I’m opening my door when Klara emerges from her room. Back from work, Dirk is loafing on their bed with a handcloth over his shoulder, having freshly scrubbed the engine grease from his fingers.

“Ida.” Klara smiles. “We missed you at breakfast.”

I smile back ruefully. “I’m just as sorry to have missed it.” I’m preparing to deliver an excuse when a pounding noise interrupts.

“Aufmachen!”

Our faces swing toward the front door. The muffled command to open up is underscored by additional pounding, firm and rapid. A matching description now for my heartbeat. Rushed footsteps bring Mrs. van der Meer down from her floor. She shoots a troubled look our way before descending the next flight, confirming the knocks this time aren’t for a neighbor.

Bolted upright, Dirk orders Klara into their room. As she dashes inside, I rush back into my quarters and shut the door. My mind spins. I fear again that Brouwer betrayed us. Or was I trailed here from Arie’s?

Was the man by the tram indeed Willem? What if he agreed to help me just to locate Arie’s hideout? After all, the communication line was compromised; why not by the contact assigned to us both?

Gunshots echo from a place unseen. With my curtains partly open to a mottled gray sky, I peek through the window. Spread throughout the square are men in the dark-green uniforms of the Ordnungspolizei. The German Order Police. They’re barging into more buildings than ours.

It’s a razzia.

Though not solely for me, it’s still a raid.

I scan my room, noting its bareness. Too bare for a guest staying overnight.

Overlapping boot steps thud up the staircase. At least two men are charging this way.

I grab my satchel, toss out garments to look naturally strewn about, then heft the bag aside.

“Ausweise!” The call for our documents booms through the house. Fear scaling, I wrangle my identity card from my coat pocket. The hall floor creaks a mere second before my door flies open, and I suck in a breath.

The policeman is brandishing a rifle. He jerks the barrel toward the hallway, ordering me out.

I hustle past him and join Klara and Dirk. With backs to the wall and papers in hand, we stand before an “Orpo” officer. Bearing a widow’s peak and prominent Adam’s apple, in Dutch thick with a German accent, he demands of Mrs. van der Meer: “Your marriage booklet?”

She appears laudably composed. “I store it in my room, sir. Upstairs.”

Trouwboekjes, listing marital details and lineage with children’s dates of birth, are being used to sniff out onderduikers through discrepancies in count. I’ve heard that some police, at the slightest suspicion, shoot randomly at walls and floorboards to test for anyone in hiding. Just as likely to torment for amusement.