The Tiger Claw (65 page)

Gestapo Headquarters, avenue Foch
Paris, France
Thursday, November 25, 1943

P
IERRE
C
ARTAUD
came for Noor after midday soup and bread, two Gestapo thugs behind him.

Fear swarmed in her stomach. She backed away, glancing up at the sloping skylight as she had every day, since her last interrogation. Too high.

“Where is Herr Vogel? I demand to be taken to him.”

“Herr Vogel,” sneered Cartaud, “is wounded. In hospital—one of your Canadian spies shot him.”

The two Canadians had landed in June, were escorted by Gilbert to the station and dispersed for their missions. They had disappeared soon after. If they hadn’t been interrogated till now, that could mean they’d been shut away in Fresnes prison for more than four months.

“Nonsense!” she said, pretending to be brave. “Tell him Princess Noor wants to see him immediately.”

This time he will rape me, without Vogel to stop him
.

She was boiling and freezing inside.

Cartaud surprised her by explaining, almost politely, that he needed her room. “The Canadian must be kept under observation—he fired eight times. He threatened to shoot me too if I told him one more time how bad is his accent. And I only told him once—
quelle barbarie!”

So, said Cartaud, he needed the room Noor had occupied for six weeks in the avenue Foch. Herr Vogel had found a prison that had a cell for her. Cartaud would move her tonight.

“You’ll be a Special Prisoner,” he said, as if offering her a special treat. He made it sound as if she had a choice, but she didn’t. Not with three men exuding power, sweat and obvious relish, who cuffed her flailing hands before her.

“No fighting, now!” said Cartaud. “I’ll shoot you right here and tell Herr Kieffer you tried to escape.”

I should have bitten your hand much harder
.

Her neck jerked. A bandage wedging her upper lip against her teeth, its snaffle forcing an unnatural grin, stanching her furious questions, threats and invective; both nostrils blocked. She worked facial muscles, jaw and tongue till the bandage slipped a few millimetres, granting air to straining lungs.

Welcome scent of new air: the door to her room had opened. Noor took a deep nasal breath, to scream. But the scream gagged in her larynx, going up up up, reverberating into her skull.

The thugs held her between them. German orders and
jawohls
flew over her head. Down, gun-prodded down, step by step. Eyes on the carpeted spiral. Five storeys she couldn’t remember climbing.

Into the vestibule, out into chilly November sunshine. She was being shoved down the short driveway towards a black staff car waiting in the
contre-allée
. If she let her body go limp as she had with Gilbert, they’d have to drag her through the iron gates.

Those filthy hands would roam all over her again.

No. Struggle harder
.

“You want me to tell Herr Kieffer how dangerous you are? He’ll keep you in chains.”

Five fingers and a giant palm on the crown of her head, pushing down. A blow, knocking her sideways into the back seat. Leather scraping her cheek, shoulder scraping leather.

Aim for Cartaud’s groin
.

She kicked out. Pain shot up her jarred ankle. Cartaud gasped like a pricked balloon. Behind him, a man laughed. The door slammed closed.

The door at her head opened. Glimpse of a husky SS man. He grabbed her.

Choking, choking.

She was folded into sitting position easily as a doll, nothing she could do. The SS man got in beside her, the trace of a smile on his face. Outside the window, Cartaud was still doubled over.

The SS man’s side arm gleamed in its holster, just to frighten her; she refused to be frightened. With her hands shackled, escaping was a rope trick she couldn’t do.

The car swung away down the avenue Foch.

Villages of cream stone and red tile, points of steeples rising in their midst. Plough-combed fields and periodic glimpses of the Marne flowing away to join the Seine. Solid stations resisting the motion of scurrying trains, woods swamped in water, nests clumped like lookout posts at the tips of branches, piles of firewood, the chug-a-chug of wheels on the track and the occasional toot of an engine. Wagons on sidings. A station—Chalons-sur-Marne.

How easily they had transferred her from the Gestapo staff car to this train compartment. Like a sack of grain. No chance to escape, and though her gag was removed, her feet were now shackled as tightly as her hands. Two SS guards, one short and pig-faced, the other tall with a sad-dog face, glowered at her from their seat opposite.

She turned to the window, pretended she didn’t notice them.

A fountain spouted from stone, sheds of grain, sweet-faced cows at pasture, power lines uncut by saboteurs, covered wagons of the
SNCF
, shuttered windows of a
boulangerie
, bales of hay, milk-chocolate earth, a bridge, sun slanting through the green lace of trees, weathercocks on steeples.

Paris was left behind. Where was she going? East, since the sun was setting behind the train.

Undulating hills, a canal. Bar-le-Duc station.

A train swung by on the adjoining track, bound Parisward. Mountains in the distance offered sanctuary to Maquis bands. If only she could run away, join them.

Under a bridge now, then into a valley. A few bicycles moving on a thin thread of road. A hamlet, a square steeple, a road curving beneath the track, a rise of hill, puffy trees obscuring hard blue sky. In a hollow between hills, signs pointed to destinations—too far away to read.

Sunrays slanted further now, mirroring the still surface of a pond, teasing shadows from a line of trees. Patchy shapes of Holsteins should have been visible against the darkening earth, but animals were long slaughtered to supply the army.

Trees lay felled against each other, branches snapped, a crater before them. Lérouville station. A cemetery, scruffy shapes of woodpiles. A château brooded on a craggy hill overlooking the river. Who lived there—did they agree or disagree with Hitler and Vichy?

Sunlight moved away now, birds flew homeward, horses nuzzled one another in a paddock. A railway crossing, then the spread-eagled red roof of another railway station.

A canal flowed alongside the train. If she could work herself out of her bonds, maybe she could leap from the train and roll down the bank into the canal …

The windows filled with the echoing darkness of a tunnel. The light returned. The canal had veered away.

The train slowed but did not stop at Foug station.

Rust-orange mounds of scrap metal. A store of sandbags stamped with something illegible at this distance.

The train sloped in the direction of its turn, straightened.
Toul Poste 1
.

Double steeples rose from the grimy, rundown town into twilight. Storm clouds gathered over hostelries and turreted mansions. Noor squinted to read Pig-face’s watch upside down.

Dwellings dotted across a hill. “Nancy,” said Sad-dog to Pig-face.

Try not to need. Remember the taste of water. Turn off need, try not to need
.

How, how to get out of the compartment? German soldiers everywhere.

Sad-dog stepped into the corridor. Pig-face stretched his legs out before him, stared at her with expressionless eyes.

A fricative whistle; the train began to chuff forward again. Desperation spread like an ink blot within Noor. Everywhere, windows were blackening for the night, shutters closing.

The train hooted past a petrol refinery.

Sad-dog returned with two enamel cups of soup, one for Pig-face, one for her. He didn’t release her wrists. Mild taste of potatoes, brackish and lukewarm.

Drink it slowly. Look outside. Drink slowly
.

The slope of rooftops changed, houses broadened at their base.

Nervous fluid rushing in her ears. This must be Germany.

And the landscape revised itself, colouring the sunlight red, heightening shadows, torturing shapes into metal objects and monsters, turning the flit of birds to ferreting movements.

Vineyards, sheep, railyards, empty stables. Horses, carts, night blue spreading. Footpaths wending their way into fields. Dark everywhere, not even a peep of light.

Low blue station light. Strasbourg.

Kehl. A Wehrmacht officer with a burn-disfigured pink face passed the compartment, gripping a valise with a bandaged hand.

23: 00 hours on Pig-face’s watch.

Karlsruhe.

23: 30 hours.

A tambourine moon shivered in an unseen hand above a tiny station.

Pforzheim.

The tall guard rose to his feet and jerked the chain between Noor’s wrists.

“Raus!”

One strong push opened the door, another sent Noor stumbling into an oblong cell. Iron bars sliced pale moonlight pouring through the high window.

She had entered this cell before, without manacles or leg irons. The walls of whitewashed plaster weren’t familiar, nor the straw mattress on the metal frame cot. Nor the toilet, the only item out of the direct line of vision from the peephole. This dead air was familiar, its changelessness. The feeling of being hostage.

The month she spent confined for the sin of loving Armand, confined weeping in her room.

Limbs flailed in every direction. Two prison guards shouldered their way in and stood watching her, expressionless. Her hands were manacled, a chain running from cuff to cuff; she was leg-ironed, chains running between her ankles; and another long chain connected the two—worse than a creature in a zoo.

Anger flared to a scream that hadn’t crossed her lips for pain, hadn’t surfaced in torture, a shriek that mustered all her strength then exploded all around her.

A blow to her head brought darkness.

CHAPTER 37

Pforzheim, Germany
December 1943

A
THIN MIST
chilled Noor’s cell. She used a knitting needle the guard had given her for stringing tickets, to carve hash marks into her cell wall, one for each day. The seventh, slashing across the rest, was Friday.

But she might have made two hash marks one day. Or she might have forgotten to make a hash mark.

Strange how Vogel simply appeared in her cell—like other ghosts and memories that gusted in with first snow. He lifted his shirt to show her the bullet wound inflicted by the Canadian in his left side, as if looking for comfort. He said he had to see her.

“I saved your life by reserving this cell. Instead of sending you to a camp, you know,” said Vogel. “And your shackles, mademoiselle—they’re your own fault. Cartaud told me how he caught you escaping through the skylight. Said he wrestled you down among the chimney pots.
Gott!
How I wish I’d been there to see it.”

Her word against Cartaud’s.

Silence. The only suitable response.

Vogel was looking as pleased as a sultan with a harem of one. A non-Aryan harem of one. There must be some huge fissure within him, some very basic need, carnal and beyond, for him to come here at all. Why had he? And what could she gain from his visit?

His hand moved towards her like a serpent arcing on its tail, then hesitated, fell. Serpent hand, serpent guardian, serpent who must be propitiated, satiated with milk, stroked and delighted. Had he come looking for a thank-you note? She wasn’t thankful.

Writing things down should make men like Vogel nervous.

Play a little of the part he wants you to play. Play along just enough to be spared, Scheherazade
.

Noor’s shackles clanked as she leaned close to him for a moment. “Such ennui to be here, Herr Vogel. Especially for me. My world is so different! Durbars, tiger hunts, elephant parades, jewels, servants.” She stopped as if struck by a thought. “Oh, the fables I could tell!” She looked up at him, gave an exaggerated sigh with a catch in it. “If I could write, it would pass the time.”

“Fables?” Vogel cocked his head. “You write stories,
ja?
”

“If I had paper, pen and ink,” she said, “Yes, I could write beautiful stories.”