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She moved closer to the source of the sound, made a full circle, bewildered – and to her surprise, as she shaded her eyes and surveyed the land, she caught the glint of sunlight on water.

She squinted. She had had no idea that the Beekhof farm was bound on one side by water…quite likely, she realized, now that she considered the arc of land, an inland arm of the Spaarne – the same river that had been her home for more than four long years.

She contemplated the course of the terrain, certain she heard voices.

“Jacob?” She called, more assertively. “I can hear you, but I cannot see you.”

Then another curious thing happened. To her right, what appeared for all the world to be a grassy berm began to fall away before her eyes, and Willem’s rangy form emerged as if from nowhere. Behind him came Jacob, and finally Papa Beekhof.

She looked from one to the other, but the silence was long and deep.

“There’s a tunnel, Evi.” Jacob said finally, looking over at the older Beekhof. “We’ve been clearing out the tunnel Papa Beekhof dug years ago as an escape route for Jewish refugees.”

Evi’s mouth dropped open.

“Klara and I were horrified when the Germans began rounding up the Jews,” Papa Beekhof leaned on a hoe. “I think, in the first months of 1941, perhaps a hundred or more escapees made their way through this tunnel – down through the Spaarne, in small boats, to the North Sea and beyond.”

They were more words than Evi had ever heard from the reticent, bearded farmer. She nodded, though she was truly dumbstruck.

“Hard to know how many actually made it to safety,” Jacob shrugged. “The North Sea can be rough. But one thing for sure; the escape route is damned hard to detect. ”

Evi marveled, looking from one to other. How fortunate was Jacob when he dropped from the sky to come to rest on Beekhof land …

She nudged Willem. “Lunch is ready. I will race you back to the house.”

ZOE

The elderly physician hopped onto the gurney with more agility than she expected. “God bless,” he said.

Patting his shoulder, Zoe covered him with a sheet so that only his toes were exposed and pushed the gurney out from behind the makeshift ward toward the freight elevator.

He was the fifth of the high-profile refugees she had transported that day – mostly the Jewish doctors in hiding who continued to treat their fellow refugees.

Moving smartly through the corridor in her starched nurse’s uniform, she pushed the elevator button for the basement.

Gerritt met them in the morgue. “I think, for the moment, we have met the limit of the ‘deceased’ we are able to accommodate here,” he said.

“But perhaps it is safe to move ten or twelve people into the old pathology lab – and then, if we need to, we can put the hardiest among them into the sub-basement.”

Zoe adjusted the nurse’s cap she had pinned to her hair. “We can do that,” she said, though her heart broke to think of the spartan conditions these people would be forced to endure.

She lifted the sheet from the face of the ‘deceased’ physician. “I am affixing a nametag to your big toe,” she told him. “It is not your real name, of course.”

She completed the task quickly, and eased the gurney nearer to his ‘deceased’ companions. “Will you be all right here?” she asked.

The older man offered a wan smile. “I have never been much addicted to daytime napping,” he said. “But it is infinitely more attractive than the prospect of eternal sleep at the hands of Hitler’s thugs…”

“Amen to that,” his colleagues murmured.

Zoe smiled and pulled the sheet back over the old man’s head.

Gerritt moved from one to other of the counterfeit corpses. “A little drill,” he said. “The door to the morgue will be locked. Entry is restricted to Zoe and myself and the few trusted nurses who bring your food.”

He paused. “This soft knock,” he demonstrated, “will signal to you that one of us is about to enter. Anything but this distinct knock and you run and warn the others.”

Zoe heard the murmured assents.

“You may sit up and walk around a bit for a while after meals,” Gerritt continued. “Use the toilet or whatever. But as mealtimes approach – and you know the timing – please assume your prone position until you can confirm who has entered.”

His voice grew increasingly sober. “Lastly,” he said, “If you detect any sort of commotion outside these doors, take the stairs down to the sub-basement until, als god , the danger has passed or you exit through the ambulance bay…”

God help them if they are forced to run into the streets , Zoe put a hand over her heart. “What would become of them then?

...

The population of the makeshift ward had been reduced by more than half, Zoe guessed – including the youngest children, who were the first to be relocated with their parents or hiding parents.

Her gaze swept those remaining for the storyteller who tugged at her heart, and who had refused to leave, in spite of the danger, until the last of the refugees were safely moved.

She watched him talking with a pair of teenaged boys who, like him, had decided to stay until the others had been moved. Kurt threw his head back, as if laughing at something one of the teens had said .

Zoe shook her head slowly from side to side. A hunted German refugee , she reflected. Who would have believed, in this time of bitter war, that she was losing her heart to a German?

MILA

Mila pushed food around her plate. It was another of those rare evenings with just the three of them at the table. But more and more often, conversation between them was stilted.

Her mother, still opting for dinner in her room most evenings when her father’s German guests were at the table, seemed to be shrinking into herself, neither strong enough to oppose what her husband was doing, nor meek enough to support it.

Her apathy was awash in a sea of red wine, leaving Mila sad and helpless.

And what could she expect her father to share?

She watched him out of the corner of her eye.

That his shipping business was busier than ever?

That he was helping the enemy transport food and supplies for enemy German troops?

Moving another shipment of arms from Berlin with which to murder Dutch citizens?

She passed the scalloped potatoes when he asked for them.

Perhaps she could tell him about Lotte Strobel’s death at the hands of his Nazi ‘ business partners’ – about the daughter they had left both motherless and homeless, dependent on the kindness of strangers.

Or remind him that, on just the other side of their handsome doorway, innocent Dutch were being starved and murdered by the disciples of an arrogant madman…

She gazed at the huge bouquet of pink and white orchids resplendent at the center of the table.

What would he say of her calculated ‘tryst’ with the traitor Reimar de Boer – of the part she played in his failed assassination, or her passion for the man who fired the shot?

“Will you want a new frock, Mila, for your evening with Franz Becker?” Her father broke the silence .

She jumped at the sound of her name. “No, Father, I have many lovely dresses,” she replied. “And I doubt the obersturmfuhre r is a connoisseur of women’s fashion.”

“Nevertheless, my dear, he occupies a special place in the Reich hierarchy. He will expect you to look elegant on his arm.”

And what else will the obersturmfuhrer expect, she wondered, suddenly on the verge of bringing up the few bites of food she had swallowed. Was her proud father willing to offer up his daughter as nonchalantly as he offered up his shipping routes?

Feeling ill, she tossed her napkin on the table. “Excuse me, Father. I am feeling tired.”

“But you haven’t had dessert,” her father said blandly. “Reit has prepared a toffee pudding.”

Mila forced a smile. “But we wouldn’t want my dress to be too tight around my hips,” now would we?”

EVI

The kitchen windows were so heavy with steam that she could see nothing beyond them. Inside, it felt warm and comfortably moist. She mopped her face with the hem of her apron.

“I am ready for those jars, Evi” Mevreouw Beekhof said.

Evi jumped to pick up a pair of metal tongs and fish the jars, one by one, out of the boiling water, setting them on towels on the kitchen counter.

She watched, fascinated, as Mevrouw filled the jars with a small crop of rhubarb that had somehow survived the cold, and which she had diced and stewed with the last of her stock of honey.

Mam had been a passable cook in the years before the war, but never in Evi’s memory had she canned vegetables as Mevrouw was doing now .

“There,” Mevrouw said, wiping down the jars with a clean cloth. “We will leave them to cool and eat some for supper, and the rest we will put aside in the cellar to be there for us on another hungry day.”

She put the kettle on. “Sit, Evi. I will make us a cup of tea.”

The men, as usual, were working in the field, and although she would have liked to be nearer to Jacob, Evi relished this time with Mevreouw .

It made her feel as though she were wrapped in cotton batting, as though she were safe and protected from having to think about that day off the coast of Rotterdam.

In a strange way, although she had turned seventeen, she felt more vulnerable, more defenseless now than she had before the day she had dressed like a harlot and lured that first Nazi to his death.

“Evi,” Mevrouw poured the tea and sat. “There is something you need to know…”

Evi sat up straighter.

“We had a visitor yesterday, while you had target practice with Jake,” Mvreouw began, a softness in the planes of her face. “It was a man named Johan Steegen. Do you know him?”

Evi shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Well. He is a friend of your friend, Mila Brouwer. It seems that he was able to locate your Mam’s barge, still afloat in the sea near Rotterdam, and bring it back to Haarlem.”

Evi’s eyes widened.