The Tiger Claw (61 page)

He was waiting. Noor let silence lengthen.

He shrugged and continued. “Then I must know why do you fight for the Communists, the capitalists and the Jews? Do you need martyrdom? Is it ideology? Money? Out of fear? I can only represent you to Herr Kieffer if you help me understand you.”

The obstinacy of love, anger at tyranny, concern for the world her child would inherit—such reasons for a woman to gird herself for battle were off Vogel’s list. Noor’s shoulder throbbed with anger.

“I think we will find that you are an innocent victim of terrorists, pressed into service by foreigners—the British.”

He was suggesting an extenuating excuse, one that pride would never permit her to use.

“You must understand, Fräulein Noor, friends who have used you are troublemakers. You are young—heed my counsel. I’ve seen tactics like theirs for years. People like your friends carried a burning torch through the windows of the Reichstag and set it on fire. Can you believe—the Reichstag! That day the world changed. It was a day no civilized person can ever forget. I was visiting my uncle in Berlin. We celebrated when the Chancellor, now our Führer, declared a state of emergency and vowed war on terrorism everywhere.”

And that first emergency decree has made arrest on suspicion, imprisonment without trial in camps, and executions possible in Germany and beyond ever since. That “law” has turned the whole world into a place of everlasting war
.

“I joined the
NSDAP
that very day, mademoiselle. And since the war began, I have interrogated extremists, terrorists, guerrillas, militants, separatists, rebels, bombers, killers and murderers—call them what you will, they all do the same thing: deliberate attacks against unarmed civilians.”

In Noor’s jarred memory, stukas bore down upon the Amilcar as she and her family joined the refugees streaming out of Paris, bullets began to rip into unarmed civilians under deliberate attack. Against a dark veil of night in her mind, the Luftwaffe’s Molotoff breadbaskets spewed clustered incendiaries that popped like starbursts from skyrockets, firemen ran through roaring flames searching for civilian victims in the debris-littered streets of London. Émile began to say what she wanted to say to the pale man: “Not a single German occupying France must be allowed to sleep easy in his bed while they billet themselves in French homes, steal our coal, grain and wine, and ‘resettle us’ somewhere in the east. The tanks and guns may be with them, but we have no recourse but to fight, for our homes, for the future.”

“Their goal,” Vogel was saying, “is continual fear. Which makes me curious about you, mademoiselle—or is it madame?”

“Mademoiselle,” muttered Noor.

“Mademoiselle, then. Young women with features as delicate as yours, women as refined as you, don’t usually join terrorists. Jews and Communists do, yes—but no woman like you.”

Noor couldn’t reply with the words Émile had said. Instead, when Noor thought of Armand in Drancy, Anne-Marie Régnier pouted. As soon as Noor thought of Armand probably in that green bus leaving Drancy for Bobigny station, tears leaped to Anne-Marie’s eyes. And when she thought of him somewhere, starving as a poor man denied rice in India, his musician’s hands callusing to build roads for tanks and Volkswagens, Anne-Marie’s eyes brimmed over and she began sniffing. “Monsieur, I don’t know what you’re talking about—I want my mother.”

“Your mother—she is a British hostage? Is that how they induced you to spy?” He reached over the desk. “You see only the
war before your nose. You must realize that everything in this world is connected to everything else, connected to all that has happened in the past and to what will happen in your future. We have a duty to fight the war at all possible points, on all possible fronts.”

“Then why don’t you go and fight Russia?” Anne-Marie wailed, before Noor knew it. But it was time Vogel was given a seemingly innocent reminder of German casualties.

Vogel ignored her. He came around the desk and took his hand from his pocket. A folded square of white cotton came towards her. Vogel’s handkerchief. He dabbed at her face, wiping away tears. She let him—Anne-Marie Régnier would let him.

Nothing like the
SOE
’s mock interrogation.

Vogel returned to his seat and continued. “We must guarantee our safety against ruthless killers who move and plot in shadows. We never aim to kill innocent people. We may have to do it in reprisal, after we have been attacked, but we don’t
intend
to do it. Whereas Jews and Communists who are the French ‘resistants’ intentionally kill innocent German soldiers placed in France to protect and defend the French. So much hatred! They kill priests, nuns, civilians—babies! Let me explain to you the consequence, mademoiselle: we have to target the family, friends and neighbours of terrorists to stop these miscreants. We’re following terrorist activity, we’re disrupting terrorist plots, we’re shutting down Maquis camps from the Jura to the Alps, we’re hunting down one person at a time. Many terrorists are now being interrogated. Many have been killed. And what thanks do we get for liberating the French people so they can join the New World Order? None. Ach, we now understand the nature of our enemy—you all hate us because of what we love—freedom for the Fatherland.”

For the Fatherland only—what about everyone else in the world?

He came around the desk to her side. “Try to understand us instead of giving in to your hatred: we are only defending our freedom, our interests, searching for
lebensraum
—how do you say it in English?—living space.”

“I don’t understand,” Noor said in French.

“Yes, you do. Your message book is in English.”

Noor gave him a look of blank innocence she’d perfected for Uncle Tajuddin’s benefit. But pain erupted at the base of her neck; Vogel’s cold fingers were shaking her gently.

“Anyway, mademoiselle, France and Germany will prevail over our common enemies.”

Pain drummed and muscles spasmed, but at least Vogel had returned to French.

“We must become better acquainted, you and I. You have an accent or an air, perhaps a scent, that is different. You don’t look English, you don’t look Jewish. A Spanish revolutionary perhaps? Where did you go to school?”

“Bordeaux. I am from Bordeaux, I want to go home,” she wept.

This brought a derisive snort. “Every second agent sent by the
SOE
is from Bordeaux, because identification records at Bordeaux were destroyed. You think we don’t know that? So, if you are from Bordeaux, tell me the name of the lycée you attended.”

“Saint-Éloi Convent.” Noor fixed her eyes on Vogel’s brown felt bow tie as she provided this detail from her cover story.

“I can verify this with one telephone call, mademoiselle, but I won’t. Because you see, I lived in Bordeaux for two years before the war, and in 1939 the French put me in a POW camp near Bordeaux, and I can tell you without telephoning anyone …” He shouted suddenly, “There is no Saint-Éloi Convent there!” Then quietly, “There is a Saint-Éloi Cathedral, but no convent.”

“No convent? You bombarded it?” cried Noor, surprise and distress in her tone.

“No, Fräulein. There never was a convent. Ach! They should have taught you better lies.”

His steady gaze brought a flush to her cheeks.

“Perhaps you can be put to some good use.”

He will crack the whip and I am to perform. For him
.

“
D’accord!
About England: Were you sent to the
SOE
’s school
for agents? Who was with you during your training? Names, descriptions! We must and will eradicate troublemakers, hit the terrorist organizations and their caches of arms. Their leadership has to be on the run, and all communications with each other and the terrorist state of England where they are given safe haven must be terminated. We will do this if it takes house-to-house searches. We will target everyone to whom you are connected, everyone with whom you have associated. Reprisals will happen—it is the only way to stop terrorism.”

Professor Balachowsky seemed to answer for Noor: “Every martyr is one more step in the fight against Occupation.”

“I want my mother,” repeated Noor. And Anne-Marie dissolved into tears.

That night, I took one-handed the plate of cabbage and gristle meted out at the avenue Foch. All day my shoulder throbbed in tabla rhythms, though I tried to immobilize it by inserting my left hand in Napoleon pose between the buttons of my blouse. I had to wait till my body recovered in other areas before I attempted the procedure for a dislocated shoulder—one I’d memorized but never tried on any patient, certainly not myself
.

Sitting on the maid’s bed near the wall, I probed the hot, tender tissue of my shoulder with my fingertips, slowly rotating my arm, raising my elbow. When sweat beads stood out on my forehead and I could not move a millimetre more, I knew I was almost in the position in which the dislocation first occurred. Now I jerked my elbow up at an angle, throwing my weight against the wall. A firestorm coursed into me, like magma pouring from elbow to shoulder to chest. I fell back on the bed, sobbing
.

The ball still protruded; all that pain and it hadn’t moved
.

I lay waiting for the pain to subside, wondering what to do
.

I thought of another diagram in my Red Cross textbook. I lay face down upon the bed, with my injured arm hanging vertically. But I needed a weight to attach to my dangling wrist. I had no weight
.

I lay, wetting the crook of my good arm with tears
.

Another diagram entered my mind like a slow revelation. I needed a chair
.

I had no chair
.

But the headboard of the bed was steel, a roll bar like a hospital bed
.

I wiped my tears. Was the bed too heavy to move? It was indeed too heavy to move with one hand. Quietly, I kneed it, nudging, pushing till it pivoted just a little away from the wall. I climbed up and knelt, dangling my arm over the headboard, letting it wedge into my armpit till I gasped. I reached through the bars with my good arm. I wanted to pull my dislocated arm slightly downwards, but I couldn’t—too much pain
.

So I remained kneeling on the bed, waiting, shaking sweat out of my eyes, biting my lip to keep from crying out. An hour passed, I think, until the head of my dislocated humerus moved, returning to its place in the joint capsule
.

I rested awhile, then tore away the base of my blouse to make a better sling for my shoulder. Then I lay down, trying to quell the pain with deep yoga breathing. But the two-way signals raced up and down from my shoulder to my brain, reminding me of doctors who would tell me all pain was in my head. In my body there was no separation of mental and physical pain, as they taught, none at all
.

I bargained with Allah. Is this enough pain, Allah? Or is this no more or less than the pain of others? Allah was too busy comforting needier people, the starving, the sick, and people like my beloved taken away in a bus to Bobigny station
.

Late that night, I thought pain made me hallucinate Archambault’s face in my room, but no—there was Vogel behind him, ushering him in
.

Incredibly, Vogel said, “Explain to her.”

Then left us alone
.

Archambault leaned against the wall for support; how much more broken he was inside than I
.

“Madeleine,” said a saw-rasp in his throat
.

I drew away. Vogel could have been watching through a peephole or listening at the door. There could be a listening device somewhere in the room. The pain in my shoulder burst forth again
.

“I do not know any Madeleine.”

He straightened, swinging his arms slightly, crossed the room to stand at my side. “Listen well,” he said in French, near my ear. Prosper, he said, had made an agreement with the Gestapo
.

“Who is Prosper? What kind of agreement?” I said through a cloud. Perhaps pain was causing me to hear voices
.

“We said we will tell them what they want to know, provided they agree not to execute our agents and treat each arrested agent from our network as a POW.”

Pierre Cartaud’s voice flooded the tiny chambre de bonne again, shouting about arms dumps
.

“You told them where they could find arms? Arms sent by the Allies? They’ll use them against the French!” I whispered, abandoning caution. I had to understand more
.

Archambault held out his hands. Fingers that had tapped Morse as fast as mine looked like ginger root. Deformed, blood-crusted where his fingernails should have been
.

“Agents are more important than weapons,” he said
.

The
SOE
always taught this, even though they gave us L-pills full of cyanide. Mine was still sewn into the lining of my jacket sleeve
.

“Archambault,” I said, “is it true your transmitter was found at Grignon and the Germans used it to request more arms?”

He confirmed this with a nod
.

I was shocked again, though Major Boddington had all but told me this
.

“But, Archambault, how can this be? Even if they found your code books, we had security checks, encryption keys, and each of us has a distinctive fist. I transmitted news of every arrest …”

“All useless.”

“Maybe so, but why would England continue to send arms when they knew the Germans were receiving them, arresting agents as they parachuted in?”

“They wanted the Germans to trust the transmitters when they called to the Resistance to rise up at the invasion.”

I had thought so too
.

“Why should the Germans trust any messages about an invasion?”

“They didn’t, until they caught and tortured Prosper. He confirmed it. Prime Minister Churchill had told him personally that the invasion would come on September 12.”