by Matt Killeen
“Bullets, guns, and bombs get made in the same factories by the same people. When the German Army goes over the top with Leichner sticks and finds the Americans armed with Pan-Cake makeup, that’ll put an end to the Führer’s Reich.”
“Maybe we need the United States on our side after all,” Sarah muttered.
“Damn right, we do . . . Hey, stop flinching.”
Lisbeth was pushing something into Sarah’s eye.
“What is that?”
“Eyeliner, stupid girl.” Lisbeth laughed.
Sarah froze and allowed the point to close in on her face.
“Lisbeth . . .” Sarah began, conscious of the sharp stick next to her eyes. “Is someone causing these outbreaks? Deliberately, I mean?”
Lisbeth bit her lip as she swept the pencil effortlessly under Sarah’s eye.
“It looks very suspicious, doesn’t it?” Lisbeth said. “But that would take someone who was very driven, who could murder hundreds of natives to get what they wanted and not worry about it. Could a normal person imagine killing . . . massacring all those people? Could you bring yourself to do that?”
“Maybe dead natives is what they want. We dropped bombs in Spain and didn’t worry about who they hit. And have you read Red Rubber?”
Lisbeth stopped and considered this before continuing. “Eyes closed, please . . . yes, but that was money. People do horrific things for money. Or revenge. And what is a little girl doing reading Red Rubber?” Lisbeth added.
Sarah felt very vulnerable, but the question needed to be asked.
Commit to the move.
“Do you think your American friends might pay for . . . someone to do that?”
“What are you saying, Ursula?” Lisbeth hovered the pencil right next to Sarah’s eye.
Commit.
“You don’t think . . . it could be—”
“It’s not my father, I promise you that.” Lisbeth sighed, almost relieved. “He’s very driven, yes, and, nasty, but even he couldn’t do this. And he’s always here. He never leaves.” She spoke with total certainty. She swapped to a small brush and began to paint Sarah’s eyelids. “No. I think there’s a reason it’s always in the bush, away from the towns and moving south like this. I think it’s an animal disease, like the flu or rabies. Maybe it’s birds or bats or some creatures on the move.”
Sarah wanted to believe her, to think only good things of her. The feeling was so strong that it surprised her, overwhelmed her. Threatened to drown her.
Her mind shook itself like a wet dog. She looked at what remained and made herself go there.
“Did you have to have the man shot? Couldn’t you have caught up with him?”
Lisbeth sighed. It was deep, filled with sorrow. “And have him pull someone’s mask off? Scratch someone’s face? Worse, let him go and reach the next village before we’re ready? Do you know what triage is? It’s when the doctor selects patients to treat from multiple casualties. It means giving up on people you can’t save in order to save someone you can. It’s horrible, miserable, and it kills me every time.”
“But you’re keeping these people here against their will,” Sarah said, unable to stop herself. “And not letting them tend—”
“These people are our children, and it’s our duty to care for them,” Lisbeth asserted. “We have to worry about the science, not the superstition. Grown-ups have to make hard decisions.”
“Do you have children?” Sarah began again.
“Do I have to have children?” Lisbeth had stiffened. “It’s expected, isn’t it? Marriage, children, Hausfrau. Kinder, Küche, Kirche . . .”
Her voice had acquired a hard edge, beyond which the atmosphere grew dark.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah murmured.
Lisbeth brightened. “Oh, don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault, is it? No, no children, no husband. I’m married to my work,” she stated theatrically. “I’m sorry about your girl’s camera. I just got cross. I hope it didn’t break it. You really shouldn’t have given her a 1932 Leica II though, far too good for mucking about with . . . Now, lips. Do this—” Lisbeth widened her mouth into a large O, revealing bright white teeth.
Sarah did her best to copy her. She hadn’t thought about Clementine at all while she was having her face done, and now felt uneasy about it.
“Eye-oo-oo-air-ache-uh-ih-uhs-huht . . .” Sarah began.
“Wait, doof.” Lisbeth chuckled. “Now you can talk,” she said, sitting back.
The lipstick felt gooey and thick as Sarah contracted her mouth. It tasted faintly soapy. And grown-up.
“I said, why do you wear all that makeup in this heat?”
“Pout, please,” Lisbeth insisted and leaned back in.
She busied herself around Sarah’s lips and hummed tunelessly to herself. The woman looked at Sarah’s face and then set about it with a fluffy brush. The powder tickled Sarah’s throat, and the feeling of weight on her face increased.
She had begun to wonder if Lisbeth would answer the question, when the woman placed her brush on the dressing table, reached around Sarah’s shoulders, and drew her in to look in the mirror.
Sarah inhaled sharply, taking in some floating powder and coughing.
The little girl was gone, irrevocably extinguished by this window into adulthood and the appearance of a woman in her place.
Not a woman, not a real one, she understood that. The mask of one, but a mask so compelling she wondered if she could bear to take it off.
“Feel it? Feel the power?” Lisbeth rested her chin on Sarah’s shoulder.
Her mother had been beautiful, once. Sarah knew that for sure having seeing her onscreen. With the exception of those final sober days, now flecked with her blood, her makeup had seemed a function of her descent and demise. The cracks, the faults, the failure to use it properly, all drew attention to the artifice, revealed its fakery. This face that Sarah wore was immaculate, like it was sealed over her own.
She was, her face was, the mask was . . . stunning.
Somewhere inside of her a little child—a smart, capable, cynical beast who had looked into the mouth of a real monster and seen her utter destruction and enslavement there—stamped her foot and howled at the superficiality, the rootlessness of this feeling. Sarah ignored her.
“I see it, but the work involved . . . the discomfort.” She laughed hollowly as a bead of sweat broke on her brow.
“It’s civilization, Ursula. We wear clothes, even in this heat, because we’re not savages. These things give us authority.”
“But is anyone looking?”
“We’re looking. We are. This is for us.”
Sarah looked at the mask. At her face. This was her face. She cleaned lipstick off her teeth with her tongue and smiled.
Dearest Mouse,
What does it mean to be a woman?
Is it wearing makeup and going to parties? Is it bearing children? Is it becoming the Ice Queen? Does it mean drinking alcohol, all day and all night?
I don’t know and have no one to ask, except you . . . or the paper I’m writing on, which is really the inside of my own head when I close my eyes. Maybe that might change.
Schäfer wanted to do something that was to do with being a woman, but I was not a woman. You were not a woman.
The things that happened to you, that were done to you . . .
I don’t know what happened to you.
I can’t even think about it.
When I think about what happened to me, what nearly happened, I just get really angry and confused, and my brain speeds up until I can’t think and I want to hurt people, or myself. I want to hurt the world.
Because that was not for us, like a schnitzel is not for a baby. It was wrong. It was a crime.
One day it might be for us, but I wonder if that is still possible?
Alles Liebe,
Ursula
TWENTY-THREE
SARAH WALKED BACK to the Captain’s tent with a skip in her step. She marveled at this expression of confidence and joy, so tied to the little girl yet fueled by the mask of the adult. She didn’t care. She was smiling. So much it made her cheeks hurt.
She walked into his tent, and all that seeped away.
“It’s gone,” he said, an edge of panic in his voice.
He was sweating profusely, soaking his shirt to the point of transparency. His eyes were wide and round. She had never seen him this agitated. When he had lain dying, infected and feverish on the floor of a barn, when he was near to his own death, he had been calm and pragmatic. That had vanished.
“What’s gone?” she asked.
“You know what!” he snapped.
“The gun?” she whispered.
“Don’t be dense, child.”
The carefully constructed self-delusion that Sarah had been relying on evaporated in that moment.
In the months following his recovery from the gunshot wound, the Captain had suffered. He concealed it, but Sarah could see that the injury was limiting. It disturbed her to know that they could no longer rely on his physicality. She was strong for her size and nimble, but she was no match for the Captain and his skills. Worse still was the idea of trusting the surly Norris, who she wasn’t sure would step up, even if he could.
Then one day, he’d seemed better, stronger, brighter, and back to his pre-shooting self. The change was so sudden it had piqued her curiosity, but something made her pause and feign disinterest to herself.
After six months, a short temper coupled with sweat and an intense frown became the nightly routine. His irritability—the pain—whatever it was during this time, made him do questionable things. Stupid things, Sarah thought. Later that evening, or the next morning, he was his usual self.
Sarah had chosen to overlook this coincidence and then tried to forget that choice.
Neither was an option now.
“Where was it?” Sarah asked him.
“It’s not there now—”
“I am trying to help you . . . where might it have fallen out, been placed, I don’t know . . .”
The Captain stared at her, as if seeing her for the first time. “What the hell happened to your face?”
“I’ve been ingratiating myself with the mission target, Arschloch. What have you been doing except losing . . . things?”
Claude stuck his head into the tent.
“It’s very noisy in here,” he growled.
“Your friend is being a branleur,” Sarah snapped.
“What happened to your face?” Claude asked, confused.
“Don’t you start. My uncle needs help finding something and apparently doesn’t need my assistance,” Sarah said, pushing past the priest and out.
The air was really no cooler outside. The skies were growing pregnant with moisture, and the clouds were pleading for a storm. But it was a relief to be out of the Captain’s tent. Maybe the problem would quickly resolve itself . . . but maybe it wouldn’t. The idea of continuing the mission without his . . . guidance? Connections?
She wasn’t even sure she knew how to achieve the mission goal. She thought back to Canaris’s office and the three parts to the job they were given, each apparently contradicting the others. She had assumed the Captain knew what had to be done and what their own personal goals would be. Did she need to stop the disease, or stop the White Devil, or just stop Hasse? Did she need to stop Bofinger meeting with the Americans? How important was that afterthought? What did she need to destroy?
Claude was an agent for the Allies, but being on his side made her skin crawl.
Did she need the flamethrower?
She felt very alone.
“I told you that your uncle had a problem.” Clementine’s voice came out of the darkness.
“I know. I knew,” Sarah replied quietly. “And there are no medals for being right.”
“That’s a shame. I thought this espionage stuff was all military. They like giving medals.”
Clementine caught sight of Sarah’s face in the light of a nearby lamp. She pouted and made a short rising whistle.
“The good doctor is giving lessons,” Clementine said slowly.
“It’s stupid,” Sarah muttered.
“No, not really. You look like a woman. A big, grown-up white—”
“What have you learned?” Sarah interrupted.
“Well, it seems to have escaped your notice that the people here are monsters. Kidnapping, murder, vivisection . . . This is the Congo basin, famous for atrocity, but you’ve only been here a few weeks and yet you’re apparently happy to play dress-up with them. That was quick.”
Sarah couldn’t trust herself to speak, angry at both Clementine and herself, with warnings thumping in her ears.
“Trust you, you said,” Clementine continued. “We’re on the right side, you said. But which side is that?”
“The Abwehr—”
“Yes, I’ve heard that Quatsch already. You’re Jewish.”
Lies will tie you up and eat you. . . . Find some truth.
“There are those who don’t approve of the way the war is going, how it’s being fought,” Sarah managed. “They don’t care what I am. Or they don’t know.”
Sarah was standing on treasonous ground now. She couldn’t read Clementine’s face, which was shadowed. The lamp behind lent her a halo where the orange light caught her tight curls.
“Things are happening that are . . .” Sarah continued. “Like this.” She waved her hand about her.
“So you’re not here to take this weapon back to Germany,” Clementine whispered carefully.
Commit.
“No.”
“So you are the traitors.”
Sarah measured the distance between her and Clementine. Her pistol was in the tent, so Sarah wondered if she could get her hands around her neck before Clementine could react. She thought—she knew—that she could murder her, here in the middle of the camp, and that there would be no investigation, no police, no consequences. Her body could just be rolled onto the pile of arms and feet. Just another African.
What had Clementine just said? That was quick.
She was waist deep in the monstrosity that was that thought. Her life didn’t even depend on Clementine’s silence. She could walk around the camp screaming the truth, and they might be able to talk their way out. There would be no arrest, no Gestapo basement. But with the Captain out of action, Sarah’s fear was beginning to take over, and it drove this putrid line of thinking.
Act now before it’s too late.
“He’s having trouble making the weapon,” Clementine stated. “He’s stockpiling diseased blood samples, but they don’t last long enough. Two weeks, maximum.”
The relief was like a cold shower.
“Show me,” Sarah said.
* * *
The professor’s lab was deserted, but the lamps were still lit above the workbench. One was sputtering as the oil ran dry.
To the left was a large glass box, like a fish tank, with two circular doors in the side. Rows of test tubes and other arcane equipment sat next to it, along with scattered papers and jumbled rubber tubes. There were two cabinets that looked like kitchen iceboxes, one cold and one warm to the touch. Both had stenciled warnings to leave well enough alone. Sarah pulled on a pair of gloves and undid the latch on the heated cabinet. Inside nestled dozens of eggs. An incubator. Clementine shrugged. The cold box was full of labeled glass bottles, containing a dark red liquid.
“This is it?”
“I don’t know. Looks like it.”
Sarah wanted to seize them—smash them—and at the same time recoiled from their touch. How could they be destroyed? Und
erneath the workspace, open buckets of bleach filled the air with their distinctive odor. Could she pour the bottles into the disinfectant without being infected?
But over that caustic smell they could now make out the unmistakable scent of animal. They turned to the blanket-covered crates lining the right wall of the tent. Small movements could be heard within.
Heart beating, Sarah gripped the first blanket and slowly pulled it away.
The crate seemed to be a dirt-filled birdcage with a ceiling that appeared to have quivering leather pouches suspended from it.
“Bats,” Clementine murmured, replacing the cover.
The second blanket covered a stack of mouse cages, their contents scurrying and rustling in wet straw.
As Sarah drew the third cover, two bloodshot human eyes stared back at her.
She started and took a step back.
Crammed into a cage far too small for it was an ape, a chimpanzee. It looked at Sarah with an expression of the deepest, most profound sadness, like it would lean forward and tell them the miseries it had seen. The aspect was so much that of a person that it was Sarah who leaned in and looked back into those eyes, overcome with sympathy and sadness.
The ape threw itself at the cage door so violently that the cage nearly toppled onto the girls. As they jumped away, it bared its teeth and screamed, pounding its fists against the wire and hooting. The eyes now spoke of only horror and pain and rage.
Someone pushed past and threw the blanket over the cage. The hooting and the crashing died away, as if the ape felt the pointlessness of the exercise, but all around them the jungle answered.
The figure turned. In his hand was a small revolver, and Sarah took an involuntary step back. He was one of the black mission staff, but he had an air of authority and seniority reinforced by his silvered hair and beard. But not invited to dinner, thought Sarah. She noticed that, as the people of Chad had looked subtly different from the Fang and the Bateke, this man looked different again.
“What are you doing here?” he asked quietly.
“Samuel. Tell her what you told me,” Clementine ordered.