Three Fearless Musketeers (excerpt)

Fearless

?How do spies do it? Even when caught in harrowing situations, when a normal person’s first instinct would be to bolt, they stick steadfast and execute missions.?Not just the macho gun-wielding secret service types, even the docile hard-to-spot everyday people who double up as informers.?All of them hold their ground (most of the time) in the face of grave danger.

?Is there something in their DNA that makes them lack fear?

?In the Three Fearless Musketeers meet brave-hearts whose inability to be indifferent fueled their courage.?When you care deeply about something, then everything becomes possible, even cheating death.

?Immerse yourself into this first offering and judge at will.

?***

Freddie tied her long hair into two braids, making her look much younger than her actual eighteen years. Wearing a neat knee length blue cotton dress and flat-heeled shoes, she could have been on her way to buy bread and eggs for dinner. Astride her bicycle, she rode purposefully through the almost deserted streets of Haarlem.

?Those on the streets hustled past without stopping for pleasantries. Neither nightfall nor the tense situation in town boded well for civilities among the town’s law-abiding citizens. Many had seen Freddie and her sister zip through the streets several times in the past and thought nothing of spotting her that evening.?

?Five minutes later, she passed the bar where her sister Truus had taken up a part-time job a couple of weeks ago. She rode past without stopping. Her destination lay further ahead. A few blocks down, she came across the barracks. Keeping a steady pace, she ploughed on. One of two lewd catcalls from off duty German soldiers was the only attention she drew before she disappeared down an alley, into the night.

?Taking the next right and then another right further down the lane brought her to the upmarket locality where the SS Officers lived.?Before they arrived, this had been a peaceful neighborhood with a predominant Jewish population. All its former residents had fled leaving behind lavish homes for the senior officers of the German military to occupy.

?She crossed her bestie, Hannie, strolling down the street hand-in-hand with a young corporal who had the night shift at?House No. 15 that night. Ignoring Hannie, she kept riding. At the next curb, she tucked her bicycle under a bush and crept back to the main gates of No. 15. The shift was about to change. She was on time.

?Hannie snuggled closer to her young man, making him stand with his back to where Freddie lurked in the bushes. The soldier he was replacing grinned and suggested in a jeering voice that he could keep the girl warm and happy all night since he was getting off shift. Hannie chose that moment to initiate an urgent lip lock.

?On cue, Freddie slipped inside the compound through the half-open gate and ducked behind the nearest shrub. The trio at the gate were too caught up in the PDA to notice her. Hannie left minutes later, the first part of her job done.Inside the compound of No. 15, Freddie waited for well over an hour, her legs cramping from inaction and heart thudding with tension, a cold heavy country made pistol clutched against her chest ready to fire.

?This is an excerpt from my newsletter True Fiction . Read the complete story (free) on True Fiction here.