Chapter 11 #2
Camille took a substantial cardboard box out of her rucksack, which was on the ground beside her. She fished out a wooden box that appeared well preserved. It contained the bottle in question, and she removed it and placed it on the table.
Though the label had perished in the water, the brass plaque was still intact. They all sat in silence for a moment. There it was, the reason why they were sitting here.
“It’s beautifully made,” Bente said.
The etching of the oak was extremely detailed, with gnarled branches, a generous covering of leaves, and a powerful, twisted trunk.
Miss you
Your Dejje
“So what have you found out?” Camille asked.
“Not much.” Bente took her through the little they knew about the Swedish address from the lists Camille had sent.
And about Sven and the Foreign Legion. Didrik had done some research of his own in the days leading up to the trip, and had learned that Sven had been arrested in France.
He had been helping the country’s resistance movement through his links to the Legion, and had been sent to a prison camp, where he later died.
Didrik hadn’t been able to find out where the prison camp was.
“Now we want to know where the bottle came from,” Bente explained. “To be honest, we’re not totally sure that Sven Steen sent it—he died in 1944.”
“But if it was him, then we think the bottle has a fantastic story to tell,” Didrik said.
“The brigade Sven belonged to fought for de Gaulle’s Free French forces, and we want to find out what he was doing in occupied France.
Was he there on a secret mission? How did he even get there?
All these questions lead us back to the origin of the bottle—if we can track it down, we might learn more about Sven. ”
Camille nodded. “I’m afraid none of us on the dive team know any more about the wine.
Like I said, there’s nothing about the vineyard on the bottle or the wooden box.
We’ve checked the ship’s log, but there were no lists of exporters or anything like that.
” She shook her head slowly. “However, the rest of the boxes came from Bordeaux, so we’re pretty sure that’s where this wine originates too. ”
“You can’t see anything on the cork?” Bente asked.
Camille shook her head, her dark bob swinging. “I’m afraid not. We’ve tried to look through the neck, but as you can see, the glass is very dark, and we can’t make out any words there.”
Bente turned the bottle around and held it up to the light. “No, there doesn’t seem to be anything on it. Did the rest of the wine come from the left or right bank in Bordeaux?”
While Bente and Camille discussed the location of various vineyards, Didrik took a sip of his coffee.
It was at least as delicious as the cup he had drunk earlier.
Rounded and smooth, creamy. It reminded him of a weekend in Milan with Lovisa; they had spent the days drinking first-class coffee, visiting museums, seeking out good wines, and eating excellent food.
They had only recently fallen in love then, and on the second day they had simply stayed in bed in their hotel room.
They had emptied the minibar of drinks and snacks, and the following day they had rushed to a small café on the street corner and ordered virtually everything on the menu for breakfast.
“Sorry, did you hear what I said?” Camille was looking at him. She laughed to take the sting out of the situation; she had obviously asked him a question while he was lost in his memories.
“She was wondering if you knew anything about the Foreign Legion’s work with the resistance movement,” Bente clarified, clearly annoyed.
“My apologies.” Didrik cleared his throat. He could see why Bente was finding him difficult, and he really wasn’t like that—unreliable and a poor timekeeper.
Then again, according to his mother it was a wonder that he could even manage to avoid putting his sweater on inside out every day. The fact that he’d secured a job at the university had been a miracle greater than the first moon landing.
Sometimes Lovisa had been drawn into his mother’s little digs.
In the beginning he had found it quite sweet, but the longer they lived together, the more vicious the digs became.
The more distance he got from their relationship, the easier it became to see both her and the marriage in a different light.
She had never been satisfied with him, his job, what he did.
For his part, Didrik had found it difficult to immerse himself fully in their relationship without constantly thinking about children.
They had never raised their voices at one another, but they had bickered nonstop over the past year, maybe the past two years.
She no longer listened when he talked about work; she wasn’t interested in hearing about his colleagues at the TV station, or about his new show, which had made him bitter.
He would find himself paying her back in the same way—changing the subject when she tried to tell him about her job.
Lovisa had worked overtime more and more often, and they hadn’t shared the household tasks anymore.
Instead when the snow melted, he had asked Victor to help him out with clearing and burning the garden rubbish.
He and Lovisa hadn’t wanted to spend time together—but he had hoped it would be possible to change that.
“I’m not an expert on military history, but I can certainly look into that,” he answered Camille now.
“As I said, Sven’s brigade liaised with the Free French, the forces built up by de Gaulle when General Pétain agreed to an armistice with Germany and allowed France to be occupied.
And the Free French worked with the resistance movement. ”
Bente nodded, her green eyes fixed on him and her auburn hair shimmering like copper in the sunlight. There was a sternness in her expression, but then she turned to Camille.
“I love the stories about how the winemakers hid the best wines from the Nazis as a way of supporting the resistance.”
Camille smiled. “Me too. I heard about someone who found an entire cellar that had been hidden from the Nazis.”
“Amazing! Imagine if our research takes us to undiscovered vintages from Chateau Margaux or Mouton Rothschild,” Bente mused.
Didrik had been captivated by her during the train journey; she had been completely absorbed by the stories she told him, her sparkling green eyes reflecting the same passion he recognized within himself.
There was the anecdote about a colleague who had picked up the wrong bottle—a cheap crémant instead of vintage Champagne—and no one in the party they were serving had noticed the difference.
The memory had made her laugh out loud, and in that moment he saw the real Bente.
He could tell that she was generally trying to keep her distance, holding back, almost as if she were apologizing for talking too much.
This behavior was very familiar to him—people often acted that way in his company.
Didrik assumed he was the problem; maybe he wasn’t the kind of person you could confide in.
He had experienced this dynamic on numerous occasions, most often with Lovisa’s coworkers.
But right now, here in the café, he saw the passionate Bente, eagerly and comfortably chatting with her friend.
That kind of passion was what he had loved about Lovisa. The way she could spend an entire weekend reading some scientific article, studying it in detail, or meticulously scrutinizing a publication she had discovered in an antiquarian bookstore, written by one of the philosophers she admired.
Once again Camille was looking at him inquiringly.
“Maybe you know more about that?”
Didrik dragged his attention away from Bente. He was confused—Camille was clearly waiting for an answer.
“Sorry, I didn’t quite understand the question,” he said hesitantly, feeling Bente’s disapproval.
“Mines from the Second World War—can they still turn up today?”
Didrik cleared his throat. “They can, yes. Mines from that period have been safely detonated in recent years. Do you mind if I take a closer look at the box?”
“No problem,” Camille replied.
Didrik picked up the box, turning it this way and that as Bente and Camille continued to discuss the transportation of wine after the war. It was beautifully made. He noticed a tiny gap, no more than a millimeter wide, in one of the panels on the back of the box.
“Look.” He showed them. “I wouldn’t have seen it if the dampness hadn’t made the wood a little darker just here.” He used his finger to trace the area where the wood bellied out a fraction. “It’s odd—could it be some kind of compartment?”
Camille leaned forward. “How exciting! There wouldn’t be room for anything more than documents—could that be it? People were very inventive when it came to smuggling things under the noses of the Nazis.”
Didrik nodded.
“Maybe the bottle was sent with a secret message in the box?” Bente suggested.
Didrik nodded again. “In which case the paper would have perished long ago.”
“Is it okay if we borrow the bottle?” Bente asked.
“Of course. Keep it as long as you need it—it won’t be going to auction until later. It would be great to see it on TV!” Camille said with a smile.
“It would be brilliant to have Camille on the show, talking about the diving expedition,” Didrik said as they walked back to the hotel. A thin layer of gray clouds had moved in over the city, and the sunbeams that managed to break through spread an apricot-colored glow over the streets.
“I agree. I hope we can find out more. The fact that the bottle was shipped after Sven’s death doesn’t make sense—what if it wasn’t him?” Bente said.
Elnaz nodded pensively. “It does seem illogical. We need to know where the bottle was sent from.”
Didrik considered all the information they had gathered so far. Tried to connect all the loose ends. This was what he loved—making connections. He felt as if he were walking on air.
Working on the bottle and being in Paris made the divorce and all his problems associated with it seem very far away.