by Matt Killeen
“Oh, Ursula.” Clementine sighed again. “The Nazis aren’t anything new. The Belgians were turning blood into rubber in the Congo before we were born. What the French did in Indochina, what the old German Empire did to the Nama and Herero, what the British did everywhere . . . All of it criminal, all of it horrendous. Even the Americans who think they don’t have colonies forget the Philippines and Mexico and that they were a colony, and they exterminated the natives so they could live there with their slaves. All of white history is a series of mass graves. Unless you really believe we’re so below you that it’s only a problem now that white people and Jews are being beaten up, arrested, and murdered?”
“Not everyone—”
“Not everyone?” Clementine cried, the calm dissipating. “You woozy sentimentalists don’t stop the cruelty, the slavery, the slaughter. You read Red Rubber? That man, that angel, that hero who risked his life and livelihood to expose the work of the Belgian rubber trade? He was responsible for the whole Black Shame Quatsch. All those stories about black soldiers raping their way through thousands of innocent white women in the Rhineland, everything that made my life so miserable. He was all for caring for the blacks, as long as they stayed in their place, like naughty children.”
“Twice false doesn’t make once true, Clementine.”
“Come on, how old are you?” Clementine replied.
“You’ll never be equal to them in their world.”
“And in which world would I be equal, little Eva? In Africa run by white people? In America where they hang black people from trees for fun? I’m a Neger. This earth isn’t designed for people like me. I have money and protection now. That’s the best I can do.”
“And you’ll murder people to get it?” Sarah said sadly, looking at Ngobila.
“I haven’t murdered anyone . . . much. Come on, Klodt was an Arschloch who kept a human in a tiny cage,” she added, shrugging. “Yes, I’ve done bad things, but you want me to be a good little Bimbo and be a slave? Scheiß drauf.”
“You could fight them with me,” Sarah begged.
“You know, I thought about it when I found out who you really were. I even got excited, but you’re too feeble. Your uncle, the addict. Claude, the high priest of racism. I can’t count on you . . . And you’ve already lost, Ursula. The bastards have already won, from Poland to the French coast, and on every continent on Earth, long, long, before you were born.”
“What about those millions of Slavs who Hasse wants to get rid of? Don’t they deserve better?”
“Ha! In Poland, there were those who were happy to round up their neighbors and do horrific things to them. The Germans only had to suggest it.” Again her anger faded away. “People are monsters, Ursula Haller. All people. There’s no one worth caring about,” she finished quietly.
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“Well, forgive me for being weak. I thought I might talk you around, because you’re not a bad sort, little Eva . . .” Clementine stepped toward her, a pained expression on her face, and reached out a hand as if to comfort Sarah.
Sarah watched the hand, wanting the conflict to be real and the remorse genuine, so she missed the moment that the pipe wrench swung up and hit her in the side of the head.
THIRTY-TWO
SARAH SAW DARKNESS and an eruption of yellow-and-white fireworks. Then she felt herself hit the matted floor. The pain rolled in an instant later and was all she could feel or think about for the seconds that it took Clementine to bind her hands and feet.
“If the gottverdammten Free French hadn’t shown up, we’d have had more time. This wouldn’t be happening,” Clementine said as she worked. “I’m sorry. I liked you. I really did. I didn’t even tell him you were Jewish. I was just going to slip it into your uncle’s food or do this while he slept, and he’d have never noticed. I definitely didn’t want it to be you.”
She pulled off Sarah’s mask.
“What are you going to do?” Sarah managed to say, opening her eyes.
“A Neger would be too noticeable, you see. No one was going to think twice about the sick white man, especially a Morphiumsüchtiger . . .” Clementine looked Sarah in the face. Cunning and sadness and irritation and anxiety fought for control of her expression. “But you had to come sniffing around. What were you thinking? I told you to go . . .”
Clementine stood, and Sarah managed to roll over to watch her. She could feel something hot running across her face, and she tried to shake it out of her eyes. Each movement made her feel like she had been hit again.
Clementine continued. “But I suppose no one is going to look twice at the moody, little white girl on the steamship to America. Maybe she’s poorly and sleeps a lot. She might even tell a fantastic story, but she’s just a little girl, so . . .”
“What?” Sarah cried.
Clementine was opening the cage where Ngobila was imprisoned. She had a syringe in her hand. She raised her mask. “By the time you’re infectious, you’ll be safely in your cabin and on your way. We’ll keep you sedated, you won’t know—”
“Oh, Clem, please don’t do this,” Sarah pleaded. She couldn’t assemble a more robust thought process, all she had was revulsion and fear. “Please.”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Clementine mumbled, closing her eyes. “It’s just another horrible thing I have to do to survive.” She opened them again, more determined. “Haven’t you done things you’re ashamed of? Who are Klaus and Stern? You say their names over and over in your sleep. What did you do to them? . . . Scheiße!”
She had pushed the syringe into Ngobila’s arm and tried to pull the plunger, but nothing was coming out. She pulled it free and tried again.
“I could scream for help,” Sarah managed.
“And there’s a war on and no one will hear you . . . Beschissener nonexistent blood pressure,” Clementine swore. “Veins like noodles . . .”
“Didn’t I . . . save you?” Sarah tried.
Clementine stopped trying to find a vein and turned, pushing her mask down and breathing heavily.
“You’re annoying me now. A white savior, rolling in to bring civilization and moral rectitude. Well, put down that burden, white girl,” she growled. “I put myself in that position. I knew you were in that radio room. I knew you’d feel sorry for me. Not the only mistake you’ve made, by the way, you’ve missed something else blindingly obvious—”
“Please,” Sarah cried. She rolled left and right but couldn’t coordinate her bound legs and arms while the pain in her head was so intense.
“You’ve got to stop that, I’m sorry but—”
“Please. Don’t.”
Clementine failed to fill the syringe again. She let go of it, leaving it dangling from Ngobila’s arm. She looked like she might cry, just for a moment.
“You’re just making this harder . . .” she said, reaching in and tugging at his bloody gag. “I’ve got to stop you talking.”
The gag came free.
Ngobila spat into her face.
It was a mouthful of blood ejected as a spray. It missed her mouth but speckled her hands, neck, and chest.
Clementine staggered back with an expression of surprised terror. She looked into his eyes, to see the defiance and anger there, behind the mask of loose skin. He grunted, a guttural noise of satisfaction.
She slowly wheeled around to look at Sarah, who had managed to wriggle into a seated position.
“Is it on my face, in my mouth . . . my eyes?” Clementine stammered, staring at her gloved hands and rubbing them on her dress.
“I don’t know . . .” Sarah managed. “Bleach . . .”
Clementine lunged for the nearest desk where a lone bucket stood among the lab equipment and, shoving things out of the way in a frenzy of smashing glass, she pulled it toward her. She took one sniff and then poured its contents over her face. She
spat and shrieked, before tearing at the neckline of her dress. It came away from her shoulders with a rip, and she scrabbled out of it, before backing away and peeling off her gloves.
She finally sagged to the floor next to Sarah, breathing heavily.
“Ngobila has an opinion on your plans,” Sarah croaked.
Clementine looked like she might strike Sarah, but a moment later, she started to giggle. It became a chuckle and finally a loud, honking roar, at the very edge of hysteria.
“Guess that told me, huh?” she called out to Ngobila between whoops of laughter and frenetic inhalations. He had sagged, with his eyes now closed.
Sarah fought the sensation of relief. She knew the truce was fragile, temporary, even treacherous. She had a window, a moment to reach out.
“You didn’t tell Hasse I was Jewish?”
“I knew he’d . . .” Clementine said. “That he’d do something to you.” She winced and rubbed at her red eyes. “This stuff stings.”
“What . . . will you do now?” The pain in her head was making talking difficult.
“It’s you or your uncle. Or me. Hasse would hunt me down.”
“Doesn’t have to be either of us.” Sarah was pleading again. “We can protect you.”
“Mmm,” Clementine mused, shaking her head and gesturing to Sarah, bound on the floor. “You can’t protect yourself.” She leaned in and laid a hand gently on Sarah’s shoulder. “You don’t really get it, do you? You think you do, Jewish girl, but I’ve watched what these people can do, and you haven’t seen anything yet. Surviving them is going to require something special. It means compromises. Anyway, if I saved you at the risk of my own life, that would be a bit tacky—too Mark Twain, don’t you think?”
Then she brightened and pointed to Ngobila. “Then again, shall I go and infect this whole town? The whole capital of imperialists, collaborators, slave owners, Nazis, and their soldiers and compliant human pets? I could get on that plane to Berlin!”
“Ach du heilige Scheiße . . .” Sarah swore and began to laugh. “You’re mad. You’re actually a crazy lunatic.”
Clementine feigned confusion. “Isn’t that what you want, to change the world? Don’t you want me to kill all the Nazis?”
Sarah saw Lise Meitner outside the café on the Nyhavn, asking how many innocent people had to burn to win a war. The ends do not always justify the means.
“Not like this,” Sarah said, nodding to Ngobila slumped in a cage—a man with a life, with a family, with who knew what else, taken from him in the most horrific manner possible.
Clementine looked at the gag on the floor next to her ruined dress. One tear streaked down her face.
“You’re a woozy sentimentalist, Ursula Haller. I’m sorry.”
Sarah didn’t really hear the sound of the gunshot, just felt the intensity of the noise as pain in her head wound.
The matting behind Clementine erupted, and she set off on all fours for the shelter of the cages. Claude advanced into the tent, his gun stretched out in front of him. He fired again, blasting a hole in the box underneath Ngobila. Clementine vanished behind it.
The Frenchman ran the last few meters to her hiding place, then swore before turning and sprinting back out of the tent. Sarah rolled over to see him struggle out of the rubber seal.
Outside there were two more shots, and Claude swore again.
Sarah listened, waiting for any other sound, a clue as to what had just happened, but all she could hear was distant artillery fire and Claude’s audible irritation.
Did you get away? For reasons she couldn’t fathom, Sarah hoped Clementine had.
Claude returned and pointed his Beretta at Ngobila. The Bateke looked at the Frenchman and made an assenting grunt before closing his eyes.
“Je suis très désolé,” Claude apologized, and fired. Sarah made herself watch. It seemed cowardly not to.
Then he picked Sarah up in one swift motion and headed for the tent flap. He pushed his way through, banging her head against a wooden post. He dropped her to her feet in front of the table of bleach and pushed her head down into the pan.
It stung her face, lighting her skin on fire, but it was the wound on her head that was the focus of her discomfort. It felt like a long, hot needle was being pushed slowly into her brain. She struggled and thrashed, but he held her down and scooped handfuls of the liquid onto her neck and shoulders.
Finally he released her, and she rose into the air with a roar, coughing and spitting. He freed her hands and went to work on her feet.
“Wash yourself, all of yourself,” he shouted.
Sarah was stunned and couldn’t think clearly. She tugged fitfully at her gloves as her feet came free.
“Pour l’amour de Dieu,” Claude roared. He picked up one of the other pans and emptied its contents over Sarah, soaking her clothes, stinging her eyes, and making her lips tingle.
“It burns,” Sarah spat.
“So does l’hémorragie. You’re not dying on me, little girl.” He began scrubbing at his hands and face with the third bucket. “We have to burn this place,” he grunted. “All of it.”
“Did she—” Sarah began.
“Slippery anguille, yes, she lives,” he grumbled.
“Hasse—”
“Met him, a charmer. He’s packing up to leave right now, we have to move.” He began searching through the piles of equipment that lined the walls of the store. “Mon dieu . . .” he whispered, stopping. He reached into a box and pulled out a large white gas mask, practically a helmet, with huge round respirators and oversized oval eye pieces. It was the head of a beast, a monster . . . a devil.
He handed it to Sarah, who stared into the demonic glass eyes, seeing herself there. The helmet was oily and left a cream residue on her hands. She dropped it and watched it roll away. She rubbed her hands on her damp dress. She couldn’t decide if her hands felt raw from the bleach or whether the evil of the thing had burned her.
Claude lifted a white painted diving suit from the box before throwing it back. “It’s real. They did this. All of this,” he whispered.
“The airfield . . . but he also has a ship, to get to the United States . . .” Sarah pushed her damp hair out of her face. Strands of it broke off in her hands.
“One problem at a time,” Claude said as he turned to her, the flamethrower in his hands.
* * *
The building was already melting in on itself as Claude lit up the outside. The nearby soldiers came to watch, confused and wary, but Claude wasn’t in uniform and he was accompanied by a wet-looking little girl, so they weren’t obvious targets. By the time the nearest officer had decided to intervene, the building was gone and Claude and Sarah were starting up the mission’s truck. As they accelerated away, scattering the waiting troops, no one felt like firing on them.
“Fischer wants to go to England? She knows who you are?” Claude asked, trying to catch up. “Hey, stop crying and talk to me.”
Sarah’s eyes stung from the bleach, but her shoulders were quaking for a very different reason.
“I don’t think she’s sure,” Sarah managed, sniffing. “But she knows we aren’t here to get Bofinger to Germany . . . and you have to suppose that Hasse knows that, too.”
“Did she know there was that Bateke in there?”
“Ngobila, his name was Ngobila,” Sarah snarled. She took a breath and her chest hurt. “She can’t have,” she added, startled by the amount of hope that was shoring up her conviction. “No, she thought he was killed when they torched the camp. She wouldn’t have done that.”
The truck bounced through the potholes and puddles, each vibration like another blow to Sarah’s head.
“Will that girl go to Hasse now?”
“No, she’s . . . failed him. I don’t think she can go back.”
In truth, Sarah didn’t know. She
hoped that Clementine was free of him. She also hoped that she herself was free of Clementine, at least for the moment.
“You should have let me just whip her when I said—”
“Claude, tais-toi,” Sarah snapped. She rubbed at her temples. Hair, dried greasepaint, and skin flaked off in her fingers.
The other truck was gone when they arrived at the hotel.
“Find Jeremy if he’s still here, and I want his MP Forty.” Sarah looked blankly at him. “His gun,” Claude continued tersely. She nodded and jumped out.
* * *
The rooms where the Bofinger mission had been staying were empty. They had all gone, including Lisbeth. Sarah mounted the stairs to the top floor with growing apprehension. Had they taken the Captain? Had Hasse killed him? The latter seemed more likely, if the manager hadn’t seen him leave. She slowed as she reached the landing and padded quietly along the polished wooden floor. His door was in shadow, but a flicker of light from the approaching battle illuminated the inside and revealed it was slightly ajar.
Sarah held her breath and pushed as gently as she could.
The door swung open. The Captain was laying on the bed, fully clothed. She crept in, uncertain what she was hiding from until she realized that she didn’t want to know what had happened. Every extra second she took was a second where she didn’t have to deal with the consequences of it.
She rounded the foot of the bed. His sleeve was rolled up, and the silver syringe was still in his arm. The paraphernalia was unfamiliar to Sarah, but among the equipment, she could see the morphine, which was German military issue. Hasse had supplied the perfect way to remove him from the game.
She felt along his neck, and underneath her fingertips she found a heartbeat. He was still alive. Her rage boiled over the top of her fear.
“Du dummer gottverdammter Bastard!” she screamed at him, and knelt on the bed to slap at his face. “You couldn’t refuse junk from your enemy?” She swore at length, grabbing his shoulders and shaking them. He murmured and moved but didn’t wake.
