The Kingdom of the Air

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The Kingdom of the Air Page 22

by C. T. Wells


  ‘See. Sometimes you actually have to make a choice.’

  ‘Left or right?’

  ‘I’m a socialist, Josef. When in doubt, turn left.’

  He raised his eyebrows but he put the car into gear and turned left. They drove along a rough track winding amongst the dunes. It emerged at a vantage point overlooking the ocean. He turned off the motor. The ringing in his ears seemed to be diminishing. Waves murmured and cats’ paws of breeze snatched at the ocean and the dune grass. He could taste the salt in the air.

  Josef turned and looked at her. ‘There’s got to be more to it. You’re not a résistance agent just because of some ideals. There’s something personal about this.’

  She stared at the waves for a moment. Then she took the silver locket from the chain on her neck. She handed it to Josef.

  He took it and looked at the small oval form. There was some kind of decorative cross etched on the surface. Like an iron cross, only more delicate. It meant something different.

  ‘It’s a Huguenot cross. Have you heard of us?’

  ‘French protestants, right? Persecuted by the Catholic state ...’ He didn’t know when it had happened exactly, but he thought it went back hundreds of years to the Reformation.

  ‘Yes, my people have lived with persecution in previous generations. We were scattered across Europe. Open it.’

  He had to get a thumbnail into the tiny clasp to open it. Inside was a photograph, carefully trimmed to fit in the oval frame. It was a young man, with dark, neatly combed hair, and fine features. Maybe twenty–five years old.

  ‘A lover?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. My cousin. Leon. He was about to marry into a German Huguenot family. He moved there three years ago to be near his fiancé. Leon was a musician too. Studying to become a conductor. He was my idol, in many ways. He and Martin were close. The same age. Germany needed men like him.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He was a haemophiliac. It’s a genetic disorder, so he was a target for the Nazis. He bled badly one time and the wrong people found out. He was betrayed by a jealous violinist. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? A traitor in the strings section. But the Nazis rounded him up for compulsory sterilisation before he could have children who might be carriers. Part of their eugenics program.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on, Josef. You know people have been vanishing from German homes for years. They’re trying to erase any blight on the master race.’

  He couldn’t deny that there were rumours. Sterilisations. Even eradications. He didn’t know anyone personally who had been a victim of the so–called genetic hygiene policies, but occasionally someone dared to voice a fear about someone who had gone missing. ‘So they sterilised him?’

  ‘They killed him. Because of his condition, he didn’t survive the operation. Or maybe they just didn’t try very hard to stop him bleeding to death.’

  Josef said nothing. He couldn’t argue. Couldn’t defend the Fatherland on these practices.

  ‘That was ’37. Since then, Nazi policies have only got worse, and some of us at The Sorbonne monitored it pretty closely. It’s barbaric, Josef. Truly evil. We have to stand in the way of it. And yes, you’re right. It’s personal.’

  He gently closed the locket and handed it back to her.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s sit on the beach. We have other things to talk about.’

  They threaded their way down a narrow foot–track to the high tide line. He was still following her, puzzled and yet drawn along by her; his limbs numbly obeying. Why was he always following someone? Maybe it was true. Maybe he had never made a real choice about his direction; or maybe it was hard to make sense of anything on a day such as this. She was a musician. A Huguenot. A socialist. A French résistance agent working for English masters. And, evidently, a woman not a girl. No wonder he was confused.

  The sand stretched away to a hazy vanishing point. It was a timeless place, and exposed. A concrete sea wall stretched out far to the south, streaked with the white droppings of seabirds. A fence of bleached and wave–worn timber had been erected to stop the ocean eroding the dunes. It failed to provide much resistance to the onslaught of wind and water—in many places the dunes had slumped and buried the weathered timber.

  They found a place to sit on the lonely margin between the elements. With their backs against fence posts, they stared at the heaving ocean. There was still warmth in the afternoon sun, and they watched foamy crests crash down, then suck out with the backwash, before surging in again. On and on it went in an eternal series of invasions and retreats.

  Josef turned his eyes to the sky. He caught a flash of white. A gull wheeled slowly, far above the turbulence of the sea. Perfectly detached from what lay beneath. To be there, above it all.

  After a while, Giselle stood up and stretched. She opened her handbag.

  Josef watched the way her body moved, lithe and graceful. Was she also a dancer? He tensed as she withdrew a pistol. It was the same sort of bulky automatic Martin had used, and it barely fit in the slim handbag, barely fit her hand. ‘What are you doing?’

  She turned to face him, taking a step backwards, increasing the distance between them. ‘Do you know what this is for?’ She had it in her right hand, not quite aimed at him.

  His throat was suddenly dry. He shifted uneasily, still up against the fence looking at the .45. She had pointed a gun at him once before, and he had believed she would use it if necessary. ‘Giselle. You don’t need that.’

  ‘I am supposed to kill you with it.’

  He was flat on his backside and she was too far away for him to make any kind of move. Helpless. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Really. These are my instructions from England. They were sent through today. You are considered too great a risk. You have served your purpose and now you are a liability. I am to kill you and then our cell will relocate until our next objective is issued.’

  Josef just looked at her. Dear God, he had been stupid enough to get in the car with Martin, and now even more stupid to get in the car with Giselle. He had followed her like a rat after the piper. Entranced.

  He didn’t doubt her for a minute. It made perfect sense the résistance would use him as an asset, then dispose of him. He had walked right into a trap and if he was about to be killed, he deserved it for sheer stupidity. But there was something that perplexed him … she could have already killed him many times over. She could have shot him in the dunes. Why wait? Why draw it out? Why the story about Leon? It seemed she had wanted to talk. Now he would have to keep her talking, but his mouth was as dumb as it was dry.

  ‘We talked about choices, Josef. And I am making a choice today. Unlike you, I question some of the orders I’m given.’ She turned and walked on the hard sand towards the ocean—a strange combination of woman and weapon. The water swirled towards her feet. She hefted the pistol and flung it overhand into the shore break.

  Josef breathed in deeply as the ocean rushed up once again.

  She turned and faced him, a smile spreading across her face and lighting up her eyes. She looked as genuine as could be, but he scarcely believed it. The sunlight passed through the cotton dress as she walked back up the beach towards him. He saw the outline of her body, the curve and sway of waist and hip, the brush of thigh on thigh. She wasn’t hiding much at all.

  He said nothing. Watched the spectacle, even if he didn’t understand it.

  She knelt in the sand next to him and spoke softly. ‘It’s a risk to leave you alive, but I told you I like the danger.’

  ‘Giselle, I can’t work you out.’

  ‘Stop trying to be logical, Josef. The logical thing for me to do was shoot you. But sometimes you have to make a choice. Go with your heart. You should try it sometime.’

  ‘So you actually think I have a heart?’

  ‘It�
��s been hidden by this Luftwaffe tunic for a long time, but yes.’ She drew closer and tapped him on the chest. ‘I think there’s still a heart in there.’

  He leaned back a fraction. ‘You just disobeyed your orders and spared my life.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘This.’ She leant in close. The kiss was hesitant at first, a gentle touch of lips. Tentative. He brushed stray hairs back from her face and they kissed again, more firmly, until she pulled back. ‘Josef, we need to talk about Melitta.’

  He sat up. She had said the one word that could break the spell of the moment. Melitta. ‘Tell me the plan.’

  Giselle screwed up her eyes. The smile was gone. She was struggling to speak.

  Josef’s heart lurched. ‘What is it? Tell me.’

  Giselle looked him in the eyes and her lips trembled. He knew something was wrong, but he had to hear the truth, however painful.

  ‘Josef … you have been lied to. Melitta is already dead.’

  ‘What are you talking about? You’re going to get her to Switz ...’

  ‘Josef, listen to me. The truth is that the week before you were shot down in England, Melitta died in Johannesburg. It was all a deception, right from the start … I promise you, I didn’t know about this. Cardinal lied to me, too.’

  ‘But what about the letter? I wanted proof … you gave me a letter in her own hand.’

  ‘It was a forgery. The British had access to her diary and a forger used information in it to construct the letter. They smuggled it to me so you would believe … ‘

  Josef was reeling. Of course. He had doubted Lucas from the start. But the letter had completely deceived him, and as he had been drawn deeper into the résistance plot, the more he had justified himself by believing he was saving Melitta. He had willed himself to believe she would be safe, but she was already gone. He stood up, staring blankly at the ocean. ‘How did she die?’

  She stood next to him and took his hand. ‘It was smallpox, Josef. Like they said. Only there was no medication and she had already gone when they made the deal with you. I’m so sorry … I promise you, I didn’t know until today. I had to tell you the truth … like Mnemosyne …’

  He had no idea what the last bit meant, but a storm was brewing inside him. He had been used. Day after day he had been drawn in by lies that led him deeper into chaos. Now in front of him was the beautiful woman who had bewitched him at every turn. He snatched his hand away. He ached for Melitta. She had been the only one left for him. He could almost have lashed out at Giselle, but she was on her knees now, just as broken by the truth, and he did not raise his hand.

  ‘Please, Josef,’ she reached out, ‘Don’t blame me. I just had to tell you ...’

  He glared at her like the sun, seeing at last—too late—through everything. He turned his back on her. He strode away through the sand, an unearthly energy transforming him and propelling him towards retribution.

  ‘Wait, Josef!’

  He glanced back once and saw her crumpled, sobbing form on the beach with the sea wind whipping her hair, his own footprints abandoning her. Damn her! Damn the English! He churned the sand as he stormed away and gulls on the beach fled from him.

  XXV

  It had taken only two telephone calls and less than fifteen minutes for Eberhard Reile to establish there was a squadron leader named Claus Langer stationed nearby in Cherbourg who had been awarded a Spanienkreuz. A third telephone call direct to JG27 informed him Langer was in the Hospital Pasteur in Cherbourg suffering from serious burns. Definitely a candidate for the owner of the stolen uniform.

  On balance, of the two main leads he had, it seemed better to pursue the uniform than the Citroën. It was all a matter of probabilities—pursue the highest probability leads first. Besides, if the Luftwaffe Citroën had been stolen it was likely to be reported. That side of the investigation may even take care of itself. In the meantime, he and Boelcke would pursue Hauptmann Langer of JG27 and his missing uniform.

  Reile had Boelcke bring up the Mercedes. Dust covered its black paint, but it was otherwise unscathed by the bomb blast. Moments later they were on the Route Nationale heading north to Cherbourg and the Hospital Pasteur.

  ***

  Anton Joubert walked the corridors of the Hospital Pasteur in an orderly’s white jacket with a large cloth sack bulging with linen over his shoulder. He remembered his months in hospital recovering from the gas attack in 1918. He knew the way people bustled about hospitals, taking little notice of each other, going about their work. So he walked confidently from one ward to the next, scanning typed lists of patients with German names who were receiving medical attention as he went.

  Anton made his way amongst hospital personnel, looking like just another weary orderly doing his rounds. He had walked almost every corridor, retracing his route more than once, before he found a private room bearing the name Hauptmann Claus Langer. The ex–soldier glanced over his shoulder. The corridor was empty. He turned the door handle and stepped into Langer’s room.

  ***

  The grass in the Normandy fields was drying and withering under the summer sun. The horizon was warped with heat haze. Telephone poles flicked past rhythmically as the Citroën ate up the kilometres. Josef had started to form a plan. His rage had dissipated, replaced by a ruthless clarity. The English would pay. It might cost him everything but, at present, that amounted to very little. He knew he had it in him; the capacity for a pure form of hatred that could be channeled into calculated destruction.

  Years ago, he had felt an absolute commitment to retaliation. At all costs. His father had been rough with Melitta. She was about ten, Josef thirteen. He had quivered with rage to see her caned but he knew he had to wait for his opportunity. He would pay for his cruelty.

  His father’s patterns were predictable. He would work on the property and come back to their sagging homestead hot, dusty and irritable. He would assume he had done his bit, and everyone else would do his bidding or suffer the consequences. He would open a bottle and drink it while he soaked in the bath on the back veranda. Then Mr Schafer would drink another one, and everyone would keep out of his way.

  When his father had gone out to work in a distant field the following morning, Josef did not go to school. He had plenty of practice of skipping school and it wasn’t hard to walk down the driveway then hide in the scrub and double back to the house when everyone was gone. His mother had taken Melitta into town for the day—she didn’t want anyone at school to see the welts on the girl’s legs. The shame would be devastating.

  Josef had found the cache of bottles under the house. How could they have so little money for food and clothes and keep such a stock of bottles? It was cheap stuff from the shanty–towns, but still a waste of money.

  Josef started carrying the bottles up onto the veranda to where the bath tub sat like a tyrant’s throne. He uncorked the first bottle and watched amber fluid swirl down over the chipped enamel and vanish down the plughole. It drained away into the soil beneath the house where it could cause no harm.

  After the first three bottles, he decided it was too slow to uncork each one. So he started smashing the necks off the bottle and tipping the liquid over the shards of glass. Bottle after bottle after bottle. Then he sat down, surrounded by bottles with broken necks as the hot, dusty wind came off the veldt. He was surprised at how calm he was. A thrashing was inevitable, so why stop?

  He picked up another bottle and hurled it down into the tub. Green glass fragments exploded and slid down into the pile. He slung down another into the tub. Another explosion of glass.

  When he was done, the bath was half full of broken glass. He looked admiringly at it. He imagined his father sitting in it, half–immersed in glass instead of soaking in warm water. In his mind he saw the old man’s body go pale as blood drained out of a thousand gashes and welled up among the shards. Kurt Sch
afer had fuelled his body with the contents of the bottle, and now Josef could imagine him bleeding out, pouring his life back into the glass. Paying his dues.

  It was four o’clock when Kurt returned from the fields, earlier than usual. He came on foot and Josef had been expecting the noise of the tractor to give him warning.

  He was practising with his slingshot, shooting rocks at a fencepost. His best stone was saved in the pocket of his dungarees.

  His father stepped off the veranda, and the first Josef knew of it was when a long shadow reached across the yard. There was no point in running.

  Josef turned and looked at the ruddy, thick–armed man who glowered at him across the yard. The look in his father’s eye told him he had found the glass–filled bath.

  ‘Come here, you little mutt!’ he growled.

  ‘Why don’t you go and have your bath, Papa?’ Josef spoke calmly, looking straight into his father’s rage–twisted face. ‘You must be tired after working in the fields and beating little girls.’

  Josef launched his best stone into his father’s chest before he was caught by the neck and thrown to the ground. A heavy boot slammed into his ribs. He rolled in the dust, coming up on his knees.

  He looked straight in his father’s face. ‘Go and have your bath, Papa. You deserve it.’

  The second kick got him in the side of the head. His vision blurred, but he looked up defiantly into his father’s eyes. He saw the rage, but he also saw his father was completely sober as he raised his boot one more time. That realisation was what hurt the most.

  He had avoided his father as much as possible in the years that followed. He threw himself into schoolwork or rugby or anything that would get him off the farm. Some kind of a truce was restored when Josef helped with the farmwork for the sake of the family. His father still drank from time to time but, after Josef had made his stand, Kurt kept his hands off them. The struggles of making a living out of dust overshadowed whatever other struggles they had.

 

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