Mac wingate 6, p.8
Mac Wingate 6, page 8
Wingate shrugged the hand off his shoulder. “I don’t even know what the mission is yet,” he said pointedly. “How should I know how to return from it, let alone complete it?”
Walters looked down at the rapidly growing puddle that was collecting around his feet. “In the future,” he said precisely, “you may wish that you had gone down with my ship.”
Wingate’s attitude took a 180-degree turn. They were no longer on Walters’s turf. They were out in the field, where the colonel was more dependent on Wingate to stay alive than vice versa. Wingate just had to make sure Walters’s stupidity didn’t seal their fate. He wasn’t a man to be hated. He was a man to be pitied. Wingate decided to treat him accordingly.
“Let’s just be glad we survived that confrontation, sir,” he said calmly. “Now you’d better get inside. You’ll catch your death out here.”
Walters stared at him, then nodded and walked away. Donald Neill sidled over to Mac as the rest of the men went below to warm up.
“Great going, Captain,” he complimented Wingate effusively. “Even now I’m not sure how you pulled it off.”
“I’m sure how,” Wingate replied, concentrating on the second trawler. “I’m just not sure how well.”
Neill looked in the direction that Wingate was gazing. “More trouble?” he wondered.
“Maybe,” Wingate admitted. “But according to the Norwegian seaman, it’s our underground contact.”
“Talk about timing,” the Canadian marveled. “They show up right after all the trouble. Just like the cops in a ‘Captain Marvel’ serial.”
“Yeah,” Mac drawled. “I was thinking about that myself.” Still musing, Mac went below to see if there were any dry clothes, Neill trailing behind. Thankfully for all, there were items for a full fishing crew of six, as well as some extra Nazi materials. Between the two sources, everyone was able to change and dry off. Mac sat in the hold with the other commandos tending to their wet weapons. He had just dried the Browning and put it back together when Colonel Walters and Tyler entered in the company of another man.
“Captain Wingate,” the Englishman called. Mac looked up, but Walters said no more until the American had risen and approached the trio. “Captain,” he repeated, “this is Captain Einar Sørum of the Militoer Organisajonen.”
“Captain,” Einar said, putting his hand out. Wingate took it and they shook. Sørum was pretty much what one might expect a normal Norwegian male to look like. He was blond, ruddy-faced, of medium height and of a solid musculature that hard work and a harsh environment combined to create.
“It seems,” Walters continued dryly, “that your Colonel Erikson warned MILORG of your coming.” The Englishman hit the word “warned” a little too strongly for Wingate’s taste, but he refused to be baited at this point in the game. “In effect,” Walters went on, “he told them that since you knew the lingo, it wouldn’t be necessary for us to be met by a MILORG who knew English.”
Well, bless Erikson’s hard little heart, Wingate thought. Even from across the ocean, the Norwegian colonel had been able to pull a plum from the humble pie. Mac positively beamed at the MILORG agent, his handshake increasing in strength. Einar responded, smiling wider as well. The Norwegian looked at Walters, then rattled off an old saying for Wingate to translate.
“He says he knows a little English,” Mac informed the other colonels, “but nothing in depth. But he wants you to know an old saying from the Havamal, their book of truths. Namely, ‘Everyone in this country speaks four languages and three of them are Norwegian.’”
Tyler looked at Walters. Walters looked at Tyler, then back at Wingate. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What does that mean?”
Wingate didn’t feel like explaining the various dialects. “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” he answered. “It’s just from the book of truths.”
Walters nodded as if he understood. Wingate was hard-pressed not to roll his eyes. Instead he turned back to Sørum.
“Let’s get to work,” he said. The Norwegian nodded and motioned that Wingate should follow him. “Hold tight,” Mac called back to the commandos as he left. “We’ll be back as soon as we know what’s what.” The men nodded listlessly. The last thing Mac saw before going on deck was Neill gingerly taking a pack of cigars out of his wet jacket and laying them separately on the floor to dry.
Back on the bridge, Harald was in the company of at least eight other resistance fighters. They were of varying heights, but Mac couldn’t make out their features because of the cowls they wore over their clothes. Mac felt like he had stumbled onto a monks’ vacation cruise.
“We cannot take any chances,” Sørum explained in Norse. “It is important that you recognize me, but the fewer the men you know, the fewer you can identify under torture.”
Wingate looked at the other captain. Einar spoke as if torture were a foregone conclusion. “If I’m captured,” Wingate reminded him.
“Ja, of course,” Sørum agreed. “If you are captured.”
“Where do we go from here?” Wingate wanted to know.
“We must get you ashore and to safety,” Sørum informed him. “Then we must wait.”
“Wait? Wait for what?”
“For word,” Sørum said cryptically.
“Word of what?” Wingate pressed on.
“Word that we can proceed,” Sørum answered, as if his reply were perfectly obvious.
Wingate was reluctant, but still he decided to press the conversation to its natural conclusion. “Proceed to what?” he said, steeling himself for the answer.
“Proceed to do the job you were sent to do,” Sørum concluded simply.
The circle was complete. Mac was right back where he started. He turned to look at Colonel Walters who stood among the cowled MILORGS like a Pope among underlings. Even without knowing what the two captains had been talking about, the Englishman smiled cannily. That sort of smug expression was primary in the Britisher’s character.
Wingate turned back to Captain Sørum, the effort of the ‘Shetland Bus’ trip finally reaching the reaction centers of his brain. He was suddenly very, very tired.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s get going, then.”
“Very good,” Sørum answered. “You and your men will come with us on the Varfeinal. Lars!” he suddenly called. The captain of the Varsø quickly approached.
“Ja?”
“It is too dangerous for you to return home,” Sørum decreed. “Whether you can make a valid excuse or not, the Nazis will blame you for the disaster out here today. Better that you should disappear along with the Germans. Maybe they will think it was a sea accident, ikkesant?”
The Norwegian captain had ended his statement with the Norse phrase meaning, “Is it not so?” It was obvious to Wingate that Harald did. not think it was so. The reluctance on his face was evident.
“Do not worry,” Sørum assured him. “It is more important that you do as I bid. We will destroy the boat and you will accompany some men over the mountains. You will be safe once you arrive. Understand?”
“Ja,” Harald muttered, “but ...”
“Do not worry,” Sørum soothed. “Go now. Onto the other boat.”
His face creased into lines of worry, Lars Harald joined a few cowled resistance fighters and left the Varsø bridge. Captain Sørum turned back to Wingate. Before he could continue, the American spoke up.
“I’ll go get the others.”
“Very good,” the Norwegian commander said.
Wingate made his way across the cabin, keeping a careful watch on the adjoining vessel. Looking through the various windows, he saw Lars Harald make the transition, followed by the disguised MILORG agents.
The American had not liked the uncomfortable strangeness of the conversation between Sørum and Harald. There was something unspoken there. Something both were aware of, but didn’t want Mac to know about. Harald’s actions on the deck of the Varfeinal bore out Wingate’s curiosity. Just as he was about to disappear into the bridge house, one of the cowled men handed Lars something. Something small, but tangible nevertheless. It could have been a message. It could have been some microfilm. It could have a cigarette.
Wingate wasn’t sure, but he didn’t like it. He liked it even less when he glanced around and saw Colonel Walters staring right at him. Wingate wasn’t sure if the Englishman had seen the handoff or was just staring at him. Either way, it made him uneasy. The uneasiness turned to a certain dread when, once more, the Britisher flashed him that empty, insidious death’s-head smile.
Chapter Four
Trondheim was in the Twilight Zone for more reasons than one. First of all, it was September. Summer, with its riot of colorful flora and its “midnight sun,” had ended. The horribly dark, depressing winter of November had not yet come. So Norway hung in the pale purgatory between seasons, when the fjord mist filled the streets and the pine trees dripped white, misty shrouds. Night came early in September, but unlike the Norwegian winter, it did not stay all day.
Secondly, it was 1943. It was the third year of German occupation. And it wasn’t a pleasant one for either side. The manic-depressive seasons, the almost continual cold, and the lack of any battle action brought out the worst in the Nazis. The Norwegians trudged down the slush-filled streets as quietly as the mist itself, trying not to attract the attention of the Germans, who swarmed the streets like flies in the summer and held sway like termites inside for the winter.
Although the Nazi presence did much to diminish the country’s beauty, the “Land of the Generous Sea” had much to be admired. And Mac had plenty of time to admire it. The Varfeinal coursed north, into the Arctic Circle region, for two days. In that time, no Norwegian talked to him. Instead, he studied his surroundings. The coast was beautiful in a rugged sort of way. And all around, everything was enveloped by the mist made from the water of the ocean and the density of the cloud-wrapped sky.
The trawler finally stopped just west of North Cape, in a tiny inlet seemingly made up of millions of sea-smoothed rocks. Almost as soon as they had set foot on somewhat solid ground, the cowled MILORGs led them into a thicket of pine trees and close to straight up. Each of the Allied commandos had to navigate painfully from one tree trunk to the next, using the wood as the rungs of a ladder. The Norwegians, naturally, were a lot better at climbing, and often had to slow so Wingate and company could catch up.
They stopped several hours later on a ledge in a clearing overlooking the expanse they had just traveled. The view was magnificent. Down below them was Alten in miniature, complete with a quaint little town made up of cottage like structures, lovely green fields, patches of darker green forest, and beyond all of it, the bay—just a small section of the Barents Sea. It was rich, marble blue with streaks of foamy white cut into it. And rising around it were more mountains, made up of the same rocky olive as the one they were standing on.
“Very good,” said Einar Sørum, hardly breathing heavily. “I must leave you here for the moment. I have pressing matters elsewhere. The others will be known to you with code names.”
Mac was not winded enough so he was unable to talk. But he was winded enough not to want to try. He accepted Sørum’s declaration by nodding. There was very little he could do about it even if he thought it was a bad idea. And he had no evidence that it was.
“Follow Snow Queen,” the Norwegian captain said, pointing at a cowled figure to Wingate’s right. Mac turned to see just another shapeless resistance fighter in monk’s clothing. “We will meet again soon,” Sørum promised, turning toward Harald and several others. They marched off into another section of the woods.
“Goddag,” Wingate said after him, saying the simple Norwegian “good day.” The new MILORG leader motioned for everyone to follow. Wingate nodded at the commandos and moved after the already striding figure, walking off in the direction opposite Sørum’s.
They continued walking for many minutes more, everyone putting one foot in front of the other in perfect silence. The sudden dunking Wingate had given the commandos and his superiors a couple days earlier was at odds with the expectations of everybody but Wingate. It threw off their equilibrium, so now they were anxious to get to their destination. They wanted to relax and do what Sørum had said. Wait. Just wait.
Wingate’s battle sense was alert the moment anything unusual happened. So when the cowled leader leaned over to whisper in another’s ear, Mac concentrated on it. He wasn’t taken by surprise when the MILORG who had been whispered to stopped short and silently motioned for everyone else to do the same.
The MILORG who had halted quickly approached Mac. “Snow Queen says you should be on guard. This is the most dangerous section of our trek.”
Mac looked around. The area looked no different from the wood they had been marching through for quite some time. But on second glance, he noted a sparseness of foliage in front of them to the left, where the ground made a notable dip. In between the evergreens there, he saw something dark, something brown and deep blue. Studying it further, he waved the other English-speaking soldiers to him.
“Why have we stopped?” Walters demanded, some of his bluster returning to him.
“Be on guard,” Wingate suggested. “We may run into trouble.” The group responded by unslinging their weapons. Tyler moved a little closer to Walters, holding up his M3 as protection.
Wingate nodded at the Norwegian who had spoken to him. That agent went to the one called Snow Queen. Snow Queen waved the small group forward. In a few seconds and with just a few more steps, Wingate could see fully what he had just glimpsed before. On the crest of a hill on the other side of a dip in the ground was a strikingly angular Nordic pagoda.
The six-tiered structure, made up of sharp gables that rose, ever smaller, off the center of each proceeding it, lay atop a square stone fence that reached all the way around it. At the very tips of the gables were sculptures of angry dragons, mythical heads that resembled Viking figureheads.
At the bottom of the dip that led to the structure was the remnant of a path. Although overgrown and broken, it was still a walkway. It was little wonder Snow Queen had sent out a warning. During their entire trip after landing, the pagoda and the path were the first signs of humanity.
Mac quickened his step toward Snow Queen’s motionless figure. He was intercepted by the agent who had spoken to him before.
“Snow Queen is thinking,” he explained. “There should be no disturbance.”
“Can’t we go around it?” Wingate suggested. Snow Queen must have heard him, for the agent’s head shook “no.”
“We would lose too much time and put ourselves in certain danger,” Snow Queen’s seeming assistant said. “We must pass by, but we must take care.”
“What’s the delay?” an English-accented voice said behind Wingate. The captain spun toward Walters, his right hand up in a casual “stop” signal.
“Just take it easy, Colonel,” he said. “There’s a possibility of an ambush inside that place.”
“Nonsense!” retorted the Britisher. “Who is going to use an ancient, out-of-the-way church as an ambush? Why, it is obvious that no one has traversed this path in weeks! We have nothing to fear and no reason to pause.”
“Don’t you think ...” Wingate began.
“Come on, Tyler,” Walters interrupted, brushing by the captain and walking between Snow Queen and the other MILORG member. The two Norwegians reacted with surprise as they saw the Allied colonels go by. Wingate made no move to prevent the pair from going out in the open. Breaker moved forward, but Wingate put out his arm to stop the Australian.
“Forget the heroics,” he said quietly. “If you’re not right, they’ll court-martial you for manhandling them. If you are right, well, then they’re doing us all a favor. If somebody shoots them, they will have been asking for it and then we’ll know for sure there’s an ambush.”
The MILORGs must have been thinking the same way, for once the colonels had passed, none of the cowled figures made a move. Quickly, Wingate scanned the area around the pagoda. Below the stone wall was a large rock covered with ferns. Nearby were some thin trees and heavy, moss-covered tree roots.
Walters and Tyler strode right out in front of this, stopped, looked around, and turned back toward the waiting MILORGs. The possibility of Walters doing what he did entered Wingate’s mind a second before the colonel did it. As soon as Walters’s arm started to rise, Wingate was moving. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Snow Queen doing the same.
Only, while he was racing toward the bottom of the rock, the MILORG agent was running directly at Walters.
The English colonel was going to wave the others ahead. Essentially, he was going to silently announce to whomever might be around that there were others where he came from. Neither Wingate nor Snow Queen wanted to chance somebody strafing the wood with high-powered machine gun bullets, grenades, or mortar fire. If something like that happened and they were caught on the other side of the path, the crew would either have to retreat or risk being pinned down and killed.
Wingate moved because he trusted the Norwegians to know their own country and what they were up against. If it turned out that no one was lying in wait in the pagoda, then all Wingate would have done was run across the road. No shame in that.
The American sped past Walters a split second before Snow Queen was able to reach him. Just before the MILORG agent bowled him over, the shooting started.
The forest was suddenly filled with the thudding crackle of 7.92 mm shells pumped out of the pagoda’s third level. Wingate saw the telltale crackle of fire just before he threw himself forward, rolled, and wound up against the rock hill below the stone wall. He turned his head to see Snow Queen and Tyler dragging Walters toward him, the American colonel using one hand to lay down a protecting fire with his M3.
