The Tiger Claw (63 page)

Noor pouted for effect. “I know all prisoners are allowed one suitcase. I was unable to bring mine. Monsieur Cartaud would not allow me.” Then she held her breath.

“My apologies, Princess, I will ask Monsieur Cartaud to collect it. You will give him a letter for your rentier, with a list of your requirements.” He sounded pleased with his own magnanimity.

Noor took a deep breath and inclined her now regal head ever so slightly. “I was living incognito as Anne-Marie—the press, you
know. They can be so insistent. My rentier is an old lady who would never have rented me a room had she known I was a foreigner.”

“The very old and the very young are of no use and no importance to us. Give me her name, Princess. I assure you she will not be arrested.”

A Nazi’s assurance that old Madame Aigrain would be spared was no assurance at all, but it was all the assurance she would wring from him.

“Thank you, Herr Vogel.”

“Princess, I understand you now.”

He understood nothing.

“Please, call me Ernst. Soon I hope you will understand me.”

Vogel would expect any Eastern woman, even a princess, to be submissive as a fantasy odalisque. Let him think so while she searched for a way to escape.

“Come, we will dine.”

He snapped his fingers and the stenographer stepped in. Vogel’s directions in German darted at the woman till she came forward and unshackled Noor’s hands.

Noor stifled a scream of pain, let the waves pass. The stenographer led her to an adjoining windowless bathroom, handed her brush, comb and—wonder of wonders—soap! A creature with wild eyes stared at her in the mirror, cheeks patched black and blue. The woman waited while Noor washed her face and used the toilet, then helped her brush her troll-cloud tangle of black hair.

Back to Vogel.

A trolley nosed the door open. A few minutes later, silver cutlery shone beside gold-rimmed porcelain plates, and cut-glass goblets stood waiting for the first swirl from a bottle of wine at the centre of the table. Steam wisps curled from a covered silver gravy boat sitting on Vogel’s desk like a just-rubbed genie lamp.

Some meat that didn’t smell like pork, petits pois, baby potatoes, spaetzle.

Vogel snapped his fingers again and pointed at the mantel. The stenographer took the pair of silver candlesticks standing on either side of the gilt-framed mirror and placed them on the desk. Vogel flicked a lighter and two flames plumed the candle wicks.

Dinner for two, with her captor.

Noor picked up the fork in her right hand, speared a potato and forced herself to eat. No telling when she’d see a meal such as this again.

Under the splayed glow of the green-glass-shaded lamp beside Vogel lay Noor’s identity card, ration book, certificate of Aryan descent, tortoise-shell compact, and ausweiss from her handbag. The valise she had requested three days ago in her note to Madame Aigrain sat open and rummaged on a table in the corner.

A sidelong glance told her the leather pouch had not joined the items on Vogel’s desk.

This time she stood with her left arm in its makeshift sling and the guard chained only her ankles.

Could she leap from that window, the one slightly ajar? Only if she could leave her skin behind. She had lost count of the number of escape plans she had made and discarded in the last few days. Even with bound hands, she had tugged her heavy bed to the centre of the maid’s room and jarred her shoulder again by attempting a jump. As if she could seize one of the bars beneath the skylight! Too high, even if she had two good arms.

“Forgeries. Excellent forgeries.” Vogel looked up and straightened his bow tie. “The English are becoming more and more adept. However, I have learned something that confuses me. I need your help in understanding it—” He broke off. “Princess, I like it when you lift one eyebrow.”

Vogel had moved from the familiar
tu
to the more respectful
vous
. Her princess performance was proving convincing.

Then Vogel went back to his prepared speech. “Princess, we now know more about you. You see, we have Monsieur Viennot in custody.”

Viennot as well!

“It’s unfortunate, as he was an old friend of ours—used to be a buyer for our Bureau of Requisitions. He too tried very hard to save you. From him Cartaud learned a very important piece of information. Would you like to know what it is?”

“Since you already know everything, how can there be anything left to learn, Herr Vogel?”

Vogel looked at her askance, but proceeded. “We have determined that you are not only an Indian princess and a British spy, but you are a
mischlinge
.”

“I have admitted I am Princess Noor,” said Noor with a confidence she did not feel. “I repeat I am not a spy for any country. And since I don’t know this Viennot or understand your language, you must enlighten me: what is
mischlinge?”

“Mixed blood—offspring of an Indian prince and an American mother. Princess, why did you not tell me your mother is American?”

This was said as if she’d been a very naughty girl.

Viennot had probably given Cartaud this information under torture, and in the belief it would help Noor. Should she deny it? The Americans were coming—and they had tipped the scales against the Germans once before, in the Great War. If she denied it, would that mean more torture for Viennot?

“You didn’t ask. I didn’t think it important.”

Vogel stopped and glared at her, then said as if to a child: “The Americans are our enemies.” He pulled a chair behind her. “Sit down.”

Behind his desk, he paced back and forth. Was Vogel moving, or was his backdrop of Hitler, Goebbels and Göring?

“Ach, they call themselves the Allies, but it is really the Americans who control. Since the Great War they have poured money into warfare, using England as their surrogate. Always
clever, lending Germany money for reparations to France, and then … But that is history. I don’t think you understand the position in which you have placed me,
ma princesse
. Each
mischlinge
is a deadly danger to the Reich, and if you are not to be executed as a spy, my duty is to deport you immediately. Those are the orders. Without delay,
vous comprenez?”

A cold blade of fear entered Noor. Those buses, people crowded like cattle, the old, the sick and the children … Yes, she was afraid. In France she stood a chance, even now, of talking her way out of the avenue Foch. But if Vogel sent her to a camp or prison in Germany, she’d be closer to Armand but imprisoned indefinitely, with no hope of communication or reunion with him.

Vogel was still pacing, talking. “But American blood … this confuses the picture. It is not so easy to deport you … American blood. It could be useful. But tell me—how did your mother come to be pursuing happiness, as they call it, in France? I find this difficult to believe.”

Noor’s eyebrow rose involuntarily, then lowered; she wouldn’t make a single gesture Vogel liked.

Evade his question
.

“You said you lived in France for many years before the war. Did you not come seeking happiness?”

“That is
tellement différent
,” said Vogel. “Very different. I live in exile here. I had to leave Germany long before the Führer came to power. Twenty years ago I was your age—about twenty-four? Those were difficult times,
très difficiles
. You know, I had to stand in line three times a day at the factory where I worked to get paid? My money was worth half its value by the end of the day. No, I didn’t come to France to seek happiness—I left my home and my family to find work. And where did I find it? In the Rothschild’s bank. I was a clerk in a cage, counting Jewish money all day. Now that Jew is in a cage and my office is in his home. That is the kind of justice I wanted, and the Führer made. The Führer understands—he is my megaphone. But
happiness?
I never pursued happiness, or expected any—”

His tone, like Uncle’s, placed the word “happiness” in quotes. It was true Mother had pursued her own happiness, by running away to marry Abbajaan; but she hadn’t pursued it at the expense of everyone else in the world. Whereas Nazis like Vogel …

Vogel went on, “—and not the state’s happiness, but their own—so frivolous! Now in Germany, we aim for greatness, the grandeur of all Germany. America aims for mediocrity in the name of individualism. Fascism is like democracy—it expresses the will of the majority,
nein
? We have so much in common—even the eagle as our symbol. The tidal wave of Fascism is rising in America too, you know. They appear to worship Herr Roosevelt, they too would like to deport all foreigners—Germans, Japanese, Jews, Gypsies, Negroes, Indians—leaving just enough of other species and races to do the labour that soils their hands.”

The world reflected in a funhouse looking glass, a mirror-world.

“I wouldn’t know, Herr Vogel, I have never been to America.” This, at least, was true.

Vogel came around the desk and stood before her. A little too close, especially at hip level. “Tell me, how does it feel?” His voice had deepened. He breathed from his mouth, shallow and quick. “
To be a mischlinge, I mean?
”

His accent had thickened.

“It must feel terrible,” he said in a musing, intimate tone, “not to belong anywhere, to be a rootless cosmopolitan, never to be satisfied anywhere, to always be comparing one place to another.”

Noor turned her head away.

“When I was with other Germans in the camp for a year before the fall of Paris—the one the French call the Battle of France,” said Vogel, “I remember being afraid.” He laughed. “Yes, I—afraid. I was afraid not of the French or martyrdom, but that the Fatherland might abandon me in France. My Führer might decide I no longer belonged to Germany. Do such thoughts worry you,
mischlinge?
”

The scent of his desire, words of tender concern—so long as he had her sitting before him with chained feet. He was calling to the fear she had in common with women of all nations. Using it. The only surprise was that he’d waited till now. But there was something holding him back. It would be foolish to believe it was conscience.

Noor sat up taller. “Herr Vogel, you are a most astute gentleman. I can only say you have made a terrible mistake. I am no spy, just a visitor to Paris caught in the war, unable to return to the Kingdom of Baroda. Forgive me for lying to you, but I was afraid you would send me to a concentration camp, where many foreign citizens have gone. I belong in India.” She tossed her head. “There, someone like Cartaud would not be allowed in my presence.”

“Oh, why do you play with me, Princess? I can interpret you, better than you interpret yourself.
Écoutez
, when it’s better for you to be French, you say you are French, when it’s better to be Indian, you say you’re Indian. When you wish to be American, you will say you are American. And if it is ever advantageous to you to be German, I’m sure you will not hesitate.”

Vogel was accusing with dreads she had always had, of discovering Mother’s opportunism in herself, of being seduced by a need to belong.

“Not true,” she protested.

“But have you ever thought,
mischlinge
, that the reverse is true as well—that when it is advantageous for the British to call you British, they will, and when it is advantageous for Americans to include you, they will, and when Indians wish to claim you for a while, they will.”

Of course she had. But she wouldn’t admit that to Vogel—Vogel who was casting a covetous glance over her.

“I understand, you see, because I am a linguist. People who know many languages have many selves, just like
mischlinges
.” He lit a cigarette and pulled in smoke. “You’re so lucky I have been allowed to interrogate you without Herr Kieffer present. He interrogates by domination. I have different methods. You see, people
are like words—they have meaning only in context, so I ask myself what does your context and that of the others have in common? I mentioned to Prosper that Colonel Buckmaster was more likely to be found in a club than in a pub, and to Archambault I wondered why Colonel Buckmaster of the
SOE
wasn’t sitting in the interrogation chair in place of his agent. But with you …”

Smoke puffed. He let the sentence trail away.

“For your interrogations, Princess, I have changed nuance and weight when I reported the answers you gave to Herr Kieffer. For your benefit I made tiny substitutions, supplied alternatives for a turn of a phrase.”

Which answers? Vogel must have conducted entire interrogations in his own mind. If her few words were five percent of the story, his imagination had to supply the remaining ninety-five. But at least her “princess” story had one advantage: Vogel had made no move to touch her.

“Why do I do this? I cannot say. It is not what I have done for any other terrorists, even women.”

He moved to the window and gazed down at the avenue. Ash grew on his cigarette. When he turned back, he seemed to have lost the thread of his thoughts.

“Language, separator of all men! To know even a single other language is to have a mistress to whom you cling in times when your wife and children only ask for bread at table, never how it got there. Language introduces you to men you would never have met but for her.”

He tossed the cigarette end into the fireplace. “French has a passion wholly lacking in our German life—it refuses to obey even its own rules. Its syllables are as sirens seducing my ear. I taste them like fine champagne.” He paused. “I am glad you are not French, little princess.”

If Frenchness could be measured by how much one resisted all who threatened France, Noor had never before felt quite so French. But which performance did Vogel wish to see? To be Indian was important at this moment. But being Indian was also
being English. How long could she meet Vogel’s need for illusion?

She drew herself taller, summoning every ounce of majesty. “I appreciate your requesting my valise, Herr Vogel.”

“Not at all. It enabled us to arrest yet another dangerous miscreant, a saboteur, a bomber of some repute. You may know him, mademoiselle? He is notorious—he goes by several names, but his file is labelled
Phono
.”