AFTER THE FAILED January drop, Rønneberg insisted the Gunnerside men take a break from Gaynes Hall. While waiting for the new moon phase, they spent two weeks in a lonely stone cottage beside Loch Fyne, in western Scotland. Owned by a former intelligence officer and friend of Colonel Wilson, the place had no electricity and was accessible only by boat or on foot across the moors. Surrounded by mountains, it was the perfect training location — far rougher than the easy meadows around Cambridgeshire. The six took daily hikes with full packs to accustom their muscles to the terrain they would face on the Vidda. When not trekking, they fished for salmon and hunted seals and stags. Their time in Scotland both readied them physically and brought them closer together as a team.
On February 12 they returned to Gaynes Hall. The window to depart was open, but if Norway was being ravaged by the same rain and strong winds as Britain, they would not be leaving any time soon. On their first day back, Tronstad met them to review the latest information from Swallow. They had feared that the long delay in launching the operation would give their enemy time to reinforce security at Vemork and that had now happened. “German troops have joined Austrians. Strength of guard at Vemork increased to thirty men,” reported Swallow. “Double post on the bridge. During air raid alarm complete state of readiness.” Since the Freshman disaster, the Germans had increased their garrisons at Lake Møs from ten to forty men; at Vemork, from ten to thirty; and at Rjukan, from twenty-four to two hundred. These reinforcements were mostly crack German soldiers. An antiaircraft battery had been set up at Lake Møs. A pair of D/F stations searched constantly for radio transmissions, and several Gestapo investigators were permanently on hand in Rjukan, sniffing out any trouble.
The Germans had also laid additional minefields around Vemork, positioned searchlights throughout the grounds, and posted reinforcements at the top of the pipeline and on the suspension bridge. Patrols ran around the clock. The winter fortress was prepared for an all-out assault. All these heightened defenses signaled the importance of the atomic program to the Nazi war effort, yet recent intelligence Tronstad and Welsh had collected from their spies painted no more than a murky picture of the intensity with which they were pursuing a bomb.
Paul Rosbaud, aka the Griffin, sent news that a member of Hitler’s inner circle, Albert Speer, had commandeered the German program, but Rosbaud was uncertain what this meant for its status. He also highlighted Heisenberg’s intention to build a self-sustaining reactor despite the explosive fire that had ruined his most recent experiment.
Harald Wergeland, the University of Oslo professor Tronstad had recruited as a spy, recounted a meeting with a German physicist who stated that their research was focused on building a power-generating machine, not a bomb. Any such weapon was a distant dream, Wergeland was told. Nicolai Stephansen, a Norsk Hydro executive who had recently escaped to Stockholm, backed this up. He delivered a report that chronicled the continued push for heavy water at Vemork. Yet from the conversations he had with German scientists at Norsk Hydro headquarters, the rise in production was “not to be utilized for bombs or other sorts of devilry connected with the war.”
However, couriers also brought secret messages from Njål Hole, a twenty-nine-year-old Norwegian physicist. Tronstad had encouraged Hole to join the Physics Department at the Nobel Institute of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to spy on any Germans who visited or corresponded with its staff. Among the institute’s noted scientists was Lise Meitner, whose close collaboration with Otto Hahn helped lead to his discovery of fission. In January, Hole sent a message, detailing recent attempts in Berlin to separate uranium isotopes with centrifuges. He also reported an outright statement by a German physicist involved in the program that his countrymen “intended to make uranium bombs.”
Tronstad shared none of these conflicting reports with Rønneberg and his team. Vemork was the single identifiable target open to them in their effort to stop the Germans from obtaining a bomb that could annihilate a city in a single strike.
*
Rain battered the roof of the truck as it came to a stop at the edge of Tempsford airport. The rear doors opened, and the Gunnerside team emerged in white camouflage suits and ski caps, their weapons at their sides. They crossed the tarmac to the Halifax, where Tronstad stood waiting. “Whatever you do, you must do the job,” he told them. “Whatever problems you hit against, think of the job. That is your main responsibility.” He wished them luck, and they clambered inside the fuselage. They took their seats, squeezed in beside all their gear, which included an arsenal of half-pound charges of Nobel 808, detonator cords, primers, delays, and pencil time-fuses. At 7:10 p.m. February 16, the plane rumbled down the runway and lifted off. Over the North Sea, the clouds disappeared, revealing the moonlit water below.
After four days at Gaynes Hall, each bringing notice of “No operation today,” they had finally got the call to go, despite the weather. During the briefing with the aircrew, both Rønneberg and Haukelid made it clear that if the navigator was unable to spot their new drop site (Bjørnesfjord, one of the largest bodies of water on the Vidda and a short day’s journey from Swallow’s location at Fetter), they should be called into the cockpit to help. They also told the crew that, whether they spotted Swallow’s reception lights or not, sure of the position or not, they would be jumping that night. “We’ll find our way ourselves on the ground,” Rønneberg said.
“Ten minutes,” the pilot called out just before midnight as the Halifax crossed over the Vidda. The team readied themselves to drop. At last, two minutes into the new day, the warning light switched to green. Rønneberg led the way, vanishing into the darkness and rushing wind. In quick and sure order, four of the remaining five men and several containers followed.
Then Knut Haukelid edged toward the hole, his heart thumping in his chest. No matter how much he had practiced at STS 51, parachute school, his nervousness about jumping never abated. Twelve hundred feet of empty air was a lot to fall through, and it was impossible to know what dangers existed on the landing. One Kompani Linge team had parachuted down onto a lake, gone straight through the thin ice, and drowned. Every second he delayed put him farther from the others.
Haukelid then saw that the cord that released his parachute was wrapped around the dispatcher’s leg. If he jumped, the dispatcher would come with him. Swiftly, Haukelid rose, shoved the man out of the way to free the line, and then, without further hesitation, leapt through the hole. A moment later his parachute opened, and with a sharp tug, he was momentarily lifted up by his shoulder straps. Sixteen other parachutes, attached to containers and packages of gear, floated down with him.
He landed in a bank of snow, drawing his parachute together before it could sweep him away across the ground. One of their supply packages suffering this fate was carried through the snow for over a mile. They discovered it lodged in a crack of ice. A few feet to the left and the winds would have continued to carry its essential contents — three rucksacks and sleeping bags — too far away to find.
They assembled quickly. Rønneberg asked Haukelid if he knew where they were. He had spent the most time on the Vidda. “We may be in China for all I know,” Haukelid joked, but given the expanse of flat terrain surrounded by hills, he suspected they had landed exactly on target. For a brief moment, he sat, cupping a ball of white snow in his hand, savoring his return to Norway at last.
Then the team got to work. First they buried their parachutes. Then Storhaug, who was the strongest skier, scouted the area, while the five others set out to locate their containers. A short while later, Storhaug returned with the news that he had found a cabin a mile away. Over the next several hours, they collected their containers and placed them in a long trench they dug in the snow. They set rods around the depot to mark its location and used a map and compass to take a navigational bearing. By the time they finished, the steady drifts of snow had obscured almost all signs of their arrival.
At dawn, they arrived at the empty cabin. To enter, they removed the doorframe with an ax. It was an expansive space, with a sleeping loft, a well-equipped kitchen, a fireplace, a sitting area, and a cord of cut birch. It would have been a nice place to hole up for a few days, but they didn’t have that kind of time: they would need to start soon for Fetter. After a short sleep, they returned to the depot and sorted out the weapons, equipment, explosives, and food they would need for the sabotage. When the deed was done, they would retrieve additional supplies for their retreat to Sweden.
At 6:00 p.m. Rønneberg led them eastward, compass in hand. According to their maps, fifteen miles separated Bjørnesfjord and Lake Store Saure. They were carrying almost 65 pounds each on their backs and towing two toboggans of equipment, each weighing 110 pounds. Four miles into their journey, the winds picked up, blowing against their backs. Soon after, they were caught in a storm that surged across the high plateau with runaway force. With each slide forward of their skis, the westerly winds cut harder, and it became very difficult to see.
Forging ahead, Rønneberg came across a twig sticking up from the snow. He thought it curious but continued, only to come across some underbrush a couple of hundred yards later. Had they been cutting across the Bjørnesfjord — a channel of water — there would be no such vegetation. Then the realization hit: they had not landed at the intended drop site.
He stopped, and the others came alongside him. Through the sweeping winds, he yelled, “We have to turn back to the cabin so —” the rest was lost in the storm.
He started back in the direction from which they had come. The others followed. Now they were headed straight into the gale, and ice and snow bit at their faces. The gusting wind made it almost impossible to breathe without the men shielding their mouths with their hands. Visibility cut to zero, and their incoming tracks erased, Rønneberg led them only by the needle of his compass.
They pushed on, hauling their gear through the snow. The darkness was impenetrable, and the cold overwhelming. If they missed the cabin by even a few feet to either side, they would continue endlessly into the Vidda, into the arms of a tempest.
*
The huge storm enveloped Fetter. Inside the cabin, the Swallow team and Skinnarland were worried. On the morning of the sixteenth, clear weather over the surrounding mountains had given them hope that Gunnerside would launch that night. Soon after, Haugland received the crack signal “211” on the wireless set — the prearranged code from Home Station that the drop was moving forward.
Poulsson led his team to Bjørnesfjord. They set out the Eureka and prepared the lights, but besides hearing the distant drone of engines, there was no sign of the plane or the drop team.
Throughout the night of the seventeenth, the blizzard continued, almost burying the cabin in snow. They talked of sending out a search party to Bjørnesfjord, but Poulsson thought better of it. It would be near impossible to find one’s own hands out in that weather. Further, he doubted that Gunnerside had dropped anywhere near the target. They would have to wait until the storm subsided. But with each passing hour, the blizzard seemed only to grow more angry and murderous. Huddled in their sleeping bags, the walls of Fetter thick with hoarfrost, they shivered and feared the worst.
*
Rønneberg took the framed map down from the wall. A few hours earlier, he and his team had run blindly — seemingly miraculously — into the very cabin they were looking for. Stamping their frozen feet and trying to thaw their frostbitten faces, they were well aware that they had barely escaped the Vidda with their lives. As the others slept, Rønneberg took first watch, though it was hard to think there was any threat greater than the terrible cold and wind.
Now, staring at the map by flashlight, Rønneberg tried to determine exactly where on the plateau they had landed. Starting at Bjørnesfjord, he ran his finger in a broadening circle, spying for terrain that matched their surroundings. Someplace flat, with a sizable lake, bordered by hills. On the third encirclement, his finger settled on Lake Skrykken, twenty miles northeast of their targeted drop and forty from Vemork.
In the morning, they broke into the small locked side room in the cabin. In it, they found a fishing logbook and learned the cabin was named Jansbu. It was owned by a Norwegian shipping magnate and was indeed beside the lake Rønneberg had identified.
With no wireless set and the storm outside continuing to rage, the team could only sit and listen to the wind, which sounded like muddled screams. The gale blew with such force and duration, they began calculating how much they and their equipment weighed and whether the sum total was enough to keep the cabin fixed to the ground. The structure held, but the rattle and shaking of the walls made them feel as if they were aboard a ramshackle ship tossed on a roiling sea. None of them had ever experienced a storm of such ferocity.
Three feet of snow fell over the course of the blizzard. When the team dared to crack open the door, the storm still howling with undiminished force, they glimpsed a landscape transformed into high drifts and flat, indistinct planes of snow. Their mission receded in their minds; there was nothing but the storm.
All six became ill from the swift change in weather. Only two days before, they had been near sea level in the moist, relatively warm English climate. Now they were suffering cold beyond measure on a plateau almost a mile above sea level. Swollen glands made it hard for them to swallow; their eyes became rheumy, their temples hot with fever.
On February 19 Rønneberg wrote, “Same weather. Storm and driving snow. We made an attempt to reach the depot to fetch more food to save the rations. This had to be given up because of the danger of losing our way.”
The storm elevated in intensity that night, a beast set loose in the world. In the middle of it, the smoke from the fireplace began choking the cabin. Rønneberg braved the conditions outside to check the chimney. When he shoved the door closed behind him, he found himself lost in a desolate wilderness. Snow fell in fist-sized clumps. Eyes wide behind his goggles, he could see nothing, and the wind stole his breath. He made his way onto the roof of the cabin, keeping his body low.
The howl of the wind made it impossible for him to think straight. The landscape seemed to be moving and reshaping itself, as if nothing was real or firm. Finally he determined that one of the braces supporting the chimney pot had come loose. He struggled to straighten the pot and secure the brace, acting by touch alone.
While engaged in this task, Rønneberg was suddenly lifted up and back, as if a giant had grabbed the back of his jacket. Then he was flying, head over heels off the roof, tossed away by a gust of wind. He landed in a snowbank. When he staggered to his feet, the cabin had vanished. All was white, swirling white, around him. Heading into the wind that had knocked him away, he eventually found the cabin. Climbing onto the roof a second time, he managed to fix the chimney pot, only to be hit by another gust of wind that sent him flying into the snow.
A slight respite in the storm the next day allowed the team to venture from the cabin to attempt to locate their depot. All landmarks had sunk into the drifts of snow, including the rods they had put up as markers. A three-hour search ended in vain. Another, in the late afternoon, turned up one container, but then the blizzard returned with a fury.
On the fifth day after their arrival, a fraught Rønneberg wrote, “The storm raged with renewed power. Visibility was zero. The general lassitude of all members of the party was still very much in evidence.” All the world was snow and wind, and there appeared no escape from its hold.
*
As quickly as the storm swept into the Vidda, it left. On February 22, the six Gunnerside men woke up to silence. They stepped from the cabin into a clear, windless day. The blizzard had transformed the landscape. Jansbu was now an igloo. Drifts had gathered to make new hillsides. Stalagmites of ice and snow stood like a collection of quiet sentries on the watch. Jutting precipices of white hung over cliff sides. They might as well have emerged onto a planet made wholly of snow.
Rønneberg gave the order that they must depart for Fetter by early afternoon. For six days they had been out of contact, and as far as Tron-stad or the Swallow team knew, they might be dead, and the operation off. They must hurry.
They returned to the general area of their depot, and over the next several hours, rummaged about in the drifts of snow until they found one of the rods marking it and were able to retrieve some extra rations. Given the distance and steep terrain they had to travel to reach Lake Store Saure, Rønneberg decided to minimize their loads. They would carry only enough explosives to blow up the high-concentration plant (not the surrounding machinery), uniforms for Swallow, Kreyberg rations for ten men for five days, and their operational equipment — weapons, hand grenades, shears, axes, field glasses, detonators, time fuses, and first-aid equipment.
At 1:00 p.m. the team was finished packing up back at the cabin, ready to head out, when Haukelid spotted a figure in the distance. Towing a sled, he was headed straight toward them. They retreated inside, shut the door, and hoped he would pass without incident. There was no doubt, however, that their ski tracks would attract attention. In the dead of winter, particularly after such a storm, signs of human habitation deep in the Vidda would surely be cause for investigation.
They readied their guns. As the man approached within a few steps of the cabin’s door, they sprang out. With six gun barrels pointed at him, the man’s weathered face paled. He was fitted out like a typical Norwegian in winter.
“What are you doing in the mountains?” Rønneberg asked.
“I’m a hunter,” he said, innocently enough. They searched him and his equipment. His identity card stated he was Kristian Kristiansen, forty-eight, from Uvdal, a valley due east on the edge of the Vidda. On his sled was over fifty pounds of reindeer meat. He was carrying rifles, a bundle of cash, and his pocketbook contained a list of names and addresses in Oslo. He was evidently who he said he was; the list of names, clients for his meat. That did not translate, however, into him not being a threat.
Rønneberg brought Kristiansen inside the cabin. He asked him if he was a member of Nasjonal Samling. “Well,” Kristiansen said, still frightened, “I’m not exactly a member, but that’s the party I support.”
“Are you sure?” Haukelid asked. The man was all but stating that he was their enemy, in cahoots with the Nazis.
“Yes,” he said hesitatingly.
Glancing at the others, Haukelid knew they were all thinking the same thing: that they might need to kill the man. Given their mission, there was no way they could simply detain him. If they let him go, he might reveal their presence to the Germans or to the police.
Haukelid tried a different tack. If he were to go to Uvdal and ask around, he asked Kristiansen, would his neighbors say he had Nazi sympathies? “I’ve so many enemies down there,” he said, “they’re sure to say I’m not a Nazi, just to make things difficult for me.”
It seemed as though the man was saying whatever he thought would win him the sympathy of his captors. He was in all likelihood harmless, but they could not be sure. It was for Rønneberg to decide what to do. “This is a bit of a shame,” he finally said. “You think we’re Germans, but we’ve nothing to do with them. We’re Norwegian soldiers, and we assume you look forward to the day when the king and government can come home.”
“They’ve never done me any good,” Kristiansen said. “They can just stay where they are.”
His statement shocked the Gunnerside men. Kasper Idland asked to speak with Rønneberg in private. “I’ll shoot him for you,” Idland said, once outside the cabin. Rønneberg knew he was trying to unburden him of the responsibility. It was a kindness. But he put himself into Kristiansen’s shoes: six heavily armed bearded men seize him in the middle of the Vidda — he is scared and trying to wriggle out of an impossible situation. It would have been one thing if Kristiansen was carrying an NS card, but he wasn’t. He might not pose a threat. Even so, Rønneberg’s instructions were that if the unforeseen occurred, he must act with the aims of the mission foremost in mind. He was not ready to decide. He told Idland, “We’d better take him with us for now.”
Kristiansen immediately proved to be of use to the Gunnerside team. They took some of his store of reindeer and cooked a big lunch, saving their own rations. Then Rønneberg asked if he could guide them on a route toward Lake Store Saure. Kristiansen said he could. They decided to leave that night to avoid any further chance encounters.
At 11:00 p.m. they departed. Kristiansen was in the lead, a sled tied around his waist loaded with rations and equipment. Rønneberg stayed close behind, compass in hand, to ensure they were following a proper course.
Kristiansen proved a better guide than they could have imagined. Not only was his path sure, but he skied a course that used the natural contours of the land, economizing effort. It was, Rønneberg thought, beautiful to watch.
At dawn, February 23, as the sun rose, first bronze, then gold over the mountains, Kristiansen led them to a small, flat-roofed hut owned by his family, where they rested. He chatted easily with them now and even attempted to buy one of their Tommy guns. When they left the hut and came across a herd of reindeer, Kristiansen begged to be allowed to shoot three or four of them — to be collected later. Rønneberg refused, but he had come to the conclusion that their captive was a simple mountain man, without guile — and no threat to the Gunnerside team.
At the entrance to a long valley, seven miles by their map from Fetter, they spied a man crossing the lake below in their direction. They dropped quickly behind some boulders, none more quickly than Kristiansen.
Rønneberg waved Haukelid over and handed him a pair of field glasses. Given that the skier was headed in the direction of Bjørnesfjord, he might well be a member of Swallow out searching for them. Haukelid would know better than anyone if this was the case. Although the skier was only a few hundred yards away, Haukelid could not make out who it was. He had a heavy beard and wore a thick layer of Norwegian clothes. Then Haukelid sighted another skier coming around a bend, a hundred yards behind the first. Rønneberg ordered Haukelid to move forward for a closer look. If he was discovered, and the skiers were not Swallow, Rønneberg told him he should simply say he was a reindeer hunter, much like Kristiansen.
Haukelid crept through the soft snow as the two skiers came up from the valley toward him. Near the crest, they stopped. One, then the other, scanned the surrounding area. They were looking for somebody, for something.
As they started ahead again, Haukelid recognized a weatherbeaten Helberg when he turned his face toward him. Beside him, bearded and unkempt, was Kjelstrup. For a second, Haukelid remained hidden, overjoyed at the sight of his friends. He wanted to say something funny — “Dr. Livingstone, I presume”— but seeing how thin and wan they looked, he thought better of it. Instead, he simply coughed, and the two swung their heads around, startled, hands on guns. When they recognized Haukelid, a shout, a whoop, then a holler rose over the valley.
A message from Home Station had confirmed that Gunnerside had been dropped on February 16, but still stated, erroneously, that they had been released over Bjørnesfjord. Poulsson had sent Helberg and Kjelstrup out to search for them there. By pure luck, Gunnerside came along that same route from Lake Skrykken. The three men embraced and slapped each other’s backs, and Haukelid waved for the others to join them.
*
Crowded into Fetter that night, the men had a feast. The Gunnerside team provided crackers, chocolate, powdered milk, raisins, and, as was welcomed most of all by Poulsson, “tobacco directly imported” from England. The Swallow men offered reindeer of every cut, including marrow, eyeballs, stomach, and brain. Their guests were happy enough with the lean meat.
Earlier, Helberg had gone ahead of the others to warn Einar Skinnarland that the Gunnerside men were on their way. Skinnarland’s identity needed to be kept a secret even from Gunnerside in case anyone was captured during the operation. After Skinnarland left Fetter, Rønneberg, Haukelid, and two more of the six arrived while two others kept Kristiansen under guard in the valley.
After discussion with Poulsson, Rønneberg decided to release the hunter with a warning that if he spoke to anybody about them, they would make it known that he had helped guide their party. “Stay on the Vidda and say nothing,” Rønneberg told Kristiansen before letting him go.
Nobody felt completely at ease with the situation, but Rønneberg measured the risk against the taking of an innocent life.
The ten men talked and laughed like old friends into the night. Haukelid thought of the months Swallow had spent surviving on the Vidda, and considered that, despite their rough beards and sallow skin, they were in remarkably good shape. He asked whether they had experienced any trouble, and when Kjelstrup answered, “Nothing,” they all understood it was to be left at that.
Poulsson and his team were cheered to see new faces and to enjoy new conversation. Their long wait and struggle had proven worthwhile. Altogether, they were almost overwhelmed by how uplifted and inspired they felt just at being united with Gunnerside.
Of the mission ahead, there was little talk. There would be time for business in the morning. For now, they celebrated.