The Tiger Claw (62 page)

I recalled Émile saying Prosper had met with Mr. Churchill
.

September 12, 1943, was by then a month past; no Allied invasion had occurred. If Vogel and Kieffer had believed Prosper, they now knew they had been fooled. By now Hitler knew he had been duped
.

Archambault, that menhir of a man, was in the throes of a pain so deep it was resistant to speech
.

“You cannot believe it, Madeleine. Neither Prosper nor I could believe it for so long … but after September 12 we had to admit Monsieur Churchill had fed Prosper a lie. It’s now too late for an invasion this year, too cold.”

That face—deflated as if he’d lost all his illusions
.

“Prosper was—we were all—we are all—doomed spies, Madeleine. Don’t bother taking your L-pill, for both Prosper and I took ours and we are still alive. That’s when we knew we were all doomed.”

I had read enough of Sun Tzu to know what he meant by doomed spies: Mr. Churchill had given Prosper and thousands of agents false information—lies destined for the enemy. Assuming Hitler believed the false invasion date, Berlin could have moved military resources from the Russian front, giving Stalin a much-needed respite. The timing was critical, even if Hitler had no idea where the Allies were landing
.

And if Prosper was a doomed spy, we were all doomed with him when Hitler took revenge; and now that we had done our jobs, succeeding by failing to stay out of Gestapo clutches, we were expendable as far as Mr. Churchill was concerned. I was destined to die as if Churchill had strapped bombs to my back and bid me walk into Germany
.

Could it be that despite all my intentions I had been a marionette for the Raj? And was it now that I must abandon stubborn hope and look to Allah, admitting finally that nothing, but nothing in these last months of fear, running and hiding had been within my control? That all choices, actions and decisions had not been my own, but designed by men in London?

Unlike Archambault, I did not struggle to believe the worst of Mr. Churchill or the English. For had not Mr. Churchill denied rice and boats to poor Indians, diverting food from the poor to war industries, deciding that millions in India were expendable for this war?

And Miss Atkins gave me a cover story, a story with the specific detail that Anne-Marie Régnier was a student at Saint-Éloi Convent—when there was no Saint-Éloi Convent
.

On my mission to France I had learned so many ways to be betrayed
.

Even so, I knew from seeing Drancy that my life or death was but a tiny part in Christianity’s Oedipal crusade against Jews. If I was expendable, it might be so that Hitler’s jihad against the world was defeated sooner
.

The last time I saw Prosper, at the Jazz Club, he said silence would be the fate of fifteen hundred brave French soldiers in his network. He meant the penalty for spying: execution. None of us wore uniforms. If we were French citizens, we would be treated as traitors to France; if foreigners, our execution chambers were already built and awaited us
.

Unless—

And here I began to understand Prosper’s thinking. Unless he could persuade the Germans to treat his agents as prisoners of war, in exchange for information about the arms dumps
.

The doorknob began to turn; we thought Vogel was returning. Time for masks to slip back in place. Agony everywhere in my body, it was easy to weep and wail, “I want my mother.”

“Anne-Marie,” said Archambault quite loudly, “where is your suitcase?”

Archambault’s sudden solicitousness for my suitcase penetrated my fog of pain. He wanted something, or Prosper wanted something
.

The diamonds. Of course, they wanted the diamonds. Diamonds could be bartered with Kieffer, Vogel and Berlin, bartered for lives
.

“I have none,” I said, weeping loudly, copiously. “I have nothing from home.”

It was not Vogel but the Russian guard who entered. Archambault’s smashed, swollen hand patted mine with a shake of his head—he was telling me the Russian could not understand French
.

“It’s been more than twenty-four hours,” he whispered. “Our people should have taken cover by now. Speak to Vogel. Hide what you can behind the sink in the lavatory. Bon courage, Anne-Marie!”

The guard pulled Archambault from the room before I could ask if he believed Gilbert had betrayed Prosper, indeed betrayed us all
.

Requesting my valise meant giving Vogel Madame Aigrain’s address. He could arrest her, execute her—I’d never know. And I was beholden to Madame Aigrain in so many ways, not only for shelter, for the loan she had given me, the way she had nursed me, the care she had lavished on me. Every day, she had been in danger of possible arrest and execution for harbouring me
.

Her life balanced against the lives of hundreds of agents in the
PROSPER
network
.

My dilemma was far smaller than Churchill’s. He weighed the lives of millions starving in India against all the people like himself in England; he weighed the lives of fifteen hundred agents against the freedom of a continent. But I cared about Madame Aigrain,
cared deeply, as Churchill never cared about faraway brown men, women and children, or his legion of secret agents
.

Caring or not caring did not absolve me. I had to choose between tragedy and disaster
.

It was past twenty-four hours. By now, Madame could have moved the English books, the maps and my transmitter to her daughter’s home. But what if she had not? I had warned her, explained what she must do if I did not return—but what if she had done nothing?

For two days, I said the Istikhara prayer so many times, pleading with Allah for guidance. Then back to Vogel’s office
.

Noor sat before Vogel’s desk, hands in shackles. “Für Elise” played on the gramophone in the corner.

“You have indeed impressed me—why resist more?”

Vogel seemed to believe he was the natural and only audience for her actions.

“You see, my dear, at heart I am an idealist, like you.”

“We believe in very different ideologies,” said Noor. And regretted the word instantly.

Would Anne-Marie Régnier say “ideologies”? No. The vocabulary of a nursemaid from Bordeaux wouldn’t stock such grandiloquent words.

“Mademoiselle, we know exactly who you are now. You are an Indian princess.”

Indian princess—where had he heard this? Archambault.

Trying to help, no doubt.

She kept her face completely without reaction.

“I am Anne-Marie Régnier. I came to Paris to find work as a nursemaid and”—here she broke into tears—“I want to go home. I don’t know any princesses.”

“Archambault,” said Vogel, “tells us you’re a princess.”

“You believe someone who tells you I’m Cinderella? That man—I met him for a few minutes, once in my life.
Il est fou!
He should go to Pigalle and indulge his fantasies.”

“The time for lying is past, mademoiselle—although we know you do it well. Archambault went to the lycée in Suresnes—not Bordeaux, mademoiselle, but Suresnes—and he knew you there. He says you became an accomplished, though charming, liar by writing stories for children. You live, he says, in a fantasy world, in which you may fancy yourself a secret agent working for all kinds of foreign powers, but that is delusion.”

Noor blinked at him but said nothing.

“In fact, I believe
some
of what Monsieur Archambault has told me is the truth. Because he didn’t tell it without pressure, Mademoiselle Khan. Almost as much force as it took to find his real name—what does it matter?—we’ll call him Archambault. Perhaps Archambault thought your German-sounding name, Kahn, would save you. But most interestingly, he says we are detaining a woman who has no desire to see the British win. A colonial completely unengaged in this war.”

Archambault might have revealed her origins to Vogel, but had she behaved stupidly enough, Vogel might not have believed him. Anne-Marie Régnier from Bordeaux would have been humble, acted stupid, shown more fear.

“I am glad you can now see I could never spy for the English.”

Vogel’s face cracked in an approximation of a smile. “Non, non, non. You see, that is where I stop believing Archambault. You’re a spy—you fought so hard, you bit Cartaud’s hand! I wish I’d been there to see it. And,” he added, “Archambault said your father is a maharaja and it was therefore even more impossible that you would collaborate with the British. This information explains many things.”

She gave him a baffled glance.

“It explains your posture, your bearing. A certain flash in your eyes.”

His gaze stroked her from head to toe. Vogel had mistaken her anger at herself for aristocratic imperiousness.

“And if you aren’t a spy, just what were you doing with a transmitter? Using it to listen to the BBC? Even if you could use one for that, it is forbidden.”

Everything is forbidden unless permitted by you
.

“I found it,” said Noor. “Someone left it in the apartment and I was trying to understand what it was. I thought Monsieur Cartaud was a thief.”

“In an unfurnished apartment? What was there to steal?”

“I had just rented it, I didn’t have money to furnish it yet.”

“Non, mademoiselle. A princess can afford to furnish any apartment she chooses. You are a British subject living outside a detention camp, not obeying orders to report to the Kommandant every week—you’re a spy. What other interpretation can there be?”

Armand. Not a single hint about Armand or Drancy
.

A woman in a feldgrey skirt, jacket and high wedge heels entered—quiet, deferential, functional. She placed an armful of manila files at Vogel’s right hand. A stenographer, perhaps.

Wet thumps alternated with the stamp of rubber on paper.

Grignon, the day of the arrests. Vogel standing beside Kieffer in the sandy courtyard before the main château, threatening immediate execution of the third man, Odile’s aristocratic amour, Louis de Grémont. A moment of hesitation—the only such moment either had shown in the entire event—when they saw de Grémont was no peasant who could be labelled a Communist once executed.

Yes, she could perform like an aristocrat. She wasn’t a princess, but Abbajaan’s family was noble enough, a courtier-artist clan. Vogel wouldn’t know the difference between her performance and the airs and graces of actual Indian royalty. He wouldn’t know Baroda was ruled by a Hindu raja, not a Muslim nawab. He wouldn’t know a Hindu from a Muslim. And wouldn’t have any way to verify it. But to employ the same tall story Mother had invented so long ago—Oriental mystique …

Allah is showing a way; take it
.

Give Vogel’s small mind a large, unfamiliar idea with which to grapple.

Vogel recapped his fountain pen. The stenographer collected the files, closed the door behind her.

Noor gave an exaggerated sigh and switched to English. “Herr Vogel, your intelligence is indeed excellent. I can no longer deny I am Princess Noor Khan of the independent Kingdom of Baroda. My father and my government will be anxious for my return.”

Electric daring crackled in every nerve. She held Vogel’s eyes for a very long moment.

Vogel stood up and gave a slight bow, as if they were meeting for the first time. He came around his desk.

Her wrists—so heavy on her lap. She tried moving her fingers.

The scent of kerosene changed to a burning smell as Vogel flicked his lighter, cauterized a cigarette and held it out to her.

She turned her head away.

He shrugged, then switched to English. A new phase had begun.

“I don’t understand why you work for your conqueror,” he said. “Millions of Indians are fighting for independence. Your Mr. Gandhi has been imprisoned many times for attempting to unite Hindus and Muhammadans.”

Mr. Gandhi, Mr. Nehru and thousands of others had not been imprisoned for attempting to unite Hindus and Muslims, but for exhorting the British to quit India. Correcting Vogel’s grasp of reality or politics wouldn’t help Prosper, Archambault or anyone else. So she lifted her good shoulder a little and said, “Baroda is independent, a British ally, neutral in this war. I request diplomatic immunity.”

Vogel waved a hand. “It’s subjugated by the English, I’m sure—no immunity. As for you, perhaps you believe the English have come to understand your colonial resentment. But they are not Germans—I assure you they understand only themselves.”

Mr. Churchill didn’t understand Indian resentment despite
their continuing, thirty-year independence struggle. But Vogel was implying the Germans would have had more empathy. He’d be convincing if she hadn’t experienced the rule of both colonizers.

No matter who the colonizer, no matter who the colonized, there is no such thing as benign occupation
.

Aloud, she said, “Many English people now sympathize with India’s need for freedom from tyranny. The British have promised India freedom once Hitler surrenders.”

“Herr Hitler,” corrected Vogel. “Once Herr Hitler surrenders?” He crossed his arms on his chest. “Oh,
mein schatz
, the Führer is just falling back a few times to make the Allies believe he is being beaten.”

Had he called her his darling? Perhaps she could use it.

“It is all part of his plan, don’t you see?”

“Ah,” she said, matching his tone with one of inscrutable Oriental omniscience.

She couldn’t tell if she was hollow from hunger or fear.

Could her sudden elevation to princess help Prosper and Archambault? She had to try—but try while protecting Madame Aigrain.

“Herr Vogel, I need a small favour.”

“Prisoners do not receive favours, my princess. And prisoners captured in combat without insignia are entitled to no favours at all. You are an illegal combatant—an enemy soldier who does not follow the civilized rules of war. You should be shot! Shot immediately!” His right eyelid drooped into a long, slow wink. “But all the same, you may ask me a favour.”