Laurence Grand started speaking before he had even sat down at the large wooden table upstairs at the pub.
“We’re not exactly the only ones to have located the Achilles’ heel. Fritz Thyssen, the steel magnate who lives in exile, was abundantly clear in his advice to the French recently. It was more than just a hint. Block the transport of iron, and you’ll force Hitler to capitulate. That was the big topic of conversation in Paris in the autumn. Couper la route du fer, he’s reported to have said, in French. Funny that we should get tips from a man like him, but he’s fallen out of favor. Cut off the supply of iron, gentlemen. Easier said than done, and that’s why we’re sitting here for the third time. Now we want to hear how it could possibly have gone so wrong so many times.”
It was indeed the third time they had met, their second time at the Spaniards Inn, and Rickman could feel recriminations in the air. He had sensed it before he even entered the pub, on the steps outside, where he had met one of the two people in charge. And yet Grand was the more charitable of the pair. That chap Morton was worse. They had met upstairs on the last occasion too, to avoid any disturbance from the rowdy regulars drinking their cider in the conviviality of the bar on the ground floor.
Up here they were alone, with no one to bother them. It was here, almost six months previously, on this sizable wooden table, that Rickman had opened out the large map of Oxelösund. With a red pen he had marked all the relevant routes, both sea and land, and on a small side table he had placed photographs of all the significant mechanical equipment and buildings situated by the quay. There were pictures of the port’s own icebreaker, the Simson, and the huge wagon tippler. All the surrounding tracks and the associated transporter wagons were well documented. A series of pictures showed the new crane with its transporter wagons, photographed from all angles, unfortunately out of focus. He had given a lengthy apology for the quality of the pictures, but soon moved on to a description of how the loaded trolley discharged its contents straight into the electrically driven wagon. It had been important for him to show exactly how this crane and the related transporter wagons could move the newly arrived ore to the yard or directly onto the boat, or from the yard to the boat. Laurence Grand had listened attentively and nodded approvingly.
That goodwill was now dashed, as Rickman could clearly sense when he sat down at the rustic table with his fiancée. It was the second time Elsa had been to this kind of meeting. Grand paid her scant attention but came straight to the point.
“So you set off on skis, you said? Had you parked the car in Nyköping?”
Grand sounded slightly impatient, as no sooner had the conversation started than it was immediately interrupted. A barmaid had come upstairs with drinks and managed to spill one of them onto the documents on the table when she was putting the first mug down. They had ordered three different ciders.
“A Porter’s Perfection, a Morgan Sweet, and a Tremlett’s Bitter.”
The girl with the tray looked around, unsure where to put the other two, which were full to the brim. Before she could ask, Grand had taken the tray out of her hands and placed it farther down the table.
“Thank you. Thank you. This will do,” he said crossly.
It didn’t really matter that a little cider had spilled on the table, but it was yet another source of irritation for Grand, who wanted to shed some light on the whole mess before his superior arrived. It was obvious that, time after time, these amateurs were making mistakes that couldn’t simply be explained away as bad luck.
Attack is the best form of defense, Rickman evidently thought, returning to the question of whether they had chosen the right kind of explosive. This complaint had been discussed exhaustively at each meeting, and Grand was well and truly sick of it, especially as Morton, who made the final decisions but still hadn’t arrived, was utterly convinced that the debacle had nothing to do with explosives but was down to fundamental incompetence. Rickman picked up the thread again, however, and Grand let him carry on.
“Certain forms of dynamite perform badly in the cold, as we know. Nitroglycerin ‘sweats’ from the cardboard tube, so the stick of dynamite gets clammy. Confounded little crystals form, and they’re slippery and make you lose your grip. Nitroglycerin on its own differs from all the stuff that’s absorbent—ammonium nitrate, sawdust, and whatnot. If dynamite freezes and then thaws, it gets dangerous. It can go very wrong if you don’t take it damned slowly.”
While Rickman was speaking, Grand looked out the window at the trees on the heath, their bare branches outlined against the sky as if they were sketched in charcoal on a sheet of gray paper. He felt tired. It was already growing dark, and soon all that would be discernible from up here would be the lampposts illuminating the narrow thoroughfare between the pub and the old tollgate. Rickman continued his litany of explosives options, though he had utilized none. The operation had been aborted several times before it went that far. But he was concerned, because one chilly morning the other week the dynamite had frozen in the wooden box, even though it was insulated. It had been a cold winter, and the longer hours of spring light had brought no warmth. They had carried the box out of the warehouse on Näckströmsgatan and cautiously moved it to the warm cellar on Grevgatan to thaw. But this was dangerous, he wanted to point out, coming back to the matters they had already talked through many times.
“As you know, English dynamite is sold packed in round cylinders of paraffin paper of the same diameter as the boreholes they’re normally used in. Every stick of dynamite weighs a hundred and twenty-five grams. That gets very heavy when you’re talking large volumes. Then when the dynamite starts to sweat . . .”
Grand could listen to this no longer. He made a show of turning toward the window when Rickman started to repeat his mantra.
“Nitroglycerin sweats. The whole stick of dynamite gets clammy and difficult to handle because of the slippery crystals. Thawed dynamite is rubbish. I say it again, we need TNT. Rods of TNT.”
Rickman caught his breath. No, the mood was patently not the same.
They had seen each other twice before. Once in London, once in Stockholm. Rickman and his fiancée, Elsa Johansson, had nothing against a meeting in London, as they planned to settle somewhere in the north of the city after the wedding and needed to look around. And now they were back at the Spaniards Inn by Hampstead Heath. The pub was situated right next to the heath and only a short distance from the park surrounding Kenwood House. It was Grand from Section D who had suggested meeting here; quite why, no one knew. He always appeared from behind the building, as if he had walked through the wood at the north end of the heath from Jack Straw’s Castle, the other popular pub in the Hampstead area. It wasn’t difficult to travel out to Highgate and then walk along the northern boundary of the heath, through the park, and out of the large gate on Hampstead Lane. All the same, it was surprising that he hadn’t chosen a more central meeting place. On the bend beside the pub the road was too narrow for cars to pass in both directions, and they had to slow down to avoid collision. From the secluded table on the first floor, one could look down on the cars meeting in the gap between the tollgate house and the pub, as if threading their way through the eye of a needle.
Last time, Major Desmond Morton had arrived later than the others, in an official car with a chauffeur, and this time appeared to be no different. They had already been speaking for almost an hour when a car stopped just beyond the tollgate to let out a man who then hurried across the street.
Sure enough, it was Morton.
As soon as Morton entered, it was clear that Sutton-Pratt, the military attaché in Stockholm, the one who had originally suggested Rickman for the job and who was obviously now sick and tired of all the shenanigans and excuses, had apprised the major of the group’s latest fiasco. Morton’s irritation was palpable.
In short, they had tried to go as far as they could by car. But to be able to get out onto the ice, it was essential that everyone had the right equipment. In the morning, therefore, they had stopped in the small town of Nyköping to buy an extra pair of skis as well as boots and poles and other paraphernalia. There was a sports shop adjacent to the large hotel, and that was where they had selected the skis. Elsa Johansson, the only one who could converse with the young man in the shop, had become embroiled in a needlessly deep discussion over which ski wax was required for the ice. Was it not indiscreet to purchase this equipment so close to the site where the whole operation was going to take place, and to actually reveal that they were going out on the ice? Must that not be considered rather ill-advised? Yes, Rickman agreed, but he had laughed it off. And the episode with the skis was nothing compared to the disastrous excursion a few weeks previously, when they had driven into a ditch and had to call out a breakdown truck from Nyköping.
Mishaps, setbacks, sheer ineptitude, or, as Grand had expressed it in his first report to Morton, idiocy, pure and simple. This gang, whom Sutton-Pratt had engaged and to whom Grand himself on several occasions had lent his support, despite accounts indicating that they were clumsy and downright incompetent, would cast him in a very poor light if all the circumstances were put on paper. Even so, the height of stupidity had to be the affair with Biggs, the adman, who had been persuaded to join them on a few trips even though he had enough difficulty climbing only a couple of stairs with his wooden leg. The first time this was recounted, Grand couldn’t believe his ears. He had laughed, thinking it was a joke, and that the adman moved as if he had a wooden leg. That he might have been stiff, or particularly ungainly.
That wasn’t the case, however. They had taken along this lame chap, a British advertising manager with the Paul Urban Engström store, on a night excursion to the port in Oxelösund. “He hopped along on his wooden leg faster than the rest of us,” Miss Johansson had said with a laugh.
The whole thing was a farce that must not get out; on that they were all agreed. These reports must not reach the higher echelons. But how should they proceed now? Was it best, once and for all, to declare Rickman and his group ill-suited? The fact that they had failed on their very first reconnaissance had emerged at the previous meeting. The atmosphere then had been quite different, and they had joked about how hilarious it was to end up in a ditch with all that camera equipment and all that plastic explosive. The breakdown people hadn’t opened the boot containing the explosives, thank goodness, and Rickman had pretended to be alone in the car. Miss Johansson had hidden in the wood, with the rucksacks containing the maps and rolls of film. She had brought provisions for the road, so they didn’t starve, despite the length of time it took for the tow truck to arrive.
Morton sat down at the table, in the same position as last time. On that occasion Rickman had just published his book about Swedish iron ore with Faber & Faber and could comment with authority on anything concerning transport distances, volumes, and port facilities at Narvik, Luleå, and Oxelösund. Eventually the conversation had focused on Oxelösund, the increasingly important port lying seventy-odd miles south of Stockholm, which had been transformed from a minor pilot station to a community of over three thousand inhabitants, all as a result of the traffic so central to German-Swedish relations. Rickman had wearied his taskmasters with an in-depth description of how a three-thousand-ton vessel could be fully loaded in eight hours, and that with a workforce of only seven men. Thanks to modern loading and unloading equipment, the labor force in the port had been reduced from six hundred to just over one hundred, he had explained, and he had even gone into the intricacies of how the mechanics of the cranes were designed. They had learned that the equipment, the largest of its kind in Europe, had been supplied by the Brown Hoisting Machinery Company and had already been in service for twenty years.
Rickman had located and documented the most vulnerable sites. Confident of success, he had guaranteed complete collapse if the explosive charges were placed in the precise positions he had identified and circled in red. They had drunk to it in cider and had in fact emptied so many mugs that their subsequent descent of the steep staircase felt a trifle unsteady.
But since then, one debacle had followed another. Rickman shifted the blame. It was bad luck, of course, and some of his colleagues had caused him trouble. In addition he was dissatisfied with the explosives he had collected from Sutton-Pratt.
At the Spaniards Inn Rickman was onto his third cider. Morton and Grand exchanged a knowing glance of resignation. They plainly had no alternative but to allow him one more chance, and for the last few days impatient questions had been coming from the very top. Besides, they had invested too much in this businessman. Had Rickman actually realized that his initial task, to map out all the important ore mines and port facilities in the country, was only the first step in the bigger plan now entrusted to him? Did he seriously believe that the Faber & Faber editors were really interested in his exposition and had intended to publish these tedious reports about port capacity and crane installations to delight their sophisticated readers? The same readers who had come to know the new publisher through the selected poems of W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot and translations from French.
What Rickman had in fact considered to be his own role remained unclear. But what he thought was basically irrelevant. If there had been any other possibilities, they would most certainly have terminated his assignment. But no such options existed. Now, instead, Grand repeated the question about how the actual sabotage would happen. He preferred the technical questions; he left the politics to Morton.
“How will it happen, you’re asking. Yes, how will it happen?”
Rickman might have been slightly drunk, or maybe he was just impatient and couldn’t hide his excitement as he now unrolled a large sheet of paper. It came from a tube he must have concealed under the wooden bench fixed to the wall next to the window. He began with the mechanical details, which he reeled off at speed. He dashed back and forth around the table, pushing Miss Johansson out of the way at one point to find the right item on the drawing.
“Right. Listen to this. I’m talking about TNT rods. They’ll cause maximum damage if we manage to fix them on the inside of the cranes’ legs, preferably on the two legs that are resting on the quayside right next to the water. The whole structure will collapse and hopefully fall into the sea. The rods are activated by detonators. They must detonate at the same time, of course, otherwise there’s a risk that the charge going off first will prevent the others ever being triggered. Do you follow me?”
He glanced briefly at Grand and Morton, but as neither of them reacted, he continued with his elaborate speech, which, given that it flowed like running water, he must have rehearsed in front of his fiancée.
“There is a solution! I can solve it with a pentyl fuse, a fuse wire that’s actually a very elongated charge. The thing is, the whole wire catches fire and detonates instantly. Bang!”
Gesticulating more and more energetically, he didn’t stop to ask the gentlemen from the Secret Service if they had any questions, but kept up his frenzied monologue.
“Now we get to the exciting part. We connect these clever little wires to all the detonators, thus creating a circle. As the last step in priming, we attach a powder fuse to one of the detonators. When it detonates and the heat spreads to the pentyl fuse, the whole damn thing explodes into a sea of fire. Everything in one go. Boom!”
The room was quiet. The sound of voices and clinking from downstairs could be heard, but Grand and Morton remained silent. Eventually Grand leaned forward over the drawing and asked: “And where will you be when this sea of fire makes the crane collapse?”
Rickman was relieved that the oppressive silence had been broken and saw the chance to rebuild some trust by dwelling further on the technical side.
“The powder fuse can have a burning time of ten minutes or more, but of course we’ll be working with electric detonators and timers. They’re called signal relays, and we’ll set them for forty minutes, let’s say. Or for twenty-four hours. When the cranes fall, we won’t be in Nyköping any longer. We’ll be in the office in Stockholm.”
After a moment’s silence that was broken only by Grand lighting one of his slim cigarettes and Rickman taking large gulps of cider to hide his nerves, Morton stood up, took a few steps toward the staircase, and leaned on the wooden banister.
“Good. That’s what we’ll do then. You’ll receive the go-ahead via Sutton-Pratt within the next ten days.”
Morton had never shown any interest in technical details and addressed only matters of principle when he did speak. The fact was, whatever he said almost always developed into some kind of political exposé that required a number of listeners. It was odd in more ways than one, Rickman thought. The level of noise in the Spaniards Inn had risen in a crescendo and smoke from the bar on the ground floor was so thick that even the air upstairs resembled a bank of fog like the one shrouding the trees on the heath outside. Morton spoke as if he had a large audience.
“The Germans produce just over twenty percent of their iron ore themselves; the rest is imported. French and Spanish ore is declining, as is ore from Canada and North Africa, for different but related reasons. Now have a closer look at the production from Grängesberg, recorded so meticulously in your report, Mr. Rickman. In recent years the Germans have bought nearly seventy percent, which actually corresponds to eight percent of the entire country’s export of goods. Naturally we too have imported iron from Grängesberg, but that’s a question of a modest ten percent. You understand where this is leading. If anyone asks what the Germans’ Achilles’ heel is, it’s very easy to identify. Yes, gentlemen, Swedish iron. And that is what we’re now going to bring to a stop.”
The barmaid, who had reached the point on the stairs where her friendly face could be seen between the banister spindles, asked if the gentlemen would like another round of ciders, which Rickman affirmed with a nod. But Morton didn’t seem to notice anything going on around him.
“The French talk about a drôle de guerre, a fake war, and I’ve heard the Poles too are amazed that real acts of war haven’t spread. The phony war, they call it—I can’t pronounce the Polish words. At their last meeting the entire British cabinet was discussing how the Swedes can be forced to nail their colors to the mast. Everyone’s now agreed on the importance of the mining areas and the need to block transport not just from Narvik but from Luleå too. And when the port in Luleå freezes over, from Oxelösund as well.”
Grand was leaning against the window frame, apparently deep in thought. Rickman and his wife-to-be did their utmost to follow the argument and were anxious to demonstrate that they were on top of it all, which was only partly true. It had been the same at their previous meetings. Morton’s pontifications seemed to go on for an eternity.
“It’s been clear to everyone, even to Foreign Minister Sandler and definitely to his successor, Mr. Günther, that we can put more pressure on the Swedes than the Germans can. Let’s forget the transport of iron for the moment and look at the whole picture. For the last few years Swedish exports to England have constituted thirty-three percent. Compared with around fifteen percent to Germany and Austria combined. Nota bene: only fifteen percent combined! Then think about transatlantic trade, and how dependent on us the Swedes are for shipping crossing the Atlantic!”
Why Morton felt the need to analyze the world situation in front of this little gathering remained unclear, but while his colleague from Section D calmly smoked his cigar, Rickman and Elsa Johansson emptied their mugs of cider, and the racket from downstairs persisted at the same deafening level, his survey of the tensions in the north continued. Elsa Johansson, who was passionate about the battle against the Nazis and could speak at length about the fight for freedom, made one or two attempts to chip in, but Morton would not be stopped.
“The traffic from Narvik can be halted, of course it can be halted. But at what cost? You know about Operation Wilfred, a very simple little thing our dear First Lord of the Admiralty has planned. One single ship being sunk in the channel leading directly to the port. And in Luleå as well. But to boost the effect, the ship’s full of concrete. More or less impossible to recover. Not a bad idea of our good Churchill’s, who would personally prefer more heavyweight maneuvers. He would have liked to widen the war to include Norway as well as Sweden. The Swedes have to be forced in. They must be compelled to join our side.”
“I’m sorry, but can we be completely sure that the Swedes won’t choose the German side, if it comes to light that the sabotage is a British initiative?” Elsa Johansson had finally managed to get a word in.
Morton carried on as if he hadn’t heard her. Some words about Sweden’s new foreign minister and another quote from the First Lord of the Admiralty.
“As I said, he doesn’t give much for their so-called neutrality, he’s seen through that. When Oxelösund blows up, the Germans will give in.”
Rickman and his fiancée had heard similar speeches from Morton, and from Sutton-Pratt in Stockholm. And they read the newspapers, both the British and the Swedish. But Morton’s endless elucidation was soon too convoluted and specific for them. It wasn’t easy to figure out all the controversies that split the Supreme War Council into factions. The same was true of the differences of political opinion that tended to render these cabinet meetings so turbulent. Perhaps Morton believed himself to be an educator, but neither Rickman nor Elsa Johansson could distinguish properly between the various committees, and they couldn’t remember the decision-makers’ official titles. They were both aware of the rumors that Chamberlain was about to resign, but quite what that meant for their plans, they had no idea. Nor did they know where Lord Halifax stood on these matters. Of course they realized that Sandler, of whom there had been much talk at their first meetings, had been replaced as Sweden’s foreign minister by a taciturn maverick by the name of Günther. Elsa Johansson in particular followed the developments in Swedish politics, but she had no chance of grasping Morton’s European exposés, especially since they were interrupted periodically by patrons who peered inquiringly from the stairs to see if there was room up there, and by the good-natured barmaid.
“A Tremlett’s Bitter, a Porter’s Perfection, and a Morgan Sweet. Or did you say two Tremlett’s Bitters? I forgot there were four of you up here.”
“They’re not in the least disagreeable, the foreign minister and Boheman, his right-hand man,” Morton continued, as if nothing had happened. “The banker he associates with, he isn’t unpleasant either. I mean Mr. Wallenberg.”
“Two Tremlett’s, then. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“All this is being talked about now, but Churchill had decided as far back as October. Operation Catherine won’t be enough. The sabotage of Narvik won’t be enough.”
Some things had now been repeated so many times, Rickman and his fiancée could hardly avoid picking up the most important. Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, was the one most passionate about blocking the transport of iron. It was essential, using methods that were neither diplomatic nor military, the minister repeatedly stressed. The highest priority was to stop maritime traffic from Oxelösund, and, true to his impatient character, he insisted on the earliest possible action. He had emphasized the importance of Oxelösund back in October. And if they understood correctly, they had now been given the green light. That was all they needed to know.
“A Porter’s Perfection, a Morgan Sweet, and a Tremlett’s Bitter. No, actually, two Morgan Sweets. Did I get it wrong after all that?”
Four more mugs of cider were placed rather clumsily on the table while Morton reported on various meetings with Swedish representatives, one Björn Prytz, Sweden’s minister in London, and state secretary Erik Boheman.
Rickman attempted to gather his thoughts. There were a number of things he had never understood, and now it was too late to ask. Was Morton working for a central body or directly for Section D, like Laurence Grand? It was evident that Grand, the engineer, led the work of the section. Yet Morton behaved like the superior, and Grand accepted it, nodding in agreement, sometimes being quiet and thoughtful, never objecting. Rickman recalled the previous meeting at the pub, when the mood had been relaxed and they had tasted and compared different kinds of cider. Tremlett’s Bitter from Somerset had been the favorite. It was copper-colored and smooth as velvet.
Now a full mug of this same classic stood on the table before them, untouched. It was clear Grand was about to break up the party. No one wanted any more to drink, no one wanted to listen to any more arguments. Rickman mustered the strength to underline the importance of the correct explosive one last time.
“Nitroglycerin sweats through the cardboard sleeve. The sticks of dynamite get clammy and slippery,” he said doggedly.
This was his overriding message, and a prerequisite for the success of the sabotage. It was absolutely crucial to fix the TNT rods to the cranes’ legs. And large quantities of pentyl fuses were needed.
But he couldn’t get another word in edgewise. Morton made one final grand pronouncement involving something Lord Halifax had recently stated. Grand slapped Rickman on the back with a little too much gusto, gave Miss Johansson a quick kiss on both cheeks, and disappeared down the stairs.