Chapter 8

C leo tugged a thermos from Einar's knapsack and took a swallow of sludgy coffee, compliments of the truck driver who'd picked them up on the road near the village of Tangen. They'd parted ways when he turned off to make deliveries, and they'd found a ride on a farm wagon pulled by a teeth-grindingly slow tractor. Hitching rides proved easy. Traffic was thick, a snaking line of cars and trucks and buses making their ponderous way between valleys as they headed north and east. Everyone they met asked the same questions—had they seen the Germans? Did they know what the government planned? Would the Norwegians fight back?

She wished she had answers.

Einar seemed to be immune to the exhaustion that dogged her with every long mile. He traveled with the eagerness of youth as if they were on a big adventure rather than running ahead of a deadly German army. As if his ancient revolver and enough confidence to sink a battleship could change the tide against trucks and tanks and machine guns. It would have been endearing if she hadn't wanted to strangle him with his own knitted scarf.

Outside the village of Bekkelaget, they faced another roadblock. Another group of soldiers. And another rebuff of Einar that left him sullen and quiet, but it had also offered up valuable information that almost made Cleo lose what little self-control she had left. The Norwegian government had left Hamar for the town of Elverum farther east.

As if to prove their claim, planes roared low with a throbbing rumble Cleo could feel in her sternum. For a moment, she was back in Zakopane, shielding her eyes against a late summer sun as wave after wave of bombers flew toward Warsaw and Kraków. Beside her, Micky had muttered under his breath, and when fear drove her to seek out his hand, it was as damp and cold as her own. This time, it was Einar who slid his mittened hand into hers. His scent of wool and spruce filled her nose.

" Vi er nesten fremme . Almost there."

Adjusting their direction, they marched on, thumbing rides when they could, trudging through snow and slush along the verge of slippery roads when they couldn't. As darkness fell, and they grew closer to Elverum, lights flickered over fields from nearby farmsteads while traffic increased. A line of cars roared around a bend. A convoy of buses soon followed. A half hour later, an open truck rumbled over a low ridge, carrying armed soldiers in white coats that blended in with the gray dusk and the tree-shadowed snow. A staff car, all chrome and purring engine, sloshed mud against her legs. Cleo kept an eye out for Sam's van, half in hope and half in dread. But no battered van appeared. She sent out a wish they were safe and warm. Then cursed them for being safe and warm.

She knew she wasn't thinking straight. It had been a very long, very confusing day.

By now, Cleo could barely see her hand in front of her face. She followed Einar as much by hearing as by sight—the crunch of his boots, the huff of his breath, the occasional gurgle in his stomach. Dulled to exhaustion, her brain focused on putting one foot in front of the other. She nearly banged into his back when he stopped suddenly in her path, his head up, a hand going to his belt.

"What it is?" She stood ankle deep in the snow, trying to hear whatever sound had spooked Einar, when there was a murmur of voices caught on the air, the creak and snap of branches, the rasp of a saw followed by the chink of heavy chains.

A farm hugged the road. Figures moved over the yard and in and out of the sheds and barns, erecting a makeshift barricade. Logs and barbed wire and abandoned cars waited to be pushed across the road. She sighted along the hill toward a low ridge where the glint off a muzzle revealed more soldiers hunkered in wait behind a stone wall.

"Are they German?" she whispered over the thud of her heart and the roaring in her ears.

Einar grinned like a fiend. "Norwegian."

He pushed on with renewed energy. Cleo followed more slowly, ankles rolling on hidden stones and uneven ground. Down below, a long, low sedan slowed at the roadblock. A soldier leaned into the window, his voice loud against the quiet night. He pointed up the road. Another voice responded, one Cleo recognized.

"That's Aunt Daisy!"

She lost her footing in her rush to catch up to the car, her feet skidding out from under her. She landed hard, the breath wheezing from her lungs. Her back jammed into a root. She called out. "Wait! I'm here!"

The men on the ridge stood up, and she immediately felt the prickle of more than one rifle trained on her.

"Wait!" She held up her hands. "American! I'm American!"

Einar was behind her somewhere in the dark. Nearby a dog barked frantically.

The car slid back into drive and disappeared as a hand gripped her arm. A voice burned in her ears. A gun was trained at her head.

"I'm American," she whimpered.

S he'd come so close. Twenty measly little miles separated Cleo from Aunt Daisy. Might as well have been two thousand. No matter how she'd argued, she'd been told to stay put and follow orders. If she'd done that in the first place, she'd be nicely tucked up in her bed in Oslo rather than cold, hungry, and reeking of soiled straw and pig shit.

She huddled in a corner of an old barn, counting the young men sporting hunting rifles and determined expressions who came and went as they prepared for battle. A few looked no older than Einar. Schoolboys playing at war. They shifted uneasily, hands trembling and throats tight. No matter how Cleo did the math, she came to the same conclusion—they were woefully outnumbered. As the last of the soldiers departed, Einar and a man in an officer's uniform approached Cleo, alone in her corner.

"What's happening?" she asked, looking between the officer and Einar, whose face glowed like a lit fuse.

"Germans are close," Einar translated for the officer. "We will trap them like fish in a net and then..." She noted the word we as he slid a finger across his throat.

"What's that got to do with me?"

Einar shoved his revolver into her hand, the butt warm from his coat pocket, and she almost leaped out of her skin. "What's that for?"

He mimed shooting someone before moving off to take up his own position shouldering a borrowed rifle.

She risked a peek through the rough slats of the barn. Below, where the road passed the farm, a group of soldiers had hefted logs across the road until the pile stood nearly a dozen feet high. Others looped and twisted roping metal barbs over and under and through the barricade. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the flash of moonlight off a rifle muzzle on the far side of the road, a shift of shadows as soldiers hunkered down to lie in wait. Anyone traveling the road to Elverum would be stopped by barbed wire and barricades. Anyone attempting to force their way through would be mowed down by the platoon of waiting Norwegian soldiers.

That was the plan, anyway. Simple but effective.

She heard the Germans before she saw them. A clamor that made no attempt at subterfuge or subtlety. The first in a line of buses stopped at the barrier, the rest idling behind it. Men got out to inspect the barricade. Orders moved up and down the column. Guards with rifles hopped from the backs of trucks, peering into the trees where nothing moved.

Her breath shallowed then caught at the back of her throat with a metallic tang that turned out to be blood from where she'd bitten down on the inside of her mouth.

A shout carried up from the road. There was a moment when everything sharpened in her mind, the air clean with pine and snow, the fast-moving clouds throwing shadows over the landscape to trick the eye. Then the night exploded.

Muzzle flashes and the high-pitched rattle of a machine gun seemed to come from everywhere. She pressed herself into the floor of the barn, the straw dust catching in her throat as she fought to make herself as small as possible. There was a buzz in her ears, a roar that pumped angry at her temples. Her head seemed to vibrate with the noise.

A muffled shout burst through the underwater ringing in her head. Two soldiers beat at flames that ran ahead of their attempts, slithering up the ancient beams of the barn, catching in the thick dry straw litter, chewing through the loft to drop embers that smoldered in coats and panicked the soldiers who fought to escape. Black smoke seared her throat. Cinders burned her skin and hands. She couldn't see. Couldn't breathe.

A hand caught her own, pulling her blindly. She crawled and stumbled forward until she broke free of the burning barn. Einar, his sooty, grinning face alive with the thrill of battle, helped her to her feet, pointing toward the brow of a nearby hill. "Go that way."

Keeping hold of the revolver, she covered her mouth and nose with the cuff of her coat. Eyes stinging and weepy, she crouched and zigzagged her way to the safety of the tree line. Behind her, flames shot into the air, swirling skyward in a cyclone of embers and smoke. A grenade exploded to her left, shaking the ground, throwing chunks of dirt and shrapnel in every direction.

From the ridge of the hill, she could see the battle being played out like a chess game.

The Norwegians, despite their numbers and inexperience, proved worthy successors to their Viking ancestors. They were ferocious in their attack. The buses offered some protection to the Germans, but with no way to go forward, they were forced to retreat back down the narrow road. The officer had said the attack would be like trapping fish in a net. Cleo would say it was more like shooting fish in a barrel.

A snap of a twig behind her caused her to spin, her hand sliding the revolver free of her coat. A man stood twenty feet away. Even in the uneven shadows from the burning barn, she could tell he was German. Had he come up here to circle around and come at the Norwegians from behind? Had he fled at the first shot, hoping to lose himself in the chaos? Was he hurt? Was he armed? A thousand thoughts tumbled through her brain at once, but even as her heart threatened to jump clean out of her chest, she was steadying her sights on the man.

"Don't move." She spoke in German through the deafening roar of her pounding heart and her heavy breathing. "I'll shoot. I swear I will."

"Will you, little bird?" He stood still, but there was no fear in his stance, only a watchful scrutiny. "Are you sure about that?" His smile gleamed white and toothy in the dark—or maybe she imagined it. His tone was certainly enough to send shivers up her spine.

"I'm very sure." The revolver was old and heavy, her sweaty palms cold on the metal. Her wrists ached from targeting it at his chest—or where she thought his chest was.

"I don't think you have it in you." He took a step toward her. "I think you're going to let me go."

She pulled back the hammer. "I mean it!" she shouted. "I'll blow your damned brains out."

He took another step toward her. She had a brief thought of shouting for help, but who would hear her way up here? She was on her own.

"Give me the revolver, little bird." His voice was slow and persuasive and trickled like cold water down her back as he moved closer.

If he reached her, she was dead. She could see it in his eyes. He was furious and desperate and she was easy and alone.

"I won't tell you again." Cleo hated the squeak in her voice.

"You're right. You won't." He lunged.

She dodged, her boots sliding out from under her, sky and branches and snow swirling above her as she fell. The gun exploded, knocking her back, every tendon in her shoulder screaming in a wrenching pain. As her head hit the ground, there was a crack of gunfire, and someone shouted something in incomprehensible Norwegian.

Then nothing else .

Dear Anne,

I'm far too old for this to-ing and fro-ing over the countryside one step ahead of calamity. My nerves remain steady. My knees less so. And the less said about making decisions after thirty-six hours without sleep, the better. But after a good night's rest and a hearty breakfast served to us by the hostess of our guesthouse, I'm much refreshed and ready for whatever new adventures await.

Postscript:

I spoke much too soon . . .

"S he's coming around," Petra said, relief flooding her tired features.

Cleo's unfocused gaze moved from Petra to Daisy to the Norwegian boy who'd turned up in the dead of night babbling nonsense about murdered motorcyclists, a van full of musicians, and an ambush that almost led to Cleo being burned to a crisp, then shot through the middle.

"Am I dead?" Cleo asked, her voice raspy and thick with smoke and confusion.

The weight that Daisy had been carrying since her phone conversation with Lieutenant Bayard lifted, but nothing eased her exasperation, which continued to simmer low in her gut like a pot on the hob. "You damned well should be. What on earth were you thinking, haring across Norway without the sense God gave a goose? This isn't a game, Clementine. You, of all people, should know that."

Cleo winced, her hand gripping the slightly musty wool blanket they'd found in a cedar chest, and Daisy almost— almost —felt bad for shouting. "No, ma'am, you're right. It isn't."

Cleo contrite and apologetic? Now Daisy did feel bad—and scared. Cleo had always brazened her way through every tight spot and unpleasantness, arrogance carrying her when cleverness failed.

"She will live, yes?" the boy asked, worry clouding his bright blue eyes. His face was streaked with dirt, his hair matted and unkempt under a thick wool cap. He reeked of smoke and sweat and the sour odor of pig.

"It's going to take far more than a knock to that hard head of hers to lay her low."

He might not have understood all the words, but he caught the gist. A grin broke over his face, and Daisy realized he was younger than she'd first thought—no more than sixteen at the most. She couldn't help but recall the last war and the legions of boys just like him, gray-faced and broken after four years in the trenches. Would this be his fate? Forced to grow up far too quickly amid death and bloodshed? Did he have a mother at home worrying? A sweetheart awaiting his return?

"Thank God you're alive, Einar." Color slowly returned to Cleo's face. She tried to sit up, wincing at strained muscles and sore ribs, tentatively touching the sticking plaster on her forehead, the bandage on her neck. "Did we win?"

"Of course." He puffed out his chest, lifted his chin. "I took the bad man out—blam!" He aimed his finger and shot. "Then when they all run away, we bring you here."

Outside, a truck horn sounded, followed by a shout.

Einar glanced out the window. "I go now. You're safe here."

Cleo gave him a kiss that turned him pink as a peach. "Stay out of trouble." When he started to go, she grabbed his wrist and held him back. "Thank you."

He grinned again and gave a final wave as he headed out the door. Petra mumbled a few words about antiseptic and slipped out after him, leaving Daisy alone with Cleo. She lay back on the sofa and started to close her eyes.

"Don't you dare!" Daisy scolded. "Not until I'm finished raking you over the coals for behavior bordering on criminal."

"Einar told you about the soldier on the motorcycle?"

"Einar told me all sorts of things, and if only half of them are true, I'm beyond furious. Did you really leave a German soldier lying dead in an alley?"

"Einar killed him, not me. If it makes any difference, he seemed happy enough to leave us dead in an alley."

Daisy breathed in slowly through her nose and out through her mouth. Anything to keep herself from saying more than she ought. A headache—which she attributed solely to her goddaughter's cockamamie antics—banged against her temples.

She paced the parlor like a lion in its cage, relieved that they had the guesthouse to themselves after the British had fled farther afield to stay ahead of the German forces. No need to play the polished diplomat. She could be as tired and cranky and put out as she pleased.

Petra returned, bearing a breakfast tray, which Cleo dug into as if she hadn't eaten in days. Maybe she hadn't. Daisy's guilt washed fresh through her. How could she have left the girl behind? It was an inexcusable lapse. She couldn't afford any more of those. Not with Mr. Whitney watching her like a hawk.

"The Norwegian foreign minister, Dr. Koht, is on the phone for you, ma'am," Petra said. "He wants to fill you in on the current negotiations with the Germans."

"The phone lines are still working?"

"For now. Stockholm left a message as well. Apparently, Herr Brauer would like a word with you too."

So she was to be the middleman between Norway and Germany. Daisy was reminded of her conversation about mother hood with the crown princess. If only she could send both men to their rooms without any supper.

"Right. You stay here, Miss Kristiansen. Make sure my goddaughter doesn't leave this room without an escort. She has a bad habit of vanishing." She pointed at Cleo. "And you—I am in no mood to play child-minder so stay put until I get back."

"Herr Brauer..." Cleo looked up from her boiled egg and toast, trouble in her gaze.

"What about him?"

"I went to see him yesterday morning."

"Doesn't take no for an answer, indeed," Daisy muttered through gritted teeth. "And?"

"I didn't get in to see him, but there was another man there who seemed to know who I was. He said he'd help find Micky, but I've been thinking—" Cleo was interrupted by the rattle of windows in their panes, and a growl that vibrated the walls and floor of the tiny guesthouse. Bombers headed toward Elverum. "I've been thinking about the school in Zakopane you talked about." Cleo gripped the blanket. The scrapes and bruising on her face and up into her singed hairline made her look unbearably young and painfully fragile. "Do you think Micky may not want to be found?"