The Tiger Claw (40 page)

Rolling fields bordered the roadsides for a mile or so, giving way to the gloom and woody scent of oak from a game forest. The stone wall and porticos of the institute came in sight.

Behind her, a shiny black shape roared and reared up. Noor swerved sharply as a Citroën swooped within an inch of her left knee. But her hands refused to surrender the handlebars, and down she went in a great jangle of metal to bone-jarring gravel.

Elbow-searing, hand-grazing gravel. Glimpse of a
milice
kepi on the driver’s head.

A pale face with round spectacles turned towards her. It flicked past as the Citroën swished away, leaving her bruised and winded with the bicycle coiled above her.

Noor scrambled to her feet, dusting off hands and slacks, searching for her beret, tucking her ponytail under again.

What satisfaction did they gain by frightening French people for sport?

But annoyance gave way to dismay as she saw the Citroën turn at the stone porticos and enter the institute.

Allah, don’t let this happen!

No need to look for any covert signals. The Gestapo had come to Grignon.

If she hadn’t been late, if she’d been minutes earlier, as Gilbert ordered, she would have been caught in the act of transmitting!

Noor pulled her bicycle erect, ready to mount. Émile had told Odile last night to warn the Hoogstratens, Professor Balachowsky and Viennot. And Gilbert—assuming there was any need to warn Gilbert. Following Émile’s instructions, Marius and the students must have hidden or moved every bomb, gun and bullet by now.

Archambault had told her to stay away, to use a public phone to warn others, and hide.

Out of the question. She needed details of what had happened or was happening at the institute to determine the damage and transmit the information to London. She had seen only one Citroën, but there could be more Gestapo coming, or Gestapo men already at the institute. She had to risk that.

She tried to advance her bicycle, but the front wheel was bent, so bent it mimicked a melted Dali clock. No time to straighten it.

She shook dust and pebbles from her clothes.

Steal through the woods, come around behind the greenhouse and the administration buildings. She’d seen the
Hoogstratens’ cat walking the wall of the dry moat; the institute’s stone wall didn’t continue all the way around. Insh’allah, she could find her way.

No time to lose
.

Noor lifted the front of the bicycle, with the basket and her handbag, balanced the weight on the back wheel and rolled it into the woods. A few metres from the edge she glanced back, searching for landmarks to orient herself. Then she retrieved her black kid gloves and binoculars and, from the concealed compartment of the bag, the loaded pistol.

She slipped the binoculars into her pocket and drew her gloves over scratched palms. The bicycle would be safe on its side beneath the toothed leaves and spiky yellow flowers of a mignonette bush. Noor piled ferns and underbrush, hiding it from sight. Then, inserting the pistol in her waistband, she set off stealthily through the woods.

Twenty minutes later, as Noor crept between trees under leaf-filigreed light, a man’s voice boomed through the woods.

“
Attention! Attention!
Every student and professor of the Institut National Agronomique,” it said in imperative tones, “must report immediately to the courtyard before the Grand Château.”

Noor drew closer. The megaphone repeated its directions louder.

At the edge of the woods, trees gave way to the grounds of the institute. Noor tensed into a squat behind large, hairy burdock leaves. Where the drive from the entrance of the institute flattened to join the courtyard, three private omnibuses stood side by side, doors open.

Professor Balachowsky’s expedition.

With the torso of an oak tree at her back, Noor raised her binoculars. The courtyard before the Grand Château swarmed with swastika arm bands, Gestapo police—the dreaded SD—and the black jackets and kepis of Vichy’s
milice
. She focused on a ring of rifles surrounding a bewildered, heat-wilted group of about two
hundred young men and women dressed in the familiar blouse coats of the institute.

Parked at right angles to the buses, blocking the exit, were two German lorries on the drive. Two lorries holding about twelve SS men each: some could be searching classrooms or posted on exit roads leading to the fields. Noor adjusted her focus, swept the woods behind her, but saw no uniforms.

She let out her breath—even that seemed unnaturally loud—and sank down further behind the bush, inched into a cross-legged position as if seating herself before a veena.

Control your thoughts. Calm. Calm
.

An open Mercedes with a swastika pennant on its front fender stood before the carved double doors of the Grand Château. Behind it was the Citroën that had knocked her off the road—and there was the
milice
kepi of its chauffeur. Below it, a sandy brown moustache and beard moved into the circle of her lenses.

A breeze ruffled the flower beds and lush green lawn between the Grand Château and the director’s château on the hill. Odile’s room in the director’s château was out of Noor’s line of vision. Insh’allah, the intrepid young courier was safely at her lycée at this moment.

The chef’s tall white hat and the maid’s frilly apron stood out in the crowd of students. Professor Balachowsky? Not in view. But there was a large hat and veil, then a chartreuse chiffon dress and pearls—that would be Madame Hoogstraten. Too far away to see her face.

But she could see Director Hoogstraten’s face. He was standing very erect before the wrath of a man tightly buttoned into the full regalia of an SS Oberstürmbannführer. Looking force-fed as a
foie gras goose
, the Gestapo captain shouted into his megaphone in German, in language obviously deafening but incomprehensible to Monsieur Hoogstraten. And to most in his audience.

The pale-faced man with the round spectacles approached Monsieur Hoogstraten and the Oberstürmbannführer. Taking over the megaphone, he stood a little behind the Gestapo captain
and added French shouts after each shout in German: “We have been too patient with you. It is enough.”

Monsieur Hoogstraten looked mystified but unapologetic.

“You are the director of this institute. You will be held responsible.”

An SS man stepped forward, holding a stack of books to his chest. The SS captain read aloud, “
Du contrat social
.”

The leather-bound book flew from his hand like a white-winged bird and thudded onto the sandy courtyard.

“
Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality in Mankind
.”

The volume skittered across the ground and stopped at Monsieur Hoogstraten’s feet.

“Trotsky! Freud! Thomas Mann!”

Books—precious books, rare books—flew through the air.

“André Maurois. Henri Bordeaux.”

More books flew, slapped and smacked to hard ground. Noor squeezed her eyes shut, seeing other books, books that, when she was sixteen, flew from her bedroom window on the third floor of Afzal Manzil the day Uncle Tajuddin decided all books by writers unknown to him were to be banned, destroyed or thrown out.

“Banned books! Jewish authors!” said the megaphone.

Books about other religions, even ones bought by Abbajaan, were the first to land in the garden below, over Mother’s cries of outrage. Then Uncle enlisted Kabir to take down paintings from every wall of Afzal Manzil and stack them in dustbins. Soon these were joined by a tubby little Ganesh statue, memento of an elephant ride with her cousins in India. Noor felt Mother’s arm around her shoulders again, saw Mother’s clenched fists unclenching. Saw herself standing with her arm around Zaib.

Noor forced herself to look as the megaphone voice persisted. “In defiance of explicit instructions from the Ministry of Information, you have not removed these works from the institute library. This is why, Monsieur Hoogstraten, we no longer believe you know nothing about English arms and ammunition on your premises.”

The pale-faced man rested the megaphone on his shoulder after translating, and Monsieur Hoogstraten’s voice could be heard quite clearly. “We have been co-operative, Herr Kieffer,” he was saying. “We have invited you to search every classroom and sleeping chamber for yourself. Four hours and your men found nothing. Perhaps you have been misinformed.”

Herr Kieffer shot back via the interpreter, “The SS is never misinformed. We have always very good information.”

Good information from Gilbert or had the SS tortured it out of poor Prosper and Archambault?

An SS man ran up to the SS captain, stopped, gave the Nazi salute, said something in German. Herr Kieffer turned back to Monsieur Hoogstraten and shouted louder. The interpreter relayed the message in turn, shouting in French.

“You said we should check the stables. There is nothing in the stables.”

Be still
.

Odile had warned her father in time.

Monsieur Hoogstraten took the megaphone and a deep breath, as if about to make a statement or exhortation to the students. Then he looked up at the interpreter as if suddenly struck by a bright idea. “Did you check the pigsties?”

The innocent-sounding question boomed over the crowd. The image of Gestapo men mucking in the institute pigsties, checking under offal and ordure for British weapons, was alluring. The students thought so too; snickers and laughs surfaced here and there in the encircled throng.

The pale-faced man snatched the megaphone back from Monsieur Hoogstraten. Even without her binoculars Noor could have seen Kieffer turning crimson. Sunlight glinted off the silver death’s head on his black cap. Kieffer turned to his interpreter and told him what to say.

The interpreter took a deep breath and shouted into the megaphone. “The director and students of this institute harbour terrorists and their weapons. Weapons that have been supplied by
foreign powers for use against innocent Germans stationed here to protect France from its enemies. We have given you every opportunity to surrender these weapons peacefully, but we now have no choice but to show you what happens when you continue to support violence, sabotage and illegal activities.”

At Kieffer’s order two husky SS men reached into the crowd of blouse coats and dragged a young man of medium build from its edge. A young woman—perhaps the pleasant-faced one who had given Noor directions the first time she came to Grignon—cried out, but her friends held her back.

Noor went cold in the humid warmth of the undergrowth.

People who can throw books to the ground are capable of anything
.

The SS men forced the young man’s hands behind his back and cuffed him.

Kieffer spoke, and his interpreter continued. A soft voice, calm, as if explaining the rules of Monopoly. “We hear that suicide holds traditional fascination for Catholics. Our scientists say this has become part of your psyche, a reaction against the modern world and full participation in the New World Order that the Reich is bringing to Europe. So, we will test your fascination by executing one student at a time. The choice is yours: if you wish the executions to stop, tell us, where is the cache of foreign weapons?”

A threat. A trick. Surely no one would execute innocent people at random.

These are students, civilians, citizens of a friendly power, a conquered power. A German ally—Vichy. Don’t give in, monsieur, don’t agree
.

The interpreter held the megaphone out, inviting Monsieur Hoogstraten to call students forward by name or give them orders. But apparently Monsieur Hoogstraten had come to the same conclusion, for he shrugged and said clearly into the megaphone, “I cannot tell you what I do not know, Herr Kieffer.”

Upon hearing this in German, Kieffer shrugged too, and barked an order.

The two SS men shook the poor student. He attempted protest till a gloved fist smashed into his mouth and a knee into his groin.

They dragged him around the side of the château, out of sight.

The young woman began screaming. Someone shouted, “
Salauds!
”

Kieffer’s eyes were on Monsieur Hoogstraten. The director looked into the distance. Kieffer nodded to the interpreter.

The colourless man’s eminently reasonable voice began again, its undertone setting the leaves surrounding Noor quivering. “We have asked you to set an example for your students. If you do not condemn terrorism, you support it. By not co-operating, you are sending this young man to his death just as if you pulled the trigger. For the last time, where are the arms?”

Monsieur Hoogstraten shook his head as if completely baffled.

Everyone expected the shot, yet no one expected it. When it rang out, Noor almost left her skin. A commotion of birds rose to wing. A horrified murmur rippled through the milling, sweating students. The young woman gave a howling cry and fell to her knees.

Noor’s eyes blurred momentarily. But her trainers had said: “Every army holds mock executions to get information. We do it, they do it. The rounds are blanks. Don’t be deceived.”

They didn’t shoot him. Allah, let him live and I’ll read my Qur’an again from cover to cover
.

Monsieur Hoogstraten looked unperturbed.

He isn’t deceived
.

The poor young woman, who knew nothing of mock executions or blank rounds, continued her low weeping.

Kieffer spoke, and the pale face and megaphone turned to the students. “Your director is willing for all of you to forfeit your lives and your futures to protect terrorists and saboteurs. Perhaps he does not know any students who are secret terrorists, but you know
who these are among you. You must speak now before you meet their fate.”

Monsieur Hoogstraten shook his head, and no one volunteered to betray his fellows. So a second student was hauled unceremoniously from his comrades.

Peasant stock, well built. Awed by the SS men.

He tried apology and pleas, and for a moment both Kieffer and the interpreter seemed to shift stance and consider him, as if both drew confidence from the man’s self-abasement. But then Kieffer jerked his head. The student fought, kicked and shouted, but he was handcuffed and gagged. Noor’s binocular-enlarged gaze followed as he too was dragged around the side of the Grand Château, out of sight.