I can’t see Willem, but I know he’s not far away, a few blocks down, hiding with a change of clothes for Ollie.
Because Ollie, Olivier, Laurence Olivier, when Bas was feeling silly, is now wearing the gray Gestapo uniform of Elsbeth’s husband’s. It’s too big around the shoulders. If anyone looked too closely at Ollie, they would realize he was all wrong, and if anyone who knew Ollie walked past and questioned his uniform, that would be even worse.
So this is the plan: for Ollie and me to wait under the awning until the transport comes. For him to stop the soldier leading it, saying he has orders to search one baby carriage for contraband. He’ll get the camera. He’ll meet up with Willem to change out of the uniform so that suspicious neighbors don’t see him wearing it. Ollie must be nervous, but he doesn’t show it. He stares ahead, into the night, at the people who hurry past on their way home. We have time. Half an hour, at least—we’ve gotten into position just before curfew—and we’ve been killing time by barking reminders and observations to each other.
“You’ll only have a minute to get her,” Ollie says abruptly. “I’ll be querying them about the carriage, showing the false orders Willem created. I’ll draw it out as long as I can, but you’ll have barely any time, and they absolutely cannot see you.”
“I know, Ollie.”
“And then you’ll run to the street around the corner, where I’ll meet you and—”
“Ollie.”
We both fall silent again. I know everything he can warn me about because we’ve been through every variation of the plan that we can think of, and because I’ve already been warned, several times: If I can’t find Mirjam or get her to come with me in the period of time that it takes him to get the camera from the baby carriage, then she is not going to be rescued.
Then I will have failed her.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks me.
“Nothing,” I say. “What are you thinking about?”
He turns away slightly, and in the shadows of the night, it’s enough to mask his expression. “I’m thinking about Bas.”
“You are?”
“Aren’t you, too?”
I am, too. I am, always. Bas ice-skating with my mother. Bas bringing me cake. Bas driving me crazy. Bas alive. Bas dead.
“Tonight I’m thinking about…” He stops and swallows. “I’m thinking about, what was going through Bas’s mind in the invasion, when he realized he was probably going to die?”
“Was he just thinking about how scared he was?” I say, and it’s easy for me to finish Ollie’s thought because I’ve had it so many times myself. “How scared he was and how much he wished he could be at home?”
“Was he in pain?” Ollie asks.
“Angry?” I say.
“Or was he just alone?”
“It was my fault,” I whisper. The words fall, breaking in front of me for both of us to see. “It’s my fault that Bas is dead.”
His face in the shadows is impossible to read. “What did you say?” he asks.
“Bas. It’s my fault that Bas is dead.”
The most terrible thing, and now I’ve said it out loud, and the enormity of that makes me gasp. When you say a terrible thing, it should be like a weight lifted off your chest, but giving voice to this thought has only made the weight heavier.
“What are you talking about? What happened to Bas wasn’t your fault. You were miles away. You didn’t pull a trigger. You didn’t release a bomb.”
“I know I didn’t pull a trigger.” It’s the same thing my parents told me after he died. That I wasn’t there. That I didn’t shoot him, or bomb him, or drown him, or do whatever it was, precisely, that caused Bas to no longer exist. “But I sent him. I told him to join.”
“Hanneke, you knew Bas. You knew him as well as I did. Do you honestly think he didn’t want to go? Do you honestly think he would have enlisted if, deep down, he didn’t really want to?”
He’s trying to make me feel better, but I only feel worse. I’m about to tell Ollie the secret that I never wanted to tell.
“He told me he didn’t want to,” I say. “During his party. I left, and he chased after me, and he told me he didn’t want to go, and I said he had to. I said it was his duty to. And he gave me a letter to read in case he died, but I didn’t. I took it home and threw it away because I was so sure he would come back, and I was so wrong, because he didn’t come back. Do you understand, Ollie? I made him go.”
My throat is sore, like the words themselves caused physical pain coming out of my mouth. Now I’ve said it all. I can’t look at Ollie, because I’m so filled with shame. He’s standing very still, but I can hear him swallowing back lumps in his throat. When he speaks again, his voice is thick.