Chapter 11

Dear Anne,

Catastrophe! Will write more when I can . . .

"P etra only wandered a short way into the woods, but the pilot jettisoned his bombs as he went down over the hill. We found her lying beneath those pines," Daisy shouted over the ringing in her ears.

Trees and sky and road swirled in a kaleidoscope of blowing snow and ash, and she put a hand against the car to steady herself. Flames lit the lieutenant's stunned face and reflected in Mr. Whitney's dark eyes like devilish pinpricks. Only Cleo seemed unaffected by the confusion. She took charge with crisp commands that seemed to cut through the shock like a knife, directing the men in their efforts to load Miss Kristiansen into the Ford.

"Gently into the car. Gently," Daisy added her voice as chorus. "For God's sake, don't jostle her."

Smoke scoured Daisy's throat and made her eyes sting and water. Her calf ached where she'd stumbled, and something wet and salty slid between her tightly pressed lips. Tears? Blood? She slid onto the front seat of the Ford, which had been extricated from its snowbank, the farmer going ahead to warn his family of their arrival with a wounded woman.

"The house is up around this bend, ma'am. The family's name is Peterson." Mr. Whitney's voice echoed down to Daisy from a long tunnel, and there was a low hissing like radio static filling her throbbing head.

"Can you hear me, dear?" She draped herself over the front seat in order to take Petra's hand, trying not to notice how cold it was, trying not to slide her fingers farther up her wrist to check for a pulse. "It's going to be all right, Petra love. You'll see."

The words rang hollow, but they were all Daisy had to keep the panic at bay.

"She's cold as ice." Cleo sat in the back, cradling Petra Kristiansen's head in her lap. Blood soaked the sleeve of her coat, black and sticky under the car's faint dome light. "I think she's in shock."

"Keep her warm. Take my coat if you must," Daisy suggested, but Cleo was already shedding her own coat to tuck around Petra. The girl must be freezing herself; she wore only a thin wool sweater, but she showed no sign of the chill as she murmured quiet nonsense and smoothed the hair back from Petra's forehead.

"What did you say?" Daisy asked.

"I told perfect Petra she couldn't allow some boorish Nazi with bad aim to get the best of her." Cleo's gaze shone bright and angry and scared.

The poor road and the squeak of struts, the iron scents of sickness, gasoline, leather, and blood, the sense of urgency screaming through every vein. Daisy steadied her breath as memories of the last war flooded her like a spring tide. But back then she'd had strapping regiments of capable Red Cross Motor Corps girls by her side, and there had been the anticipation of a good meal and a soft bed at the end of the journey.

Tonight, she was lost in the middle of nowhere, and the injured was not some anonymous soldier, but one of her own. Someone she cared about. Someone who counted on her.

"Watch out, Mr. Whitney," she scolded after a particularly teeth-jarring slam of the axle into a deep hole. "Speed won't help if she's flung about like a rag doll. An ambulance driver needs to match promptness with vigilance. Do I need to take the wheel and show you how it's done?"

She sensed his resentment in the sudden stamping of brakes, but he kept his mouth shut and they swung into the farmyard without incident. The house and outbuildings formed a break against the wind and a lamp burned in the window.

A tall woman, her graying hair scraped back off her forehead beneath a blue kerchief, stood silhouetted in the doorway. "Come. Bring her inside. Quickly. Quickly," she called in Norwegian.

Between the four of them, they bundled Petra into the house, where they were guided toward the kitchen with its enormous corner fireplace, a squat cast-iron baking oven crouched beside it. Pretty lace curtains were drawn tight against the dark, holding in the faint aroma of yeasty bread. "Put her on the settle there. It's warm from the oven, and we will build up a fire."

Through introductions, Daisy forced herself to remain calm despite the nervous energy flooding her system. She drew slow breaths through her nose. Focused on the unusual pattern in the crocheted blanket covering Petra: the skill in the knots, the way the colors blended from blue to yellow to red and back again, the strength and softness of the wool.

Any other time she would have engaged Fru Peterson in a conversation about her handicrafts, pestered her for advice on how to get that beautiful floral design at the edges. She would have admired the woman's skill and shown off the half-finished sweater she was knitting for her youngest grandchild that now sat at the bottom of her trunk.

As Fru Peterson stripped Petra of her coat and shoes, she scattered the children with orders to gather up lamps from the bedrooms and bring them to her while inviting her guests to wait in the parlor. She tried to shove Daisy toward the door, but she planted herself like a tree and refused to budge. "Miss Kristiansen's in my charge. I'll stay."

Fru Peterson nodded even as she moved around the room, gathering supplies, putting a kettle on the hob, ordering the children one by one to set the lamps close so she could see as she knelt beside Petra, examining the girl slowly and thoroughly from the gray cast to her features, the cuts on her arms to the bruises on her ribs and the way her right ankle swelled.

"She needs a doctor," Daisy urged. "Or maybe the Red Cross hospital in Elverum?"

Fru Peterson shook her head as she cleaned each cut with antiseptic. "We've no phone to summon a doctor even if he agreed to come this far, and the roads are dangerous." She settled a blanket over Petra, who by now was waxen and pale, her skin damp with sweat.

Petra jerked and tried to sit up, her eyes shocked open as she took a gasping breath. "The codebook," she declared in a rush of English and Norwegian as she fought to sit up. "Is it safe?"

"Easy, little one." Fru Peterson eased her back onto the cushioned bench. "You've been in a bad accident. You need to rest."

"It must be made safe."

Fru Peterson shot Daisy an aggrieved look. She, in turn, gestured toward Mr. Whitney. "Make sure the luggage is brought in from the car. Take special care of my traveling case."

"Ma'am?"

"Just do it."

She knew she was being high-handed, but right now dancing around Mr. Whitney's sensibilities was beyond her.

A blast of cold air stung Daisy's cheeks as the door opened again on the farmer and the lieutenant, stamping the snow off their boots, dusting the ice from their hair. "There are fires to the south and west. Elverum is burning."

"Dear God, preserve us." Fru Peterson crossed herself while her children watched from doorways and the top of the narrow stairs.

"It's not safe to travel any farther tonight," the lieutenant said, reverting to English, his hair glittering with melted ice and his face shadowed by worry. "Peterson has offered to let us sleep here. We can head out in the morning and hope to catch up with... with our friend."

"If he's still alive," Mr. Whitney muttered.

"Of course he is, and that's the last I want to hear of such defeatist talk," Daisy fumed.

Fru Peterson gave her an odd glance, making Daisy wonder how much English she understood. "Tore," their hostess said to the oldest boy, dark of hair and eye like his mother. "Settle our guests. I will stay with the girl for now." She gave an impatient jerk of her chin toward Daisy. "Go with my daughter. Lillie will see to that cut on your cheek."

"I have a cut?" For the first time, Daisy noticed the sting where a splinter had slashed her cheek. She touched her face, fingers coming away red and bright with blood. "It all happened so fast."

Their eyes locked, Daisy seeing the same weary resignation she felt weighing down her own body, aching in places she couldn't blame on the blast.

Fru Peterson nodded. "So it did."

C leo shifted her hips to the left, her arm to the right. She pushed a second cushion beneath her head, but there was no getting comfortable on the lumpy couch. Not that it would have helped. Sleep was impossible tonight, even without Mr. Whitney's snoring. Every time she closed her eyes, the flicker of flames danced across her lids and memories of Poland chattered to life like a movie house film reel, playing over and over in her head.

Micky, wrapping her in blankets and tucking a hot water bottle beside her. Teasing her about wearing her necklace to bed under her flannel pajamas. She'd not wanted him to leave, but he'd been insistent. An important meeting, he'd said, giving her a kiss on her feverish forehead. "Mrs. Nowak will check in on you."

If she'd known it was the last thing he'd say to her, she might have pushed him for something more profound.

She'd been woken by the shake of the building and the clang of fire engines passing in the street. Mrs. Nowak had brought the news along with a bowl of soup and crusty bread warm from her bakery ovens. The Black Cat was gone, destroyed in a blast that some blamed on a gas leak and others on sabotage. When Micky wasn't home by midnight, Cleo grew worried. When he didn't turn up at all the next day, she started asking around. Could he be one of the nearly two dozen dead in the explosion? No one could say for certain, but after two days of silence and gallons of tears, she'd finally come to believe it.

Then his letter arrived.

Since then she hadn't known what to believe.

She still didn't.

Could Aunt Daisy be right? Could Micky have done something that brought him to the attention of the SS? He was a musician, not a spy or a soldier. She tried shuffling the pieces, looking at the clues from different angles, but the questions remained the same. The memories rewound. The film started again. No matter how many times the images slid past, she couldn't change what happened and she couldn't come up with an answer that made sense.

She finally gave up trying, opening her eyes on the beamed ceiling of the farmhouse. Her hands trembled, and there was a knot in her stomach, the same one she'd carried with her since that night. Most of the time she ignored it. Not tonight. Not with Petra lying injured in the next room. Tonight it squirmed like a living thing, threatening to climb its way back up her throat.

Mr. Whitney remained a lump in the corner, but Bayard's chair was empty. Through the parlor's curtains, she saw a figure bundled in coat and scarf by the farmyard pump. She rose quietly, pulling on her coat as she let herself out of the house.

Bayard looked up at her approach. "You should be asleep."

"So should you," she replied, the cold air burning in her lungs, "but if your chair is as uncomfortable as that torture device they call a couch, I can understand why you're not."

"Whitney's snoring doesn't help." He tried to spin it as a joke, but neither of them laughed.

"Speaking of Mr. Whitney, what do you know about him?"

"Not much," Bayard answered. "He's a vice consul. A State Department fossil. Bleeds ink. Guards his little consulate fiefdom like a junkyard dog. Why?"

"No reason." She ignored the question in his gaze by asking one of her own. "This is going to sound crazy, but could you teach me how to shoot?"

"A gun? You're right. It's crazy."

"I'm tired of being powerless. Of being the victim and at the mercy of others."

"That's what Petra's sister said—or as good as." She couldn't see his face, but his tone was as brittle as the ice on a nearby pail.

"Her sister?"

"Sofia Kristiansen. She's a doctor at a clinic near Domb?s. She couldn't get through to Petra so she sent word by me that she was leaving her job to join the army. She said she couldn't sit by while her country was being attacked."

"That was why Petra was so upset this morning."

"Her parents are cut off in Narvik. Her brother's somewhere at sea. And now Sofia's running off into who knows what. Petra's worried sick about them. Ironic, isn't it? Here she's the one fighting for her life." He fumbled for a cigarette, lighting it with shaking hands. For the briefest of moments, there was something in his hollow gaze that made her insides sit up and take notice.

She shook it off, but the dirty feeling of betrayal remained. "I'd best get back inside before I catch pneumonia. Good night, Lieutenant."

He grabbed her wrist as she turned to go. She could feel the warmth in his fingertips, the strength in his grip. See the flecks in his eyes like steel splinters and the way his expression shifted ever so slightly. "I'll teach you if that's what you really want."

She stepped away, and his hand dropped to his side. He drew a breath that held nothing but regret before letting her go.

Dear Anne,

My secretary has been wounded. We're taking shelter with a very kind family whose farm lies just off the main road. The Petersons are the epitome of Norwegian hospitality paired with a spirit of practicality, and I have no doubt that poor dear Petra is in the most capable of hands, but I can't help questioning my decision to follow the government rather than staying to nurse her...

"T he car's ready, ma'am," Mr. Whitney said, his somber visage made even more morose by the salt-and-pepper stubble graying his square bulldog jaw and the bags under his eyes. Like all of them, he'd slept in his clothes, giving him a raffish air of morning-after dissolution.

"All the luggage stowed safely? "

"Yes, ma'am."

"Has Mr. Peterson found a way through that doesn't involve abandoning the Ford for horse-drawn sledges?" Daisy broke the icicles at the farmyard pump with a bang of her hand before brushing her teeth. She knew her own appearance was less than pristine—it would take an army of maids to get the wrinkles out of her suit—but she would at least greet the day with fresh breath and every hairpin in place.

"He thinks so. But we need to get on the road as soon as possible." He checked his watch. "As in now."

"What about Miss Kristiansen?" Bayard asked when told of the plan. "Do we just leave her behind?"

If Mr. Whitney was somber, the lieutenant was downright dismal. Daisy didn't blame the poor man. She felt equally disconsolate, but she'd spent half the night spinning over possibilities in her head. None of them were winners. Only one made sense.

"I understand your concern, Lieutenant, and I respect you for it. I feel the same. But our mission is clear, and I need you beside me to carry it out. I've left the number for Ambassador Sterling in Stockholm, where they can send word. When she's well enough to travel, we'll arrange her passage over the border into Sweden."

"And if the borders become impassible?"

That had been one of the possibilities that had kept Daisy awake and she'd come up with no solutions. If the Germans were successful in closing the borders, Petra would be trapped. Their only hope was that the Norwegians would overcome their initial disorganization to rally. But that was a thin hope with each fleet of bombers that passed overhead. His Majesty had declined the Germans' offer of a negotiated peace. They had answered by doubling their efforts to subdue Norway by force, pouring troops and machinery into the country.

"I'll stay with her, Aunt Daisy," Cleo offered.

Daisy took a breath and counted to ten before she spoke. "Impossible."

"Why? You need Lieutenant Bayard and Mr. Whitney. I'm just a passenger, one you didn't even expect. I can stay with Petra, and when she's better, we can travel on to Stockholm together."

"And your travel papers? They'll never let you across the border without them."

She patted her coat. "Safe and sound."

"Why am I still not filled with confidence?" Daisy pulled on her gloves. "I promised your mother I'd look after you, Clementine."

Barely a ripple on the surface, but Daisy saw the shadow pass over her features, the dark entering her gaze. "I can do this. Let me do this." After a moment, she added, "What if it was Phyllis? You'd want someone you could trust to stay with her."

Bringing up Daisy's granddaughter was hitting below the belt. Just the sort of sucker punch she'd begun expecting of Cleo, who didn't miss a trick when it came to getting what she wanted. "I think you know the answer to that question very well, which is why you asked it."

"Ma'am?" Mr. Whitney urged. "We need to be on the road now if we're going to make Nybergsund."

A sense of inevitability took over. Daisy's choices taken away one by one. She expected a glimmer of triumph, but Cleo's features were pensive rather than triumphant.

"Right. But as soon as Miss Kristiansen can travel, you need to leave. No dallying. Once there, go immediately to the American legation and ask for Mr. Sterling."

"Where will you be?"

"That remains to be seen." When Cleo frowned, Daisy tried to cheer her up with a confident smile. "Buck up, my dear. I'm an old campaigner. This isn't my first war, remember." Mr. Whitney held the car door for her. "You're sure we have everything?" she asked as she settled herself against the seat.

"Yes, ma'am. Every box, case, file, and report. Even a typewriter, though I don't see any of us using it between here and Nybergsund."

"Maybe in a pinch we can throw it at the enemy."

"Enemy, ma'am? I believe America's official stance remains one of neutrality."

"My secretary is injured, and I've been dodging bombs for the last twenty-four hours—not exactly the actions of friends," she snapped, realizing by the cunning glint in Mr. Whitney's eyes that she'd been goaded into a loss of temper.

Lieutenant Bayard cleared his throat, and she submitted to his subtle command to shut her mouth before she said something she shouldn't.

Strapped into his skis, Mr. Peterson waited at the head of the lane to guide them through the maze of barricades and roadblocks while the rest of his family offered their farewells and best wishes. Daisy tried not to worry over what might happen to them. Her burden was already greater than she wished. She forced herself to keep her eyes on the road and the days ahead. But the thought still intruded: she was too old for this.

Adventure, indeed.