by Anna Schmidt
Peter nodded and studied his hands. “This business of needing to rebuild my strength—can you help me with that?”
“I can and will, or rather Anja will. She’ll be here later today to go with you for your first walk outside. A couple out for an evening stroll tends to raise less suspicion than two men walking together might. In the meantime, I will show you some strengthening exercises that you can do here in your room and—”
“Tell me more about this escape line,” Peter interrupted. He was hungry for information—the more he had the more likely his chance of making it back to his unit in England. “How did it get started?”
Josef hesitated. “I will tell you only what is commonly known by everyone—including the Nazis.” He glanced toward the window. “The first thing is that there is not just a single escape line—there are several. The second is that although it would appear that the most direct route would be by sea across the channel or perhaps a rescue by air, that is not possible.”
“So what is the route? Anja mentioned the need to be able to hike and climb and—”
“Evaders like you must be moved through France, over the mountains and into Spain. All along the way, you will need to rely on the bravery of locals who will see that you are sheltered and fed and hidden for as long as necessary. Eventually your destination will be the British embassy in Madrid. From there you can be moved to the British territory of Gibraltar and the naval base there.”
“Who came up with that idea?”
“A young woman—Andrée de Jongh, or Dédée—back in 1941. Early on, escape across the water off the coast of the Netherlands or Belgium became impossible, and it was her idea to take those escaping directly to a British consulate or embassy. She is a nurse like Anja.”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to name names.”
Josef shrugged. “Dédée was arrested recently and is no doubt incarcerated in one of the Nazi prison camps … if she is still alive.”
Peter felt a chill at the thought of someone like Anja being held in a German prison camp—or maybe the woman had been taken to one of the concentration camps he had heard about. He’d always assumed that the stories about such places had to be at least partially made up. But after hearing her stories—and Josef’s—about what they had witnessed firsthand, he was beginning to accept that the level of pure evil associated with this war went beyond anything he could have imagined. He glanced around, gauging his surroundings.
“How come I’m kind of out in the open here? I mean, if they came looking for me, seems all they’d need to do is climb the stairs.”
A slow smile spread across Josef’s haggard features. “That’s right. You have seen only that back stairway and the trapdoor through which you arrived. Come.” He motioned for Peter to follow him out to the hall and down the steep, narrow stairs. The door at the base of the winding steps was only wide enough for one person to squeeze through, and Josef flicked the light switch off before easing it open. Instead of stepping into another room as Peter had expected, they stepped into what appeared to be a large storage crate. “Sometimes when we have more guests than we can accommodate in the room you occupy, we make space for them here.”
In the darkness Josef led the way toward the opposite side of the crate and opened a second door—this one low to the ground. He dropped to his knees and motioned for Peter to do the same. Then he crawled into and across that crate and a third. Peter tried to imagine the very pregnant Lisbeth making this trek, carrying trays of food, fresh linens, and clothing for him. He was so focused on Lisbeth’s difficult journey that he did not realize that Josef had stopped, and he bumped into him.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
Josef tapped lightly in a code on the wall of the crate they were in and waited. A moment later, they heard Lisbeth singing, and Josef pushed open the lid of the crate and stood up. He climbed over the side of the wooden crate and dropped to the floor then helped Peter to do the same. He was grinning. “Pretty impressive, don’t you think?”
They were standing just inside a normal doorway at the top of another set of stairs. Off the hallway, Peter saw a bedroom, a bathroom, and another small room.
“I don’t remember any of this.”
“That’s because we brought you in another way.” Josef continued the tour, pointing to a small bedroom. “This will be the nursery,” he said then started down the stairs. “That is if I ever get around to painting it.”
Peter could not understand these people. They were on the Nazi’s wanted list; they were expecting their first child; yet they were risking everything to help him.
“Down here,” Josef continued, “we have our kitchen and sitting room, and down those stairs is the entrance to the café’s kitchen. You’ll come here for breakfast at six with us in the morning—it’s unlikely anyone will come looking for you at that hour. Afterward you’ll have to stay hidden until the evening, after the café closes at eight.”
“You mean I won’t have anything to eat or drink from six in the morning until eight at night? I mean other than the water I can get from the sink up there?”
“You mustn’t run the water, Peter,” Lisbeth warned.
“After breakfast I will make sure that you have snacks and water and cider and a lunch to eat. Normally we are accustomed to eating our main meal at noon, but because that’s the café’s busiest time, we have adopted the American way of having our main meal in the evening,” Josef explained. “It’s best if you eat with us when you can. I have told my wife that her days of bringing food to you are over—at least until the baby comes.”
“And by that time you will probably be safely back in America,” Lisbeth added.
“So after that evening meal?”
“You and Anja can go for a walk if the weather permits.”
A clock from somewhere close by outside the building chimed ten o’clock. “Are you open then, even though it’s Christmas Day?”
Lisbeth smiled. “No. Tonight after our supper we will gather with other Friends in meeting for worship. We would be pleased if you would join us.”
Will Anja be here? he wanted to ask and wondered why he should care one way or another. “Perhaps I will,” he said as he looked back up the stairway toward the door that led to the room filled with the wooden crates. “Incredible,” he murmured as he recalled the journey he and Josef had taken through the maze of empty crates. “But the window in the attic …”
Josef motioned for Peter to follow him once again. He went down the last stairway through the café’s large and pristine kitchen and out to the alley behind. He pointed to the top of the building. There was no window. “I don’t understand,” Peter said. There was a window in his hideaway. He would swear to that.
“It’s a scrim,” Lisbeth explained as she joined them. “A friend of ours is a theatrical designer, and he came up with the idea. I think it’s brilliant.”
“What’s a scrim?”
“It’s a kind of curtain made of a special fabric so that when lit from the front as in daylight it appears opaque. And when there is no front light and the light comes from behind the curtain, the fabric appears transparent. That’s why it is vital that the blackout curtain be in place before you light the lamp in your room after dark or even on a gray day.”
They had thought of everything, and that told Peter that they had done this before—perhaps many times. Lisbeth and her German husband had saved lives—English lives, American lives. The lives of complete strangers—like him.
Later, after the three of them sat around the table in the kitchen, Lisbeth prepared a second cup of tea for him and placed one of the delectable almond pastries she’d served with his breakfast on a plate and handed it to him.
“Why do you do this?” he asked.
Lisbeth looked confused, and she eased the plate closer to him. “You enjoyed it, and it is Christmas, after all,” she explained. “And in spite of the terrible shortages—”
“I don’t mean the pastries. I mean
me—why are you helping me?”
Husband and wife looked at each other and smiled. “It is what we do,” Lisbeth said quietly. “Friends helping friends.”
“But I am not of your faith.”
“What is your faith, Peter?”
He shrugged. His parents attended a small country church shared by a congregation of Baptists and Presbyterians. His college roommate and best friend was Catholic, and for a time the pomp and circumstance of that religion had appealed to him. But lately?
Lisbeth added hot water to her cup. “You do not need a steeple house—a church or cathedral—to have faith, Peter. Faith comes from within,” she murmured. “It is the Light within that guides you—and us and Anja and the others.”
Outside the kitchen window, they heard bicycle wheels bump their way over the rough cobblestones that lined the alley. “That’ll be Anja,” Josef said as he went to the door to greet her.
The minute Anja topped the stairs from the café and stepped into the warm kitchen fragrant with the scent of spices, she saw Peter, and as always she seemed incapable of looking away. He was nothing like her late husband. Not in looks and certainly not in demeanor. Yet something about him drew her to him the way she had instantly been attracted to Benjamin.
Foolish romantic nonsense, she chided herself and forced her attention back to Josef and Lisbeth. “You showed him the way?” she asked with a slight jerk of her head in Peter’s direction.
“Through the storeroom, yes,” Josef replied. “But …”
The tap of a fork against glass made them both turn to Peter. “Hey, folks? I’m right here,” he said. Then his eyes widened with understanding. “Are you saying there’s another way out of here?”
Anja ignored the question. “Have you shown him his exercises?”
Josef smiled. “I’m afraid we got to talking—and eating.” He nodded toward the crumbs of almond pastry.
“Let me fix you something,” Lisbeth said as she hurried to set another place at the table. Josef pulled out the chair next to Peter’s for her.
Anja supposed that taking the seat right next to Peter was better than sitting across from him. He had this way of looking at her that unnerved her. By now she should be used to the frank, probing looks of Americans. Certainly she and the others had helped enough of them that she’d finally accepted that this boldness was just their way. Most of them had been barely out of their teens—if that—more boy than man and so sweet in their desire to please. But when Peter Trent settled his gaze on her, she seemed incapable of rational thought. What was the matter with her?
She stirred her tea and then took a sip and sighed. The warmth of it brought back memories of home—her home with her parents back in Denmark, the first time she had given her baby daughter a sip of the drink heavily laced with fresh milk from their cow, and the time that she and Benjamin had sat for hours in a café not unlike this one, drinking cup after cup of tea as they planned their future. They were all dead now—her parents, her husband, her daughter—casualties in two wars they did not start and wanted no part in.
She was not even aware that tears were leaking down her cheeks until one plopped into the mug that she held and Lisbeth used a corner of her napkin to gently stem the tide.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “I never know what will set me off. One would think after all this time—these months …” She swiped impatiently at the tears with the back of her hand as she cleared her throat and turned her attention back to Josef. “Mikel is adamant that we need to move him as soon as possible at least as far as Paris so that when the winter is at its end, he’ll be ready …”
Peter cleared his throat. “Again I must insist that you please do me the courtesy of not speaking of me as if I am not in the room.” His lips had hardened into a thin line, and his eyes flashed with irritation.
“You do not understand,” Anja said.
“I understand more than you think,” he replied, locking his gaze with hers in a gesture that told her he would not back down. That kind of stubborn arrogance could serve him well on the escape line. It could also get him and others killed.
“With respect,” she began, trying hard to keep her own temper in check.
“With respect,” he interrupted, “I am not a boy. I am a trained airman, and I know—”
“Did you not tell me that this was your first combat mission?” she challenged quietly.
His cheeks flushed with even more ruddiness than she had noticed was natural for him. He had the look of an outdoorsman—someone who spent time in the sun. In the times when she was not with him, she had imagined him on a ski slope or sailing or running on a beach. She shook off such thoughts as she waited for him to respond to her question. “Well?”
“Again I would remind you that I have been trained by possibly one of the finest military organizations in the world, and I am well past the days of being a teenager enamored by adventure. This is my life, and I will be part of any decisions to be made, is that clear?”
He was sitting close enough to her that she could see every feature of his face, could feel the warmth of him filling the space between them, could smell the scent of the strong soap he’d used to wash himself and shave. She stood up, giving her, for the moment, the advantage of being slightly taller than he was as long as he remained seated. “Perfectly,” she replied. “However, allow me to make one thing clear to you,” she continued, more to wipe the half-smile off his face than anything else. “Once you start on the line, you are not in charge—this is our area of expertise.” He opened his mouth to protest, but she held up a hand to stop him. “If you go with us, then you are agreeing to let us get you back to England—our way, is that clear?”
Lisbeth burst out laughing. “You two make quite a pair,” she said, shaking her head as she began clearing the dishes.
Anja could not help but notice that, judging by the expression on his face, Peter was horrified by the very idea that she expected to take charge and expected him to follow her instructions. She was used to men thinking of her as a girl rather than a woman, and even if they did get used to the idea that she was well into her twenties and a mother, they rarely gave her credit for having a brain. She was determined to stand her ground.
Crossing her arms and drawing herself to her full height, she focused on Peter. “Do you not understand the question?”
“I got it,” he grumbled as he pushed himself away from the table and stood so that now he was the one looking down at her. “Josef said something about you taking me for a walk?”
“Yes, once you are—”
“I’m ready now.”
Anja saw Lisbeth glance at her husband, who shrugged. “A short one perhaps,” Josef said.
“I’ll get my coat,” Peter said, but then he looked up toward the storeroom as if trying to figure out exactly how much strength he would have once he crawled through the maze, climbed the stairs, and then made the return trip.
“Wear mine,” Josef offered, pointing to a wool coat hanging by the stairs that led down to the café and the street.
Anja waited for him to put on the coat and the slouch-brimmed hat that Josef was fond of before heading downstairs. She opened the door to the alley and watched as Peter limped out into the night. “Take my arm,” she said.
“I’m fine. I can do this.”
Anja rolled her eyes, glad that he could not see her annoyance. He was in many ways her patient, and she had certainly dealt with difficult patients before. “I am not questioning your strength so much as if we happen to pass someone on the street, it will look more as if we are a couple out for a Christmas night stroll.”
“Then you should take my arm,” he said and offered it.
She placed her hand near the crook of his elbow, and when he tottered slightly, she tightened her grip. “Steady there.”
“Just need to get my balance.”
But she noticed that he did nothing to lighten her grip on him and that his steps were hesitant as he made his way out to
the main street where she saw Mikel standing on a corner a block away. He would watch out for soldiers on patrol or, worse, Gestapo agents prowling around, hoping to catch someone off guard. She decided to put Peter to a little test and turned to walk toward Mikel. She was fairly certain that Peter had not yet recognized the man, and she wanted to see what would happen.
Peter seemed to be concentrating on each step, and she was aware that he was already tiring. “Just to the corner and back,” she said.
Peter grunted and jerked his head up to see his destination then returned to focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. “There’s a man standing there,” he muttered.
“I know. Just keep walking.”
“But—”
“No questions, remember?”
He grunted again and walked doggedly on. When they were within a few feet of Mikel, Peter glanced up, looked directly at him, and released a breath of relief. “Oh, it’s Mikel. Merry Christmas to you.” He stuck out his hand for the other man to shake.
Mikel looked at Anja, shook his head as if Peter were a hopeless case, and walked quickly away.
“Well, and a Happy New Year to you as well,” Peter called after him. “What’s eating him?”
“Do you not understand what you just did?” she asked, biting off each word in an attempt to contain her fury. Not that she had expected anything different, but she had hoped Peter might surprise her.
“Yeah. I wished the man greetings of the season. It’s Christmas Day.”
“You called him by name, identifying him to anyone who might be nearby. Look around you. There are dozens of places someone might have been standing and watching and listening. You spoke to him in your native language—”
“It’s the only language I know,” Peter protested.
“Please keep your voice down,” she ordered as she quickened the pace, praying they might get back to the café without incident. “You spoke in English and clearly expected that he would understand, further compromising his safety. If this had been any other night—a normal evening with people around, not to mention soldiers and members of the secret police—the three of us would probably have been arrested on the spot. Worse, they might have arrested Mikel as soon as he walked away and then waited to see where we would go next. If we returned to the café, we would have endangered Josef and Lisbeth as well.”