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“If I am not being too forward, Mademoiselle , may I perhaps join you for lunch?”

She gestured amiably to the seat across from her. “I would be pleased for the company. I was just enjoying a glass of Chardonnay. Is there anyone who prefers drinking alone?”

De Boer heaved his bulk into the red banquette, folding his coat beside him and placing his hat precisely on top of it.

“And if you have the time after you complete your business, I would be happy to show you the sights of Amsterdam.”

He picked up the white linen napkin and spread it across his lap. “I realize we have only just met,” his gaze caught sight of her neckline. “But who could be a safer companion than the city’s police chief?”

Mila smile and inclined her head. Who indeed?

EVI

Bicycle forgotten, book bag over her shoulder, Evi followed in Jacob’s wake as he forged a path for them through the brush between thickets of trees.

“We need to move faster, Evi,” he called over his shoulder. “Those bastards may well be on our tail, trying to figure out where those shots came from.”

Evi struggled in the darkness to keep up with his stride. “I’m right behind you, Jacob,” she huffed.

He clearly knew the terrain, she realized, knew where he was going and how to get there. He must have walked these woods, inch by inch, more than once in the months he had been secreted with the Beekhofs – and godjizdank , for both of them that he had.

Branches fell away at her feet. Leaves crunched underfoot. She followed blindly, trusting Jacob’s lead as night deepened and the air around them grew colder. Soon, she began to recognize the land nearing the driveway to the Beekhof farm.

Struggling for breath, she slowed her pace. “Please, Jacob, I need to rest.”

“Okay, here,” he told her, jogging up the secluded drive and slowing under a towering elm. He collapsed under it, Evi falling beside him. She listened to their breathing slow.

“Damn…” he muttered. “Snafu…”

Evi frowned. “Sna-fu?

“Old army term.” He muttered. “Situation Normal…All Fu…” Never mind. It’s done. It’s over…”

She could think of nothing to say.

“Well,” he said finally, into the silence. “It seems we are even Steven...”

Now she looked at him. “Even steven?”

She was close enough to see his crooked smile. “An American expression…It means…well, it means what it says. We’re even.”

Still, she struggled to understand.

Finally, he looked directly into her eyes, expression sober “You saved my life tonight, Evi. I don’t why or how you followed me, but you did. So, now we’re even.”

She swallowed hard. What was there to say? She would have ripped out the woods, tree by tree, to ensure that Jacob was safe.

“The helicopter,” she managed finally. “It was coming for you…?”

He drew a breath. “Yeah… I thought we could pull it off though… The Air Force did, too. We never figured on a bunch of drunken Germans.”

Evi listened, searching his face.

“I managed to contact my CO – my commanding officer – on an old wireless the Beekhofs had in their basement. I was ecstatic. My CO thought it was worth a try. So, we made the plan for my exfiltration – “

“Exfil…”

“For the Army to retrieve me, send a rescue ‘copter to a precise location at a specified time and pluck me into the air. I thought maybe that clearing in the woods could be an ideal place to try it.” He screwed up his mouth. “…I guess it wasn’t…”

A cold wind riffled through the elm.

“Lousy timing. Lousy luck,” he said. “And I think one of the rotors was hit. I pray to God that ace makes it back to safety.”

Evi shivered.

Jacob put an arm around her. “You’re cold.”

“Yes.”

He drew her to his chest. She turned her face up.

Slowly, so slowly she was not sure it was happening, he began to close the distance between them. Close…so close…

Then she felt him pull away.

Evi blinked, aching in a way she had never felt before to feel his lips on hers.

Jacob shook his head. “You are sixteen years old, Evi. Sixteen. Jailbait, we call that in America.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means…never mind what it means. Just thanks, Itty Bitty. That’s all. l don’t know what possessed you to follow me. But my Jewish mother would thank you, that’s for sure.”

Evi’s eyes widened. “You are Jewish…?”

Even in the darkness, she saw his lopsided grin. “A Jew and an American pilot. No wonder the Huns are after me, eh?”

ZOE

Two Gestapo officials had, as Lukas warned, paid a visit to the Dans Hal, Leela told Zoe. Unlike their ransacking of the pet kliniek , however, their manner had appeared to be less threatening than information-seeking.

“I offered them the grand tour,” Leela reported coolly.

“I showed off the posters we have been making to promote our Carnival Week dance. Even though festivities must be curtailed, I told them, we are doing everything we can to maintain Dutch tradition. It is helpful in keeping up morale during these uncertain times.”

Zoe raised her brows, listening.

“I invited the gentlemen to sit in and watch a toddler ballet class – I even told them we would be glad to accommodate if they or their comrades had youngsters here who might like join our dance class…”

Zoe gaped. “Leela, you are amazing.”

As if on cue, a teen-aged girl Zoe did not know led five little girls in frilly skirts onto a makeshift stage. The cheerful strains of Tchaikowsky’s Nutcracker wafted in from somewhere.

Leela stopped to applaud the little girls, then turned back to Zoe.

“Then I showed those Nazi bastards all around the hall,” she said. “Including the office space, which had been thoroughly cleared. It all looked innocent enough.”

“But what if they come back?” Zoe asked. “What about Het Parool ?”

“We must be quick to get copies out of here as they are printed – to keep the shelves and counters clear at all times,” Leela paused. “And everything else we carried out is stored in our cellar at home.”

“But what if –”

Leela sighed and shrugged. “If they come for us, they come,” she murmured. “For nearly four years, we have lived or died at their whim. It is a chance we must take until we are free. Lieve god it will not be much longer before the Allies prevail.”

Zoe stared, amazed and thankful for the moment of sober level-headedness.

“Leela, you are the calm in the eye of a storm.”

“No more than the rest of us, Zoe. We do what we must.”

She moved closer. “Is there any word of Daan?”

Zoe shook her head.

“Nor of our missing farmer…:” Leela sighed. “But,” she lifted her head in the air. “There is some good news.”

She led Zoe into the office space, cleared of everything but some dance posters on the wall and the two ancient mimeograph machines .

Leela reached into her bag and held up a handful of what looked like ration books. “My sister, Miep, has worked for more than two years in the government office here in Haarlem. She now has charge of the distribution of ration books. And she is very well trusted.”

Zoe nodded.

“Two days ago, she reported a break-in.” Leela’s dark-eyed gaze was hard to read. “It seems a thief broke into the office and stole more than a hundred ration books.”

Zoe began to understand.

“The police are still searching for the’ perpetrator,’” Leela said. “But the ‘stolen’ ration books are in our cellar at home, along with the other things we stowed there. We can parcel them out to those who need them.”

“What if the Germans –”

Leela held up her hands. “So be it.”

Tears sprang before Zoe could stop them.

A look of understanding passed between them. It was risk that was keeping them alive .

MILA

It was dark in the alleyway in Amsterdam, and cold. Mila pulled her woolen scarf close and peered at the bubbling fountain in the Leidseplein . She had seen it many times, but never with such nervous trepidation.

What was it about men like Reimar de Boer, she mused – men with power but no principles – who thought they were exempt from payback?

The police captain had squired her around the city as though he had built it brick by brick for her pleasure – the Rijksmuseum, and the Prinzengracht Canal, miraculously spared from the bombing

And all the while, he told her of the evening he planned for them – an evening, thanks to her insinuation, ripe with the promise of sex .

It had not been easy, when she insisted on a change of clothes, to dissuade him from collecting her at her hotel. But she had been adamant and charmingly insistent that they meet at the celebrated fountain.

“I will enjoy it more seeing it with you,” she had coaxed – and he, in his eagerness to get under her clothing, acquiesced.

“I will meet you at the fountain at eight o’clock,” she had told him, her hand stroking his thickset wrist. “I have been told it is extraordinary at night. Tell your driver to pick us up at the entrance to the square at eight-fifteen promptly. Then I shall be yours for the night.”

Mila looked up, glad for the nearly starless sky and the slowly gathering mist. She checked her watch again. By seven-forty-five, if all went well, Pieter would be positioned in a dark alleyway across from the entrance to the square.

It was risky to choose a spot where people might gather. But Pieter was a good marksman – and on such a cold night, they chanced it would be relatively deserted. As she looked out now toward the appointed meeting spot, she was relieved to see they had been correct.

Stamping her leather boots in the cold, she squinted into the square. Traffic was light, but the minutes were passing, and there was no sign of de Boer’s black BMW.

What if it all went wrong? What if de Boer had grown suspicious? What if Pieter was not in place, or if de Boer’s driver, whose assistance they counted on, was less trustworthy than they hoped?

Minutes went by. Mila worked hard to tamp down anxiety.

At seven-fifty-nine precisely, an automobile emerged out of the gloom, black and sleek, she thought..

A BMW? Ja!