The German Task

By Thorvald Lygum

We write 1977. The cold war is raging, but master instructor Lars Steensen has enough to do with his own war. A war against creditors.
After a serius riding accident it seems he has lost the battle, but in the hospital he receives an unexspected visit. Two officers from NATO intelligence ask him do do a job for them.
A rather simple task. So it seems, and he is not in a situation, that invite to refuse.
The assignment brings him around on the north German competitions camps, but the simple task turns out to be a lot more complicated than assumed.
And a lot more dangerous.

The crime-circle wrote:
A new Dick Francis whith the same ability to write. Not about the racing world this time, but about the show jumping world.
An exellent thriller.

Horse&Rider wrote:
A book that can be equated with the the greatest novel writer successes in the Danish bookmarket.

The libraries reviuw wrote:
A really good, old-fashioned thriller from the good, old, cold war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496989604

Thorvald Lygum

Thorvald Lygum was born in Skads (Denmark) in 1944. He began working at the age of fourteen, and was in the army in the age of seventeen. Out of the army in 1967 he started the master instructor training (six years). In 1981 he went to Italy, where he, besides his work as riding instructor, began to write fiction. The Hans Jürgen Fritz affair is his debut novel.

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© 2014 Thorvald Lygum. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means vwithout the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/27/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8937-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8936-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8960-4 (e)

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 1

There were eight cigarette butts lying in the ashtray. The living room, which also was my office, was smoky, and the second percolator was almost empty.

The telephone was finally silent. Telephone hours were over for the day.

I tried to relax, but it wasn’t easy. There had not been so much as a single call of the type that I had longed for, but there had been three of the calls that I feared.

I looked at the clock; it was a quarter past nine. Time to work. Annemette would soon be ready with the first of the horses. The curtains were drawn, but a bright winter sun tried to find the smallest cracks. Outside, it was tolerable, but I still felt it hard to get up from my desk.

The drive was missing.

Damn, I thought. It was not the work that mattered. I myself had even chosen it as my dream job, and should I make a choice today, I would have done the same.

It was the motivation that was missing.

The day hit me when I opened the front door, and it almost blinded me. It was more of a spring sun than a winter sun. The trees were still bare, but I sensed a fragrance in the air like the power of growth, which should have been impossible at the end of February.

The mist slowly disappeared, as I pulled on my riding boots. One of the stable cats had found a place in the sun on the stair railing and tried to attract my attention by arching its back, while my eleven-year-old Rottweiler behaved like a puppy at the foot of the stairs. I gave the cat a few strokes over the back, while the dog expressed his jealousy by trying to bite his short tail. He danced around me all the way across the yard towards the stables.

Annemette was at the washing area with D’Artagnan. She was putting on the last part of the working bandages, and I said:

Hello.

Hey, Lars, she said without looking up.

Annemette was a pretty girl, from top to waist. Her hair was light and her eyes were blue. Her face was pretty, and the upper part of her body was certainly not below average, but it was a different story from the waist and down. Her buttocks were excessively wide over her short, thick, and crooked legs. She would not be anyone’s dream of a bed buddy, but she was indispensable in the barn.

Finn was coming out from the other barn with a wheelbarrow. His gait was, as usual, a little sluggish, but then again he held the same gait almost the whole working day, without a break. He was not among the brightest, but he was steady.

Annemette looked up:

The digital tendons have been cold and dry for more than a month now, and I am convinced, he is ready for more demanding work. It must have been just a little rupture of the tendon, so I do not think, he needs to be held back.

And it is fine weather for a ride, I said.

She held the reins, while I jumped up into the saddle. Of course, I could have used the stirrup, but this way I got more exercise.

D´artagnant obviously shared the opinion that he should not be spared. His muscles quivered with enthusiastic energy, which I felt inside him as a whole series of uncontrolled bucks, fighting a desperate battle against his more educated upbringing.

The education won, but the riding hall did not attract any of us, so we continued to the jumping field. We had been able to use it for almost a week now, and it had just been harrowed the day before.

While we warmed up, I could feel his pent-up energy, and after a while he greeted the birds, that sang in the still bare trees with a joyful whinny. It was impossible not to get carried away.

Annemette had placed herself at the railing, presumably so she could check that I really rode the horse through, but I often had my doubts about who really controlled the riding centre. As long as it was just her, I did not mind.

After we warmed up, we took a small cross jump; d’Artagnan exploded with energy, and he put at least three feet of space between his feet and the barriers. We jumped them seven or eight times, before we tried with a small stationata, but for him it did not make any difference.

He was playing with an oxer of one meter and twenty, and then there remained only the jumps that Esprite had jumped the day before.

They were too big for d’Artagnan, but his eagerness and spirit had infected me. Annemette was there, and of course I should have asked her to put the barriers down a little bit, but I didn’t.

The first jump was a stationata. No problems. The next was a pretty big oxer, and if there were problems, it was just, that he still put at least twenty centimetres of air to it.

I started to cheer inside.

D’Artagnan had always been what I considered to be a good horse, but he had never been tested on really big jumps, and now that he was, he showed the star quality.

Next was the three combination. He sailed over the first and lightly touched the next, but it was only his willingness to go forward that cheated him, and he remembered that in the third and left a lot of air under his feet.

There was only one more leap. A large and straight oxer: suitable for Esprite, a little too big for d’Artagnan, but nothing seemed to cause problems that day. I again cheered inside, after we landed from the last combination, but then reality came back during the turn towards the oxer.

A magnificent horse, fantastic, everything I could ever dream about. Almost at the level with Esprite, but how long would I be allowed to keep him? The creditors were already standing next to each other, and if only one of them filed an insolvency proceeding, I was done.

The horses. The riding centre, my students, and Annemette. I had learned to appreciate all these things since I bought the riding centre in 1973. It could all be lost.

Show jumping is perhaps, in the most radical form, a sense in the spinal cord. What you have fought hard to learn becomes instinct, a sense of speed and situational awareness, but yet the eye coordinates everything, and you can’t do without it. A second of inattention could be disastrous, and so it was.

The distance was wrong.

It was too late to short him in, and that left two options: I could have turned him off, but I had always taught my students not to do so.

Keep your horse in balance and take advantage of the situation that arises, was my usual advice.

Now I found myself in a situation, where it was impossible to follow that counsel, and as an alternative solution, I sent d’Artagnan forward, while I prayed to the higher powers to give him wings.

D’Artagnan did not hesitate. In blind faith to my judgement, he went forward, but only a super horse could have made that jump. He might one day be that horse, but he was not yet.

I felt him put his whole soul in it, and his front legs went over the front bar with ease, but the oxer was too wide, and they crossed over the rear bar.

At that moment, it felt like a movie that was in slow motion. I felt like he paused in the middle of the jump, and the whole obstacle collapsed under him.

Instinctively, I knew he tried to pull his legs free of the barrier, but it was there, and he landed with it between his front legs. He went down on a foreleg knee, when the centrifugal force pushed relentlessly from behind, and I was thrown forward, when his nose hit the ground.

Somewhere out in the unreal periphery, I could hear Annemette scream. Perhaps she should not have done so, but it was understandable.

I rolled away, but my left foot was stuck in the stirrup.

Lying on the ground, I looked, paralysed, at how d’Artagnan’s heavy body was thrown forward, while his neck was snapped in a grotesque angle.

It was hard to relate to everything. The nearly thirteen-hundred-pound horse that lay on top of my left leg, felt secondary, while the grotesque angle of d’Artagnan’s neck was the primary.

Would he survive?

If not, it was me, who had killed him. His only fault was in having unlimited confidence in me, and that confidence I had blatantly misused.

He lay quietly, and I dared hardly to breathe. After something that felt like a lifetime, he began to move, and relief swept through me.

At least he lived.

As he began to struggle to get up, I had a sudden thought: The stirrup! I should be able to get free of it now, but I could not, and when he got up and shook on trembling legs, I realised that my whole foot had slipped through.

Then there was the security lock. It should let go now, but I recalled, that I had never been particularly careful about having them greased. A situation like this never happened, but now it had.

Annemette screamed again, and out the corner of my eye I saw her come running.

Damn, I thought. Don’t run. Walk … Walk slowly and talk … talk quietly with soft vocals.

But Annemette kept running, and that was the second mistake that day.

The first had been mine.

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D’Artagnan hesitantly took a step forward. If I had not been hanging in the stirrup, it probably would have stopped with this, but the unnatural weight made him insecure. For a moment he stood still, as if he was considering the instinct commanding him to run.

Escape.

His training ordered him to stand still, but he took a step more, and the unaccustomed weight was still there.

The instinct won.

First, he took a few hesitant steps. Then he took a few more, but the unnatural and disturbing weight was still there, and it made him anxious.

Shortly after, he ran off in wild panic, and Annemette screamed for the third time.

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As the horse dragged me behind, the ground was hitting my shoulders and my neck. With my free right heel I tried to keep free from his thundering hind feet. It was no longer the loose sand on the riding track, but the cow pasture’s rocks and hillocks.

The head, I thought. Not the head. My jacket was ripped from my body, and my shirt followed. My pants were torn to tatters, and my skin was not treated better.

The head, not the head, for God’s sake. Keep braking with the heel. Keep me free. That damn security lock. It had to surrender. Why on earth did I not get it greased?

Somewhere in the memory there was a glimpse of a film that showed the most brutal form of execution in the Arab states. Why did I suddenly remember that?

The head. Not the head.

All my life began to pass before me. Glimpses from my childhood, of my youth, and then what followed. They came in flashes and lasted a few seconds, but when the flashes were there, they seemed like a full movie.

The head. Not the head.

And the security lock. Why the hell did it not give in?

It did not, and at some point, it occurred to me that it might be the end. Not a moment, the idea occurred, that it could also be a beginning.

I must have slackened my defensive guard; it felt like an electric shock went through my whole body, and my brain mass exploded in an orgy of white and yellow light.

Chapter 2

It all started as an annoying, buzzing sound, and my mouth felt dry, rough, and painful. In itself, it was bad enough, but it got worse. The buzzing sound began to rise and fall in volume, and something wet and decidedly uncomfortable began running over my face. It scrawled in a strange way in certain locations, and a pair of white spots appeared in front of my eyes.

There was no correlation at all, and then there came something dry, that felt almost worse. Somebody touched my right arm, and there was a sting. Then a calm voice came out of the chaos:

Hello, Mr Steensen. Now you just have to relax and take it easy. You have plenty of time to wake up.

Steensen, she had said; that seemed confusing. I didn’t know any Steensen, and I had no desire to know him, but the relaxing feeling that started spreading through my body, I could only welcome, and after a short time, it brought me back to the protective darkness, where I wanted to be.

There were other moments that sank into a somewhat hazy memory. Rising and falling tones were summed to words and even later to phrases. The two light spots dancing in front of my eyes gathered together and became one.

Even later, the spot turned into a woman dressed in white, and by then, I had come so far, that I began to perceive the environment, but what I saw made no sense.

There was a man at the end of the bed. He, too, was dressed in white, and behind him stood three girls, also dressed in white.

Didn’t they dress in white in heaven? Of course. That was possible, but every signal, my body gave me, suggested, that I was in hell.

The man said:

Well, Lars. So it finally seems, you are coming up to the surface. It was also about time, but now you just take it easy. You will get something to sleep again, and then we can talk tomorrow.

I looked at him and felt even more confused. A doctor. It had to be a doctor, and four nurses, but why? And why did I lay on my back without being able to move?

The doctor came up to the side of the bed. He touched my shoulder and gave it an encouraging pat.

See you, he said, and then he turned and went out, followed by the nurses.

I wanted to say something, ask a lot of questions, but my tongue filled up my entire mouth, and the effort woke a lot of pain in my neck and shoulders.

Then the plug came again, and all the white faded. With a sigh of relief, I slipped back into the darkness I never should have come out from.

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Jan was sitting in a chair to the right of the bed. At least he had told me, that his name was Jan Petersen. He had also said, he was a junior doctor in the orthopaedic department, where I was now lying. I had been transferred here after five days in intensive care.

My own name was Lars Steensen. I was a riding master, and I had an equestrian centre in the outskirts of Silkeborg.

According to Jan, we had been friends for the past couple of years.

It felt strange. I had no trouble in keeping up with, what had happened after my awakening, and even the hazy impressions, I had picked up during the coma, was stuck in my memory, but I could not recall anything further back.

I could read and write. Jan had tried with the history of the world, and I remembered the vast majority of the Roman emperors from Caesar up to the Byzantine period.

I also knew the history of Denmark, but as soon as we moved towards my own life, I hit an impenetrable wall.

Jan tried. He talked about experiences we had had together, and he told me about the recent period in the riding centre.

The last part I would have been better without hearing, and it was maybe just this part that my subconscious was guarding me against.

Jan was my own age. We were almost the same height, and we were both dark-haired and blue-eyed, but there the similarity ended.

He was about thirty kilos heavier than I, and the weight suited him. He looked like a big good-natured teddy bear, a person anyone could confide in and lean on. I was looking for a superlative, that could cover my impression of him.

The best word I came up with was trustworthy, and it was probably because of that, that he was so well-liked as a physician.

Over four days, he had spent all the time he could manage to keep me company, and I was grateful for his visit. I was far less grateful for the puzzle he tried to piece together for me.

Okay, Lars, he said as he stood up. In my opinion, your memory loss is temporary, and rest assured that we will get your brain knitted back together. Just relax and don’t exert yourself too much. It is often the strain itself which blocks your recovery.

Would that be an improvement? I asked.

He grinned encouragingly and said, Of course. Problems are there to be dealt with, and although they may seem a bit confusing now, you still have to grab it by the roots. If you do, you will be thankful later.

I did not feel very confident about that, but I felt grateful for Jan’s optimism and for the time he spent with me.

He waved at me from the door.

Jan, I called, and he stopped. Thank you.

Jan smiled and left, while I sank back in my self-pity.

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It was Annemette who removed the first brick in the wall. She seemed almost apologetic as she entered the room with a bouquet of flowers, and she blushed as she kissed me on the cheek.

Maybe this was the first time she had shown