The Tiger Claw Read online

  When your spirit enters this world, ma petite, may you remember this: If you speak of tolerance while planting a hedge between yourself and your neighbour, as my uncle Tajuddin did, as many in France did, your hedge will one day be replaced by a fence, then a low wall, then a high wall, and finally fortifications.

  Grignon, France

  Thursday, June 17, 1943

  A short distance past the train station and the swastika-draped front of the mairie building, through the market square, and the village of Grignon was left behind.

  Every Hindu temple she’d seen in India had its swastika, a health charm—swast being Sanskrit for “health”—so common it was woven into the fabric of women’s saris. Even in Europe the twisted cross was older than tyranny itself, ubiquitous, spokes bent right for male power, left for female. But for the Germans it meant one power only—male. What ego! Red for blood, white for Aryan purity and black for Hitler’s intent to obliterate “others.” Mr. Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League of India, must feel the same terror of extinction as Noor at this moment, watching the power of the swastika rising in India. For the first time she understood Mr. Jinnah’s fear of a Hindu mobocracy that could, if independence came, set out to annihilate Muslims in India, and why Mr. Jinnah was agitating for a separate homeland he called Pakistan.

  More and more separation, bane of our very existence. What a terrible idea.

  Rolling fields bordered a stretch of bumpy country road. Past the fields the road flowed into the gloom and the woody scent of a pine and oak game forest. The road behind her was empty; no one was following.

  She set her shoulders and cycled on, arriving at high stone porticos marking the entrance to the Institut National Agronomique.

  Inside, ancient trees swayed above her. A familiar scent whiffed past. Horses—a stable. Long dark blouse-coats—students walking by the road. Noor squeezed her brakes, stopping beside a pleasant-faced young woman wearing clogs and carrying a clipboard.

  “The library? Straight ahead past the director’s château you’ll see the administration buildings in a horseshoe to your right. The classroom buildings are the long ones on your left. Pass them and turn left at the crossing. You’ll be in front of the Grand Château. Enter at the far end, near the woods. The library is upstairs.”

  Noor thanked her, wiped her brow with her handkerchief and continued. Handlebars bumped beneath her sore palms as the road ran downhill past a large greenhouse and a shuttered shop. Past the horseshoe of the administration buildings her mount settled as the road widened into a crossing. Noor dismounted beside flower-framed, rectangular lawns and wheeled her bicycle across the expanse of a courtyard where, a few decades ago, horses must have pawed the ground in anticipation of the hunt. The brown-and-cream façade of the Grand Château of the institute towered above.

  Allah! I’m late again.

  She leaned her bicycle against the stone wall of the château, taking her handbag from the basket. Entering, she climbed wooden stairs worn concave over the years. A door creaked open, releasing the scent of yellowed paper.

  At the centre of the high-ceilinged room lined with glass-faced cabinets, Émile Garry’s elbow patches rested on a time-polished table. He was in hushed conversation with two older gentlemen, so Noor waited in the doorway, handbag clutched uncertainly before her, till he noticed.

  He rose immediately, came forward to greet her with Gallic courtesy. “Ah, Mademoiselle Régnier. We were beginning to worry. May I present Monsieur Hoogstraten, director of the institute …”

  Mr. Hoogstraten’s smooth face, whose forehead rose all the way into a shiny bald pate fringed with silver, glowed in a wide smile of greeting. The military set of his shoulders relaxed. “Enchanté, mademoiselle.”

  “ … and Professor Balachowsky.”

  The Professor rose with a slight bow. The unused end of his belt stuck out past its buckle at least a foot. A pipe rose to his lips. He came to Noor’s side.

  “So this is the mademoiselle from London?” Kindly brown eyes twinkled above a moustache and sparse goatee, like those of an Indochine elder. Beard and moustache were seasoned with grey, and he puffed at the pipe as if from habit, though no smoke rose.

  “This is Madeleine,” said Émile Garry. “Alias: Anne-Marie Régnier.”

  “Ah, Madeleine,” said Monsieur Hoogstraten. “How is your Colonel Buckmaster?”

  “Very well, monsieur.”

  “Please, be seated,” said Monsieur Hoogstraten.

  Émile held a chair and seated Noor as if she were made of blown glass. Monsieur Hoogstraten took Professor Balachowsky’s elbow and whispered.

  Professor Balachowsky nodded and took his pipe from his mouth. “Mademoiselle Régnier, could you wait for us for just a few minutes?”

  “Certainly,” said Noor.

  He turned to a huge door that almost reached the ceiling. “Tu viens, Émile?”

  Alone in the library, Noor drew near the windows. A black cat stepped gingerly below, balancing on the stone wall of a dry moat that separated the château from fields. Unlucky, according to Mother. Abbajaan always said they were lucky.

  If I marry Armand again, it will mean black cats are lucky.

  As she turned back to the room, a sparkle caught Noor’s eye; a chandelier’s prisms winked from the door left slightly ajar. Noor glimpsed the three men gathered around a long table with stark black shapes arranged on its white tablecloth. Émile was nodding as Monsieur Hoogstraten pointed—Sten guns, pistols, incendiaries, grenades, explosives.

  Noor moved away. The weapons must be from the canister hidden under her seat in the Lysander, or one just like it. Émile, Monsieur Hoogstraten and Professor Balachowsky must be, under orders from Prosper, coordinating weapons distribution for safekeeping. Only Prosper would know how much had been secreted away till now throughout northern France.

  Gilt lettering on the spines of the leather-bound books in the glass cases: Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Du contrat social and his Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality in Mankind, a few French translations of Trotsky and Freud, André Maurois’s History of England, another about travelling in Germany by a Henri Bordeaux.

  When Noor first met Armand, she needed to borrow something from him so she would have some excuse to see him again. He loaned her books from his bedchamber—distilled summaries of whole areas of his life before their first meeting. And Noor loaned him Rumi for his Rousseau, the Qur’an for his Old Testament, Tagore for his Tolstoy, the poet Kabeer’s Bijak for a Balzac novel. Then secret meetings at the library in Suresnes, debates in passionate whispers.

  Oh, Armand, how shall I find you? The country we knew and loved has grown strange.

  Monsieur Hoogstraten, Professor Balachowsky and Émile Garry returned to the room. And as if on cue, a walrus-whiskered, leathery face appeared at the library door.

  “Marius,” said Émile, “I was just on my way to find you.” To Noor he said, “Marius is one of the gardeners here at Grignon. We call him Master of the Greenhouse, n’est-ce pas?”

  A light crept into Marius’s black eyes. He stood, cap in hand.

  Émile showed Marius to the Grand Salle.

  “Come, messieurs,” said Monsieur Hoogstraten. “We have much to do, but at this moment Madame and my daughter are waiting for lunch. I invite you, mademoiselle, to see your new home.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Grignon, France

  Thursday, June 17, 1943

  FROM THE COURTYARD before the library, Noor and the three men walked up the central path to Director Hoogstraten’s château on the hill. Noor left them to wheel her bicycle to the shed at the back. At her knock, a woman in a black dress with a frilly white cap and apron peered from the screen door of the kitchen.

  “Anne-Marie Régnier,” said Noor.

  The maid turned a latch, opened the door a crack, and a sleek black shape shot past Noor into the house and jumped up on the kitchen counter. A chef, hunched over an enamel bowl, started in surprise. “C
hat lunatique!“ The gloom filled with the whisked rhythm of judiciously chosen imprecations.

  The maid scooped the cat out of his reach and held it close, crooning, “Ooh, Mignonne, Mignonne!”

  Noor followed the maid through the dining room, where a long table was set for lunch, then a salon with Louis XIV–style furniture, to Madame Hoogstraten’s sitting room.

  Madame Hoogstraten, a kind-looking woman with sandy hair rolled fashionably high, rose from her escritoire and greeted Noor. A sautoir necklace of pearls flowed down her black dress, the tassel ending beneath her waist.

  Mother’s style, worn in a French way.

  The cat sprang from the maid’s arms into the open drawer of Madame Hoogstraten’s desk, evidently her accustomed spot.

  Madame Hoogstraten asked Noor conversational but probing questions. “How old? Married? Ah! Engaged. Your fiancé is where? Ah, Londres. I was there a few times before the war—I love Walter Scott and Madame Tussaud. You too? Ahhh. You lived here how long? Ahhh! Many years. Your father? A teacher of philosophy. Which lycée did you attend? Ah! Not far from here—and afterwards? L’École Normale de Musique? Six years of the piano—you must be quick-fingered on the wireless. And after that? The Sorbonne. Of course. Vous avez reçu une bonne éducation. Vos parents vous ont bien elevée.”

  Well educated, well brought up. This being verified, Madame was welcoming, showing Noor to the WC so she could wash her hands before lunch.

  Madame’s questions had to be asked and answered, regardless of the SOE’s training and instructions. Passwords and code names could not replace instinctive ways of building trust, forming friendships. And the first requirement in her line of work was the trust of her fellow agents.

  Laughter pealed from an inner room. Madame Hoogstraten’s brow furrowed. She went to the door and called, “Odile?” A laugh rang out once more. “Odile?”

  A pixie-faced, dark-haired girl with striking green eyes came running, bubbling with barely contained mirth.

  “What are you doing?” Madame Hoogstraten’s voice sharpened.

  “It’s Monsieur Gilbert!” said Odile. “He told me to tie him up very tightly. What an ingenious agent he is—now he can’t get free!”

  Madame Hoogstraten’s lips twitched. “Where is the monsieur now?”

  “Là!“ Odile gestured behind her. “I tied him to the chair. I took the rope and wound it round him. I even tied his hands together behind his back …” She broke down in giggles.

  “Free him immediately. It’s time for lunch.”

  “Yes, Maman.”

  “Young people!” said Madame Hoogstraten. “Excuse her, please—she’s only seventeen.” Responding to Noor’s amusement, she said, “Odile doesn’t act like a child too often. In fact, sometimes I think her father gives her too much responsibility—but these days, who else can he trust? You’ll sleep in her room. If the servants ask who you are, say you’re my cousin, visiting for a few weeks.”

  The men were now assembled in the salon. Professor Balachowsky produced a bottle of wine from his briefcase, opened it, and left it to breathe on the sideboard. Gilbert was a little rumpled but no worse for his misadventure with Odile, his grin raffish as ever. Behind him was a short, gloomy menhir of a man whom no one introduced. When they moved to the long dining table, Noor found herself motioned to a seat between him and Gilbert.

  “Archambault.” The code name for the radio operator she was to replace. She had the feeling she had met him before.

  “Madeleine,” she said.

  The glare beneath his knit brows did not relax. A pause lengthened to the point of discomfort.

  “She gave the correct recognition phrase, Archambault,” Émile said, taking his seat across from Noor.

  Now she was sure she had met the gloomy man, years ago. “Be most careful,” Miss Atkins had said, “to stay away from anyone who could recognize you from before the war.” But Archambault was a member of her cell; she couldn’t avoid him.

  “You were in my brother’s class at the lycée,” she said.

  Archambault picked at his teeth with a toothpick. “Your brother’s name?”

  It was a challenge question.

  “Kabir Khan.”

  “The Indian boy. How is it you remember me?”

  “You were a tenor soloist in the choir, yes? You once sang one of my favourites, the Benedictus from Bach’s B Minor.”

  His serious face lightened slightly. The memory of a time before the war made the difference, like the possibility of return to one who roams in a strange country.

  “B minor—yes, key of passive suffering. For myself, I prefer his Agnus Dei aria. G minor, the key of tragic consummation. I have the record at home.” He put the toothpick away. “We will work together after lunch,” he said, as if according her a great favour. “We must tell London you have arrived.”

  “My transmitters are not yet here.”

  “We will use one of mine.”

  “Is Prosper here?” asked Noor. The package wrapped in brown paper in the hidden compartment of her handbag must be delivered soon.

  “You will meet him.”

  Professor Balachowsky offered a first taste of wine to Monsieur Hoogstraten, and once the bouquet was pronounced acceptable, measured carefully into each long-stemmed glass.

  “It’s a Vouvray—1934,” he said.

  It was a gesture of welcome. Noor took a sip and smiled her thanks.

  In London’s social circles the war would be intentionally ignored, like an amateur’s mural on the walls of a dining room, Hitler’s bombing being considered in very poor taste. But it was not ten minutes before the group at the château was deep in passionate discussion about the war. This was no social occasion, but a meeting.

  Monsieur Hoogstraten passed the cheese soufflé along with the latest developments. “Terrible, terrible news: the Germans have arrested General Vidal.”

  “Vidal” was a code name for the head of General de Gaulle’s Armée Secrète, taking shape for a little over six months, since late 1942. Noor had heard more about General Vidal’s second-in-command, Jean Moulin, the legendary Max, who had travelled undercover through France earlier that year, calling on disparate Resistance groups—Combat, Libération, Action Chrétienne and La France—to unite.

  Monsieur Hoogstraten paused for a moment, then seemed to recover. “Judging from the large number of Sten guns, incendiary bombs and grenades we’ve received in the last few weeks, the Allies must surely be planning the invasion soon.”

  He glanced at Noor as if seeking confirmation from the latest arrival from London. She gave him a blank look. He continued.

  “More than 1,000 Stens, approximately 1,800 bombs and nearly 4,500 grenades—we are storing arms from the drops as fast as we can, but it’s difficult.” Worry flickered in his eyes. “There isn’t enough manure in the stables to cover it all—the Germans have taken most of our horses. Prosper tells me shipments will double this month, and double again in July.”

  “Mon Dieu! We’ll have to double the manure, and double it again in July,” said Odile.

  Madame Hoogstraten’s spoon tapped the table. A look of utter innocence came over Odile’s face.

  “Archambault,” continued Monsieur Hoogstraten, “six more canisters must be disposed of tonight. Marius and two students will go with you.”

  Archambault nodded.

  “Where will you dispose of them this time?” Gilbert’s voice was worried.

  “In the Seine,” Archambault said with laconic simplicity.

  Monsieur Hoogstraten focused on Noor. “Madeleine, you will send messages only from myself, Émile or Professor Balachowsky.”

  “And myself?” prompted Gilbert.

  Monsieur Hoogstraten hesitated. “And Gilbert. Professor Balachowsky, please give us your report.”

  “Only good news from the Versailles region,” said the Professor, chewing away at his unlit pipe. “From Rueil this time. On June 13 our saboteur blew up a barrack occupied by Germ
an troops. Thirty-eight German soldier casualties.”

  A low cheer echoed around the table.

  “None killed, unfortunately. At Argenteuil, on the fifteenth of June, a charge set by Émile destroyed a detachment of German military, wounding thirteen.” A second cheer fell away as the Professor added, “Unfortunately, three of them were French civilians, but … it’s a war. Every French martyr is one more step in the fight against the Occupation.”

  He looked around. No one objected. He continued. “There is news from Dourdan that gives us courage. After exiting a cinema, spectators marched up and down the streets of the city singing the Marseillaise.”

  Madame Hoogstraten offered Noor a tomato salad garnished with chervil, then a platter bearing a wheel of desiccated brie. It was Ramzaan, but she was travelling; she’d make up her missed days of fasting when she returned to London.

  “For July 14, we plan an operation at Houdan—resistants will take back the Monument of the Dead and observe a minute of silence. Of course, there are demonstrations planned in Paris, some at Versailles. Please be very careful in the next four weeks. The Germans know well the symbolic importance of Bastille Day, and will be quick to make examples of any suspicious behaviour. Last week one of my men in Paris was arrested, not for listening to Radio London but for listening to General de Gaulle broadcasting on Radio Alger.”