The Tiger Claw (69 page)

“Yes?”

Vogel squinted as if peering through a membrane. “I wanted her to call me Ernst. It was such a little thing.”

A silence. Something had been blurted, something Vogel hadn’t meant to say.

Noor would never have called him Ernst. No sister of Kabir would allow herself to be on first-name terms with someone like Vogel. He was beneath her. The way the Jew Rivkin had been beneath her.

“You wanted more than that,” Kabir almost spat. “Admit it, you … you fornicator.”

The word was archaic, anachronistic, Qur’anic, but it was the one that came to mind.

“No, no. What are you saying? It was against orders to touch a non-Aryan woman. And she was a
mischlinge
—a mixed breed—I don’t know the word in French. Do you know that I could have been sent to a camp myself for that?”

Kabir felt he was flying into the centre of paradox. Vogel called Noor Princess, yet by Nazi definition considered her a menial. If the non-Aryan and the
mischlinge
were equivalent to the
dhimmi
of Islam or the untouchable of Hinduism, it meant millions had become subhuman to the Germans.

“I told Herr Kieffer I was just about to break her. I said one more visit and she would reveal whole realms of spies. Believe me, I tried to protect her, save her by visiting her.”

“You were going to use her as a hostage.”

Vogel seemed to consider. But was he trying to recollect his motives or to evaluate the possible consequences of admission or denial?

“Yes, I was,” he said, as if the words wormed through a dyke inside him. “She was a princess and her mother was American—I was sure someone would want her badly enough to make an exception for me. Hitler had betrayed Fascism, and I could see we were destined to lose the war by then.”

If Hitler betrayed Fascism, then Allah save the world the next time it surfaces.

“I gave her pen, paper, ink. I allowed her to write stories. Children’s stories. I asked her to write children’s stories for my sons.”

“And she did? Where are they?”

Vogel took off his spectacles, leaving his face curiously vulnerable. He polished them with his tie and put them on again.

“Yes, she did. But I no longer have them.”

There was no way to prove it, but again Kabir knew this was a lie.

“Why not?”

“Because my house was bombarded, sir. By the
RAF
. When the Gestapo office closed in Paris, I returned here. I discovered my wife had moved from the apartment I had arranged for her. She put our older boy in an orphanage, took all our possessions—to this day I don’t know why. Even now I can’t find her. And she doesn’t know, yet—”

“What doesn’t she know?”

“One of my sons …” Vogel gave a deep sigh. “We had sent him to Dresden for the summer in 1944, for safety. But then eight months ago, his legs were crushed from the bombings.” A light-beam glanced off Vogel’s spectacles and hit Kabir squarely between the eyes. “He didn’t survive the amputation.”

He appeared to be waiting for some expression of sympathy. Kabir couldn’t find a single phrase in his repertoire of standard responses.

“So I now live alone at Dachau. Temporarily, you understand. I have become dependent on the Allies.” He gave a small snort. “But then, they need me for interpretation.”

“We have to translate five tons of documents before the Nazis get their trials next month,” the captain interjected. “We wouldn’t need his kind if we didn’t have thirty thousand arrestees awaiting trial at Dachau.”

“The victor shows his justice,” said Vogel.

The captain shot him a deadly look. “Fuck you and every Nazi, Vogel. In the last few months I’ve toured enough camps and met enough people like you. If we said screw all this legality, just gave all of you a taste of your own justice, you bastards wouldn’t suffer enough for the misery you’ve caused.”

“The United States has set an example that will, I’m sure, be followed in future wars,” said Vogel’s smooth voice.

The captain said to Kabir, “We’ve brought in interrogators from the United States, but reports and evidence are coming in faster than we can translate them. We don’t have time to prosecute thirty thousand krauts and be home by Christmas, so we’re only bringing the camp director and his henchmen to trial. And we’re leaving the crimes committed by Germans against Germans to their own courts, though how we’re going to figure out the nationality of corpses, I have no idea.”

“When did you say you last visited Mademoiselle Khan at Pforzheim?” Kabir asked Vogel.

“Shortly before we evacuated the avenue Foch.”

“August of 1944.”

“Yes.”

“And your home was bombed—when?”

Vogel shrugged off the question. “Orders from Berlin were to send all prisoners to camps. We had kept no record of her, so she could have remained at Pforzheim—but I happen to know she was sent to a camp. And I do know where she was sent.”

“Where, damn it, where?!”

“As it happens, I’m occupying her cell.”

“Occupying her cell?” Kabir must have misunderstood.

“Yes, I’ve been living there for a little more than four months. Sometimes I feel a trace of her spirit. At Dachau, I mean.”

This man who had wielded power over Noor’s food, clothing and shelter, perhaps even her life, was now occupying the cell where she had been held at Dachau. And he “felt a trace of her spirit”? Words with a connotation of worship. It made no sense.

An MP entered with a note for the captain, who excused himself for a meeting.

Kabir’s questions became louder. He began shouting. Ended up wheedling. Vogel gave him nothing more. Two hours later, Kabir was hoarse and feverish, red-rimmed eyes alternately burning and brimming with barely contained rage.

Everyone is part of God. Even Vogel. A fragment of the universal divine spirit, even if he tortured Noor and was part of the Nazi machine
.

But Abbajaan’s philosophy was never more distant than at that moment. There was no possibility that he and Vogel could have anything in common.

How many men and women like Noor had Vogel interrogated, tortured—killed? How many of those who passed through the avenue Foch headquarters of the Paris Gestapo had been sent to concentration camps? True, those men and women were not in uniform, but every enemy combatant, secret agent or spy had relatives who loved them, who worried about them; surely all of them did not deserve to vanish without trial or trace? How many orders for roundups of Frenchmen—Jewish or otherwise—had this man translated at the avenue Foch?

No one comes out of war without betraying his humanity in some way. There are no prophets, angels, pirs, gurus or messiahs who can keep us clean. But there are degrees of destruction, and trained killer though I be, I may not be cursed by as many dying breaths as you
.

Clearly, Vogel didn’t accept any role Kabir assigned him. Pressured further, he unfolded a cream-coloured paper and waved it beneath Kabir’s nose.

A certificate issued by the Allies. The Persil Certificate, named after a bar of soap to show how very clean its bearer was. This one, countersigned by each Occupation authority—British, French, American, Russian—announced that its bearer had been cleared of all charges and was not wanted by the Allies in any of the four zones.

Kabir handed it back. Certificates like it could be easily forged for a few hundred occupation marks, perhaps a pound of butter.

He continued questioning, but it was of little use. Vogel had explained his participation in the machine to himself, persuaded himself he did all he could for Princess Noor. He said several times that if she had not been an escape artist, she would never have been sent to Pforzheim. And if she’d only done as he told her … Vogel sounded like Uncle Tajuddin.

Noor must have done or said something that annoyed this Nazi bastard, for Nazi he undoubtedly was. And she had been sent to Dachau. But there must have been something more that made this bastard request a billet in Dachau and live in Noor’s cell.

Needles of anxiety flowed through Kabir’s veins.

Where is Noor now?

What happened at Dachau? Has she been repatriated from there?

Vogel took off his spectacles. “One question, if I may, Flight Lieutenant Khan?”

“What is it?”

“Was your sister married? Or did she perhaps have a fiancé?”

“Why do you ask?” The man shouldn’t be given any information at all.

“She wrote a letter, sir, a letter I happened to read.”

How did you happen to read it?

“She talked about ‘A’ and said she had changed her
adieu to au revoir.”

“Did you ask her?” said Kabir. “A” was for Armand. “A” spelled mistake.

“I didn’t want to know her answer then. And she did say to call her mademoiselle.”

If Noor had changed any former
adieu
to
au
revoir
, perhaps she had contacted the Jew again. After he’d
told
her! But that was Noor—never obeying his explicit directions. Who knew what it had cost her to contact the Jew?

Kabir would have to find Armand Rivkin.

“No,” he said, “she is most certainly not married. No, she does not have a fiancé.”

“I didn’t think so, sir. Well, if there is nothing further, I will wish you good luck.”

“Nothing, except—here, write down where I can find you again.”

Vogel said as he wrote, “I’m working as a cowhand on a farm. But I hope to return to my former position—I used to work in a bank.”

The captain came back, looked pointedly at his watch. Kabir nodded wearily. The MPs escorted Vogel from the room.

“That’s progress,” said the captain, when Kabir brought him up to date. “There should be some record of her at Pforzheim. Maybe Dachau too. We’re just piecing some of this together. Write down the date he said she was deported—I’ll have my assistant look into it.”

Kabir reached into his shirt pocket for his pen. Not there. He crossed the room—perhaps he’d left it on the captain’s desk.

“Lost something?”

“My pen—it’s one of those new ballpoints they give us pilots.”

The captain gave a sardonic laugh. “That’s three hundred marks the S.O.B. just got from you.”

PART NINE

CHAPTER 40

Pforzheim, Germany
September 11, 1944

A
REEL CROWDED
with familiar faces from the past whirled around Noor and blurred to an end. Abruptly, she was back in the solitude of her cell. Here she was,
seule et toute-seule
.

Alone and all alone.

Above her, the small window dimmed as if disturbed by cloud.

How much time had she lost in reverie? Where would she be a month from now, a year from now? Still here, still waiting for freedom? When would she join Armand? How long would it take?

How much lay before her? She was growing weaker by the day.

Noor shuffled from her cell, the butt of a guard’s rifle pressing into her ribs. The iron gates to the next bank of cells screeched open, bowls banged against bars, women’s voices called.

This guard—she had never seen him before. Where was the woman guard? It was too late at night for exercise. Why was she the only one being taken from her cell?

A pincer held her upper arm, jerking her along. The main door to the women’s cellblock was before her. She stopped, undecided, drawing fluent curses.

Sound of women screaming, shouting. One yelled,
“Au revoir!”

A prod sent her staggering through the door. A desk, a lamp.

Slam of the door; no more shouted messages for loved ones, no more shouts of encouragement.

Where are they taking me? Is this my chance to escape?

Another guard came around the desk. He sat down, wrote something in a large ledger and swivelled it towards Noor’s captor. Releasing her arm for a moment, her guard signed the ledger. Then the date:
September 11, 1944
.

He sank to one knee before her and her ankle irons clanked to the cement floor. She held out her hands as he rose. But he avoided her eyes, unlocking and removing the connecting chain but not the manacles.

Something small and white in his hand. Paper. He wrote on it—perhaps her name or number—then it disappeared.