‘It was here.’
His feet stirred up the dirt as he walked the perimeter of the line of trees. He peered into the darkness. It was pitch black. Impenetrable.
A breeze rustled through the trees. ‘Perhaps you’re wrong. It’s dark.’
‘No.’ He straightened up. ‘It was here. I know it was.’ He sent his foot into the leaves.
I took a step away, straining to see, and suddenly the point of something sharp pressed against the base of my spine.
A woman’s voice hissed in my ear. ‘Don’t move.’
‘Jakob!’ I called, and my brother whipped around. A torch glared in my brother’s face. He raised his hand to shield his eyes from the dazzling light.
‘Please,’ I started to say, but the tip of the knife digging through my clothes silenced the rest of my words.
‘Hilja?’ Jakob dropped his hand and leaned forward, squinting. ‘Hilja, is that you? It’s me. Jakob Rebane.’
The knife quivered.
Jakob held up his hands. He hesitated then took a step towards us. ‘Do you remember me? From the meeting in Torvid’s dorm? I remember you. You helped us get the dye for the flags. Right?’
The woman behind me sniffed, but I felt the knife withdraw a little until only the faintest edge of it was touching my jumper. ‘So. I remember you. Jakob Rebane. What are you doing out here? You’re lucky I didn’t slice you open.’
The knife pulled away. My whole body was tingling.
Jakob grimaced. ‘We need to speak to Oskar.’
‘What do you want with Oskar? Nobody gave you a message to pass on, did they? I would have known about it.’ Her voice was accusing. ‘And who is this? You know what Oskar said, about bringing outsiders in. They have to be checked. Approved.’
The torch beam tracked over me. I could not see my interrogator, only her dark outline against the trees.
‘I know.’ Jakob shifted. ‘But there was no time. This is my sister. Kati. It’s important we find Oskar. We have some information he needs to hear.’
‘Information.’ The torch beam wavered. ‘It’s urgent?’
‘Yes. Why else would we be out here, in the dark?’
‘Maybe you’ve got nowhere else to go,’ she said. With a click the torch beam disappeared. ‘Fine. I’ll take you. He’s at the bunker. There are… others there, too. You will see.’
Her words made me shift uncomfortably. What if she led us into a trap? I remembered Papa speaking about the NKVD agents who paid informants to catch out resistance sympathisers. But then, Hilja would not have been so reluctant to help us if her intention was to trap us.
Understanding swept through me. ‘Germans,’ I said.
Hilja clucked her tongue. ‘Hush.’
I pressed my lips together.
The sound of rushing water faded a little, muffled by the trees as Hilja led us through the clearing.
‘Over here.’ She was bending in the dirt some feet away. The torch flicked on, making a puddle of light at my feet. Hilja pulled back a screen of shrubs that had been cleverly drawn down to conceal the bunker’s entrance.
Beneath the foliage, the entrance was a dark open maw, as narrow and damp smelling as the doorway of a crypt.
‘Don’t worry.’ I heard the smile in her voice. ‘It’s bigger inside than it looks.’
‘I’ll go first.’
I watched as Jakob scrambled inside, hunching over to fit his body into the space, moving forward on his knees.
‘Now you.’ Hilja jerked her head at the dark hole. ‘Quickly; it doesn’t do to hang around, waiting for patrols to find you.’
I nodded, trying to accept her reassurance, although every fibre of my body screamed at me to back away. What if there was no air in there? What if the supporting beams collapsed, crushing us into the earth below?
From somewhere behind me, blackbirds began to caw, beating their wings. An odd sound at night.
Hilja raised her head, like an animal sniffing the air.
‘Inside now,’ she barked. It was not an invitation but a command.
My knees scraped against the dirt floor. It was pitch black in the tunnel, but there was light ahead, a small golden circle. It was this light I focused on as I inched myself forward, trying to ignore the walls that seemed to press around me, squeezing what little breath was left from my lungs.
The tunnel widened suddenly into a room lined with timber bunks. A dirty oil lamp cast an amber glow over everything. Pushing myself up, I looked behind me to see Hilja emerging from the tunnel, the lamplight catching the glint of her dark eyes and the bare skin of her forearms collared by the rolled-up cuffs of her shirt. A grey handkerchief was knotted over her hair. She brushed the dust off her trousers then straightened up and pointed, unsmiling.
‘Oskar is in there.’
At the end of the room was another entrance, a door made of rough-hewn timber, hanging slightly ajar. It led into another space, a room no larger than our threshing room but containing at least fifteen men bent over a table made from crates pushed together to form a flat surface. A radio sat in the middle, a lump of black with wires poking out. Maps overlapped each other, their edges pinned down by rocks.
They all turned as we entered, the conversation dying. The light from the oil lamp transformed their faces into planes of yellow and grey. Most of them were young, hardly older than us. They wore uniforms like Oskar’s, made from mushroom-brown wool. Two were clad in grey and stood slightly apart. Small swastika emblems were emblazoned on their armbands. Nazis. My heart tapped out a staccato rhythm. I tried not to stare at them, but their presence unnerved me. These were not the Baltic Germans we had grown up hearing about, but foreigners from another land.
I tried to remember what my grandmother had told me about the Germans who had lived next door to her when she was growing up, in the little timber house in Haapsalu. She had told us they were Christians who prayed at the tiny Lutheran Church and chose to eat the crops grown in their own yard rather than slaughtering animals. Was it possible we would have no choice but to side with the Germans again now? The thought made me uneasy. What would life be like under the Germans? What conditions would they set down in exchange for helping us? Our old president Konstantin Päts had banned the National Socialist Magazine and forced the elected member of the Baltic German Party to resign after he made unsettling comments about Jews. But that had been before the Russians arrived. When they had, President Päts was placed under house arrest and eventually deported. There was nobody to protect the rights of the Jewish people now.
I had a terrible sense of foreboding and felt Jakob shift uncomfortably beside me. Perhaps he, too, understood the danger of this association. When I glanced at Hilja, I realised she had moved back, out of the lamplight, leaving us to speak for ourselves.
Somebody broke away from the group and came forward. A rush of relief made my legs tremble.
‘Kati?’ Oskar’s pale eyes widened. ‘What are you doing here? And Jakob.’ He turned to my brother. His eyes travelled down Jakob’s rumpled clothes and came up to rest on Jakob’s face. ‘You better explain.’
Jakob and I glanced at each other.
‘Is it your father?’ Oskar’s voice had hardened. ‘Did he send you out here to spy on us for him?’
‘He’s dead.’ The words turned to dust on my tongue. ‘He was killed tonight by the Partorg’s men. Mama too.’
Oskar’s mouth dropped open.
‘We’ve come to ask you for protection.’ Jakob’s eyes roved over the knot of men watching us. ‘And to warn you about an operation that is happening right now, as we stand here.’
Oskar moved so quickly I barely registered that he had grasped Jakob’s arm. ‘What kind of operation?’