The Second Winter (34 page)

Fredrik lifted his whiskey, drank it in a single swallow, slammed the glass onto the counter. “Another,” he said.

“Easy, there,” the bartender told him, though he was already filling the glass. “Who’s going to pay for all this?”

Fredrik stuck his hand into his pocket, dug for a few crowns, slapped them on the counter next to the whiskey. “I am,” he said. “In fact, I’m paying for drinks all around.”

Skaal!
someone shouted.

Skaal!
the rest of the bar echoed, and to a man everyone in the room bent their heads into their drinks.

Fredrik knew that he was being foolish. The bundles of crowns were burning a hole in his pocket. He had never bought a round of drinks before, not once in his life. Behind his back, his friends liked to remark how difficult it would be to pry a single øre from his fingers. Still, he felt light tonight, and it was nice to relax a little.

Pedersen took a deep drag on his cigarette, then draped an arm over Steen’s shoulders and leaned toward Fredrik. “So what do you think about this business with Vilfred?” he asked.

Steen shook Pedersen off him long enough to take a careful look around the room. “Shhh,” he warned. “No need to shout.”

“Why
shhh
?” Pedersen was suddenly belligerent. He wasn’t used to so much whiskey. “We can talk, can’t we? Vilfred’s our friend, there’s no more to it than that.”

“Shhh!” Steen hissed again. “Don’t be a fool.”

“You’re both fools,” Fredrik said. “That’s what I think.”

Pedersen faced him. Steen’s brow furrowed. Behind the counter, the bartender filled their glasses. “Almost closing time,” he said.

“Sure, sure,” Fredrik said. “If the Nazis tell us to go home, we go home like good children. Who are we to decide how much we can drink or how late we can stay up?”

Pedersen’s eyes sharpened, despite the alcohol. “And yet you call us fools,” he said.

Fredrik shrugged. “Vilfred wasn’t alone that night, was he? You set fire to Jepsen’s warehouse last month, sure as he did. I call that stupid.”

“Christ,” Steen said. “I’m telling you — quiet.”

“Jepsen’s a Dane,” Fredrik said. “You probably went to school with him, didn’t you?”

“Jepsen’s a traitor,” Pedersen said. “And to tell you the truth, I didn’t like him any more when he was sitting in the front row with the answer to every question. He was every bit the weasel then that he is now.” He tried to make this into a joke with a laugh, but Fredrik didn’t join him.

“That might be,” Fredrik said with another shrug. “But the three of you set fire to a warehouse full of Danish grain. And now Vilfred’s in jail.”

“The grain was only feeding the Nazis,” Pedersen countered. “And Vilfred knew the risks. We stand up and we fight — or are you happy cowering like a baby, Gregersen?”

Steen looked over his shoulder, met another man’s stare. “I’m telling you,” he said, slapping his friend’s chest with the back of his hands. “Quiet.” He thought about giving Fredrik a small punch as well, but decided better of it. “The walls in here have ears.”

Fredrik sneered. “You know what will happen to Vilfred? He will be shot — executed without a trial. Are you going to tell me that the small fire you three set was worth it?”

Pedersen swallowed his whiskey, set his glass on the counter. Fredrik held his glass toward the bartender, too. Rather than pour the drinks himself, the barman slid the bottle down to them. He had heard enough of the conversation to know to keep his distance. Steen nursed his beer, eyeing the crowd in the mirror that hung behind the counter. Pedersen leaned in close to Fredrik’s ear while Fredrik filled their
glasses. This time, he spoke in a whisper. “We’re going to get him out.”

Fredrik exhaled through his teeth and shook his head, still unconvinced.

Pedersen gave the counter a firm tap with the tip of his index finger. “He’s our friend, isn’t he?”

“A friend worth dying for? You don’t have the guts, either of you.”

Pedersen leaned even closer. “Tonight.”

Fredrik swallowed his whiskey. At last, the alcohol was going to his head. He palmed the glass, appraised Pedersen, waited for him to tell him more.

“They’re going to move him tomorrow,” Pedersen said. “That’s what we’ve heard — tomorrow our man Munk is going to sign him over to the Germans, and you know what that means. They’ll take him to the base in Aalborg for questioning, and we’ll never see him again.”

Fredrik smirked. “So that’s what it is, then.”

“What’s
it
?” Pedersen asked him.

“You’re afraid he’s going to talk. That’s why you want to spring him — you’re afraid he’s going to finger you, too, before they shoot him.”

Before Pedersen or Steen could respond, the door to the bar was pushed open, and a man in uniform entered. Steen spotted him first, and he gave Pedersen a sharp nudge.

“Speak of the devil,” Pedersen said.

When Fredrik caught sight of the Danish policeman in the mirror behind the counter, his mouth tightened into a frown. He swiveled, raised his voice. “What’s this, Brink? Haven’t you heard about the curfew? Or perhaps you think it doesn’t apply to you?”

The policeman was closing the door behind him. “Does it?” he snapped. Conversations lulled. He glanced around the bar at the men seated there, then tracked Fredrik’s voice to the counter. When he met the farmhand’s eyes, he half smiled, as if the two of them were in on a small joke. “Anyway, curfew or not, I see you’ve still got a bottle for yourself.” He made his way across the room between tables, approached the counter, offered Pedersen and Steen a curt nod. “How are the three of you tonight?” he greeted them.

“I was feeling much better,” Fredrik said, “just before the door opened.”

The policeman sniffed, as if Fredrik had meant something funny. The farmhand didn’t yield an inch for him, and the policeman jostled Steen to make space.

“I don’t remember asking you to join us,” Fredrik said.

“Do I need an invitation?” the policeman retorted. He signaled the bartender. “A shot of vodka,” he ordered, “and a glass of water.”

“On your way home from the precinct, Brink?” Pedersen asked him.

“Hmmm?” The policeman assessed Pedersen out the corner of his eye. “Me? No — I have the late shift — I’m just on my way in.”

“So you’re standing watch tonight,” Pedersen said, “are you?” Except for a few scattered voices, the bar had fallen quiet.

“It’s my job,” the policeman said.

“And we’re all grateful to you,” Fredrik said, “for keeping us safe.”

“What’s that?” The policeman cleared his throat nervously, threw a glance over his shoulder at the hushed room. “You don’t like the job I’m doing?”

“Is it your job,” Fredrik pressed him, “to turn a Dane over to the Germans?

The policeman swallowed his vodka, then followed the shot with a few large gulps of water. He held the empty shot glass toward the bartender, waited for him to refill it. “Vilfred Thiesen?”

“That’s who we’re talking about,” Fredrik said. “Isn’t it?”

“Is it?” The policeman drank his second vodka, then placed the glass back down on the counter, so gently that it slid sideways in a small pool of whiskey and beer. “I thought maybe you were asking me about his accomplices.” He pulled a few coins from his pocket, dropped them next to the glass. “Thiesen didn’t set fire to that warehouse by himself. Did you know that? Jepsen was there that night. He saw the gasoline being poured. He said there were others. At least two others. They should be found and interrogated, too, alongside Thiesen. And I’m sure they will be.”

Pedersen froze. Steen couldn’t resist a frantic glance at the taller man. Fredrik harrumphed. “What do you think will happen to you, Brink,” the farmhand asked, “when your friends pack up their guns and their tanks and leave the country?”

The policeman shrugged his burly shoulders. On his way back through the bar, he raised his voice. “They’re not my friends, the Germans. Any more than you are, Fredrik.”

“You take care of yourself, Lars,” Fredrik said to him.

The policeman paused at the door. “I would say the same to you.” Then he let himself out.

When the door clicked shut behind him, a few people laughed, but the mood had darkened, and everyone had become much more somber. Fredrik waited for voices once again to fill the room before leaning toward the other two men. “I’ll do it,” he said. Now he was the one to speak in a hushed tone.

Both Pedersen and Steen understood, but neither could quite believe it. “You’ll do what?” Pedersen asked, also in a whisper. He wanted to hear Fredrik say it.

Fredrik’s eyes met Pedersen’s. “I’ll get Vilfred out,” he said. “Tonight.”

“He’s your brother-in-law,” Steen said. “Isn’t he?”

“Lars Brink?” Fredrik shook his head. “I never married the woman,” he said. “I only made her pregnant.”

Pedersen lifted his glass.
“Skaal,”
he said. He waited for Fredrik and Steen to raise their glasses, too, then the three men drank.

Two hours later, Fredrik sat crouched in an unlit doorway across the street from the police station. Snow was falling, and the temperature had dropped. His chest was cramped with a sharp pain he hadn’t felt before. Still groggy from the alcohol, he found himself fading in and out, focusing on the snow rather than the building behind it, and then the station house would begin to float like a helium balloon against the black sky. Once or twice, he caught himself falling asleep. He was holding himself up with a hand pressed against a brick façade, and his fingers were so cold that they were beginning to bleed. The staff sergeant from the evening shift, whom Lars Brink was supposed to relieve, hadn’t yet left to head home. Perhaps he was lingering as long as he could in a building with central heat. Fredrik wasn’t afraid — he wasn’t sober enough to worry about one more policeman. But he had no quarrel with the staff sergeant. He didn’t even know who he was. Perhaps the man had a wife and family. He lowered his head, fought to keep his eyes from closing.

When the door finally swung open across the street, Fredrik roused himself. The staff sergeant stood in the doorway, peered
up at the sky to measure the fall of the snow, then started ambling down the sidewalk. Behind him, the yellow light fled back into the station house. Fredrik watched the man until he had blackened into a wisp of smoke and his footsteps faded into the tick of a clock. Then he pulled himself to his feet and started across the street. The ground was icy, and Fredrik’s legs had become tight. He stopped in the middle of the road to place a few tablets on his tongue, then staggered the rest of the way to the precinct door. There, he paused to look up and down the street for signs of trouble. But Aalborg was asleep, buried beneath a blanket of snow. The only sound was the distant rumble of an engine in the direction of the air base. He yanked open the door.

Seated behind a reception desk a few steps up from the entry, Brink started at the commotion. His hand shot to his pistol. When he saw Fredrik, his face relaxed, but he didn’t let go of the Luger. He set it on the desk in front of him without taking his index finger off the trigger. “Oh — it’s you.”

Fredrik stumbled into the lobby, stopped below the desk, found his balance with a hand on a polished wood railing. The amphetamine was hitting his bloodstream, reviving him, but he was dizzy. His legs tingled, his toes ached in the sudden heat. He swayed from side to side no matter how hard he tried to hold himself still. “Yeah,” he said, “it’s me.”

“What do you want?”

Fredrik’s vision blurred. He tried to remember how many whiskeys he had swallowed. The tab had come to seven crowns eighty — almost eight crowns. Of course that had included drinks for Pedersen and Steen, too, not to mention the round for the bar, but he had drunk more than his share. And what a waste!
Seven crowns eighty
. He wouldn’t be so careless again.

“Come along,” Brink said. “What is it you want here, Fredrik?”

Fredrik squinted over the policeman’s shoulder. Behind him, a hallway led to the jail. The lights were switched off, though, and the corridor was dark. All Fredrik could see was a series of shadows. When he focused on the policeman again, Brink had taken off his cap. Elke’s brother had lost so much hair in the last few years that he was almost bald. The cap, its rim shiny with grease, was lying on the desk next to the Luger. The weapon was sitting loose. “I want to talk to you,” Fredrik said, “that’s why I’m here.”

“Talk to me?”

Fredrik shook his head. “That’s not true, no.” He climbed a step, once again stopped, clasped the railing. “I am here to deliver a message to Elke.”

“You’re drunk.” The policeman’s face registered his disgust. He turned away with a sneer, ready to dismiss this intoxicated lout. In the same instant, before he knew what was happening, Fredrik had climbed the next stair and was leaning over him, and his hand was covering the pistol. It had happened slowly, but so unexpectedly — and with so much surprising grace — that Brink hadn’t had a chance to react.

“I never noticed before,” Fredrik said, “how much you look like your sister. Even without your hair.” Then he yanked the Luger from the policeman. It was landing on the marble floor with a metallic clatter as Fredrik’s hands were sinking into the policeman’s uniform. He lifted Brink from his chair as if he were as light as a pillow, slung him onto his back on the hard surface of the desk. Brink managed to grab Fredrik’s wrist, but Fredrik was too strong to be stopped. He pinned the policeman down with one hand around his throat, with his other reached into his jacket pocket and found his favorite hunting knife. “You knew she was seeing Ole Henriksen behind my back — you all did, the whole lot of you — didn’t you —” He brought the knife to Brink’s jugular.