My blinks grow longer.

And longer.

When my chin drops, I realize I’ve dozed off. For seconds or much more? I can’t say.

My pulse races as I peek at my watch: 12:33 p.m. Just twelve minutes until my bus. While I haven’t missed it, I have to slip out. The service could last another hour.

I’m contemplating how to evade attention when the minister commences a final prayer, a timely reward, though his blessing stretches cruelly in length. Upon the “Amen,” I grab my satchel and trail the congregants ebbing toward the doorway. I keep to the middle of the stream.

Finally outside, I cast my eyes downward and walk with casual purpose. At the glimpse of a bus idling by the hotel, I bridle my urge to sprint. Several folks are queued up to board. An armed guard is checking their papers. Fumes from the engine grow in pungency as I approach.

I assure myself I’ve been supplied with foolproof forgeries. Retrieving them with a steady grip, I review my lessons in London meant for exactly this scenario. Were those really just two days ago?

Ida Hofman, I am Ida Hofman from Elspeet.

The young soldier is unfocused. Combining German and improvised Dutch, he’s flirting with a girl standing off to the side with her bike. Her flowy peach dress punctuates the surrounding drabness. As her chirpy giggles float over mauve-painted lips, a lean suited man in a brimmed hat lines up behind me. I have no intention of skipping out, yet there’s a troubling sense now of being locked into my spot.

When it’s my turn to hand over my identity card, the burden of its falsity lessens from the guard’s preoccupied state. He skims and returns the document, clearing me with a flick of his hand, eager to keep chatting up the girl.

After such a buildup, the simplicity of my entry almost causes me to laugh, the release of tension like a wave breaking then washing over the shore. Containing the impulse, I board, pay my fare, and start toward an empty row. And that’s when I hear the sputtering of engines. Louder, closer. Swooping in, a military truck parks before the bus. A blockade.

My stomach plummets, a boulder dropped within me.

Then a motorcar arrives and its driver lets the officer out. He steps forward with a limp, a gait I recognize from the field. It’s the SS captain, adorned with insignia on his tunic, an iron cross dangling at his collar. All at once, more soldiers are circling and someone is yelling and the flirty guard is ordering all passengers off.

Could the hotel clerk have reported suspicions? Perhaps a shrewd congregant?