PART 10 – THE UNEXPECTED ALLY
We spent the entire morning hiding in the forester's lodge. Outside, the rain continued, but the storm seemed to ease up a bit. My head was buzzing with information. Everything I had ever believed about my family, my childhood, and my father had dissolved into thin air.
My brother paced restlessly back and forth in the cramped room. Suddenly he stopped at the window shutter and turned to face me.
“We can't stay here long,” he said decisively. “They probably know by now where we are. The cars in the neighborhood weren't a coincidence. They placed trackers or are tracking our phones.”
Immediately I reached into my pocket and pulled out my mobile phone. “Should I turn it off?”
“It's already too late to just turn it off,” he replied. “But we can use it to throw them off track.”
He pulled out his own phone, typed a quick message, and laid it on the table. “We're going to Rotterdam. To the address Mom wrote in the notebook. But we have to be extremely careful.”
We packed our things. I carefully lifted the red box and stashed it in an old canvas bag so no one could see what it was. We got back into the old station wagon and drove off, deep out of the forests.
During the drive to Rotterdam, I felt constantly watched. Every car driving behind us seemed to be a pursuer. My brother steered the car expertly, but from his knuckles I could see he was just as nervous as I was.
By noon we reached the port city. The rain had given way to a cold, gray fog hanging over the Meuse. We parked the car in an underground parking garage in the old industrial area and continued on foot through the foggy streets.
According to the address in Mom's notebook, we had to look for an old warehouse on the edge of the quay wall. The building looked abandoned, with rusted metal doors and broken windows.
My brother knocked on a small side door. Three times short, two times long.
Nothing happened.
He repeated the knock. Then came the mechanical sound of an unlocking latch. The door opened a crack, and a pair of sharp eyes inspected us from the darkness.
“Who are you?” a deep voice asked.
“Tell him the yellow roses were delivered after fifty-six years,” my brother said in a calm voice.
The gaze in the opening changed. The door swung wide open.
