Where Treasure Hides

by Johnnie Alexander Donley

  The other passenger moved on, and the conductor turned to her with a gentle smile. “My schedule, miss,” he said, quickly pressing a piece of paper in her hand and walking away.

  Alison shoved the paper in her pocket and hurried off the train. Inside the station, she sank onto an out-of-the-way bench. Once she could breathe normally, she pulled out the paper and smoothed it on her lap. Small printed letters provided dates, times, and train routes. Beneath the schedule was an outline of a fish. She smiled, thanking God for this blessing.

  Outside the station, she found Will with two bicycles. “Look what the conductor gave me,” she said, handing him the schedule. “We have a friend.”

  Will read the paper. “Do you trust him?”

  “Didn’t you see the Christian symbol? Besides, he had a kind face.”

  “I have a kind face and I blow things up. Your father has a kind face and he’s a forger.”

  Pieter’s artistic imagination may have left him, but his eyes and fingers worked perfectly to create the documents needed by the Dutch Underground.

  Alison tilted her head in thought as she settled her bag into the bike basket. “Papa doesn’t have a kind face. His eyes are too intense.”

  “Kind face or not, I’ll see what I can find out about our new friend before we trust him.” Will pocketed the paper. “How were our packages received?”

  “With buttermilk and cake.” Alison pedaled away, but Will quickly caught up. They cycled along the city streets toward the gallery in silence, ignoring the German soldiers who frequented the rebuilt restaurants and shops.

  When they turned on Oude Binnenstraat, Alison stopped. Will slowed, did a U-turn, and maneuvered his bike alongside hers.

  “Do you know what today is?” she asked.

  He sighed deeply and jammed his hands in his pockets. “I know.”

  “Two years.” But neither the memories nor the grief had eased. Too much had been lost on that single day.

  “Let’s go.”

  They left the business district behind and a few minutes later turned onto the cratered cobblestone street leading to the canal house. Because of the rough pavement, they walked their bicycles past the remains of a once affluent neighborhood, now a cemetery of bricks and stones.

  The exterior walls of a few houses stood precariously upright, resembling dollhouses with their open interiors. Others had totally collapsed into rubble.

  Alison and Will walked their bikes toward the mound of broken bricks and splintered lumber that had been their home. Despite their grief, both had reluctantly helped in the search for anything that could be salvaged from the debris. Papa had found one of the Grecian statues lying unbroken on top of a crushed ottoman. Many of the books in Opa’s library had remained shelved, though the shelves rested horizontal on the ground.

  Alison wandered around the perimeter of the rubble, kicking at the loose bricks that littered the ground. At the rear of the house, she climbed over a pile of debris to the area where her desk had been found, its legs sheared off the top. She had found a few of her belongings there, but not the keepsake she wanted most.

  Once winter released the ground from its frozen grip, she had ridden her bike here once a week or so and dug in the debris. But the pewter lighthouse stayed hidden within the rubble. She didn’t even try looking for it today. At least she still had Ian’s gold pen safely tucked in her purse.

  Instead she circled to where Will stood, near the remains of the kitchen hearth. Its pockmarked chimney stood about seven feet high, a silent sentinel guarding the tear-stained ground where Tante Meg and Gerta Brant had taken their last breaths.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Immediately after the evening roll call, Ian slipped into the third-floor theater. He paused inside the door to let his eyes adjust to the darkness, then crept beneath the stage. Rustling among the odds and ends stored there, he found a bundle of clothing and escape aids that Dodge had hidden there earlier. Slinging it on his back, he shoved against a heavy trunk, sliding it away from the wall and revealing the square opening into a forgotten passage.

  He and Mitch Harris had found the corridor while working on the scenery for a POW vaudeville production last winter. Throughout the cold winter months, they had secretly explored the passage and made their plans. In letters written to a fictitious aunt, Dodge, the British escape officer, sent coded messages to MI9, the London War Office. The equally fictitious Prisoners Welfare Fund smuggled escape kits to the prisoners in charitable packages of food, games, and cigarettes. The melting of the snow heralded the opening of escape season.

  Ian took the pen-sized torch from the bundle and switched it on. The thin beam barely cut through the dark passage. Taking a deep breath, he raced through the corridor to narrow stone steps that spiraled against one of the round watchtowers. The stairs opened into an unused pantry, empty except for the cobwebs that laced the shelves together and a square window that overlooked the grassy moat.

  Through the paneless window, he peered up at the quarter moon, his beacon to freedom. He wished Mitch was with him instead of in the prisoner cells. The captain had picked the wrong time to get caught in the parcels office. The goons thought he was pilfering items from the prisoner packages, stored there to be searched and x-rayed before being distributed to the POWs. He was pilfering all right—the contraband from the Prisoners Welfare Fund’s most recent package. Fortunately, he had managed to hide the parcel, so another prisoner smuggled it out before the goons found it.

  Ian wanted to postpone the escape attempt until Mitch was released, but Dodge wouldn’t let him. “You’re our guinea pig, Dev,” Dodge had said, chomping on his unlit cigar. “If you get out, Mitch can use the same route. So can others.” Ian’s protests had been ignored.

  In a way, he was glad Dodge had outranked him. He’d already been at Colditz a year too long. And he surely didn’t want to tell his grandchildren that he spent the entire war in a POW camp. He quickly changed into the laborer’s clothes that Dodge had hustled for him. It was time to get back in the game.

  He stuck the silk map and compass from the escape kit in his sock and pulled a navy blue knit cap over his hair. A worn leather wallet, with the forged identification papers and money from the Prisoners Welfare Fund, went in his pocket along with a switchblade. There was nothing left to do but breathe a prayer and climb out the window.

  Hanging off the window ledge, Ian dropped to the outer courtyard. He hugged the tower wall, on the lookout for the guards. Seeing no one, he edged his way to the gate that joined the watch tower with an outer wall. He knelt in the shadows and held his breath as a sentry strolled past the gate. Pressing his back against the tower wall, he counted to ten before peering out again.

  The sentry had disappeared. Taking a deep breath, he dashed past the gate toward the outer wall and across the drawbridge. Sliding down the bank feet-first, he dislodged a rock and tensed as it bounced toward the bottom. He lay still, waiting for the sirens and rifle shots. But only the orchestra of the crickets and frogs from the nearby fish pond filled the night air.

  After another calming breath, he slipped through the wicket gate that led into the dry moat, the gate he had seen so often from his upper-story window. He jogged along the broad moat as it circled the fortress, staying close to its wall, until he reached the park gate. Again, he dropped to his stomach while he listened carefully for any sounds of alarm.

  When a long minute had passed, he slipped through the gate and scurried to the opposite side of the park wall. And kept on walking until early the next morning when he reached the train station at Leisnig and bought a ticket to Dresden.

  * * *

  “Why don’t you go to bed, schatje.” Hendrik closed his book. “They’ll be home soon.”

  Alison looked up from her mending and glanced at the clock. It was almost two o’clock in the morning, and neither Will nor his father had returned. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep.”

  “Something must have gone wrong.” Pieter paced
by the second-story window. Every minute or two, he peeked through the heavy blackout curtains. “I should have gone with them.”

  “Do you know where they are?” Hendrik asked his son.

  “They didn’t tell me.”

  “All we can do is pray they haven’t been arrested.”

  Alison stared at her grandfather. “Arrested? Do you think—?”

  “No,” Hendrik soothed, but worry deepened the wrinkles in his ruddy cheeks. “We cannot give up hope.”

  “They’re here.” Pieter rushed from the room.

  Alison wanted to race after him, but she took her grandfather’s arm and let him set the pace, knowing he was as eager as she to get downstairs.

  They entered the kitchen and found Will sitting at the table, his head buried in his hands. Pieter appeared in the doorway from the back room, his face pale and a chill in his gray-blue eyes. “Brant’s been wounded,” he said as he filled a pan with water and put it on the stove to boil.

  “What happened?” asked Alison.

  Pieter glanced at Will, but he didn’t answer.

  “An explosion,” Pieter said, gathering towels from a drawer. “Brant has shrapnel in his legs. Alison, keep an eye on the pot. When the water gets hot, bring it back here.”

  “Will he be all right?” she asked.

  “He won’t be going on any more midnight missions. But if he stays off his feet for a few days, he should be fine.” Pieter returned to his patient, and Hendrik followed him.

  Alison drew a chair next to Will and put her arm around his shoulders. “Did you hear Papa? He said your dad will be fine.”

  Will raised his head and rubbed his hands over his face. His eyes were rimmed in red and blood caked his shirt.

  Alison gasped. “Are you hurt too?”

  He barely shook his head, as if the slightest movement pained him. “It’s not my blood,” he muttered.

  “Your dad . . .”

  “No.” He gripped Alison’s hand. “There was someone else. He . . . he died.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Please, Will. I want to know.”

  He studied her, as if making up his mind, and the sorrow in his soft brown eyes tore at her heart. “His name was Danny de Graaf.”

  “I know him.” Stunned, she shook her head in disbelief. “He married a classmate of mine.”

  “Hannah.”

  “That’s right.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “They have children.”

  “Two-year-old twins—Aaron and Anna.”

  “Oh, Will. Does she know?”

  “I brought Dad straight here and . . . How can I tell her, Alison? She didn’t want Danny to work with the Underground. But then we found out his name was on the list for Westerbork. We had to hide him.” He abruptly stood, knocking his chair to the floor and squeezing his head with his hands.

  The water bubbled on the stove, and Alison turned off the burner. She poured the boiling water into an enamel basin. “I need to take this to Papa.”

  “Let me.” Will rested his hands on either side of the basin. “Hannah isn’t expecting to see Danny till later in the week. I’ll go to her after the sun comes up.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  He shook his head. “It’s my fault Danny died. I need to do this myself.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Alison had given little thought to Hannah de Graaf the past few years. But since Danny’s death, she couldn’t get the young widow out of her thoughts. Her heart ached for Hannah’s tragic loss, but the senselessness of it made her angry. No matter how many acts of sabotage Will and the others committed, no matter how many documents her father forged, it wasn’t enough. The needs only became more dire as the Nazis ground their heels deeper into the soul of the Dutch populace.

  Danny was no more than a martyr to a lost cause. And now his wife and children were left to fend for themselves.

  At least Papa and Will were spending more time at the gallery instead of sneaking out after curfew to attend their secret meetings. Brant, too, though he had little choice, as the pain in his legs prevented him from moving much beyond his bedroom.

  Three or four days had passed before Alison realized the men, including Opa, were occupying themselves in different areas of the gallery. When they came together for meals, they barely spoke to one another. She found herself avoiding Papa after they had another argument about smuggling her out of the country. When she turned to Will for support, he had stared at her and left the room, wearing his guilt like an impenetrable suit of armor.

  Only Opa provided quiet companionship as they relaxed together in Alison’s sitting room in the hour before bedtime, he with a book, she with her mending or her paints. Her fingers busy with a needle or brush, she thought about Hannah and the fatherless babies, her mind wrestling with one persistent question: If on the eve of her wedding, Hannah had been given a glimpse into the future, would she still have married Danny?

  If Alison could return to the moment when she last saw Ian, would she tell him how much she loved him before she let him go?

  * * *

  Tired of being cooped up with Papa’s angry sneer and Will’s vacant eyes, Alison spent a busy morning in the kitchen. She wrapped her freshly baked strudel in an embroidered cloth and placed it in a basket along with a few ripe pears and four jars of green beans. With no one around to stop her, she left a note for Papa, tied a scarf around her hair, and headed out on the bike ride to the de Graaf home.

  Hannah answered her knock, caution in her deep-brown eyes. Her dark, unruly curls were pinned away from her face, accentuating her high cheekbones. A yellow Star of David adorned her pale-green housedress.

  Standing awkwardly on the stoop with her basket in both hands, Alison smiled brightly. “Hello, Hannah. I’m Alison Schuyler. Do you remember me? From school?”

  “Of course I do.” Hannah ventured a smile. “You’re the American girl.”

  “That’s right.” Alison grinned. No matter how long she lived in Rotterdam, her earliest classmates always thought of her as the American girl. Strange to know now that the only thing American about her was her birth certificate and her passport. She was as much a Dutch girl as any of them.

  “Please come in.” Hannah opened the door and Alison entered a small, well-kept parlor furnished with an upholstered sofa and matching armchairs. A multi-branched candlestick—a menorah—and a wedding photo in a silver frame were displayed on an antique hutch. A family heirloom, Alison guessed, perhaps fashioned by a de Graaf ancestor.

  “I brought you a strudel.” Alison offered Hannah the basket. “And a few other things.”

  “This is very kind of you,” Hannah said as if the phrase had worn a groove in her mind, a record she was tired of playing. She set the basket on a nearby table and gestured toward the sofa. “Please. Have a seat.”

  “Will Brant told me about Danny. I’m very sorry.” Alison smoothed her skirt as she sat down. “Is there anything you need, Hannah? Anything I can do for you?”

  Hannah laughed a strange, humorless laugh. “Turn back time, perhaps?”

  “I would.” “I love you, Alison Schuyler.” Her chin quivered and she shushed Ian’s whisper. “If I had the power.”

  Hannah’s reflective dark eyes studied Alison. “Not only for my own sake, I think,” she said gently. “But also for your own.”

  Alison gave a sheepish nod.

  “Come.” Hannah suddenly stood, her voice firm. “We will taste your strudel.”

  “Before lunch?”

  “And why not if we want to?” She grabbed the basket and led the way to a shining kitchen. Red geraniums bloomed on the windowsill over the sink, and a portrait of Queen Wilhelmina, the exiled monarch, adorned the wall over the oilcloth-covered table.

  “Danny’s mother has taken the children for a stroll.” Hannah heated the coffeepot and gathered plates. “We will have time for a quiet visit before their return.”

  “I interrup
ted you,” Alison said apologetically, “when you wanted to be alone.”

  “The interruption was welcome. Please, will you slice the strudel, and I will pour this black mixture. I refuse to call it coffee.”

  Alison chuckled and served the strudel while Hannah placed two steaming cups on the table. They sat across from each other, smiling as if they were naughty children sneaking dessert before dinner.

  Hannah’s dark eyes twinkled. “My Danny, he loved his whims. Sometimes I’d have to scold him not to behave like such a boy. But he never could resist a bit of fun. Even something as simple as this treat.” Her cheeks flushed. “I can’t be serious all the time, not if I’m to honor his memory.”

  “No, of course not.”

  Hannah looked across the table at Alison. “You know of my sorrow. Will you tell me yours?”

  “Mine?”

  “Why do you wish to turn back time?”

  Alison laid down her fork, momentarily unsure how to respond to such directness. But Hannah’s compassionate expression inspired confidence.

  “His name is Ian. Lieutenant Ian Devlin.”

  “A soldier.” Hannah’s sigh was filled with sympathy.

  “A prisoner, actually. At a place called Colditz in Germany.”

  Hannah stretched her hand across the table and clasped Alison’s fingers. “I will pray that Adonai will bring him safely back to you.”

  “Thank you.” Alison wondered why she and Hannah hadn’t been closer friends in school. But the answer was painfully obvious. They had moved in vastly different circles, separated by class and by religion.

  “If you ever need anything,” Alison blurted, “you must let me know. If there’s anything I can do for you . . .”

  A shadow crossed Hannah’s face and she stiffened slightly. “Did Will send you?”