The Tiger Claw Read online

  “Ah, Gaullisme!” Gilbert rolled his eyes.

  Odile said, “Then who shall we listen to? General de Gaulle is recognized all over the world.”

  “But not yet by Monsieur Roosevelt.” Gilbert wagged his finger at her.

  “Then Monsieur Roosevelt does not understand yet: Gaullisme is no longer incarnated in de Gaulle. It is no longer just a movement, a spirit, a tendency—but a spiritual force. One we can trust—unlike Vichy!”

  “Mademoiselle Odile, neither your father nor I have elected General de Gaulle our leader.”

  “Monsieur Gilbert, when the war is over, everyone will vote for him. Give me a vote and I will too.”

  “Odile!” Madame Hoogstraten frowned.

  Noor revelled in the rapid French flowing about her, surprised how deeply she had missed its melodic cadence during her three years in London. Not only French but the lively interruptions, the rapier thrusts of teasing between friends, and the tangential drift of conversations. Evidently the institute was better supplied with food than Renée Garry’s little apartment in Paris, and even this wartime meal was served with an élan Londoners might envy. What a pity she couldn’t belong to this group longer than her allotted three weeks. Their determination and dedication were contagious.

  Gilbert was saying to Professor Balachowsky that when he was eighteen years old, he saw Lindbergh land at Le Bourget airfield. “The roads were jammed with cars, so my friends and I rode the métro all the way to the end, to Le Bourget–Drancy station.”

  Drancy?

  “There we waited and waited in a muddy field well past dark with a hundred thousand others. Of course, I didn’t know then that we were so many. All I could feel was the man before me and two more pressing on either side. Sometimes, while we’re waiting for planes from England now, it reminds me of that night—that same fear of danger, the same rush of excitement at the daring of the pilot in his little plane. Then we saw tiny dots, lights weaving and circling in the night.” A prone hand demonstrated over Madame Hoogstraten’s Limoges. “With just one man.” The hand wavered and descended slowly to the tablecloth. “And he landed! The first flight over the Atlantic! Thirty-five hundred miles in thirty-three and a half hours, with just a compass, an airspeed indicator, favourable weather and luck.”

  Drancy was near Le Bourget airfield. Noor knew the airfield was somewhere in the industrial suburbs of Paris, but she had never been there. She listened closely as Gilbert continued.

  “We rushed past the restraining ropes so fast that those in the front could have been killed by his propeller, and we were all shouting ‘Vive Lindbergh!’ and clapping, and I was waving my hat as if I’d gone mad. None of us slept that night. We were raising glasses to Lindbergh in every bistro in Paris.”

  When Lindbergh made the first crossing of the Atlantic, Kabir was only eleven, yet that epic flight, and that of Bellonte and Captain Costes soon afterwards, had changed the course of her brother’s life as it had Gilbert’s.

  “The next morning we went to the Hôtel de Ville, and I watched the president shake hands with Monsieur Lindbergh and give him the Orteig Prize. It was a great moment, a moment when I knew here”—he struck his breast—“that I would be a flyer.”

  “And Monsieur Lindbergh greeted you by name?” Odile snickered, setting off a bout of verbal sparring with Gilbert.

  Noor could visit Armand at Drancy simply by taking the métro!

  She would excuse herself that very moment, leave now.

  But Archambault was looking at his watch. “Time to transmit.”

  Neither war nor Occupation had affected the midday ritual of her childhood milieu. This three-hour lunch would have lasted a maximum of an hour in London.

  Monsieur Hoogstraten rose, saying to all and no one in particular, “I will be in my office.”

  This permitted all to rise.

  “I have a meeting,” said Professor Balachowsky, excusing himself with a small bow to Noor. “I am organizing a student expedition in a few days. We shall discover and classify many insects,” he promised with touching enthusiasm.

  “Anne-Marie,” Émile Garry whispered, “Prosper will meet you tomorrow morning.”

  He took a leather-bound notebook and pencil from his pocket and drew a small map, wrote the password. He showed it to her and, once she nodded, tore them to pieces.

  “I am expected in Paris,” he said to all, putting notebook and pencil away. “Mais, nom de Dieu! I almost forgot—” He foundered in embarrassment. “Madame Hoogstraten, I was wondering, are there … perhaps … if you can … spare some eggs?”

  Madame Hoogstraten nodded graciously. Émile brightened.

  When again ready to leave, he whispered to Noor, “Tomorrow, 11:00 hours, Chez Tutulle. Take extra precautions. Be sure you are not followed.”

  Noor followed Archambault out of the director’s château, across the wide drive leading downhill into the institute. He collected Marius at the institute’s garden shop, then led her towards a greenhouse whose shining glass roof nestled beneath chestnut trees. Two huge desert palms framed the doorway. Noor hadn’t seen desert palms this size since her stay in India.

  “Monsieur Hoogstraten wants to grow one plant from each corner of the world at the institute,” said Marius.

  “Mind the nettles,” said Archambault.

  “Enh! No nettles here,” said Marius. “Those grow in the ditch by the road.”

  Noor followed him into dim, glazed verdure.

  Scent of humid soil, flowers … green. The fragrance of the Prophet’s colour.

  “We can’t transmit from in here,” said Archambault.

  “Too much metal?”

  Archambault nodded, continuing past neat rows of Latinlabelled plants, then stooping to exit by a small door. Emerging into sunshine again, Noor stood on a patch of unkempt grass in a courtyard formed by high surrounding stone walls draped with ivy.

  Archambault turned to Marius. Marius stepped forward, clasped the ivy in two callused hands and held it back like a curtain, revealing the door to a small stone garden shed—so well concealed, Noor hadn’t noticed it bulging the ivy. Archambault unlocked the door and led Noor across a wedge of sunlight into cool darkness.

  The cabbage smell was Marius, the hint of Old Spice, Archambault. What did she smell like to them?

  A torch clicked in Marius’s hand and light spread over the plank floor to the legs of a desk and chair, swung up to a shuttered square—a window set in the stone wall—then back to illuminate a jumble of spades and trowels in the corner. Archambault lifted away some of the implements, revealing a suitcase. He placed it on the desk and thumbed the clasps. Marius opened the shutters. Sunlight streamed over the four compartments in the suitcase: the power supply dials, the short-wave transmitter and receiver, and a spare parts kit. A now obsolete OSS-issue SSTR-1 radio. She was more familiar with her own SOE-issue transmitter, a Mark II suitcase radio about half the size of this one, and considerably lighter.

  “We can operate off the battery for these few messages,” said Archambault. He reached over Noor’s head to a shelf above the door and retrieved two exercise books—his code and message books. He and Marius strung the radio antenna out of the window, carefully hiding it in the ivy.

  “I’ll be on guard outside, on the road,” said Marius.

  Once Noor heard the ivy scrape across the door, she moved to the window. Outside stood Marius’s hunched figure—hands in his pockets, a Gauloise drooping along with his moustache, standing watch for enemy uniforms beside the nettle-filled ditch.

  “Encode, please.” Archambault pulled the headphones over his ears and plugged the cord into the receiver.

  Noor took a pen from her handbag and began referring to the crib sheet in his code book, writing down in the message book the resulting coded letters to be transmitted in successive squares of five blocks across.

  “You must decide by reading the whole message before you begin if this one is worth your freedom. Some messages, they might
be worth one person’s freedom, tu sais, Madeleine?”

  Noor nodded.

  “Send quickly. We are the only radio operators left in the north now. The German mobile receivers located all the other transmitters by taking bearings on their signals. They are swift and deadly in triangulation. My colleague in Reims was arrested two days ago after transmitting for less than five minutes.

  “Your double security check authenticates your transmission. If you’re caught and tortured, you may reveal your bluff check when you can’t bear the pain any longer, but try never to disclose your true check. If the true check isn’t transmitted after each line, operators in London will assume this radio has fallen into enemy hands. But if ever you are in haste and have to dispense with the checks, as I have on several occasions, they should know your fist by now.”

  By “fist” Archambault meant her distinctive style. Yes, London operators certainly did know her fist; it had taken as long for women there to adjust to the rhythm of her dots and dashes as for Noor to improve to high speed. From years at the veena Noor’s natural rhythms varied from five, seven, nine to ten-eight time. Like Abbajaan’s, like Armand’s.

  Jasmin has played her flute.

  The message squirted a thousand miles around and across the Channel in Archambault’s rapid hand relay of dots and dashes to the attuned headphones of one of three hundred women in radio intelligence near London. A few seconds on the air, and Miss Atkins and Colonel Buckmaster would have the message on their desks in a matter of hours.

  More messages, some over two pages long. This time Archambault encoded and Noor sent them in rapid succession. Afterwards, Archambault returned his code and message books to their hidden locations. Noor drew the antenna back and closed the shutters to signal Marius. Archambault stowed the suitcase, locked the shed door and led Noor back through the greenhouse. Marius was already back at work in the institute shop.

  “Marius told me a white van was seen prowling Grignon village yesterday,” said Archambault. “Grignon is becoming too dangerous—you must find other safe houses where you can transmit. I must teach you our safety precautions quickly. A moon plane is coming for me a month from now. London has ordered me to return for retraining.” He straightened a bicycle leaning against the stable wall. “What made you volunteer for this assignment, Madeleine? Your father is a sultan, n’est-ce pas?”

  Noor suppressed a laugh. Her family of courtier musicians were noble indeed, but several steps down the scale from all the maharajas, sultans and nawabs that populated the minds of Europeans upon mention of India. Should she exploit such ignorance, as Mother did? But denial would bring little illumination to Archambault.

  “My father taught philosophy,” she said. “And yes, he was from India—he is no more.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Your brother—he was named after an Indian poet, I think. Once, he said his sister was going to be a writer for children. Was that you? We were both little more than children ourselves, and I remember thinking how wonderful it would be if someone wrote stories for us. But then I grew up.”

  “I did too,” said Noor with a smile. “But I still write stories for children.”

  “Pardon me, mademoiselle, but it does seem strange to see you back in France, and in the Resistance. I sent a message a few days ago about some Indian troops taken prisoner by the Germans. They wear patches of orange, white and green with leaping tigers. The patches say Free Indians.” He paused, waiting.

  It was understandable that some Indians would join any enemy of their exploiters; but at the moment, either Archambault needed a radio operator or he didn’t.

  “Of course, I remember your mother—American, oui? The Americans are with us now … Well, you must have your reasons.”

  “I do,” said Noor. “Probably similar to your own.”

  “I was in England visiting my father’s family when the war broke out.”

  “Your father is English?”

  “Yes, and my mother, she is French. They needed bilingual people, and I wanted the chance to learn about radios. Maybe, when things get better, I’ll open a radio repair shop. But now … I’ll be back tonight to help with the canisters. Have you been told the danger signals?”

  “No.”

  “Ttt! Come, I’ll show you.”

  They headed uphill along the drive leading out of the institute, Archambault walking his bicycle. Halfway to the stone porticos he turned around.

  “From here you can see the top-storey windows of the director’s château and the main château. If the curtains are drawn back in either one, it means danger. If it is dark and a candle is shining in either of those windows, that’s also a sign of danger.”

  “Then?”

  “Then stay away. Get away as fast as you can and warn others in the network. Use a public phone if possible. Then hide. Later, find out what has happened and transmit the details to London. You understand?”

  Yes, she understood.

  “À la prochaine, Madeleine.” And he cycled away.

  So many cautions! Necessary, but each administered a dose of contagious fear.

  Noor wandered into the stable. Several empty stalls. Horses requisitioned by the Germans, Monsieur Hoogstraten had said. A few muzzles poked from the stalls as she walked past, and a roan with a white diamond on his forehead gave her shoulder a wet nibble. Too old for horsemeat, and he wouldn’t have much speed before a cart. Cheek against his mane, Noor took in the scent of hay, horses and manure.

  Armand, how I wish I could transmit a message to you as I just did to London. Tapping it out, knowing you are there to receive. A short message. How to encode it? To whom would I entrust it? What should I say? Perhaps: “I am near; have hope, my love. We will be together again.” But anyone could say that. Some pattern you will recognize like a radio operator’s fist, a message you would know could come only from me.

  Beneath the slanting eaves on the top floor of the château, Noor faced the casement, clad in a borrowed frothy pink nightgown. The dark hand of blackout had spread through the village of Grignon and lay across the woods surrounding the director’s château. Grasshoppers, like small violins, began the staccato rhythm of mating calls.

  “I used to go to the cinema to learn English. I will speak English with you. You like the cinema?” Odile’s chatter in English mixed with French followed Noor in a steady stream. “Gilbert said Gone with the Wind was in the theatres in London—he told me the whole story. In French the book is called Autant en emporte le vent. It is a good translation. After I read it, I made a dress from my bath curtains, just like Scarlett. Then the BBC said Ashley Wilkes was shot down by the Germans—that is so sad, no? Gilbert says he was on a spy mission—ha, how does he know? But you can tell me, what is the goût du jour these days?”

  Noor turned back to Odile, who had arranged her limbs in a languid pose, like Ingres’s Odalisque, on one of the two beds. Odile burbled on, not waiting for an answer.

  “Here we have mostly German films. Ils m’ennuient! And the Germans bore me too. You know the first time I saw the Germans? It wasn’t from this front window but from that side window, the oval one. I looked out one morning and there were two planes chasing one another in the blue sky, a French and a German one. And mon Dieu! our horses were grazing below in the fields as if nothing was happening. Of course, I didn’t actually see a German in the plane, so I should say I saw my first German many days later—on a motorcycle in Grignon.”

  Noor listened with interest as she took her freshly washed blouse and lingerie out of a basin and hung them behind the chamber door to dry. She only needed to prompt Odile with a nod, at most a word or two.

  “But when I saw the planes, immediately I thought of Papa. You know why that was strange? Because he was at Verdun that very instant, and later I learned that I thought of him at the very moment of his capture.” A second’s pause emphasized so amazing a coincidence.

  “He was captured at Verdun?”

  “Yes. Maman fainted when we
heard the news. But I got on a vélo and cycled to Verdun to find him.”

  “Cycled from here to Verdun?”

  “Yes, three days, sleeping by the road. I had to find out if my papa was alive or not, you see. And when I got there, I found him in the prison camp, and he was so surprised to see me, he forgot to be angry.”

  “Did they let you see him? Did they let you bring him home?”

  “Mais non, he wouldn’t leave his men. But he gave me a letter for Maman, and all his men gave me letters for their wives and fiancées and mothers, and so many other men wrote to their families. I put all their letters up here in my dress—I had no breasts then.”

  Odile didn’t have any breasts to speak of three years later, either, but Noor let this pass.

  “Like this, I carried all their letters past the guards, smiling sweetly at them.” She hitched up her dress at the waist so the top ballooned over her belt and she gave Noor an exaggerated smile, batting her eyelashes in demonstration, then lay down again on the duvet.

  “That’s how I carried them home. It took me months to send them, because of course all mail was censored by the Boche. When my father was released, he vowed: no matter how many years it takes, nor how many pay the price, we cannot allow France to be occupied by the Germans like a country of savages in Asia or Africa.”

  After only three years of Occupation Odile’s passion was like Mr. Gandhi’s when he spoke of the hundred-year British occupation of India.

  “So ever since, I’m a courier for Papa, after school. I bring Archambault’s messages, and probably I will bring yours too. Papa says I have a good memory—I only write down very long ones.”

  The seventeen-year-old slip of a girl had been risking her life almost daily for three years on every road, at every Gestapo checkpoint.

  “Tiens, if I call you and say ‘Keep in touch’ like an American in the cinema, it means you must check for a message behind the milk bottles at Flavien’s pawnshop in the Troisième arrondissement. And you can leave messages there for me.”

  “With pleasure, Mademoiselle Odile,” said Noor gravely.