• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 459 0

civilian clothes and hoped they would be enough to make him credible. It was not uncommon for young men to fight or get drunk at parties; and despite the old bruises on his face, the fresh damage to his mouth and the blood on his leg, he offered a hearty ‘good morning’ to passers-by and pretended to be proud of his laddish exploits. ‘If asked about my injuries, I was going to say that I had been involved in an argument over a girl. As it turned out, no one asked.’

By the time he reached central Ringsted, it was almost light. He spotted a single taxi parked at a rank, with the driver waiting patiently in the hope of early morning trade. ‘You’ll have to forgive me,’ said Sneum. ‘I’ve had a few drinks and I’m a bit of a mess. Are women worth all the trouble they get us into? Please, take me to Copenhagen so I can forget all about it.’

The driver looked unhappy about his potential fare’s state, but he weighed that against the small fortune a trip to the capital would net him. He put a towel out on the passenger seat and told Tommy to get in.

In the meantime, Christophersen had waited until dawn to walk to the nearest railway station at Grandloese, south of Holbaek. Now he was bound for Copenhagen on a morning commuter train, a risky journey if his dishevelled state aroused suspicion among his fellow passengers.

As Tommy’s taxi sped through the western suburbs and neared the center of the Danish capital, the streets were already busy. He felt quietly exhilarated that he had got this far under difficult circumstances. When he asked the driver to stop, however, he realized that he had no Danish money. It was a tense moment as he pulled out some Swedish kronor and tried to explain. He made up a story about having recently returned from a business trip across the Oeresund, only to walk straight into an argument with his twotiming girlfriend. She had gone off with their Danish money, he had fought his love rival and now he was in this rather embarrassing predicament. As one man to another, he hoped the taxi driver would show a little compassion and accept his payment in Swedish money.

Much as he sympathized, the driver wouldn’t play ball. He suggested they go to Copenhagen railway station, where Sneum could change his funds into the local currency.

‘I thought, Bloody hell, this is going to be dangerous—the railway station in Copenhagen was usually crawling with Germans. But I couldn’t think of an alternative.’ As he walked into the station, the blood on his torn trousers dark and dry, he avoided eye contact with anyone in uniform. The last thing he wanted was for his forged papers and shaky cover story to be put to the test by the Danish police or their Nazi masters. ‘My heart was pounding when I went up to an exchange counter, especially when I saw a doubtful expression on the face of the clerk. Even after I changed the money and began walking back towards the taxi, I thought I might feel a hand on my shoulder and hear the order to stop.’ He walked on, and paid off the taxi driver without being challenged. It was hard to know which of the men looked more relieved as they parted company.

Shuffling along quietly, Sneum reached the designated rendezvous point at 10.00 a.m. He had arranged to meet Christophersen outside the home of his sister and brother-in-law, Margit and Niels-Richard Bertelsen, in Njalsgade. But Tommy was horrified to discover they had moved in his absence. As fate would have it, though, he bumped into Christophersen just as the latter turned to leave the same address. Sigfred looked nervous, particularly when he saw the state Tommy was in. ‘Relax,’ said Sneum as he shook hands with his partner. ‘All is well.’ They arranged to meet again later, when Tommy had done something about his appearance and injuries.

Sneum called Professor Ole Chiewitz, a tuberculosis expert and known resistance sympathizer, who had helped him in the past. ‘The first time I met Chiewitz,’ Tommy recalled later, ‘I thought, If God came down again in human form His eyes and smile would look like this. He had the eyes of an angel and