No, she wouldn’t. Her breath built up inside and puffed out in short bursts. “I’m trapped. I need to be free.”
Gerrit leveled his gaze at her, unspeaking, in that way of his, taking eons to compose his thoughts.
Cilla didn’t have eons. She bolted to her feet and shook her hands before her chest, shook off the chains.
Gerrit drew a long breath. “You want to escape the trap so you can find freedom.”
“Of course.” She couldn’t keep the exasperation out of her voice.Thatwas the thought he took eons to compose?
“Sometimes you have to find freedom inside the trap.”
Cilla gaped at her cousin. “For a brilliant man, sometimes you make no sense.”
Gerrit stood and set a firm hand on her shoulder. “You must stay in the trap. You have no choice. Attend the NSB meetings but keep to the fringes. And don’t join any more mobs, no matter what nonsense Hilde gets involved with.”
Her shoulder chafed under the pressure of his grip, and she shrugged him off.
One corner of Gerrit’s mouth puckered. “You can do it. You’re a good actress. Do it for Dirk.”
Cilla managed a nod and spun away, out of the room, out of the flat.
Do it for Dirk? Dirk was dead, and if she stayed in the NSB, she’d be dead too.
****
Tuesday, February 25, 1941
How much longer could Cilla keep acting?
She sat beside Hilde in the NSB assembly hall as men and women muttered to each other before the meeting started.
In the fortnight since Dirk’s death, much had happened. Hendrik Koot had died from his injuries, and the Germans had cordoned off the Jewish neighborhood in Amsterdam. Over the past weekend, the Germans had rounded up over four hundred Jewish men and sent them to a concentration camp.
On Tuesday morning the Dutch people had risen in protest. Tram workers walked off the job, and a general strike swept Amsterdam.
Cilla had never been so proud to be Dutch.
That sentiment wasn’t echoed in the NSB, and tonight’s meeting would overflow with vitriol. How could Cilla hold her tongue?
She sandwiched that tongue between her molars. The NSB was the only political party now allowed in the Netherlands, but it remained small and despised. She knew the names of each person in the room.
Except the middle-aged man standing to the side, one of the few in the room not wearing the black WA uniform or the black armband of the NSB. Trim and neatly groomed, he scanned the seats with an analytical look.
If Cilla didn’t know better, she’d think he was spying on the group, as she was. But who would spy so blatantly?
Cilla nudged her sister. “Do you know who that man is?”
Hilde let out a beer-scented chuckle. “He’s too old for you.”
Arno leaned around Hilde. “That’s Dr. Schultz with the German Abwehr. He’s recruiting spies.”
“He tried to recruit Arno.” Hilde’s bleary eyes lit up.
“To be a spy?” Cilla fought to keep her voice low and to suppress a laugh.
“In England,” Hilde said. “He refused. He can’t bear to leave me.”
“That’s right.” Arno clamped a hand over Hilde’s knee.
