The Tiger Claw (6 page)

It was just a dream; he could also refuse to remember it.

And besides, even if Noor was older, Kabir was the eldest son, the son on whom Abbajaan bestowed his mantle. Abbajaan
chose
him to bridge the gulf between earth and heaven for his followers. Of course, that choice followed the Sufi silsila tradition, but the memory of his initiation ceremony was still comforting.

Kabir searched the K-rations for a vitamin biscuit—a “cookie.” He replaced the chocolate bar, chewing gum, cigarettes and lima beans in the sidecar. Perhaps he could barter them for information in Munich.

Large drops wet his jacket like spit from the sky.

He mounted the Triumph and took to the road again.

On his way to the U.S. Office of De-nazification in Munich, Kabir rode right through the ground floor of a shattered building, unable to see any difference between the scarred outside and the building interior. Stalagmite shapes loomed over roads reclaimed by grass and the buzzing of insects. The reverberation of a single scream might bring every brick and stone to knee level.

The cathedral was completely gutted. A place referred to as the Brown House was damaged badly but not destroyed, and the priceless collections in the Pinakothek had received a direct hit on
a date matching an entry in Kabir’s flight log. Everywhere, clearing crews of Nazi prisoners and large-boned women in scarves were loading rubble from gargantuan fallen monuments at a steady pace, but anyone could see it would take years to restore what bombs had destroyed in an instant.

A peddler jiggled the tray suspended from his neck, calling, “Eggs, eggs!” as Kabir approached the Rathaus, the richly ornamented town hall in the Marienplatz. The mechanical clock began its glockenspiel performance as he climbed the stone stairs inside. Soon he was shifting his weight on a hard wooden chair sized for a child, in a modest room with the scrawled label
U.S. Office of De-nazification
. There, a very young-looking captain from Chicago to whom he’d been referred by Zaib listened to his story without comment, then laughed with a cynical timbre that placed him closer to Kabir’s own age.

“Find her in three weeks? Christ! Lieutenant, you sure set yourself one helluva task.”

But if Kabir didn’t leave Munich tonight, he couldn’t report for duty in Paris on schedule. Upper echelons would believe he’d delayed or even deserted, fearing confrontation with the Japanese. It would match their prejudices against Indian men and confirm their worst opinions of refugees from France.

So he must, he had to, return on time to Paris.

“Know how hard it is to find a single person?”

“I know,” said Kabir.

The captain’s eyes were bloodshot from sleeplessness or drinking or both. Kabir knew his own eyes had the same crazed look from days of filling in international tracing requests, quizzing forced labourers, former POWs and other refugees at the Deutsches Museum, sending telegrams and telephoning Zaib from the American base.

“You’ll need months of leave, buddy. Maybe years. Tell me, how many camps can you go to? How many prisons? How many mass graves can you search?” The captain rose and turned to the map of Europe on the wall behind his desk. “You saw the buildings
of Natzweiler, right? Wasn’t that discovered by the French? The Russians came upon this place—here.” A forefinger alighted on a single, tiny red push-pin. “It’s called Auschwitz. You wouldn’t buh-
lieve
me if I told you what they found. And you Brits liberated Buchenwald and Belsen in April. Then we stumbled over the horrors of Ohrdruf.”

Jab, jab, jab.

Kabir had seen photographs in the newspapers: piles upon piles of skin-and-bone dead. But he could not, would not, believe Noor was among those people.

“Then Dachau. And Dachau wasn’t just a camp for Jews; it was for anyone the Nazis disliked—Poles, Russians, Gypsies, Catholic priests, homosexuals, and dissidents of any kind. It goes on and on … For three months we’ve been uncovering primary concentration camps, sub-camps and work camps, and prying folks out of civilian prisons.”

Kabir leaned closer. The entire map of western Europe behind the captain’s desk was prickled with a constellation of tiny red and blue push-pins. He sat back, stunned.

“We’re just trying to clean out the Nazis in Munich, but there’s too many of them and we’re awful undermanned.”

“I was told your office has the files captured at Gestapo headquarters in Paris.”

“I haven’t received any. Pleased to know I can expect some, though.” He paused, then continued in a kinder voice. “Look, pal—flight lieutenant, I mean. If your sister was an agent for the British, the Nazis would have labelled her ‘Nacht und Nebel.’ That’s a ‘Night and Fog’ prisoner. She could be anywhere in Germany. God forbid the Russians have moved her to one of their camps. There were many—no, I’d say mostly—French and Italian Jews among the prisoners liberated from Auschwitz, and many of those are still DPs and haven’t arrived home yet, coz guys like you did such a great job bombing bridges, railroad tracks and stations across Europe. Or they can’t find rail cars or … I dunno, there’s always some darn Limey, Frog or Russkie excuse.”

Kabir’s arms and shoulders felt like rock, ready to attack this destroyer of hope. The captain tore the wrapper off a pack of Lucky Strikes and propped a cigarette in Kabir’s direction, as if to soften the impact of his words. Kabir raised a hand, refusing on principle.

“Some DPs aren’t well enough to travel, two months after liberation. If she’s still alive, Lieutenant Khan, she might be in a prison, in a camp or under medical care. You don’t know, do you? You can’t know.”

It wasn’t “if” Noor was alive—she must be, she must be. But if she was, surely she would contact him, send word to him in care of the
RAF
? A Red Cross message, a phone call? The captain’s words rang true. Kabir rested his elbows on the desk and clasped his hands at moustache level, desperate to unite thoughts and body.

The captain continued in a kinder tone. “The Nazis weren’t ordered to keep records of Night and Fog prisoners, but that don’t mean squat. Amazing how much the bastards wrote down ‘bout what they did and to whom. Always afraid some bigger bastard might raise questions, accuse them. Here—” He pushed an index card across the table at Kabir. “Fill it in. I promise you, if we find anyone matching her description, or anyone who can tell us about her, I’ll contact you personally. Immediately. Best I can do.”

The captain was asking Kabir to acknowledge and accept powerlessness in the face of chaos. Passivity. Fate.

Hope crumpled beneath the weight of reality, then turned unaccountably to anger.

Noor, you brought this on yourself; you are responsible
.

Noor wasn’t his only obligation. He had three women to support on his pay: Dadijaan, who sent all the house money she could get her hands on to Muslim charities for the millions starving in India; Zaib, for whom he should arrange a marriage with some Muslim who could be persuaded to overlook her tending unrelated men—and soon, or she’d follow Noor’s example and ally herself with some totally unsuitable man and commit the same mistakes;
and Mother, who, since the letter from the War Office saying Noor was missing, had lost her legendary organizational efficiency, energy and optimism.

If only he could be all places he was needed at once.

Kabir managed to fill in the card, shake the captain’s hand, salute and mumble thanks that sounded grateful. Outside the captain’s office, he threaded his way between desks. Shoulders cradling telephone receivers each bore the flaming crusader sword insignia of the Allied Expeditionary Forces. Outside, their businesslike, optimistic drawls yielded to the calls of street peddlers vying for attention from passing hausfraus. A Rosenthal lamp, a dinner jacket, a music box—scavenged and looted goods to be bartered and sold. Even fresh eggs, here and there. Shirts, shoes, a pair of patched trousers. One hawker balanced a lone tomato on his palm, loudly boasting its matchless beauty.

Survival of the fittest often means survival of the loudest, the most bumptious
.

Neither term described Noor.

What more could he do but report for duty on schedule? He’d call Zaib, Mother and Dadijaan on his way back to Paris. He would say: Noor must be alive, insh’allah she’ll return home to Paris, she’ll telephone, she’ll write. He wouldn’t wonder if Noor might write to someone else if she was alive—to her friend Josianne Prénat, or that Jew Armand Rivkin.

He would try not to remember the meeting with the Jew, five years ago, that meeting he hadn’t mentioned to Zaib. Climbing to Rivkin’s apartment on a cold spring day, a weight in his pocket. Just before the May invasion, before the battle of northern France, before the fall of Paris. Holding that envelope out, saying, “Leave my sister alone.” Try not to remember the packet of money that never changed hands. He couldn’t imagine where Rivkin was now.

Zaib wouldn’t give up, of that he was sure. She’d continue writing letters and telegrams of inquiry.

Of course, if Kabir was sent to the Far East, he’d go. But if, insh’allah, he was demobilized, there was Afzal Manzil to be
reclaimed in Paris. He would restore it, bring his family home from London. After that, he would decide whether to reopen the school. Could he muster enough faith to preach Abbajaan’s beliefs? Perhaps. That is, if any in Europe would pay to learn again about tolerance and love.

No recourse at present but to endure, wait, watch, hope, pray, write letters—women’s pastimes. But there was also work to be done.

Kabir skirted the edge of the crowded Marienplatz, made his way through a tent city sprouting behind the Rathaus, and returned to the Triumph and its passengerless sidecar.

PART TWO

CHAPTER 3

Surrey, England
May 1943

I
NTERMITTENT SPRING RAIN
had eroded the topsoil from Glory Hill, exposing tree roots like ribs rising under famished skin. May sunshine speared tangled foliage, revealing more than a dozen young women in the khaki uniform and shoulder patches of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. Pale faces drenched in sweat, they waited in the underbrush. At the signal, an all but unnoticeable flutter of a white handkerchief, the women broke into a trot, then into a run for the slope, using the roots as stairs, climbing in purposeful silence.

Noor grabbed at the roots with gloved hands, lungs expanding, buttocks tensing alternately in coordinated rhythm.

Quiet, quiet!

She pulled herself up, glancing sideways to check she was level with the others. A few yards off, another crouching figure in
FANY
khaki turned for an instant. A tweezed sandy-brown eyebrow arched in Noor’s direction. A few more strides uphill, her strength renewed by Yolande’s unspoken challenge.

Noor threw Yolande a quick smile.

Now the crest was in sight.

Look for black uniforms. Wait
.

Breath sounding too loud.

Hold that breath. Listen!

That was the owl hoot? Some atrocious imitation.

She rose and scaled the last few yards.

Over the summit, she dropped to a squat and held out her hand to Yolande.

“Ouch, my bum!” said Yolande in a stage whisper. “Three times up and down that hill today!”

Noor’s regulation black shoes half slid down the slope. With the hill behind her, Noor pulled a miniature pair of binoculars from her pocket and peered at each clump of foliage at the edge of the woods. Not a leaf stirred, so she signalled an all-clear to the next pair of
FANY
s and emerged from cover with Yolande. The taller girl slipped her arm through Noor’s as they stood in the clearing. Yolande, her competitive yardstick, was breathing deeply too.

“I thought they might be doing that ‘sorting out’ today, but that was easy,” said Yolande. “We pass! Together to the end!”

Noor laughed. The others were emerging from the woods.

“You might have thought they’d ambush us here, now,” said Yolande, wiping her face with a mud-stained handkerchief.

“They did that yesterday,” said Noor, pulling her hat off. Warm hair tumbled about her shoulders. “It has to be unexpected,” she said, tying a ponytail.