June 23, 1942
Arjan held down the stencil with one hand as he sloshed black paint over the side of the oak crate with the other, choking as the harsh fumes burned his nostrils and throat.
For the last four days and nights, he and Philip Verbeet had taken turns packing up the paintings and digging out the root cellar. His wrists ached from tightening the screws onto the lids and his back from shoveling. Yet it was the overpowering stench emitting from the cheap house paint they were using to stencil numbers onto each crate that was the hardest to take. They didn’t dare open a window lest the smell drew someone’s attention, and the fumes were suffocating him.
He covered his mouth with a handkerchief to dampen the noise as another cough racked his body. After his choking fit subsided, he turned to his inventory ledger and placed a small check mark next to the Monet, Renoir and Redon belonging to his old friend Frans Keizer.
Holding the handkerchief to his nose, he glanced around the room, frowning as he counted the paintings still stacked up on the left wall of the shed. Sixty-five paintings to fit into forty-five crates. And there were still the ten paintings hanging in his gallery to consider. It would be a tight squeeze.
Despite their hard work, there was so much more to do. Yet his body was shutting down from pure exhaustion. He had no choice but to go home soon and get a few hours’ sleep.
Arjan swatted at his pants leg, trying in vain to get the powdered lime out of its dark fabric before going back outside. He didn’t want to give the police any reason to stop and question him. He’d spilled some onto his legs while carrying three heavy buckets of the chalk-like substance down into the root cellar, placed there to help absorb extra moisture while the paintings were hidden away.
Once he was satisfied his pants wouldn’t be a source of concern, he pulled on his waistcoat and jacket before opening his pocket watch, the same one his father had given to him for his eighteenth birthday, the day he became a man. He sighed in dismay when he saw it was after midnight.
“I’m ready to leave,” he called down to his cohort, currently spreading the last layer of plaster onto the walls of the newly enlarged cellar. In two days the plaster would be dry enough that they could begin shifting the filled crates, now stacked up in towers to his right, down below. If they picked up the paintings from his gallery tomorrow evening, they’d have a full day to crate up the rest.
But now, he had to go home, wash the filth and grime out of his clothes and body, then get some rest. After he’d started packing, that is. Philip brought his suitcases around this morning, the portrait of his oldest daughter the only painting tucked inside. Once they’d finished up in the shed, they would take the train down South together, before parting ways in Venlo. His contact at the resistance group had warned him not to bring more than his two smallest suitcases. But that would be enough, it would have to be.