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his most valuable allies would be a man he didn’t know, and would never meet—a twenty-nine-year-old Norwegian named Knut Haukelid.
    Haukelid had dark wavy hair and a broad, muscular body toughened by years of hiking and skiing. When the Germans conquered Norway in 1940, Haukelid and a few friends had refused to admit defeat. They strapped guns to their backs and skied deep into the roadless forests and mountains. “There was only one thought in our heads,” he later said. “Hitler and his gang should be thrown back into the sea.”
    While crossing a lake on a ferry boat, they found an outlet for their rage. Standing on deck, leaning casually on the rail, was a Norwegian man in a Nazi uniform—some Norwegians were Nazi sympathizers who aided the invading army.
    After waiting until the boat was about 300 yards from shore, Haukelid gestured for his friends to follow. He walked up to the Nazi.
    â€œHeil Hitler!” Haukelid said, using the typical Nazi greeting.
    â€œHeil Hitler!” the man said, reaching out to shake hands.
    As Haukelid grasped the man’s hand, his friends grabbed the Nazi, lifted him over the rail, and dropped him into the lake.
    The only thing that floated was his hat.
    *   *   *
    O VER THE FOLLOWING YEAR, Knut Haukelid found a more organized and effective way to fight the Germans. He joined one of the secret resistance groups that were forming all over Norway. He began working as a radio operator and spy.
    â€œNo one—not even those nearest to us—could know what was going on,” he said. Anyone caught resisting the German occupation was instantly shot. “In the daytime we had to do our ordinary work,” he explained. “We were dropping with fatigue. What kept us going was a growing pride in doing something , little as it was, against the hated invaders.”
    By day, Haukelid worked at a German-controlled submarine base. After dark, he gathered his radio equipment, snuck out of town on a bicycle, and searched for a remote electrical pole. He climbed the wooden pole, tapped into the electrical wires, powered up his radio, and sent information on German military movements to British intelligence officers in London.
    â€œWe had many wild plans in those days,” Haukelid remembered. Hoping to deal the Nazis a more direct blow, he and his friends concocted a plot to kidnap Vidkun Quisling, leader of the Norwegian Nazis. The plan was to knock Quisling unconscious, drive him into the mountains, call Britain for a plane, fly him to London, and put him on display in a cage.
    Haukelid found out where Quisling was staying in Oslo. He rented a room across the hall, contacted a fellow resistance fighter who worked for the telephone company, and arranged to listen in on Quisling’s phone line. “The plan was to find out when he ordered a car,” Haukelid said, “so that we could pick him up in one of ours.” Haukelid’s men dressed in stolen Nazi uniforms, so Quisling wouldn’t be suspicious until it was too late.
    But before they could pull the trigger on the operation, German intelligence uncovered Haukelid’s crew of radio operators. Some of the men were thrown into concentration camps. Haukelid escaped into the mountains. He managed to get across the border to Sweden by bicycle and traveled from there, by plane, to Great Britain.
    Haukelid was safe, but all he could think about was getting back home to continue the fight. He would get his wish, and more. What Haukelid did not yet know was that a remote factory perched on the side of a cliff in Norway was the key to Germany’s top-secret atomic bomb project. Someone had to put that factory out of operation. And he was about to get the job.
    *   *   *
    B ACK IN N ORWAY, Hitler’s secret police force, the Gestapo, got Haukelid’s name and stormed his family’s house. They ransacked the place for evidence of his