Knudsen looked up, holding his hat. “I don’t see bombers.”
A grayish cloud puffed up above the roofline. Not far ahead of them.
Else gasped. Something—something big had exploded.
“Come on!” Rask took off running toward the explosion, and Knudsen and Gebhardt followed.
Was it wise to runtowardan explosion? But Else ran after them, wanting to stay together and to learn what had happened. She could always turn back.
Up and down the street, people darted outside in alarm. They walked toward the noise, jogged, ran. Questions flew.
Else’s breath came hard. She stayed close to the other physicists and scanned the crowd for danger, for gray-green German uniforms or black Schalburg Corps uniforms.
The gray cloud settled lower, and no further explosions rent the air.
Else’s feet and lungs ached. She hadn’t run so far in years, but she kept up with her colleagues. Glass crunched under her shoes. Jagged glass edged window frames along the street.
Else’s heart seized. What had exploded? And why?
Their path jogged, and in another block, the crowd slowed and spread out and merged with the crowd that had formed around skeletal steel ruins.
The ruins of the Forum, and Else covered her mouth. The Forum was the largest exhibition hall in Scandinavia, seating over ten thousand. The glass dome had disappeared, cinder-block wallslay in rubble, and bony fingers of steel jutted up through the dust into the sky.
Murmurs flowed through the crowd ... “Holger Danske.”
“Holger Danske?” Else said. “That’s a resistance group.”
“But why?” a middle-aged woman asked in a rough voice.
“Haven’t you heard?” a man in a blue suit said. “The Germans were turning it into military barracks. Tomorrow morning, thousands of soldiers were supposed to move in.”
“That’s horrible,” the woman said. “Bad enough they’re here, but to live in our Forum?”
“Better to blow it up,” a young man said.
“Ja, ja,” flowed through the crowd, echoed by Knudsen, by Rask.
Else’s insides squirmed. “I hope no one was hurt.”
“Not a soul,” an older man said. “It’s lunchtime. They waited until the workers had left.”
Murmurs of approval swept the crowd, and Else smiled in relief.
Rask gave Gebhardt a pointed look. “Unlike the Nazis, we Danes are civilized.”
Gebhardt’s look mirrored Rask’s. “Civilized jokesters.”
Else held her breath. Would the men come to blows?
Arne Rask tipped back his head and sang,“Der er et yndigt land.”
“There Is a Lovely Land,” the Danish national anthem, flowed through the crowd, and Else joined in, proud of the Danish people for resisting in a humane way.
Hemming would approve, he who resisted in a very humane way, and tears filled her eyes as she sang.
31
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST25, 1943
