by Anna Schmidt
“Sometimes it’s the younger ones you need to watch out for. They can be instilled with a false sense of power—well, in reality not so false. They have the power to question, to arrest, to shoot you in the street if they decide that’s what is called for.”
She was instructing him now, and she felt the tension of annoyance tighten the muscles in his arm as they walked back to the café. “Okay, I get it,” he muttered, speaking in English.
“I just wouldn’t want—”
“Just drop it.”
“I don’t see why you are so annoyed. I am just trying to—”
“Knock off the lectures, Anja. Maybe kissing you wasn’t the best choice, but give me credit at least for thinking fast, okay?”
Aside from the topic under discussion, it was a strange exchange because she had continued speaking to him in German while he had reverted to English, and she wasn’t sure he was aware he had made the switch.
“You do know that you are speaking to me in your native tongue,” she said as they stepped inside the café and stopped to place the umbrella in its stand and shake off the rain from their outer garments.
“I … I mean Ich …”
“Too late,” she said. “If this had been a real test, you would be on your way to Gestapo headquarters by now.
“I’ll just go say goodnight to Josef and Lisbeth,” she added. And she trudged up the stairs without waiting for him as she normally did.
“Anja?” His voice was edged with an apology. “I’ll be ready. You can trust in that.”
“Good. Because by this time next week, you’ll most likely be in Paris, and I won’t be there to lecture you … or help you if it comes to that.”
In Brussels, Peter’s time with Anja was more frequent and extended than it had been on the occasions when she came to the farm. Then she had been focused on his physical health—frowning when she did not see improvement and even when he had shown off his ability to stand without support.
“You have to be able to walk,” she had told him. “For many miles over impossible terrain through the mountains.”
“I’ll get there,” he’d replied, irritated at her lack of enthusiasm for the tiny progress he had fought so hard all week to show her. Everybody in the farmhouse was so solemn—even the kid.
Josef and Lisbeth were a welcome change once he moved to the hiding place above their café. At least Lisbeth was. He especially enjoyed talking with her, mostly because she was American and had some of the same memories of growing up there that he did. But other than when it was deemed safe for him to come to the kitchen, it was always Josef or Anja who climbed through the maze of fake crates and up the narrow winding stairs to his room. With her advanced pregnancy, the trek was too much for Lisbeth.
After the night of that kiss, Anja continued to be all business in her visits—even when they took their walks. She was constantly giving him instructions about what he should and should not do. “Don’t put your hands in your pockets when you are in a group or waiting inside a shop,” she said. “It’s a very American thing to do and will give you away.”
“Got it.”
“Do you smoke?”
“No. Why?”
“Americans hold smoking materials such as cigarettes and matches different from the way such things are held in Europe. It’s a dead giveaway.”
“Well, I don’t smoke, so you can cross that worry off your list.”
“And don’t—”
“Anja, for once could we just take a walk and talk about normal things—the weather, the supper we just had, anything but this constant lecture?”
She went silent and trudged along beside him as if the two of them were headed for the gallows instead of out for a walk on what had turned out to be a fairly mild late January evening. He waited for her to speak, and when she didn’t, he knew that she was annoyed with him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, speaking in German to pacify her. “It’s just that—”
“It is important for you to prepare,” she interrupted. “You have no idea what could happen to you. I—we are just trying to keep you alive and get you back to your unit.”
“Then make me understand, Anja. Tell me the things that you have seen and endured. I know you and Josef and Lisbeth have been through a great deal, but not one of you ever speaks of it. How am I supposed to—”
“We do not speak of it because we wish to move forward. We do not live in our pasts but in our present and future. All you need to know about the things that I have seen or experienced is that they were more horrid than anything you could imagine, and because of them we are uniquely qualified to help you avoid experiencing such horrors firsthand. You may see us as simple country people who—”
“I see you and Josef and Lisbeth as three of the most courageous people I have ever known. I see you especially as someone who by rights should be focusing all her attention on her son and grandparents but who takes time she could spend with them to teach me.”
“Then let me teach you,” she grumbled.
“Not tonight. Back home we have a part of our school day called recess. It’s a time for the students to go out to play and get to know each other. Let’s have a little recess from our lessons.”
“You want to play a game?” Her tone told him how exasperated she was with him.
“No, I want to get to know you better. Tell me about your childhood—before you met your late husband, before you had children, before the war.”
They walked on in silence, but finally she drew in a breath and said, “My parents died when I was very young. My father was killed in battle during the Great War. My mother officially died in the flu epidemic, but I believe the cause was a broken heart. I was an only child and was raised by my grandparents.” The words came in short declarative sentences that ended with this last bit of information.
“You lived in Denmark?”
“On the island of Bornholm. My grandfather was a fisherman. My grandmother raised chickens and kept a garden.”
“So you are a child of the sea.”
“Did you grow up near the sea?” she asked. It was the first time she had shown the slightest curiosity about his life before the war.
“Nope. The mountains—foothills really. In the United State people who grew up where I did are called ‘hillbillies’ and—”
“Like billy goats in the hills?”
Peter laughed. It felt so good just to laugh. “Kind of like that, I guess. I never thought of it that way.”
“You Americans have many strange names for things.”
“And you are changing the subject. We were talking about your childhood, not mine.”
She shrugged. “It was not so different. I went fishing with my grandfather, and when the weather was warm, I would go swimming.” Her voice took on a wistful tone. “It’s been a very long time since I went for a swim.”
“What kinds of things did you do with your grandmother?”
Anja actually giggled and seemed not to notice that he had switched to English. “She tried to teach me to cook. Unfortunately, it is not something I am good at.”
“I can’t imagine anything that you wouldn’t be good at.”
She let that compliment pass but gave herself away when her voice cracked on her next question. “Did you play sports?”
“When you live in a small town like I did and you have any athletic ability at all, it’s practically mandatory. I lettered in football, basketball, baseball, and track.”
“What is this lettered?”
“It means I got an award—a commendation of sorts.”
“Because you won all the games?”
“No, because I played—everybody got a letter.”
“And who wrote this letter, and what did it say?”
“Oh no, not that kind of letter—it was the emblem of our high school—a large S for Shakers—our team name. Get it? Saltville was the name of the town and we were the Shakers.”
“Your team name was a kitc
hen item?”
Peter was beginning to understand why people around the world struggled to communicate with each other. “It’s hard to explain, but when I get back home, I’ll send you a picture. You know what they say about a picture being worth a thousand words?”
“You speak in riddles—and in English. You have me speaking your language,” she added, horrified at the realization. She glanced around nervously. “You know better than that,” she said—this time in German.
Peter just smiled, and in the darkness he was glad she couldn’t see, because if she caught him smiling, she would not be pleased. But the fact was that he had—without intending to—caught Anja in a mistake. The woman was human after all.
When they returned, Josef and Lisbeth were sitting at the kitchen table. Mikel stood by the window, his back to them. Peter could practically smell that something had changed—something major. “What?” he asked, directing his question to Josef.
Lisbeth stood up and went to stand with Anja. “It’s your grandfather,” she told her. “He has been taken in for questioning.”
Peter heard Anja suck in her breath. “When?”
“About an hour ago. Mikel—”
Anja went to her friend, forcing him to turn and face her. “What happened?”
“Schwarz—the Gestapo officer who came to the farm searching for our friend? He’s been reassigned to headquarters here in Brussels.”
“He knows that I work here in Brussels. Why would he take my grandfather?”
“He’s toying with you. He knows he could take you in for questioning any time, but the likelihood that you will give him the information he wants—information that he knows full well that you have—is slim to nonexistent. So he goes after someone you want to protect—your grandparents, Daniel—”
“Daniel?” Anja’s fist went to her mouth.
Josef stepped forward. “The man is proving a point, Anja. He won’t harm Daniel—at least not now. He’ll start with your grandfather, hoping in your need to protect him you will take his place and talk.”
“And if I don’t?”
Josef looked away. “He’ll move on to your grandmother probably and eventually to perhaps us and others you care about. He’ll save Daniel until there’s no one else for him to threaten you with because he knows that you know that Daniel is always a possibility.”
“I’m so sorry, Anja,” Lisbeth murmured.
“I have to go to there—to wherever they are holding my grandfather.”
“Look, it’s me they want,” Peter said. “So I’ll go.”
“Oh, that’s right—play the hero and get us all arrested,” Mikel said. He turned away again, his fingers clutching the edge of the sink as if he wanted to break it off.
“He’s only trying to help,” Anja said, but Peter could see that she was distracted and had defended him out of habit. “No, we must leave for Paris tonight—Peter and I will go together. We can pose as husband and wife, and Daniel can—”
“Daniel will be safer at the orphanage,” Josef said. “If you and Peter are captured, then he will not be involved.”
“But what about my grandparents?”
“Once he knows you are no longer in Brussels, Schwarz will have no further interest in them. He will—”
“Why wouldn’t he think that refusing to release Olaf might bring Anja back?” Peter asked. “Why wouldn’t he go after Daniel?”
“The nuns will protect Daniel,” Mikel replied impatiently. “We are wasting precious time here.” He turned his attention solely to Anja. “You have to do this. You must leave tonight for Paris. I’ll make sure that your grandfather is released.”
Peter felt like laughing at the ridiculousness of that statement. Mikel was Basque—a foreigner and not a desirable foreigner at that. What could he possibly do to protect Anja’s grandparents? The man might be strong as an ox and know the mountains as Anja had told him, but he was clearly thinking with his heart, not his head. Peter understood that even if Anja escaped she would never forgive herself if that resulted in harm coming to anyone she loved—and that included the people in this room, with the possible exception of him.
“Enough,” he said forcefully. “Schwarz wants me.” Having not yet removed his coat and hat, he headed for the door.
Josef and Mikel both blocked his way.
“Don’t be a fool,” Josef said at the same time that Mikel muttered ominously, “We have no time for this.”
Peter reached inside his collar and pulled out his dog tags. “I will at worst be sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. Anja and the rest of you—”
“I thought I told you to remove those identifiers and sew them into your trousers,” Josef said.
Mikel simply reached up and, with a single jerk, yanked the chain and tags free. Before Peter could form the words to protest, the Basque walked to the wood-burning stove and tossed the tags and chain into the fire.
Peter made a move toward him but stopped when Anja stepped between them. “That’s enough. I need to think.”
Mikel turned away while Lisbeth touched Peter’s arm and handed him a cup of tea. No one spoke while Anja paced in a circle around the square kitchen table. After two trips around the table, she pulled out a chair, sat down, closed her eyes, and rested her open palms on the table. A few seconds later Lisbeth did the same. Then Josef joined them. And finally Mikel sat in the fourth and only vacant chair. With a defiant glance at Peter, he took out his rosary and began silently mouthing the prayers that went with the counting of each bead.
Peter could not believe what he was seeing. This was a time for urgency—for action. He picked up the fire poker from next to the stove and retrieved his scorched dog tags from the fire. He waited for one of the two men to stop him, but no one made a sound. He dropped the metal tags in the sink and poured water over them to cool them; then he picked them up and headed upstairs and on through the fake crates in the storeroom to his hideout.
By the time Anja made her way through the storeroom to him, he had dressed himself in layers of clothing as he’d been taught would be necessary once the time came for him to take the night train to Paris. How he had longed for this day when he’d first arrived at the café. How hard he had worked to regain his strength, to learn enough German to get by, to prepare for his run to freedom. Now he felt the same sadness and sense of mourning that he had the night before he’d reported for active duty—the last night he had spent in his childhood home. He swallowed around the lump in his throat that threatened to make breathing difficult when he heard the door from the storeroom open and Anja’s footsteps climbing the stairs.
“Peter?”
“I’m going,” he said, his voice choked with determination.
“We’re going,” she corrected him and pressed her fingers to his lips to stop further protest. “You promised to trust us. We have been doing this for months now. We have moved many men like you to freedom. We know what we’re doing, Peter.”
“This isn’t about me now. It’s you and your family and Josef and Lisbeth and their child and—”
“And that is exactly why you and I must leave tonight. Schwarz will have men watching the farm and the hospital and the café. He believes that I will be at one of those three places. He knows that you are at one of those three places. None of them is safe for either of us any longer.”
Peter had a thought. He would go with her because it was clear that she was not about to back down now that she had set her mind on a plan. No doubt she thought the Light was guiding them. Well, he would go and then at the first opportunity disappear so that if she was captured she would honestly be able to say she had no idea where he was.
“I’m ready,” he said.
Anja arched one cynical eyebrow. “You will follow our instructions without question?”
“Our?”
“Mikel is going with us. He will be on the train. If need be he will create a diversion in the event that you are questioned or get into—”
“I can handl
e myself.” Peter ground out each word.
To his surprise, Anja reached up and tenderly stroked his cheek. “Whatever happens—and we may not have a chance to say a proper good-bye, Peter Trent, I am so very glad to have met you.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Ready?”
When he nodded, she led the way; but not down the stairs and into the fake crates. Rather, she turned in the opposite direction to a second stairway and an alcove where a wooden ladder led to the roof.
CHAPTER 7
A rush of cold air and flying snow hit Anja’s face the minute she opened the trapdoor that led to the roof. Months earlier she and Josef had mapped out this emergency escape route. It had been used at least a half dozen times to move other evaders to safety, but it was dangerous on a different level than the usual process of moving airmen from one safe house to another. Here they were four stories above the street. They would need to climb onto the slanted tiled roof of the café closest to the nearest building and then drop to that roof half a story below. From there they would need to traverse several more rooftops, sometimes having to leap two or more feet of open space between buildings. Certainly not the easiest of feats in good weather. With the snow and wind, it looked pretty close to impossible.
She and Josef had made the crossing several times to test the best points of connection. Up to now Mikel and Josef had trained every evader in the logistics of the route. But none of those men who had used this escape had been recovering from a badly wounded leg. None of them had had questionable strength for making the drops, landings, and leaps required. And they hadn’t thought Peter was yet ready to physically complete the route. They had always planned to take him out another way.
“I can do this,” Peter said as if reading her mind once he’d squeezed through the trapdoor and was standing next to her on the only flat part of the café’s roof. “I can,” he muttered more to himself than to her.
Below them they heard the slam of car doors and knew the Gestapo had arrived to search the premises. She had long understood that if she made it out of this war alive, the sound of car doors slamming would haunt her for the rest of her days. In the weeks that Peter had been hidden in the attic, twice he had had to move temporarily to other safe houses in case the searchers discovered the fake crates and the hideaway beyond. But each of those times they had been able to spirit him away through the café’s kitchen entrance by having him pose as a deliveryman. This was different—for both of them. Anja had no doubt that this time the hunt was for her as well as Peter.