Work Text:
Berlin, late September 1944
“Hannes,” Chris Rörland, the most junior of the clerks still in residence at the Swedish embassy in Berlin, called to one of the men employed as a general handyman.
“Yes, sir?” Hannes said.
“I need you and Tommy to bring a couple of sacks of vegetables over to the church this evening,” Chris said. “The pastor said they’re running low on cabbages.”
“What time, sir?” Hannes asked. The embassy sent food, much of which was grown by Tommy, the embassy’s groundskeeper, to the Swedish church in the Wittenau section of Berlin at least twice a week. He also knew that the church sheltered Jews and smuggled them out of Germany when possible – something he and Tommy had helped with in the past, so he knew the mention of cabbages meant the pastor had a special errand for them. He also knew that they might not return to the embassy for a day or two.
Chris sighed. “5:30, sorry. But that’s the best chance you’ll have of getting there in between the daytime bombings and the night bombings, at least as long as the British and Americans keep to their usual schedule.”
Hannes knew that when the streets were crowded with people traveling to their homes from their jobs, on the theory that the Gestapo would be less likely to stop him and Tommy, both of whom were tall, blue-eyed blonds, as they’d be concentrating their efforts on people who ‘looked’ Jewish. “Well, I don’t mind going at that time so very much,” he said. “Reverend Sundström’s housekeeper usually offers us some soup before we leave, sometimes even some pastries.”
Chris raised a brow at that. “Does she? Perhaps I’ll have to go myself one of these days, Mrs. Larsson never makes pastries.”
“I’ll bring you back a pastry, if there are any to be had,” Hannes promised with a grin.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Chris chuckled. “Everything will be ready for you and Tommy to grab at 5:30.”
“All right, I’ll be ready,” Hannes said. He went back to the task at hand, boarding up several windows that had been shattered by a stray bomb that had gone off nearby. The embassy, set in a park on the outskirts of the city, wasn’t subjected to the nearly incessant bombing of the more developed areas, but every so often an Allied plane veered off course and dropped its load of bombs in this area. Window glass was even more difficult to obtain than sugar, so they decided to just cover them over.
At 5:30, he met with Chris and Tommy out in front of the embassy building and shouldered one of the two rucksacks full of vegetables from the embassy’s garden and other supplies shipped in from Sweden via diplomatic courier. Hannes suspected that there might be a few more clandestine items concealed within the rucksacks but knew better than to ask if there were. He was safer not knowing if anything was in the bags, much less what those items might be, on the off chance he was stopped and questioned.
Which, he sometimes was. Hannes had been questioned by one particular Gestapo agent a few times now, which worried him. Maybe he was imagining it, but it seemed as though the man was actively looking for a reason to confine him to the embassy if not deport him. He hoped that he and Tommy wouldn’t be questioned on their way to the church today, though, since they were supposed to do something for the pastor later. Fortunately, they weren’t.
Reverend Pär Sundström greeted them with a smile when they arrived at the church. “I’m glad you made it here all right,” he said, his voice carrying surprisingly well despite his small stature. “Come in, come in! Mrs. Hedberg has a good bean soup on the stove this evening, and cinnamon rolls as well, thanks to young Mr. Rörland’s kindness in sending over that sugar last week.”
“I’m certainly not going to say no to cinnamon rolls,” Tommy said with a grin. “Mrs. Larsson at the embassy never makes any sort of pastry, even when there is sugar to be had.”
“Yes, yes, I’m quite spoiled here,” Reverend Sundström chuckled, closing the heavy door of the church behind them. Lowering his voice once the door closed, he said, “There’s a party of ten leaving tonight. Eight Jews and two political – including one you’ve worked with, Hannes, the Jansen woman. The Gestapo broke into her flat and found the identity papers she’s been counterfeiting for us. Thankfully, she was out on a delivery and a neighbor warned her who’d come calling, so she managed to evade them, but given her position, we can’t let her get captured. She knows far too much to let them break her.”
Hannes only just stopped himself from uttering a few words that one simply didn’t say while standing in a church and speaking with the pastor. He hadn’t just worked with Floor Jansen; he’d been dating her.
It had started as a hasty cover story when they’d met at a public park nearly a year ago; he’d been tasked with passing Floor a couple of bags of coffee beans, a valuable commodity on the black market, when they’d been seen and questioned by a Gestapo agent. Hannes had told the man that he was just giving his girlfriend a gift, and they were allowed to leave after a bit of questioning as he quickly proved his identity. However, fearing they might be followed, he’d insisted on taking her out to lunch at a nearby café to cement the story. After that, he walked her back to her flat and kissed her goodbye to put on a show for any watchers.
The next day, he’d called her and invited her to a concert, and before long, their story to satisfy the Gestapo had turned into the real thing. They had a date planned in a few days, in fact, and Hannes had planned on asking Floor to marry him. It didn’t look as though that would happen, though. More worrisome, the Gestapo officer who’d originally questioned them on that day he’d given Floor the coffee, Kriminalinspektor Franz Schumann, was the one who kept finding excuses to stop Hannes and question him.
“She’s not hurt, is she?” Hannes asked, trying not to show his concern.
“Where are we taking them and when do we leave?” Tommy asked at the same time.
“She’s fine,” Reverend Sundström said. “I’ll bring the group into the church and then you’ll guide them to the freight track six miles north of here. There will be a blockage on the track, and when the train stops to clear it, that’s when Joakim and a couple others will get them aboard and hidden in furniture crates in place of furniture that several Swedish diplomats are ‘sending home’ through the port at Lübeck. They’ll be taken care of once they reach Sweden.” Joakim Brodén was the church’s handyman and had worked with both Hannes and Tommy on previous errands of this nature.
“But when do we leave?” Tommy asked again.
“After dark, of course, right, Reverend?” Hannes said – knowing that meant in about an hour.
“Correct,” Reverend Sundström confirmed. “The first mile will likely be the most dangerous, as you’ll be moving within the city still. But once you’re into the woods, you should be all right.”
Hannes nodded. “Right, then, let’s go get our food, then, Tommy, as we’ve time to pass before it’s time to leave.”
“All right,” Tommy agreed.
The two men joined Mrs. Hedberg and Reverend Sundström in the kitchen, where the housekeeper dished up bowls of bean soup for them all. Hannes noticed that the pot appeared to be much larger than would be needed for the amount of soup it contained, and also that the soup itself did not contain ham scraps as flavoring. He’d never ask of course, as it was far safer for both him and everyone who worked at the church if he didn’t know, but he suspected that at least some of the people he and Tommy were to lead out of Berlin tonight were hidden somewhere within the church building and had eaten from that same pot of soup.
Reverend Sundström excused himself as Mrs. Hedberg served Hannes and Tommy the promised cinnamon rolls. Both men savored the treat, despite the seriousness of what they were about to do. If they were caught trying to help Jews and other wanted people escape Germany, their diplomatic status might not save them from the Gestapo. And even if it did, they’d be deported to Sweden, probably after being questioned regarding their activities. Questioning which both men knew would leave them bruised and in pain at best, severely injured at worst.
“Everyone is ready to go,” Reverend Sundström said softly as he stepped back into the kitchen.
“Then so are we,” Hannes said, standing up.
Tommy stood as well, and the two of them walked back into the main area of the church. Most of the group sat huddled together nervously, while Floor attempted to reassure a gray-haired man that he’d be able to keep up with the group.
“All right, ladies and gentlemen,” Tommy said, giving a friendly smile to the group. “The first mile of the trip is going to be the difficult one, as we have to get out of the city, and it’s quite likely that the usual nightly air raids will happen while we’re walking.”
“As you know, we can’t go to the public shelters, as the Gestapo and the SS often visit shelters during air raids in hopes of finding people without the proper papers,” Hannes said. “We do know of a couple of relatively safe places we can shelter in if the bombers target the Wittenau area, but we also need to get to our destination as quickly as possible. I understand that most of you have likely been in situations where your movement has been limited, but just keep your goal in mind.”
Most of the group nodded as they stood up, the two women besides Floor taking the hands of the men beside them. Reverend Sundström came in from outside and told them, “The street is clear for the moment, you’d best get going. God be with you on your journey.”
A murmured chorus of, “thank you,” came from the group as they filed out of the church behind Tommy, with Floor and Hannes bringing up the rear.
They’d barely gone half a mile before the air raid sirens started wailing. Tommy hurried the group to a bombed-out house, where they sheltered as best they could against the partial walls that still stood. To everyone’s relief, the planes passed overhead, dropping their bombs on the city center instead of Wittenau. They hurried out of their improvised shelter and resumed the trek northward.
Almost immediately, Hannes sensed that they were being followed. He looked at Floor, who nodded. “Just one,” she whispered in his ear. “But we have to pass near a police station just before we get into the forest.”
“That’s… not good,” Hannes said. As they moved from one bit of shadow to another, he waved to Tommy. “We’ve got a follower,” he said as soon as he got closer to his fellow Swede. “We need to detour around the police station, to try to get a little space before our follower calls in reinforcements. And we’ll have to muddle the trail somehow.”
“Shit. All right,” Tommy said, taking the lead once more and moving a few streets to the left.
Hannes took up the rear again, Floor falling back in beside him, and they nudged the group into picking up the pace a little. His ears, already stretched to catch the sound of footfalls behind them, caught a more beneficial sound after a couple of hours the woods. “Tommy!” he hissed. “Stream. Take to water! I’ll lay a false trail.”
“I can help with the trail,” Floor said.
“No, love, go with Tommy and the others,” Hannes told her. “You know a lot more than I do – you mustn’t be captured. If you are, it puts too many others at risk.”
Floor looked like she wanted to protest, then frowned. “You’re right,” she reluctantly agreed. “Be safe, Hannes.” She kissed him, then hurried to join the others in walking in the stream.
Hannes crashed through the underbrush, purposefully making noise in an effort to draw any followers to him instead of to the group. Then he circled back around to the stream and went into the water to kill his scent, hurrying through the water to catch up with the group. But to his dismay, he heard the baying of dogs behind him, drawing closer. Either he’d been in enough contact with the shrubs and other plants growing on the banks of the stream that the dogs picked him up, or else the dogs’ handler made the assumption that the group took to the water and was simply having the dogs sniff along the banks to find wherever they moved back to dry land.
To his horror, he saw lights behind him as he left the water and started to lay another false trail to lead the searchers away from the railroad tracks. He took a sharp right, no longer entirely sure where the hiding spot for the group was in relation to his position, as the stream was not only somewhat off their intended trail to begin with, it didn’t follow a straight path through the woods. Not to mention, Tommy had the compass. Now he could see the silhouettes of the dogs straining at their leashes, in the light from the searchers’ lanterns.
“Halt!” called an unpleasantly familiar voice.
Hannes groaned to himself on hearing the Gestapo agent’s voice over the baying of the hounds. It was Kriminalinspektor Franz Schumann chasing him. He wondered if the man was so determined to catch him was because he hoped to use him to get to Floor. He put on another burst of speed, zig-zagging his way through the trees.
Schumann snapped out a command to the dog handler. A moment later, Hannes went down with a scream as the dogs launched themselves at him, their teeth sinking into his right leg and his left arm. He pulled out the hunting knife he had hidden in a sheath at the small of his back. “Get off!” He growled as he slashed at the throat of the dog on his left arm, then the one on his leg, killing one and making the other back off, growling at him. He scooted back awkwardly, trying to find some sort of cover that would at least keep the dogs from attacking from the rear.
“What are you doing out here at this time of night, Swede?” Schumann demanded. “Are you trying to hide your girlfriend from us? We know she hasn’t been to her home in days, and we also know she isn’t at the Swedish embassy.”
Hannes sent up a silent prayer that his acting skills were up to this. “What? Floor’s missing?” he gasped out. “But… how? Why? I haven’t seen her in several days myself, but that’s not so unusual due to my work at the embassy. She’s been reported missing, then?”
Schumann rolled his eyes. “I highly doubt you’re truly this stupid,” he said contemptuously. “Then again, you’d have to be stupid to be involved with an enemy of the Reich, especially when you’re already under suspicion yourself.” He pulled out a pistol and pointed it at Hannes. “Now. You will tell me everything I want to know, if you wish to return to Sweden and see your family again.” Cocking the pistol, he repeated, “So. What are you doing out here at this time of night?”
“I wanted to get away from the city for a while, and hopefully away from the bombs,” Hannes said glibly. “And then I heard the planes and decided it was better to stay out here for the night, than to return to the city.”
“You lie,” Schumann snapped. “You were seen earlier – and with your whore. Where is she?”
Hannes ignored the slur against Floor, knowing that the Gestapo liked to try to anger their victims into giving up more information. “I don’t know,” he said, which was the truth at this point. He wasn’t even sure where he was, let alone where the group that he and Tommy had been escorting had gotten to. He just hoped they were safely hidden somewhere.
The remaining dog gave a yelp and collapsed, an arrow sticking out of its side. The handler screamed a heartbeat later as another arrow landed in his gut.
Schumann reflexively fired his pistol – fortunately as he turned towards the dog handler, so that the bullet merely grazed Hannes on his left upper arm instead of embedding itself in his forehead – and screamed, “Who’s there? You’re under arrest!”
Another two pistol shots sounded, and Schumann collapsed with blood spurting from a pair of wounds in his chest. Hannes crawled towards the wounded dog handler and cut his throat as well, removing the final witness to the events of the evening.
“Hannes!” Tommy’s voice called in the darkness.
“Here,” Hannes called back, picking up Schumann’s lantern and waving it over his head.
Tommy, carrying a bow and quiver and accompanied by Joakim Brodén, hurried over. “Shit, Hannes, you’re bleeding all over the place!”
Starting to feel somewhat lightheaded, Hannes giggled. “No, I’m only bleeding right here. If I was strapped to a bomber flying overhead, then I’d be bleeding all over the place.”
“I’m supposed to be the one making terrible jokes here,” Joakim said. “Right, let’s get you cleaned up and then hidden with the others. You’re going with them.”
“Okay, I… wait, I’m what?” Hannes asked.
“Think about it, man,” Tommy said. “We heard that Gestapo agent referring to Floor as your girlfriend – and good job on keeping that quiet, if it’s true – and that means you’ve also been marked by them. That makes you less useful for future errands right there, and with these wounds you’ve gotten, you’ll not be able to do much of anything for a while. What’s more, if anyone notices your wounds, they’ll be suspicious.”
“Not to mention, you’ll never be able to walk back to the embassy in your condition,” Joakim pointed out. “Now, let’s get you cleaned up and into the hiding place.” He rummaged in his pockets, pulling out a few rolls of gauze and a hip flask. “You’d better appreciate this, Hannes, it’s the last of my akvavit.” He used the potent alcohol to swab out the two dog bites and the gash caused by the bullet, causing Hannes to grit his teeth and whimper softly.
“Is there anything you have at the embassy that you want me to send to you in Sweden?” Tommy asked.
“Yeah,” Hannes said. “There’s a ring box in my room. That’s all I want.” He managed a smile despite the pain he was in.
“Ah, so it was true, what he said about you and Floor?” Tommy asked with a grin.
“It was,” Hannes confirmed. “It’s almost a year since we first met, so I thought I’d ask her to marry me on that date.” He sighed, adding, “I’d had a very nice date planned, too, dinner and a show and all that, and I planned to ask her over dessert.”
“Well, it won’t be nearly that romantic,” Joakim joked, “but we can arrange to put you and Floor in the same furniture crate for the trip. Now, let’s get out of here before someone comes looking for these two.”
“Agreed,” Tommy said, digging his arrows out of the dog and the handler. He cleaned them on the handler’s clothing and dropped them back in the quiver.
Joakim quickly got Hannes bandaged up, then hoisted him onto his back. “Don’t argue,” he grunted as he settled his grip. “One, we’re closer to the freight track and the others than you probably thought, which is why Tommy and I heard the ruckus and came to help. Two, you don’t want to re-open that bite on your leg, it’s the worst of the three wounds and the last thing you need is an infection when you’re not going to be able to properly care for it for a couple of days. Right now, it’s clean and bandaged, and I’ll give you the flask to take, to clean your wounds again while you’re in transit, but there’s no point making it worse than it already is.”
“Fine,” Hannes agreed, clutching Joakim’s shoulders as the man set off at a trot.
They made it to the hiding place, where Floor quickly took charge of Hannes, supplying him with a packet of food and a canteen of water for the trip, as well as a bottle of cough syrup and a bucket with a tightly fitting lid that had some sawdust in the bottom.
“What’s all this?” he asked.
“We’ll be in the furniture crates for at least two full days,” Floor said. “We don’t want to cough and make noises that might give us away before we reach the ship, which is why there’s cough syrup. The food and water should be obvious, and the buckets… well, what goes in, must come out, right? And we don’t want to risk any sofas or pianos leaking.”
“Oh,” Hannes said, blinking a little. “Why do I suddenly think you’ve been even more heavily involved in the resistance movement than I knew?”
“Probably because I was,” Floor told him.
The headlamp of the expected train appeared in the distance, then the train slowed and ground to a rumbling halt on a curve. The engineer shouted for help in clearing the tracks of a pair of fallen trees, and several middle-aged men in army uniforms but with obvious physical barriers to being considered fit to serve in combat clambered out of cars to make their way to the locomotive and the blockage on the tracks.
Tommy glided up to the last boxcar in the train, sliding the door open as Joakim urged the hidden group to hurry and climb into the boxcar. Once everyone was aboard, Joakim, Tommy, and two men Hannes had seen at the church but had never spoken with started prying open specific crates and tossing the furniture within them out of the train. Fortunately, between the length of the train, the sounds of the locomotive maintaining its head of steam, and the noise made by the track-clearing activities, the sound of the furniture being discarded wasn’t noticed by anyone in uniform.
“Okay, everyone inside,” Joakim told the group, directing them into three different crates – the two Jewish couples into one, the four single Jewish men into another, then Hannes, Floor, and the gray-haired man she’d been reassuring back at the church before they started their journey into the third.
It was a bit of a tight fit, as obviously Hannes hadn’t been intended to go with them, but they managed to arrange themselves and their supplies reasonably comfortably around the weights added to make the crates heavy enough for what they supposedly contained.
“Remember to take the rest of the supplies back to the church or the embassy,” Floor said before Joakim replaced the lid on their crate.
“Tell Reverend Sundström and also Chris Rörland that I said goodbye and God bless,” Hannes added.
“We will,” Joakim reassured her, closing the lid and nailing it down with light taps of a hammer.
“Why take the supplies back?” Hannes asked in a whisper.
“We were followed tonight,” Floor told him. “They can’t use this route to get people out anymore. Even if no one investigates what happened to whoever followed us, they have to assume that this route will be watched after this. Now let’s not talk any more until we’re aboard the ship for Sweden and we’re let out, okay?”
“Okay,” Hannes acquiesced. They heard some grunting and shuffling, then the door of the boxcar closing. A short time later, the train gave a jerk and started moving again.
Tommy, Joakim, and the other two men watched the train depart, satisfied to see that none of the uniformed men entered the car they’d hidden their charges in. “God be with you in your journey,” Joakim said softly as they train pulled away.
The four men gathered up what was left of the supplies, then set out for a farm on the far side of the tracks, purposefully treading in a manure pile before taking a different route back to Berlin. They made it to their respective destinations just before dawn. Tommy and Joakim reported the events of the evening to Chris Rörland and Reverend Pär Sundström respectively, before collapsing into their beds for a few hours of sleep before they needed to take up their usual routines for the day.
That morning, the Gestapo sent an agent to the embassy to request that Hannes present himself for questioning. Chris Rörland raised a brow. “He’s not here, actually,” he told the agent. “I sent him to bring some vegetables to the church last night, and when he didn’t return promptly, I assumed he’d gone to see his girlfriend. But he’s not yet returned, so I assumed they got drunk for whatever reason and he’s not yet recovered enough from the hangover to come back and go to work.”
“Who is his girlfriend?” the agent demanded.
Chris shrugged. “I think I’ve heard him call her Floor?” he said. “I don’t know, he’s a handyman, not one of the diplomats, so it’s not as if I speak with him unless I’ve a task for him to do.”
“May we search his quarters?” the agent asked. He wasn’t quite sure whether to believe this junior diplomat, but as Sweden was one of the few countries that hadn’t cut diplomatic relations when the war started, he didn’t dare use the sort of tactics he would on a recalcitrant German citizen.
“Of course,” Chris said, having already inspected them as soon as Tommy reported in, and made sure Hannes hadn’t left anything incriminating behind. Which he hadn’t.
“Thank you,” the Gestapo agent replied. He followed Chris to the little cubicle of a room allotted to Hannes and searched it methodically. All of the man’s clothes appeared to be there, along with his suitcase, a Bible and a couple other books, and tucked into his sock drawer, a ring box containing what appeared to be a diamond engagement ring. The agent looked disappointed. “Well, it appears that he truly is missing, then,” he said. “You’ll let us know if he returns, I trust.”
“Of course we will,” Chris said, subtly escorting the Gestapo agent out. “I don't know where his girlfriend lives, so I hope he wasn’t injured or worse in the bombing last night.”
The agent looked startled, as though that possibility hadn’t occurred to him. “Yes, one can hope. Thank you, Herr Rörland.”
“You’re welcome,” Chris said, letting the agent descend the steps of the embassy building before shutting the door firmly behind him.
A week later, Chris had Tommy box up everything Hannes left behind and shipped it to Sweden via diplomatic courier. A week after that, Tommy received a note in the newest diplomatic pouch to arrive. He showed it to Chris, who smiled as he read it.
Tommy and Chris,
Thank you for sending my things. The journey to Sweden wasn’t the most comfortable, but we all arrived safely. I took Floor to my parents' home, while the others have gotten themselves settled with the help of Reverend Sundström’s friend, a man by the name of Thobbe Englund. If you see Reverend Sundström, please tell him that Thobbe sends his greetings. I miss working at the embassy, but at the same time, I am glad to be home again. I’ll write in more detail soon.
Regards, Hannes van Dahl
P.S. Floor said yes!!!