As Time Goes By (5 page)

Inside, Victor was beaming. He knew that Ilsa was
magnificent, but never before had he suspected just
how splendid she really was.

"Gentlemen," he said, picking up the skein, "you
can see how devoted my wife and I are to the cause.
We are, both of us, prepared to die for our beliefs—as
are our colleagues from Czechoslovakia in this noble
endeavor." The nod of his head indicated Jan and
Josef. "We do not ask the same sacrifice from you.
Only that, when the time comes, you will be there for
us—-just as surely as we are here for you at this mo
ment."

Ilsa rose to go. "I hope you gentlemen will please
excuse me. There is someone very important whom
I must see. Someone I have not seen in a very long
time."

There was a moment of silence, broken by Major
Miles. "I hope you will forgive me, madam, for asking
who this someone might be."

"What's the matter, Sir Harold?" she replied.
"Don't you trust me?"

"Nothing of the sort. But in an operation like this,
one must maintain the highest level of security. There
fore, it is with the greatest regret that I must ask you
who—"

"I am going to see my mother," Ilsa said candidly.
"I hope that is all right with you gentlemen. I have not
seen or spoken to her in two years. I'm sure you will
all agree that it is high time that I visit her."

Three of the men knew who Ilsa's mother was and
what she had suffered at the hands of their enemy. "Please allow me the honor of escorting you person
ally to that great lady," said Major Miles, visibly chas
tened.

"That is most kind of you, Sir Harold," Ilsa said.
"But I'm quite sure I can find my own way."

She took her coat from Mrs. Bunton and went outside. A taxi came right along. She hailed it, gave the
driver an address, and stepped into the cab.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

Ilsa Lund sat in the taxi, accompanied only by her
thoughts. Involuntarily she let out a deep breath and
felt a sense of relaxation sweep over her. This was the first time she had been both safe and alone in many
months. Yet it seemed either a lifetime ago or only yes
terday that she was bidding good-bye to her parents on
the steps of their Oslo home, off to Paris for language
study at the Sorbonne in the fall of 1938. Who could
have imagined that the world she was leaving would so soon disappear? Or that the shy, naive student who was
about to embark for France would also vanish, to be replaced by the determined, experienced woman now riding across London? No one, least of all her.

Instinctively she reached across the backseat of the
taxi to take Victor's hand and was momentarily surprised when it wasn't there.

A natural linguist, she had been studying Slavic lan
guages, with a concentration in Russian. Her father had
encouraged her. "We Scandinavians cannot expect the
people of Europe to learn our languages, Ilsa, so we
must learn theirs," he told her. She threw herself into
her studies, forsaking the nightlife of St. Michel for the
hard work of Russian grammar and the rewards of
being able to read Tolstoy in the original. She would have time later for celebration, she reasoned. Plenty of
time.

Then, on the first of May 1939, she met Victor
Laszlo.

"Get dressed, Ilsa!" said Angelique Casselle, her
best friend, diving into Ilsa's closet, coming up with
her best dress, and tossing it at her as she pored over a
textbook. "You can't stay in your room studying for
ever. Do you want to die an old maid?"

"But, the examination," protested Ilsa.

Angelique put her lips together and blew, a typically
French gesture of disparagement. "Bah!" she said.
"You already speak Russian better than Stalin. What
more do you want? Come on! There's somebody I want
you to meet."

Ilsa would never forget the address: 150, boulevard
St.-Germain. She had stopped at the open-air market
that lined both sides of the rue du Seine and bought
some fresh cheese and a bottle of Bordeaux to bring as
presents. When she pressed the buzzer of the flat, the
door was opened by the handsomest man she had ever seen, a man who greeted her with continental elegance
in perfect French.

"Miss Ilsa Lund, I believe," he said, kissing her
hand. "My name is Victor Laszlo." His eyes met hers.
"Miss Casselle told me you were the most beautiful
girl in Paris. She lied. You are the most beautiful
woman in all Europe."

Ilsa was astonished. Everybody in Paris knew Victor
Laszlo, the Czech patriot who, before the Munich Pact
of 1938, had so resolutely opposed any accommoda
tion with the Nazis in his daily newspaper,
Pravo.
Laszlo had fearlessly exposed the Nazis' record of brutality, redoubling his efforts after the Sudetenland was handed over to Germany. When Hitler annexed Bohemia and Moravia on March 15, 1939, Laszlo became a
wanted man. He went underground for a time, continu
ing to publish. Finally, when the situation became too dangerous, he fled to Paris, where he joined the Czech government-in-exile and continued his opposition.

From that moment on, they were nearly inseparable.
Victor fell in love not only with Ilsa's beauty, but with
her intelligence and strength; he saw in her a partner in
his grand crusade. For Ilsa, Laszlo opened up a whole world of knowledge and thoughts and ideals, and she
looked up to him and worshiped him with a feeling she
supposed was love. They worked together feverishly,
not for themselves, but on behalf of all the captive peo
ples of Europe.

Swept away by his selfless dedication, Ilsa Lund se
cretly married Victor Laszlo in June 1939. Not even
their closest friends knew of their wedding.

Despite her protestations, Victor returned to his
homeland in July to carry the fight to the enemy. She
told him it was too dangerous, but he wouldn't be dis
suaded, "Ilsa, I must go," he had told her. "How can I
ask others to do what I myself will not?"

The Gestapo, however, was waiting for him; a few days after arriving in Prague, Victor was arrested and
sent to the concentration camp at Mauthausen in Ger
man-occupied Austria. A short while later he was reported dead, shot while trying to escape.

Ilsa was despondent. For a time, she considered re
turning home to Oslo but quickly decided against it.
Victor would have wanted her to stay and carry on their
work. Besides, her brief experience with the Under
ground had given her a taste of the game the men were
playing, and she liked it. Even when the rumors of war
grew too loud to ignore, even when Hitler's saber rat
tling started to shake foundations from Warsaw to
Paris, she stayed in France. When, in September 1939
the Wehrmacht attacked Poland, she knew she had
made the right decision.

She did not worry about her family. Scandinavia was
small and unthreatening. Aside from Swedish iron ore,
it had nothing the Germans either needed or wanted. Letters from home gave no cause for alarm. Then in
April 1940 the Germans attacked and conquered Nor
way. The King fled to London, and the letters from
home suddenly stopped. When next she heard from her
mother it was a month later, and the news was terrible indeed: her father was dead.

Ilsa watched the city flash by her window as the taxi maneuvered northeast through the rainswept, twisting streets. To her eye, London's gray, imposing buildings
were clumped along the carriageways like descendants
of Stonehenge, silent, magisterial, and more than a little forbidding. On this day they matched her mood.

London was nothing like either Oslo or Paris, she
reflected. Her hometown was small and hilly, perched
on the water's edge as if getting ready to cast its fishing
nets into the sea at any moment. Oslo's houses were
smaller than London's, less regimented, more neigh
borly. They were narrow, gabled, and made of wood.
In the brief summer, they were ringed with greenery
and bright flowers made all the more cheerful by their
impermanence; sealed tight against the elements during the long, dark winter, the homes were warm and
inviting. Paris straddled the Seine serenely, incorporat
ing the river into its very conception of self, as if man, not God, had put the water there for the pleasure of the
Parisians. Oslo was happy to let nature dominate; Paris
was pleased to allow nature to participate.

The Thames was London's lifeline to the sea, but
unless you were a dockworker or an MP, you could go
for days without encountering the river. The buildings
were at once grander and less elegant than their French
counterparts, and the city's inhabitants moved more
purposefully. The rainy weather and the sooty fog
often erased the sun, but London preferred to ignore
the elements rather than accommodate or kowtow to them. The business of London was not business but
power, and it was to the keeping of that power that the
country had rededicated itself in this war. Did Hitler know what a formidable opponent he had in the British? She doubted he did.

"Here, driver, here!" she cried as they turned into
Myddleton Square in Islington. She threw a handful of
coins at the cabby, leaped out, and rushed up the steps to her mother's flat, her heart beating furiously.

Inghild Lund rose to answer the doorbell. She
opened the heavy door and beheld the daughter she
thought she might never see again.

Before she could say anything, Ilsa threw her arms
around her and the two women stood on the doorstep, hugging fiercely.

"I can't believe it's you," whispered Inghild through her tears of joy.

"I'm here, Mama," cried Ilsa, "I'm here."

They stayed locked together for longer than either of
them knew, not caring about the passersby or the rain,
until Inghild at last released her daughter. "Come in
side and tell me what miracle has finally brought you
back to me."

The little flat was homey and comfortable; though it
was far from Norway, to Ilsa it sang of home. A picture
of King Haakon VII hung on one of the walls, and on a small side table stood a photograph of Edvard and
Inghild Lund, taken on their wedding day in 1912. How
handsome her father was in his dress suit, his left arm around his new wife and a cigarette in his right hand,
Ilsa half expected him to walk in the door any minute,
fresh from a meeting with the King; it was impossible
to believe that she would never see him again.

Ilsa Lund had been born in Oslo on August 29,1915,
just ten years after Norway won independence from
Sweden; Oslo was still called Christiania then. Ilsa's
father, Edvard Lund, had been a member of parliament,
the Storting, which had rejected the Swedish monarch, Oscar II, and established the modern Norwegian state.
"To those who question the depth of our desire," he had said in a fiery speech, "I reply: We are ready to
prove it with the sacrifice of our lives and our homes—
but never of our honor." Ilsa's father was quickly elevated to the cabinet and there he remained until April
1940, when the Nazis appropriated Norway in the name
of the Greater German Reich.

Inghild had been able to take along only a few be
longings when she was spirited to London along with the King and the government-in-exile. Ilsa recognized
them at once. A lace tablecloth that used to cover a
heavy wooden table with thick carved legs, under
which she liked to hide as a child. Some silverware. A
few Persian rugs, one of which still bore the stains of a
glass of milk she had thrown so long ago in a childish
tantrum. A small wall clock that had been in her moth
er's family for generations. It ticked softly in a corner,
every passing second a bitter reminder of the calamity
that had befallen their homeland.

No, that was no way to think, Ilsa told herself. Every
tick was one moment closer to liberation and freedom
for them all. Whatever role she could play in that liber
ation, she was ready.

Inghild had been preparing some tea for herself, but
now she added more water and left it to steep in the pot, to serve later. She produced some cookies, as
mothers always will, and some schnapps, which mothers sometimes will.

"I've been beside myself with worry about you,"
Inghild told her daughter, her voice alive with relief
and delight "After the fall of France your letters sud
denly stopped. The Underground were able to tell me
you were alive, but little else. Over the next year or so,
I got a few of your letters, smuggled in. From our agents, I knew you were in occupied France, but I didn't know where. When I learned that you were
headed to Casablanca, I could not ask why, but at least
I could do something about it." She laughed. "And
now here you are! How I wish your father could see
you."

"So it was you who suggested I contact Berger!"
exclaimed Ilsa. In this moment of exultation, she didn't
want to think about her father; they would mourn him
together later—after she had avenged him. "I might
have known my mother would still be watching over
me."