Paula pouted, wept and swore—but she had fallen completely under the spell of the sardonic Russian, who treated her with the utmost brutality but made love to her with more vigour than any man she had ever known; so eventually she agreed to put up to Major Quisling the matter of obtaining a Norwegian passport for Erika. Stefan left her with the conviction that she was really frightened of him and so would do as he said, but it was an anxious time waiting to hear the result of her endeavours.
On the Wednesday night that she was to tackle Major Quisling news came through that there had been a reshuffle in the British Cabinet, but its results were disappointing. The only definitely good thing which came out of it was the appointment of Lord Woolton as Food Minister. The other leeches clung on to their jobs in spite of the fact that both Press and public obviously considered them incompetent to fill them.
On the Thursday morning Paula telephoned to say that she thought that things would be all right, and that if Erika had any preparations to make she had better get on with them, as, subject to the arrangements going through, they were to sail in a boat which left two days later—Saturday, April the 6th.
On Friday they learned definitely that the matter had been settled. That afternoon Erika received her passport in the name of Yonnie Rostedal, and Kuporovitch his in the name of Odo Assburg. Both passports had been duly visaed by the Dutch Legation and each was accompanied by a note to say that special accommodation had been reserved in the ship which was sailing for Rotterdam on the following day.
‘Such,’ remarked Gregory cynically, ‘is the power of the Nazis in this so-called neutral country.’
Ever since their discussion with Kuporovitch on Paula’s projected departure Gregory and Erika had realised that the possibility of their own separation was once again imminent, but they did not take the thought by any means so hardly as they had done before. Then it had been their own affair and a voluntary act which might result in their not seeing each other again as long as the war lasted; now it was dictated by policy and they could part with a reasonable hope of being reunited in the comparatively near future. There was no longer any question of Erika’s leaving for the United States, as in Holland she would now be able, under a new identity, to continue her work against the Nazis with some degree of safety.
The plan was that she should live there very quietly, so as to run as little risk as possible of meeting any Germans who might know her as Erika von Epp, but keep in touch with Paula through Kuporovitch and transmit, by carefully-worded letters to Sir Pellinore in London, all the particulars that could be obtained about the operations of Hitler’s secret weapon in Holland. Gregory, meanwhile, would remain in Norway and continue his endeavours to ascertain the date of the projected invasion until either he was found out or the balloon went up; but he meant to join her in Holland as soon as his work permitted.
On the Thursday evening Paula was giving a farewell party to which they were all invited. When they arrived about half-past nine they found her big apartment already crammed to capacity. The women were nearly all Germans, Austrians or Hungarians who came from good families and had been specially picked for their looks. The men were Norwegians or pro-Axis members of the Diplomatic Corps in Oslo. No secret was made of the fact that Hitler was regarded as the master of them all and they laughingly ‘heiled’ one another as though the party were being given in Germany. But although Gregory cautiously sounded everyone there to whom he talked about the date of the anticipated German take-over he drew a complete blank; none of them seemed to know anything definite.
Major Quisling was there; an arrogant-looking man with fair hair that was turning grey, and heavily-lidded eyes. He quite obviously considered himself cock of the walk and many of the Norwegian officers who were his senior in rank openly deferred to him.
At one period of the evening, when Gregory was exchanging playful badinage with a plump, dark-haired, bright-eyed little Hungarian girl, Quisling was standing just behind him talking to the dashing German Air Attaché, Captain von Ziegler. Straining his ears Gregory endeavoured to listen to their conversation but he could catch only scraps of it. They were planning something for which Quisling said that the airman would receive the personal thanks of Hitler, but what, was by no means clear. Then Quisling said, ‘If you succeed you must fly him straight to Germany,’ which gave Gregory the cue that a kidnapping was on foot.
Von Ziegler had a sense of humour, and he replied with a laugh: ‘I shall need an outsize plane for that, because he’s six-foot-two in height, you know.’ But immediately afterwards they moved away towards the buffet so Gregory heard no more, and there were so many people in Norway on whom the Nazis had designs that he knew he might puzzle his wits indefinitely without getting any farther, so he dismissed the episode from his mind.
As it was their last night together in Oslo he and Erika left the party early and were back at the hotel shortly after midnight. For a long time they talked quietly together while she lay in his arms, but at last he managed to soothe her fears that they might never meet again and she dropped off to sleep.
Next morning he took her down to the dock, but they had already made their farewells as both had decided that for him to hang about until the ship sailed would only prolong the agony. During the time that he had been with them Kuporovitch had grown extremely attached to them both, but the Russian was such a cynical devil that Gregory was both surprised and touched when, just before Erika went up the gangway, he drew him aside, and said:
‘Keep in good heart, my friend. I will postpone my trip to Paris until you can join us in Holland, and you may sleep soundly with the knowledge that I will tear the throat out of any man who attempts to lay a finger on her.’
Gregory knew that the Russian had a lion’s courage and a serpent’s cunning, and that when he said a thing he meant it, so he could not have asked a better protector for Erika. For once he was almost at a loss for words and could only murmur: ‘That’s good of you, Stefan—damned good of you.’
That week-end of April the 6th and 7th proved a trying one. He was not unduly worried about Erika as, although her change of name was only a comparatively slight protection against her being traced sooner or later by the Gestapo, her new Norwegian nom-de-guerre coupled with her removal to another country would almost certainly secure for her a fresh period of immunity from their unwelcome attentions; but he was restless and uneasy.
He now had many acquaintances in Oslo but that Saturday none of them seemed to be available. They had left the city without warning or were busy arranging to depart on all sorts of different excuses. Even the Norwegian officers whom he had met no longer seemed to have time to spare to amuse themselves; they either had urgent duties or had gone up-country to various military stations, so Gregory decided that zero hour must now be very near.
Having sent to Sir Pellinore all the information that he could secure there was no more that he could do about it, but he was hoping that the Allies would forestall Hitler by a sudden coup. It was common knowledge in Oslo that the Germans had an armada of troopships all ready to sail from their Baltic ports and British Intelligence must be aware of that. In addition, there were his own reports which conveyed the fact that a large section of the ruling caste in Norway had been so seriously undermined that the country would almost certainly capitulate after only a show of resistance. It seemed, therefore, the obvious thing for the Allies to act first and invade Norway before Hitler could get there.
By evening the curious quietness of the city had affected him so strongly that he decided to risk sending an almost open telegram direct to Sir Pellinor. It read:
RATS HAVE ALMOST UNDERMINED FOUNDATIONS OF ENTIRE HOUSE STOP SEND RAT POISON BY AIR AND DISPATCH PESTOLOGIST BY FIRST SHIP STOP MOST URGENT.
He had no idea what, if any, plans the War Office had made for the invasion of Norway in such an emergency, but he hoped that due notice had been taken of the entirely new tactics which the Germans had used with such success in their conquest of Poland and that the Allies would first seize the Norwegian air-fields then follow up as swiftly as possible with troop-landings.
On the Sunday he spent his time out and about in the city, mixing with the crowd and entering into casual conversation with as many people as possible wherever he found that they could speak English, French or German. He talked to a girl in a tobacconist shop, a professional guide, a taxi-man, several barmen and quite a number of people who were having drinks in bars, and by the end of the day he was beginning to think that he had drawn too black a picture of the situation through having mixed entirely with pro-Nazis during his stay in Oslo.
Quite a large proportion of the ordinary Norwegians were sympathetic to Germany but very few of them were pro-Hitler and none at all thought that it would be a good thing if Norway were incorporated into a German-led federation under him. They had heard too much about the concentration-camps, the forced labour, the suppression of the Press and of free speech, which all went with the Nazi régime, to have the least wish to surrender themselves to it. Their one desire was to preserve their independence and they were prepared to fight for it if they had to; but when Gregory asked why, in that case, they did not take Mr. Churchill’s tip and come in with the Allies in defence of their liberties while the going was good they seemed to think that that was a crazy idea, because Germany was so much nearer to them and so much stronger than Britain. Their success in keeping out of every war for the past hundred years had convinced them that if they kept quiet and gave no offence to their powerful neighbour they would be able to keep out of this one, and some of them even showed definite ill-feeling towards Britain for what they considered her unreasonable attitude in making it difficult for them to maintain good relations with Germany.
In reconsidering the whole situation that evening Gregory came to the conclusion that the Norwegians would fight if they were given a chance, but he was extremely dubious as to what sort of show they would be able to put up in view of his private knowledge that so many of their leaders had already succumbed to Hitler’s secret weapon.
On the Monday the quiet tension of the city suddenly gave way to intense excitement. The British Navy had appeared in force off certain points along the coast and was laying minefields in Norwegian territorial waters. The official reason given for this was that the Allies had at last decided to take a strong line and close the winter route by which Germany secured her supplies of iron ore from Narvik.
With huge satisfaction Gregory bought himself a bottle of champagne and sat down to drink it. He was a clever fellow—a monstrous clever fellow—and he was used to reading the news which lies behind the headlines; the story about blocking the iron-ore route was all ‘my eye and Betty Martin’. Now that spring was here and the Baltic open again the Nazis could get all the iron ore they wanted without bringing it down the coast of Norway, so why should the Allies suddenly decide to block the winter route of the iron-ore ships when they had left it open until summer was almost here? The thing did not make sense, but was perfectly obvious to anyone. The Navy was really laying minefields to protect lanes through which troopships, bearing the British Army, could come to take over the country. Good old Winston had managed to kick some of his colleagues in the pants and Britain was at last stepping out to fight a war.
Having finished his bottle he went out to the Oslo air-port confidently expecting to see the R.A.F. sail in. There might be a little mild fighting but he doubted if the Norwegians would put up any serious resistance and thought that if he could establish contact with the British landing-force he might prove useful to them as he now had a thorough knowledge of Oslo and its environs.
Although he waited there until an hour after sunset the British planes did not appear, so he assumed that they meant to make an early-morning landing on the following day, at the same time as the troopships appeared off the Norwegian coast. Back at his hotel he found plenty of people who were only too ready to air their views over rounds of drinks in the bar, and through them he learnt that the Norwegian Press had suddenly turned intensely anti-British. In spite of the number of their ships that had been torpedoed by the Germans they appeared to resent most strongly any suggestion that the British should protect them from the people who were murdering their sailors. Then a Norwegian naval officer came in with the startling news that German battle cruisers and destroyers convoying over one hundred troop and supply ships were reported to have left their ports.
Gregory promptly ordered another bottle of champagne. Such tidings were all that was needed to crown his happiness. The British Fleet was also either in or approaching Norwegian waters. They would catch the Germans and there would be a lovely battle in which they, with their superior numbers, would put paid to Germany’s capital ships and sink or capture those hundred transports. Allied transports and aircraft carriers were evidently lying out at sea, just out of sight of the Norwegian coast. The intention was to let the Germans make the first open act of war against Norway so that world opinion and the Norwegian public should quite definitely be swayed on to the Allied side. The Germans were to be given a chance to land a few hundred men, then the balloon would go up; the Navy would sail in and shell their ships to blazes while British forces landed farther up the coast.
He went to bed about one o’clock in a high good humour and full of impatience for the momentous events which he felt certain this Tuesday, April the 9th, would bring. At four o’clock he was wakened by the crash of guns.
He had already made his preparations the night before, so within seven minutes he was dressed and downstairs in the hall, where a little group of people—mostly in their night attire—was assembled. Nobody knew what was happening and most of the Norwegians seemed pathetically surprised—even stunned—at the thought that their policy of so-called neutrality had not saved them after all. They were as shocked and indignant at this unprovoked attack as an ostrich, considering itself hidden by burying its head in the sand, might have been upon receiving a sharp stone in the backside, aimed by a small boy with a catapult.
Police whistles were blowing, the guns continued to thunder and people were exchanging the wildest rumours, but no shells or bombs fell in the centre of Oslo and it seemed that the fighting was confined to the harbour district.
Within twenty minutes of the first alarm it was definitely established that the Germans were the attackers. Apparently, considerable numbers of Nazi troops had been concealed in cargo ships in the harbour. Under cover of darkness they had landed and were now shooting down anyone who attempted to oppose them, while their warships were engaging the shore-batteries along the Fjord.
This news perturbed Gregory considerably. It was all in order that Germany should be branded as the aggressor by being allowed to land troops before the Allies arrived on the scene, but what had happened to the British Navy? Why hadn’t it intercepted the German Fleet that was bombarding the forts? But perhaps the German battle squadron had been deliberately allowed to reach its destination with the idea that it would be more certainly destroyed if the British sailed in behind it so that it was caught between two fires.
By 5 a.m. the invasion was reported to be in full swing by land, sea and air and Gregory began to plan what he had better do if Oslo fell to the Germans before the British put in an appearance. As the British had command of the seas it seemed reasonable to suppose that the Germans would not venture to send troopships out into the open ocean beyond the waters of the Skagerrak, whereas the Allies could land their troops anywhere along the Atlantic coast. Bergen, being the nearest large Norwegian port to Scotland, was the obvious choice for a British landing in force, so Gregory decided that he had better go there. However, he felt that there was ample time to have breakfast first and run from the Germans afterwards.
As the hotel staff was completely disorganised there was little prospect of getting proper service, so he walked downstairs to the kitchens and just shouldered his way past the stunned-looking people who had gathered there from fear of air-raids. In the larder he found that day’s selection for the restaurant’s cold table and while the other people sat or stood about in gloomy foreboding he made an extra large meal of some of his favourite foods because he had no idea at all when he would get another.
After his admirable breakfast he learnt that simultaneously with their invasion of Norway the Germans had invaded Denmark. The news did not surprise him and he felt that there was nothing very much that could be done for the unfortunate Danes. If Hitler had succeeded in forcing their frontier, which should not have proved a very difficult task, he could bring such a mass of men and metal to bear that no Allied expeditionary force could have hoped to hold Denmark for the Democracies. Norway, however, was a very different proposition, and he remained convinced that at any time now news would come through of landings by British troops who would oust the Germans because they could not be supported by sea-borne reinforcements from their bases.
On going upstairs again he heard that the Gneisenau had been sunk by one of the shore-batteries in the Fjord, which cheered him up a little. The place was thick with rumours that every sort of treachery was on foot and that certain commanders of forts on the Fjord had deliberately refrained from shelling the Germans; but there was evidence that at least one officer had had the courage to use his guns before a ‘cease fire’ order had been telephoned to him.
Soon after 7 a.m. word flew from mouth to mouth that a somewhat belated German ultimatum had been received in Oslo. The Nazis demanded the unconditional surrender of Norway’s armed forces, the reception of German garrisons, the resignation of the Norwegian Government and the setting-up of a new one under Major Quisling. During his three weeks there Gregory had received good reason to conclude that the pompous Major was a big cog in the German Fifth Column machine, but it now seemed that he was an even bigger fish than he had appeared. The Norwegian Parliament was said to be already in session and Gregory waited with growing anxiety to hear what reply they would give to the high-handed ultimatum.
At 7.45 the Government’s decision came through. They had rejected the ultimatum and had resolved to light. Gregory was considerably relieved, as although he naturally assumed that they already had a promise of full Allied support, and that that support was close at hand, he had begun to fear that Hitler’s secret weapon had done its work so effectively that the Norwegian Government might betray their trust and the Norwegian people. Feeling that Norway’s entry into the war as an ally thoroughly justified a bottle, and that there was still no urgent reason for leaving the capital, he went downstairs to the cellar.
Many of the hotel guests were gathered there and several of them, who had sought out the cellar hours before, were sitting on the floor drunk to the world. He helped himself to a bottle of Krug Private Cuvé 1928 and proceeded to drink it to the damnation of the Nazis.
He had only just finished the bottle when bombs began to fail. Evidently the Germans were demonstrating their displeasure at the rejection of their ultimatum by letting their airmen loose on the virtually defenceless city. The attack, by comparison with the Russians’ first air-raid on Helsinki, was like the performance of a village dramatic society compared with a first night in a famous theatre of a great capital. It was little more than a demonstration; but it was enough to rattle the Norwegians, who had no experience of air-raids.
Everyone in the hotel crowded down to the basement so that it became a jam of angry men and hysterical women. In consequence, Gregory went up to the lounge again. The hotel was solidly built and by sitting on the floor behind the hall-porter’s desk he was quite safe from bomb-splinters or the flying glass of shattered windows, and if the place received a direct hit from a really heavy bomb the people in the basement would just as certainly be crushed to death as those on the ground floor. As a result of his move he heard the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Professor Koht, make the first Government broadcast, via a radio-set which had been left turned full on in the manager’s office nearby.
He could not understand Norwegian but the head hall-porter, who had also remained upstairs, gave him the gist of the speech in English. Apparently the Minister, who only the day before had been protesting most violently about the British mine-laying as an infringement of Norway’s neutrality, was now calling upon all loyal Norwegians to resist the German invasion by every means in their power. He also stated that the Norwegian Government had asked for aid from the Allies, who had agreed to send the Norwegians armed support as soon as possible.
With some alarm, Gregory questioned the head porter upon the last phrase, but the man was quite definite about it, which gave him furiously to think. The statement should have been to the effect that, in anticipation of German aggression, the Allies had had troopships waiting off the coast which were now landing forces in support of the Norwegian Army, but apparently all that the Allies had said was that they would send troops; which might mean this year, next year, some time or never. Even if they were leaving now—at this very moment—by the time they reached Norway they would find that the Germans had secured a solid foothold and were well dug-in there. Evidently somebody had slipped up pretty badly.
It was now after nine o’clock and Gregory decided that the time had come for him to make a move. The bombing had ceased some twenty minutes before, and it seemed that comparatively little damage had been done except that the Nazis had put one down plumb on the American Legation. The Minister and his staff had escaped, but Gregory felt that by destroying their papers and belongings Hitler had done his good deed for the day; nothing could be better calculated to arouse the fury of the people in the United States than this wanton desruction of their property, and since we still had no propaganda there worth talking about it was just the sort of thing that we wanted.
Out in the street he found people now hurrying about and many cars stacked high with baggage, so evidently the unfortunate folk of Oslo who had the means to do so were already in flight from the city, That would jam the roads and make his trip to Bergen longer and more difficult, but he was well-fed and well-clothed so he had no doubts at all about his ability to arrive there without suffering any great discomfort.
Round at the garage, however, he received a nasty shock. The man who filled his hired car with petrol told him that the Germans were in Bergen. Gregory gaped at him, amazed, angry, helpless; he could only suppose that a convoy of German troopships had slipped past the British naval patrols in the night. Anyhow, the presence of the Germans in Bergen put any question of going there now right out of the picture, so he decided to head north, for Trondheim.
As he drove slowly through the crowded streets he once more reviewed the situation. By allowing the Germans to get into both Oslo and Bergen the Allies had landed themselves in a pretty mess. With their usual amazingly efficient staff-work the Nazis would now be able to seize all the strong points in southern Norway and, the power of defence being so vastly superior to that of attack, they would sit there—perhaps for weeks—wiping out any Allied forces that were sent against them. With such a lead they might even succeed in putting Norway right out of the war before Allied help could reach her.
From this he began to speculate on what measures the Germans would take in an endeavour rapidly to subdue the whole country. Obviously they would make every effort to get control of the Government machinery so that an official announcement could be made calling upon the Norwegians to lay down their arms. Paula and her friends had put in so much useful work with Norway’s official classes that the way was already prepared for such a move. But it could be done only by exerting pressure on King Haakon.
The Ministers who had remained uncontaminated by Hitler’s secret weapon would advise him to fight on and to put his trust in the eventual victory of the Allies; the others would urge him to spare his people the horrors of war and continue to rule over his kingdom by the gracious permission of the Nazis. What would the King decide to do?
As Gregory was pondering the point he caught sight of a man driving a car a little way ahead of him. It was the German Air Attaché, Captain von Ziegler. Instantly the snatches of conversation that he had overheard at Paula’s farewell party, between von Ziegler and Major Quisling, flashed back to him. They had been planning for von Ziegler to kidnap somebody and fly him into Germany, and it was somebody who had the unusual height of six-foot-two. King Haakon had that unusual height.
Gregory’s brain began to race. Could it be? It must be. It was the King whom they intended to kidnap and torture into surrender. At that moment von Ziegler turned his car out of the main stream of traffic and shot up a side-turning. Instantly abandoning all thoughts of Trondheim, Gregory jerked round his wheel, narrowly missing a lamp standard, and roared after him.