Page 99 of Winter’s End

The cobbler took a moment before answering.

“I know your name. We have a mutual friend, I think, by the name of Pieter.”

Mila nodded. “We do.”

The cobbler wiped his hands on his apron. “Berend,” he called over his shoulder. “Can you watch the front of the shop?”

A young man with sharp blue eyes and a neat, short beard, stepped from behind a curtained area. He wore an apron much like older man’s.

“Follow me, please,” the cobbler told Mila. “I may have just the shoes you are looking for.”

She followed him behind a curtained area into a small office, where he shook her hand and offered her a chair.

“There is too much glass out front,” he said, sitting behind a cluttered desk. “Here we have a bit of privacy.”

He held out a hand. “My name is Klaus Jaansen. I have known Pieter for many years – since long before we found ourselves on the same side of a cause.”

Klaus Jaansen leaned back in his chair. “I think I can guess why you are here.”

Mila felt instantly comfortable.

“Pieter came to Amsterdam to hold a certain police captain accountable for Daan Mulder’s abduction.”

She nodded.

“We offered our assistance, but Pieter believed he could act on his own. This mission is personal to him.”

“It is. I was here with him for the initial rendezvous. A random passer-by was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“And I can only guess,” Jaansen said, “that Pieter wants to accomplish what he came here for.”

“I want to help, if I can,” Mila said.

Jaansen paused, but briefly. “The target resides in Diemen,” he said, confirming what the day nurse had told her.

He gave her an address. “My guess is that Pieter is somewhere in the vicinity. But it is not so safely walkable.”

She was about to speak when Jaansen leaned forward. “The place will be guarded, of that I am sure…and I must tell you there is not much we can do to protect you if your plans should go awry.”

He paused. “But if you are determined, we can provide you with a bed for tonight, and a map and a bicycle in the morning.”

EVI

She must have passed out, because the first thing Evi remembered when she swam to the surface of a misty fog was Zoe bending over her. She did not know for a moment where she was – only that the pain in her shoulder hurt like a mad thing as Zoe worked to extricate her arm from her layers of clothing.

“Ouch! Oh, Zoe it hurts.”

“You are a hero, Evi. You need to know that. You shot down two German guards. My father and his friends are free.”

Evi blinked, her gaze darting around the old barn, settling finally on Zoe’s ministrations.

She did not feel like a hero. She felt like the daughter of a woman murdered by Nazis who had managed a bit of payback. What was it Jacob had called it?Even Steven...

“You were shot in the shoulder,” Zoe told her. “It is a flesh wound, I think. I do not see a bullet, although there may be fragments.”

Zoe was tearing a strip of fabric from her underskirt. “There was fair bit of blood, but that is subsiding” she said, wrapping the cloth around Evi’s arm.

Evi winced.