“I’m understudying the lead in Les Sylphides.”
“Will you get to dance it on stage?”
“No. There are two casts, so both the other dancers would have to fall ill.”
“Shame. I’d love to see you.”
“If the impossible happens, I’ll get you a ticket.” She returned her attention to the wing. “We have to make sure there are no internal fractures.”
“That means we have to examine the wooden spars under the fabric.”
“Yes.”
“Well, now that we’ve got the material to repair rips, I suppose we could cut an inspection panel in the fabric and just look inside.”
She looked dubious. “Okay. .”
He did not think a knife would easily cut the treated linen, but he found a sharp chisel on the tool shelf. “Where should we cut?”
“Near the struts.”
He pressed the chisel into the surface. Once the initial breach had been made, the chisel cut the fabric relatively easily. Harald made an L-shaped incision and folded back a flap, making a sizable opening.
Karen pointed a flashlight into the hole, then put her face down and peered inside. She took her time looking around, then withdrew her head and put her arm in. She grasped something and shook vigorously. “I think we’re in luck,” she said. “Nothing shifts.”
She stepped back and Harald took her place. He reached inside, grasped a strut, and pushed and pulled it. The entire wing moved, but he felt no weakness.
Karen was pleased. “We’re making progress,” she said. “If I can finish the work on the fabric tomorrow, and you can bolt the axle strut back on, the airframe will be complete, except for the missing cables. And we’ve still got eight days to go.”
“Not really,” Harald said. “We probably need to reach England at least twenty-four hours before the raid, for our information to have any effect. That brings it down to seven. To arrive on the seventh day, we need to leave the previous evening and fly overnight. So we really have six days at the most.”
“Then I’ll have to finish the fabric tonight.” She looked at her watch. “I’d better show up at the house for dinner, but I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
She put away the glue and washed her hands at the sink, using soap she had brought from the house for Harald. He watched her. He was always sorry when she left. He thought he would like to be with her all day, every day. He guessed that was the feeling that made people want to get married. Did he want to marry Karen? It seemed like a foolish question. Of course he did. He had no doubt. He sometimes tried to imagine the two of them after ten years, fed up with one another and bored, but it was impossible. Karen would never be boring.
She dried her hands on a scrap of towel. “What are you so thoughtful about?”
He felt himself blush. “Wondering what the future holds.”
She gave him a startlingly direct look, and for a moment he felt she could read his mind; then she looked away. “A long flight across the North Sea,” she said. “Six hundred miles without landfall. So we’d better be sure this old kite can make it.”
She went to the window and stood on the box. “Don’t look-this is an undignified maneuver for a lady.”
“I won’t, I swear,” he said with a laugh.
She pulled herself up. Breaking his promise cheerfully, he watched her rear as she wriggled through. Then she dropped out of sight.
He turned his attention back to the Hornet Moth. It should not take long to reattach the braced axle strut. He found the nuts and bolts where he had left them, on the workbench. He knelt by the wheel, fitted the strut in place, and began to attach the bolts that held it to the fuselage and the wheel mounting.
Just as he was finishing, Karen came back in, much sooner than expected.
He smiled, pleased at her early return, then saw that she looked distraught. “What’s happened?” he said.
“Your mother telephoned.”
Harald was angry. “Damn! I shouldn’t have told her where I was going. Who did she speak to?”
“My father. But he told her you definitely weren’t here, and she seems to have believed him.”
“Thank God.” He was glad he had decided not to tell Mother he was living in the disused church. “What did she want, anyway?”
“There’s bad news.”
“What?”
“It’s about Arne.”
Harald realized, with a guilty start, that in the last few days he had hardly given a thought to his brother, languishing in jail. “What’s happened?”
“Arne is. . He’s dead.”
At first Harald could not take it in. “Dead?” he said as if he did not understand the meaning of the word. “How could that be?”
“The police say he took his own life.”
“Suicide?” Harald had the feeling the world was crumbling around him, the walls of the church collapsing and the trees in the park falling over and the castle of Kirstenslot blowing away in a strong wind. “Why would he do that?”
“To avoid interrogation by the Gestapo, Arne’s commanding officer told her.”
“To avoid. .” Harald saw immediately what that meant. “He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to withstand the torture.”
Karen nodded. “That was the implication.”
“If he had talked, he would have betrayed me.”
She was silent, neither agreeing with him nor contradicting him.
“He killed himself to protect me.” Harald suddenly needed Karen to confirm his inference. He took her by the shoulders. “I’m right, am I not?” he shouted. “That must be it! He did it for me! Say something, for God’s sake.”
At last she spoke. “I think you’re right,” she whispered.
In an instant Harald’s anger was transformed into grief. It swamped him, and he lost control. Tears flooded his eyes, and his body shook with sobs. “Oh, God,” he said, and he covered his wet face with his hands. “Oh, God, this is awful.”
He felt Karen’s arms enfold him. Gently, she drew his head down to her shoulder. His tears soaked into her hair and ran down her throat. She stroked his neck and kissed his wet face.
“Poor Arne,” Harald said, his voice choked by sorrow. “Poor Arne.”
“I’m sorry,” Karen murmured. “My darling Harald, I’m so sorry.”
24
In the middle of the Politigaarden, Copenhagen’s police headquarters, was a spacious circular courtyard open to the sunshine. It was ringed by an arcade with classical double pillars in a perfect repeating pattern. To Peter Flemming, the design stood for the way order and regularity permitted the light of truth to shine in on human wickedness. He often wondered whether the architect had intended that, or had just thought a courtyard might look nice.
He and Tilde Jespersen stood in the arcade, leaning against a pair of pillars, smoking cigarettes. Tilde wore a sleeveless blouse that showed the smooth skin of her arms. She had fine blond hair on her forearms. “The Gestapo have finished with Jens Toksvig,” he told her.
“And?”
“Nothing.” He felt exasperated, and he shook his shoulders as if to shrug off the feeling of frustration. “He has told everything he knows, of course. He is one of the Nightwatchmen, he passed information to Poul Kirke, and he agreed to shelter Arne Olufsen when Arne was on the run. He also said that this whole project had been organized by Arne’s fiancee, Hermia Mount, who is with MI6 back in England.”
“Interesting-but it doesn’t get us anywhere.”
“Exactly. Unfortunately for us, Jens doesn’t know who sneaked into the base on Sande, and he has no knowledge of the film Harald developed.”
Tilde drew in smoke. Peter watched her mouth. She seemed to be kissing the cigarette. She inhaled, then blew smoke out through her nostrils. “Arne killed himself to protect someone,” she said. “I assume that person has the film.”
“His brother Harald either has it or has passed it to someone else. Either way, we have to talk to him.”
“Where is he?”
“At the parsonage on Sande, I assume. It’s the only home he’s got.” He looked at his watch. “I’m catching a train in an hour.”