“They have motorbikes and a horse and cars. It’s all of them. There are two groups. They seem to know that we were over there on the beach. They’re coming from there.” She pointed.
“The north?” Heather asked, alarmed.
“Yes. And up from the ferry dock.”
“From the south too?”
“If that’s the south, yes.”
“How far away are they?” Heather asked.
“I don’t know. Not far.”
The dogs must have tracked her scent from the prison. And that made sense because they had spent the night not too far from the dock or where they had picked up Hans. The O’Neills would figure out that, realistically, they couldn’t have traveled very far in the heat.
“They must have realized now that they just missed us yesterday,” Petra said.
“They’ll find us today. They’ll make sure. They’ll search this whole beach until they find us,” Heather said.
Petra shook her head and smiled. “Not necessarily,” she said.
“There are no rocks to hide behind today, and we can’t—”
“Do you see that gully ahead of us? It is a dried-up river. It must have dried up a long time ago.”
Heather looked where Petra was pointing. It was what on Goose Island they called a hollow way—a portion of land, an old pathway or a river, that was lower than the rest of the terrain. “What about it?”
“It leads deep into the heathland. Perhaps a kilometer. If we’re lucky,” Petra said.
“That won’t fool the dogs,” Heather said. “They’ll sniff us right out.”
Petra nodded. “That is what I am counting on,” she began. “Listen to me. This is what we must do. I will run down the gully and keep going until I reach the end. And I will make a lot of noise so that I will attract their attention. The dogs will hear, and both groups will converge on me. I will go east as far as I can before they catch me. And you will go north along the shore as far as you can. At the very least, I will buy you some time. Perhaps a few hours.”
“Are you crazy? They’ll kill you. Forget it. Come on, let’s go!” Heather said.
Petra shook her head. “No. I am not coming with you. You are going to go north along the beach. I am going this way. You will look after the children and I will draw them away as best I can.”
“Why?”
“Because, Heather, this is the only way. It’s simple mathematics. Four of us or one of us.”
Heather opened her mouth and closed it.
She could see the look in Petra’s dark brown eyes. Steadfast. Determined. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Heather nodded and the two women hugged.
“We should swap T-shirts,” Petra said. “If the dogs are tracking you, it might help.”
Heather put on Petra’s gray Leiden University T-shirt and Petra put on her plain black Target one.
“Thank you,” Heather said.
“Good luck,” Petra said.
And each woman knew she wouldn’t see the other alive again.
27
Petra ran down the gully fast. Certainly faster than she’d been going with the Americans. She’d always been fast. Even in Holland, where everyone biked, everyone was skinny, everyone ran. She’d been a sprinter and she was good—although not quite good enough to make a career of it.
She finished high school with no real ambitions in either athletics or academics. It was 1977 and she was the perfect age. She moved to London. She signed on the dole. She found a squat in Hackney. She listened to the Damned. She listened to the Clash. She listened to the Pistols. John Lydon was talking directly to her. She wanted to hear more about England’s Dreaming.
She followed the Pistols all over England and back to Europe. She met a Dutch boy at a Pistols gig at Club Zebra in Kristinehamn, Sweden.
“This is the worst music I have ever heard,” he said to her in his peasant accent.
“That’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard,” she replied.
And thus their lifelong relationship had begun.
Hans had encouraged her to enroll in college. She hadn’t been interested in further study before, but now she read everything. Hans was a competitive bicycle racer, and at first she’d gone to watch him and then she too became a racer.
She was better than him. She won trophies.
She was fast.
And more important than being fast, she was determined.
She read Tim Krabbé’s The Rider. She read it and, for a while, it became her bible. She was one of Krabbé’s “true alpinists.” The true alpinist does not climb mountains because “they are there”; the true alpinist’s will is not so weak that it is bent by a mere mountain.
It was all about will.
The ravine was only a meter wide and a meter deep.
She ran on.
Stones, red dirt, red clay under her feet—definitely a riverbed. A winter phenomenon, and not every winter.
She could hear Hans’s voice in her head, see his face. They are going to catch you. They are coming in a pincer movement. Go faster and keep your head down and then when they are behind you, you can slip out of the hollow and double back to the beach.
“I’m not going anywhere near the beach. I will go this way as far as I can. I will make noise and keep going and going,” she said.
You alone on the flat land? They will get you.
“Yes. Eventually,” Petra said with a smile.
Why are you doing this?
“Because of the children, Hans.”
You and the children. You won’t forgive me for that, will you?
“Of course I will, my darling Hans. It was our decision.”
Petra, is there any other way? The dogs…
“I will contrive to get myself shot before the dogs get me.”
Hans said nothing and then he too smiled.
The sun was almost directly overhead and the T-shirt was drenched with sweat. Hans had been correct about black. Heather’s black T-shirt absorbed the heat. Her gray one was a few degrees cooler. A long-sleeved cotton shirt would have worked even better.
She kept running as the gully narrowed.
A mosquito had settled on her left arm. Only the female mosquitoes bit you, because they needed blood to make eggs. There was, Petra noted, no female solidarity between them. Petra didn’t mind. “Live, little mosquito, make your eggs,” she said and it flew away from her, satiated.
She had gone about four hundred meters.
It was time to make some noise.
She stopped and caught her breath and looked back.
The two teams were converging on the beach where they had been.
“Where are you going, you bastards!” she yelled in her best Johnny Rotten voice and ducked back into the gully.
That will do the trick, poor dead Hans said in her head.
“I think it will,” she replied.
She could hear the dogs. Four of them. Four dog voices. Twenty human voices. Kids with them. What kind of sick people were they to bring their children with them?
She ran on as the gully got narrower and narrower.
Surprisingly, she found that she wasn’t so much scared as sad.