“Never mind.” Far’s voice rose in that way of his. Shoving away failure and those who failed. “You’ll find someone more deserving. I came to check on the progress of the ship on Way Three. My manager mentioned a problem, and I wanted to see.”
“Of course. Come with me, sir.”
Footsteps shuffled away.
Henrik tugged his cap low and peeked around his shoulder.
Far walked away with the same rower’s build he’d passed to his son but softened by age. His dark blue suit fit perfectly, and his black homburg sat squarely over his fair hair.
Henrik rose to standing. For the first time in over three years, he saw his father.
Everything tumbled around inside. The burn of anger. The juvenile pleasure of knowing Far would be appalled to see his heir working as a common laborer.
And something he’d never expected and didn’t know how to handle, something that pulled at him and urged him to run to the man who’d raised him.
The man who had spurned him for his failures but also told heroic tales while little Henning sat on his knee. The voice that hurled insults but also rose in laughter at childish antics. The handsthat clenched in fury but also patiently, lovingly trained him to row and to row well.
For his first fourteen years, Henrik had wanted to please his father, not just because he’d been in awe of him but because he’d loved him.
He still did.
And that shattered him.
18
WEDNESDAY, JUNE23, 1943
Else’s chalk flew across the chalkboard, formulae spilling into formulae spilling into formulae.
The graduate students tossed out suggestions, and the solution to the problem cascaded down the board.
Her nerves tingled and her mind danced. Moments like this were why she’d chosen a career in physics.
That morning the idea had germinated. Mortensen had dismissed it as stupid, but the idea pressed against the starting gates in her mind.
As soon as Mortensen left for a meeting, Else picked up the chalk, and her idea raced down the track, gaining speed with each turn. Soon the frenzied scratch of chalk on slate had attracted the graduate students.
“Jensen.” Mortensen’s voice and footsteps assaulted her ears. “I need copies.”
“Just ... a ... Gebhardt, you were saying?”
“Planck’s constant,” Manfred Gebhardt said in his German accent.
“Of course.” She plugged in Planck’s constant and beamed at the answer. She’d done it.
“I need copies.”
Else’s shoulders stiffened, but she sent the man a benign smile.“I’ll make them at the end of the day as always.” Her policy allowed her to stay in the lab all day and to printFrit Danmarkafter most of the staff had left.
Mortensen huffed. “Now, Jensen.”
Two temptations battled—to protest in a peevish manner and to be nice and give in. Both were wrong.
She tented her eyebrows. “When Wolff told me how disappointed you were that I was always away running your errands, I vowed I’d never let that happen again. And if I left now, I couldn’t put the finishing touches on this.” She swept her arm toward the chalkboard.
“Jensen solved it.” Kaj Knudsen’s oversized eyes stretched wide in his round face. “For over a month, we’ve puzzled over it, and Jensen solved it.”
Else’s cheeks warmed. “We solved it as a team.”
