“I hope so. It might help our chances of getting you away.”
“What about Hannah’s chances?”
“I will return later and see what can be done for her. Does that ease your mind?”
“You’ll be too late.” She bit her lip and stared at the traffic ahead of them, biding her time.
Duret braked for an intersection, and she clasped the door handle. “Forgive me, Monsieur.” Before he could stop her, Alison opened the door and slipped out. She quickly walked back toward the de Graaf home, careful not to let the Nazi soldiers see her. Before slipping to the rear of a neighboring house, she turned around and waved to Duret, then crept to the back of the de Graaf house. She listened at the back door and, hearing nothing, cracked it open. An elderly woman, whom she recognized as Danny’s mother, sat at the kitchen table humming to herself. A lacy cap covered her silver hair and a crocheted shawl enveloped her frail shoulders. She peered at Alison through rheumy eyes.
“Shh.” Alison placed her finger on her lips. The poor woman, already in poor health, had rapidly declined since Danny’s death. She smiled and hummed her tune. No wonder Hannah was reluctant to leave her.
Hearing voices from the living room, Alison listened at the door to Hannah’s desperate pleas. “I know nothing. My husband never told me of his plans. Herr Brant was his friend, not mine.”
“The saboteur Brant was seen coming and going from this house,” said a dispassionate male voice. “Do you deny it?”
“He only came to see if I needed anything. We’ve known each other since we were children.”
“He is your lover, perhaps? Is that why he came to see you?”
“Of course not. Only as a friend. My husband’s friend.”
“Nevertheless, you will come with us. If what you say is true, we will return you to your home. If not . . .” He let the sentence hang.
“My children . . . I can’t leave them.”
“I give you the time it takes me to smoke my cigarette to make your arrangements.”
A momentary silence ended when the kitchen door opened. Alison sprang back as Hannah entered, eyes wide in fright. Catching her breath, she pointed to the pantry and pushed Alison into it. “Did you hear?” she whispered frantically, clasping Alison’s hands.
“Hannah, I’m so sorry.”
“Is it true what he said? Will was arrested?”
Alison nodded, her mind racing to come up with a plan. “We need to leave right now. I’m going to England, and you can come with me.”
“To England? Now?” Hannah smiled and her face brightened. “I prayed for a deliverer, and you came.”
“Hurry, Hannah. We can go out the back.”
“No, Alison. I will go with the German. You will take the children.” Hannah placed her hand against Alison’s mouth to stop her protest. “Please, there is no time to argue. Take the children with you. To England. Will you?”
Both women froze as the kitchen door opened. Alison pressed her back against the pantry’s rear shelf. Though she couldn’t see who spoke, she recognized the German’s harsh voice. “No more delay.”
Hannah held Alison’s gaze, her question in her eyes. Alison nodded, and Hannah squeezed her fingers, then grabbed a jar of peaches from the pantry shelf. She slipped through the door, leaving Alison alone in the shadows.
“Mama de Graaf, here are peaches for your supper.” Hannah’s voice sounded calm and soothing. “Take them next door to Beppie. She will take care of you now. And tell her the children are napping. Can you do that?”
Alison heard the scrape of chair legs on the floor and the humming changed to muttering. Shutting her eyes, scarcely daring to breathe, she pictured Hannah helping her mother-in-law to her feet and leading her to the door.
“I’m ready now.” Only the slightest tremor betrayed Hannah’s fear.
Alison forced herself to count to one hundred once, then again, before she ventured from the pantry. Taking care not to make any noise, she peeked into the living room and breathed a sigh of relief at finding it empty. She rushed up the stairs and into the children’s bedroom. The window, covered with a heavy blackout curtain, let in no light. Alison turned the switch and glanced around the room. The twins napped in a narrow bed, Aaron’s arm carelessly slung over Anna’s shoulder.
Alison carefully moved aside the curtain and peered out. Rain splattered against the windowpane in thick drops. The Germans, Hannah with them, were gone. Alison started to turn away, then did a double take as a dark Bentley drove slowly up the street and parked several houses down. Monsieur Duret, coming back for her.
As quickly as she could, Alison rummaged through drawers and the wardrobe, gathering a change of clothes and supplies for each child into a bag. She found their jackets and nudged Aaron awake. As she helped him into the jacket, footsteps sounded from downstairs.
“Alison?” Monsieur Duret called quietly.
She went to the top of the stairs. “Up here.”
By the time he entered the room, both children were wearing caps and jackets, rubbing their eyes and asking for their mama.
“They took her,” Alison said, glancing at the children.
“I saw them leave.” Monsieur Duret clasped his hands behind his back. “You are taking the children?”
“All the way to England.”
“Come, then. We’ve already delayed too long.”
They managed to get the twins downstairs with little fuss. Alison looked out the front door, where the rain, now a downpour, created a gray screen between them and the Bentley. Duret sniffed, then bent his head and hurried toward the car. In a few moments, he pulled in front of the house. Alison settled the children in the backseat, talking quietly to them while Duret concentrated on navigating the rain-soaked streets.
Alison’s dress, totally drenched, clung to her legs, and her wet hair stuck to the back of her neck. She rubbed her chilled arms and silently prayed for Papa and Will, Opa and Hannah. She couldn’t bear to think about Will and Hannah in Gestapo interrogation rooms, or that her grandfather might never leave the colorless hospital ward. That she might never see any of them again.
Papa might have been arrested too. Or perhaps he was hiding somewhere in Amsterdam. Had he really thought he could get close enough to Göring to kill him? Or had that been Will’s role in the failed attempt? So many secrets. Despite all the trips she had made, escorting children to the safe houses and foster homes, they had never trusted her with their sabotage plans.
But their secretiveness had not been enough to protect her. Hannah was taken from her home simply because Will had visited her. The Germans would have even more reason to suspect Alison than they did Hannah. If not for her grandfather’s heart attack and Theodor’s warning, she might be in an interrogation room herself.
She shivered again.
At least Ian was safe at Colditz.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Ian drove the truck for several hours, stopping only for Libby’s needs. He avoided towns as much as possible and used the descending sun as his guide for keeping to his southwesterly tack. When night fell, he drove cautiously without headlights until he dozed off, jerking awake when the truck bounced into a rut. He leaned out the window, peering into the darkness, until he found a cutoff in a stand of trees. Parking the truck as far off the road as possible, he slept fitfully until sunrise.
He guessed they were about fifty kilometers, as the crow flies, from the Swiss border when the truck’s engine sputtered and died, the result of another in a long line of calculated decisions he had been forced to make since his escape from Colditz. He couldn’t get fuel without going into a town or village, and he didn’t want to risk arousing anyone’s suspicions. Especially now that he had Libby with him. Besides, he might need the little bit of money he had to get across the border.
In studying the silk map, he also guessed he was farther west than his original destination, an outcropping along the border known as the Ransom Salient. A returned escapee, who had be
en caught in Italy, had given Ian detailed instructions on how to cross the border at that point. But Ian’s primary concern now was to get out of Germany as quickly as possible. He’d have to trust God to lead him to a safe crossing point. At least he had managed to put some distance between him and Gretchen’s farm. For that, he was thankful.
He folded the map, consolidating the contents of the truck into two bags, then used the blankets to fashion a type of backpack. With frequent checks of his compass, he and Libby walked through the quiet countryside. Eager to please, Libby seldom complained, but their pace was slow and their stops frequent. As the day drew to a close, Ian’s patience thinned. He hid his frustration, knowing she was doing the best she could to keep up. The closer they came to the border, though, the more anxious he became.
Though reluctant to stop, he scouted around for a suitable campsite when the sun touched the horizon. If he’d been alone, he’d still be walking, at least a couple more hours. But Libby had stumbled twice in just the past ten or fifteen minutes. Both times, as he brushed the dirt from her knees, her little lip had quivered, but she had refused to cry.
He took a deep breath and smiled at the girl with more warmth than he felt. “I don’t think I can take another step. How about you?”
“I can walk all night long, Papi,” she said in a singsong voice. Giving lie to her words, she sat on a fallen log near a broad-bottomed evergreen and rested her cheek on the cloth doll she clutched tightly against her chest.
“Look, Libby,” he said with false enthusiasm. “You found our shelter.” The ground beneath the evergreen, about a meter and a half below the tree’s lowest branches, was packed dirt with a smattering of dried pine needles. A perfect place to spread their blankets.
“I did?” Her brown eyes, half-closed with weariness, grew round.
“Supper first, then bedtime.” Ian shrugged off his makeshift backpack and sat on the ground, adjusting the Walther at his hip as he rested his back against the log. Libby slid down beside him, and they shared a cold supper of cheese and apples.
When they finished, Ian crawled beneath the branches and stashed their bags next to the evergreen’s trunk. Another source of irritation: Before Libby joined him, he traveled light. Now he carried food and supplies, the Hebrew Tanak, the Steinberg family photograph, and blankets. Sometimes he carried Libby.
He arranged the blankets, and Libby crawled in after him. Lying beneath the evergreen, his forearm behind his head, he peered through the fringe of the branches at the dusky sky. One by one, pinpoints of starlight appeared, brightening in intensity as darkness settled across the land. Libby, curled up next to him, hugged her doll and quietly sang her lullaby.
Twisting his head, he found the North Star and remembered boyhood camping trips with his brother and with Mark. How they stretched out just like this, pointing to and naming the constellations. Libby snuggled closer and he patted her slender arm. A gentle peace stilled his lingering tension and he breathed deeply of the pine and dirt and long-ago summers. The smells of freedom.
* * *
Ian slept soundly, his first good night’s sleep since escaping Colditz. But he woke with a sense of dread, an out-of-sorts absence that pushed him fully awake when he opened his eyes.
Libby was gone.
He crawled out from the branches and looked around. They were on the edge of a rolling meadow, dotted with evergreens and wildflowers. Hearing a giggle from beyond a rise, he pulled the Walther from its holster and raced that way.
Libby’s back was to him as she waded in a narrow creek, the water barely above her ankles. A woman waded beside her. A woman wearing a nun’s habit, the long black skirt hiked to her knees.
She must have heard his approach, because she looked up as he neared. A snowy-white wimple framed her oval face.
Libby turned too and waved. “Hi, Papi. I found a lady.”
A wide smile further brightened the nun’s lightly sunburned cheeks. She reached for Libby’s hand and led the child from the creek to a gravelly sandbar where they’d left their shoes. Ian joined them, holding the pistol at his side.
“We played, Papi.” Libby wiggled her toes, wrinkled from cold water. “I’m wet.”
“That’s fine, sweetheart.” Ian stepped next to her and rested his hand on her shoulder.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you.” The nun looked pointedly at the gun. “You were sleeping so soundly, it seemed a shame to wake you.”
“Too soundly, apparently.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. I often walk here early in the mornings.” Her gray eyes twinkled. “Though it’s not every day I find a pixie washing her hands in the bubbling brook.”
“I’m a pixie.” Libby giggled and tugged at Ian’s sleeve. “Isn’t she pretty, Papi?”
The nun’s musical laugh infected Libby with another case of the giggles.
“Very pretty,” Ian agreed. “Does the pretty nun have a name?”
“I’m Sister Regina. And my convent is beyond that hill.” She pointed southeast. “You are welcome to come. For a hot meal. Some needed rest.”
“May we, Papi? Please?”
“Shh, Libby.” Ian holstered the Walther. “I appreciate the offer, Sister, but we’ll continue on our way.”
“It would be wise to reconsider. German patrols pass through here frequently. They are suspicious of strangers.” She spoke with a casual indifference, but her pale eyes focused with an unspoken intensity on Ian. “We are not far from the border, you know.”
“How far?”
“Two days on foot.” Sister Regina smiled at Libby. “Longer with a child.”
The frustration that had gnawed at him yesterday attacked again, eating at his stomach. With Libby tagging along, it might take four days, a week even, to reach the border.
“We are a small order, but we do what we can for the lost, the hungry.” She paused. “The foreigner.”
“Please, Papi?” Libby hopped up and down beside him.
“Let’s get your shoes on, shall we?” Ian knelt down and helped Libby scrunch her toes into the worn leather boots. An idea niggled at the back of his mind. Perhaps Sister Regina was the answer to a prayer he didn’t realize he’d prayed. Convents often ran orphanages, especially during war. Libby would have shelter, food. And he’d be in Switzerland in two days.
“You are not the first travelers to need our refuge,” said Sister Regina, her good-natured expression undisturbed by Ian’s scrutiny. “Nor will you be the last. I suppose the convent will shelter those in need until the world ends.”
“Do you think that’s what it will take to end this war? The end of the world?”
“Perhaps not. But war will follow peace as surely as night follows day.”
“That seems a pessimistic point of view for someone of your vocation.”
“Only a realistic one.”
Ian found his distrust fading beneath her confident serenity. “German patrols, huh?”
“I fear so.”
“I need to get our gear.”
“I’ll help.”
Ian crawled under the tree to retrieve the bags while Sister Regina and Libby laughingly shook out the blankets and folded them. Following the creek bed toward the convent, Ian and Sister Regina walked together while Libby alternately ran ahead and lagged behind them.
The nun, her hands hidden within the folds of the blankets she carried, smiled up at Ian, her eyes sparkling. “May I tell you something?”
“Please do.”
She leaned closer, lowering her voice. “I think you are not Libby’s father.”
Ian looked at Libby, a few meters ahead of them, dragging her doll as she followed the hops of a brown toad along the shallow bank. “She believes I am. I haven’t the courage to tell her otherwise.”
“Where are her parents?”
“I don’t know what happened to her father.” He hesitated, feeling again the weight of Gretchen’s body in his arms, hearing the distant disturbance of the water when
he lowered her into the well.
“What about her mother?”
Ian shifted the weight of the bag he carried on his shoulder. “Dead. Libby doesn’t know.”
Sister Regina stopped walking, and Ian turned to face her. “Are you responsible for her death?” Her grave eyes searched his face.
“I tried to protect her.” He lowered his eyes. “I failed.”
“Protect her from what?”
“A thug dressed up as an officer.”
“A German officer?”
Ian looked at her and, jutting out his chin, nodded once.
“What was his fate?”
He didn’t answer, and she tilted her head, her eyes never wavering from his, as if she could see into his soul. “You did what had to be done. That’s the end of it.”
“Are you giving me absolution?”
“Only God can do that.” She walked away, but Ian hesitated, his troubled spirit anxious to find solace wherever it might be found.
But he didn’t expect to find forgiveness from Sister Regina or at the convent. Not when he planned to compound his sins by breaking a promise he’d made to a dying woman.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Duret stopped the Bentley across from a warehouse near the Amsterdam docks and blinked the headlights. Through the drenching downpour, a yellow light twinkled on and off in a short, rhythmic pattern. Duret blinked his headlights again, then drove through the opening doors of the building. He switched off the ignition and, shifting in his seat, looked at Alison. “It’s best the children stay in the car until it’s time to go.”
“What about me?”
“Do you need my permission to leave the car?” he asked with a wink.
Alison lifted her shoulders in an appropriately repentant shrug. “I guess not.”
“Come on, then.”
Lifting Anna across her lap, Alison set the child next to Aaron. “Stay here, okay?”
“I want Mama,” Aaron said. Anna pulled her thumb from her mouth only long enough to echo Aaron.
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