“Go find out where Knut Birkeland is, then come get me. We’ll have a chat with him. I’ll be out here.”
Kaz threw me a mock salute and went off to find Birkeland. I kept walking through the gardens as the sun tried to break through the steel gray clouds. I was thinking about little things and trying to add them up so they made sense. I decided I was a couple of sums short of an equation and stopped to smell the roses, just like they always said you should. I reached out to pull a flower closer to sniff it. It smelled like raspberries and perfume on a beautiful woman’s neck. I let go and a thorn caught my fingertip, leaving a slit on my right index finger, and spraying tiny flecks of blood on the blooms beneath it.
About a half hour later Kaz and I were sitting in Knut Birkeland’s office on the third floor, where most of the government offices were. There were stacks of papers everywhere. Birkeland looked as disheveled as his room. He pushed aside the open books and folders in front of him, leaned his heavy frame back in his chair, and raised his bushy black eyebrows.
“What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” There was gruff suspicion in his voice.
“I just wanted to apologize, sir. I didn’t mean to upset people at lunch by asking about the gold.” I put on my meekest voice and enjoyed the look on Kaz’s face. He’d obviously hoped I’d pull out some brass knuckles.
“Well, it doesn’t bother me, but I don’t like it being brought up in front of the king. This is a very delicate time.” He stared at me with those dark eyes, and didn’t even try to hide the fact that it really did bother him.
“You mean because of the pending appointment of a senior adviser?”
“You ask a lot of questions, young man, especially for someone who just apologized for it.”
“I’m sorry, sir. It’s just that I was a policeman before the war, and it seems that asking questions is a hard habit to break. I don’t even realize I’m doing it.” He seemed to accept my humble apology, and relaxed a bit.
“Well, no matter. I have nothing to hide. I didn’t take any gold, and I do want the position of senior adviser. If only to keep it from Skak!” He punctuated that statement by pounding his fist on the desk. I could tell he wouldn’t mind the next question at all.
“What’s wrong with Vidar Skak?”
“He’s a coward and a liar! He claims two cases of gold coins went missing while they were in my possession, with no other proof than his own books! He never spent a night standing guard in the snow over that gold or bent his back loading case after case onboard a ship with German planes dropping bombs all around!”
“Why would he blame you for the missing gold? What has he to gain?” asked Kaz, taking on some of the questioning himself.
“Gain? Why the senior adviser job, that’s all! Can’t you see that? If he discredits me in the king’s eyes, then the job is his, and the worse for Norway.” Birkeland’s eyes slid sideways, as if envisioning a dark future with Vidar Skak whispering in the king’s ear.
“Seems to me he just wants to fight back against the Germans.” I congratulated myself on avoiding a direct question.
“Neither of you strike me as fools,” Birkeland said. “You can see that Skak wants to use the Underground Army to support his own aims. The more glory for him, the better. He can be a hero in Norway after the war, when we lay wreaths on the monuments to the dead.”
“There’ll be plenty of death to go around before this war is over. Sacrifice can’t be avoided.” Geez, I sounded like Harding.
“Skak is willing to accept the sacrifices of others. He has lost nothing himself. I’ve had to watch newsreels of my own fishing boats being destroyed by the commandos, some of them Norwegian! I have a fishing fleet in Nordland, and when the commandos destroy one of those fish oil-processing plants to keep the Germans from producing nitroglycerin, my boats go up in flames. I’m watching my own business, which I’ve built for twenty years with my bare hands, go up in smoke. But, by God, I’ll put the torch to the whole damn thing myself if it will keep the underground from going into battle! We would gain nothing, and the reprisals would be terrible.”
The wind went out of him and he sank back into his chair. “Terrible,” he repeated quietly. “Let the British destroy our industry if it will hurt the Nazis. But let our people live.”
We left soon after that. On the theory that a guy who would rather see his own property destroyed than lose innocent lives would make a lousy candidate for a thief or traitor, I decided it was time to move on to greener pastures. I said as much to Kaz as we walked to our rooms, and to my surprise he responded like a cynical desk sergeant.
“How do we know he really owns a fishing fleet, and that it’s being destroyed in commando raids?” Ah, cynicism, the first dawning sign of a rookie cop learning the ropes.
“All right, let’s think it through. Skak and the king would know. Hard to believe he could be lying about it.”
“Yes, but the key point is his willingness to sacrifice his fortune. We have no confirmation of that.”
I thought about that for a minute. It seemed harmless enough, and who knew what the little guy might find out?
“OK Kaz, here’s your first assignment. Ask around and see if anybody else knows about it. Ask the Three Musketeers. That Rolf guy is with the commandos; he might know. Just act like you’re interested.”
“I will be the soul of unoffending curiosity.”
“Just remember the cat. He didn’t offend anyone either.”
I left Kaz to his junior G-man investigation and went up to my room on the top floor. I was tired, the alcohol drifting through my system and weighing down my eyelids, making me think about catching a few z’s before the evening festivities. The king had invited our group to some sort of state dinner he was throwing in the main ballroom. It sounded boring, and I knew I needed my beauty sleep so I wouldn’t nod off during the third speech.
Evidently, all the big rooms were taken. Mine had a double bed, a bureau, one straight-back chair, and an armoire, with just enough space to walk around the bed if you kept your elbows tucked in. The furniture looked a little worse for wear, the kind of stuff that was too sturdy to throw out but too scruffy to show off. The room did have its own bathroom, and I liked that, a step up from the attic of the Dorchester. Kaz had told me a lot of these old castles and mansions never got around to upgrading the plumbing, but that the Beardsleys were very modern for their day, and each room had hot and cold running water and the usual facilities. I kicked off my shoes, tossed my jacket onto the chair, loosened my tie, and closed my eyes for about a half hour. Catnaps and spy chasing are my specialties.
I woke up two hours later from a dead sleep. It had only been a few days since that flight across the Atlantic, and I guess I wasn’t over it yet. I yawned, stretched, and decided I had time for a soak in a nice hot tub before dinner. Maybe it would wake me up and help me decide what to do next. Always thinking of the war effort, that’s me. I turned on the hot water and was greeted by clanging and thumps as the pipes summoned up the strength to deliver a lukewarm trickle of water. I was familiar with the sounds of overtaxed plumbing from my parents’ house. Everyone probably had the same bright idea I had-take a nice hot bath before dinner. I tried the cold water. Plenty of that. I soaked my feet in the tub, washed up in the sink, and cursed the plumbing that had robbed me of a plan.
Jolted awake by the cold water, I went downstairs and joined the crowd gathered in the ballroom. Two long tables took up half the room. Chandeliers lit the room and candles burned along the length of the tables, their light reflecting off the gleaming silver. I had thought lunch was fancy, but this was hoity-toity. There was the head table with seats on one side, and another table at a right angle to it with seats along both sides. There were little cards with names to let you know where to sit. I didn’t bother looking for mine up at the head table. I was down at the end, surrounded by names I didn’t know. Harding and Cosgrove had seats at the head table, along with Daphne and Baron Piotr Augustus Kazimierz. I guess that showed me. I was fingering my place card when Kaz came over. He was wearing a British dress uniform with a gleaming leather belt and a big grin. He handed me a glass of champagne.