The Tiger Claw (47 page)

She wound fabric around the pistol and her note and painstakingly sewed the entire package tight. If she was wrong about Gilbert, the pistol might kill an innocent man, but instinct said she was right, so the pistol might save the lives of other agents. Émile wouldn’t act on it unless there was another arrest. Small comfort in that, so long as that arrest was not her own or Émile’s.

Her head—feeling immense as a barrage balloon. Her eyes—red and half closed in the mirror. She locked the door to the ladies’ lounge, took her headscarf from her handbag and used the Isfahan carpet for namaaz. Insh’allah, the landing would go smoothly, with no arrests tonight.

She put on her green jacket, took her coat over her arm. She would leave long before curfew, arrive well in time.

The bellman exchanged her valise for the package for Émile, bobbing his kepi at her parting tip. When he was back behind his desk, Noor slipped out, circled behind the hotel to the shed Gilbert marked as her starting point.

The bicycle was a racehorse caught in the traces of a bullock cart—a ten-speed fit for the Tour de France fitted with a pedal generator that powered a headlamp, a luggage carrier with a rope to fasten her valise, and a wicker basket for her handbag. She fastened finger-curl pins to hold her slacks away from the chain, and had a little trouble getting her leg over the crossbar. She took the back streets again, to avoid the checkpoint. Soon the cone of light from her headlamp began bumping over cobblestones in the Gallo-Roman ruins of the old city and descended to the riverbank of the Sarthe.

The swish, creak and bump of tires began to reverse the route she and her fellow agent Edmond had taken only two and a half weeks earlier.

Noor cycled past darkening fields, manure smells. The moon had subsided to a pale crescent since the silver night of her arrival. She gauged the roadside by the glint of porcelain bulbs atop telephone poles.

By 02:00 hours a pilot would be unable to see trees in the dark. London must be concerned in the wake of so many arrests, to risk a landing on any night with less than a full moon.

Slow down
.

If she wasn’t careful, she’d land in a ditch instead of taking to the skies.

There was the forest—where was the netted pole? A partridge poacher’s netted pole at the mouth of a game trail. She dismounted and wheeled the bicycle about a hundred metres till she found it.

Along the game trail, trees creaked and popped in the cool night breeze. Small animals scurried through grass. The path snaked through heavy undergrowth interrupted by felled logs and stalwart trees. Fine hair on Noor’s arms stiffened; her skin felt moist and cold.

There was the stream she had to follow, a small backwater with spinning eddies, disturbed as her thoughts. What if? What if? What if an angry, rejected Gilbert went to the Gestapo?

Beyond the banks of the stream, all shapes faded to black.

Stop those thoughts
.

But they returned, incessant as raindrops.

Watch those thoughts pass, let them go
.

Meditation techniques were useless; every shadow hid a German shouting, “Halt!”

The stream riffled over its gravel bed, poured short curtains over cobbles. Piles of rocks altered its flow and direction.

Tamas
, Abbajaan called it, chaos of the mind. She was lightheaded with it.

Noor stifled a cough and wiped her nose.

She came to a wood-slat bridge. Pul-Sirat—“
baal se bareek, talwar se tez
”—slender as a hair, sharp as a sword-edge. She
would fall on one side or the other, into the ravine below; not from the balance between her good and bad deeds, but because she felt so unwell.

Allah, send your farishtas to me
.

She led her cycle along the trail and came to the X on the map in her mind—the woodcutter’s cottage.

At her knock, a woman with a knitted shawl covering her head as if for namaaz took the bicycle with no comment. Noor put on her coat and crept out, carrying her valise and handbag through an area of long grass into a newly cut field.

No Germans arrayed for her arrest. But they could be lurking in the dark.

This wasn’t where she had landed two weeks earlier.

A lantern placed on a tree stump illuminated Gilbert and someone in overalls—probably the woodcutter. Gilbert held a torch tied to a stick. He brought the flat of his other hand down lightly on its unlit face, demonstrating planting it in the soil. The woodcutter took up an armful of torches and disappeared into the dark. He would be forming the L-shape to guide the landing.

Halfway to the tree stump, Noor recoiled. A strange object hovered before her eyes.

“Bonjour!” said a voice.

Bonjour with a German accent? Where was the “Halt!”?

Then another, “Bonjour.”

Where were the boots? The swastika? That smell—what was it?

Chocolate.

Fragrance steamed into night air from the hovering thing. Only a flask cup.

Two fair-headed men of college age wearing jackets with sleeves ending halfway up their forearms stood before her. They whispered at her in Dutch that was double dutch to Noor and held out strong right hands.

Don’t let Gilbert see you were frightened
.

“Vous parlez français?”

Both shook their heads. They gathered around the tree stump, and since they spoke only a few phrases of French or English, all Noor could do was nod, smile and pantomime.

Gilbert greeted Noor, cocky as ever and very much in command. He spoke no Dutch either.

Torches in place, there was nothing more to be done till 02:00 hours but wait.

The aeroplane mechanic turned woodcutter spread a blanket over the nubbly ground, placed the Thermos flask upon it, blew out the lantern, rolled over on his side and fell asleep. The heat coil of Gilbert’s lighter glowed beneath a cupped hand. He drew deeply on his cigarette, yawned, lay down on his back and patted the blanket beside him.

Disregard him
.

Noor sat down cross-legged. The gourd base, bridge and strings of an imaginary veena lay between her and Gilbert. A yawn came, but she wasn’t sleepy; she was wound more tightly than her wristwatch. Cold seeped through her oilskin coat.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee lay down, leaning against their duffel bags, and whispered to each other.

“They’re agents of Queen Wilhelmina’s WIM,” said Gilbert.

Noor had heard of WIM, a Dutch resistance network. Its leader, a Belgian code-named
Rinus
, had been recently arrested. These two agents must be escaping to England.

“I wish I could speak Dutch,” said Noor.

“What for?” asked Gilbert. “You want me to believe you prefer Dutchmen to Frenchmen?”

“Non,” said Noor, stung into reaction despite herself. “But I would like to know who betrayed their leader and his network, and what advice they have for smelling out traitors.”

“Some networks don’t need traitors. They can betray themselves by carelessness.”

“Carelessness! Someone told the Gestapo where to find their leader, and when. And the same with Prosper. That kind of man is a traitor.”

Gilbert shrugged. “Traitors can be women also. My wife, for instance … I just paid two million francs for a parcel of land in the Midi and now she says she doesn’t want to leave her lover in Paris.”

Two million francs was a large sum. A huge sum. How could an air movements officer afford two million francs? But someone who owned a château could afford it.

“Men or women traitors, both are despicable creatures,” said Noor, having no desire to discuss the dalliances of Gilbert’s wife. She gritted her teeth to keep them still.

“Have more chocolate—I laced it with rum,” said Gilbert. “No? Then I’ll have some. How quickly you judge others, Madeleine—but then, you’re so young, so naive. ‘Traitors!’ We’re in a war.
Enfin
, some people get involved more deeply in the Resistance than they meant to, or circumstances force them to compromise, leaving them no choice but to betray.”

She had pitied Monsieur le Missionnaire at Drancy for such a dilemma, and she had to agree. But Monsieur le Missionnaire was truly forced; his family was hostage at Drancy. What circumstance forced Gilbert to betray Prosper? Money. Provide the Gestapo with information and get paid.

Perhaps over a friendly game of chess.

Gilbert hadn’t once mentioned the messages for which she had almost been captured at Grignon.

“Do you have the messages I am to take to London?” asked Noor.

“Those messages? I sent them.”

But a few hours earlier, when he met her at La Place des Jacobins, had he not said, “I have them”?

“How?” asked Noor. “Do you now have another radio operator in northern France?”

“No. I sent them by courier over the Pyrénées. He should be in London by now.”

There had been no messages to send from Grignon. There were no messages to carry to London. She had been lured here.

You’re not being fair; suspicions are not proof. You mis-remember what he said
.

A sound like a steam engine startled them—only the woodcutter’s snore.

“Dream!” said one of the agents. He shook the woodcutter.

Noor’s head seemed to be moving through its own dream. Sharp fronds interlaced themselves around her heart, squeezing it tight.

“Aren’t you at all sorry for those who have been arrested?” she asked Gilbert.

Gilbert slowly expelled a sigh. “Madeleine, the stupid cause their own problems. If you ask me, Prosper lost his nerve in the last few months. I’ve seen it happen to pilots.”

“Losing your nerve is not stupid. It’s unfortunate, unlucky. Often sad. If a pilot lost his nerve after seeing his comrades fall, I would call him human, not stupid.”

“
D’accord, d’accord
. But you have, I’m sure, had some long night when something overcame your courage. For you, it may have been fear of shame, for Prosper, fear of capture.”

A warning bell crashed in Noor, sounding all the way to her womb. Those were her own words, “the long night at Madame Dunet’s when fear of shame overcame my courage.”

Mais non! Impossible. Impossible
.

“What do you mean?”

“Only that it is impossible to judge men—and women—who play many parts simultaneously. Like Arletty in Fric-Frac. She’s still playing many parts.”

Her own words again. “
Mother showed me how to play many parts simultaneously. Remember the time Zaib and I were at the cinema laughing at Arletty in
Fric-Frac?”

Why would Arletty come to Gilbert’s mind? And Fric-Frac? An old film, a little-known comedy. How?

Gilbert had read her letters. To Zaib and to Kabir.

Did her blood run cold from night chill or the implications? If Gilbert had read those letters, he had read others, letters with
much more confidential information. It showed a malevolent curiosity, a quest well beyond casual interest. He could have collected an arsenal of information for the Gestapo. Simply horrifying to contemplate.

She had no proof Gilbert had read the letters of other agents, only her own.

But why had Gilbert quoted her words now? Was he not afraid she would report to London that her letters had been opened by him, or was he so confident he could spin a tale to justify his actions?

She would tell her fears to Major Boddington on arrival. He would take action.

But suddenly Noor didn’t want to be on an aeroplane arranged by Gilbert. Maybe there were no Gestapo men on the ground because that plane, Noor and the two Dutch agents would never survive the crossing.

A mosquito-drone became a buzz. Gilbert and the woodcutter ran into the field to switch on the torches. By these and the tiny lights below the black plane, the resistants gathered on the ground could intuit its silhouette.

Maybe Gilbert quoted her letters to her in petty revenge for rejecting his advances. And with impunity, knowing she would never carry the information anywhere but into the waters of the Channel.

The stars rotated in their sockets above.

How many farishtas must Allah send with signs before I heed his warnings?

The buzz became a pulsing roar.

“Lysander again, not a Hudson,” said Gilbert.

Noor scrambled to her feet, her handbag looped over her arm.

Torch in hand, Gilbert flashed the Morse code signal into the sky. The landing lights sparked briefly and the heavy-footed plane touched ground. Noor felt the earth-shaking bump, and the Dutchmen seized their bags and ran past her, following the propeller’s slipstream.

Gilbert flung the torch onto the blanket and picked up Noor’s valise. But Noor tugged at his grasp till he dropped it and turned with a look of irritated surprise.

“I’m not going,” she shouted over the roar. “I’m not going.”

“What? Get on, get on!”

“I’m not leaving.”

“
Merde!
What are you saying?
Allez-hop!
”

The pilot leaned out, so close she could see his scarf. The woodcutter had the ladder up against the side of the plane. She yelled to the pilot, “Stop! Don’t—”

She was about to shout, “Don’t let those men get on the plane, don’t take off! Don’t, don’t … !” But Gilbert clapped his hand over her mouth and dragged her nearer the flutter-roar, nearer the propeller, overpowering her voice.

The woodcutter came running. One of them had her by the forearms. She was shaking, shaking till her head lolled. It was Gilbert, teeth clenched at her eye level, rum on his breath. He was thrusting her so close …

He wouldn’t dare, not before so many …

The woodcutter had retrieved Noor’s fallen valise and was clinging halfway up the ladder, handing it to the mystified Dutchmen.

“She’s hysterical! Hysterical!” Gilbert yelled over her head. “Afraid of flying!”

The pilot threw up his hands. Gilbert dragged her past the wing, closer to the ladder.

At the base of the ladder Noor went limp. She slipped through Gilbert’s grasp to the ground, as if struck unconscious. Gilbert backed away. But a second later his hand thumped down, grabbing her arm through her coat. Away she rolled, shedding the oilskin, retaining her grip on the handbag.