More troubling yet, had the Germans somehow known we were coming? Find the fourth was their order even before discovering my chute. Were they waiting in the field from the start, and if so, how much detail would they have? Indeed, my itinerary would have led them straight here.

A tremor in my legs threatens to betray me as I disembark with the seven or eight others, including the driver. We’re instructed to spread out alongside the bus.

The captain, whose thin, brown mustache centers on a chiseled face, lights a pipe while we scramble into place. I land at the end of what resembles a police lineup, our gazes glued to the ground. Soldiers clutch their rifles.

I do the same to my satchel hanging from my shoulder, snug as a harness, and a conversation returns to me. The dispatcher explained the less obvious reason for tightening the straps of our parachute packs: the Gestapo’s practice of checking suspected spies for bruises to the thighs and chest. I hadn’t noticed any forming, but are they there?

The officer makes his way gradually down the line. He exhales smoke with the leisure of reclining on a veranda at sunset. His boots brush the ground, creating contemplative sweeps. And it dawns on me that he lacks specifics of the missing fugitive, that his strategy has been to wait in the lurch, ready to pounce on the departing transports and screen for shifty, nervous characters.

My name is Ida Hofman. I am on holiday to visit my cousin Martha.

Fixated on my low-heeled shoes, purposely weathered and faded black, I notice a spot. A dirt-brown smudge. Soil from the fields I neglected to wipe off.

He pauses before me. Does he see it too? Is there shrubbery on my clothing I somehow missed? Will he inspect my skin for bruising?

The smell of pipe tobacco, normally a comfort reminiscent of Papa, only emphasizes the officer’s proximity. I feel his stare. It bores through my hair, my head, as though he’s attempting to pick through my brain. I yearn to close my eyes, disappear, pass through a trapdoor onstage.

“Herr Hauptsturmführer,” a voice hollers. “Schauen Sie, ein Problem hier.”

The troops surrounding us undoubtedly finger their triggers.

After a beat, lowering his pipe, the captain swivels and strides toward the caller. My shoulders don’t dare slump. Without moving my head, I see the young guard by the front of the bus. He’s waiting with papers from the lean suited man. Save for the crinkling of the pages, there’s only quiet.

Soon comes a noise: a sharp slide of metal, punctuated by a click. The chambering of a round.