The Last Train to London by Meg Waite Clayton

Author:Meg Waite Clayton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-07-11T16:00:00+00:00

Princess Power

At the Hamburg station, as Truus waited in line with the children to exchange German currency for Dutch, she tried to imagine what Baron Aartsen had meant to do if she hadn’t come to see him. He might have taken the children himself, but it was one thing for a simple Dutchwoman to be caught taking children across the border on forged German orders, and quite another for that person to be a Dutch diplomat. It was of course possible that the orders were real. Truus appreciated the baron allowing her a plausible claim to believe they were—or at least the ability to state truthfully that she did not know they were forged.

“I’d like to exchange sixty reichsmarks for guilders,” she told the customs officer when her turn came.

“For whom?” the clerk asked.

“For the children,” Truus said. Each German was allowed to take ten reichsmarks from the country, and Baron Aartsen had thought even of this, giving her the money for each child. But in her experience, German border control was far more likely to seize reichsmarks they could easily pocket and spend unnoticed than to seize Dutch guilders whose exchange would have to be recorded and explained.

“These children are your children?” the clerk demanded.

They weren’t her children, of course. The travel orders for each of the six identified them as Jewish.

“Jewish children don’t need money,” the clerk said, and without further attention to her, he moved to help the next person.

Truus intertwined her gloved hands, tamping down her fury, before stepping away from the window. There was nothing to be gained by arguing with him.

She walked over to the ticket counter with the children. “I need a ticket for Amsterdam for tomorrow, please,” she said.

She in fact had all the tickets she needed, but she could change the extra ticket in Amsterdam and receive her refund in guilders, effecting the currency change in a roundabout way. She felt rather proud of her resourcefulness as she shepherded the children onto the train.

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