Night Falls on Norway

alongside his desk. Pulling down a large world atlas, he carried it over to a reading table and set it down, opening it and turning to the pages for Norway. In her last transmission, Jian had said that she was outside Steinkjer. He had warned her that the Huns knew she was in Norway, but he hadn’t received a reply. Hardly surprising, and he hadn’t been concerned last night. They had received confirmation that the message was received, and that was all that he was concerned with at the time. He had no way of knowing how reliable the radio was that she was using, or even if it would continue to be able to transmit. Therefore, when no reply came, he assumed that they had simply lost their signal again. After all, he had told her contact again in ten hours. He hadn’t told her to acknowledge the message. He had wanted to keep the messages as short as possible. The shorter the message, the less time it took to decode, and the less time the Germans had to intercept a location on the radio.

But now the ten hours had been and gone, and there was still no word from her.

After some searching, he found Steinkjer on the map and studied the area with a frown. The town was located in the middle of a bottleneck where Norway narrowed, bridging the north and the southern portions of the country. It was about two-thirds of the way between Trondheim and Namsos. He shook his head. Without knowing how she was traveling, he had no way of beginning to estimate when she would reach Namsos. In fact, without knowing where she was now, he couldn’t be sure that she would reach Namsos in time. The cruiser would be in the harbor tomorrow, and the captain was under orders to unload his cargo and then return to England. If Evelyn wasn’t there by the time he finished unloading the troops, he would leave, and she would be trapped in the middle of a battle for Norway.

A battle that was never supposed to have occurred in the first place.

He let out a frustrated grunt and followed a line from Steinkjer to Namsos with his forefinger. If the party had made it through Steinkjer last night, it would have been after midnight or even after one or two in the morning. They would have stopped for what was left of the night. Asp looked like a possibility. It was the next sizable town after Steinkjer. They would probably have been able to find somewhere to stop there. If that was the case, they would be far enough away from the water that the likelihood of running into enemy troops would be lessening. They would be able to move more freely as they got away from the bottleneck, and drew closer to Namsos. All the current surveillance photos showed the German troops concentrated around Trondheim and moving north along the fjord to join up with the forces coming south from Narvik. They were staying in the middle for now. They would worry about the smaller coastal ports once they joined up with the other divisions.

And that might just be the thing to save Jian. If she’d made it through Steinkjer, she had the whole western swath to Namsos to navigate without much risk of interference from enemy forces.

If she’d made it through Steinkjer, he reminded himself, straightening up and removing his glasses to rub his eyes. And he wouldn’t know that until he heard from her again.

He turned to go back to his desk, a frown settled on his face again. So far, she had been extremely punctual in contacting when she said she would, but of course, he had no way of knowing what kinds of delays she was running into. All he could do was wait.

And pray.

Chapter Thirty-One

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Spillum, Norway

Evelyn leaned against the post of a wooden fence and felt her eyes trying to close. She forced them open again and looked at Anna, sitting on a tree stump a foot away. She looked as half-dead as Evelyn felt. They had been hiking through the mountains since eight this morning, moving through progressively deeper and deeper snow until she was convinced her legs couldn’t take one more step. She had lost all feeling in her feet and ankles hours before, and her calves and thighs were screaming from the effort of slogging through at least two and a half feet of snow. Her rifle was back to being slung across her body and she carried Peder’s radio and her toiletries case, switching hands when she lost feeling in the one carrying the heavy radio. Anna still carried her suitcase, her own left behind on the incline outside Steinkjer. She had her feet propped up on it while she sat on the tree stump, waiting for Erik and Philip to finish checking the immediate area.

They had come upon the outskirts of Spillum, a town just south of Namsos, and Erik was checking to make sure it was clear and safe for them to pass through. So far they hadn’t run across any indication that the German forces had made their way west, but they all knew that could change in an instant. If the town was clear, they would look for somewhere to take shelter in the hills. If not, they would have to go around. Evelyn grimaced at the thought and fought back a wave of helpless tears. She honestly didn’t think she could go much further, perhaps no further at all. She was falling asleep on her feet, and so was Anna. They had to stop soon.

“It looks quiet,” Erik announced, coming out of the trees with Philip beside him. “I don’t think they’ve come this way yet. We should be safe to look to for shelter for the night.”

“Oh, thank God,” Anna said. “I don’t know how much further I can go.”

Erik nodded. “I know. Come on. Philip thinks