Page 44

Haarlem, the Netherlands

ZOE

“There is some good news, Zoe,” Gerritt came up behind her in the hospital’s dim sub-basement.

She had been listening to Kurt’s expressive voice reading The Ugly Duckling, marveling at his ability to keep even the youngest children rapt, no matter how many times they had heard the story.

They had worked out a system for bringing in food, for tending to minor emergencies – even for ensuring that the ‘bodies’ posing on gurneys in the morgue could walk about and exercise on schedule.

They had developed a signal – three quick blasts of an airhorn – to alert them if the Germans stormed the building. The door to the ambulance bay was a way out, though the bravest of them knew they might be running into the arms of the enemy.

Zoe turned to her cousin. “Any good news is a blessing.”

Geritt sat beside her on a low wooden bench.

“Two of the city’s mortuaries have agreed to help when we are ready to evacuate our refugees.

They will keep transport our ‘bodies’ once or twice a day – and they will keep a couple of marked vans in the ambulance bay with keys in the ignition so that anyone escaping will have a chance to outrun the Germans. ”

MILA

Mila struggled, falling backwards, landing in a heap on the cold ground, limbs entangled with her captor’s.

“Let me go,” she kicked and pushed, but powerful hands held her.

Her mouth found an arm and she bit down.

“Ouch! Mila, it is I.”

Her head swiveled. “Pieter?”

“I was waiting till dark. You beat me to the vantage point.”

“Did I get him?”

“We cannot be sure.” He helped her to her feet. “But neither can we wait to find out. We need to get out of here – now!”

But heavy footsteps barreled into the street and the WAH-wah of police sirens pierced the air before they reached the end of the street.

Mila blessed the falling dusk as they crouched between stands of trees and alleys.

“There is a canal on the other side of these woods,” Pieter said, leading Mila through the brush. “I have a small dinghy anchored there. My plan was – is to take it to the north end of town not far from the railroad depot.”

He picked up his pace as their distance widened.

“There is a ten o’clock train to Brussels,” he huffed, as the sky above them began to flash red and blue. “We need to be on it,” he told her over the noise of screeching sirens, “before the polizie move to shut everything down.”

Mila followed in Pieter’s wake, moving fast to keep up with his stride, nearly stumbling on the roots of an oak tree and feeling his strength as he steadied her.

She was breathing hard by the time they reached a clearing and she saw, in the pallor of a cold moon, what appeared to be a bobbing row boat.

Pieter stepped in, then reached for her hand.

The dinghy rocked under their weight. She fought to keep her balance and sat hard on the wooden bench.

Pieter grabbed for the oars. In seconds, they were moving away from shore, the ebbing sound of police sirens giving way to the steady splash of oars in the water.

EVI

Something was amiss. Evi could feel it the moment she entered the Beekhof’s kitchen. Mevrouw’ s back was to her, leaning over the sink, but Jacob and Papa Beekhof, at opposite ends of the table, wore decidedly grave expressions.

“What?” she asked, searching Jacob’s face, dropping a bag full of clothing on the floor.

Willem brought in a wooden crate and stopped short at the silence.

“What has happened?” Evi asked again.

For a long moment, there was no answer.

Mevreouw turned to face them, her mouth a grim line.

At last, Jacob met her gaze. “Do you remember,” he said, “when I told you the Beekhofs had managed to obtain a Dutch ID for me?”

She nodded.

“Well, it seems the identification I have belonged to a guy who was deceased…a guy about my age named Hans Mittlinger, who was living in Amsterdam when he died.”

Jacob’s gaze met Papa Beekhof’s for a second, then flitted back to hers. She could read the anguish in his eyes.

“Well, it seems…” he exhaled noisily. “It seems the guy was German by birth, but the Germans don’t seem to know he’s dead.”

Evi scrunched up her face, looked briefly to Papa Beekhof, then settled her gaze on Jacob’s face. “ Ja ? ”

“So, Hans Mittlinger is being conscripted into the Wehrmacht …the German Army…”

Evi’s eyes grew wide.

Jacob nodded slowly. “He is to report to the High Command in Maybach II, just south of Berlin, at 0700 hours on the eighteenth day of March.

Evi dropped heavily into a chair.

ZOE

They were deep in conversation in the dim light of the basement morgue.

“ Lieve god , the children are gone,” Zoe said. “We can only pray they can be transported from the mortuaries to safety….”

Kurt shook his head. “We will never know. But we did what we could. Now we pray.”

Zoe sighed. She looked down half-heartedly at the list they were preparing for Gerritt.

“You and Doctor Aaron should be the next to go. You know that.”

“Aaron, yes, but I will take my chances until the others have escaped.”

Zoe looked at him and sighed. “How do you decide whose lives are more important than others,” she murmured.

Kurt did not hesitate. “The hiding mothers. Some of them sent their own children abroad to keep them safe from warfare…”

The list was not yet half completed when the three blasts tore into their consciousness.

Zoe was the first to move.

“The airhorn,” she said. “ Lieve god , Kurt,” she said, “They are here…the Germans. You must get out of here now.”

“The others first,” he protested. “I will help them toward the ambulance bay. How many will the van hold, do you think? ”

Zoe shook him by the shoulders. “You are not hearing me, Kurt. You must go first. You are high on the list of the Reich’s most wanted. The others will know what to do.”

He hesitated, his face a mask

“Go now, Kurt – if not for your own sake, then for mine.”

He looked at her and something electric passed between them. He reached for her, and she knew she must go with him.

She was propelling him out through the door to the ambulance bay when the first sounds of jackboots began clattering down the stairs and daylight flooded the morgue.

She had never driven a vehicle this large, but when the van was full of fleeing souls, she slid into the driver’s seat, turned the key in the ignition, and sped out of the bay, tires screeching.

Heart hammering in her chest, she lowered her speed as she reached the main road, realizing, belatedly, that a speeding mortuary van might be a certain target for Germans on high alert.

Slowly, steadily, she guided the van through familiar streets, eyes darting left, right, straight in front of her, watchful for check points, for gathering German soldiers, for signs of anything out of the ordinary.

It was not until she pulled to a stop in the alley behind the Klaasen Mortuary that she realized she had been holding her breath. Gulping air, she jumped out of the driver’s seat, raised the back door of the van, and flung open the mortuary door.

Shivering in the cold, in their hospital nightshirts, the evacuees filed into the mortuary.

“ God zegene ,” Zoe whispered to each as they passed. “God bless.”

Kurt was the last to disembark. “How can I leave you, Zoe? I cannot think of it. I may never see you again…”

She met his gaze, and a thought came together in her head.

“Stay in the van, Kurt. Get up on the gurney and under a blanket. If we should be stopped, you are a very ill patient – near to unconsciousness, you understand?”

Kurt’s brows knit together.

“There is no time to explain. Do you trust me? ”

The shortest of pauses. “With my life.”

MILA

The latest edition of the Telegraaf , which Pieter had managed to find after they crossed the border into Belgium, was cause for muted celebration.

The Americans had successfully taken the Rhine at Remagen in Germany. Another blow to Herr Hitler. Not surprisingly, the German army had responded by executing thirty-six Dutch men and women pulled at random at a deserted fair ground in Amsterdam.

But Queen Wilhelmina had announced her plans to return to the Netherlands.

It could only mean, Mila thought, that liberation could not be far behind.

They had very nearly missed the train to Brussels.

The station master had been wary of their soiled, damp clothing, and it was only after Pieter had convinced the man he was on holiday with his mistress – that they had had too much to drink and had slipped in a darkened garden in their haste to catch the train that he had eyed Mila with unconcealed longing and sold Pieter the tickets.

She looked with satisfaction at the newspaper. Below the fold on page one, a story under bold headlines reported the assassination of Amsterdam Police Captain Reimar de Boer in ‘a bold second attack on his life.’

The assassin was still at large, the story read, but authorities were employing the latest advances in forensic science in an attempt to trace the bullet lodged in de Boer’s spinal cord to the revolver used by the assassin.

Mila put down her tea cup in the small café in Brussels and passed the paper back to Pieter, pointing to the last sentence.

“Can they do that, do you think? ”

“Trace the bullet?” Peter shrugged. “Perhaps. “The science is not exact. But ja , I suppose it is possible.”

The Luger lay deep in the depths of the canal, but the chance that the bullet could be traced to her was altogether alarming. Mila wondered when, if ever, she would walk again on Dutch soil…

Oddly, it was little Hondje she thought she would miss the most…

“That means,” she said finally, “I could not go home again if I wanted to.”

Pieter took his hands in hers. “Not for a while. Would you want to?”