Rescue

A conductor enters the car the fugitives are in and starts checking everyone’s papers. The Durands have their fake papers, but Meg realizes that she left her own at home. When the conductor mentions that the train will be searched at the next stop, the young girl decides to find a place to hide. She finds a bathroom that is locked for repairs after partisans damaged it, and she sneaks inside. The floor has a gaping hole, and one of the walls is damaged, leaving a hole just big enough for her to hide with Captain Stewart’s backpack. Meg then feels the train stop, and the search begins.

A soldier comes in to search through the locked bathroom, but he does not find Meg. The young girl waits until it is safe to come out of her hiding place, bringing the backpack with her. A gust of wind from the open floor makes her father’s note fly free, and she catches it just in time, falling over the hole at the same time. She catches herself by straightening her spine, remembering one of the lines of her father’s note as she does so. Once she is safe, she realizes that her father was telling her to look into the spine of his book of poems, in which she discovers fake papers. They are travel visas to Switzerland for her, her mother, and her grandmother.

Meg goes back to her car and sees a notice posted on the wall warning passengers to keep an eye out for Albert, Liesel, and a young French girl they are traveling with. When she gets back to her seat, the Durands are gone. A conductor informs her that they have “moved on,” and the young girl assumes that they left without her. She resigns herself to go back home on her own, her mission to save her father having failed.

A little while later, Jakob comes back to the car and is excited to find Meg. She misunderstood the conductor’s words, and the Durands were simply waiting in the next car. They reunite and prepare to disembark at the next stop. As they enter the Forbidden Zone, all passengers will be interrogated before being allowed through. They go over their story carefully and change their appearances as much as they can with Liesel’s makeup.

Meg decides to leave the train on her own in case she is searched so as not to bring attention to the Durands. When she disembarks, she gives her fake papers to a soldier and starts answering his questions. She panics when she notices that, nearby, Albert is being arrested, but the soldier lets her through. Liesel and Jakob meet Meg further from the station and tell her that they do not know why Albert was arrested. Although Meg needs him to rescue her father, they realize that they cannot wait for him at the station. Liesel sends Meg to buy some provisions at the nearest market, where the young girl runs into a group of German soldiers while waiting in line. The soldiers mock her when she does not laugh at their jokes, and then, behind her, Meg hears Lieutenant Becker’s voice admonish them.

Meg keeps her head down as Lieutenant Becker makes the soldiers leave and offers to pay for her order as an apology. The young girl thanks him before leaving as fast as she can. She finds Liesel with Jakob, who has secured them a ride in a farmer’s wagon, and she urges them back to the train station. While they wait for the farmer to show, German soldiers begin to notice them and look at them suspiciously. Finally, the three of them get into the farmer’s wagon just as it pulls up at the station. Meg hides under some hay in case Lieutenant Becker is still around, and she feels the wagon stop briefly before moving on.

Once they are safe and away from the German soldiers, Jakob tells Meg she can come out. She is surprised to find Albert in the wagon with them. He tells them that he was released after he pretended to be senile to avoid answering the Nazis’ questions. He offers to repair the farmer’s tractor in exchange for shelter for the night, and the latter shows them to his small guesthouse. During dinner, Meg tells Jakob what Albert did to help his parents, and they apologize to each other. After they go to bed, Meg uses the house’s telephone to call her neighbor, who can give a message to her mother and grandmother. The neighbor informs her that both of them have been missing for a few days, so Meg tells her companions that she must go home.

Jakob tries to convince Meg to stay, but eventually, all three of the Durands let her go.

Before she sets out on her way back to her grandmother’s farm in La Perche, Meg makes a stop at her nearby childhood home, which her family left because of the war. She wants to get some money that Harper hid in the walls. Once there, she studies her father’s note again. Meg realizes that the first letter of each line spells out “DONT / TRUST / HERR” (217) and understands that Harper was warning her against Albert, Herr Durand. A German soldier enters the house, calling out to the intruders in his home, but Meg is able to run away before the soldier sees her. Torn between helping Liesel and Jakob or her family, she eventually decides to return to the farmer’s guesthouse.

When she arrives back at the farm, the Durands are still there. Meg lures Jakob outside by throwing a rock at a window, and the young boy is elated to find her.

Meg explains her findings to Jakob, who is in disbelief at first. Eventually, they decide to come up with a plan together. Meg checks her father’s note again, hoping to find another clue, and notices that the last letters of each line spell out: “MEGSBDAYGEMSF,” or “Meg’s Birthday Gems F.” Indeed, Meg inherited a valuable family heirloom on her birthday, which Harper hid in their family home before they left. Jakob volunteers to help her retrieve them from the house, now occupied by the Nazi soldier.

Meg hides near the guesthouse while Jakob has dinner with Liesel and Albert. While she waits for him, she goes through the miscellaneous objects in Captain Stewart’s backpack and realizes that some of them are explosives and weapons. Later, Jakob sneaks out, and the two leave for Meg’s childhood home.

When they arrive, Jakob goes to the barn to get some skis and poles while Meg slips inside the house. She finds the necklace that she was looking for, but the soldier wakes up. Meg is able to escape and runs to her and Jakob’s meeting point, where she waits until she falls asleep.

Jakob wakes up Meg a little while later, having narrowly escaped the suspicious soldier and successfully stolen the skis as well as a wooden sled. When they get back to the guesthouse, Albert and Liesel welcome Meg back, and the older man tells them that he has bought the farmer’s wagon and horse.

The next morning, Meg and the Durands ride in the wagon until they get to a border crossing where Nazis are patrolling. They backtrack to a nearby market, where Meg quietly asks around to try and find Pierre. A boy gives her instructions to meet Pierre at a church a few kilometers away, and the fugitives do as he says despite Liesel’s doubts about his honesty.

The boy, accompanied by two other girls, meets them at the church. Pierre is not an actual person but rather a code word for fugitives looking for help to cross the border. For their safety, they need to split up, so Liesel and Albert go with one girl, Jakob with the other, and Meg with the boy. He takes her to a warehouse where crates are being loaded onto trucks and locks her inside one of the boxes, warning her to be quiet. He then loads her crate onto a truck, which soon starts moving, leaving Meg terrified inside.