James Benn - Billy Boyle

“Hva helvetet er De som gjore?” demanded a cook, a mean look on his face as he advanced toward me with a meat cleaver.

“Excuse me, sir,” another guy said in pretty good English. “What are you doing?”

He had a dish towel draped over his shoulder and I grabbed it and wiped away the water that was dripping in my eyes.

“Hold on,” I said, using the towel to wipe off the worst of the mud on the photos. They were all black and whites, printed on eight-by-ten glossy sheets. On the back of each was stamped “Ministry of Defence-cleared by censor.” At first glance, they were pictures of British soldiers. As I laid them out, I realized they were all commandos. There were a few grinning thumbs-up photos that clearly showed the commando shoulder patch. There were commandos running, firing weapons, but it all looked… staged. Publicity photos. That’s what they were cleared for. Photos for the papers about the brilliant exploits of the commando chaps. What was the big deal?

As I went through them, I noticed several showed commandos on small boats along a rocky coast. In one, there were several boats at a dock, burning, with a group of commandos smiling at the camera. This one had a caption on the back: The Nazis won’t be making nitroglycerin from fish caught by these boats, thanks to a recent raid on the Norwegian coast by a joint British and Norwegian commando unit!

I went back and looked through the photos again. I realized these were all probably taken on raids into Norway. In a few, there were signs in Norwegian. I didn’t know what they meant, but I had seen enough Norwegian to recognize it.

By now, the kitchen crew was all gathered around and looking at the photos with me. They saw the Norwegian, too, and started chattering. The cook with the meat cleaver put it down and joined the crowd. I tried to tune them out and see if I could find what was special about these pictures. What had been worth two lives? What would incriminate Rolf Kayser? I flipped through them again. Then I saw it, as clear as day. A photo of a commando standing back from a burning wooden building, a can of gasoline in his hand. It was a two-story structure on a dock; a small town was visible in the background. Flames were licking the side of the building, just below the name of the business painted up on the second story, between two windows. Kayser Fiskeri.

I didn’t need to ask, but I did anyway.

“What’s fiskeri?” I asked the group.

“Fishery,” said the English-speaking guy. “A fish-processing plant.”

Money. It had just been about money all along. Goddamn! Had Birkeland and Daphne died because of Rolf Kayser’s family business? I wanted to cry, but like I said, a Boston cop doesn’t cry. I gathered up the photos slowly and wiped my face one more time. Seemed like there was still rainwater in my eyes.

I decided Harding could damn well wait and went up to my room to clean up. I ran a hot bath, dumped my muddy clothes, and soaked for a while. I was trying to figure out a way to get close to Rolf before they took him into custody. I didn’t have any bright ideas, but I knew I didn’t want him sitting out the war safely in a cell as the Allied wheels of justice slowly turned and better men and women than he died by the score. I put on fresh fatigues and boots, strapped on my. 45, looked at the pictures again, and thought it all through.

Twenty minutes later I was in the map room, where I found Harding and Jens, sitting across from each other at the long table, drinking coffee. They weren’t working, or talking. I tossed the incriminating photograph down between them.

“I learned a new Norwegian word today,” I said. “ Fiskeri.”

“What’s this?” Harding asked, picking up the photo with his good hand.

“A picture taken less than two months ago on a commando raid on the Norwegian coast. There are other pictures of them burning fishing boats, part of the campaign to cut off the German supply of fish oil, for making nitroglycerin. In this one they’re burning a fish-processing facility, evidently owned by the Kayser family. Kayser Fiskeri.”

“But Rolf himself went on some of these raids,” protested Jens.

“What else could he do? If he refused, somebody else would do the honors. He’s not stupid. He probably knew that the issue would be decided when the king appointed the senior adviser and tried to move things in his favor by getting rid of Birkeland.”

“Didn’t anyone here know about his family’s business?” asked Harding with a hard glance at Jens.

“Only what he told us, that his family was well off, and wanted him to go to law school. It would be difficult to check, and we had no reason to do so. Rolf was with us from the beginning. Kayser is not an uncommon name in Norway, you know.” Jens shrugged.

“I’ll bet his family owns a whole string of these plants,” I said, “maybe fishing boats, too, and he was determined to protect their investments. Kaz may have found some other proof, but this photo clinches it for me. It’s the missing motive.”

“I follow what you’re saying, Boyle,” Harding said. “But what about the note that Daphne and Kaz received? And how could Kayser have killed Birkeland when he had gone hunting with the king?”

“No one ever saw the note; Rolf delivered the message personally. As for the time of death, I have a few questions to ask Rolf before I can explain that. I think I have it straight, but I want to talk to him first.” Talk to him alone, I thought. “Do we have him in custody yet?”

“There’s a little problem, Boyle. He’s already left.”

“What? Where the hell did he go?”

“Norway,” answered Jens. “On a mission to the Nordland province.”

“What’s going on here? How could you let him go?”

“Simmer down, Boyle,” Harding said. “By the time Jens got through to Southwold, Kayser was long gone. He must have driven straight there this morning. Then he hopped a Sunderland flying boat that dropped him at a base up north in the Shetland Islands. The SOE runs a sort of ferry service between there and Norway.”

“How did he just happen to hop on this aircraft and then conveniently catch a boat to Norway?” I asked.

Jens answered, “We wanted to dispatch a team to train Underground Army units in the use of explosives, so they could go into action in coordination with the invasion. Rolf organized the transport, landing areas, contacts, everything. We have been waiting for the right weather for them to take the Shetland Bus.”

“The what?” This was getting stranger all the time. I sat down hard, the energy I had received from finding the photographs and learning Rolf Kayser’s motive, drained by the distance Rolf had put between us.

“That’s what we call the boats that go back and forth to Norway. Most are Norwegian fishing boats that have fled to England. They carry agents and supplies over, mingle with the regular fishing fleet, make their drops, and then bring back recruits. It works quite well.”

“Kayser wasn’t scheduled to go over,” Harding explained. “He added his name to the list at the last minute. Since he had been in on the plan from the beginning, no one questioned it.”

“Seems like a pretty loose operation,” I said.

“No, not at all,” Jens protested. “As a member of the planning staff, it was appropriate for Rolf to fly up to Shetland to check on weather conditions. And once the boat was ready to leave, he could easily join the others. No one else involved in the planning of the mission was there to contradict him.”

“This Shetland operation,” Harding explained, “the Shetland Bus, is a bit unorthodox in its methods. It’s nominally run by the Royal Navy, but the sailors are all volunteer Norwegian fishermen. Very effective, but Kayser could easily take advantage of their informality.”