The Englishman stepped into the light, and Magnus noticed that he had a deep scar angling from his jaw down the side of his neck. “Your help is appreciated,” he said quietly. “I know what you’re risking.”
“No more than you are,” Papa said, and Magnus felt a welling of pride in his chest.
“All right, then,” said Sweet. “You can leave by the back door. There’s a work barrow for you to use in tonight’s operation. Good luck.”
The three of them left the basement, their shoes kicking dust through the stairs. Magnus’s nose tickled, and he held his breath, suppressing a desperate sneeze. They seemed to take forever to leave. Just as the door shut, he burst out with the sneeze.
The footsteps outside the door stopped. “Did you hear something?” asked Uncle Sweet.
There was a long pause. “It was nothing,” Papa said.
“And that,” Magnus told his rapt listeners, “is how I learned my father and his friend Sigur—my Uncle Sweet—were involved in the resistance effort. It was quite a moment for me, finding out my mild-mannered father had a secret persona. Discovering his secret was like revealing Clark Kent’s hidden identity as Superman. Very exciting. In my mind, my father went from being an ordinary civil engineer to a war hero.”
“Your father claimed he wasn’t risking anything more than the British guy was risking,” said Tess. “That’s not true, though. He put the whole family at risk.”
Magnus’s smile of memory disappeared. “Times were different then. Early in the occupation, life continued to seem normal for a time, so perhaps we didn’t understand the risk. It wasn’t until later that we grasped the danger and seriousness of the underground activities. In all, the Danes manufactured about ten thousand submachine guns, and many of those originated with my father’s production drawings. He drew everything down to the last detail, and then mislabeled the parts in code so they would appear to be anything but weapons. For all the Jerries knew, the drawings were entirely mundane—parts for bicycles or sewing machines. The guns were then assembled in various places throughout the city—bicycle shops, small machine shops, pump repair facilities—under the pretext of being something else altogether.”
Mac scrolled to a website on his laptop. “So these production drawings that were preserved by the Danish Historical Society were made by your father?”
“The ones labeled Bruder Petersen—Petersen Brothers—likely came from him. The Petersen brothers were two boy detectives in a series of novels we used to read as youngsters, so it was actually a nonexistent company.” He studied an enlarged drawing on the screen. “This one is labeled ‘rocker arm for pump relay.’ In actuality, it is a STEN gun trigger. I assume that after my father drew, measured and labeled each individual part, someone else was in charge of the assembly.”
Isabel exhaled a shaky breath, not even realizing she’d been holding it as she’d listened to the story. The tension her grandfather had described while hiding beneath the cellar stairs had been palpable.
On the table lay a few pictures of Magnus as a boy; she’d seen them before. He was tall and good-looking, neatly dressed and solemn, his eyes large and darkly fringed, making him appear almost too pretty for a boy. Yet as often as she’d seen the photographs, she had never quite been able to connect the teenage boy with her grandfather. Now the youngster came to life in her mind, a kid avidly reading a comic book, or looking forward to ice-skating with his friends, or crouched beneath the basement stairs, too frightened to speak up.
“That’s such an extraordinary story. Why have you never told me this before?” she asked him.
He reached across the space between them, patted her hand. “Life is long,” he said. “I have so many moments to remember, large and small, and I haven’t thought about that incident in decades. I suppose, considering what came after my discovery in the basement, it never occurred to me that this would be of interest to you. Or to anyone.”
“Of course it is,” Tess assured him. “Your father and his friend must have been incredible.”
“I’m sure they regarded themselves as ordinary men, simply doing what was right in order to live with themselves. But yes, they were heroes in my eyes.”
“In anyone’s eyes,” said Isabel. “I like to think I’d be that kind of person, the one who would dare to put myself at risk.”
“Let us hope you never have to find out,” said her grandfather. “I was very proud of my father, and I miss him to this day.” Magnus’s eyes looked into something distant and unseeable. “However, sometimes I can’t help imagining how our lives would have unfolded if he had not embraced the cause. You see, many of our friends and neighbors simply kept their heads down and endured the occupation, then returned to normal routine after the war. Of course a big part of me, the part that desperately needed my parents and grandfather, wishes Papa would have chosen that path rather than risking himself. Risking the whole family, when it comes down to it.”
“You’re only human,” said Tess. “Of course you wished that.”
“Did you know what resistance group your father was affiliated with?” asked Mac.
“He wasn’t with the Princes, since he was a civilian, although I believe he did identity work for them. There was a faction of the resistance known as the Holger Danske. It wasn’t terribly well organized, but they got things done—underground activities, rescues, acts of sabotage. I believe that was his main connection.”
Isabel studied the “family” picture taken by Uncle Sweet so long ago, angling it toward the fading light. Grandfather was just a gangly boy on the verge of becoming a man, yet he had a face she recognized. He was standing next to his own grandfather—the beloved Farfar, a distinguished physician and a widower. His mother sat in an old-fashioned tufted armchair, which looked incongruous in the outdoor setting. With a faint smile on her face, she was flanked by his pretend uncle and cousin, a slender girl with her hair in pigtails. She looked directly into the camera, her guileless expression heartbreaking to Isabel, because the girl in the photograph had no idea what would soon happen to her. Finally her gaze went to Magnus’s father, Karl Johansen, who stood with one hand on his wife Ilsa’s shoulder, comb furrows in his hair, his tie perfectly straight.
The idea that the Johansens had sheltered a Jewish man and his daughter made Isabel proud, too. Yet she could relate to her grandfather’s wish. Suppose his father had done nothing to resist the Nazis. The family’s entire future would have unfolded in a different direction.
Mac stood and checked out the photograph over her shoulder. “They were hiding in plain sight,” he said.
Magnus nodded. “At first, I’m certain we—everyone—underestimated the danger. Reports of atrocities were just that—reports. Everyone found out about Kristallnacht when it occurred in 1938, but the world shrugged its shoulders. Most people believed the Night of Broken Glass was a disgusting spectacle, but an isolated event. The extent of the Nazis’ activities was still not fully known. Look at us in that picture. None of us knew what was around the next corner.”
“You look so much like your father,” she said. “I’m sorry you lost him.”
“I lost everything,” Grandfather said, bracing his hands on the chair arms and levering himself up. “I’m tired. I believe I’ll go inside and read my paper.”
Isabel exchanged a glance with Mac, who pocketed his phone and stepped back.
“Are you all right, Grandfather?” asked Isabel, going to his side. “Do you want me to help you?”
He gently touched her cheek. “I am fine,” he said. “Fine. It’s curious, the way reliving the past can be