international calls, and calls to military bases, so there was a strong chance that Hermia’s conversation with Arne would be monitored. She would have to communicate in hints and double-talk. But that should be possible. She and Arne had been lovers, so she ought to be able to make him understand without being explicit.
The station was built like a French chateau. The grand entrance lobby had a coffered ceiling and chandeliers. She found the phone bureau and stood in line.
When she got to the counter, she told the clerk that she wanted to make a person-to-person call to Arne Olufsen, and gave the number of the flying school. She waited impatiently, full of apprehension, while the operator tried to get Arne on the line. She did not even know whether he was at Vodal today. He might be flying, or away from the base for the afternoon, or on leave. He might have been transferred to another base or have resigned from the army.
But she would try to track him down, wherever he was. She could speak to his commanding officer and ask where he had gone, she could call his parents on Sande, and she had numbers for some of his friends in Copenhagen. She had all afternoon to spend, and plenty of money for phone calls.
It would be strange to talk to him after more than a year. She was thrilled but anxious. The mission was the important thing, but she could not help fretting about how Arne would feel about her. Perhaps he no longer loved her as he once had. What if he were cold to her? It would break her heart. But he might have met someone else. After all, she had enjoyed a flirtation with Digby. How much more easily might a man find his heart straying?
She remembered skiing with him, racing down a sunlit slope, the two of them leaning to one side then the other in perfect rhythm, perspiring in the icy air, laughing with the sheer joy of being alive. Would those days ever come back?
She was called to a booth.
She picked up the phone and said, “Hello?”
Arne said, “Who is it?”
She had forgotten his voice. It was low and warm and sounded as if it might break into laughter at any minute. He spoke educated Danish, with a precise diction he had learned in the military and the hint of a Jutland accent left over from his childhood.
She had planned her first sentence. She intended to use the pet names they had for each other, hoping this would alert Arne to the need to speak discreetly.
But for a moment she could not speak at all.
“Hello?” he said. “Is anyone there?”
She swallowed and found her voice. “Hello, Toothbrush, this is your black cat.” She called him “Toothbrush” because that was what his moustache felt like when he kissed her. Her nickname came from the color of her hair.
It was his turn to be dumbstruck. There was a silence.
Hermia said, “How are you?”
“I’m okay,” he said at last. “My God, is it really you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.” Suddenly she could not stand any more small talk. Abruptly she said, “Do you still love me?”
He did not answer immediately. That made her think his feelings had changed. He would not say so directly, she thought; he would equivocate, and say they needed to reassess their relationship after all this time, but she would know-
“I love you,” he said.
“Do you?”
“More than ever. I’ve missed you terribly.”
She closed her eyes. Feeling dizzy, she leaned against the wall.
“I’m so glad you’re still alive,” he said. “I’m so happy to be talking to you.”
“I love you, too,” she said.
“What’s been happening? How are you? Where are you calling from?”
She pulled herself together. “I’m not far away.”
He noticed her guarded manner and responded in a similar tone. “Okay, I understand.”
She had prepared the next part. “Do you remember the castle?” There were many castles in Denmark, but one was special to them.
“You mean the ruins? How could I forget?”
“Could you meet me there?”
“How could you get there-Never mind. Do you mean it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a long way.”
“It’s really very important.”
“I’d go a lot farther to see you. I’m just figuring out how. I’ll ask for leave, but if it’s a problem I’ll just go AWOL-”
“Don’t do that.” She did not want the military police looking for him. “When’s your next day off?”
“Saturday.”
The operator came on the line to tell them they had ten seconds.
Hastily, Hermia said, “I’ll be there on Saturday-I hope. If you don’t make it, I’ll come back every day for as long as I can.”
“I’ll do the same.”
“Be careful. I love you.”
“I love you-”
The line went dead.
Hermia kept the receiver pressed to her ear, as if she could hold on to him a little longer that way. Then the operator asked her if she wanted to make another call, and she declined and hung up.
She paid at the counter then went out, dazed with happiness. She stood in the station concourse, under the high curved roof, with people hurrying past her in all directions. He still loved her. In two days’ time she would see him. Someone bumped into her, and she got out of the crowd into a cafe where she slumped in a chair. Two days.
The ruined castle to which they had both enigmatically referred was Hammershus, a tourist attraction on the Danish holiday island of Bornholm, in the Baltic Sea. They had spent a week on the island in 1939, posing as man and wife, and had made love among the ruins one warm summer evening. Arne would take the ferry from Copenhagen, a trip of seven or eight hours, or fly from Kastrup, which took about an hour. The island was a hundred miles from mainland Denmark, but only twenty miles from the south coast of Sweden. Hermia would have to find a fishing boat to take her across that short stretch of water illegally.
But it was the danger to Arne, not herself, that she kept thinking about. He was going to meet secretly with an agent of the British secret service. She would ask him to become a spy.
If he were caught, the punishment would be death.
11
On the second day after his arrest, Harald returned home.
Heis had allowed him to stay at school another two days to take the last of his exams. He would be permitted to graduate, though not to attend the ceremony, which was a week away. But the important thing was that his university place was safe. He would study physics under Niels Bohr-if he lived that long.
During those two days he had learned, from Mads Kirke, that the death of Poul had not been a straightforward crash. The army was refusing to reveal details, saying they were still investigating, but other pilots had told the family that the police had been on the base at the time, and shots had been fired. Harald was sure, though he could not say this to Mads, that Poul had been killed because of his Resistance work.
Nevertheless, he was more afraid of his father than of the police as he made his way home. It was a
