The Violent Century (11 page)

The rest of their escape was uneventful.

– We nullify each other, the Old Man says. Has already dismissed them. Speaking to himself. Oblivion says, Sir?

– Had there been Übermenschen on just one side, the Old Man says. If only the Nazis had them, for instance. Then the war could go a different way. But having them on every side nullifies the advantage. I’m afraid, gentlemen, that in this war, we are merely common soldiers.

Seems to lose interest. As if their mission, after all, had not concluded favourably. Dismisses them with a wave of his hand. Good work, he says, as they leave. But half-heartedly. Outside, Fogg lights up a cigarette. Oblivion too. It’s war. Everyone smokes. Leave the Bureau, walk down Pall Mall, heading to the river. Cold on the embankment. Stare into the water. Green-grey and murky.

– What would you do … hesitates. What would you have done, in life I mean, if the Old Man hadn’t found you?

Oblivion looks surprised at the question. Doesn’t answer. So little that Fogg knows about him, so little we have been able to dig up. Where had he come from. You? Oblivion says. Fogg shrugs, the question bouncing on him, shapes in the fog from the lights of river traffic, trapped ghosts projected on a screen. Maybe a carpenter, he says. Doesn’t know why he says it. It makes Oblivion smile. A carpenter, he says. Yes, Fogg says. Oblivion says, Really.

Fogg tries to imagine a world in which he is not standing by the railway tracks, the expanding wave rushing towards him, the frozen faces behind the windows of the approaching train, that crystalline shimmer in the air, the gathering fog, the onrush of probabilities hitting him, altering him on a micro-scale, a change he’s not even aware of until it is a done thing, and the faces unfreeze behind the windows, and the train rushes on, and the fog gathers around him like a living thing … no, he can’t imagine it, this alternate present is a blank in his mind. What would he have become? Follow his father into the market stall, off-loading vegetables, shouting, A pound for a pound! Fresh apples, darling, still with the dew of morning on them! Saying, There you go, mate, closed-cap mushrooms in a brown paper bag, the scales, the old cash register, drinks in the pub, slap the missus around on a Friday night, church on Sunday, God looking down on a world unchanged.

– Fogg? I lost you there, Oblivion says.

– Vomacht or not, Fogg tells him, there on the embankment, as an air-raid siren begins to sound, we’d still be soldiers, Oblivion. And there would still be a war.

SIX:

TRANSYLVANIAN MISSION

TRANSYLVANIA
1944

NAZI FORCES ENTER HUNGARY

March 19, 1944

In a surprise action, Nazi forces have taken over Hungary in a bloodless operation, code named Margarethe. Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Kállay, a long-time ally of Adolf Hitler, was invited by the Führer to the palace of Klessheim, outside Salzburg, Austria, on March 15 for negotiations. It appears Mr Kállay has been secretly negotiating with Allied forces in order to reach an armistice.

As Mr Kállay was in Austria, Nazi forces moved quietly into Hungary, occupying the country without a fight. Mr Kállay returned to Budapest March 19, where he was welcomed by German soldiers. Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy was faced with no choice but to surrender.

45.
TRANSYLVANIA
1944

There is an ancient grandeur to the Carpathian mountains. Sleepy villages sit under distant, snow-capped peaks. Smoke rises peacefully from chimneys. Trains chug-chug-chug along the mountain pass, their sound like a lullaby.

… at least if you read your trusty old
Baedeker’s
.

Which manages to forget the train wagons going to Poland, the thundering industry of factory-produced boots hammering on the harsh winter ground on their searches door to door, locating and assembling the Jews of Transylvania, like so much extra luggage, to be shipped to the camps. As for the gypsies of Transylvania, their fate is not unlike that of the Jews. Camps are broken up in pre-dawn raids, children torn from the arms of parents, wagons set on fire, horses confiscated for the war effort and men, women and children sent on the trains that leave laden and return empty. Up in the mountains the forests are dark and deep and hide the men Fogg had been sent to find. Up there in the mountains the snow sits on the dark leaves and the bears make their way through forest trails, huffing and puffing, and the wolves howl at the moon like a lament. This is where we come from. But this is not our story.

Fogg sits huddled by the fire. Cursing winter and this backwoods arse-end-of-nowhere dump of a godforsaken country.
Baedeker’s
glowing words of ancient Transylvanian grandeur lost on him, if truth be told. Curses the Old Man for sending him here. Peers around, from side to side. Spooked by the shadows. The sounds in the trees. His first night a bear came ambling into the clearing where they slept. Drawn by their meagre supply of food. Wasn’t detected until he was so close that Fogg, who was miserably asleep, woke up to the smell of wet fur and the rank breath of the bear, and the sight of teeth.

– He is hungry, the poor thing, Drakul explained. He had materialised in the clearing, a gaunt shadow. Frankly, he gave Fogg the screaming abdabs. Drakul had walked right up to the bear and laid a hand on the bear’s neck and the bear came down on all fours and sniffed the air, and then followed Drakul meekly out of the clearing, into the forest.

– But so are we, Drakul said, later. They were eating steaks by the fire. First red meat in weeks, from the way the other partisans attacked their food. Fogg didn’t have the heart to ask where it had come from. Didn’t need to.

Poor bleeding bear indeed.

Drakul is an emaciated man, unnaturally elongated, stretched, no meat on him, his skin like leather, his eyes black holes. His English is surprisingly good. Learned it from the two previous recon officers.

Fogg doesn’t need to ask where
they
had gone. War is a one-way ticket to a place where the train tracks end. The partisans had an Englishman recon officer before, Mallory, and before that an American, or an Armenian, Fogg isn’t quite sure, but they both ended up in holes in the snow.

Drakul is a Jew without faith. He is a man without passion, and almost without anger. When he kills it is almost with regret, with an apologetic shrug. His men sit around the fire sharpening sticks. It isn’t easy to impale a man. One needs stout wood, sharp and strong, and enough power to spit a man on it, an animal force as the man struggles in the hands of his captors, screaming or cursing or begging. But there is no mercy.

Fogg had been with the partisans earlier that day, on the road to Marosvásárhely. Though the Germans know the partisans operate in this area, they can’t always spare the military escort necessary to fend against them. The partisans stopped a truck coming through and dragged the two drivers out. They had come across from the town of Cluj. Their cargo was useless. Building materials. Didn’t matter to Drakul. Gave the order. The stakes were erected; the two men: impaled. Fogg watched the wood penetrating the men, into their anal cavity straight through their guts to their mouths. Spitted and left to rot on the side of the road, an old familiar message in an ancient script.

– Like Vlad, Drakul tells him. Materialises by the fire, sits down to chat. Like they’re in some tea parlour in Budapest. Fogg listens to the night sounds, things moving in the foliage. Lookouts around their camp. High vantage point. The city of Marosvásárhely nestled far below. No SS should be able to sneak up on them. Though Fogg has private doubts.

– Vlad? Fogg says.

– Vlad the Third, Drakul says. Vlad Țepeș. They called him the Impaler. Rubs his hands mournfully together. The sound of dry leather, like pages turning in a book. It is an ancient message for my people, he says. Vlad was a Christian. It is said here in Transylvania that he was a hostage of the Turks as a boy. They raped him many times. When he grew up to be a man he fought them, impaling them as a warning and a message.

Drakul makes a curious noise, somewhere between a spit and a laugh. Through the anus! he announces. His men laugh.

– Your people? Fogg says. Yes, my people, Drakul says. Transylvania is a land of its own. Magyar, Romanian – here he makes as if to spit again – gypsy or German or Jew, we are first, all of us, of Transylvania. It is in the blood, my friend. It is in the soil.

Germans, too, Fogg thinks. A minority in this mountainous land, like the Jews – but their fate in this war is very different. He says, You style yourself after him?

– Of course! Vlad was defender of Transylvania.

Fogg isn’t sure what to make of that. Had found a beat-up old volume of Stoker’s
Drakula
, in English, that the partisans, for whatever reason, kept. Two names, handwritten inside it, suggested both previous recon officers had had it in their possession at some point. Fogg saw it as an ill-omen. Avoided the book.

– The land and the forests shaped me, Drakul declares. I am of this soil. I
am
the soil!

He tends to speak in this fashion, when he speaks at all. Declaiming insane proclamations. His men hanging on to his every word. An assemblage of misfits, crooks and the damaged. See this Übermensch as some demi-god, as Vlad Third Reincarnate. Fogg, shivering despite the heat from the fire, tries to draw the conversation, if you can call it that, back to more pressing matters.

– Brigadeführer Hans von Wolkenstein, he says.

A sudden silence around the fire. The men turn black gazes, black as night, on this Englishman, this
Fogg
. Drakul is still. A piece of night, of old leather, a bat man in this land full of ancient horror stories.

–
Der Wolfsmann
, he says. But quietly. His voice so soft it makes Fogg shiver. As soft as when he speaks the order to impale his prisoners.

– Yes, Fogg says. Into that silence. Wraps his coat around him tighter. Nervous. The fog hovers at the edge of the clearing. When Fogg is nervous the fog responds. Though it is strangely different here, in the high altitude of the mountains. The fog here responds more clearly, almost eagerly, its touch on the skin is like the touch of silk. Yes, der Wolfsmann, he says, whispering the words.

– What of him? Drakul says, at last. There is a nervous relaxation around the fire. The men turn back to their own affairs, the silence broken. But in this renewed conversation, Fogg nevertheless knows that they’re listening.

– My masters in London are very interested in
Herr
Wolkenstein, Fogg says.

– So, Drakul says. Seems to lose interest. Examines his nails in the light of the fire. They are long and jagged like talons. Fogg once again wonders what he was like before the change. Before Vomacht. The name brings uncomfortable feelings back. Feelings he had hoped to forget. Had pushed deep inside, into the dark recesses of the mind.

– So, Fogg says.

– He is a bloody Nazi, what, Drakul says. A bad imitation of Fogg’s accent. His companions laugh, dutifully. Come on, Drakul, Fogg says. Hates that name. Give me something I can use.

– Yes, he is here, Drakul says. Herr Count von Wolkenstein. Der Wolfsmann.
Ja
?

No more laughing. The fire casts a pale ring of light. At the edge of darkness, a young boy – Pèter? Something like that – whispers:
Wolfskommando
.

The boy’s eyes as round and pale as moons. Drakul throws him a glance like a dagger. The boy flinches.

–
Ja
, so, Drakul says. Wolfskommando.

Sounds studiously bored.

Department F of the Gestapo. Übermenschen hunters. Made up of the worst of Nazi Übermenschen themselves and the dregs of European society, a band of Germans and Ukrainians and Poles, a couple of Frenchmen, a plethora of Scandinavians. The wolf man found them, the wolf man trained them, the wolf man set them wild and free on this godforsaken corner of the world. Das Wolfskommando.

– He wants you, Fogg says. Understanding dawning. Drakul smiles, his teeth like filed stakes. His men laugh. As though at the punchline of a joke.

– Ach, it is so, Drakul says. Nodding.

Wolf versus fucking bat, Fogg thinks, but doesn’t say. And I, Drakul says, and pauses, flashing again this smile, this almost boyish grin. And I want
him
, he says, so softly it is hard for Fogg to catch the words.

46.
TRANSYLVANIA
1944

When Fogg thinks of the Carpathians, years later, it is with a mixture of horror and awe. Of the sun rising over a barren hillside, over men like scarecrows impaled on stakes driven into the frozen ground. No flies to mar their faces, frozen in screams of agony. The bodies preserved almost beautifully, in that cold, clean air.

But he tries, very hard, not to think of Transylvania at all.

– Here they come.

The first trucks of the military convoy come around the bend, down below on the mountain road. Drakul and his men high above, concealed from view. Fogg tagging along. The sun high in the sky. Sunlight breaking through ice crystals in the peaks high above. Trees bathed in sunlight. The river Maros snaking in the distance in the valley where the city lies. Fogg shifting weight on the hard ground. Binoculars hard against his skin, his eyes feel trapped within them.

– Are you sure?

Drakul laughs, softly. The smell of earth and dust. Has a network of informants spread out across the towns and villages of Transylvania. The same devotion that his men show him. Admiration or fear, Fogg doesn’t know. A mixture of both. You don’t cross Drakul.

Fogg watches the convoy. It goes slowly, the mountain pass is dangerous, the curves sharp, no rails to stop them from plunging hundreds of feet down. Heavy armoured trucks. In the middle of the convoy a jeep, a ramrod figure in the passenger seat, Fogg focuses the binoculars, sees. A mixture of loathing and that fear he can’t quite control. Bad blood, a history. History is made of cut-up pieces, like raw meat. Like open wounds. This one hurts. Paris. Things it’s better not to think about. Too dangerous. Still. Paris. Like a gaping wound in Fogg’s soul.