Donald Hamilton - The Wrecking Crew

"Let's go," I said shortly. "The damn trail won't get any shorter from our standing here looking at it."

She said abruptly, "They will kill you, Matt."

"It's been tried," I said. "So far, unsuccessfully."

"But-" She checked herself, hesitated, swung around, and started into the forest with that businesslike foot-trayerler's stride I'd seen before. Following behind, I said, "Caselius must value his privacy highly, to hike six miles every time he wants to reach his headquarters."

"it is only a rendezvous," she said without looking around. "It was only intended as a place to meet once. A place to leave from. A place for the airplane to come, where it could not be seen or heard."

"So he's leaving the country."

"Yes." Still without turning her head, Elin said, "You must love her very much, to deliberately walk into danger for her."

"It's not that," I said. "I just feel kind of responsible for putting her on the spot. If it hadn't been for my trick with the films, Caselius would be in jail and she'd be safe." After a moment I added, "Lou's all right. I won't say I'm not fond of her, but I don't make a habit of wasting undying passion on married women. She's still got a husband around somewhere."

The girl ahead of me didn't actually break step, but her foot kind of hesitated in midair before she put it down. "Has she?"

"What do you mean?" I asked innocently. "Isn't that how Caselius has been keeping her in line, by holding her husband prisoner?"

"She is a fool," Elin said scornfully. "Her husband died of his injuries six months ago. Caselius has been fooling her ever since. One heavily bandaged man in a hospital bed looks very much like another, if the photograph is bad enough…" She threw a quick, suspicious glance over her shoulder. "You knew?"

"I guessed, when I saw the pix," I said. "After all, I really am a photographer of sorts, you know. I couldn't help wondering why he'd have such lousy shots taken when he'd be bound to have somebody around who could take good ones."

F heard her laugh, striding ahead of me briskly. "You are quite clever… Am I walking too fast for you?"

I said, breathing heavily, "Well, we're not standing still, that's for sure."

"I will go slower," she said. "It is too bad we cannot drive you in that fine American car with its soft springs and its wonderful automatic transmission?' She laughed again. "How can you believe America is going to win, Cousin? How can one conquer the world sitting down?"

After that, we didn't have much breath for conversation. The kid was a walking fool, and despite her promise to slow down she continued to set a killing pace. The country was the wettest I'd ever hiked through. Although I hadn't noticed an abnormal amount of rain during the week I'd been there, the ground seemed to be saturated almost everywhere. We jumped little creeks, splashed through puddles, and waded through boggy hollows. Our shoes were soaked after the first quarter mile. I suppose the solid granite of the earth's core is so close to the surface up here-the soil is so thin.-that any rain that falls has no place to go.

Finally I called a rest and sat down on a boulder, panting. She didn't deign to admit weariness; kids never do. She just stood there waiting. Aside from wet feet, the only sign of distress she showed-if you could call it that-was the fact that her soft, light-brown hair, loosened by her exertions and snagged by branches along the way, was falling untidily out of its neat, pulled-back arrangement. Presently she reached up, removed a few pins and a contraption that seemed to be made of horsehair, and shook it all lose about her shoulders.

"Elin," I said. "Tell me. What are you getting out of all this?"

She threw me a quick glance. Her voice was stiff when she spoke. "I am not ashamed."

"Fine," I said. "You're not ashamed. I'll make a note for the record: Elin von Hoffman is not ashamed."

She said, "You would not understand. You are an American, not a Swede. America must be a wonderful country in which to live. At least for the moment, you are both free and powerful. And you have no history to remember and regret."

"Now, listen-"

She made an impatient gesture. "American history is a joke! Why, Columbus did not discover the New World until almost the year fifteen hundred. We have churches still in use here in Sweden dating from twelve hundred, and all they indicate is the time of the arrival of Christianity.

Much Swedish history, as you must recall, was made earlier by men who worshiped Odin and Thor. By the time your American history was fairly begun, Swedish history was almost ended."

"I'm slow," I said. "You're leading up to something, but I haven't got it yet."

"Now America is a great power," she said, "and Sweden is a little neutral country, cowering between two giants she must not antagonize on any account. We must be careful, we are told, we must be prudent… Bah! Can we forget that there was a time when the dragon ships would put to sea each spring, and the crews would cast lots to see whether they would take their tribute, this year, from east or from west? And all along the coast of Europe, people trembled awaiting their coming!"

"What are you suggesting," I asked, "that we gather together a bunch of congenial Vikings and go a-raiding?"

She gave me an indignant look. "You joke," she said, "but it is no joke! Once Norway was ours, and Finland and Denmark; the Baltic was a Swedish lake. When Swedish armies moved, the world held its breath, waiting to see where they would strike. We had real kings in those days, not just a family of handsome figureheads imported from France, whose function is to make palatable these little socialists and their comfortable welfare state!" She drew a long breath. "If we are to have royalty, let's have royalty that rules-and fights! Or let us get rid of the whole cowardly pack of princes and politicians and get a government that will recognize that these are days of decision for the whole world. Sweden cannot hide from what is to come under a word called neutrality, like a cur dog hiding under a broken basket. We must take a stand. We must make our choice!"

I said, "It's pretty clear what choice you've made."

"Somebody will rule the world, Matthew Helm! Will it be the country that spends its time and ingenuity saving its people from the dreadful effort of shifting gears? You Americans have almost forgotten how to walk; how can you fight? I do not like these Slays with their silly political theories, but they have the strength and they have the will, and one cannot be sentimental in these matters. And when it is all over, what country will they select to form the nucleus of the great Scandinavian state that must come?

Will it be Finland, that fought them savagely and hates them bitterly? Will it be Norway, that joined your North Atlantic pact against them? Wifi it be Denmark, geographically and politically aligned with the continent, rather than with us here in the north?" She moved her shoulders abruptly. "It is not what one would choose for one's country, perhaps, but who is free to choose? And who knows, if the giants kill or weaken each other, maybe the time of the pygmies will come!"

I said, "Elin, I'm no world strategist, but I know that for years-centuries-the Russians have been trying to break through to a warm-water port on the Atlantic. It's even more important these days, when the nuclear submarine may become one of the deciding factors of world power. They've got access to the Pacific, but they're still hemmed in on this side of the world. The Black Sea can be blocked at the Dardanelles. The Baltic can be closed almost as easily. Murmansk, way up there on the Arctic Ocean, is a hell of a place to get into and out of, as our boys learned during the war.

"Narvik, in Norway, could be the answer. But you can't reach Narvik by land except through north Sweden, not from the direction of Russia, anyway. I don't say it will happen this year, or the next, but they're considering it, or they wouldn't go to all this trouble to get pictures of the area." I gestured toward the two paper-wrapped packages she carried. "And you're helping them."