Winter's End, page 21
Gerritt’s face registered his hesitance.
“It will not be an easy place for people to co-exist,” he said. “It will be cramped at best, with little available light. Anxiety levels will soar, and it may be all but impossible to keep the little ones from acting out.”
A vision of Kurt reading stories passed before Zoe’s eyes.
“We can bring in some light – lanterns perhaps,” she offered.
“But people will have to make do with pallets or blankets on the floor.”
Zoe brought her hands to her face. “It is far from ideal, Gerritt. But little is these days – and in the worst case, with the ambulance bay outside, there’s a chance, at least, that some of these people may be able to outrun German bullets…”
MILA
Without a conscious thought about where she was going, Mila found herself staring across the intersection at the closed and padlocked door of the plumber’s office. There was no sign of Pieter or anyone else.
Heartsick, and wary of being seen in the area after her father’s admonition, she tugged gently at Hondje’s leash and turned the corner – and realized almost instantly that she was not far from the auto parts shop where she had met with Pieter and Johan Steegen.
She stood for a moment outside the shop, and watched as Steegen slid out from under a silver-colored Porsche. Hearing the tinkle of a bell over her head, she opened the door and ducked inside, Hondje close at her heels.
Steegen, seeing her, rose and looked around him, as though to be sure no one was watching. Then he nodded formally. “Missen Brouwer.”
He reached down to ruffle Hondje’s topknot. “We have not seen you for a while. Is there a problem with your father’s Daimler?”
Mila smiled. “Not that I am aware, dank u. I was – I thought perhaps you might know how to help with another matter.”
His heavy brows knit together.
“Is there something else?”
Mila bit her lip. I have been trying without success to contact Pieter,” she whispered. “Have you by any chance seen him of late?”
“I have not,” Steegen said “But it is quite possible he is in Amsterdam.”
Mila’s brow furrowed. “In Amsterdam?”
Steegen inclined his head. “It appears there is – a mission he is intent on completing.”
Surely not, Mila’s mouth fell open. Surely, Pieter would not have gone back to mount a second attempt on de Boer’s life…
Steegen’s expression did nothing to dispute it.
“Is there something else?” he asked.
Oh, Pieter….
She cleared her throat. “As a matter of fact, there is,” she murmured. She told him briefly about the assault on the barge, the Nazis’ cold-blooded murder of Lotte Strobel.
“There is no way to know how far the barge might have floated,” she told him, “Or if it can even be located. But if it can be found, is there a way, do you think, to bring it back here to Haarlem?”
The tall Dutchman met her gaze. “Off the coast of Rotterdam, you say?”
“Ja.”
Steegen passed a big hand over his face. “I cannot promise,” he said at length. “But we can try. I will need help. Let me talk to Bakker and some of the others.”
Mila bit her lip. With Daan gone, and Pieter who knew where, she understood their resources were dwindling.
Steegen lifted a tray full of nuts and bolts. “I must get back to work,” he told her. “One never knows who may be watching…”
Mila nodded, backing toward the door, winding Hondje’s leash around her wrist.
EVI
It seemed to Evi that the morning sun was warmer on her back. It made her feel less burdened, somehow, as though winter might after all come to an end – that soon there would be spring vegetables, and some of the grief that still consumed her might begin seep away in the sunlight.
She had followed Jacob out the back door of the farm house, her jacket open, the Colt tucked into the waistband of her skirt. A target practice, Jacob had suggested, might be just the thing to keep her focused.
“I have butchered a chicken,” Mevrouw Beekhof had called from behind them. “Behagen, the two of you – remind Papa and Willem to be here in time for Evi’s birthday dinner at noon.”
Evi’s eyes widened. It was a difficult choice, she knew, for Mevrouw to deal with the few chickens left in her yard – whether to keep them for the occasional egg, or surrender them one by one for food. That she had sacrificed one of them on Evi’s behalf touched her to the core – and the very thought of roasted chicken for lunch was enough to lift her spirits.
“I will race you to the targets,” she shouted to Jacob, running through the cleared brush. “The last one there is a kaskop!”
“What’s a kaskop?” Jacob took up running beside her.
“I think in English, it means, cheese head,” she called. “And that will be you! You are a cheese head!”
“So, you say,” Jacob panted, picking up enough speed to pass her, but flagging at the end so that he nearly collided with her when she turned, hands triumphantly on her hips, at the target range.
“Whoa,” he managed, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Damn, I am seriously out of shape!”
Breathing hard, Evi said nothing, just stared into his amber eyes. He was close enough that she could feel his breath, and she all but swayed at the memory of the single kiss they had shared that night under the oak tree.
She willed him, yearned for him to kiss her again. But he blinked after a moment and pulled away.
“Good job, Itty-Bitty,” he said.
Embarrassed now, she backed away and reached for the Colt. “I’ll bet I can out-shoot you, too.”
“Hah!” he retorted, bringing out his pistol. “That will be the day You’re on!”
. . .
After an hour, it was quite clear Jacob could absolutely out-shoot her, hitting the collection of makeshift targets very time. But Evi hit them often enough to take pride in her own skill.
He looked at his watch. “Time to round up the Beekhof men for your birthday lunch,” he said. “Wait here. I’ll go down and get them.”
Evi cocked her head. It was not the first time she had observed Jacob and the Beekhof men going off to work in the lower field.
“It is too early to be planting,” she said, “What are the three of you doing in the lower field?”
“Clearing,” Jacob told her. “Just clearing the field. It’s a long, tiring job.”
She shaded her eyes, watched his broad back recede, shifted her weight from one foot to the other. After a moment, the earlier playfulness returned.
“Wait,” she called. “I will race you!”
She could not be sure whether his silence was assent, or whether he simply had not heard her, but she began to lope after him, through tall grasses that seemed to go on forever. She thought she heard voices, stopped to listen, but saw no one.
“Jacob? Willem! Where are you?”
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 obersturmfuhrer 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.
“The barge is back, Evi, in the same berth alongside the Spaarne where it has always been. Meneer Steegen says it is still in fair condition and does not appear to have been ransacked.”
Evi thoughts flew to baby Jacob, but Mevrouw closed her eyes and shook her head. “There was no baby, Evi, no one living or dead on board the barge…But everything else – your clothing, pots and pans…everything seems to be the way it was left.”
Mvreouw paused. “It is your home, Evi,” she said finally. “You are able to return to it if you wish.”
Tears sprang, faster than fireflies on a summer night, and Evi let them flow. She shook her head. “I cannot return…not now, not yet…”
Mevreouw covered the space between them and took her into her arms. “It is all right, Evi. I understand. Behagen, you may stay here as long you like…it is only that you needed to know…”
ZOE
The phone was ringing as Zoe fit the key into the lock of her apartment. It was past nine, the end of another long day helping Gerrit deal with the trials of too many people in too little space, and fearful of Gestapo intrusion.
