Read Online The Drifters by James A. Michener - Free Book Online Page B

dogs and airplanes, so they had to leave Norway. But your father stayed. He and Mr. Storness the electrician and Mr. Gottheld the chemist—and how they survived, no one will ever know. Do you know why they stayed in the mountains, dodging the Nazi airplanes and killing the police dogs when they got tooclose? Because they had to send messages to the airplanes in England. Your father had a radio, not a good one, and Mr. Storness cranked it by hand, hour after hour—and do you know what? Every time they sent a message to London, telling the airplanes where to bomb, German headquarters in Tromsø got the message too. Because they could listen on the radio, couldn’t they? So as soon as your father started to speak on his radio, the Germans would send out their patrols with dogs, and we would wait to see what they had when they came back.
    ‘What do you suppose your father was telling London? On most days not much. But the wise men in London … you remember I told you that Mr. Halverson the banker was one of them? These wise men knew that someday, strange as it might seem to us, the great German battleship
Tirpitz
would sneak into Tromsø harbor, right here, and hide from Allied airplanes until it was time to rush out and destroy all Allied ships. If the
Tirpitz
did enough damage, the Germans might win the war, and you would now be speaking German. And when you grew up you would have to marry Germans. It was as close as that. So we kept watch for the
Tirpitz.
    ‘For nearly two years … can you imagine how long a time that is? For two years your father stayed in the mountains and told London what was happening in Tromsø. If a destroyer hid in our waters, he would tell the airplanes in London, and next day we would have bombs falling on the destroyer, and our houses too, but we didn’t care about that because we knew there was still a chance.
    ‘And then one day, in September of 1944, can you guess what appeared around this headland?’
    ‘The
Tirpitz
,’ said the children.
    ‘It was so big we could not believe it would fit between the islands. I remember running down to that pier over there and seeing how high it soared into the air. You couldn’t believe it. Where the captain stood was much higher than any building in Tromsø, and its guns were so enormous they terrified you even to look at them. We didn’t have to be told that if this fierce thing got free in the Atlantic it would sink every Allied ship. It was a hideous weapon to have hiding in your harbor. Look how menacing it is, even when it lies asleep.’
    At this point each summer the children would stare down at the enormous hulk and shiver as they saw itreaching out far beneath them, like a monster biding its time until it rose from the waves to destroy all things. When their mother resumed her story she always spoke in a lower voice, but this was the part they cherished, because it involved their parents. ‘As soon as the
Tirpitz
arrived, the German commander in Tromsø sent extra policemen to check on anyone who might have a radio. He sent airplanes to fire machine guns at spots in which your father might be hiding. And up the mountainsides went the patrols and the dogs. But what did your father do?’
    ‘He stayed where he was and sent the same message over and over again for five hours,’ Britta told the younger children. ‘He told the airplanes in London, “
Tripitz
arrived Tromsø this afternoon. Big hole forward deck. Probably stay here six weeks.” ’
    ‘When he finished his last message,’ Mrs. Bjørndahl said, the dogs were almost upon him. That’s when Mr. Gottheld was shot. He volunteered to stay behind so that the radio could be saved.’ At this point she stopped her story to recall Mr. Gottheld, a small man who had been afraid of storms and dogs and his wife, and everything except Nazis.
    ‘He was shot. They showed us his body in the Shipgate. And for a while it seemed that his sacrifice had been useless. Because no airplanes