Hornet Flight by Ken Follett Read Free Book Online Page A

time the finest in Denmark, was a separate building as large as the church. There were science laboratories, modern dormitories, an infirmary, and a gym in a converted barn.
    Harald Olufsen was walking from the refectory to the gym. It was twelve noon, and the boys had just finished lunch—a make-it-yourself open sandwich with cold pork and pickles, the same meal that had been served every Wednesday throughout the seven years he had attended the school.
    He thought it was stupid to be proud that the institution was old. When teachers spoke reverently of the school’s history, he was reminded of old fishermen’s wives on Sande who liked to say, “I’m over seventy now,” with a coy smile, as if it were some kind of achievement.
    As he passed the headmaster’s house, the head’s wife came out and smiled at him. “Good morning, Mia,” he said politely. The head was alwayscalled Heis, the Ancient Greek word for the number one, so his wife was Mia, the feminine form of the same Greek word. The school had stopped teaching Greek five years ago, but traditions died hard.
    â€œAny news, Harald?” she asked.
    Harald had a homemade radio that could pick up the BBC. “The Iraqi rebels have been defeated,” he said. “The British have entered Baghdad.”
    â€œA British victory,” she said. “That makes a change.”
    Mia was a plain woman with a homely face and lifeless brown hair, always dressed in shapeless clothes, but she was one of only two women at the school, and the boys constantly speculated about what she looked like naked. Harald wondered if he would ever stop being obsessed with sex. Theoretically, he believed that after sleeping with your wife every night for years you must get used to it, and even become bored, but he just could not imagine it.
    The next lesson should have been two hours of maths, but today there was a visitor. He was Svend Agger, an old boy of the school who now represented his hometown in the Rigsdag, the nation’s parliament. The entire school was to hear him speak in the gym, the only room big enough to hold all 120 boys. Harald would have preferred to do maths.
    He could not remember the precise moment when schoolwork had become interesting. As a small boy, he had regarded every lesson as an infuriating distraction from important business such as damming streams and building tree houses. Around the age of fourteen, almost without noticing it, he had begun to find physics and chemistry more exciting than playing in the woods. He had been thrilled to discover that the inventor of quantum physics was a Danish scientist, Niels Bohr. Bohr’s interpretation of the periodic table of the elements, explaining chemical reactions by the atomic structure of the elements involved, seemed to Harald a divine revelation, a fundamental and deeply satisfying account of what the universe was made of. He worshipped Bohr the way other boys adored Kaj Hansen—“Little Kaj”—the soccer hero who played inside forward for the team known as B93 København. Harald had applied to study physics at the University of Copenhagen, where Bohr was director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics.
    Education cost money. Fortunately Harald’s grandfather, seeing hisown son enter a profession that would keep him poor all his life, had provided for his grandsons. His legacy had paid for Arne and Harald to go to Jansborg Skole. It would also finance Harald’s time at university.
    He entered the gym. The younger boys had put out benches in neat rows. Harald sat at the back, next to Josef Duchwitz. Josef was very small, and his surname sounded like the English word “duck,” so he had been nicknamed Anaticula, the Latin word for a duckling. Over the years it had got shortened to Tik. The two boys had very different backgrounds—Tik was from a wealthy Jewish family—yet they had been close friends all through school.
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