want to weep.
He was saved by the doorbell. He pulled himself together rapidly and answered it. The nurse had arrived at the same time as Bent Conrad, who had come to pick him up for the journey to Vodal. He shrugged on his jacket and left the nurse to clean Inge up.
They went in two cars, standard black police Buicks. Peter thought the army might put obstacles in his way, so he had asked General Braun to detail a German officer to impose authority if necessary, and a Major Schwarz from Braun’s staff was in the lead car.
The journey took an hour and a half. Schwarz smoked a large cigar, filling the car with fumes. Peter tried not to think about the outrageously light sentence on Finn Jonk. He might need his wits about him at the air base, and he did not want his judgment to be skewed by rage. He tried to smother his blazing fury, but it smoldered on under a blanket of false calm, stinging his eyes with its smoke, like Schwarz’s cigar.
Vodal was a grass airfield with a scatter of low buildings along one side. Security was light-it was only a training school, so nothing remotely secret went on here-and a single guard at the gate casually waved them through without asking their business. Half a dozen Tiger Moths were parked in a line, like birds on a fence. There were also some gliders and two Messerschmitt Me-109s.
As Peter got out of the car, he saw Arne Olufsen, his boyhood rival from Sande, sauntering across the car park in his smart brown army uniform. The sour taste of resentment came into Peter’s mouth.
Peter and Arne had been friends, all through childhood, until the quarrel between their families twelve years ago. It had started when Axel Flemming, Peter’s father, had been accused of tax fraud. Axel felt the prosecution was outrageous: he had only done what everyone else did, and understated his profits by inflating his costs. He had been convicted, and had to pay a hefty fine on top of all the back tax.
He had persuaded his friends and neighbors to see the case as an argument about an accounting technicality, rather than an accusation of dishonesty. Then Pastor Olufsen had intervened.
There was a church rule that any member who committed a crime should be “read out,” or expelled from the congregation. The offender could rejoin the following Sunday, if he wished, but for one week he was an outsider. The procedure was not invoked for trivial crimes such as speeding, and Axel had argued that his transgression fell into that category. Pastor Olufsen thought otherwise.
This humiliation had been much worse for Axel than the fine with which the court had punished him. His name had been read to the congregation, he had been obliged to leave his place and sit at the back of the church throughout the service, and to complete his mortification the pastor had preached a sermon on the text “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.”
Peter winced every time he remembered it. Axel was proud of his position as a successful businessman and community leader, and there could be no greater punishment for him than to lose the respect of his neighbors. It had been torture to Peter to see his father publicly reprimanded by a pompous, self-righteous prig like Olufsen. He believed his father had deserved the fine, but not the humiliation in church. He had sworn then that if any member of the Olufsen family ever transgressed, there would be no mercy.
He hardly dared to hope that Arne was involved in the spy ring. That would be a sweet revenge.
Arne caught his eye. “Peter!” He looked surprised, but not afraid.
“Is this where you work?” Peter said.
“When there’s any work to do.” Arne was as debonair and relaxed as ever. If he had anything to feel guilty about, he was concealing it well.
“Of course, you’re a pilot.”
“This is a training school, but we don’t have many pupils. More to the point, what are you doing here?” Arne glanced at the major in German uniform standing behind Peter. “Is there a dangerous outbreak of littering? Or has someone been cycling after dark without lights?”
Peter did not find Arne’s raillery very funny. “Routine investigation,” he replied shortly. “Where will I find your commanding officer?”
Arne pointed to one of the low buildings. “Base headquarters. You need Squadron Leader Renthe.”
Peter left him and went into the building. Renthe was a lanky man with a bristly moustache and a sour expression. Peter introduced himself and said, “I’m here to interview one of your men, a Flight Lieutenant Poul Kirke.”
The squadron leader looked pointedly at Major Schwarz and said, “What’s the problem?”
The reply
“When military personnel are
“Of course you do. However. .” He moved a hand in the direction of Schwarz. “Our German friends want the police to deal with it, so your
“He happens to be flying.”
Peter raised his eyebrows. “I thought your planes were grounded.”
“As a rule, yes, but there are exceptions. We’re expecting a visit from a Luftwaffe group tomorrow, and they want to be taken up in our training aircraft, so we have permission to do test flights today to make sure the aircraft are in readiness. Kirke should land in a few minutes.”
“I’ll search his quarters meanwhile. Where does he bed down?”
Renthe hesitated, then answered reluctantly. “Dormitory A, at the far end of the runway.”
“Does he have an office, or a locker, or anywhere else he might keep things?”
“He has a small office three doors along this corridor.”
“I’ll start there. Tilde, come with me. Conrad, go out to the airfield to meet Kirke when he comes back-I don’t want him to slip away. Dresler and Ellegard, search Dormitory A. Squadron Leader, thank you for your help. .” Peter saw the commander’s eyes stray to the phone on the desk, and added, “Don’t make any phone calls for the next few minutes. If you were to warn anyone that we’re on our way, that would constitute obstruction of justice. I’d have to throw you in jail, and that wouldn’t do the army’s reputation much good, would it?”
Renthe made no reply.
Peter, Tilde, and Schwarz went along the corridor to a door marked “Chief Flying Instructor.” A desk and a filing cabinet were squeezed into a small room with no windows. Peter and Tilde began to search and Schwarz lit another cigar. The filing cabinet contained pupil records. Peter and Tilde patiently looked at every sheet of paper. The little room was airless, and Tilde’s elusive perfume was lost in Schwarz’s cigar smoke.
After fifteen minutes, Tilde made a surprised noise and said, “This is odd.”
Peter looked up from the exam results of a student called Keld Hansen who had failed his navigation test.
Tilde handed him a sheet of paper. Peter studied it, frowning. It bore a careful sketch of a piece of apparatus that Peter did not recognize: a large square aerial on a stand, surrounded by a wall. A second drawing of the same apparatus without the wall showed more details of the stand, which looked as if it might revolve.
Tilde looked over his shoulder. “What do you think it can be?”
He was intensely aware of how close she was. “I’ve never seen anything like it, but I’d bet the farm it’s secret. Anything else in the file?”
“No.” She showed him a folder marked “Andersen, H.C.”
Peter grunted. “Hans Christian Andersen-that’s suspicious in itself. He turned the sheet over. On its reverse was a sketch map of an island whose long, thin shape was as familiar to Peter as the map of Denmark itself. “This is Sande, where my father lives!” he said.
Looking more closely, he saw that the map showed the new German base and the area of the beach that was off limits.
“Bang,” he said softly.
Tilde’s blue eyes were shining with excitement. “We’ve caught a spy, haven’t we?”
“Not yet,” Peter said. “But we’re about to.”
They went outside, followed by the silent Schwarz. The sun had set, but they could see clearly in the soft twilight of the long Scandinavian summer evening.
They walked onto the airfield and stood beside Conrad, near where the planes were parked. The aircraft were
