Page 37 of Winter's End
A split second of silence.
“Got him! Nazi bastard!”
It was a voice Zoe did not know. She looked up to see a barrel-chested farmer inspecting the now-still German.
“He’s dead,” the man shouted. “But if one survived the blast, there could be others. Best to have a good look around!”
The chaos increased, people milling about, more pistols at the ready. Zoe watched, wondering again if she could ever bring herself to shoot.
Finally, the uproar faded. “I don’t see any movement,” someone shouted. “Quickly, now!”
“Ja, please!” Zoe cupped her hands and yelled. “We need to be quickly out of here.”
...
She waved at Leela, who hurried past, hauling a wagon full of food. Her husband followed, and others came up behind them, cycling off in different directions and disappearing beyond the tree line. Zoe prayed. She wished she had had a cart to hitch to her own bicycle, though she wasn’t sure now that her tires could have borne the extra weight.
She blew a stream of air into the night sky, wondering how long it would be before the train wreck was detected, before firefighters and railroad men and Nazi personnel arrived at the grizzly scene.
In the quiet darkness, she hopped on her bicycle. She would not stay long enough to find out.
MILA
Mila left the Daimler at home and walked to the Cinema, arriving at three in the afternoon. She paid her admission, then loitered in the rococo lobby with a half-hearted crowd of ticket holders looking, she supposed, for any means to escape the struggle of daily life.
Anxious, she did her best to blend in, avoiding eye contact, pretending to smoke a cigarette in the lobby and studying her surroundings as she waited for the show to begin.
Three potted plants badly in need of care stood against a window near the entrance. When she was finished with the cigarette, she approached one of the pots and tamped it out in the dry earth. As she did so, she dropped in the small device she had secreted in her hand and half-buried it in the soil. Glancing around her, she retrieved the used cigarette, dropped it into a trash can, and joined the twenty or thirty people making their way into the theater.
She sat through a thirty-minute travelogue touting the finest beer gardens in Berlin, Munich, and Hamburg, then an old Greta Garbo film about a wayward young woman being punished in a harsh reform school.
It was nearly intolerable, and by the time she got home at well after five, she was filled with a nervous energy. She took a bath to help steady her nerves, then dressed in a plain black skirt and sweater and moved quietly down the stairs.
She had picked up her coat and was nearly at the front door when her father’s voice stopped her.
“Mila? Where are you off to?”
She turned to face him, her expression neutral. “Out to have dinner with friends, Father. I will not be late.”
“A friend for lunch in Amsterdam and now friends for dinner.” His expression was clearly skeptical. “No, Mila, I do not think so. In any case, it could be dangerous out there tonight. The Reich officers have called a meeting, as you are aware. You know how much they drink, my dear, and they tend to get unruly when they do.”
“But I promised, Father,” she felt her heart sink. “And we will not be out on the streets in any case.”
Her father was adamant. “No, Mila. Please indulge me and cancel. We have no dinner guests scheduled this evening. Just your mother and me. The three of us. Won’t that be nice?”
Mila thought frantically. “But father, I am to be the fourth at bridge. They will not be able to play without me.”
“Then they will have each other for company. No, Mila. Dinner will be served at seven. Your mother and I will be delighted to have you to ourselves.”
...
At seven precisely, she took her place at the table, dressed, as expected, in a proper dinner dress set off with her father’s birthday pearls. She had alternately raged and fretted and agonized, even considered alerting Pieter that the mission was in peril. But in the end, she decided that if she could manage to sit through dinner, there should time enough for her to get back to the Cinema before the German gathering was over.
To her surprise, her mother was already seated. More and more frequently these evenings, she begged off with a headache and took dinner in her room. But tonight, she sat tall and elegant in navy blue silk, her steel gray hair in a fashionable chignon.
“You look lovely, Mila,” she said, her expression rueful. “As well you should. Your dressmaking bills have been enormous.”
Mila opened her mouth, but her mother shushed her. “It is not that we mind, for heaven’s sake, Mila. You have an admirable fashion sense. Are you still wearing your own designs?”
