The Tiger Claw Read Free Page B

homewards, hoping to surrender to the British or Americans.
    “Restez tranquilles,”
he reassured them, and backed away from their visible relief. They were boys. Or maybe they just looked like boys to him. This damn war had aged him far beyond his twenty-nine years. If he spoke German, Kabir could have explained they had nothing to fear—that the Russian army was nowhere near this tiny town, that British, French and American troops had thousands of German POWs now and were no longer interested in surrenders, except of Nazis and other war criminals.
    Did those boys realize that their suffering was the outcome of arrogance? that the battles of Paris and London, the bombing of Coventry and Dunkirk, made this necessary?
    Necessary. How much retaliation had really been necessary?
    In the alley, he switched on the headlamp again. Shadows loomed and shrivelled against the church walls—tattered scavengers sifting through rubbish. The beam illuminated an iron hitching ring embedded in the church wall. Kabir mounted,started the bike and guided it up to the wall in low gear. He took a fastening cable from the sidecar, looped one end around the frame, the other into the ring of the post, then snapped a Masterlock through both ends. The empty jerricans couldn’t be secured, but were hidden beneath the black button-down cover.
    Why had it been his hands that guided a plane to where it could drop its payload on the most people? Women, like that one looking at him with deadened eyes. Children, like the street urchin looking like a starving beggar-child from India.
    Kabir entered the church through a side door, fighting the urge to pull his collar to his nose against the reek of flea-infested, unwashed humanity. In Paris bistros before the war he’d played lighthearted games with friends, identifying the origins of tourists fed on buttered scones, kielbasa, sauerkraut or paprikashed goulash from their sweat—so different from people raised on wheat and brie. But here the pores of each man, woman and child excreted a common animal odour of rot, dirt, disease, feces and fear, indistinguishable in origin.
    So many years since he was in a church or mosque, he’d almost forgotten the silence such places inspire. A U.S. Army chaplain stood near the altar with Red Cross workers dispensing hot soup in place of the sacrament, ladling it from a great cauldron to outstretched metal bowls. What of the German parish priest? Probably interned long ago in some Nazi camp.
    Every inch of the church was covered by ragged travellers of all ages, kneeling, sitting, lying anywhere, everywhere, in pews, on the stone floor. Some sat, some lay pillowing their heads on rotten shoes, many coughing and spitting. Children wailed or played. Money-changers operated in the shadows, turning Reichsmarks and American military scrip to dollars and pounds. Money passed from hand to grasping hand.
    As he had in other villages, Kabir queued with the rest, hoping the steaming cauldron was full enough to contain a share for him. Hushed voices rose and fell in a dozen languages and dialects around him:
    “How far is the border from here?”
    “Which border? Of this zone or of France? Maps change every day.”
    “Please, is there an orphanage? This child is lost.”
    “Did you hear Herr Truman came to Berlin, now the canals are clean?
Ja
, the Russkies made the Nazis haul out the dead first.”
    “Pétain will be tried next. Oh, let the Maréchal reveal his ‘double game’ now. Perhaps he’ll be found dead, like Hitler and his whore.”
    “Hitler dead? Not so—I hear he gave a speech on the radio.”
    “My village is in Poland. Is there any Poland now?”
    Someone clutched at his arm. “I have sister—she is pretty little virgin, she love officers,” said rotten teeth and a cunning smile.
    Kabir shook the ghoul away in horror. His gaze flitted from face to face.
    Noor, dear sister—where are you?
    Kabir reached the front of the queue. The American chaplain