Only the drip, drip, drip of the water from the tip of the rowboat oars broke the stillness of the night. Johan Kooistra dipped the paddles into the water without making a sound, pulled back, and lifted them. A chilly breeze seeped through his thin clothes. The weather had warmed since the blizzard last month, enough to thaw the canal, but winter had not yet gasped its last breath.
He counted on absolute silence. Needed it. He couldn’t be caught out at night. He couldn’t be caught out at all. At twenty years old, Johan might get picked up at any minute by the Gestapo or the NSB—the dreaded collaborating Dutch police—and shipped off to work in the German factories.
His sister Cornelia caught him the first time he tried to leave the house, forcing him to wait until she got busy out back. She wouldn’t understand his aching desire to be outside. He loved her, but this war changed her into a different person. Most of the time she acted more like his mother than his sister. He couldn’t talk to her and have her understand his feelings like she did before.
While he had been working and hiding on his umpka’s farm in the country, he had the freedom to go outside every day and breathe fresh air. He liked staying with his father’s brother and his cousin. Then a few months ago they had been betrayed and the situation became dangerous there. Not having anywhere else to go, Johan returned home to his sister.
He wished she didn’t watch every move he made.
He had heard the gunshots by the canal bank. Like a child who runs to the schoolhouse window to watch the first snowfall, he needed to see up close what had happened. So he snuck away in the dim light and pushed their rowboat onto the canal.
He took a deep breath of the crisp evening air, and liberty filled his lungs. The risk was worth this moment of freedom.
He had found some orange fabric in Mem’s sewing basket. He didn’t know what she had intended to do with it. Sometimes mothers bought material and never used it. She died in the second year of the war, so he couldn’t ask her, but he didn’t think Cornelia would mind if he took it. He wanted to cover one of the bodies of the executed men with it. Displaying the color of the Dutch royal house would be his show of resistance to the occupiers. He had heard tales of others doing the same.
A rush of adrenaline surged through him. He couldn’t fight since the Germans had dismantled the woefully unprepared Dutch army. He couldn’t join the Underground because Cornelia kept such a thumb on him. But this he could do. The tips of his fingers tingled.
He turned the boat to shore and, within a few strokes, beached it on the grass. Though death happened all the time on a farm, he hadn’t prepared himself for the sight in front of him. All these men, shot in the head. He turned away from the gruesome scene while the small dinner his sister prepared burned in the base of his throat, threatening to erupt. He inhaled, then walked down the line of men. At the ninth and last man Johan stopped, pulled the orange fabric from inside his jacket, and laid it over the body.
His chest swelled. He had done a brave and noble thing.
Then he detected movement from the corner of his eye. Something—or someone—stirred at the end of the bridge.
Johan fell to the cold, hard ground and flattened himself. The hair on his arms bristled. Just breathe. He listened for the thudding of jackboots on the pavement but heard none, nor the clack of klompen.
Cautious or daring—he didn’t know which he was—he lifted his head. Whoever moved before now lay still.
Lay. Not stood.
Johan scrambled to his feet but kept low as he climbed the bank toward the figure. A man lay crumpled on his side near the end of the bridge. A moan escaped him. He tried to move but winced in pain. “Help me.”
“What happened?” Johan crouched but couldn’t see much in the gathering dark. All of the blackout curtains had been drawn and for almost five years the streetlights had been dark. Only a sliver of the moon illuminated the scene. A ring of blood stained the man’s right shoulder, like he’d been shot.
One of the executed men?
“Help me.”
Johan didn’t miss the pleading in the man’s voice. “Where do you live?”
“Nee. Help me.”
What should he do? He couldn’t leave the man here. His sister Anki was a nurse, but she didn’t know he had returned. His family didn’t trust her husband.
He could take the man home. Cornelia wouldn’t like the arrangement, but he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. “Can you walk at all? We have to get to my boat.” He couldn’t leave their rowboat on the opposite shore. It would raise too many questions with the Nazis about how it got there.
The man reached with his left hand and Johan pulled him to his feet. He held the injured man around the waist while he flung his good arm over Johan’s shoulder. Together, with the man leaning much of his weight on him, they made their way to the canal bank. Though sloped, it was shorter than going to the flatter ground. The wounded fellow distributed more of his mass Johan’s way.
“Don’t pass out on me.”
“I won’t. I don’t think I will.”
Lifting milk pails and working around the farm made Johan strong, but they still struggled down the bank, slipping and sliding. All the while, his heart kept time with his legs. They could get caught at any moment, so exposed they were out here. He wanted to hurry but the man couldn’t.
Please stay conscious. He wouldn’t be able to lift him if he passed out.
Johan tried not to jostle his patient, but it proved to be impossible as they slid down the icy bank. The man cried out in pain.
“Hush or both of us will end up dead.”
The man nodded.
They reached the boat and now Johan faced another difficulty—how to get the man in.
“I can do it.” The injured man managed to sling one leg into the boat. The vessel wobbled, then stilled. Carefully, he leaned one arm on the boat’s edge, then pulled the other leg in. He slunk in the seat.
Johan pushed the boat away from shore, then hopped in, picked up the oars, and headed for the little house on the far shore. When he left home tonight, he wanted adventure. He sure got it. More than he planned.
They didn’t talk, the need for silence absolute. Where had the man come from? He had been shot, that wasn’t in doubt. But how? He couldn’t be one of those executed, could he?
No one survived his own execution. The Nazis weren’t that sloppy.
Johan had no other explanation, though.
Wouldn’t his sister be surprised when she saw what he brought home?
CORNELIA RELAXED IN her rocking chair, enjoying the peace and quiet of the darkness. Right now, no planes flew overhead on their way to bomb Germany—a rare occasion these days. Silence enveloped her. Johan must have fallen asleep upstairs because all remained still. Since her parents had died and her sister, Anki, had married, the job of caring for her younger brother had fallen to her.
Three years ago, when he was seventeen, he had received notice that he had to register for service in Germany. They promised good meals and a salary. Right away, Cornelia didn’t trust it. Since Hitler broke his pledge to respect the Netherlands’ neutrality, she didn’t trust anything that man or his compatriots said. After a lengthy talk with her umpka, they agreed that Johan should go into hiding at his farm. He could work there and earn his keep. Umpka Kees had plenty of places to hide, and his own son, their cousin Niek, would hide there too.
Two months ago they had been betrayed. Someone must have seen the boys working outside as they often did. Both of them managed to get into the hiding spot in the hay mow, but she and her umpka agreed it was too dangerous there now. Niek had gone to another farm while she and Umpka Kees constructed a hiding place here so Johan could come home.
She sighed and her black-and-white short-hair cat, Pepper, stirred at her feet. She wanted to stroke his head but didn’t want him to jump up and find another place to sleep, so she resisted.
This war had a way of turning everything upside down, like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces didn’t fit together. They had lost so much. Too much.
She rubbed her temples, erasing all of these musings. She didn’t want to think about the past. Or the present. She gathered Pepper in her arms and nuzzled his soft neck. “Come on now, time for bed, though you have slept all day today, haven’t you?”
He answered her with a lick on her cheek with his rough, bumpy tongue. A gurgle of laughter bubbled inside her, the rare treat sweeter than chocolate.
A knock at the door tightened her throat and her pulse rate kicked up a few notches. Who would come unannounced at such an hour? No one would dare venture out after curfew. Only the Gestapo and a few audacious Resistance workers roamed the streets at this time.
Whoever was outside now pounded on the door. Could it be the police? You never knew when the Gestapo or the NSB would show up. She had to warn her brother and get him into his hiding place before they broke down the door.
She squeezed Pepper so hard he screeched and jumped from her arms.
The pounding continued. “Cornelia, open up.”
Her mind whirled. That sounded like Johan. But wasn’t he upstairs?
“Open the door. Now.”
She cracked open the door.
Johan stood on the clean-swept step, another man draped over his shoulder.
Behind her, Pepper scampered away. She drew the door open a sliver wider. “What is going on?”
“This man has been shot. Help me get him to the bedstee.”
The man reeked of danger.
“Corrie, help me.”
She clung to the doorknob.
“Let us in.”
“I can’t.”
“Help me.” The man took a labored breath.
“He will die if we don’t aid him. You have to open the door. Please.”
What if this had been Hans? What if he had knocked on someone’s door, desperate for help? She knew what he would have wanted her to do.
She opened the door and stepped to the side.
The man must weigh almost twice as much as she did, and Johan struggled to half drag him to the front room.
She walked beside them, studying the man, his handsome face pallid, his lips tinged with blue. He smelled of filth, his wavy, sandy-colored hair matted, his clothes caked in mud. Then she saw his shoulder, blood seeping through a crude bandage, and the metallic taste of bile bit her tongue.
“Shut the door.” The man’s voice, though weak, held an air of authority. “Lock it.”
Cornelia scurried to the front and obeyed. Why would he need the door locked?
Johan went to the front room and crossed to the two sets of double doors. The built-in cupboards were painted yellow with green trim. Behind one was a bedstee. Behind the other was storage. Cornelia scooted in front of them and flung open one of the bedstee’s doors. No one had slept here in a while since she and Johan each had rooms upstairs, but clean red-and-white-checked sheets stood at the ready.
Johan eased the man’s torso across the mattress, then swung up his feet.
She stood beside him but turned to her brother. “Where did you find him?”
“On the road, near the bridge.”
“Do you know what happened to him?”
Johan shook his head and the man remained silent.
“Let me look at your shoulder.” Taking great care not to hurt him in any way, she pulled aside his ripped shirt and lifted a crude dressing. Red oozed from a gaping hole. Her stomach recoiled and she dropped the bandage in place as she turned away. “What happened to you?”
“The Gestapo tried to execute me. They missed.”
Johan gasped. “You. You were one of them. The men by the canal.”
“Ja.”
Cornelia touched the bandage. “Who took care of you?”
“Your neighbors across the canal treated me, but they turned me out. They were too afraid to let me stay.”
Her neighbors had done the right thing. A current of panic shot through Cornelia. She had been wrong to allow him in her house. The Gestapo would arrive to search for him, and when they found him, she and Johan would be shipped to a prison camp.
“You have to let me stay.”
“I—I—I don’t know.” Was he dangerous? What was the right thing to do?
Again she asked herself, what if this had been Hans?
Her brother leaned against the door of the storage cupboard. “If we turn him out, he will die for sure.”
She twisted her damp hands together as she looked at the man. His eyes, as clear and blue as the big Frisian sky, spoke of kindness. But if she was wrong about him . . . “If you want me to let you stay here, you must tell me what you did.”
“I was out after curfew.”
“Doing what?”
“Meeting a woman. A married woman.”
Nazis didn’t shoot people for meeting a woman. They shot people for many reasons and sometimes for no reason at all, but this was an execution. An execution of men who had done something awful.
“You’re lying to me. I will throw you on the street unless you tell me the truth.” And she might turn him out even if he confessed.
The man sank into the bed, grimacing in pain. His blond, arched eyebrows lowered, a muscle jumping in his square jaw. He hesitated for a full minute or two. “I work for the Resistance in Leeuwarden and was arrested there. They found contraband on me. For your own protection—and mine—I refuse to tell you more.”
Cornelia clasped her hands to her chest. Contraband. Resistance. Her safe, quiet life shattered.
A pulse of excitement radiated from her brother beside her. “This man is a hero. We have to take care of him.”
“Not a hero, just a man doing what I have to do.”
His humility didn’t move her.
The circle of crimson on his shirt had grown in the few minutes he’d been here. Without immediate aid, he would die.
“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
For Hans’s sake, she had to help him. Her gut twisted. What would she do, what would she say, where would she hide him when the Nazis came searching?
“What is your name?”
“Wim vander Zee.”
“Another lie.”
Johan tugged on her arm, a little child wanting his way. “You have to get Anki. He needs medical care, but Doktor Boukma might not be trustworthy. He might turn in Wim. With her nursing background, Anki can help.”
“You want me to go out after curfew?” She would be arrested. They all would be. The possibility became more and more a reality with each passing second.
Wim reached out and grasped her wrist, squeezing it hard. He hissed at her, “You can’t go for this Anki. Nobody can know about me. No one at all. Do you understand?”
She nodded, unable to breathe.
He relaxed his grip. “You will have to take care of me.”
Cornelia found her voice and the words tumbled out. “I have no training and I hate the sight of blood, so what happens if I pass out? If I do it wrong, you will die. Having me nurse you is not the way to stay alive.”
“Five years we have been occupied and you have never had your abilities tried?”
Wim was testing her. Was she one of those who watched from the sidelines or would she participate in the game?
“Please, Cornelia.” Her brother didn’t want her to sit by idly.
His pleading gripped her. But she would have a talk with him later about bringing strangers into the house. And about being out of the house in the first place.
She rose and padded across the cold floors to the tiny bathroom to gather everything she needed to doctor him, including an old, almost-empty bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a few cotton balls.
Was she one who watched from the sidelines? Yes, she was.
And what was so wrong with that? The Netherlands was a small country. Their army—which didn’t exist anymore—had ridden bicycles, aging rifles slung over their shoulders. Over four and a half years ago, they had been no match for the German tanks. She retrieved a needle and some thread from her sewing basket.
Every Sunday she went twice to the tsjerke and prayed that the Allies would come soon and free them. All of her friends chatted about it. Some had wireless sets and listened to Radio Oranje on the BBC in secret. The Allies would be here soon, and then it would all be over. Why risk their lives now when before long help would come and they would be free?
She brought her supplies and dumped them on the end of the bed. Trying not to hurt him any further, she peeled off the rough cotton dressing, her eyes turned away. Wim didn’t make a sound, not even when she pulled the bandage from his skin. He lay with his eyes closed.
She looked at Johan’s wide face. “Did he pass out?”
He nodded.
Good. He had fainted—from blood loss or pain, she didn’t care, as long as he stayed unconscious for a while.
Covering her mouth, she swabbed the wound, cleaning it. Then she spied the bullet still lodged in his shoulder. Waves of nausea rolled across her middle. “He needs a doktor.”
“Wim told us not to get Anki.”
“What if he dies? He’s unconscious now, so we can get Anki here to treat him without his even knowing. Whom can we trust if not our own sister?”
“What about Piet?”
Anki’s husband did pose a problem. He wasn’t a collaborator, but his complacent attitude toward the occupiers made her nervous. “We will make her promise not to tell him. Remember when we were little? She was always the best at keeping secrets.”
Johan shrugged. “Fine. I will go get her.”
“Nee, not you. What were you thinking when you left before? Do you know you could have gotten yourself arrested? Or killed?”
He opened his mouth and drew in a breath, but she lost interest in his defense.
“Never mind, time is slipping away. I have to get her.” If her trembling legs would carry her that far. They had no other choice.