by Anna Schmidt
“Let’s go,” she said, her teeth chattering from fear as well as from cold.
She found the rope that Josef had secured to a concealed hook on the landing and threw it over the side of the building, then motioned for Peter to ease his way over the slippery tiles to take hold. The rope—by intention—was not long enough to get them all the way to the lower roof. That would have meant having it dangle outside Josef and Lisbeth’s third-floor bedroom window, and there was always the likelihood that someone would be searching the room. The rope ended a few feet above the window so that the person escaping would “walk” his way to the side of the window, wait for the room to be unoccupied, and then drop the remaining feet onto the lower flat rooftop.
“You first,” Peter said. They had no time for arguments. Even with the trapdoor and all the windows of the house and café closed, they could hear voices—angry and insistent—coming from inside. “Go.” He waited for her to take hold of the rope, and then he turned and brushed away all signs of their footprints before balancing himself against the pitch of the roof, steadying the rope for her in the strong wind that threatened to force her off course. She had barely reached the top of the window when she heard the sounds of ransacking coming from the bedroom. Someone pulled off the blackout curtain, allowing light to spill out into the night.
She looked up at Peter and down at the flat roof on the adjacent building. At the same time she heard the latch turn, unlocking the casement window of the bedroom—heard the squeal of protest the hinge made when the window was cranked open. Anja pressed herself flat against the building and prayed that her dark clothing and the moonless night would keep whoever was about to look out that window from seeing her. She looked up and saw that Peter had disappeared. From below her she heard voices speaking German—terse and impatient men snapping at one another and at Josef. She squeezed her eyes shut tight against the falling snow and waited.
Peter did not know whether to try and pull Anja back up to the roof or leave her there pressed tight to the building. But when he heard the window crank open and saw a man in a black leather coat and fedora lean out, then bark orders to his men, he knew that any movement would only alert the Gestapo agent. So he retreated step by step back to the small flat area of the café’s roof and waited, holding his breath as he strained to hear what was happening below.
In what seemed like hours but was surely only minutes—or even seconds—he heard the snap of the window against its frame and realized the voices were silent. He edged his way back to the slippery tiled peak, held to the rope, and glanced down. The window was closed.
“Anja?”
“Schnell,” she hissed even as she agilely walked her way past the window and dropped to the roof below. “Quickly,” she urged.
The rope swung free in the bitter winter wind, and Peter caught it and stilled it before it could swing across the window. He wrapped the rope around his half-frozen hands and started down the side of the building. He had gone only a few feet when he remembered something and stopped. He had forgotten to erase his footsteps from where he’d gone back onto the rooftop.
Too late now. He continued his descent, past the bedroom window—its light still blazing. The wind caught a loose shutter on a neighboring building banging it against the wall. What if someone in another building sees us? What if …
He had reached the end of the rope—literally. Now he had no choice but to release it and fall to the roof below. He kicked away from the wall of the café as Anja had instructed and released the rope. Another loose end, he thought as he fell. The rope dangling there would tell the Gestapo agent searching the café what he needed to know if he found his way to the roof before Josef had a chance to go there and coil the rope back into its hiding place.
In the same way that the earth had rushed up toward him when he jumped from the doomed plane, now the roof came at him too fast, and this time he had no chute for slowing himself. He landed with a painful thud, and it took him a moment to get his breath. But Anja was there urging him to his feet, grabbing his arm and half-dragging him across the slippery, flat surface to the far edge.
“We have to jump,” she instructed, pointing to the next rooftop. Between where they stood and where she wanted them to go was a good two feet of airspace. Peter took one look at his petite partner and decided there was no way she could make a leap like that. How would she get the traction she needed? And if she did make it, the other roof would be slippery and could send her sliding over the edge.
“There’s got to be another way,” he said.
She rolled her eyes, backed up several yards, and before he could stop her, ran for the edge and went sailing through the air. She landed on the other side, her feet sliding as if she were ice skating before she turned and looked back at him. She was actually grinning.
Peter did as she had done and easily made the leap, but because of the icy surface, he lost his balance on the landing and ended up on his backside. “Do not laugh,” he muttered as he got to his feet.
“Not laughing,” she assured him as she led the way once again across this new roof to the next one. But he was pretty sure that she was laughing, or at least smiling, and he was glad to have given her that moment of lightness on what was otherwise a night filled with angst.
Instead of crossing the third roof, Anja led him to a door and down a winding stairway for three floors to another door. Along the way they encountered no one, and the stairs were dimly lit and filled with shadows. When they reached the second door, Anja tapped four times and then waited a beat and tapped three more times. She placed her ear close to the door, and Peter heard the distinct reply of a series of taps followed by the slide of a bolt.
The door opened just enough to allow them to slip through, and Peter could not believe what he saw. They were in a room lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling—a room filled with coffins.
“Peter, this is Willem.” As always there would be no last names. It was dangerous enough that they knew first names.
The two men shook hands. “You are an undertaker?” Peter asked the obvious, but at least he remembered to do so in German. He suspected this was another of Anja’s little tests. She was always trying to trip him up.
Willem grinned. He was a small, wiry man with a bush of white hair and a beard to match. “At your service,” he replied. “Anything here suit your fancy?”
“I’m not in the market at the moment,” Peter replied stiffly but then remembered his manners and added, “but I can see that you do beautiful work. That one is cherrywood, right?”
The undertaker murmured something to Anja about Peter having excellent taste, and the two of them laughed. Then the undertaker gestured for Peter to get in. “Try it on for size,” he urged.
This was macabre.
“He’s serious,” Anja said. “This is how we will travel to Paris—it’s too risky for us to go by train—even a local—as passengers. Once they realize we aren’t at the café, they are sure to have men checking everyone’s papers and—”
Peter ran his hand over the polished wood of the coffin’s lid. “How do we breathe?”
Willem demonstrated by closing the lid to show that there was a gap that ran along three sides of the coffin to allow air in. “It will be uncomfortable, but as soon as the train gets under way, the lid can be opened.” He lifted the lid again and pointed to a lever on the inside, hidden in the folds of the satin pleating that covered the inside of the coffin. “You’ll have a signal from the railway worker charged with managing the freight. He’s one of ours.”
“Signal?”
“He’ll whistle a folk tune,” Anja explained, and Willem demonstrated. “Until we hear that, we must remain perfectly still and silent.”
“You’ll also be in a coffin?”
“She’ll be with you. Plenty of room,” Willem said.
“Wouldn’t separate coffins make more sense? I mean there’s only so much air and—”
“Loading a single coffin as
freight is barely noticed. Two coffins will attract attention,” Willem explained. “It will all work out fine; I assure you. Anja will lie this way with her head at the end here, and you will lie with your head at the opposite end. Both of you will be on your side so that you can face the air opening. We’ve tested it, and this is the best arrangement. Several of your fellow evaders have made the trip from Brussels to Paris in exactly this way.”
“Are you okay with this?” Peter asked Anja.
“It is the only way.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Anja met his gaze directly. “We are wasting precious time.”
She had a point. He turned to Willem. “Okay, ready when you are.”
In theory it had sounded as if there would be plenty of air, but once Anja had nestled into the coffin, curled onto her side with Peter’s large feet digging into her back, she began to have doubts. And then she began to panic. How on earth had two grown men found enough oxygen to breathe in the close confines of the coffin? She felt as if her throat was closing and as if she had to move in order to catch her breath again. She shifted her legs so that her knees did not feel as if they were grinding into each other. And then she froze.
Peter had pulled her shoe off and was rubbing her foot. “In through your nose,” he whispered. “And blow it out slowly.”
She followed his instructions for a change and found that it worked. Slowing her breathing and concentrating on keeping it even and steady made all the difference. Of course, Peter massaging her foot didn’t hurt.
The coffin tipped suddenly as it was loaded onto the train, and she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out. She willed herself to focus on keeping her breathing even and deciphering the sounds filtering into them from the air passage.
Someone—or perhaps more than one person—was placing the casket on a rolling cart. After a short time, she felt the thud as the casket was lowered to the floor and pushed until it hit a wall or other freight and came to a stop. More crates and boxes were brought aboard, with a man directing the workers where to place them. Through the air passage, she felt the cold wind of the freezing night. She heard voices—shouting out orders, calling for passengers to board. She heard the train’s shrill whistle and then the slamming of the freight car door as the train slowly inched along the track and began to gather speed. Soon, she thought and listened intently for the folk song.
But instead of a folk song whistled, she heard the door that connected the freight car to the rest of the train open and close and she heard the railway worker sound out the required salute to whoever had entered the car. “Heil Hitler.”
“Heil Hitler,” the man entering the car replied almost absentmindedly.
Anja listened as someone wearing the jackboots favored by the Nazis paced the wood floor of the freight car. Their visitor asked several questions, and the railway worker replied. She heard crates being pried open at the German’s order. His voice rose impatiently when the worker took more time than he thought necessary. And then he must have spotted the coffin.
She knew this because suddenly his voice was very close, and she heard the light tap of his fingernails drumming against the top of the coffin. Peter’s hand went still, and it was as if they had both stopped breathing.
“Was ist los?” the German demanded.
To Anja’s surprise, the worker began to cry. Then she heard him say that the coffin contained the body of his younger brother—a French patriot loyal to the Nazi sympathizers and Vichy government—who had given his life for the Führer. He had died on the battlefield and was now being transported home to his parents for burial. He provided enough detail as to his brother’s name and rank and place where he’d been killed that apparently the German believed him, for he said that the coffin should be draped in the proper flag. “He gave his life for his country,” he added, and there was a hint of sadness in his tone followed by a weary sigh. “I’ll see that you have a Vichy flag—the flag of the French loyal to the Reich,” he said, and his words faded as apparently he retreated to the door and on to the next car.
A minute later, Anja heard the whistled refrain of a Flemish folk song. Peter found the latch and pushed open the lid.
“Best stay where you are,” their contact whispered. “If he comes back or sends someone, I’ll need to close the lid at once.”
Both Anja and Peter took advantage of their brief reprieve to shift positions and gulp in the cold air that now washed over them.
“That was quick thinking on your part,” Peter said in German.
The worker shrugged and continued replacing the crate tops that the German had forced him to open. “We do what we must,” he replied.
“Still, I thank you,” Peter told him. “I may not get the chance to tell you that.” He extended his hand, and the railway worker—whose name neither Peter nor Anja would ever know—accepted the handshake. “Better lie down and let me close this,” he said gruffly, his voice choking as if he were truly on the verge of tears.
He waited for them to reposition themselves and nod that they were ready, and then as he lowered the lid, he looked at Peter. “No one has ever done that before—thanked me. May God be with you.”
Once again they were cast into utter darkness as the train rumbled on through the night toward Paris.
Peter had not realized that he’d dosed off until he was awakened by the noise of the door to the freight car sliding open. Several men conversing in French came aboard. Some grumbled while others laughed as they began the process of emptying the car. The coffin was jostled repeatedly as they moved crates and barrels and boxes past it. All Peter could think about was what would happen if the coffin tipped over and opened. But finally the men lifted it, and as they did they fell silent, perhaps out of respect for the dead. He knew the exact moment the coffin was set on a rolling cart outside the train, for he heard a priest murmuring to a woman who was crying hysterically.
“Mama,” Peter heard the railway worker say and wondered if the woman really was his mother or just another actor in this little drama they were playing out.
The cart was being rolled across the planks of the station platform. The noise of the belching train and other passengers greeting family or friends and collecting their luggage retreated into the background. “Almost there,” he heard the railway worker whisper. “Just a few more—”
“Halt!”
Suddenly Peter heard the cadence of marching coming closer and closer. He felt Anja stretch her fingers to touch his while together they waited.
The nameless railway worker spoke rapidly in German to someone while the woman playing the dead soldier’s mother continued to weep. Peter pressed closer to the opening to try and make out what was happening. He heard the snap of fabric and then something was said about a flag. A moment later, the coffin was lifted evenly and carried forward. All was silent except for the steady stomp of boots striking pavement in unison on all sides of the coffin. He gripped Anja’s fingers tighter, trying to reassure her, but they both knew that if they were discovered, he would spend the rest of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp while she would be tortured and then killed.
She should have stayed in Brussels where there were people who could protect her. While Peter had no doubt that he was the real target of this manhunt, he also knew that once he was caught or killed, the Gestapo would turn its attention back to Anja—the agent Schwarz would see to that. Even so, she might have made it. While the Nazis were off chasing him, she might have made her escape with Daniel and her grandparents, perhaps back to Denmark or even Sweden—a country that had maintained its neutrality. From there she might even have made it to England. She must have known that. Surely Josef had suggested as much. Definitely Mikel would have.
She was here because of him. She had put her own chance for escape aside in order to be sure that he made it to freedom. What was it she had once told him when trying to explain the Quaker faith? Something the founder of the Religious Society of Friends, George Fox
, had written hundreds of years earlier. Something about walking cheerfully through the world, responding to that part of God that lived in every person.
It is our life’s work to find the love and truth—no matter how tiny it may be—in everyone we encounter—neighbors, friends, strangers—even perceived enemies, she had explained.
He did not understand that level of concern and devotion to others. He had always thought of himself as a decent and caring man, but would he go to such lengths to save the life of a stranger? Certainly he was little more than a stranger to Anja and Lisbeth and Josef, and even more so to the railway worker and the other unseen faces willing to risk their lives to get him home again. He recalled the day at the farm when the Gestapo agent had looked at Anja, had touched her with his riding crop—ever so gently and at the same time so menacingly. How could she include men like that in her forgiveness?
The marching came to a precise halt, and the coffin was set in place on some secure surface. Someone gave orders, and the soldiers retreated, their footsteps dying away. Now what? He heard the woman, still sniffling but more composed as she repeatedly blessed someone in French. He was surprised to hear the German thank her for her family’s sacrifice and then murmur something to the railway worker, who stated his thanks in German.
A door closed.
The woman—fully composed now—gave directions.
And then Peter heard the whistling of the folk tune. He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and reached for the hidden latch. Seconds later he pushed up the lid. It swung away, and he found himself looking up into the smiling faces of the railway worker, a woman dressed in black, and three other men.