Chapter One
April 4, 1940
“What do you mean, drop everything and rush off to Denmark?” I stared at Sir Malcolm Freemantle, British counterintelligence spymaster, with a fury I wasn’t trying to disguise. He’d told me three months before that he wasn’t going to drag me into any more investigations. At least not until the war started in earnest. Probably.
But as dusk was falling over London and blackout curtains were closed for the night, he’d called me to his office to tell me he had a new assignment for me. In neutral Denmark, of all places.
“There’s no fighting going on in Europe. At least not anything to bother Britain. Why are you sending me on another investigation, Sir Malcolm?”
“Do you know who Admiral Wilhelm Canaris is, Olivia?”
I shook my head.
“He’s chief of the Abwehr, German military intelligence. And today he has informed the Danish and Norwegian governments that the German army will attack on Tuesday, 9 April.” He studied me without expression.
I felt anything but calm hearing that news, and I know I showed my fears. That would mean the Phony War was coming to an end, and once more, my husband, Adam, would be in great danger. “Why would he warn them? Hitler will separate his head from his shoulders for giving away their battle plans.”
“Canaris is no fool. He wouldn’t have done this without Hitler’s approval. Personally, I think he did it so the Danes and the Norwegians will have time to surrender without anyone getting hurt. Less expenditure of arms and fuel by the German military. Two countries conquered on the cheap.”
“All right. It’s now Thursday night. On Tuesday morning the Germans say they will attack.” This was insane. Why would Canaris tell anyone? Why would Sir Malcolm tell me? “Why are you telling me? I don’t work for you anymore.”
“You signed the Official Secrets Act. I can call you to duty at any time until this war is over.” His satisfied smile said it all.
“The war begins in earnest on Tuesday, and I need you to get
back to work. Your holiday is over.” He studied me from beneath his bushy eyebrows. “I need you to fly to Denmark in the morning.”
“And do what? Stop the invasion?” I asked him.
Sir Malcolm’s office was cheerless at the best of times. Now with blackout curtains and lower indoor lighting to save on fuel used to make electricity, monsters could, and probably did, hide in the shadowy corners. And Sir Malcolm, sitting at his desk in the middle of the room, was the biggest monster of all. “Get Olaf Jørgensen and his research out of Denmark and on Monday’s ferry back to England.”
“Why can’t he do that himself?”
“He’s conflicted.” Sir Malcolm gave an exasperated sigh.
“And I’m supposed to convince him to come with me? Why would he listen to me?”
“He won’t. That’s why I’m sending Mike Christiansen with you. He speaks Danish and has some understanding of chemistry.”
“Chemistry?” I studied modern languages at university, not science of any sort.
“Jørgensen won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1928.”
I shook my head. We were way out of my depth now. “I’m probably not the best—”
“The point is, Olivia,” Sir Malcolm said, one hand up as if to stop me, “Olaf Jørgensen won’t leave Denmark without his wife, Ailsa. Ailsa is in a wheeled chair and won’t leave without their daughter, their only living child, Katrine. And once upon a time, Ailsa Jørgensen and your mother, Phyllida Harper, were close friends.”
The shock of hearing my mother’s name, here of all places, made me drop into the nearest chair without paying any attention to protocol or decorum. Someone who knew my mother. Someone who might talk to me about her. When I again noticed who I was speaking to, I said, “I don’t remember Mrs. Jørgensen, and I doubt she’d remember me.”
“But she’ll remember your mother.” His dark eyes held me with his stare. “And we need you to help get her back to England so Jørgensen will come along.”
“Back to England?” I emphasized the word “back.” Was that where she’d known my mother?
“Jørgensen was a lecturer and researcher at Cambridge in the early 1920s. He and Ailsa lived here with their baby. Katrine.”
“But my mother was dead by then.”
“Before the war, your father was posted to Copenhagen. He and your mother lived there for two years before your mother returned home to have you. Once you were born, the two of you returned to Copenhagen. Do you remember the city?”
“No.”
“I’m not surprised. You were only two when the war broke out and your father was sent—elsewhere, while you and your mother returned again to England.”
“So my mother lived in Copenhagen for nearly four years.” Something else I hadn’t known about her.
“Yes, and during all that time, she and Ailsa Jørgensen were close friends.”
Here was a chance for me to learn more about my mother. I could barely remember her. My father rarely mentioned her, leaving me with a roomful of unanswered questions.
Did I have her smile? Her writing talent? Her inability to boil water? Most women knew that much about their mothers. I didn’t.
If I was going to get this chance to learn more about my mother, I’d have to show more interest in the rescue mission Sir Malcolm wanted to send me on. “Katrine. How old is she?”
Sir Malcolm looked through the folder on his desk. “She was born in 1918.”
“And she’s single?”
The look on Sir Malcolm’s face told me that was a problem before he said, “She’s romantically attached to a chemist, an assistant at her father’s institute. A German postdoctoral assistant.”
“And the Germans are taking over on Tuesday.” He certainly wouldn’t want to leave at that moment, with the Germans marching in, which would mean Katrine wouldn’t want to, either.
“Exactly.”
“Her father’s institute? Is the ownership going to be a problem?”
“Actually, he’s the head of the Danish Institute of Applied and Theoretical Chemistry outside of Copenhagen. It’s not really his, so that’s not a problem.” Sir Malcolm brushed away any problems with a swoop of one hand.
“It belongs to Denmark?”
“Yes.”
“Is anyone there besides Olaf Jørgensen and this German postdoctoral assistant?”
“Yes. There are five postdoctoral assistants working with Jørgensen including the German, plus a few technicians and cleaning staff. All paid by the Danish government.”
Five assistants, all of whom could create problems for us trying to get Jørgensen out of Denmark. And at least one was German and the beau of Jørgensen’s daughter. “You mentioned flying over. Do we leave from Heston Airport?”
“They closed that down to civilian aircraft last September at the start of the war,” he reminded me. Then I remembered reading that in the Daily Premier. “Neutral countries are flying into Shoreham Airport in West Sussex. You’ll leave there on a Danish plane after breakfast tomorrow and get to Copenhagen in time for lunch. On the way back, you’ll travel by train and ferry. We don’t know how voluminous or how heavy Jørgensen’s research will be or how much Ailsa and Katrine will bring with them in terms of luggage. And then there’s the wheeled chair. All too much for an airplane.”
This sounded as if it were becoming more of a logistical nightmare by the moment. Even if Ailsa was willing to talk to me about my mother, and I really hoped she would, I didn’t see how I could be of any use. “You really want me to do this? I haven’t seen Mrs. Jørgensen since I was a baby. There’s no reason to think I’ll be of any use. Plus, I don’t have any nursing background. How do I care for someone confined to a wheeled chair?”
“You’re smart. You’ll figure it out. It’s not as if I’m asking you to solve a murder or hold off an invasion.”
“I’m sure you’re using this Mike Christiansen for that. Who is he?” From Sir Malcolm’s smile, I knew I was sunk. I might as well learn as much as I could before I had to dash to Sussex.
“He went to Oxford. His mother is English and he spent plenty of time here as a child. His father is Danish and he speaks the language fluently. He’s been a useful agent. Well trained. He’s single, resourceful, and headstrong. He won’t come back from Denmark without Jørgensen. That means you have to be on the ferry on Monday.”
“Tuesday will be too late?”
“Tuesday, the Germans will see it doesn’t sail. You must be on the Monday ferry, no matter what.” He emphasized the “you.”
“And I have to make sure that Mrs. Jørgensen comes with this chemist so he’ll go willingly.”
Sir Malcolm smiled that “I’ve trapped you now” smile. “That’s the plan.”
I knew how often plans went awry.
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