The Dynamite Room by Jason Hewitt

Author:Jason Hewitt
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2015-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

They were British naval officers; he recognized the uniform and the insignia on the cuffs of the man who was standing. The second man was huddled in the corner, wrapped in coats and a blanket; his skin was pale and his face craggy and pitted, with wisps of white in his hair. He looked at them with wild eyes, red raw in their sockets. Both men’s faces were thick with stubble and their smart navy trousers were muddied and sodden. Against the wall lay the third man, slumped dead where Gruber had shot him—not much more than a boy, Heiden noted, and certainly no older than Bürckel. His eyes were open and glassy, the blood still trickling from the two holes in his chest. The air was still laced with smoke from the hurriedly stamped-out fire in the middle of the floor, some of the twigs still faintly glowing.

What are you doing here? Heiden said to them in English.

The standing man said nothing and Heiden repeated the question, poking the air between them with his gun. I said, what are you doing here?

We ran aground, answered the man.

What? said Gruber. What’s he saying?

Heiden translated.

They had been on a British naval ship—the HMS Hardy, the man explained. It had been hit in the cross fire in the harbor at Narvik and had beached at a place called Vidrek, a small village to the west. The three men had been on the run ever since, the rest of the crew scattered by German soldiers, he told them. They had been trying to find another village where they could get help but the weather—

Heiden laughed.

You are lucky you found this place, he said. You would be dead otherwise.

Gruber dumped his kit bag down and peeled off his gloves, flexing his frozen fingers. We should throw them out into the snow and settle in for the night, or just shoot them, he said. I’m not sharing with Tommies.

Heiden bent down next to the older Englishman. He looked sick. He was crouched with his knees up and staring at them from behind the wrap of his arm, shivering and breathless. He already had a confused look in his eyes; lips almost translucent, eyelids pink and puffy. They’d been particularly diligent on the prevention of hypothermia in their training with Dietl’s division, and Heiden had seen the symptoms before on exercises in the Austrian Alps. As he leaned in closer, the man tried to push himself deeper into the corner.

I only want to see, Heiden told him. Please.

In the end, the man lifted his mittened hands out from his armpits and offered them to Heiden as if he wanted them taken from him. Heiden peeled one of the mittens off. The man’s hand was blue and covered in white and yellow patches. The fingertips were black and waxy and hardened, and there were purplish blisters filled with blood. He put the mitten back on the man’s hand and turned to Gruber and Bürckel. We need to relight this fire, he said.

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