He just wished his dear friend had been here to see it.
CHAPTER 26
At that moment, the trial of Draga was the furthest thing from the minds of the three kidnappers. They were doing chores in the barn when they suddenly heard the sound of a car coming down the road.
“Quick!” Hans yelled to Anna. “Hide the girl!”
Anna grabbed Ellen by the hand and led her to the back of the barn and one of the stalls for the cows. “Get down here,” she ordered sternly.
Anna knelt down with Ellen; both were out of sight of anyone entering the barn.
Ellen, taken by surprise, started sobbing quietly. She hated being pushed around. Besides, the stall reeked of cow manure. Anna held her finger to her lips signaling Ellen to be quiet. Ellen obeyed.
Hans went out to meet the visitor.
Ellen could hear a car engine running. She looked through a small crack in the boards where she was huddled. She saw Hans talking to a man who was standing next to a pickup truck. The man handed Hans some papers, then got back in his truck.
Ellen considered trying to scream, but then she thought about the basement and the rats. Anyway, she wasn’t sure the man could hear her over his engine. She watched him as he drove past the barn and back toward what she suspected was the main road. As the white truck passed she was able to make out the Dutch writing: “Province of Utrecht.”
When the man had left, Hans returned to the barn and Anna stood up.
“It’s clear now,” Jan said.
Ellen stood up as well. “Who was it?”
“None of your business,” Hans replied.
“I don’t like it when you make me hide.” Ellen stepped into the open doorway of the barn, wanting to breathe the fresh air and see the sky. “I want my mommy and daddy. I miss them.”
No one replied.
Ellen sat down and played with Johanna. The puppy was licking her face and jumping all over her. “I’d like to write my parents another letter,” she said. “Would you send it for me?”
“Maybe,” Jan replied.
“I think I’ll go do that now. It’ll cheer me up.”
“Okay,” Anna said. She followed Ellen into the house.
Ellen went into the house, her head down. She sat at the table with a paper and pencil. “Province of Utrecht.” How could she let her parents know?
When they had finished dinner that night, Ellen got out her letter and showed it to Jan. She had addressed an envelope as well. “Here’s my letter. You can read it. I followed all the rules.”
Jan looked at the letter.
“Will you send it? I’ll give you the money for a stamp.”
“We’ll see,” Jan replied.
“Here’s eighty cents.” Ellen took a small coin purse out of her backpack and counted out the coins. “We need to talk about an allowance. If I’m still here by Saturday, I think you should pay me an allowance.”
“You’re not serious,” Hans said.
“I get eleven Euros a week at home. I do a lot more chores here than I do at home.”
“Don’t you have homework to do now?” Hans asked.
“You sound like my Dad. He doesn’t even let me digest my food.” She turned to Anna. “Men,” she said, shaking her head as she got up from the table.
That night Jan re-read Ellen’s letter, just to be certain. It looked harmless enough.
Without telling anyone, he mailed it the next day.
The letter arrived on Saturday afternoon.
When Kevin pulled up in front of the house from a bicycle ride, Diane called to him from the door. “We got a letter from Ellen!”
Kevin dropped his bike and ran inside.
There was an envelope on the table, in Ellen’s handwriting, but with no return address. The postmark was again from Amsterdam. This time there was no demand from the kidnappers, just a short letter from Ellen:
Dear Mom and Dad,
I miss you very much. Don’t worry about me. I am being taken care of and am fine. I’m keeping up with my schoolwork, even my Dutch. I’m learning new words such as Ut, which means out, and recht, which means right. I hope that I will see you again soon, but don’t worry.
Love,
Ellen
“Where’s the clue?” Kevin immediately asked Diane.
“I was looking for that myself. Do you think there is something about out and right, like outright, or right out?”
Kevin read and re-read the letter. “I don’t know, but she’s trying to tell us something.” He couldn’t figure out what it was.
“Did you call Detective Weber?”
“Yes.”
“At least Ellen is still okay. It’s her handwriting all right.”
“She seems to be okay, if you can believe the letter. But maybe they are making her write it.”
An hour later Detective Weber arrived. She examined the letter. “This is strange. Why would the kidnappers just let her write home, with no demand or other communication?”
“I was wondering about that myself,” Kevin said. “It seems like they’re taking an unnecessary risk.”
Detective Weber rubbed her chin as she studied the letter. “Up to now they’ve been very professional about everything. I don’t see the purpose in sending this letter.”
“I bet she’s put a clue in this letter,” Kevin said. “I just can’t figure out what it is.”
“I thought it might have something to do with the words ‘out’ and ‘right,’” Diane said. “That’s just kind of out-of-context. She picked those words for a reason.”
“She spelled the word ‘out’ wrong,” Detective Weber observed. “We spell it ‘uit’ in Dutch, not ‘ut’. And she capitalized it. Wait a minute. When you put Ut and recht together, you get Utrecht. We have a province named Utrecht.”
Kevin looked at the letter. “That’s it! How big is the province of Utrecht?”
“Well, the good news is that it’s the smallest province in Holland,” the detective replied. “The bad news is that there are a lot of farms in the province.”
“This narrows it down quite a bit, though, doesn’t it?” Diane asked hopefully.
“It does,” the detective said. “I’m going to get all our manpower over to Utrecht. And I’ll get this letter fingerprinted. Your daughter is quite clever about feeding us information without her captors realizing it.”
Diane and Kevin looked at each other proudly. Could this be the break they needed? They were afraid to get their hopes up too much, but both were ecstatic with the newest developments.
“I still think that Vacinovic is involved in this in some way,” Diane said.
“Would you mind if I contacted him now?” Kevin asked Detective Weber. “If he’s not involved, maybe the secret police have heard something in Serbia that might help your investigation.”
“Go ahead. Our surveillance of him hasn’t paid off. Just let me know in advance when you’re going to meet with him.”
Detective Weber packaged up Ellen’s letter and took it with her to be processed.
“What do we do now?” Diane asked after the detective had left.
“What do you say we take a ride?” Kevin said mischievously.
“You mean to see for ourselves what the province of Utrecht looks like?”
Diane and Kevin got out their map of Holland. The city of Utrecht was located in the center of Holland, about a forty-five minute drive from Wassenaar. Upon arriving in Utrecht, Kevin and Diane visited the VVV, Holland’s tourist agency, and got more detailed maps of the province.
Detective Weber was right, there was a lot of agricultural land in the province. They spent the afternoon driving around the small, country roads peeking down driveways leading to farm after farm.
“This is so frustrating,” Diane said. “I can feel that Ellen is around here somewhere. But how do we figure out where?”
They became more discouraged as they drove on through the province. “We need more clues,” Kevin said. “I hope we hear from Ellen again. She’s gotten us this close.”