James Benn - Billy Boyle

“Billy? What do you do when guilt shows itself?” Kaz asked, reframing the question as if I hadn’t understood it properly.

“Run. Duck. Draw your piece, do something, anything. But don’t just stand there.”

A stray stone had found its way out of the flower beds and onto the soft grass path. I kicked at it, sending it back where it belonged, with a clump of grass and torn roots for company.

“Billy, you must teach me how to see and understand these things, to help you find the spy.”

I could see Kaz was all worked up. He was almost like a kid brother, jumping up and down and begging his older brother to take him wherever he was going. Like Danny always did, and I had hardly ever said no to him.

“Why do you want to know all this? Aren’t you already involved in looking for the spy? You know all about everything at HQ.”

Kaz took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and shook his head. “All I do is read and translate reports and talk to other officers who read and translate other reports. I am sure it is very important work, but it is not getting us any closer to finding this spy. And it is not very exciting,” he added a little sheepishly as he put his glasses back on.

“Asking a lot of dumb questions isn’t very exciting, Kaz. Ask questions, rile people up, watch things, think about things, then go back and ask more questions. That’s it. Not really exciting at all.”

“I do find my work not very stimulating, Billy, but it is not really excitement I am seeking. It is… revenge. If I could fight, I would, but with my heart, this is as close as I can get. If I can help to uncover a spy, that would be enough. I would feel as if I had done the right thing for the memory of my family.”

I didn’t get this little guy. He had bad health, good money, a great hotel room and a beautiful girlfriend. If I had that deal, the last thing I’d be doing would be hunting around for a German needle in a Norwegian haystack. But he was probably going to try on his own anyway, so I fig-ured I might as well take him on and make sure he didn’t mess things up for me.

“OK, Kaz. You’re on. Just watch what I do and keep your eyes open.”

“Excellent! What do we do first?”

I looked at him and wondered how much I could trust him. Was he really an eager beaver? Or was he watching me for somebody else? The thought had even occurred to me that I couldn’t rule out Kaz as a suspect. How did we know he was really who he said he was? Maybe the Nazis were holding his family hostage? Maybe he was the “Prodigal Son?” Maybe I was Sam Spade, but I doubted it. Occupational hazard of being a cop. Everyone’s a suspect.

“Go find out where Knut Birkeland is, then come get me. We’ll have a chat with him. I’ll be out here.”

Kaz threw me a mock salute and went off to find Birkeland. I kept walking through the gardens as the sun tried to break through the steel gray clouds. I was thinking about little things and trying to add them up so they made sense. I decided I was a couple of sums short of an equation and stopped to smell the roses, just like they always said you should. I reached out to pull a flower closer to sniff it. It smelled like raspberries and perfume on a beautiful woman’s neck. I let go and a thorn caught my fingertip, leaving a slit on my right index finger, and spraying tiny flecks of blood on the blooms beneath it.

About a half hour later Kaz and I were sitting in Knut Birkeland’s office on the third floor, where most of the government offices were. There were stacks of papers everywhere. Birkeland looked as disheveled as his room. He pushed aside the open books and folders in front of him, leaned his heavy frame back in his chair, and raised his bushy black eyebrows.

“What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” There was gruff suspicion in his voice.

“I just wanted to apologize, sir. I didn’t mean to upset people at lunch by asking about the gold.” I put on my meekest voice and enjoyed the look on Kaz’s face. He’d obviously hoped I’d pull out some brass knuckles.

“Well, it doesn’t bother me, but I don’t like it being brought up in front of the king. This is a very delicate time.” He stared at me with those dark eyes, and didn’t even try to hide the fact that it really did bother him.

“You mean because of the pending appointment of a senior adviser?”

“You ask a lot of questions, young man, especially for someone who just apologized for it.”

“I’m sorry, sir. It’s just that I was a policeman before the war, and it seems that asking questions is a hard habit to break. I don’t even realize I’m doing it.” He seemed to accept my humble apology, and relaxed a bit.

“Well, no matter. I have nothing to hide. I didn’t take any gold, and I do want the position of senior adviser. If only to keep it from Skak!” He punctuated that statement by pounding his fist on the desk. I could tell he wouldn’t mind the next question at all.

“What’s wrong with Vidar Skak?”

“He’s a coward and a liar! He claims two cases of gold coins went missing while they were in my possession, with no other proof than his own books! He never spent a night standing guard in the snow over that gold or bent his back loading case after case onboard a ship with German planes dropping bombs all around!”

“Why would he blame you for the missing gold? What has he to gain?” asked Kaz, taking on some of the questioning himself.

“Gain? Why the senior adviser job, that’s all! Can’t you see that? If he discredits me in the king’s eyes, then the job is his, and the worse for Norway.” Birkeland’s eyes slid sideways, as if envisioning a dark future with Vidar Skak whispering in the king’s ear.

“Seems to me he just wants to fight back against the Germans.” I congratulated myself on avoiding a direct question.

“Neither of you strike me as fools,” Birkeland said. “You can see that Skak wants to use the Underground Army to support his own aims. The more glory for him, the better. He can be a hero in Norway after the war, when we lay wreaths on the monuments to the dead.”

“There’ll be plenty of death to go around before this war is over. Sacrifice can’t be avoided.” Geez, I sounded like Harding.

“Skak is willing to accept the sacrifices of others. He has lost nothing himself. I’ve had to watch newsreels of my own fishing boats being destroyed by the commandos, some of them Norwegian! I have a fishing fleet in Nordland, and when the commandos destroy one of those fish oil-processing plants to keep the Germans from producing nitroglycerin, my boats go up in flames. I’m watching my own business, which I’ve built for twenty years with my bare hands, go up in smoke. But, by God, I’ll put the torch to the whole damn thing myself if it will keep the underground from going into battle! We would gain nothing, and the reprisals would be terrible.”

The wind went out of him and he sank back into his chair. “Terrible,” he repeated quietly. “Let the British destroy our industry if it will hurt the Nazis. But let our people live.”

We left soon after that. On the theory that a guy who would rather see his own property destroyed than lose innocent lives would make a lousy candidate for a thief or traitor, I decided it was time to move on to greener pastures. I said as much to Kaz as we walked to our rooms, and to my surprise he responded like a cynical desk sergeant.

“How do we know he really owns a fishing fleet, and that it’s being destroyed in commando raids?” Ah, cynicism, the first dawning sign of a rookie cop learning the ropes.

“All right, let’s think it through. Skak and the king would know. Hard to believe he could be lying about it.”

“Yes, but the key point is his willingness to sacrifice his fortune. We have no confirmation of that.”