The Tiger Claw Read Free Page A

hadn’t leaned in similar fashion on him.
    He was in charge of the family, and had been in charge since they all arrived in London. She should have consulted him when someone from Boddington’s hush-hush organization interviewed her! Instead, she just upped and volunteered to go overseas. In fact, she told no one she was being sent back to Paris. Until the fateful War Office letter, the entire family believed Noor was stationed in North Africa.
    Noor could have, should have, confided in him if no one else. Forget the damn secrecy. Not a single letter from her since she left for France. Not one letter to Mother, Dadijaan, Zaib or himself in two years.
    As dusk faded to darkness, the engine sputtered. Kabir slowed to a stop, dropped his foot to the verge of the road and dismounted. Coming around the bike, he stayed on tar to avoid land mines. He hoisted a jerrican clear of the sidecar with greater force than was warranted by its weight and used a rubber hose and metal funnelto pour the last few pints into the tank. He doffed his goggles and helmet, took a welcome gulp from a canteen, and swept the back of his hand across his moustache and stubbled chin. Then, chilled by some vague premonition, he reached into the sidecar for his RAF jacket.
    Distant bells, rusted from five years of silence, sounded wavering tones against the evening air. They announced food and a place to rest nearby, raking Kabir in like a marker drawn across a map to a plotter’s magnet.
    He was loath to stop, but stop he must. Besides being low on petrol, he was stiff and sore from long hours of riding, and needed information—if nothing else, confirmation that he might somewhere in Munich find a card or file with Noor’s name on it.
    He guided himself by the tall steeple needling the sky, through the town’s brick-lined streets to the central square. Everywhere, the dispossessed shuffled and limped, helping the wounded or carrying their meagre belongings.
    He stopped two Frenchmen in faded stripes and showed them his most recent photograph of Noor. They stared at her serious face, arrested by her direct gaze. Vibrant eyes, Kabir told them, black and fiery, just as in the photo. Her hair—long, wavy, jet black. He demonstrated her height at the level of his chin, no more than five foot three. Petite, he said, very petite; from a distance you could mistake her for a child. Perhaps they knew her by her Western name, Nora Baker? or her code names, Anne-Marie Régnier, or “Madeleine”?
    “Non. Désolé,”
they said. The Frenchmen had been held in a POW camp, not a concentration camp. They questioned Kabir in return about their loved ones. Kabir listened carefully, compassionately, but sadly shook his head as he had so many times before.
    At a dry stone fountain before the church a peasant woman sat alone nursing a baby, a small basket beside her. Past her, thin, rough-looking men clustered around a small fire, cooking. Through the broken light from the remains of stained glass set inGothic arches, Kabir saw a file of the forlorn thronging the centre aisle inside the church.
    Dismounting, he wheeled the motorcycle to an alley around the back. He switched off the headlamp and began searching for a place to secure his bike.
    Light glowed from an open door. A stable. A stable crowded with hollow-faced men and women, spreading jackets and saddle blankets on the straw in the stalls for the night. Polish or Russian flowed between them—he couldn’t tell. A few stared in hostile silence, some in frank curiosity. He moved on.
    Ten paces past the stable stood a weatherbeaten garage. Kabir pulled a torch from his pocket and wrenched the door open. Flicked the torch on.
    Someone gasped, and a ghost hand shot into view, palm raised, fingers splayed as if to halt him. The torch beam jerked in an arc. Another hand rose before him, then another. Kabir lowered the beam: half a dozen frightened faces below the forest of surrendering arms. German soldiers moving