Sleeper Agent (34 page)

He looked earnestly at Tom. “One cannot know what now will happen in the streets, Tom,” he said. “
We
may be the only true force ready to save our town from destructive fighting.
We
may be the only force to bring the guilty ones to justice—and prevent them from dragging down the people and the city with them in their defeat.”

He placed his hand on Tom’s arm. “You must understand,” he said solemnly.

Tom nodded. “I do, Sven,” he said gravely. “I do.”

He did understand. The responsibilities confronting Sven and his group of Freedom Fighters now had to take precedence over anything else. And that included the hunt for Rudi A-27. He felt excited and happy for his Danish friends. Their ordeal had come to an end. It was time for action. He also knew that without their help he had no chance of successfully completing his own vital mission. He had lost.

Sven watched him with concern.

“What will you do?” he asked quietly.

Tom tightened his mouth. What the hell
would
he do? Shit! He refused to admit defeat. Dammit, you weren’t licked until you admitted you were. “Keep trying,” he said defiantly.

Tove had joined them. She looked at Tom with her big serious eyes. “You will need help,” she said simply. “I will stay with you.”

Tom turned to her quickly.

“You will need me,” she said.

He looked at her. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. I will.”

Sven and his Freedom Fighters left.

Denmark is free again!
With one brief sentence, spoken in a foreign country far away, the hunted had become the hunters.

The streets of the city were crowded with jubilant people. The very air was electric with excitement. Officially the formal surrender would not become effective until 0800 hours the next morning. It was no deterrent to the exulting celebrants sweeping the city, shouting, singing, embracing in boundless joy. It was over! Freedom had come!

Tom and Tove were making their way through the ecstatic throngs toward Frederiksberggade. One last check of the Café Tosca.

The entire city was ablaze with color and light. Every neon sign, every billboard, every streetlight and every spotlight blazed in bright brilliance. Yet, most impressive of all were the candles. Magically, miraculously, a lighted candle had appeared in every window, casting a glow of joy and gladness over the hectic scene below.

Public loudspeakers blared forth national and patriotic songs, all but drowned out by the joyful roar of the crowds. The big yellow tramcars lumbered through the streets, clanging their bells, overflowing with young people hanging from the windows and clinging to the sides and crowded on the roofs, waving Danish flags, singing at the top of their youthful voices. It was an orgy of joy. It was deliverance.

Tom and Tove, infected by the all-embracing spirit of excitement and exuberance, pushed across the Town Hall Square, which was swarming with cheering celebrants. He took her hand. For a moment their eyes met. Her hand was vibrantly alive in his.

They reached Frederiksberggade. The Tosca was no longer closed tight. Every window, every door gaped wide open. In their flush of triumph, in an outburst of pent-up release the people had taken their revenge on the hated German café.

It had been totally razed. Gutted. Every window shattered. Every stick of furniture smashed. Every piece of equipment destroyed and hurled out to lie in heaps of trampled rubble in the street. Someone set fire to the mound of debris, and quickly the flames were shooting high up into the air.

The Tosca was dead. Wolff, the waiter, would never be needed again. Neither would Wolff, the undercover agent, ever return.

Rudi waved his little Danish flag wildly over his head. At the top of his lungs he shouted, “
Kongen laenge level
—Long live the King!” as he let himself be jostled through the street by the surging, agitated crowd. He was enraged. His contempt for the undisciplined mob of Danes was abysmal. He felt a deep outrage at their barbaric behavior.

He had passed by the offices of the Ufa motion picture corporation in Nygade only a few blocks away. The building of the great company, producers of some of Germany’s—and the world’s—finest films, had been viciously ransacked and demolished by the unruly rabble. Furniture was pitched from the windows, papers and documents scattered to the winds to be trampled beneath the vandal feet of the lawless mob.

He looked around him, scanning the milling crowd, as he moved along, cheering and singing enthusiastically with the rest. He was searching for himself. Someone who could provide him with a new identity. But no one looked the least like him. Or did they? Did he really know what he looked like? Does anyone?

He felt exposed. His compromised papers seemed to sear his pocket every time he passed a patrol of Freedom Fighters, their distinctive armbands prominent and portentous on their sleeves. He
had
to find someone. Soon.

Whoever it would be did not actually have to look like him. Only be the same build, the same height, the same age and the same coloring. There seemed to be something wrong with every candidate he scrutinized.

The crowd was streaming toward Amalienborg, the royal residence, to cheer the King. Close to the King’s Newmarket, in Østergade, a bottleneck had formed.

When Rudi came near, he saw the cause of it. A large German bookstore had been broken into, looted and laid waste. Piles of books and pamphlets lay strewn in the street. Laughing, joking hoodlums were milling and jostling around the devastated shop, wantonly destroying the German works, flinging them by the armful into the street and onto blazing bonfires.

A young Dane came running from the shop. He held a couple of books in each hand high above his head in wild triumph, screaming his excitement to the cheering throng. “
Mein Kampf!”
he shouted. “
Mein Kampf! Mein Kampf!”
He hurled the books on the flaming fire.

Rudi watched him closely. Could be his own age. Same approximate height and build. Hair only slightly lighter. He was the man.

The young Dane ran back into the shop. Rudi followed. Inside, the bookstore was a shambles. Torn and ripped books littered the floor. Everything had been mercilessly smashed and wrecked. In the back a door stood ajar. Rudi pushed it open. He peered inside. It was a small storeroom. It was empty. Quickly he looked around for his man.

There—busily tearing a series of colorful German posters from the wall.

Rudi ran up to him. “Hey!” he said, excitement in his voice. “Come see what I found! Give me a hand!” Without waiting for an answer, he ran to the storeroom door and disappeared inside.

The young Dane followed. He came hurrying through the door into the darkened room.

Rudi was waiting for him. He stepped up behind him and slammed a violent blow with the hard edges of both his hands to the unsuspecting young man’s neck. He dropped without a sound.

At once Rudi went through his pockets. His wallet. Quickly he looked inside. Not much money. But identification. Work papers. DSB.
De Danske Statsbaner
—the Danish State Railway. And a fishing license. Enough. “Christian Madsen. Railroad worker.”

He turned to leave. He stopped. He bent over the unconscious man. He grabbed hold of his watch and tore it savagely from the wrist, breaking the skin. His motive had to be unquestioned.

He quickly replaced his own compromised papers with the new Madsen ID. He picked up an armful of books and ran to the street. To the cheering applause of the onlookers he tossed the books on one of the bonfires.

Quickly they caught, blackened leaves curling up and dying. Books. Words. Being burned to ashes. But not the beliefs they had brought!

He hurled the last book into the blaze—and with it his old papers. “Rudolf Rasmussen” went up in flames. “Christian Madsen” melted into the crowd. He had fourteen hours to wait.

There was a surging crush of happy, joyful people flowing and eddying around the beautiful old church on the canal. “Holmens Kirke,” Tove had called out.

They were on their way to Christiansborg Castle, the seat of the government. They might get aid there, Tove thought. Information. Members of the Freedom Council would be there.

The crowd of jubilant people before the church were singing the freedom song.

Tove stopped. Her eyes shone with the bright unshed tears of happy emotion. She joined in the singing: “
En Vinter, lang og mørk og haard
. . .”

She held on to Tom’s hand, squeezing it tightly. She dug her fingers into him in exhilaration. Her young voice soared with her compatriots’:

“A winter, long and dark with fears,

Through five eternal, curséd years,

Has crushed the nation in its hold,

With hardships, hunger, grief untold. . . .”

Tom gazed at her. He felt like taking her in his arms and crushing her to him. She was like a young, golden Viking goddess.

“Rise up! Resist! All Danes as one,

And make our Denmark free!”

He loved her.

They were crossing the bridge over the canal. Ahead of them rose the verdigris copper-dragon spire of the Stock Exchange. Next to it the majestic edifice of Christiansborg dominated the district.

Suddenly a volley of shots rang out. Instantly Tom hit the ground, pulling Tove down with him. A group of fanatic
Hipo
traitors, lying in ambush, had opened fire on a detail of Freedom Fighters crossing the castle square on the far side of the bridge. Several of the men were down. Dead or wounded.

The Freedom Fighters at once spread out, took cover and began to return the fire. Savage staccato bursts from semi-automatic weapons drilled holes of slaughter in the sound of celebration that blanketed the city, like the punching out of a macabre dance of death on a player-piano roll.

Throughout the area people quickly darted for safety. Not everyone made it.

Tom pressed close to the stone parapet edging the bridge, shielding Tove with his body. Part of him was wholly alert and conscious of the violence that had erupted before them. Another part was fully conscious of the warm, vibrant eloseness of the girl.

The fire died down. The screams of the injured could suddenly be heard. The firing resumed.

Tom turned his face toward the girl. “It’s no good, Tove,” he said grimly. “The whole city has gone crazy. The situation is too damned unpredictable.”

He glanced toward the square across the canal. “We won’t get anywhere tonight. Tomorrow perhaps.” He looked at Tove. “I want to get you off the streets.”

She returned his look gravely. “I have a room,” she said. “A small room. It is not too far from here.” She pointed back the way they’d come. “That way. We can go there.”

It
was
a small room. One room with a tiny kitchen, on the top floor of an old building. But it had a warmth and a feeling of cozy comfort which at once made Tom feel safe and at home. The muscles in his back suddenly ached. He had not been aware of the rigid tenseness that had gripped him in the streets.

“I can make you a cup of coffee,” Tove said. “Not real, of course. I’m sorry.”

“Anything hot’ll be fine,” he said.

He watched her walk to the little kitchen. Her movements had a lithe grace. She busied herself. Through the open door he could see her move about. He did not take his eyes from her. She was making up a little tray with two cups and two little plates with biscuits. He thought it beautiful to watch.

She brought the tray to him. She looked up at him, her eyes huge. She stood breathlessly still.

Tom’s heart raced. He was stirred to the core. A feeling of overpowering tenderness flooded him. He did not try to stop it. He felt it possess him in a warm flush of longing, of desire. An overwhelming need to throw off the tension, the anxiety, the horrors of the years of war and violence. To lose himself wholly in the beauty, the softness and the womanness of the golden girl before him.

He said not a word. Neither did she. He took the tray from her hands, and put it down on a chair. He stepped close to her. Slowly, tenderly, prolonging and savoring every soft moment intensely, he put his arms around the slender body. She shivered. He drew her to him. He felt her melt into his very being. He buried his face in the silken hollow of her neck, fragrant with excitement.

And suddenly it was as if a leaden burden was ripped from him and his entire pent-up flood of love and desire poured out. He kissed her. Hard. She clung to him. Urgently he pressed his mouth upon hers. Upon her eyes. Her lovely, radiant eyes. Her neck. He caressed her supple, yielding body.

She dug her fingers into him.

He tore at her clothes. At his own. He did not know how, but they were free of them. Just he and she. He held the warm, soft, eager girl body tight. So tight he thought he might be hurting her. But she strained against him.

They sank down to the floor, desperately needing to be part of each other. And they made love. It was a violent, fierce release from all the outrages and all the malignity of years of stress and torment for both of them, lashing out . . . It was savage, fiery, unbridled—a clawing, straining possessing one of the other. It was a total abandonment to joy. . . . And it was tender and loving, soft and wholly satisfying.

They lay in a close embrace, both young bodies glistening with the sweat of spent passion. He looked into her face. Her eyes were closed. There was a small serene smile on her soft lips. She was beautiful. He did not want to leave the nearness of her. Ever.

He reached over and pulled the cover off a studio couch nearby. Carefully, tenderly he wrapped it around them both. Slowly, their entire beings at ease, they went to sleep, safe in their cocoon of love.

The dark night streets of the German harbor town of Flensburg, hard on the Danish border, rumbled and teemed with urgent life despite the late hour.

Although the twelfth-century seaport itself was relatively undamaged by the war, the important shipyards and submarine pens of the naval base showed the jagged scars of heavy British bombing raids.