The Tiger Claw (12 page)

So I was given love, that rarest, most precious spark that can ignite between man and woman, and I had not the courage to accept its demands for fear of losing my family’s love
.

I had expected Armand to argue with Kabir, to fight like a knight for his lady. Instead, Kabir said Armand had agreed we should part
.

When we said goodbye in the Bois beneath the locust trees, Armand explained why. Yes, I agreed we would part, it’s true, but what I did was desertion. Unpardonable even though Armand wanted it
.

Suresnes was bombarded a few weeks later. Uncle Tajuddin took a steamer from Marseilles back to Baroda while the rest of us escaped to England. Uncle could not threaten me now, and Mother, Dadijaan, Kabir and Zaib were safe in London
.

The unpardonable can be neither forgiven nor punished, only atoned for by action. So as I flew towards Paris in the Lizzie from Tangmere, laden with admonitions, instructions and directions from the
SOE
, I also went determined to make amends. I told myself I was no longer a trembling kind of woman, that I claimed my life and body as my own. This time I would not fail Armand
.

Three weeks in Paris for my secret mission, and if I could not touch Armand’s cheek once more and hold him to my breast, I would find a way to tell him only this: that I will always love him, that if he should still desire, we will marry anew in the eyes of the law when the world finds peace
.

CHAPTER 9

En route to France
Tuesday, June
15, 1943

N
OOR SCANNED THE NIGHT SKY
, looking out as ordered, for patrolling German night fighters. Thankfully, for almost an hour now, only the silvered dark rushed over the clear cowl-roof.

Edmond pulled a leather-jacketed hip flask from his raincoat pocket, unscrewed the top and proffered it. Noor shook her head. She liked a glass of wine on occasion, now Uncle Tajuddin was too far away to sour it with his frowns, but tonight she needed every sense alert.

“Landing soon.” The pilot’s shout burst against her eardrum.

He must have identified himself by s-phone to the waiting resistance team and the air movements officer, the lieutenant code-named Gilbert. Now he’d be searching for the inverted-L-shaped flare-path from their torches. Strangers—but please, Allah, not the Germans—were standing below with upturned faces, right now.

Noor’s stomach lurched as the Lysander began its descent. She was tipping backwards in her seat. She listed against Edmond’s shoulder as the small plane circled to come down against the wind. There was a bump, a jolt, a rise and another bump. The plane taxied down the long leg of the L, turned sharp right along the short leg and came to a standstill. The pilot
throttled back his engine, exchanged a challenge question for the password from the waiting reception team.

The roof above Noor slid back. The dark shape of a peaked cap appeared over the rim.

“Venez—vite!”
invited a hoarse voice.

She rose quickly in the cramped space and swung herself out, feeling for each rung in the ladder leaning against the plane. Halfway, strong hands gripped her waist, then someone lifted her bodily from the plane, held her a moment against the vigorous thumping in his chest, and set her feet on spongy, grass-stubbled ground. Slightly winded, she looked up into a flashily handsome face under the peaked cap.

“Bienvenue, mademoiselle,”
he said with a chivalrous grin. “Wait here.”

A commanding overarm gesture marked him as the air movements officer. An experienced pilot, Edmond had said over dinner. Gilbert was trained by the
SOE
to select and arrange fields on which the cloak-and-dagger planes could land—nothing ploughed, no soft mud. The Loire was as the back of his hand, and, the pilot informed Noor, Gilbert was a walking Michelin guide to the best black market cuisine in northern France. Besides, since he had begun selecting landing sites, the squadron had not lost a single flight.

Three men carrying small valises and clutching their hat brims scurried past Noor to the foot of the ladder. Edmond lifted out Noor’s coat and handbag, his own valise and, with some effort, the long drum-like canister. These passed down the ladder to waiting arms of the departing passengers. Other figures crowded around and carried the canister away in their midst. Then Edmond hoisted himself from the plane.

How could three men fold themselves into the tiny gunner’s cockpit she and Edmond had just vacated? But they must have done so, and rapidly.

The roof of the gunner’s cockpit slid closed. A hand emerged from the cockpit window and wiped a smudge of oil from the windscreen.

The engine gave a bursting howl loud enough, Noor felt sure, to wake every German from here to Berlin. Gilbert gave the thumbs-up sign. In sixty yards the Lysander was airborne, the roar fading to a distant drone in the sky. Gilbert signalled and two men ran from the clump of trees behind Noor and pulled the guiding torches from the ground. Noor read her wristwatch by moonlight—00:45 hours. Landing and takeoff had taken only three minutes.

Edmond tramped across the pasture to wait at her side, hands in his coat pockets, hat brim tipped forward, eyes on the ground, discouraging conversation. Noor pulled the winding pin on her watch and reset it to Paris time as decreed by the Germans—an hour ahead, to coincide with Berlin.

Gilbert appeared at her side as if dropped by parachute. “Come with me.” He gave her the handbag and coat, his eyes darting left and right. Noor’s too, searching for German uniforms or anything suspicious.

The night was warm, but nerves taut as telephone wire drew the warmth from her skin. She slipped her oilskin on.

Two men stood waiting, guarding five bicycles. Father and son, it seemed, one too old for military duty and the other much too young. No greetings were expected or made. Gilbert pointed to a bicycle minus a crossbar, for Noor. She put her handbag in its basket and fell in line, following closely behind the father and son. Gilbert and then Edmond brought up the rear.

They wheeled their bicycles stealthily through the moonlit woods.

“My wife couldn’t manage for even one day with so little luggage.” Gilbert came up beside Noor and nodded at the handbag bouncing in her bicycle basket.

Noor gave him a hesitant smile. Mindful of security rules, she said nothing.

Gilbert whispered, “Vol de Nuit. The perfume you’re wearing—correct? The top note is there, I think. Very faint.”

Noor shook her head, eyes on the road. Wearing perfume on a night mission would leave her signature wherever she went—the sign of an amateur.

“What is a woman without perfume? But don’t worry, the pilot said he’ll be back in a few days with your luggage.”

“If there’s moonlight,” Noor said. No reason to be silent, since Gilbert seemed to know.

A few metres later he asked, “You’re the new
pianiste?
”

She gave another slight smile, but said nothing.

“A courier, then? I must know, you see, because I select the airfields and then radio London. I have orders to take you to Paris.”

“Yes.”

“I must know where to find so beautiful a woman again.”

“You will be told when you need to know,” whispered Noor, somewhat archly. Beyond the excitement of clandestine danger, she was enjoying the underlying banter of their exchange. Three years in London and she had never come to understand the dry wit of English men.

“
Alors
, you will want to tell people in London that you have arrived safely. So have your letters ready next week,” said Gilbert. “I’ll give them to the pilot of the next landing.”

“And where will I find you to give you letters?” asked Noor.

“I assure you we will meet again, and soon, mademoiselle. But in case you must send a message to someone in London about me, my code name is Gilbert. And yours?”

“Madeleine. But to people here I am Anne-Marie Régnier.”

The small caravan plodded on, wheeling their bicycles now side by side, now in single file. Too loud crunch of footfall on twigs, over fallen branches, roots and stones along the muddy path.

“You speak perfect French with no accent, mademoiselle,” said Gilbert. “Where did you learn?”

Only a Parisian would think her French was
sans accent
, so Gilbert was Parisian. The question was conversational, but again against the rules.
SOE
security precautions seemed to be ignored
here, at least by Gilbert. But if she was to work with Gilbert and other resistants, she had to be accepted. She should make the first effort.

“I once lived near Paris,” she acknowledged.

“Aha! That explains it. Which arrondissement?”

“No, just near Paris,” she said, still guarded.

“Ah, the beautiful
banlieue
,” he said with irony. Most suburbs of Paris were dumping grounds for refuse and factory waste; they could scarcely be called beautiful.

Gilbert now fell back and began quizzing Edmond, who responded with grunts. Noor took the opportunity to memorize local landmarks, as the
SOE
handbook taught, in case she needed to return this way. People and animals had left signs everywhere. Covert ones, like the glove hanging from a branch, the remains of a poacher’s fire; overt signs, like the finger-post to a disused mine she had passed a few paces back, and a grotto of the Virgin Mary, her eyes shining like jewels. In India, Hindu idols dotted the landscape like the Virgin in France. French Catholics kissed her feet just as Muslims kissed the Ka’aba, each calling the other pagan.

A dormouse whistled and clicked in a tree hole above. Noor flipped her jacket button open, squinting in the moonlight, noting the direction of the tiny white
N
on the dial of her compass.

A dog bayed faintly. Uncle Tajuddin would say it was an unclean animal, but Noor had loved dogs as a child—that is, until a dog bite followed by fourteen injections against rabies.

The dog bayed again, sounding huge, wolf-like and far too close.

Another twenty minutes’ walking and a road broke across the dense woods. Here the father and son whispered low
au revoirs
, arabesqued over their bicycle seats and rode away into the night. She imagined the two cycling home in the dark. No one was paying them to risk their lives helping British agents bring in arms.

Gilbert mounted his cycle too, and motioned to Noor and Edmond to follow him.

“Where are you taking us?” asked Edmond.

Noor didn’t think he’d looked at his compass at all.

“To the railway station. At Le Mans.”

Noor and Edmond mounted and pedalled after him.

Moonlit vineyards, fields and hedgerows stretched away on either side of the road, tranquil as if no war had ever disturbed them.

The jumble of medieval buildings marking the centre of Le Mans loomed against the moonlit sky. Not a single light glinted; curfew was total. Gilbert dismounted and again walked his bicycle. Noor and Edmond did the same. At a small tool shed by a field of freshly cut wheat, they wheeled their bicycles in and closed the door. They set off, skirting the city. Within an hour Noor’s new shoes were chafing her feet.

A glow swung to and fro in the distance—a lantern. A
cheminot’s
lantern. Morning mist lifted, revealing tracks flowing through a station, wagons marked
SNCF
on sidings and then four being coupled near the station to a small locomotive. The first two were passenger carriages. At the third wagon a gendarme stood ramrod straight, overseeing the loading of wine bottles. The fourth was being loaded with boxes marked
bustes du Maréchal
—busts of Maréchal Pétain, Marshal of France, hero of the Great War, and now the Frenchman who had shaken Hitler’s hand.

“We part here,” whispered Gilbert. “Act as if we had never met.”

Edmond gave Gilbert’s hand a quick, grave tug and touched his hat in Noor’s direction. “You first,” he said. “I’ll take the next one.”

At the front of the station, a gendarme and a German grenadier were seated side by side at a desk beside the turnstile, a Thermos steaming between them. A quiver raced through Noor from head to toe as she approached the ticket counter.

It’s a play. Play the part, play it well
.

She was Anne-Marie Régnier, she was from Bordeaux, she had a signed ausweiss authorizing unlimited travel. Imitation Anne-Marie would be better than any real Anne-Marie.

“One way to Paris,” she said to the official in his little cage, passing him a counterfeit note. She looked away as if impatient, while he grumbled about mademoiselle’s not carrying exact change. A white strip licked forward to her waiting hand beneath the grille.

She approached the turnstile for the next test.

“Papiers?”

Her gaze fixed on her hand, her hand offering the forged carte
d’identité
and the pale green
ausweiss
to the gendarme. Not trembling—good. Miss Atkins said women were less conspicuous operatives, unlikely to have trouble with documents. Few women had any identity papers before the war. Certainly she, Mother nor Zaib was ever issued an identity card or needed a licence to drive all the years they lived in Paris. Uncle Tajuddin never allowed Mother, Noor or Zaib to hold a bank account either, and all women in France needed permission from a male relative.