“Hanneke. Listen to yourself.”
“You’re right. First we’ll get Judith’s uncle to help us. He’ll—”
Ollie presses down on my hands. “No.”
“Let go. You don’t have to come with me, but you have to let me go.”
“No,” he says. “Hanneke, do you want people to be killed? You cannot risk the network that we have spent a year building, just to go back and ask questions about one girl. We don’t have anyone left on the inside now. Judith and Mina are out. Judith’s uncle won’t help us. He’s terrified for his own life; the Council doesn’t have any of the sway we thought it did. If you storm in now without knowing anything, you’re putting the whole operation at risk.”
“But—”
“No.”
He’s right. Even through my anger and frustration, I understand he’s right. It’s a logical argument that I might make myself if this were about any person other than the one I’ve been trying so hard to find. Why wasn’t I at the Schouwburg last night? I was congratulating myself for tracking down Tobias’s father, and I should have gone to the Schouwburg instead.
“Everything I’ve done is a waste. All of this—visiting dentists, talking to school friends—I should have just planted myself outside the theater the second you told me about it. Maybe I would have seen her go in and been able to help her.”
Ollie takes his hands from mine and cups my face, holding my eyes steady. “You didn’t know what the right thing to do was. Amsterdam is a big city, and Mirjam could have been anywhere.”
“But, Ollie, what if it’s not her in the theater?”
“Hanneke, I wish it wasn’t her, but it is.”
“No, listen. M. Roodveldt? Maybe it’s a different name. Margot or Mozes, or… lots of names start with M, Ollie. Is there anybody in the theater who saw her or talked to her, who can say for sure?”
“I can’t find out without asking questions that will give us away. We’ve decided we need to pause and regroup, now that they’re deporting the Council’s families.”
Think, I instruct myself. Think rationally. If I can’t get into the theater, how else can I find information? “Maybe if I found someone who lives across the street, or works nearby. Maybe they would have seen her go in.”
Ollie’s mouth opens, a quick movement he tries to cover up.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he says, but it’s not nothing.
“Ollie, what is it? Is there someone who might have seen something?”
“I can’t tell you,” he protests. “It’s against the rules.”
“Damn the rules, just tell me. Who saw something? Please, Ollie.”
“Hanneke, we have the rules we do for a reason. We need to think of the greater good.”
But I hear an opening in what he’s saying, and I take it. “I know your ‘greater good,’ Ollie, but if the good that you’re working so hard for is one that won’t work to rescue a fifteen-year-old girl, then is it worth it anyway? What kind of society are you trying to save?”
Finally he exhales, angrily. I’ve upset him with my begging. “We are not going to help you get Mirjam out of the theater,” he says. “We can’t. But I will do one thing—one thing—to help you verify that it really is her in there, so that you don’t spend the rest of the war not knowing. And I’m only doing it because you running around asking office workers if they saw her… that puts all of us at risk.”
My shoulders go limp with relief. “Thank you, Ollie. Thank you.”
“Only this. Don’t ask for anything else.”
He looks around to make sure nobody is watching, then takes a piece of paper from his pocket and scrawls something on it. An address, I can tell from upside down. “Memorize it, destroy it,” he instructs. “It’s where Mina is staying. She might be able to help.”
“Why would Mina—”
Ollie looks down at his watch. “I have to go, right now. I can’t risk being late getting Judith to her hiding place. I’ll come and meet you when I can. It might be late.”
“But—”
“Later, Hanneke.” He looks regretful almost immediately; he’s already doubting the help he’s given me. I try to smile, to show him I’m grateful, that he made the right decision, but I can’t hold it for long.
After he’s left, I wheel my bicycle into an alley so I can memorize the address the way Ollie wanted me to. As soon as I read the numbers on the page, I know Ollie has made a mistake. What he’s given me can’t possibly be the right address. I’ve been to it before. I go there every week.
NINETEEN
The bell rings, but nobody comes to answer it. It seems that no one is home, but when I press my ear against the door, there’s a faint scuffing sound, like chairs pushed back from a table. Finally the door chain rattles as someone locks it. One blue eye appears in the gap between the door and the jamb.
“Mrs. de Vries,” I say.