The Sword and the Net

2 SWEDEN

But Otto Falken was lost—at least for the time being. Not lost, of course, in the way which Hegger had meant in his mutterings, but lost in the Falken identity. Otto Falken was no more; in his place was one Nils Jorgensen, a Swedish boy who had spent most of his twenty-seven years in Norway. . . .

This transmigration of personalities had taken place during the six short hours which had begun as he followed the Generaloberst upstairs in the deceptive suburban house and which had ended when, after the astounding, epic interview which followed, he had put on blue trousers and smock in the hut at the airport and then, donning the coat and comforters lent him by the silent pilot, had climbed into the little tri-motored pursuit plane. . . .

It had transported him, this plane, in more ways than one. It had carried him not only over the swift miles between Berlin and Stockholm—it had carried him from one personality to another; from one conception of his purpose and duty to another; from one way of life to a different way of life. . . .

And now, waking for the tenth morning in his new surroundings, he lay still in his bed and, as was his new, self-imposed discipline, worked over his mind until it began to feel like the mind of Nils Jorgensen and not the mind of Heinrich Maximilian Otto Falken.

This was difficult. It should, he felt every morning, be growing easier—but somehow the facility did not seem to come. Always, instead of being Nils Jorgensen at once, he had to start at the very beginning again, and go over that last incredible day in Berlin, dwelling particularly upon every word of the breath-taking hour he had spent with the Personage to whom the General had taken him. . . .

He, Heinrich Maximilian Otto Falken, born Von Falkenhaus, was to perform, in another and fictitious identity, work of secret and tremendous importance to the Cause of the New Germany. . . . “This is not work, Otto Falken, which will bring you public honour! But it is vital work!” . . . He, Otto Falken, after he had properly become Nils Jorgensen, was to be a doubly secret agent of the Reich, working “in another country, unsupported among enemies”—another country which, his reason told him, must be Britain! . . . “When you reach your final destination, Falken, you will apparently be under the orders of persons who think they are your superiors. You must obey these orders. But, at the same time, you will obey orders which you have received directly from myself Which practically means, Falken, directly from the Fuehrer!” . . . Yet he was not told in so many words where this great work would ultimately lie. . . . “It is not safe to tell you too much, Falken. You will receive orders in proper gradation, as and when they are necessary! . . . The work—or, rather, the first step in the work—was to become Nils Jorgensen. When he was Nils Jorgensen, he would receive the first instalment of his orders. Therefore, the sooner he fully assumed the new personality, the sooner could he begin this vitally important, this tremendously exciting, service to his country. . . . He knew how the orders would come: someone, somewhere, at some time, would show him the pencil. If he were still in doubt after this, he must casually introduce a question as to the time—and then, if he were answered in the form which was burned into his memory, he would know. . . .

He lay very still in the bed, his eyes screwed tightly shut. . . . Now for the second step of the exercise—a rehearsal in his mind of Nils’ physical surroundings. . . .

Nils’ room—this room where he lay—was an attic in the house of Axel Christensen, carpenter, The house of Axel Christensen was on the outskirts of the village of Kornemunde, some thirty miles from Stockholm. Below, abutting on to the eastern side of the house, was the long barn-like workshop in which Axel plied his trade of joiner and carpenter and in which he himself would presently be at work—for a little, public part of the time helping Axel with local orders, for the rest attaining, under Axel’s teaching, proficiency in such arts of carpentry, joinery and the like as would qualify him for the part of carpenter’s mate (or whatever they called it) upon an ocean-going ship. . . . Downstairs, immediately below the stiff and silent and hardly-ever-used parlour, which in turn was directly below his attic, came the kitchen—and there, very shortly, he would eat. . . .

So much for the geography! Now for Nils himself—and his wherefore and why! Nils (never forget!) is nephew to Axel Christensen, a brother of his mother’s. Nils has never before this visit seen his uncle—but his uncle, upon receiving the frightful news that his sister and her Norwegian husband, resident in the unfortunate northern half of Norway, had been killed by a German bomb, made haste to summon his nephew (absent at sea at the time of the catastrophe) and take him under his wing and set him to work in the ‘shop.’ Axel hopes (don’t forget) that his husky, skilful, personable, craftsmanlike nephew will make his stay permanent; will not, as other mates and apprentices seem so often to have done before, leave him suddenly and selfishly. . . . Axel says nothing (nor must Nils) of the instruction in sea-going carpentry. . . .

All right! Part Two of the programme is over. . . . Now for Part Three—and Nils can get up and go about this strange new world believing he is part of it!

Part Three is more fun than its predecessors, because he can use his senses. . . .

Relaxed, he lay in the over-soft feather-bed and rolled luxuriously and stretched himself and opened his eyes. Above him were dark beams of oak, black save for the dapplings of gold made by such rays of the early slanting sun as struggled through the skylight window. Then, as he dropped his eyes, there were the clean whitewashed walls, and the high dresser of dark, time-polished pine, and, on the far wall, the picture which (they said) was of Axel’s mother—and the washstand—and the little, gatelegged table—and the four great packing cases—and the curtain-covered corner for clothes—and all the rest. . . .

The air smelt wonderful, and the sunshine was not pale—and there stirred in Otto an anger.

“Soft!” said Otto without sound, and threw the covers from him—and then angrily reprimanded himself.

“Splendid morning!” said Nils aloud, and swung his legs to the floor and fished his watch from under the pillows and found the time to be seven. . . .

He pulled on blouse and trousers and grabbed a thick brown towel (he must remember never to find the colour unusual!) and, taking his thick shoes in his hand, ran down the stairs and let himself out of the side-door near the kitchen.

Outside, the sun was warm and the air itself cold and tingling, so that it stung the skin with a sudden, exhilarating bite before the sun could warm it. He made his way through the kitchen-garden to the door in the white fence. He opened the door and stepped through it and closed it quickly behind him and was in the common-land meadow which made a huge triangle bounded by the mill-stream and Axel’s dwelling and the mill-house itself. He began to run without waiting to put on his shoes. The coarse weed-grasses stabbed at his feet. They hurt, and he felt better. He slowed to a walk, the heavy shoes bouncing and jerking around his neck, and made a bee-line for the mill-pond. Over the stream, past the fertile fields, the sudden small mountains rose—a mile, twenty, sixty miles away. They were white-capped, and blue against the green and gold and brown of the tilled earth at their feet. The sun grew warmer and softened more and more the bite of the early spring air. Small creatures made scurrying rustles in the grass and the hedges, and a lark startlingly sang above his head. From the mill-house chimney a thin blue-grey streamer of smoke reached up uncertainly—and from the fields behind him came a velvety lowing of cattle.

It was peaceful—idyllic—beautiful—unreal! The air smelt soft and sweet—and yet was sharp and heady. And the little mountains were incredibly beautiful in their baby ruggedness.

Otto began to run again; there was a lump coming in his throat, for no reason at all, and he grew angry again.

“Soft!” said Otto violently—and then took himself to task, violently, for not being Nils, to whom all this would doubtless seem ordinary and pleasant and right. . . .

But there was nothing (surely there was nothing?) to prevent Nils Jorgensen from plunging into the searing-cold water of the mill-pond—and swimming—and climbing out and shivering until the sun warmed his aching muscles back to life—and then diving in again—and staying in the clear dark water until the coldness clamped iron fingers around his heart and lungs with such grisly force that he must use all the strength of his will to make the frigid muscles obey his mind and propel his body three times, fast, around the pool before he clambered out through the reeds. . . .

Nils came back to the house, hard and tight and glowing, to find his Aunt Kirsten cooking already, while his cousin Gertrud laid the blue-bordered white cloth upon the big white-pine table in the bay-window of the kitchen. Pots bubbled upon the great stove, and there was the vivid, tingling smell of bacon frying.

There was also another smell—a forbidden, delicious scent—the gritty-gold aroma of brewing coffee.

Nils’ Aunt Kirsten giggled as her nephew sniffed the air.

“That uncle of yours!” she said. “He will have his coffee. I keep telling him the neighbours will smell it out and then he’ll be reported for hoarding. But he has to have it!”

Gertrud, very busy with her table-setting, spoke to him softly. She said:

“You have been swimming, Nils? . . . B’rr!” She shook her pretty shoulders and her breasts quivered tautly beneath the print frock. “You are brave!”

Gertrud was brown-haired and small and slimly rounded. She was like her mother in feature, but had Axel’s colouring. Her eyes were large and of a soft, warm brownness—and her teeth, when she smiled, were very white against her red lips. She was eighteen and shyly ardent. She said again:

“You are brave, Nils!”

Otto mumbled a reply, without looking at her. He wished she were not around. He wished she were not here at all. He wished she would not speak to him. She made it increasingly difficult to be Nils, because he could not take the pleasure in her existence which any young man must take in so attractive a cousin; any young man, that is, except Otto Falken. If only Gertrud did not so irresistibly remind him of the girl in Paris; the girl whose eyes had blazed fierce and contemptuous and unreasoning hatred; the girl who, for some obscure and infuriating reason, he knew he would never be able to dismiss from memory.

He went upstairs, telling Aunt Kirsten he would only be a moment. He found a clean blouse and pulled it on. He brushed his damp hair violently and was pleased that the wiry blond curls seemed darker and more orderly than usual. He dusted his heavy shoes, which bore a Norwegian trademark, and even polished with a handkerchief the heavy brass buckle of the belt which held up the working trousers of felt-like blue cloth. He did all these things as Nils would do them—and yet, all the time, that Parisian incident was running through Otto’s mind.

It had been so—so weirdly unlikely a thing to happen, especially in a country such as France, whose people had seen the light in time and saved themselves and were happy in the New Order and safe in the protection of the Reich. It had happened during those seventy-six hours of pleasantly lionized leave he had enjoyed in Paris after he had safely landed the British plane in Calais, mercifully saved from anti-aircraft fire by the fact that the Channel fight had been witnessed and his nationality guessed. He had been fêted and complimented by an Air-Marshal, and taken to Paris and shown the sights, and dined and wined, and had songs sung to him from the stage of a theatre, and been presented to a lovely chanteuse whom he had come to know well and who had been very, very nice to him. He had had, indeed, the time of his young life. Until the morning when, his leave expired, he ceased with automatic suddenness to be a hero and became again a young Flight Commander under orders to proceed immediately to Berlin and report himself. He had, it turned out, the whole forenoon to himself, for the plane that was to carry him to Berlin did not leave until the early afternoon. He determined that it would be interesting to see Paris, or some of it, unheralded, unescorted and afoot. He realized, not without a twinge of well-earned headache, that he had not, really, seen any Paris at all. So he left his hotel, and sent his newly acquired baggage to the Air Field, and went out into the streets and drifted—a common enough sight in these days, a tall, beautifully built young Aryan warrior, very smart in his uniform, very military in his carriage.

He was passing the Madeleine when it happened. There was a high curb, and a little press of people, all natives, in front of him. They surged forward—and the girl, twisting her foot in its high-heeled shoe upon the edge of the curb, collapsed in front of him and would have fallen had he not, very quickly, put an arm around her. It was an instinctively helpful act and one impossible to construe in any other way. She was a very pretty girl, literally alight with the quality to which her countrymen gave the word chic so frequently mistreated in other lands. To keep her uptight, Otto was forced, as his arm went around her, to swing her about, slightly clear of the ground, and set her down upon her feet again face to face with him, It was also necessary, if she were to retain her balance after this whirligig rescue, momentarily to keep the rescuing arm around her. So they were chest to chest, with Otto’s arm around her waist, supporting her. He smiled happily down at her and tried to say something in very halting, inadequate French—but before the initial ‘Mademoiselle’ was completely uttered, he was seared by the blazing, contemptuous hatred which flared up at him from the dark eyes. He was so staggered, so astounded, so mentally shaken, that he did not even think to remove the arm. He just stared. And then there had been three hissing words between the clenched white teeth, and small hands which thrust against his chest with surprising, hurtful force. He removed the arm. It dropped nervously to his side and hung there while he went on staring. And then the small face, contorted by a passion of disgusted hatred, was thrust upwards towards his own—and she spat!

In the attic room of the house of Axel Christensen, Otto Falken stared with unseeing eyes at his reflection in the spotted mirror on the dresser and raised a hand to his face and rubbed at his cheek just as he had done as he stood by the curb near the Madeleine—and as he always did, though he never wanted to, he saw vividly in his mind the beautiful little face again, twisted with that deep, utterly irrational, soul-shaking hatred.

He went down to breakfast, very determinedly Nils. Uncle Axel was there now, and all four of them sat down to the meal, Aunt Kirsten and Gertrud sharing the work of serving. It was a very good meal, despite the prevailing shortage, at which Axel grumbled unceasingly, in some things like butter and preserves. Nils ate largely and did not talk. Axel buried himself behind the Stockholm newspaper, passing sheet after sheet to Aunt Kirsten as he finished them. Gertrud made a tentative remark or two, mostly to Nils; then gave up as he merely smiled in her direction without replying.

The meal was nearly over when Aunt Kirsten exclaimed in horror at something she was reading. Everyone looked at her curiously, even her husband lowering the page he was intent upon.

“Oh!” said Aunt Kirsten. “Oh, it’s . . . it’s dreadful! Dreadful!”

She had chanced upon a description of the plight of some Norse families in the bitter country around Narvik; families who, in the fighting months before, had been bombed out of their homesteads and then decided, with more bravery than sense, to stay where they were and remake something of what was left rather than join the swelling tide of refugees to the south.

She began to read aloud the passages that had moved her to horror—and then was stricken with remorse as Nils, with a mumbled apology, pushed aside his coffee, unfinished, and hurriedly left the kitchen.

“Tchk, tchk!” muttered Axel, and went back to his reading.

Gertrud’s brown eyes glistened with tears. “How could you!” she said to her mother. “How could you be so callous! To remind the poor boy like that!”

Kirsten shook her head. She said sadly:

“I don’t know what I can have been thinking of! . . . And not a twelvemonth since the poor laddie’s own parents were struck down in their own house. . . .”

Otto went straight to the workshop. He was pleased with himself. That had been very Nils-like behaviour: he believed, when he came to think it over, that he had even felt, as he left the kitchen, like a man whose beloved parents have recently been slaughtered in an accident of war.

He rolled up the sleeves of his blouse and began to set out his tools. He paused suddenly, smitten by self-criticism: ‘an accident of war’! That was not the right thought for Nils. If there were a Nils, and his parents had been killed by a necessary German bomb, Nils would not think of this as any ‘accident’—he would inevitably see this personal and unavoidable disaster as a fiendish crime, sadistically planned and executed by brutal barbarians. . . .

It was cold in the workshop, and Otto shivered. He came out of the immobility of thought and went to work. He must be careful to repair immediately this mental attitude of Nils: it was, after all, only what he had been told—first in the upper room of the Berlin suburban house, latterly and all the time by Axel Christensen. While he worked upon a slab of pine with the big plane, warmth creeping back to his body with the powerful strokes, he pondered upon the subject of Axel. A remarkable person! Who was he? Of course, in some way, in the service of the Reich—but exactly in what way? And in what standing? And what, really, was his nationality? And were Kirsten and her daughter Axel’s wife and daughter? And, whether they were or not, did either or both of them know what Axel’s real work was? Did Axel have the power to pass finally upon the ability of Otto Falken to perform, in the shape of Nils Jorgensen, the work for which he had been selected? What, exactly, was this work? Granted that it must be in England, what did it entail? And what would be its effect at the end? . . .

Axel came in as the planing was nearly done. He nodded to Otto, and crossed to his own private bench, where he stood, looking down at his tools in his habitual, somehow minatory silence. He was a tall, solid, stoop-shouldered man with a dense thatch of grey-brown hair, his eyes dark and unreadable and staring behind thick-lensed, iron-framed spectacles.

Otto, wrapping himself in Nils, got on with his work. He did not see that Axel had left the bench and moved over on quiet feet to stand just behind him. He did not know this until Axel spoke—very calmly, very casually and in his ‘workshop’ as opposed to his ‘duty instructional’ voice. And he asked a simple, ordinary, every-day question; a question which he had probably asked of his new apprentice five or six times in the past ten days. But he asked it in German. He said, in German:

“Where is the small finishing plane?”

Otto, wrapped up in his work—as Nils should be wrapped up in his work—replied without looking up. But he replied, instinctively, in the language in which he had been addressed; in his own language. He said, in German:

“On your own bench. I put it back last night.”

Perhaps he was going to say more—but he did not, for a heavy hand fell on his shoulder and roughly jerked him around so that he was face to face with Axel, who was almost as tall as he, and his eyes were looking directly into the staring, unreadable eyes behind the thick, concave lenses. And then Axel’s right hand, its palm hard and calloused and heavy, struck him with a ringing, stunning clap across the left side of his face. Although it was struck with the open hand, the blow was so heavy, and so utterly, astonishingly unexpected, that Otto reeled. He might, indeed, have fallen had it not been for the edge of the work-bench which, crashing painfully against his back, held him upright.

He thrust himself away from it, his face lividly pale save for the angry red of the injured cheek. For an infinitesimal division of time, it was his intention to hurl himself at this man who had struck him; then, immediately, discipline locked iron fingers around his mind and he dropped his hands and stood, gazing at Axel in silence.

Axel did not move. He said, in Swedish:

“So! It is that way we treat silly children!” He paused for a long moment. “And that is what you are—a foolish child!” There was bitter contempt in the quiet, heavy voice. “I speak to you in German—and you answer in German!”

Axel’s left hand was raised now, slowly and with deliberation. Otto saw the blow coming; but he did not move as the horny palm, with a blow fully as weighty as the first, fell across the other cheek. His head rang, but he hardly blinked the vivid blue eyes. He stood rigid now, at attention.

“Now, Nils Jorgensen,” said the heavy, soft voice, “perhaps you will remember that you do not know the German language; not one single word of it! You may, perhaps, recognize it as German when it is spoken in your hearing—but even that is doubtful! . . . Get on with your work.”

Otto, with heavy heart and face burning with shame and bruises, turned back to his bench. . . .