by Matt Killeen
The enslaved staff, Sarah thought absently.
—some of the servants were looking at one another and whispering. At first she thought they were listening in, but whatever interested them was outside.
One of the other guests stood and looked in the same direction.
“Whoever you are, Obersturmbannführer, sorry,” Lisbeth complained, hand on her necklace. “This is news to my team—”
“Your team—” Bofinger interrupted scathingly.
“Yes, my team, Father—”
Whatever Lisbeth said after that was lost in the earsplitting howl and explosion. The ground shook. The shutters shuddered and one came loose from its hinges. The chandelier rattled and developed a wild swing.
Everyone in the room fell silent as dust filled the air and their shadows rocked from side to side. Through the broken shutter they watched the rain being lit up, not by lightning but by the distant flashes of artillery fire.
* * *
The dinner had broken up quickly, as the locals had rushed back to homes and businesses, but Sarah had wanted to see the gunfire for herself. When they finally entered the Captain’s room, they found Clementine, sitting cross-legged on the bed, reading by the light of an oil lamp. She looked up, as if bored.
“You have a visitor,” she said, nodding to the corner of the room behind the door.
Sarah closed it and revealed Lisbeth standing against the wall. She was agitated, almost shaking.
“Can you get me to England?” she whispered.
Sarah wanted to shout, Yes, yes, come with us. But she bit down on her tongue and waited.
The Captain took off his jacket and dropped it onto the bed. Clementine waited a long second and then took it to the wardrobe.
“Why do you think I can get you to England? Why would I do such a thing?” he said, pulling at his bowtie and looking through the blinds to the muted thumping beyond the town.
“Because you’re not . . . who or what are you really?” Lisbeth pleaded.
“Why do you want to go to England?” the Captain pressed.
Lisbeth stood, caught between two moments, like an animal who sees the door of the trap close and wonders whether another way out lies deeper into the cage.
“The disease can’t go back to Germany,” she said quietly. “It can’t be used the way that this SS officer says.”
“And what do you think the British will do when they get their hands on it?”
“I don’t think they’d use it . . . would they? . . . Besides . . . Besides, who says that I’d give it to them? I just need to take it somewhere I can deal with it safely. I can’t do that here. Look, I don’t know what you are, but Abwehr or British or American, you don’t want the SS to get their hands on this . . . do you?”
Sarah always liked the simplicity of Latin. If you expected a no, the question began with the word num. Instead, Lisbeth’s question dripped with uncertainty, longing, entrapment.
“How is it going to be transported?” the Captain asked.
“That’s complicated, I’d have trouble explaining the technicalities.” She sighed, shaking her head.
“Hasse has a plane coming for you,” the Captain stated.
“I won’t get on it.”
“But your father will, and he’ll take everything with him.”
“Not if I have anything to do with it.”
Lisbeth had committed to the move.
Sarah walked up to her and took her hand. It was uncharacteristically sweaty, and it contained a tiny tremor.
“Can you help me?” Lisbeth asked. Sarah looked at the Captain, but he was unreadable, beyond the fatigue and pain he now carried like an extra limb. She turned to Sarah, necklace in hand.
“We need to make plans. Go and pack,” Sarah said, smiling.
Lisbeth smiled back and looked relieved. She squeezed Sarah’s hand and left the room.
The Captain was about to speak and then he looked around.
“Where’s Clementine? I didn’t even see her leave. She’s like a ghost.”
“So how do we do this?” Sarah demanded.
“I can’t whisk Lisbeth away. How would I get her out? The ships here are going to be swamped with people trying to get to Vichy-controlled West Africa. Even if I could drive, we’re on a peninsula and there are only a few roads out. I don’t know the area. We’d be caught. The best bet was hanging on until de Gaulle takes Libreville . . . but Hasse and Bofinger won’t wait for that to happen.”
Sarah pushed her fingertips into her temples, her initial joy fading as her head filled with problems.
“She’s committing to stop the disease, to betray her father, to turn her back on Hasse.” She ran the conversation over in her mind. “But, ‘taking it somewhere I can deal with it’?”
“She doesn’t want us to destroy it. I think she wants to keep the research.”
“She wants to achieve her goals.” Sarah nodded. “We can’t allow that.”
She felt her betrayal, to take from Lisbeth what she needed, like it was hair torn from her scalp. It was sudden, painful, but there was no going back. Lisbeth would be angry, but the woman would forgive and hold her again.
Looking at the Captain growing pale, Sarah knew that for this evening at least, he was done. Even without the morphine, he had finite strength. There was a window of usefulness and it was now closing. She shrugged off the resentment and concentrated on the practical.
“We need to know how they’ve been transporting the disease, if the blood samples are supposed to be dead by now,” Sarah pondered. Something else bothered her, something lost in the tension of the moment. “‘That’s complicated’? What wouldn’t we understand?”
“Something technical . . . Hasse said something about the Russians using eggs?” the Captain offered. “You can make things grow inside living eggs—”
“They had eggs! Or is it in the bats or the ape? Are they the vector?” Sarah shook her head, trying to focus in on the right questions, the right answers. “They’d need somewhere to put them and they aren’t here. They’ve only one truck outside . . . where is the other one? Where are the horses?”
“There are lumberyards at the edge of town . . .” the Captain murmured.
He was growing sleepy. Again Sarah pushed her resentment away. She needed to be at her most clearheaded.
“We need to stop this. Destroy the whole thing. Now.”
Somewhere in the lumberyards was a flamethrower.
Libreville was on a peninsula. There were only so many roads into the town.
THIRTY-ONE
THE RAIN HAD weakened to a drizzle, as if on intermission, so the sounds of the battle were clearer outside. The boom of artillery and rattle of small-arms fire were still distant, but ever-present, even closing. The odd wild round, like the one that had shaken the hotel, still dropped nearby, and this had cleared the streets.
Sarah’s legs did not want to move forward, to step into danger. The act of commanding them, consciously, was making her breathe heavily.
By now she had reached the fringes of Libreville, with its newer group of warehouses, mills, and storerooms. Beyond these, Vichy-supporting soldiers waited, leaning on squat tanks and smoking nervously. Both troops and officers were anxious, trying not to jump at the sound of each explosion or gunshot. Sarah understood she was looking at a group of men who had not fought before.
Walking in the darkness, through the saturated mud, Sarah was beginning to despair of finding anything. There were too many buildings, too many side roads where the trucks could be hidden. It seemed an almost impossible task for one person, even in this small settlement, but with Hasse in town, their time watching and waiting was up. The samples had to be found and destroyed. The disease had to be ended.
Stopping next to an abandoned lumberyard, its gates closed and chained against int
ruders, she sagged and put her hands on her knees. The hem of Lisbeth’s dress was coated in mud, and it was slapping uncomfortably against Sarah’s legs. She should have changed properly before heading out, instead of just pulling on a coat and boots.
A flash lit up the sky, illuminating the street. Under her feet the road was rutted by a hundred wheels and a thousand hooves. The rain was pooling in the tire tracks, the edges soft and runny. Several of these tracks turned off the main road, toward the gate and under it. They weren’t fresh, but, as the crump of the shell fire finally hit, she walked up to the lumberyard. The chain was old and rusted, and the padlock was coated in mud. She turned away.
It had been raining for a week or more.
Sarah turned back and wiped at the lock with the sleeve of her jacket. Underneath the dirt it was brand-new.
She channeled her delight into action and was up and over the gate in a few seconds, cursing the awkwardness of the evening dress as she did so. It had been a while since she had climbed anything, but even in her fragile state, her muscles remembered and responded like she was scampering atop a Viennese roof.
The rumble of the battle and the sound of rain on tin roofs covered any noise she could make, but Sarah couldn’t help but creep into the darkened yard. Another flash revealed one of the mission’s trucks backed up to a collection of buildings at the far side.
The vehicle was empty, or at least bare of the incubators or cages. It occurred to Sarah the difficulty of finding something that might be as small as a test tube. She turned back to the buildings to see that the door of one storeroom hung open a crack. A pale orange light spilled through it.
Sarah moved toward it in a crouch, planning to peer through the gap. The sky brightened for an instant, throwing two shadows across the door.
Sarah spun around—
“What the hell are you doing here?” Clementine cried in a frantic whisper.
“I’m trying to find their samples. What are you doing here?” Sarah replied as quietly as she could as the sound of the explosions rattled around the yard.
“The . . . same . . . Just, you shouldn’t be here, it’s . . . dangerous,” she hissed.
“Of course it’s dangerous—”
“Haller, go back,” Clementine said with great intensity, looking into Sarah’s eyes. It was the most serious she’d ever seemed. Clementine had been furious, superior, even frightened, but all those faces had been tinged with a sardonic humor.
“You’ve found something,” Sarah said, wide-eyed.
“Yes, yes, I have, and it’s not safe. Please.” Clementine was shaking her head and drops of rainwater were spinning away.
“Show me,” Sarah insisted.
Clementine put a finger to her lips and leaned in to whisper. “Very well. I think there’s a guard inside, so mäuschenstill.”
Sarah saw the Mouse, the first night that they had met, bouncing on her toes, unable to maintain her silence, even though she would be punished for it.
As they approached the building, Sarah’s nose grew irritated even before she registered the thick aroma of bleach. Clementine peeked in and then pushed the door gently out of the way.
In the middle of the room, pitched by iron weights and ropes that hung from the roof, stood a large white canvas tent, glowing orange from a light burning inside. A muffled chittering, scampering animal noise escaped the folded entrance flap. Between the door and the shelter was a table of bleach and protective equipment.
Underneath that table, wearing an apron and mask, lay a body.
Sarah tried to push past Clementine, but she held her back.
“Careful, you don’t know what’s happened yet—”
“They—” Sarah began.
“They could be infected, contaminated, whatever . . . Wait.”
Clementine walked slowly around the edge of the room, checking the corners, keeping Sarah behind her.
“Gloves and masks, I think,” she suggested.
“I agree,” Sarah said, nodding vigorously and pulling a dry pair from the line above the table.
The figure on the floor was facedown, the back of their head a wet, dark red rose of matted hair. Sarah crouched and rolled the body gingerly with her gloved hands.
It was Klodt. His eyes behind the goggles were wide open and lifeless.
“Someone hit him. I think he’s dead.” Sarah sighed.
“Using this.”
Sarah turned to see Clementine standing over her hefting a large, rusting pipe wrench. The jaws and teeth were spattered with drops of something dark. She fought the urge to flinch away.
“Something like that, yes,” Sarah managed.
“Let’s see the tent,” Clementine suggested, dropping the wrench to her side and moving away.
The tent flap was protected by a large rubber sheet that had to be pulled clear with a sticky, slurping sound.
It was a small version of Bofinger’s laboratory, with the icebox, incubator, and animal cages squashed together alongside a cramped workbench of jars and test tubes, lit by a solitary oil lamp. The atmosphere was a claustrophobic mix of chemicals, ammonia, and animal feces.
Sarah opened the icebox. It was warm and empty.
She pulled the incubator open to find cold empty racks.
“We’re too late. They’ve taken it all,” Sarah cried.
“Let’s go,” said Clementine.
Sarah looked at the blanket-covered animal cages. “No, not everything,”
“I didn’t want you to see this,” Clementine murmured and tugged at one of the covers.
The mice and rats were dead and beginning to molder and decompose—the stench of rotting things filled the air.
“Don’t be silly, I’ve seen dead things before,” Sarah said, pulling the blanket away from the bats. They seemed alive and well.
“Do you think the bats are the . . . what’s the word?” Sarah continued. “Are they going to bring the bats home?”
Clementine was staring at the last pen, the chimpanzee cage.
Sarah waited for her to uncover it, but she didn’t. She seemed to be transfixed, hypnotized.
Sarah took a step forward and began to feel uncomfortable. She dreaded finding the beast—so human, so tortured—and suffering its wrath once more. She went to take hold of the blanket, but Clementine tried to stop her. Sarah snorted and pushed her hands away, before gripping the blanket and making a soothing, cooing noise as she did so. The cover caught at the back, and Sarah had to give it a sharp tug to free the material. It came loose with a tearing hiss and dropped to the floor.
Sarah was ready to jump back but found herself frozen to the ground, unable to move.
The chimpanzee was gone. In his place, crammed into the tiny crate, was a man.
Sarah could only see the bloodstained gag, the bruised and ruddy brown skin, the ropes that bound him, so it took her a moment to recognize the middle-aged Bateke, from the scar on his right cheek.
“It’s . . . it’s . . .”
Clementine pulled her mask down. “His name is Ngobila. You didn’t get around to asking? I don’t think you even asked what the village was called.”
“Mpuru,” Sarah snapped.
“That means village.” Clementine sighed.
Ngobila opened one eye and looked at Sarah. The white of his eye was dark with blood. So swollen was his face around it that it was impossible to tell if he was aware of her or not.
Sarah tried to imagine what the last few weeks could possibly have been like for him, watching every member of his village fall ill and die, before being bound and imprisoned in this cage. When did he admit to himself that he was also going to die? Would he welcome it when it came?
These were just words, and Sarah couldn’t feel the terror behind them. That was something deeper and darker that she was too frightened to unleash.
“He’s about to die, but he gave them the live samples they need,” Clementine continued. “They were planning to ship him home for as long as he survived, but they can’t put him on the plane. Everyone in it would have been infected by the time they landed. So Klodt came to euthanize him.”
“How did you know . . .” Sarah began.
Clementine was still holding the pipe wrench. Something went very tight in Sarah’s chest.
“But Hasse isn’t done with him yet,” Clementine stated. “He needs Ngobila—to make a fresh walking sample that he can send to his friends in the United States by boat.”
“Clementine, what are you doing?”
Clementine shook her head vigorously. “I’m actually really, really sorry,” she managed, and her voice broke slightly on the final word. Sorry.
“I don’t understand,” Sarah managed. “You work for the Abwehr, for me, with me.” But as Sarah said it, she knew she no longer believed it. “Hasse is a Nazi. The Nazis will be rounding up your people and putting them in camps—”
“They already put us in camps, they already rounded us up. You don’t even know what happened to us, do you?” Clementine cried, her anger cut with frustration and disappointment. “They ordered us into hospitals and they sterilized us. All of us. So none of the Rhineland Bastards can have children . . . All except one.”
“You made a deal,” Sarah whispered.
“Yes, I made a deal. What would you have done? What will you do when your time comes?” she asked more quietly. “The little girl thing—that’s not a new trick. Hasse knew that people would spend so much time hating me or overlooking the maid that I’d make a good spy. The twenty year old who looks like a child. It’s a great cover. And I learned things . . . I read and studied and understood things. That was always part of the deal.”
Everything seemed clear now. Every step of their journey, every setback was rewritten.
“My uncle didn’t lose his drugs . . . you took them. You led Hasse to us.” Sarah swallowed and thought of the camera. “You’ve even been recording our progress for him. Clementine, these people are evil. Haven’t you seen what they’re capable of?”
