The Tiger Claw

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  “You said we should check the stables. There is nothing in the stables.”

  Be still.

  Odile had warned her father in time.

  Monsieur Hoogstraten took the megaphone and a deep breath, as if about to make a statement or exhortation to the students. Then he looked up at the interpreter as if suddenly struck by a bright idea. “Did you check the pigsties?”

  The innocent-sounding question boomed over the crowd. The image of Gestapo men mucking in the institute pigsties, checking under offal and ordure for British weapons, was alluring. The students thought so too; snickers and laughs surfaced here and there in the encircled throng.

  The pale-faced man snatched the megaphone back from Monsieur Hoogstraten. Even without her binoculars Noor could have seen Kieffer turning crimson. Sunlight glinted off the silver death’s head on his black cap. Kieffer turned to his interpreter and told him what to say.

  The interpreter took a deep breath and shouted into the megaphone. “The director and students of this institute harbour terrorists and their weapons. Weapons that have been supplied by foreign powers for use against innocent Germans stationed here to protect France from its enemies. We have given you every opportunity to surrender these weapons peacefully, but we now have no choice but to show you what happens when you continue to support violence, sabotage and illegal activities.”

  At Kieffer’s order two husky SS men reached into the crowd of blouse coats and dragged a young man of medium build from its edge. A young woman—perhaps the pleasant-faced one who had given Noor directions the first time she came to Grignon—cried out, but her friends held her back.

  Noor went cold in the humid warmth of the undergrowth.

  People who can throw books to the ground are capable of anything.

  The SS men forced the young man’s hands behind his back and cuffed him.

  Kieffer spoke, and his interpreter continued. A soft voice, calm, as if explaining the rules of Monopoly. “We hear that suicide holds traditional fascination for Catholics. Our scientists say this has become part of your psyche, a reaction against the modern world and full participation in the New World Order that the Reich is bringing to Europe. So, we will test your fascination by executing one student at a time. The choice is yours: if you wish the executions to stop, tell us, where is the cache of foreign weapons?”

  A threat. A trick. Surely no one would execute innocent people at random.

  These are students, civilians, citizens of a friendly power, a conquered power. A German ally—Vichy. Don’t give in, monsieur, don’t agree.

  The interpreter held the megaphone out, inviting Monsieur Hoogstraten to call students forward by name or give them orders. But apparently Monsieur Hoogstraten had come to the same conclusion, for he shrugged and said clearly into the megaphone, “I cannot tell you what I do not know, Herr Kieffer.”

  Upon hearing this in German, Kieffer shrugged too, and barked an order.

  The two SS men shook the poor student. He attempted protest till a gloved fist smashed into his mouth and a knee into his groin.

  They dragged him around the side of the château, out of sight.

  The young woman began screaming. Someone shouted, “Salauds!”

  Kieffer’s eyes were on Monsieur Hoogstraten. The director looked into the distance. Kieffer nodded to the interpreter.

  The colourless man’s eminently reasonable voice began again, its undertone setting the leaves surrounding Noor quivering. “We have asked you to set an example for your students. If you do not condemn terrorism, you support it. By not co-operating, you are sending this young man to his death just as if you pulled the trigger. For the last time, where are the arms?”

  Monsieur Hoogstraten shook his head as if completely baffled.

  Everyone expected the shot, yet no one expected it. When it rang out, Noor almost left her skin. A commotion of birds rose to wing. A horrified murmur rippled through the milling, sweating students. The young woman gave a howling cry and fell to her knees.

  Noor’s eyes blurred momentarily. But her trainers had said: “Every army holds mock executions to get information. We do it, they do it. The rounds are blanks. Don’t be deceived.”

  They didn’t shoot him. Allah, let him live and I’ll read my Qur’an again from cover to cover.

  Monsieur Hoogstraten looked unperturbed.

  He isn’t deceived.

  The poor young woman, who knew nothing of mock executions or blank rounds, continued her low weeping.

  Kieffer spoke, and the pale face and megaphone turned to the students. “Your director is willing for all of you to forfeit your lives and your futures to protect terrorists and saboteurs. Perhaps he does not know any students who are secret terrorists, but you know who these are among you. You must speak now before you meet their fate.”

  Monsieur Hoogstraten shook his head, and no one volunteered to betray his fellows. So a second student was hauled unceremoniously from his comrades.

  Peasant stock, well built. Awed by the SS men.

  He tried apology and pleas, and for a moment both Kieffer and the interpreter seemed to shift stance and consider him, as if both drew confidence from the man’s self-abasement. But then Kieffer jerked his head. The student fought, kicked and shouted, but he was handcuffed and gagged. Noor’s binocular-enlarged gaze followed as he too was dragged around the side of the Grand Château, out of sight.

  It’s a charade. Please, Allah, don’t let them shoot anyone. Allah, let it be so and I promise to give a month’s salary to immigrants at La Mosquée.

  But a second shot fractured the stillness.

  A hare scampered into the underbrush. A kite gave a high-pitched squeal and circled above.

  The crowd of students was separating into stoics and lamenters. The SS men had the guns, but the few rebels in the crowd were becoming desperate. If every student was at risk, they had nothing to lose by trying to break away. But trying to escape would only justify the Gestapo in more deaths.

  Please, Allah, no more!

  Kieffer and his interpreter conferred. The wide circle of the megaphone eclipsed the interpreter’s face again. “It is possible you have trouble believing your senses. Perhaps you are superstitious enough to believe the two men whose deaths you heard can be resurrected by a little journey to Lourdes. We did not wish to execute people before the ladies …” He bowed slightly in the direction of Madame Hoogstraten. “But perhaps you will only tell us where are the arms if you see a man die here, before your eyes.”

  Noor felt the words as if they ripped her in two.

  Monsieur Hoogstraten must have felt the same. He was mopping his face with his handkerchief. He appeared to be pleading.

  The interpreter pointed. Two milice gendarmes tore a third student from the crowd.

  Noor scanned the student from head to toe in the bounded vision of her binoculars. This one was tall, his blouse coat tailor-made. Leather shoes, available only on the black market. A haughty carriage—no peasant here. He shook off the restraining hands of the milice gendarmes as if they soiled him, stepped forward himself.

  Kieffer and his interpreter looked a little nonplussed. But the milice gendarmes were ready with cuffs, and soon the young man’s hands were manacled behind him. Kieffer gave an order and a gendarme stepped forward with a blindfold.

  Students in the crowd backed away. Someone fainted from the heat and tension.

  Oh, Allah, send your farishtas! Send all your angels now!

  Now the bourgeois young man was refusing the blindfold. The milice gendarmes shoved him to his knees on the sandy surface of the courtyard.

  A Luger appeared in the SS captain’s hand.

  Monsieur Hoogstraten’s hand reached out and grasped Kieffer’s swastika-banded arm. The SS Captain shook him off. Monsieur Hoogstraten was now gesticulating, thrusting himself between Kieffer and the kneeling man. German and French were being shouted everywhere at once, and the anger of the French students was rendered powerless by the sigh
t of the guns.

  A gloved hand pointed the semi-automatic at the young man’s temple.

  Noor couldn’t hear what Monsieur Hoogstraten was saying, but she could see his resistance crumbling, see it in the droop of his shoulders and the slight fall of his chin. Suddenly he raised his hands, then held them out.

  A gendarme stepped forward and clinched the cuffs on him.

  The megaphoned voice announced, “This student is pardoned. Your director has confessed to participation in sabotage and terrorist plots. He is a criminal. He is under arrest. He will show us the weapons. Until all the weapons are found, this institute is under Gestapo supervision. No one is allowed to leave the grounds.”

  Monsieur Hoogstraten was a respected, upstanding citizen, not a criminal. He was a fighter in the legitimate, necessary jihad against the Occupation.

  The young man was standing up, rubbing his wrists now, as Monsieur Hoogstraten was marched to the Citroën. There was no sign of the two students dragged out of sight.

  Before getting in the car, the director turned and met his wife’s eyes.

  More discussion and orders in German and French, and the Citroën’s chauffeur left the car. He escorted the maid uphill at gunpoint to the director’s château.

  The SS men still ringed the students, administering a rifle butt where needed to assert control. What were they waiting for? Was the maid leading the SS man to the arms? No—if the arms weren’t in the stables any more, Monsieur Hoogstraten had probably told Marius to hide them somewhere off the premises. And for maximum humiliation, the SS captain would make Monsieur Hoogstraten lead them to the cache himself.

  Did Monsieur Hoogstraten tell them the whereabouts of Gilbert or Professor Balachowsky?

  Non. Pas possible.

  A black-and-red widow spider was slinging sticky threads on a branch above Noor. She shifted carefully, quietly; its bite could be poisonous. A hornet buzzed past. Mosquitoes hovered over the burdock. Minutes dragged by with no change in the tableau in the courtyard. Noor checked the woods behind her again. Movement, uniforms?

  Clouds had swirled into arabesques, readying for rain.

  The maid and the milice chauffeur came back into sight, walking downhill from the director’s château. The chauffeur’s sandy brown hair and moustache centred in the circle of Noor’s binoculars. He carried a leather suitcase in his left hand, held the maid’s forearm in his right. He thrust her back into the crowd of surrounded students and took the suitcase to the Citroën.

  With the suitcase stowed, the black car started, turned around and headed up the driveway.

  Madame Hoogstraten’s tearful supplications had broken through the cordon of SS men. She intercepted SS captain Kieffer and his interpreter as they walked towards the Mercedes. The gendarmes, the soldiers and everyone in the crowd was watching her too.

  Noor could steal away now. She had the information she had come for, and would send it to London right away: Monsieur Hoogstraten had been arrested. He had agreed to reveal the location of the arms. Gilbert and Professor Balachowsky were still at large. Archambault’s transmitter and her own were likely to be discovered soon if they hadn’t been already; she would tell London both were likely in enemy hands. In any case, they were useless without the security check known only to Archambault and herself.

  Madame Hoogstraten’s pleading was now directed at anyone within hearing.

  Noor slipped her binoculars back in her pocket, adjusted the pistol in the waistband of her slacks and crept from the bushes. Behind her, words of the megaphone became indistinguishable, then faded. Every rustle and crunch reverberated among the lofty trees. She drew close enough behind the institute’s administration buildings to look through the windows: the Germans had emptied offices and classrooms of people. Crouching, she moved swiftly through the shadow-patterned woods on a course parallel to the institute driveway, heading back to the road.

  She could cross the unpaved road past the courtyard wall surrounding the tool shed she and Archambault had used for transmissions. The squat shape of the greenhouse lay beyond it. Was Marius still free?

  Two SS men stood on guard at the corner, backs to Noor, rifles slung over their shoulders, watching the drama in the courtyard at the bottom of the hill. She could steal across the road and the nettle ditch and continue into the woods—they would never notice.

  But just in case …

  She drew the pistol from her waistband and moved quietly, keeping her eyes on the SS men.

  Halfway across now.

  Suddenly, a black shape darted between the Gestapo men. The Hoogstratens’ cat was streaking right towards Noor. An SS man was turning, and she was galvanized into a dash for the cover of the woods. A yell, then another, and both were running down the road towards her. Noor jumped a ditch just as sound-burst stole the peace of the woods.

  They’ll split up, to cut you off before you reach the institute wall.

  Cover? Cover? Low land. Rock? Tree?

  She dropped behind an uprooted tree and turned in one movement, thumb flicking the safety catch off, the heavy steel finger of the gun steady in both gloved hands.

  Wait, wait till he’s closer.

  The death’s head wouldn’t stop coming.

  Point—shoot.

  Noor squeezed.

  The recoil knocked her clasped hands upwards and to the left. The SS man suddenly went down in the ditch among the nettles, a look of disbelief on his face. His rifle flew from his hands, through the air, landing a short distance away.

  A second shot, this time from the direction of the greenhouse. Not too far away.

  Take his rifle. Now!

  She jammed her pistol into her waistband and, without knowing she was going to, bounded in a single fluid movement to the rifle, scooped it up and away.

  Then she was off and running again, the rifle grasped tight across her ribs, lungs pumping, heart slamming. Heels jarring against ground, wind whipping her hair against her cheeks, and a huge darkness opening its mouth behind her.

  Run faster, run before darkness.

  Crashing thud of jackboots to her right. Coming closer, closer.

  Muscles flexed, blood rushed. Danger heightened awareness: she wouldn’t reach the road alive. Was that the rat-a-tat-tat of her imagination or a gun firing?

  Not in the back. Not to be shot in the back like prey run to ground. She must turn, turn and face her enemy, look him in the eye.

  So she turned, dropped to the ground, to face the second death’s head. On her stomach and barely breathing, the rifle stock wedging into her shoulder. The bolt drew back with a loud click, the bullet sprang from its magazine, slid into the chamber. It waited—she waited—till he came crashing through the woods. And when he was in range, the rifle came up by reflex. Steady. The bullet cracked and flew.

  The death’s head grabbed his chest, went down.

  A man with no compassion forfeits his right to mine.

  The shots would soon bring other SS. A massive hunt would begin. And if either of the two she had fired on remained to describe her …

  Run! Run!

  She threw the rifle into the undergrowth and was scrambling over rocks and roots, then running crouched between trees, taking cover behind bushes and too-slender trunks. Leaves and branches flicked and scratched her face, tore at her blouse.

  Seconds later, Noor reached the edge of the woods. And the road. She took a deep, gulping breath.

  Get your bearings.

  The porticos of the institute jutted up to her right.

  I am not a trembling kind of woman.

  But she was trembling like a sheet of foolscap.

  She knew very well what happened to anyone in France who shot a German. Even if you missed. The same that happened to Indians who shot Englishmen: arrest and execution. More immediate here, that’s all. But contrary to Herr Kieffer’s speculations on the suicidal desires of people he wanted pliant or dead, she would stay alive. For Armand.

  She hadn’t shot a man; sh
e’d shot a Nazi who stood by and watched innocent students executed.

  Had she killed one or both of the SS men? If she had killed one, could the wounded one describe her? If so, Kieffer would have soldiers stopping every train, bus, automobile or bicycle between here and Paris, searching for a woman in a white blouse and black slacks.

  She hoped she had killed them both.

  But then she’d have two deaths to atone for on the Day of Judgement, not just one.

  Merde!

  Keeping the road in sight but staying within cover of the woods, Noor retraced her steps to where she’d hidden the bicycle. She retrieved her handbag, hid the pistol in its secret compartment and covered the bicycle again. She would tell Odile where to find it.

  Noor peeked around the side of a tree, looking up and down the country road. Empty. But now what? Run from the cover of the forest in her buckled two-inch heels, all the way back to Grignon? She hadn’t seen any dogs with the Gestapo, but if they were searching, dogs would be let loose very soon.

  Stucco clouds advanced in a solid line on Grignon. The starchy brilliance of the day wilted before their marshalled prowess.

  Think!

  Thinking didn’t help.

  But then, in the distance, came a blustering, popping engine sound—thankfully, not the purr of a Mercedes. As if ordered up by Allah, a fat, rusted autobus approached.

  It could have Gestapo men on board, it might be stopped by the Gestapo along the way. She’d worry later; this was the best and fastest way away.

  Noor stepped from the cover of the woods and waved. The bus drew closer, came up to her and trundled past. Noor shouted after it, ran behind it.

  Now it stopped, waited till she caught up. Noor flung herself on and clung to the rear railing, searching the forest and each passing vineyard for pursuing men in black. She glanced down the centre aisle: too few passengers to hide between and too many to make a quick exit possible.

  An unmarked stop beside a field. No Gestapo.

  A woman moved past Noor. “Excusez-moi, monsieur,” she said.