There was a man who had to be gotten out of Denmark. The Allies needed his information and abilities rather badly. The Germans held him under close watch, for they also knew what he was. Nevertheless, the underground spirited him from his home and conveyed him down to the Sound. A boat lay ready to take him to Sweden, whence he could be flown to England.
We will probably never know whether the Gestapo was on his trail or whether a German patrol simply happened to spot men on the shore long after curfew. Someone cried out, someone else fired, and the battle started. The beach was open and stony, with just enough light to see by from the stars and the illuminated Swedish coast. No way of retreat. The boat got going, and the underground band settled down to hold off the enemy till it had reached the opposite shore.
Their hope even of that was not large. The boat was slow. Their very defense had betrayed its importance. In a few minutes, when the Danes were killed, one of the Germans would break into the nearest house and telephone occupation headquarters in Elsinore, which was not far off. A highpowered motorcraft would intercept the fugitive before he reached neutral territory. However, the underground men did their best.
Holger Carlsen fully expected to die, but he lacked time to be afraid. A part of him remembered other days here, sunlit stillness and gulls overhead, his foster parents, a house full of small dear objects; yes, and Kronborg Castle, red brick and slim towers, patinaed copper roofs above bright waters, why should he suddenly think of Kronborg? He crouched on the shingle, the Luger hot in his fingers, and fired at shadowy leaping forms. Bullets whined by his ears. A man screamed. Holger took aim and shot.
Then all his world blew up in flame and darkness.
1
HE WOKE SLOWLY. For a while he lay unaware of more than the pain in his head. Vision came piecemeal, until he saw that the thing before him was the root of a tree. As he turned over, a thick carpet of leaves crackled. Earth and moss and moisture made a pungency in his nose.
“Det var som fanden!” he muttered, which means, roughly, “What the hell!” He sat up.
Touching his head, he felt clotted blood. His mind was still dulled, but he realized that a bullet must have creased his scalp and knocked him out. A few centimeters lower—He shivered.
But what had happened since? He lay in a forest, by daylight. No one else was around. No sign of anyone else. His friends must have escaped, carrying him along, and hidden him in this tract. But why had they removed his clothes and abandoned him?
Stiff, dizzy, mouth dry and evil-tasting, stomach full of hunger, he clutched his head lest it fall in to pieces and got up. By the rays slanting between the tree trunks he saw the time was late afternoon. Morning light doesn’t have that peculiar golden quality. Heh! He’d almost slept the clock around. He sneezed.
Not far off, a brook tinkled through deep sun-flecked shadows. He went over, stooped, and drank enormously. Afterward he washed his face. The cold water gave him back a little strength. He looked around and tried to think where he might be. Grib’s Wood?
No, by Heaven. These trees were too big and gnarly and wild: oak, ash, beech, thorn, densely covered with moss, underbrush tangled between them to form a nearly solid wall. There had been no such area in Denmark since the Middle Ages.
A squirrel ran like a red fire-streak up a bole. A pair of starlings flew away. Through a rift in the leafage he saw a hawk hovering, immensely far above. Were any hawks left in his country?
Well, maybe a few, he didn’t know. He looked at his nakedness and wondered groggily what to do next. If he’d been stripped and left here by his comrades there must be a good reason and he shouldn’t wander off. Especially in this state of deshabille. On the other hand, something might have happened to them.
“You can hardly camp here overnight, my boy,” he said. “Let’s at least find out where you are.” His voice seemed unnaturally loud where only the forest rustled.