themselves. The very thing that would also entrap them one day. You could be sure.
A romantic. A fool.
Lund put the photos into a file and stamped it OFFICIAL. NS SECURITY MATTERS ONLY, and put in on the side of his desk.
Nordstrum, he was always the fucking ringleader. Just like back then.
Next time Lund would be on them, like a bee to honey.
Next time, you could count on it—he’d be the one throwing them over the rail.