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“I try to be.” The girl stood straighter. “I hate the Germans. I wish I could do more for the Resistance.”

Mila nodded. The girl could be perfect for what she had in mind – if Lotte could be persuaded to let her do it .

EVI

It was past three when she hurried down the wharf, the wind pushing at her back, and made her way along the row of dingy houseboats tied up at the pier. Finally, she let herself into the familiar yellow barge, shivering in her grey sweater.

She stood for a minute and listened. It was quiet in the barge, the kind of light quiet, the way it felt to her when there was no one inside but her.

It was different from the heavy quiet she felt when there was another human breathing beneath her feet.

She guessed that whoever was to be smuggled into the hold had not yet been delivered.

What if the day came when a pair of SS men blustered in…would they detect the heavy quiet of someone living and breathing beneath their feet?

The thought sent ice chips down her spine.

She changed her grey sweater for a warmer blue one and pulled on heavy stockings beneath her plaid wool skirt. She ran a brush through her fine blonde hair, then stood before the mirror and braided it into two long plaits, which she tied with ribbons.

She looked at her image and made a face at herself.

The braids, along with her small frame and pale complexion made her look more like twelve than her nearly seventeen years.

She loathed that, almost as much as mourned the barely swelled chest under her sweater.

She wished she could trade it for Sophie’s ample bosom…

On the other hand, as Mam was quick to point out, her petite frame was a virtue – a blessing when she bicycled across the city with sensitive materials stowed in her battered book bag.

Buttoning a jacket over her sweater, she took a last, forlorn look at herself.

Then she searched under the sink, where Mam sometimes left paperwork for Evi to transport.

She found an envelope with her name on it, stashed it between the books and drawings in her bag, hefted the bag over her shoulders and swung herself up out of the barge.

She unlocked the shed, retrieved her bicycle, and pedaled off toward the Dans Hal .

ZOE

“Ah, you’re back,” Lise called from the reception desk. “Dr. Mulder has not yet returned, and a patient is already waiting.”

Zoe glanced at her watch. It was not yet one, but a young boy and his mother sat at one end of the waiting area, a freckle-faced springer spaniel pup draped across their laps.

“Hello there,” she smiled. “I am Dr. Visser. “And who is this?”

“This is Bella,” the boy volunteered. “Back for her four-month shots.”

“Ah, yes,” Zoe said. “I thought she looked familiar.” She beckoned them into the first examining room. “And how has Bella been behaving?”

“She is wonderbaar – very good,” the boy put the pup down, holding her leash in one hand, and looked up at his mother. “Right, Mam?”

“Mostly,” his mother agreed. “She has got the hang of housebreaking pretty well, lieve god, but she is chewing on just about everything.”

Zoe grinned. “Normal for the age. Keep your shoes and house slippers out of her reach for a while, and be sure she has something of her own to chew on – a toy, or an old sock – while she is still teething.”

She lifted the Spaniel pup to the table, ruffling her black and white coat. She felt the pup shiver, and ran a soothing hand down her back. “You will be fine, Bella, I promise,” she assured her canine patient. “This will all be over sooner than you think.”

In short order, she injected the pup with the vaccines she needed, all the while talking softly and sending reassuring smiles to her young master.

“There! All done,” she said, setting Bella on her feet on the floor, laughing as the pup shook her little body as though she were shaking off water .

“She is good to go,” Zoe laughed. “No need for me to see her again until she reaches her first birthday.”

She watched the family troop out to the desk, wondering as always that even now, when most families had little enough to sustain themselves, they managed to provide for their pets.

She turned and washed her hands, put fresh paper on the examining table.

Of course, the klineik’s accounts receivables grew longer by the month, and vaccines were increasingly harder to come by, but neither she nor Daan would think of turning away an animal in need so long as they were able to help.

It was nearly four before she heard Daan’s voice, talking animatedly to Lise.

“You are back,” said Zoe, hands in her pockets. “How was Amsterdam?”

The owner of the pet kliniek was bent at the supply cabinet alongside Lise, systematically filing syringes, nail clippers, and other supplies into compartmented bins.

“Ah,” Daan said, rising. “It was as we expected,” he told her, a meaningful look in his eyes. “Busy day, traffic heavy as ever, but all good to go, Zoe. Good to go.”

Zoe nodded, interpreting his message. Tonight. The transfer was a go.

“Good,” she said. “Everything is in order. I may need to leave a bit early.”

Daan Mulder rose to his full height, an unimposing five foot-eight, a stocky figure with unruly blonde hair and a pock-marked face that belied both his inner and outer strength.

He had recently married the love of his life, Ilke, a busy attorney with no time for the Resistance but with no opposition to Daan’s commitment.

Zoe trusted Daan’s instincts completely.

“You may leave any time you like,” he told her. “It is going to be a long, cold night. ”

MILA

The lavender dress arrived at five, as promised, just as Mila stepped from the shower. “Put it on the bed, Reit,” she called to the maid. “I will be out in a moment.”

Hondje, her little Maltese ball of white fluff, waited at the foot of her bed. Poor Hondje. She hadn’t had much time for him of late. She smiled and ruffled his top knot.

Toweled off and powdered, she brushed her red-blonde hair into a loose chignon and put on the amethyst earrings her father had given her weeks ago for her twenty-fifth birthday.

She put down the brush and slumped for a moment against the mahogany dressing table. Her father. What was she to do about the growing chasm between her love for him and her passion for the work of the Resistance?

Millions of their countrymen were making do with wilted vegetables while her father’s table groaned under the finest delicacies, thanks largely to the Germans who dined with them.

Her father was a businessman, a smart businessman, a man who’d spent years building the shipping company that had kept her family in silks and satins long before the war made them scarce.

It was not his fault that the Germans needed his shipping routes.

How else could they move the goods, and the machinery, that kept the Nazi machine functioning?

And how else could he keep his business running?

She pulled on silk stockings – a gift from a recent dinner guest – and drew a lacy slip over her shoulders.

Four years into this bitter war, fewer than a quarter of Holland’s Jewish population was left, and those mostly in hiding – and as more Jewish families feared the threat of deportation, many were children placed reluctantly with willing Dutch hiding families.

Was her father a collaborator? Of course, he was. The thought made her blood run cold .

As would his blood run cold, she knew, if he had any idea what his only daughter was up to each night after those endless, wine-soaked dinners.

EVI

Evi heard the stifled cry.

She looked up from her homework. “Mam?”

Lotte had been hunched over the banned radio receiver, listening to the illicit radio Oranje.

“Nothing that concerns you, lieveling,” she said. “More student protests in Amsterdam.”

University students had raged against the Blitzkreig from the moment it had smashed across the Dutch border. This was hardly news.

“Mam, what is it really?”

Lotte sighed. “Two students were shot this morning by a Nazi firing squad in Amsterdam. They said it was in retaliation for the death of an SS officer - not that these Nazis need a reason. Any excuse to flaunt Herr Hitler’s power.”

Evi slumped in her chair. With the universities long since shuttered, too many students with time on their hands became the targets of Gestapo scrutiny.

“Six months,” Lotte murmured, stowing the radio in an empty cereal box in the cupboard. “Six months since the Allies landed at Normandy, and still, God knows if we will survive long enough to see liberation.”

Evi sat straighter in the worn wooden chair. This was, perhaps, a good time to take advantage of the moment.

“Mam,” she began. “I am nearly seventeen. I want to do more for the Resistance.”

She looked into her mother’s face, thinner than she remembered, and creased with lines Evi had been slow to notice. “I’m not a child. I can do more than pass out leaflets and transport paperwork. I want to do something that matters.”

Lotte ran a hand across her face. “ Lieveling , everything you do matters. The papers you transport are saving lives.”

“But Mam, I am smart, you know I am, and careful,” Evi persisted. “I know my way around all of Haarlem, and I know how to get by without attracting attention. There must be something more I can do – some sort of reconnaissance, perhaps.”

Her mother looked at her. “Reconnaissance, Evi? Do you even know what that is?”

“Of course, I do. It’s observation. I can bicycle around the city, perhaps, and watch for German troop movement.”

“And then what, Evi? To whom will you report this – troop movement?

“I do not know for certain, but I know people do this, to help our own soldiers plan their strategy.”

Her mother sighed audibly.