The Madagaskar Plan Read online

  Now it writhed in flame.

  He barely registered the intensity of the heat. Fenris broke free of the lead and galloped through the foliage to where cultivated land and jungle merged. For a long moment Hochburg stood motionless, his jaw listing and feeble; then he chased after the dog, into the inferno.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Suffolk, England

  28 January, 15:30

  “STOP THE CAR.”

  “We’re not there yet.”

  “Just stop!”

  The taxi driver braked sharply.

  “Now back up. I saw something.”

  The driver went to reply, then thought better of it. He put the car in gear and reversed down the empty lane. On either side was a wall of dank woodland: oak, ash, elm. Fading sunlight cut through the bare canopy.

  “Here.”

  The car came to a halt again.

  Burton Cole climbed out and stared at the gap in the trees. He felt a tightening in his throat. Above him, branches creaked in the wind. He never should have sent the telegrams.

  “It’s well hidden,” said the driver, following his gaze. “Yours?”

  Burton shook his head. He had wheat-blond hair and eyes the color of an autumn afternoon, calm but alert, hard as a rifle butt. Concealed among the trunks was a black Riley RME. He put his hand—his right hand, his only hand—into his pocket and pulled out a banknote. “You can drop me here,” he said, offering it through the window.

  “No way I got change for five bob.”

  “Take the rest of the day off, buy yourself a drink. And if anyone asks, you never came out here. Or saw me.”

  “Is it the law?” The driver looked uncertainly at the money.

  “Jealous husband,” answered Burton with a forced wryness.

  The driver gave an understanding nod and crumpled the note in his hand. “Couple of pints and I can’t remember a thing.”

  Burton lifted out his haversack and shut the door. He was unshaven, wearing a sheepskin jerkin under a secondhand suit. The trousers and jacket were cut from scratchy brown rayon; sweat from a stranger’s body lingered in the cloth. When Hitler had returned the Dunkirk POWs to Britain, rather than sending them in uniform, he’d ordered a quarter of a million of these “dove suits” hastily made. Few of the homecoming prisoners wanted their new clothes. They were to be found heaped up in rag-and-bone stalls, promised to clothe generations of vagrants.

  The taxi made a three-point turn and accelerated away in the direction of the railway station where Burton had arrived earlier that afternoon.

  Moments later—silence.

  As soon as he was alone, Burton reached into his haversack. He took out his Browning HP pistol, inserted a clip, then secured it in his waistband. He was less than a mile from home, and knew this spot well. Before he bought the farm he’d parked here with Madeleine on several occasions. It was a discreet place to leave the car while they vanished into the trees to feel a bed of leaves beneath them. Perhaps the Riley belonged to a couple looking for some privacy.

  He crossed over to it and touched the bonnet: the metal was cold. Peering through the window, he found nothing except an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. All the doors were locked.

  Burton tugged the collar of his jacket around his neck; his breath smoked the air. This was no weather for lovers.

  The mud revealed footprints—two pairs, men’s—that had left the car and joined the road heading toward the farmhouse. Burton followed them, his pace soon quickening, boots drumming a lonely sound. They were the ones he’d acquired in Angola, taken from the feet of a dead man, the laces badly tied. He’d never imagined how difficult it would be to do one-handed.

  He had been a fool to send the telegrams.

  The first was from Cape Town, before he was admitted to the hospital, when he was delirious with exhaustion and self-recrimination. The message had been dispatched to Madeleine’s house in London, all caution abandoned. Her husband had sent Burton to his death in Kongo—what might he have reaped back in England? YOU ARE IN DANGER, it read. LEAVE IMMEDIATELY! ON MY WAY BACK TO YOU. Even in his fevered state he changed the last words before they were tapped in: ON MY WAY HOME. He sent another from Mombasa and then one more from Alexandria, on Christmas Eve, the words identical, each message increasingly desperate. It was probably too late, but he couldn’t bear any more days of unresting seas creeping by while he was impotent to help; he didn’t dare to think what might have happened. There were no replies.

  Woodland gave way to open fields. Ten minutes later, Burton was staring at a weather-beaten sign: Saltmeade Farm. This moment had sustained him on his long journey. He’d clung to the image of the windows burning bright, the smell of applewood curling from the chimney, Maddie opening the door in her cornflower-blue dress, her belly swollen with the baby she would soon have. Their first child. He would clasp her and sink to his knees, beg forgiveness for leaving her to kill Hochburg in order that he could forgive himself.

  The sign brought neither relief nor welcome, only anxiety and the anger that had throbbed inside him since he’d left Africa.

  Five hundred yards of potholed driveway led to the farm; from here the house wasn’t visible. He hurried on, assuming it must be a trap, but the murmurings of hope were too strong. That’s why he’d come to the farm first.

  “Please, God,” whispered Burton to the empty heavens. “Please.”

  He hadn’t prayed since he was a child. Not after Hochburg took his parents, not at Dunkirk when German artillery turned the coast to offal. Not even when he lay trapped in the consulate in Angola with no hope of escape. Now the words tumbled from his lips, pleading for this one moment of grace. If only he had enough faith, Madeleine would be waiting.

  A gust of air shrieked down the driveway. Nearby Burton heard the shimmer of a wind chime, its sound thin and mournful.

  Suddenly he felt exposed: a man walking into the sniper’s sights. He stepped away from the drive. He would reach the house from behind, screened by rows of apple and quince trees. It took him several minutes to make his way there. Once he slipped on the grass, almost fell; close to the ground, he smelled the night’s frost gathering in the soil.

  Rows of hawthorns created a natural barrier around the orchard to protect the fruit from the wind. As Burton approached, he sensed something different, something unnatural. It was as if the lay of the land had been distorted. He squeezed through a gap in the hedge and caught sight of the house: the windows were full of shadows, the chimney lifeless. But it wasn’t the farmhouse that absorbed him; instead, his eyes took in the scene around him.

  The breath died in Burton’s throat.

  He swayed, the haversack toppling from his shoulder. Then his legs sagged and he dropped to his knees.

  * * *

  Cranley.

  Only Cranley could have done this.

  Burton had to look away. It was as if he’d taken a blow to his chest, its ferocity deadening his whole body. Two ravens watched him, like sentries in sleek black uniforms.

  He had discovered the farm two years earlier. It had been April; he remembered that because of the morning’s news: the Duke and Duchess of Windsor had accepted an invitation to the Führer’s birthday festivities in Germania. People didn’t know whether to be outraged or keep their heads down. Madeleine was at the family’s second home, on the Suffolk coast, for a few days while her husband and Alice remained in London. Burton picked her up, and they drove inland, where there was no chance of meeting someone she knew. They went walking, exploring woods and meadows, stopping for lunch by a tumbledown wall that overlooked the farm. As they ate cheese-and-chutney sandwiches, they daydreamed about living in a place like this. It became one of their regular spots. They were both drawn to the farm’s isolation and weary, dilapidated state. It was a place that yearned for renewal.

  Then, the same week they had agreed to make a life together, a FOR SALE sign appeared.

  “I don’t believe in coincidence,” said Madeleine, st
ruggling to contain a smile as they drove past.

  “Good,” replied Burton. “Neither do I.”

  The owner’s son had shown them around, apologizing for how ramshackle everything was. He explained that his father had recently died, that he himself had no urge to stay on: the work was too hard, the profits meager, all the more so given Germany’s agricultural policies. With the vast fertile plains of Russia and endless bounty of Africa, Hitler had achieved his goal of autarky. Thereafter Germany began exporting food, undercutting British farmers.

  “Of course there are the orchards,” said the son. “That’s a good business. People will always want English apples.” He led them to the fruit trees, the branches ablaze with blossoms.

  “These are quinces,” said Madeleine, gulping down the scent.

  “We have apples and quinces,” said the son. “Pears, plums, damsons, cherries.”

  “Quinces are my favorite.” She slipped her arm through Burton’s. “Do you know what they represent?”

  “Eve took one,” he replied, thinking back to his childhood; his parents had been missionaries. “In the Garden of Eden.”

  “I don’t mean fairy tales. In ancient Greece they were eaten by the bride and groom on their wedding night.”

  “Really?” He loved the way her mind was a trove of knowledge from a childhood spent in books. “But we don’t believe in coincidences.”

  Three months later, after Burton had borrowed a fortune from his aunt, the farm and orchards were theirs. Sometimes Burton wondered if he’d done the right thing: the call to adventure was impossible to silence completely, no matter what he said to reassure Madeleine. There was more work to be done than he’d realized; he discovered he was less good with tools than weapons. But it was the first home he’d had since childhood, and there were moments—repairing a patch of roof, the aroma of burnt toast in the kitchen, Maddie’s slippers nestled by their bed—when he felt a satisfaction he’d never known. A belonging life had denied him.

  The grass was soaking into his trousers. Burton stood, his face hot, and startled the ravens. They took to the air, croaking with laughter, and soared into the low, red sun. Burton headed in the opposite direction, walking through the orchard.

  Cranley had taken an axe to the trees, hacking them down. Trees that cropped showers of golden fruit, that had built their rings over decades, were reduced to stumps. It had been done some time ago, guessed Burton, before the winter: the exposed wood was blackened with frost. Split bowers lay strewn across the ground like bodies gunned down on a battlefield.

  The act itself looked frenzied, as if Cranley had been unable to control himself. Burton heard him in his head: the terrible chopping sound, trunks cracking as they tumbled. Cranley howling. Not all the trees had been felled. Some showed gaping wounds but were still standing; others remained untouched altogether. Burton reached out for an intact one. Needed the reassurance of the bark against his palm.

  Acid was swilling in his gullet; he wanted to vomit. And with it came a fury to surpass Cranley’s, a fury that had been growing inside him for months.

  He climbed over a trunk and continued to the house—

  Stopped immediately.

  He’d seen someone in an upstairs window. A face in the gloom, the outline of a white shirt and tie. Then the figure was gone, only the sway of the curtain suggesting a stranger in his home.

  Burton surveyed the destruction in the orchard. They were waiting for him. Maybe Cranley himself.

  Good, he thought, the rage leavening in him. Good.

  He reached for his Browning, tugging it from his belt, and headed toward the farmhouse.

  CHAPTER THREE

  FROM INSIDE HE heard a voice. A familiar, impossible voice: “Africa has the shape of a pistol,” it intoned, “and Kongo is the trigger…”

  Someone had forced the back door open, the old frame standing no chance against a crowbar.

  Burton pushed it inward with the stump of his arm. His left hand had been severed during his escape from Angola. In the months since, he’d learned to quell the anguish when he glanced at his empty sleeve, but the lack of weight beyond his wrist continued to feel unnatural. Keeping his gun in front of himself, he stepped into the kitchen.

  He was expecting that homey smell of must and apples; instead, the stench of tobacco hit him. Fading daylight washed the walls and cabinets in a crimson gloom. Burton tried the light switch. Nothing. On the table was a heavy-duty rubber flashlight. Next to it a half-cut loaf of bread and a mess of crumbs; a jar stood open beside a spoon leaking jam. Cigarette ends had been stubbed out on the wood, leaving a score of burn marks.

  The fury fluxed in Burton again. It wasn’t the intrusion; it was the slovenly indifference of it, the act of someone who didn’t care if they were discovered. He thought of the regimented order Cranley insisted upon in his house. Madeleine found it stifling.

  The voice was coming from the hallway, and it had been intentionally amplified. He crept toward it, straining to hear, over the jowly intonation, anything that might indicate where someone was hiding: the creak of a floorboard, a suppressed cough.

  “… We must not allow the continent to become a German dominion,” declared Churchill. In the background, a crowd was split between applause and jeers. “I therefore urge the prime minister to reconsider the clever, shameful compromise of his foreign secretary…”

  The hallway was empty, doors opening off it onto sunless rooms. Burton glanced up the staircase: there was no face peering through the banister. On the side table was a Grundig transistor radio, one of those new portable devices from Germany that everyone seemed desperate to own and that neither Burton nor Madeleine was interested in.

  “… to appeal instead across the Atlantic to the new president. The Nazis will only be contained with the assistance of the United States—”

  He flicked the off switch with the muzzle of his Browning. Africa was the land of his birth, where he’d spent most of his life: first in Togo, then, after his parents’ deaths, in the Sahara as a soldier of the French Foreign Legion. During the Nazi conquest, he’d fought across the continent as a mercenary. He hoped never to hear the name of the place again.

  Burton sensed a rush of air. He lurched backward as a crowbar smashed into the wall. It swung a second time, wielded by a man in a suit who glided silently across the floor. Iron thumped Burton’s shoulder. He dropped his Browning, watched it clatter past his assailant’s socked feet: he wasn’t wearing shoes.

  Burton stamped on his foot.

  The man tumbled forward, grabbing him. They both crashed into the table, then the floor, knocking over the radio. Churchill’s voice boomed out again—“Britain is weaker than we admit; we need American might”—followed by a rainstorm of static.

  Burton was on his back, a chubby weight on top of him, fists blurring his vision. He scooped up the radio and smashed it into the other man’s head. His hand came away full of bloody transistor parts.

  Upstairs, a door opened. Floorboards groaned.

  In the hallway, the suit was already on his feet. He kicked Burton and sent him sprawling. Burton landed hard, something digging into his back. Through his jacket he could make out a metal L-shape; he reached for it.

  The man in the suit towered over him, wagging the crowbar. “Lyall,” he shouted up the stairs. “I got the bastard.” He turned to Burton. “You broke my fucking radio. You know how much it cost me?”

  Burton shot him in the kneecap.

  The man dropped, clutched his spewing leg.

  “Where’s Madeleine?”

  “Lyall!”

  “What did you do to her?”

  A hiss and nick of plaster as the wall behind him exploded. Lyall was at the top of the stairs, a revolver in his hand. He wore an identical black suit and dainty, slip-on shoes, his lips and chin masked behind a thick beard. Burton aimed the Browning and let off two blasts before charging after him.

  By the time he reached the landing, Lyall had vanished; all
the bedrooms were shut. It was like a game he’d played with Hochburg as a child: the three doors of the washhouse, Onkle Walter reducing him and his mother to terror and giggles as he burst from one with his lion roars. Burton’s father had been a trusting doter to let Hochburg into their lives. He checked Alice’s room first, pistol raised in front of him. It was dank, stripped bare except for a sleeping bag that didn’t belong here; through the window the fields were growing dark gray. He wondered what lies Cranley had told Alice about her mother.

  Burton moved to the next room—also empty—then the master bedroom. The axe that savaged the orchard had been at work here.

  There were gashes in the walls and the wardrobe, one of its doors hanging from the hinges like a broken jaw. The bedsheets had been ripped off and the mattress slashed open. Burton’s clothes were strewn across the floor; they stank of urine. The Browning faltered in his grip.

  In that moment a revolver was pressed into his cheek, squeezing the flesh against his teeth. “Drop the gun,” said Lyall. His voice was gravelly like an old woman’s.

  Burton let the Browning slip from his hand. Clunk.

  “Hands on your head. Turn round.”

  He was marched out of the room, the revolver against the back of his skull, and guessed at once where he was being taken.

  If Madeleine cared for one luxury, it was bathing. After fleeing Vienna, she told him, she’d gone years without a proper bath, instead scrubbing herself clean with a washcloth from a bowl or sharing the facilities, and sometimes gray water, at the public bathhouse on Merlin Street; for hygiene reasons, Jews were allowed only on Thursday evenings. After marrying Cranley, she could spend hours up to her chin in hot, scented bubbles. The one time Burton had seen her bathroom in Hampstead—the swirls of Italian marble, taps that glittered—his mood slumped; he wanted to give her the same. No, better. When he learned that the farm had indoor plumbing it was another reason to buy the place.

  “Open the door,” said Lyall.

  They went through to a white enamel tub, toilet, and washbasin, below a mirror. The walls and floor were tiled, but crookedly. Lyall had prepared heaps of towels to make it easier to mop up after they’d finished with him.