Chapter 1

1

ROTTERDAM, HOLLAND – MAY 1940

The eerie calm that had settled over the Nieuwe Maas river in the last few hours was now a deathly silence. Supressing the chill that prickled his spine, Hans looked up and down the quayside for anyone who might catch hold of his mooring line. He was alone – more alone than he'd ever been in his life before – too far from the action to find a Dutch soldier and too far from the families gathering nearer the mouth of the river and preparing to flee. The dock workers had all disappeared like rats running from a sinking ship.

He brought the launch into the dockside and, holding the rope, jumped to the ancient and worn stone steps. Normally, this part of the dock would have been heaving with industry and at different times in the preceding days, there'd been activity enough, but not now. With nobody to take his line for him, Hans swiftly tied the rope to the old worn cleat himself, with the figure eight and locking half-hitch knot he could create in his sleep. The rope worked through his fingers along the pronounced calluses that a decade of boatmanship had worn into his hands. A hasty glance around the quayside showed no more signs of life. There wasn't a dockhand or boatman to be seen or heard. And he wondered now, in the strange silence like the midnight hour on this mild, sunny, spring morning, if he was dreaming. Was it over already? Had Holland surrendered, and Germany taken control?

Three nights had passed since the onslaught had started – since his world had crumbled to this other thing, this existence that was no more than dust on the air. Distant gunshots, then the low hum of dozens of tanks rumbling towards Rotterdam had heralded the arrival of the Wehrmacht . He'd heard on the wireless the news of the German Army invading Holland, and had gone out looking for them, filled with an inexplicable kind of dreadful thrill for the spectacle of disaster.

He had left Katrijn in bed, nursing baby Anika close to her chest.

‘Do you have to go, Hans? Isn't it dangerous out there? Stay in here with us, where it's safe,' she'd said.

‘I'll be fine, my love. I'm fast, and young,' he'd said to his wife with a wink, kissing the sweet, soft head of his baby girl and breathing in the milky scent of her. Katrijn had pulled him back and kissed him, firmly, fully, and lusciously on the lips like she had when they'd first found each other.

At the foot of the stairs to their attic apartment, as he'd shut the door behind him, Hans had been surprised to meet Klaus, who seemed to have been waiting for him. They'd met with a firm shake of the hand and together, they'd gone in search of the soldiers and the fighting and the horrible excitement of it all on that first day of the invasion. They'd been met by a crowd of panic-stricken families coming in the opposite direction, fleeing the soldiers, evacuating their homes and clutching everything they could carry in their arms: a few items of food, a baby, a cat in a basket, a bundle of blankets. Once the two young men had pushed through the tide of humanity and into the open square, they'd been greeted with the sobering sight of the source of all the distant noise they'd been hearing.

A grey Panzer tank, formidable in size alone, even without the firepower it was wielding, had stood in the middle of the square firing at the buildings on all sides in turn. Two soldiers had walked behind the tank carrying some kind of gun that was attached to a pack they each wore on their backs. When the deafening din from the tank's fire had ceased, the men walked forward and unleashed the dreadful power of the flamethrowers they held. The flames had roared like dragon fire and reached the full height of the buildings, setting each one alight with such incredible power and speed that the young men had ducked back around the corner for cover. They'd realised then that the exodus they'd witnessed a few moments earlier must have been the residents of these homes, warned to evacuate and then shown exactly what would happen if they remained inside.

Hans emptied his stomach into the gutter before he even realised he felt sick. His legs buckled and his head thumped as the panic released adrenaline that raced through his bloodstream. Escape , his body told him. Run away. Save yourself . In that moment, understanding the terror of the German power, Hans knew they would win. He hadn't a shred of doubt that Europe was going to become a very large German empire. No question. Holland could never withstand this level of attack. Where the hell were any Dutch soldiers now, anyway? And what did they have to fight back with? They were too busy holding the north bank and there just weren't enough of them to go around. If this nightmare was the way Germany invaded and took over a country, the rest of Europe didn't stand a chance. And neither did he and his fledgling family. At this point in his life, Hans still considered himself very much a Nederlander , because of his Dutch mother. But he would remember to his dying gasp this moment when he had the idea to cast off his ties to the country he thought of as home and decided he would become fully German instead, taking on the heritage of his proud German father.

In the nightmare of that moment, Hans saw an image of his sweet Dutch mother, happy at home, pouring coffee for guests, feeding them sweet treats she'd baked and serving it all on the pretty blue Delft pottery she treasured. If she'd still been alive now, his choice might have been different. Perhaps he would have decided to take Katrijn and Anika, run back to Utrecht to join Mother, gather her up and take her somewhere inland – anywhere – that might offer them all safety, at least out of the city, even though he knew full well there was nowhere left to run. But she'd died some months before Anika was born and now his two girls were all he had.

In the face of this dreadful power and brute force, he now saw the German father he remembered from his childhood. Strong, intimidating, content when he was getting his own way, and not afraid to show Hans and his mother exactly who was in charge.

The image of those crowds he'd seen just minutes before reminded him of how he and his mother must have looked as they'd fled Düsseldorf by night, walking for two days until they reached the safety of the little Dutch village where they had hidden from Father. Hans and his mother had fled in terror and that's when he became a Nederlander . And now, Hans – the fully grown, strong boatman – decided he must join the force instead of running from it. He would never allow himself to be the weak prey of a tyrant again. He must become German to survive.

Klaus was no more than an acquaintance from the docks, but Hans knew him to have even stronger ties with Germany than he had himself, and as he'd talked through his plans with Klaus, he had been emboldened by the encouragement of the other man.

‘You're right, Hans,' he'd said with an eager nod. ‘The Germans are going to win, and they need men like us on their side. I've already made contact with a man I know, and there's work for us to do. You should come with me to meet him,' Klaus had encouraged him.

For the next two days, while Hans worked through this solution for protecting his wife and child, becoming formally German and joining the winning side, he had heard the onrushing destructive forces of the German advance, and every hour, it seemed there were fewer people around than the hour before. There was a constant haze of smoke over the city and a background noise of firearms, with the occasional Luftwaffe plane overhead dropping a bomb.

That first night back at home, when Katrijn had greeted him with relief as if he was back from the dead, he'd collected his prized identity documents, both those that showed he was Dutch and the others, indicating his right to German citizenship, and tucked the folded papers neatly into a buttoned pocket on his shirt. He'd drunk in the sight of his beautiful family, and watched Katrijn, totally lost in this love affair with their new baby daughter. He'd sat beside her on the bed and tried to phrase the thoughts in his jumbled head; the plans he thought might save them all. But he hadn't been able to bring himself to trouble her with this nightmare from out there, instead choosing to leave her unaware and resting in the beauty of this time, treasuring every moment with her newborn.

The next morning, the second day of the invasion, he'd discovered, quite by accident, the few families at the fishing port who were planning on running away to England. In the madness and chaos of the invasion, he had taken his boat to the mouth of the river to see what was happening in other parts of the city. There were a dozen or more boats that had been stripped of their fishing gear and were being loaded with some basic supplies: drums of water, piles of blankets. On the quayside, beside the boats, families had gathered, with a few small bags. Their faces had been strangely marked by a mix of desperation and eager hope.

‘What's going on?' he'd called to the man on one of the boats, who seemed to be giving out instructions.

‘We're out of here, friend. I'm taking my family to England. So is Dirk, and Pieter you see along the way. This is hopeless,' he'd said with a nod in the direction of the clouds of smoke beginning to form over the city of Rotterdam.

‘What do you think you'll do in England? This is your home. And don't you realise the Germans will be there soon as well?' Hans had asked, unable to see the sense in their flight.

‘Look, son, I'm a man of the sea. England is surrounded by it. I'm sure I'll find work there, and even if we get a little head start on the Hun, I have more chance of saving my wife and children than I do if I stay here. Want to come with us?' he'd added with a look of real fatherly concern that irritated the independent young Hans.

‘I'll stay, I think. Take my chances. It can't be that bad,' he'd replied as he held up a hand to signal farewell, turning his boat back upstream again. But as he'd chugged slowly back towards the dock he knew so well, Hans had begun to wonder if his plans to become German might be simply scoffed at by the advancing Wehrmacht . Who was he, anyway? Why would they want to take him? And what about Katrijn? She was Dutch through and through, with no hint of German blood. Would they accept her as well, simply because she was his wife? And when he'd seen her again that night, he still hadn't been able to bear telling her of the things he'd learnt – that the city around them was virtually deserted, and people were fleeing the country any way they could.

Now, on this third day, with his boat safely tied up, Hans walked the deserted streets and alleys towards the attic room they called home, with the thought of at least gathering a few important belongings and keeping them safe in the small, enclosed cuddy cabin of his boat, just in case they should need to flee. He still hoped to meet Klaus's German contact and explain that he himself was German, and save his family that way.

The battle noise still echoed around the city, much quieter today for some reason he'd yet to discover, but he made sure to keep it at a muffled distance from his path. As he walked through one dark alley and out into a slightly wider street, he was brought to a halt in shock as he saw the sky turn blood red above him. The grey, brown smoky clouds were mingling with red shot. In places, it almost looked like a floral display, but in others, all Hans could see was blood. Somewhere to the south, red flares were being set off into the skies over Rotterdam. Was this the surrender? Did it signal the end? In his gut, Hans knew – whatever he'd seen of the German wrath so far, it was about to get worse. Much worse. And he was still on the wrong side.

The planes seemed to come from every direction possible, bringing with them a crescendo of the dreadful noise of war. Through the smoke from the previous onslaught, they came in their dozens, from the north and the south, and when overhead, they rained bombs on the ancient city as indiscriminately as if they were farmhands scattering grain for the hens. Had the city been hens and had the bombs been grain, the feed would have been so plentiful that day as to smother the creatures to death.

He ran back to their apartment, crashing into people who seemed to have been shaken outdoors in their hundreds just like cockroaches fleeing the light. For the last three days, Hans had been in a state of high alert, but the start of the bombing that would be the destruction of Rotterdam had him quivering with fear like he'd never known. He raced up the street and flung open the front door, hurling his way up the stairs three at a time until, without warning, the world exploded around him.

Hans was flung down one flight of stairs and lay there aching in every limb. The world had gone strangely quiet, as if he'd been thrown into the bottom of a deep pool and his eyes were blinded as if they were filled with salt water. The world stopped turning and slipped from a freeze frame into slow motion. When his sight returned, and he could hear again a little more clearly, the air around him roared and the staircase he was lying on was open to a gaping hole where the top three floors of the apartment building had been. Flames crackled at the foot of the stairs and dust and smoke and debris of varying sizes flew all about him.

He pulled himself up and kept going up the stairs and, though the part of his brain that wanted to survive screamed at him to go back down, he reached forward and opened the door to their room.

The wardrobe still stood on the edge of the room and the curtain flapped in the wind that howled through the broken glass where the front-facing window had been. But there in the middle of the room where the big bed had stood, and where he'd last seen Katrijn and Anika, there was nothing: a hole that dropped into an abyss of smoke, and flame, and rubble.

Hans lunged forward to the splintered edges of the wooden floor and peered down through the gloom, screaming their names into the black hole that was the grave of his wife and daughter. As the dust began to settle, he could see nothing below but an enormous pile of rubble and flames. He ran down the three flights of stairs again and ploughed into the midst of the debris, hoarse now from screaming for Katrijn and Anika, yet also knowing, somewhere deep inside, that they would never hear him. He pulled blocks of concrete and broken pieces of furniture and bricks and lumps of timber frame from the pile in the middle of what had once been the ground floor of his small apartment building. His hands were torn raw and bloody, and the smoke and dust filled his eyes and lungs, but nothing would stop him from trying to find his family beneath the rubble.

He saw the baby's fist first. Just a chubby little hand, clenched as always, on the end of an arm and sticking up from the rubble. He gently released Anika, pulled her clear and held her to his chest as if the nearness of him might revive her. She didn't seem broken, even, except for a channel of dust-encrusted blood that had run down the side of her head from her ear.

He howled like a dying bear and sobbed as he clutched the tiny body close. Then, he found a torn fragment of curtain in the rubble and made a soft bed on the edge of the room and placed the body of his daughter safely there, as if to put her down to sleep. And his search continued until he found Katrijn. But her legs were firmly trapped underneath a steel girder, and her face had been smashed by bricks that had rendered her almost unrecognisable. Her hands were growing cold already, and her skin was paler than he'd ever seen it. He couldn't pull her body out and hid his face in her chest and cried like a baby as the bombs still fell all around in the streets outside.

He did not know what to do with Anika's body, and he couldn't move Katrijn. She was already buried. So he brought the baby back to Katrijn and rested Anika in her mother's arms, then covered them both with the curtain and hoisted a piece of tin over the top of them both, as if to protect them further. Then he climbed the precariously dangerous staircase back up to what was left of their little apartment.

For hours, he stayed curled in the corner of the room, crying their names, and roaring his anger at the air around him, while outside, Rotterdam was bombed to shreds. Then it was as if he woke up, knowing with clarity what he must do next. Hans reached into the wardrobe, now teetering on the edge of the cliff that his room had become, grabbed his small canvas bag from the cupboard and threw in the few spare clothes he could reach. He owned little of any value, but grabbed the two pictures that lay smashed under the windowsill: one of his mother and the other of he and Katrijn, taken last spring when they'd taken his boat down the river for a picnic in the meadows. That day was the first time they'd made love, gently, tenderly, in the open air of the cockpit because there wasn't a soul around to see, or hear, or care.

As he turned to leave, clinging to the edge of the room around the huge hole in the floor, the deafening sound of the Luftwaffe planes overhead was smothered by the almighty noise of another bomb dropping just feet away from him, in the house that stood the other side of his staircase. Despite the terror he felt – or perhaps because of it – he flung himself down the stairs, three at a time, pulling the canvas bag behind him, missed his footing mid-flight and tumbled head first down a run of six stairs at once. A black shroud like night enveloped him and the deafening sounds ceased. But his reprieve only lasted a minute or two until he regained consciousness and the searing pain in his left leg brought him back from restful sleep into his nightmare again. He sobbed and coughed alternately until the buzzing in his ears stopped again and the noise of terror came back.

He got up to run but found the best he could manage was a painful limp. His whole leg felt as though it was on fire. When he stumbled out into the street, he saw that the staircase and the walls either side of it were all that was left intact of the two adjoining apartment buildings, which had now disappeared completely. There was just a fragile-looking stairwell left with rubble either side of it. The smoke and dust were beginning to clear from the base of his building and his heart stopped as he peered into the space to see if they were still there. But the two girls he loved were both now buried underneath several feet more of bricks and timber and rubble that had fallen deep into the basement. And still the planes roared overhead, spreading fire and death like dragons from a horrible fantasy tale of tragedy.

Hans looked down at the bag he held, which signified everything he had left in the world. And though his heart whimpered, Lie down and die with them too , his head showed him the memory of the families preparing to flee at the mouth of the river. His boat. He still had his boat. He reached a hand wearily to the pocket holding his identify documents and, as another bomb fell across the street, he set off, dragging his injured leg and zig-zagging his way back to his boat, dodging the bombardment falling from the skies. The Nazi plan for Rotterdam must be nothing less than complete annihilation, he realised.

As Hans staggered around the last bend at the docks, he groaned in relief that his boat was where he'd left it earlier and he leant on the corner, doubled over to catch his breath. Moments later, he struggled down the steps and threw his bag forward into the cabin then painfully climbed back up to the stores where he kept spare supplies for his daily runs. He had two cans of fuel so, with a huge effort, he stowed those in the boat then went back for an empty water can. As he watched it filling from the tap – which miraculously still ran amidst the destruction – he counted the bombs as he heard them fall. One, three, nine by the time the container was full and he was screwing the lid on. He hauled it to the quayside and down the steps, placing it safely forward.

He felt sick to his core and didn't know which was worse: his wretched broken heart, the excruciating pain in his leg, or the fear that the next bomb would kill him too. He stood on the deck of his launch and ran his hands through his hair, wincing as he found some small pieces of glass still lodged in his thick curls. The pain spread from his fingers to his heart and the aching emptiness in his soul which, without his girls, threatened to end him. He collapsed onto his knees in the cockpit and howled like a wounded animal until the anguish subsided to quiet sobs again. Sniffing, he wiped his face on his sleeves then raised his head to think about what he should do next. The way his mind took him from despair to rational thought and back again was like rolling on the roughest of seas in the smallest of boats.

Hans remembered he had a couple of blankets he always kept in the boat, together with several tins of food, and that would have to do. There was no more time for thinking or planning – and nowhere else to get anything from, anyway.

From the moment that they'd killed his family, the idea of handing himself over to the Germans to fight on their side had become enough to make him vomit. The Germans – everything that his father represented – had killed his wife and child and he would hate them forever for this. He could never join them. All Hans could do now was respond to his body's insistence that he escape, survive, run away, and live.

He undid the line that signified his last permanent attachment to Holland and threw it into the cockpit, started the motor, and was turning away from the dock when he heard a shout behind him. Hans looked back along the smoky dockside to see Klaus running towards him, arms flailing, calling his name.

‘Stop Hans, Stop! Wait for me!'

For a moment that might have changed the whole course of his life, Hans hesitated, while he decided whether to ‘hear' Klaus or not. He knew Klaus as a workmate but little else, and over these few days he'd learnt that Klaus intended to work for Germany. But they weren't really friends, and Hans wasn't sure he wanted this man's company in a small boat for the next few days, especially now he'd completely changed his mind about his plans. But if he left Klaus here in the dockside, he would surely die.

The better side of Hans's conscience took over and he turned the boat back. He used the docking technique that had been his daily bread and held the launch almost motionless a few metres away from the wall. He looked at Klaus and lifted his chin a little in greeting.

‘Take me with you?' shouted Klaus over the din.

‘You don't even know where I'm going,' called Hans.

‘Are you staying in Rotterdam, then?' Klaus's expression told Hans that he knew the answer already.

‘Of course not. But I'm going a long way – to England. And I only have enough food for one. Are you ready for a trip that far?'

‘England is my top choice of destination, Meyers. Take me with you, please?' he said, holding up his bag and showing Hans the stash of food he'd brought with him. Hans realised now that if he'd not come for his boat when he did, Klaus would likely have stolen it anyway. But Klaus had brought with him more than twice the food Hans already had, and he was someone to share the night watches with, at least, whatever else happened when they reached England.

Hans breathed out his frustration and took the boat in close enough for Klaus to make the jump. Klaus greeted Hans with a warm handshake and, with a sincere smile of thanks, coiled the docking line that lay in the floor of the boat and took a seat. And as Hans piloted his launch towards the mouth of the river and the place where he'd found the fleeing families earlier that morning – a lifetime ago, back when he had a wife and child and a future, and when Rotterdam was still recognisable – Klaus told him his plans, and how his industriousness was going to give them both a ticket to freedom once Germany conquered England as well.

Hans gritted his teeth, horrified now at the very idea of helping Germany, and tried to drown out the sound of Klaus and his plans.