Page 30 of Winter's End
The German downed his fourth beer and slung a heavy arm around her shoulder. “Sie, my beautifulfraulein,” he murmured. “You will bemeine fraulein, ya?”
His fingers began to play with the neckline of her dress. Evi smiled. “Een ander?”She held up her nearly full mug.Another?”
The German had trouble snapping his fingers for the bartender. She took it as a welcome sign. After his fifth beer, as his gaze explored the cleft between her breasts, both his eyes and his smile looked decidedly off kilter.
“Liebhaber- lover - she said in German, her fingers playing with his belt buckle. “Wirst du mit mir kommen?” Will you come with me?
In answer, he tried a wet kiss, which Evi barely managed to avoid. He slapped a wad of Dutch guilders on the bar and slipped crookedly off his barstool.
Evi stood beside him, settled his arm over her shoulder. “Ich lebe in der nahe,” She whispered into his ear, silently thanking Mila for her language lessons. “I live very nearby.”
By the time they reached the back door, she was certain the Nazi would have difficulty navigating. But as they stepped outside, he found strength enough to turn and flatten her against the wall of the tavern.
“Nein, bitte,”she said, easing herself out from under him. “Nein, liebhaber. Better in my house, in my bed.”
She stepped away, but he was stronger than he looked, and in one swift motion, he eased them both to the ground. He was heavy on her, clapping a hand over her mouth as his right hand searched for his zipper.
“Bitte!”– Please, she tried, mumbling into his hand. He was pulling her dress up with his free hand, grappling with clumsy fingers to pulldown her underwear. She could feel him hard and pulsing against her. Panic rose in her throat.
“Nein, bitte,” she mumbled, praying for someone to exit the tavern door, pushing hard against the German’s chest with every bit of strength she could muster.
He rose up slightly and, in that instant, she heard the pop of a pistol, and the German collapsed against her, the full weight of him pinning her firmly to the ground.
Evi gulped air, trying to ease herself out from under him, looking for the Resistance shooters. But the man who shoved the German’s body aside was a complete and total stranger.
“Are you okay?” he asked in English – American English, Evi thought – as he helped her get to her feet.
“I –ja,I think so,” she began, her heart beating against her chest. She heard the heavy pounding of boots against packed earth, and her bodyguards appeared out of nowhere and pinned the arms of her rescuer behind him.
“Who are you?” they demanded.
“Whoa,” the man struggled to break free. “I’m an American. American. United States Army Flight Officer Jacob Reese.”
There was no mistaking the American accent. The bodyguards loosened their grip. The airman began to back away, hands over his head. “My plane went down here in Dutch territory during a scouting drill, September fourteenth, nineteen-forty-four.”
Evi stared at the tall American, dark haired, lightly bearded, broad through the shoulders and dressed in civilian clothing. Her bodyguards seemed uncertain. But there was no time for discussion, with an SS officer lying dead at their feet only steps from the tavern’s back door.
The Resistance guards bent, each grasping one of the German’s arms, and the American needed no instruction to grasp him firmly by the ankles. Together, the three moved quickly into the woods, and Evi, still shivering, chignon askew, put one foot in front of the other and followed.
She watched, coming slowly back to herself, as the German’s body was stripped of all that was useful and tossed into the waiting grave.
As before, she had no idea if she might be asked to do this again. But she did know two things for certain. The first was that she might owe her life to this downed American airman.
The second was that she would demand a pistol of her own and she would damn well learn how to use it.
ZOE
With time of the essence and phone service unreliable, Zoe went directly to the Dans Hal. As always, there were women and children at work creating wall décor, chatting and laughing, creating a quite believable smokescreen in the event Nazi snoopers showed up.
She knew fewer than half of the women she saw, but she was greeted heartily by those who knew her.
“Doctor Visser, hallo!” called Leela Bakker, who printed underground communications for the Resistance, and whose rowdy little schnauzer had been a patient. “Are you here to help?”
“Actually, I’m here to recruit help,” Zoe kept her voice low. “We need volunteers for tomorrow evening. Is there somewhere we can talk?”
Leela took her into the office, where they spoke above the noise of a mimeograph.
Zoe laid out what was needed. “The train will be detonated tomorrow after dark, at precisely five-twenty,” she said. “We need at least a dozen people – strong people who can pedal for an hour and who understand the risk – to wait in the surrounding woods with wagons or carts secured to their bicycles. We will need to very quickly harvest food from the wreckage and take off in different directions, with the hospital in Heemstede as the end point.”
