James Benn: Billy Boyle

“Ferry is good?” I asked.

“No, ferry is not good,” he answered with what might have been a smile. Then he shrugged. “Is best.” He didn’t know many words of English, but the ones he knew, he seemed to know precisely.

They brought out bread, cheese, and dried fish. We ate in silence. We heard more planes overhead. They pointed out German patrol boats passing the island. I nodded. Is not good, I knew. It was nine o’clock at night and still bright outside. They kept the fire stoked to dry my clothes, and I stared into the flames, wondering. About Kaz, about Rolf, about Diana, her father, and Harry. About Uncle Ike and how I’d let him down, not even able to complete my first assignment without screwing up and disobeying orders. Hell, forging orders.

Finally the heat made me sleepy. There were wooden bed frames along the walls with feather mattresses on them. I flopped down on one and let my weariness take over. My last thought before I drifted off was that I didn’t want to dream. But I did.

There was smoke and fog, and Daphne was back. I couldn’t see her clearly and it was like slogging through molasses to get to her. We were on a boat and then we weren’t. It was all jumbled up. We were in a log cabin, then in my house back in Boston, in the kitchen. Daphne was sitting at the table, talking with Higgins. She looked up at me, placed a hand on Higgins’s arm, and said, “I didn’t ask for this, Billy. Why are you doing it?” Higgins looked up at me, too, a question forming on his lips. Thankfully, I woke up before he asked it. Or before I had to answer Daphne.

Two of the Norwegians were gone. The English speaker was still there. I tried to make conversation. “No names. No talk.” That was all I got. Well, I thought, they’re used to Englishmen, I can’t really blame them. He made some awful coffee and we ate bread and cheese. When I made a face after trying the coffee, they both laughed. “Ersatz.” The German word for a manufactured substitute for any item unavailable due to wartime shortages had become slang for anything fake. I didn’t ask what was in the brew.

There was a single knock at the door. They both grabbed their Sten guns and stood at the head of the stairs. A voice spoke to them in Norwegian. They answered and returned to the table frowning.

“No ferry today. Germans stop all boats. Search Nesna. Is not good.”

“Is not good for us?” I asked, wanting to know how serious this was.

“No. Good for us. Search Nesna for British fliers. Boat…” He tried to think of the right words in English.

“The fliers the boat was to pick up?” I asked slowly.

“Yes. Boat not pick up.”

“How do the Germans know about the fliers?”

He shrugged. “Someone talk too much. Maybe they have boat crew. They talk too much. Maybe.”

“Why is it good for us?”

“Germans will find British fliers. Eight men too many to hide. Then they stop search. Then we go. Easy.”

“Easy is good,” I said.

“Yes! Easy is good!” He smiled as if pleased with a new way to say “is good.” I didn’t. I thought about eight bomber crewmen who were going to spend the rest of the war in a POW camp, in the service of justice. My justice.

We sat around after breakfast. I cleaned my. 45 and dressed in dry clothes. That was the highlight of my day, until someone brought some more food, bottles of beer, and the news that the British fliers had been captured. The search was off. We drank a toast to our good fortune. For them, the war was over. Is good for us.

We took the ferry the next morning. There were German sentries at the ferry landing, but they were inattentive. Probably all searched out. There were other fishermen and locals on the ferry and we didn’t attract any attention. We walked through town and up a steep road to a farm-house. They stashed me in a hayloft, inside a long stone barn, above the cows. As hiding places go, I’d smelled better, but it was warm. My escorts brought me more bread and cheese from the house, and a bottle of apple juice.

“I must go fish,” my friend told me. “We go. Good luck.” We shook hands and he left me alone in the barn.

For the next four days, I was moved in small leaps westward, toward Leirfjord. Always by somebody different, sometimes through the woods, other times on the road, via horse cart or on foot. I didn’t see a single German. I didn’t make any more friends either, although one farmer lent me a razor and his wife heated water for a bath. That might have been in their own self-interest, though. Either way, it felt good. There was always enough to eat-plain food, usually dried fish, cheese, bread, a few eggs, and even butter. I walked so much that I sacked out easily enough each night, usually in a barn or a small cabin in the woods. Never in anybody’s home. They could always claim they didn’t know about the American gangster hiding in their barn, but if the Germans found me in a house, it meant a bullet in the head for the owners.

On the day before the planned meeting between Anders and Rolf, I found myself on a country road with an old Norwegian farm woman. Her horse cart was filled with milk cans, and we slowly clip-clopped through the town of Leirfjord before dawn, heading east. Without speaking a word, she pulled up on the reins and stopped her horse. She pointed in the direction of a well-worn dirt path that disappeared into a stand of pine trees. I got down, smiled, and waved. She shook her head and must’ve said “giddyup” in Norwegian, since the horse quickly started down the road. The creak of the wooden wheels, the sound of the empty metal milk cans clunking against each other, and the rhythmic sounds of the horses’ hooves faded as the road curved to the left, off into a deep pine forest. In a minute I was alone. It was quiet. I looked around. Green fields and meadows of wildflowers stretched out on either side of the road. Steep mountains rose up around the little valley. Pine forests climbed halfway up the mountains, then pale gray rock took over, jutting up into a beautiful clear blue sky with lazy white clouds drifting across it. The air smelled clean and fresh, the smell of the outdoors. A bird sang. I took a deep breath, turned, and began my hike up to the hut. To kill a man.

Jens had said it would take an hour to reach the hut. Well, maybe for him, but we didn’t have mountains in Boston and I wasn’t used to this. I had to stop a few times and catch my breath. It was pretty steep, with lots of switchbacks and boulders to scramble over. After about two hours I spotted the hut up ahead. By my count it was July 21st and Rolf wasn’t due to show up until the next day. I decided to play it safe, in case Rolf was early or Anders was trigger-happy. I watched the place for a while. Finally I saw Anders emerge and go around to the side of the hut. He was dressed in civilian clothes, dark green pants with suspenders over a heavy gray shirt. A woodman’s work outfit. I began to hear the sound of an ax hitting hard wood; he was splitting firewood.

I walked up to the hut, watching each step, trying not to make a sound. I reached the door, still hearing the sound of the ax, and of pieces of wood falling into a pile of kindling. Another swing of the ax, and I stepped around the side of the hut, my arms outstretched to show I wasn’t a threat.

“Anders-”

I stopped. A revolver pointed square at my chest. The ax was sunk into a stump that had a pile of wood next to it. Anders stood behind the stump, facing me, with two hands gripping the gun, knees slightly bent, in a classic shooter’s pose. I had as much chance as a paper target at ten paces, if he fired.

“Anders, don’t shoot. It’s me, Billy.” He didn’t speak or relax. But he didn’t shoot either, so I figured I was ahead of the game. A quizzical expression replaced the grim look on his face, as he tried to take in what he was seeing and hearing.