the car. Partly because she didn’t have a choice, and partly because there was nothing she wanted more than to leave. Anya couldn’t wait to return to the embassy. Maybe once there she could figure out who the Allendorfs were, and then she might be able to save the Jews in their charge. What she didn’t know was what she’d do with them once she found them. She had no place to hide anyone, and she didn’t have anyone she could trust to aid her.
Almost everyone was asleep at the embassy. After Dierk left, she’d went through the motions of preparing to sleep for the night. She wore her long chaste night-rail and slipped into bed. Sleep eluded her. Which was all right with her because she had plans. Ones that Ida did not need to be privy to…
She crawled out of bed once she deemed it safe, then dressed in a pair of dark pants with a matching sweater. Anya wore a silk shirt underneath so it didn’t chafe her breasts. She slipped on a pair of leather boots and tied the laces. With her clothes acceptable, she wound her long hair into a braid and then made it into a bun at the nape of her neck, then pulled a dark cap over her head. She wished she had some gloves…
Dierk had talked with Edward on the way home about the Allendorfs. Apparently, they were a wealthy family that lived on the opposite side of Berlin. The Jews they harbored were children. It sickened her to think they were raiding that house to take children to concentration camps, and then they’d punish the entire Allendorf family for sympathizing with their plight. The horridness of it was almost more than she could bear.
It had been too easy for her to uncover the information. She should be scared, but refused to give in to fear. Children depended on her to be brave. She barely had a plan in place. Most of it had been dressing in the clothing she’d secreted away days ago for an emergency. The next step of her plan was to steal one of the cars and drive to the Allendorf house. After that…she’d improvise where necessary.
She sneaked out of her bedchamber and moved as quietly as possible down the hallway. No one saw her, and she thanked whatever being helped aid her. That same being was most likely responsible for her current situation altogether, but she wasn’t going to complain. She had to make it out of the embassy safely.
Anya stepped outside and rushed over to the garage and opened the door. She went inside and looked at the cars available. There were several cars to choose from. Did they really need this many available at the embassy? She stared at them for a moment and then went over to the closest one to the garage door.
She’d have to open that first… Anya had never had to open a garage door before. How did they work? She stared at it for several minutes, trying to figure it out, and frowned. This was going all wrong.
“Why are you in here?” a man asked.
Anya jumped, startled by the sound. She lifted her hand to her chest and took several breaths, then glanced up to meet Arthur Jones’s gaze. “You scared me.”
“I seem to be doing that a lot lately.” He frowned. “You didn’t answer my question.” He didn’t waver once as he stared at her. Anya didn’t doubt for one second he would let her go without an explanation. Should she trust him? He didn’t seem to like Dierk or even Edward Wegner, but that didn’t mean he’d help her.
“I want to take one of the cars.” Would he accept that and let her go without any more details? It might be too much to hope for, but what else did she have?
“Where are you going?” He folded his arms over his chest. “And why are you dressed this way?”
That would be much harder to explain. He wouldn’t take a simple account of her plans. Anastasia probably never did anything she wasn’t supposed to; Anya never followed the rules. She’d done so more than she wanted to since she’d woken up in the wrong time. She sighed. “Would you believe me if I said I wanted to remain anonymous?”
‘Yes,” he said. “The question is why.”
He definitely wasn’t going to make any of this easy for her. “I need to help some children.” He might believe that. Especially since