The Violent Century (12 page)

– I want him dead, he says, whispers, doesn’t even realise he’s speaking aloud. Beside him Drakul chuckles, something obscene in the sound. Oh, we would not want him to die too quickly, he says. Would we now.

– Can you take him? Fogg says. But they are too high, they are strictly observers here.

– Perhaps, Drakul says. They watch the convoy drive across the mountain pass, then slow. Stop. Men peek out of the roofs of the trucks. Guns at the ready. The jeep in the middle. The wolf man climbs out, Fogg watches, the man looks a little leaner, his close-cropped hair perhaps a little greyer at the temples. Looks this way and that. Smiles. Canines flash white in the sun. Scents the air.

– Son of a bitch, Fogg says.

– I can’t take the shot. One of Drakul’s men, leaning against a rock with a rifle perched. Drakul dismisses him with a wave of the hand. Watch, he says.

Too far for sound to carry. But the wolf man’s lips move, he issues an order, evidently. Men come out of the trucks. Spread out. Fogg watches them. Not the white uniforms of the Übermenschen Korps. Not army either.

Gestapo.

It is hard to watch them. Their features shift, blur. There is every manner of the change here, on display. For this is what it is, surely. A display, for Fogg’s benefit. Or a challenge, to Drakul. One man is an obese creature, fat seems to ooze from his arms, his legs. His belly contrasts and expands. No. All of it does. Like a toad, inflating.

Then the one beside him; Fogg recognises him from his dossier, with a start.
Blutsauger
.

Years later he will see him again …

Fogg can feel Drakul’s reaction, can feel his own at the sight of this deformed creature, leathery skin like a bat’s, short ugly wings between his arms and side, as if the skin of his armpits had been hideously stretched, and the long narrow bald head and those dark eyes, a face as crumpled as a newborn baby’s, a name to go with the visage, another Carpathian horror come alive:
Blutsauger
, blood sucker, and he opens his mouth impossibly wide in a yawn or a grin and there are too many teeth inside, and he licks his lips with a long leathery tongue, Blutsauger, he flaps his wings and grins and sniffs the air as if scenting for blood.

– Bloody hell, Fogg says.

The partisans are quiet, watching:

Another man down below reaches hands into the air. As if searching for something. Drakul whispers, Lie low. Fogg does. There is a movement in the air. The leaves rustle on the trees. The man down below is a tall, pale Scandinavian. Thin blond hair. Eyes like pale blue marbles. Leaves fall down on their heads. As if invisible hands had reached this far up the mountain slope and shaken the trees, grasping, searching for them.

But withdraw, at last. A short, light-skinned man with Slavic features shapes circles in the air. The air shimmers, firms, becomes elliptical mirrors. Another man is shaggy, like a dog. Turns on all fours. Opens a mouth impossibly wide, teeth coated in shiny saliva.

– Wolfskommando, someone says, uneasily. The partisans glance at each other. Beside Fogg, Drakul grins without humour. Down below, the wolf man gives a nod. His men go back in their trucks. The wolf man gets back in the jeep. The trucks start their engines, the sound reaches Drakul’s party delayed and magnified. Fogg watches the convoy ride along the mountain pass until it disappears from view.

Fogg breathes out. Removes the binoculars. What was that about? he says. Drakul grins. Moves from lying to standing up with nothing in between. A piece of shadow. Der Wolfsmann, he is showing off, Drakul says. Fogg doesn’t ask for whose benefit. Looks at Drakul. The Jewish partisan looks back. Understanding between them, like a spark.

47.
SIGHIȘOARA, TRANSYLVANIA
1944

They enter Sighișoara at the dead of night. A sliver moon, a sickle moon, a blade lighting their way in the dark sky. Stars like holes punched into the dome of the sky with a knife. Sighișoara is a pleasant medieval town. Charming old churches, cobbled streets, the cool clean air of the mountains is beneficial for people suffering from consumption. At least if
Baedeker’s
anything to go by. The Jews of Sighișoara had been herded over to the ghetto in Cluj, before they were put on the trains. The Gestapo make their headquarters in the Sighișoara citadel. One-time home of Vlad III, Son of the Dragon. Charming medieval citadel, built by Saxons. Castrum Sex, to give it its Latin name. Meaning the six-sided castle.

The partisans are ghosts in the night. Skulk from shadow to shadow. The streets are deserted, a curfew is in effect, patrols are scarce and the soldiers doing the patrolling bored. Fogg’s value seems to have gone up in the eyes of the partisans. The fog rises from the cobblestones, thickens about them, like milk becoming cream. They pass closed shops, few street lights. The city is quiet with desperation. Drakul flickers from shadow to shadow. He moves like a bat in the night. Fogg does not know what drives him, what makes him go on. A sort of fatalism has taken over Drakul. We will try, he says, with a touch of humour. For you, Mr Fogg of London, we will try to take the citadel.

A suicide mission. Drakul’s partisans are no match for the Wolfskommando. No sign of life from the citadel but Fogg knows it is far from deserted. Feels the unseen eyes watching from inside. Wonders if, somewhere deep inside himself, Drakul
wants
to be caught. Longs for an ending. But Fogg is swept along with the plan. Something to bring back to the Old Man. Anything to justify this sojourn to the outer realms of the war, where nothing much happens but for the mass transportation of the Jews.

Tendrils of fog creep towards the citadel. Gently, gently – do not spook the unseen enemy, make the fog a natural phenomenon. Dark shapes moving over the citadel. Bats, flying without sound. The fog creeps. Drakul and Fogg, watching from the doorway of a bakery. Drakul, pointing wordlessly, first at himself, then at Fogg. His meaning clear. You and I go. The others stay behind.

The partisans circle the citadel, hiding as best they can, in doorways and staircases, on rooftops, the boy, Pèter, with them. Fogg didn’t get his full story. His dad and uncle shipped to the camps. Mother and two sisters smuggled over the border, hidden in the cart of a Romanian neighbour. Why Pèter was left behind, Fogg doesn’t know. The partisans regard him as their mascot. The boy doesn’t speak much. Seems in awe of Drakul. A distant cousin, somehow. Born after the change: for him, Übermenschen are as natural as gas chambers.

Fogg walks the short distance to the citadel. Masked by the fog. Drakul flickers into being beside him. Guards on the steps. Conversation in bad German. It’s fucking cold. Stop complaining, Toad, you’re so fat you probably can’t even feel it. A laugh, a grunt in reply. Fogg looks at Drakul. They split up.

Snatches in the fog. Fogg cuts the throat of the tall Scandinavian, the one with the reaching arms. Soundlessly. Just walks up behind him and does it. An expert now, after all these years. Holds the man, gently, as he falls. Wipes the knife clean on the man’s uniform.

The curtain of fog parts, momentarily. Fogg sees the corpulent man called Toad. Drakul appearing beside him. Toad opens his mouth to cry out. Reaction kicks in, he inflates, engorged. Drakul pokes him. No. Drakul’s talon like a blade. Punctures the Toad’s skin, ruptures the heart. The man sags, deflates. A second strike to the throat, he gurgles without sound and drops with a soft wet plop. Drakul raises two fingers in a silent salute. Two down. Many more to go.

The door opens for them. They slip inside.

48.
SIGHIȘOARA, TRANSYLVANIA
1944

There is an echoey stillness to the vast hall of the citadel. Tendrils of fog drift through the large dark space. Moonlight penetrates through high windows, illuminating ancient tapestries, grotesque paintings. Fogg finds himself staring at a portrait of Vlad the Impaler. A narrow face, pronounced cheekbones, a hawk’s nose, large, piercing eyes. The face dominated by a wide moustache, arched eyebrows. Vlad has long hair that falls over his shoulders. He wears a felt hat crowned with precious stones.

The painting hangs against the far wall. As he comes closer, Fogg sees holes in the painting, jagged wounds. A throwing knife protrudes from Vlad’s forehead. Beside him, Drakul chuckles, softly, startling Fogg. He can’t get used to the partisan’s way of suddenly appearing.

A sense of unease overtakes Fogg. Something wrong. The citadel too quiet, the hushed darkness has a sense of unseen eyes watching. Drakul, beside him – Follow me. They walk softly across the stone floor, towards a staircase leading down. Nothing stirs. Drunken laughter suddenly wafts across the space, coming from upstairs, and Fogg freezes. Drakul brushes against him, pushing him, a restlessness overtaking the normally taciturn man.

Don’t be a hero. That’s what the Old Man told Fogg, when he sent him here. The Bureau has no place in it for heroes. Go, don’t get caught, and bring me back the information I require.

Fogg shivers. The cold seeps into your bones, your soul. It is worse than the Eastern Front, almost. But no. Nothing was as bad as that. They reach bottom. A heavy metal door set into the wall. Brand new. At odds with its medieval surroundings and yet, strangely, a part of it, too. As if whatever is behind it belongs in a Grimm Brothers’ tale. Fogg looks at Drakul, a question,
How do we get in?
in his eyes. Drakul pushes the door. It moves, soundlessly. Fogg shakes his head. Motions: Let’s go back, he seems to say. The door should be locked. There should be guards down here. Too easy. Too easy to get in, at any rate. Might not be so easy to get out again.

Drakul seems to battle with himself. Pushes the door a little more. Darkness beyond. No way to tell what is in there. Fogg, suddenly, has no desire to find out. Mouth dry, rats gnawing his inside. We go back, he says.
Now
. Begins climbing back up the stairs. Drakul gives in, flickers behind him.

– Damn and blast and
fuck
, Fogg says.

Almost the last thing he says. The hall of the citadel is flooded with sudden light. It burns through Fogg’s eyes, momentarily blinding him. When his eyes adjust, every mote of dust can be discerned in the air – as can the Gestapo men on the higher level, aiming machine guns at Fogg and Drakul. Fogg looks helplessly to the doors to the outside, but more men stand guarding them.

A trap. He should have known. Waits for a bullet, but none come. A strange silence. No one moves. Fogg looks at Drakul. The man’s face twisted in something like a smile. Fogg pulls at the other’s sleeve. Back down, he says, quietly. Facing the Gestapo men they climb backwards, cautiously. Back down the stairs. Back to the door. No one moves. Drakul, almost contemptuously, pushes the door open all the way. Darkness beyond. They pass the threshold and go inside.

Into the dark. Fogg’s heart beating faster, his hands clammy, for once he doesn’t even feel the cold. Takes him a moment to realise it isn’t his reaction to their situation, it is the temperature in the room. The heat hits them fully a moment later. Warm, almost tropical air. A cloying smell. Like cloves. The door shuts behind them. Fogg turns a moment too late, just to see a sliver of light being extinguished. Anyway there is no escape that way, only death.

Takes a step forward. Another. Hits something hard. Runs his fingers over it. A rounded wall, smooth and glass-like. Drakul somewhere close by. Breathing in short, hard bursts. Angry. Fogg traces the object before him. It appears to be a column of some sort, but wide, and tapering upwards. Like a bell jar, almost. Fogg takes a step back. Takes out his cigarettes, and a lighter. Puts a cigarette between his lips, more bravado than need. Can barely feel it against his lips. Flicks open the lighter. Pushes it to life.

Light floods the chamber. Electric bars, arcs of light high above. Fogg takes a step back, the tiny flame of the lighter lost in the glare of light. Nevertheless he applies it to the tip of the cigarette, draws what he assumes might be his last breath of smoke. Blinks tears against the glare. Takes another step back.

Details come into being around him. The room is a long cavernous chamber. It has a high ceiling. The floor is white and clinical, and cables snake across it like dark reptiles. But what makes Fogg swear, what makes him draw a nervous breath on the cigarette, are the objects dotted around the otherwise empty room.

They are, indeed, bell jars. Giant bell jars, made of hardened glass, bolted to the floor with massive iron screws. Inside each one …

Fogg shakes his head, from side to side, like a wet dog. Drakul is so still beside him, it is as if he’s become one of the things inside the jars.

Suspended under glass …

Fogg finds himself staring at the nearest bell jar, the one he hit in the dark. It is filled with water. The water is blue, rich with bubbles, as if it is oxygen-enriched. Inside the water is a man.

The man’s skin looks hard, unnatural. It is an armour. A carapace. The man’s skin is blue-green. His hands, pressed against the glass in mute appeal, are webbed. Around his neck fleshy vents open and close soundlessly. Gills, Fogg thinks, numb. The man is like an ancient story of mermaids, he is like some mountain river crustacean, a human prawn. His eyes stare at Fogg. Is he alive? Is he somehow suspended there, in animation, within his glass prison?

Fogg doesn’t know. Looks around the room. At the other inmates, specimens, caught within the bell jars.

A girl with ivy growing out of her hair, her fingers. Leaves like a bracelet over her wrists and neck. Thick vines beating against the glass. Her eyes stare at Fogg. He turns away. The bell jars spread out across the room, there are so many he does not know where to look, it is a menagerie, a lab, a prison: a mixture of all three. In one jar a man constantly reconstitutes himself, his human shape shedding and re-forming, a blob that can’t stay still. In another a man looking as young as a boy has a beak and green-feather wings that beat against the glass. Fogg can’t look. Has to get back to London. To the Old Man. Tell him.