The day Henrik had decided to become the Havmand—the Merman—he’d convinced a friend at the Danish Folk Registry to issue him a false identity card. His friend referred him to a sympathetic pastor who entered Hemming Andersen’s birth in the parish records.
Then Henrik had left a note for his father with the Thorups at Lyd-af-Lys, saying he was rowing to Sweden so he could live his life the way he wanted. Let Far think his son was a selfish coward. He deserved the shame of it for letting Mor die.
Henrik chuffed out a breath and passed through the white cloud he produced, as the handcart’s wheels jangled over the pavement. Over time, the wicked pleasure he’d once felt at his father’s defeat had dulled.
His job served purposes more important than secretly spiting Far. Henrik could support himself without dipping into the funds Svend offered. He never saw anyone from his old life. And he didn’t have to talk much.
“Andersen!” Lars Koppel beckoned from outside the carpenter shop.
After a pause, Henrik headed his way. Moving and speaking slowly helped him avoid refined mannerisms and vocabulary, and it kept people’s expectations of him low.
He approached his crew chief. “Ja?”
Koppel pointed to a stack of lumber. “Last load.”
Henrik piled the wood on the handcart and rolled it to the timber shed. Hemming Andersen was known as a man with big muscles and a tiny brain, protecting him from promotions at work.
Too bad a boarder at his last home had thought Henrik’s muscles qualified him to serve as a thug for the Danish Nazis. The man’s relentless efforts to recruit Henrik had forced him to move yet again.
Henrik shoved the handcart alongside the tracks for the rolling cranes, and he inhaled salt air seasoned with fuel oil and grease.
Early in the German occupation, he’d lived in working-class neighborhoods far from his aristocratic crowd. But everyone wanted to take him drinking—and both beer and friendship loosened the tongue.
Living near the university had been an excellent solution. Rent wasn’t high, and since he’d studied at Harvard and had no friends in academia, he didn’t know anyone in the district, including FruRiber’s boarders—six undergraduates, a mathematician, and a physicist.
Henrik chuckled and turned at the end of the dock. Else Jensen had rather pretty eyes for a theoretical physicist, not that he’d met any before. Considering the lofty conversations she held with Laila Berend, she wouldn’t pay Baron Henrik Ahlefeldt any more heed than she would to Hemming Andersen.
Fair enough. Back in the day, he wouldn’t have paid her any heed either.
Henrik passed the row of Hansa-class ships on the ways, surrounded by scaffolding. When completed, the ships would haul German cargo and soldiers. Two other ships had arrived yesterday for repairs, damaged by mines or aircraft. He memorized the ships’ names for his report to Svend, assuming he could send it. Storms and ice limited his trips over the Øresund in winter.
A loud keening arose across the harbor. The air raid siren. Henrik kept walking, and the men around him continued to work, unfazed by the familiar howl.
In addition to a daily test at noon, the siren sounded whenever the Royal Air Force flew over Copenhagen en route to targets in Germany, although usually at night. The RAF also attacked Luftwaffe airfields in Denmark, but never the city itself.
In the purple twilight, silver twinkled low over the city. Several twinkles. Aircraft. Heading his way.
Dull booms rose—German antiaircraft guns.
Henrik shoved his handcart against the nearest building, out of the way. “Take cover, men!”
He ran toward his worksite to warn his crew, but Koppel and the others were already running his way. Dozens of men hurried toward the air raid shelter under the office building.
“Take cover!” Henrik’s feet thumped on the pavement, and he glanced over his shoulder. The silver twinkles grew larger. Sleek, fast, with twin shining propeller discs. Nine two-engine bombers.
“Take cover!” Henrik bellowed, not for himself but for the others. He no longer feared death. He’d died to his old life. He’d died to his new life.
As he ran, elation surged for those British lads, mixed with concern for the Danish lads around him.
The bombers zipped low but veered toward the Burmeister og Wain shipyard adjacent to Ahlefeldt’s. Silver pellets plummeted from the bombers.
Thunder jostled the ground, over and over.
Henrik and the others stopped in their tracks, feet braced wide.
Plumes of black smoke rose from Burmeister og Wain.
“Could have been us,” Koppel’s gravelly voice said behind Henrik. “Should have been us.”
