CHAPTER 6   

When they returned to the café, at least a dozen people had gathered there. They sat in the small iron chairs that had been pulled away from the tables and placed in a circle. More people were coming in from the street and taking a chair in silence. Anja could see that Peter was obviously confused and looking to her for answers.

“Oh, I nearly forgot,” Anja whispered. “This is a special meeting for worship. Will you stay?” She expected Peter to claim weariness from the exertion of the walk. Instead, he sat in an empty chair and glanced at her. He nodded toward another chair next to him, and she sat there. Aware that he was watching to see what came next, she settled herself, closing her eyes and resting her upturned open hands on her lap as she began to empty her mind of all the stresses of the day and turn her thoughts inward toward the Light.

Of course she could not explain this to him, but she peeked and saw that his hands were resting on his knees, his eyes were closed, and his breathing was amazingly calm and even. Josef and Lisbeth were the last to join the circle, and as soon as they were settled, the room went absolutely still. It was quieter than usual because there was no noise from traffic or people passing by outside.

Be still and know that I am God.

Anja thought about the task before them—getting Peter strong enough for the journey, convincing him to let go and trust those along the line to—

Be still….

She thought about the risks they were all taking—risks that she had convinced herself were right. Risks that in the end could bring pain and sorrow for Daniel. And what of Lisbeth and Josef’s unborn child, and what about—

Be still….

She drew in a breath and slowly let it out, and she felt the calm of others surround her and the stillness of this holy night, and without a doubt she knew that she was doing God’s work in helping to save men like Peter. For even as you do this for one of the least of these …

The Quaker service—they called it a meeting for worship—was not even close to anything Peter had experienced before. Back home he had attended various churches with his friends, including some pretty high-octane revival meetings where people cried out and threw up their hands and spoke in strange languages. But this was something totally new.

The most obvious difference, of course, was the silence. Those attending entered the café in silence. They might nod or smile at another person, but no words were so much as whispered. Each person took a seat and appeared to settle in, eyes closed, hands resting on knees, palms open as if waiting for some surprise gift. The second thing he noticed was the lack of anyone who appeared to be in charge. There was no preacher or priest in evidence—not even a lay minister. Apparently the deal was that everyone did his or her own thing. So did that mean there were no rules or rituals?

There certainly was no music—no swell of the pipe organ, no piano, no choir. And because this was Christmas night and all the shops were closed and people were at home with their families, no sounds came from the street. Just stillness and silence … and a hint of peace such as Peter had not felt in a very long time.

Following the example of Anja and the others, he closed his eyes and placed his hands on his knees. After a few minutes, he lost all awareness of the others around him. He focused on his breathing, which seemed to him to be far too loud. Drawing in a breath, he held it for a second and then slowly let it out. As he did so, he realized that his thoughts—always chaotic with everything he had to consider since the plane crash—began to settle into a kind of order. For the first time since he’d landed in that field, he thought about how lucky he had been—Anja would say blessed.

He had landed without incident—if he didn’t count the wounded leg. He could have landed in the trees as Simpson had or hit power lines and died there. He could have been captured as others had. Instead, he had been rescued by an eight-year-old boy, his mother, and his great-grandparents. His wounds had been treated by a German doctor who had risked his life speaking out against his own government back in his homeland. He was now on the first part of a long journey back to freedom, staying in an attic hiding place with adequate food and shelter and the company of people like Anja and Lisbeth and others who were risking their lives to save his. He was in every way he could imagine a very fortunate man. It took him a moment to realize that his lashes were wet with tears of sheer relief and gratitude.

Anja was pleasantly surprised at the way Peter changed his ways following their Christmas night walk. He asked Josef and Lisbeth to help him learn German by speaking only that language to him. He reasoned that, in spite of the need to cross national borders in at least three countries, German would be universally accepted everywhere that he needed to go on his way to freedom. He worked diligently on the exercises Josef prescribed to restore his strength, and although he continued to walk with a slight limp, even that was a kind of blessing. It caused him to stoop slightly as he favored the one leg, so he no longer moved with the upright posture and self-confidence common to Americans.

On the other hand, Anja had some serious concerns about her personal interactions with this most recent evader. In all the time she had been working with the escape line, never had she found herself as drawn to one of the airmen they had helped as she was to Peter Trent. At the hospital, she found herself glancing at the clock far more often than ever before. The minute her shift ended, she put on her wool cape and her gloves and hurried off to the café, where she helped Lisbeth serve the handful of customers and prepare for opening the following day. When the last customer had left and the last dish had been washed and shelved, she and Lisbeth climbed the stairs to the living quarters, where Josef and Peter waited to share a late supper. And all the while as she helped Lisbeth in the café, she was aware that above her Peter was waiting so that after supper they could take their nightly walk.

If the weather was nasty, they would take a longer walk because they were unlikely to be stopped if it was pouring rain or sleet or snow. Even when the weather was good and the streets were busy with people doing last-minute shopping before hurrying home to beat the enforced curfew, they would walk, always alert for a signal from Mikel or another member of the escape line that danger was near. In those cases, they returned to the café and Peter’s hiding place, where she would quiz him on his German and set up situations where he might get caught if he made the slightest mistake.

But it was the way he could make her laugh with his gentle teasing and the small animal figures he carved during the long hours of the day for her to give to Daniel that touched her most. There was also a set of wooden buttons for her grandmother to sew on her grandfather’s winter coat and an intricately carved wooden spoon for her grandmother. These small gestures of appreciation endeared him to her. Counting the time he had spent at the farm, Peter had already been with them far longer than any of their charges, and she was well aware that for his safety and theirs, he would soon need to be moved to the next stop on the escape line. It surprised her to realize how she dreaded that day.

“When do I leave?” he asked one night shortly after the start of the new year as they walked arm in arm through the icy, pelting rain. It was as if he’d read her mind, or perhaps he was simply anxious to move on.

“Soon.” They spoke in German as he had insisted they do whenever they were away from the café.

He chuckled. “You have been saying the same since Christmas. When?”

“When they have lifted the checkpoints set up when your plane crashed—when the time is right,” she replied, unable to keep the annoyance at his insistence from her voice. Are you so anxious to leave me? She found herself wanting to hurl the question at him, yet she knew the answer. It had nothing to do with her. He was anxious to be free again, back with his buddies, back with his unit to fight another day. “I hate this war,” she muttered. They walked a block in silence.

“What do you think you’ll do—you and Daniel—once the war ends?”

“Will it ever end? Back in Munich we were all so excited to learn that America was fighting with us. We all believed that it would all be over in a matter of months—weeks even.”

“We will come out on top in this thing, Anja. It may take a little longer, but we will win.”

“No one wins in something like this,” she said. After they had walked another block in silence, she finally addressed his original question. “Daniel dreams of the day when he can leave the orphanage. The nuns have been kind to him and wonderful to me, but he misses being with me and his great-grandparents. He misses his sister … and his father. His father most of all.”

“You loved your husband very much.” It was a statement, not a question.

“We were speaking of Daniel,” she reminded him.

“You were speaking of Daniel. I asked what you plan to do after the war. You’ll go home, I expect.”

“I don’t even know where home is anymore. I was raised in Denmark, but then Benjamin and I lived for years in Germany. We both attended university there, met there, married, and had our children there, and in time …” Her voice trailed off.

He tightened his hold on her hand as he shielded her with the umbrella. It was a gesture of understanding.

“What about you?” she asked.

“I suppose that I’ll go home, at least for a while. I owe it to my parents to spend time with them and let them adjust to the idea that I made it—if I make it.”

She was not given to empty promises, and so she did not rush to assure him that he would indeed make it safely back to America. “We will do our best to help you,” she said.

“I know. I trust that—believe me. But the truth is that after everything I’ve seen and experienced these last eighteen months, small-town living is not likely to satisfy me. There’s a silly song.” He started to sing the words in English, “How’re you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Pair-ee.” He executed a little dance step, and she laughed.

But their mood did not improve. “I suppose I’ll be seeing Pair-ee soon, won’t I? I mean isn’t that the next stop on this underground railroad you and the others have created?” He had told her what he knew of the American version of the escape line—the Underground Railroad that operated during the Civil War.

“You’ll go to Paris,” she confirmed. “And then on to Bordeaux and Bayonne and—”

“Have you traveled to all those places?”

“Me? I’m just a simple farm girl and fisherman’s daughter, remember?” She hoped that her flippant answer would serve as a reminder that he was not to ask questions where the answers could be used against her or the others.

“Frankly, I can’t imagine you living out your life on a farm or even in a fishing village somewhere in Denmark.”

“We do have cities there,” she protested, but she knew he was right.

“Will you marry again?” he asked, his voice so soft she wasn’t certain that he had meant to ask the question aloud.

She was surprised at how easily the answer came to her. “I doubt it. By the time this war ends, I’m going to be well into my middle age and not—”

“Mikel would marry you tomorrow or fifty years from now—he is that patient, and he loves you that much.”

“But I do not love him,” she replied.

They walked on—farther than they normally did because she was reluctant to end the evening.

“Tell me about Nacht und Nebel.”

“That has nothing to do with you,” she replied as an unavoidable shiver overtook her.

“It has to do with you and the Buchermanns and others. Tell me.”

She sighed. “It was a policy that Hitler announced back in December of 1941—actually on the same day that the Japanese bombed your base in Pearl Harbor.”

“What are the words? Night? And …”

“Fog. It’s what he called this new program. Certain prisoners are to vanish without a trace—into the night so to speak.”

“And the fog?”

“No information is ever to be given about their whereabouts or their fate.”

“And this could happen to you and the others?”

Anja shrugged. It was something she tried not to think about because her heart broke for Daniel if she should be taken and simply disappear with no word to him.

Peter was silent for several minutes. “I can’t let you do this, Anja. I won’t. You have a family—a son.”

“It is for Daniel and his future that I must do the work I do,” she replied. “Anything I can do to bring this horror to an end so that he and other children can grow up in peace is worth every risk.”

“And how does saving someone like me, or any airman for that matter, further your cause to give Daniel and his generation a better world?”

“This is not for me to decide. We do what we are led to believe is the right thing. Helping you and the others is the right thing to do—it is what we can do, and therefore it is what we must do.” A clock chimed the hour, and she turned sharply and headed back in the direction of the café. “It’s later than I thought,” she said. “We must hurry or risk being stopped for violating curfew.”

He caught up to her, and taking hold of her arm, spun her into his embrace. “Someone’s coming,” he whispered just before he kissed her.

Peter didn’t really have to kiss her. He could just as easily have pulled her into his arms and faked a kiss while the two German soldiers passed by. The truth was he’d been thinking about kissing her for some time now, and once she was there pressed against him …

Her lips were full and moist with rain, and in spite of the difference in their heights, his first thought was that they fit together as if they had been made to complete one another. The thought was stunning. Never in his life had he had such a sense of belonging with a woman as he did holding Anja in his arms. He told himself it was the situation—the danger, the uncertainty of their lives. But deep inside he knew better.

He was aware of the two soldiers passing by. They were young, judging by their snickers and snorts. One of them muttered something in German that Peter was pretty sure he didn’t need or want a translation for. Their leather-heeled boots echoed on the pavement as they moved on down the street. Still Peter held Anja close, and he realized that she seemed in no hurry to move away from him. Her shoulders were shaking, and he tried to soothe her sobs. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “They’ve gone.”

“I’m not crying,” she said through her giggles as she snaked her hands up to his face and cupped his cheeks. “You are very quick thinking, Peter Trent. I will give you that.” She pushed away from him and straightened her hat before starting once again to walk toward the café.

Had the kiss meant nothing to her?

He had been rocked to his core. She had laughed.

The only thing Anja could think to do was to laugh. Peter’s kiss had ignited a fire in her that she’d believed had died with Benjamin. Up to now she had been able to rationalize any hint of attraction she felt for Peter as the result of being overtired or as something that arose out of her concern for his safe return to England and eventually to his family in America. Up to now she had shrugged off Lisbeth’s none-too-subtle hints that perhaps the time had come for Anja to consider a new future for herself and Daniel—one that included the possibility of marriage and even more children. As if such a thing could simply be wished for and it would happen.

But with one kiss, he had made a lie of everything she had tried to tell herself about her emotions when it came to this American flyboy. To have feelings for Peter Trent was ridiculous, impossible, insane. And she simply would not permit such feelings to cloud the serious work ahead of them both.

“That was close,” she said as she glanced down the street to where the two soldiers were turning a corner.

“I doubt they would have questioned us anyway,” Peter replied. “They’re young and—”

“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 kitchen 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 handle 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.