The Madagaskar Plan Page 4

  “On your knees.”

  Burton hesitated until the revolver was prodded more forcefully against his head.

  “You’re Burton Cole,” said Lyall. It was a statement rather than a question.

  “No.”

  Lyall reached into his jacket to retrieve something; the whole time the revolver stayed against Burton’s skull. “Who are you then?”

  “I heard the place was empty; I thought I’d break in, see what I could find.”

  “Most burglars don’t carry Browning HPs.”

  “It’s from when I was in the army. I haven’t taken anything. You can let me go.”

  Lyall found what he was looking for and tutted. He thrust a card in front of Burton.

  It was Burton’s military record; Cranley must have retrieved it from the War Office. On the inside was a photo taken against a white backdrop. It had been snapped a decade earlier, when he had signed up and immediately been demoted: his Legion service counted for little with the British Army. He hadn’t cared; he wanted to fight the Germans. Burton looked at his younger self. My God, he thought, what happened to that boy?

  “You were captured at Dunkirk,” said Lyall, pinching the shoulder of Burton’s dove suit.

  “No. I got out.”

  “Lucky bastard.” Thirteen years later, his voice bridled. “I spent six months in a POW camp, and Halifax* called it a victory.” He cocked the Webley.

  “Wait,” said Burton. “There was a woman. Madeleine.”

  “You mean the Jew?”

  “I came back for her. What happened?”

  “Russell dealt with it. He was very keen. You know how it is with those kids who missed the war.”

  “Russell?”

  “Mr. Russell. The little terrier downstairs. The one who’s going to walk funny from now on.”

  “What did he do to her?”

  No reply.

  Burton twisted round. There was an unpitying expression in Lyall’s eyes. “What did he do?”

  Another prod of the revolver. “Keep forward.”

  Burton’s gaze came to rest on the tiles in front of him. He’d been laying them the afternoon before he left for Africa, accompanied by the sound of Alice playing outside. He couldn’t get the lines straight, no matter how hard he concentrated: as the tiles went beneath the bathtub, they grew more and more skewed. In the end, Maddie said she would redo it.

  “You married?” asked Burton.

  “I was.”

  “What if it was your wife? You’ve got to tell me. You owe me that at least.”

  “Four weeks we’ve been waiting for you. Four weeks in this shithole, Christmas cut short. No heating, no decent food. There’s not even a pub nearby.” A blast of stale tobacco breath. “I don’t owe you anything.”

  Burton was still looking at the tiles. There was a stack of them under the bath where they had been lifted. Madeleine must have started it while he was in Kongo, using a chisel to pry them up, ready to be laid again, straight as a German road this time.

  He could see the handle of the chisel, almost hidden from view beneath the belly of the tub.

  “You’ve never killed before,” said Burton.

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Then why aren’t I over the plughole?”

  “What?”

  “There’ll be less mess. You can wash it straight down.”

  There was a long pause. Downstairs, Russell was still bawling. Finally, Lyall grunted. “Go on then.”

  Burton shuffled forward on his knees, feeling the pressure of the revolver ease against his head. In the orchard, acid had swilled in his throat; now he let it overflow. He snatched Lyall’s ankle, yanked it upward, sent him tumbling. There was an ear-bursting blast from his revolver. Burton reached under the bath, grabbed the chisel. Buried it in Lyall’s groin.

  Lyall shrieked, swinging his revolver. Another bullet sparked against enamel.

  Burton spun round, found a fistful of Lyall’s hair, and smashed his face into the washbasin. He yanked his head back up and this time drove it into the mirror. Once, twice—then in a frenzy. Glass cascaded everywhere. The fury that had burrowed inward since Africa was free; it came out howling. He thought of his failure to avenge his parents and slay Hochburg. He thought of all the men under his command in Africa who died; Patrick, his oldest friend, had been killed in Angola. He thought of Madeleine, and Russell manhandling her. Had she cried out for Burton? The tendons in his neck were rigid. He smashed Lyall’s limp body harder, a piston against the wall.

  Then he stopped, chest heaving.

  He let Lyall slither to the floor and put his stump out to steady himself, nausea rising. Around his boots was an archipelago of silver fragments. Burton caught crazy, distorted images of himself: his blood-flecked face; sleepless eyes that were darker than he ever remembered. A laugh escaped him. He imagined what Patrick would say, shaking his head at the pieces of broken mirror. That’s a barrel of bad luck, boy. He chased away the voice: the guilt was too intense.

  Downstairs, Russell had left a trail as he dragged himself toward the front door. It was almost nightfall. Burton stood over him and demanded to know what he had done to Madeleine.

  When there was no reply, he pressed his boot against Russell’s leg and relished the scream. He asked again before squatting by him, placing his Browning inside the hollow of Russell’s good knee.

  The man in the suit struggled briefly, then sagged, nodding his fleshy head. “We took her,” he said. “From the house.”

  “You mean in Hampstead?”

  He nodded once more, forehead studded with sweat.

  “Where did you go?”

  “It was the governor’s orders. I was just doing my job.”

  Burton screwed the muzzle of the Browning into Russell’s knee. “Where?”

  Russell seemed in a daze, whispering something over and over. Burton couldn’t make it out; he leaned closer to hear. The face below him turned to a snarl.

  There was the flick of a switchblade.

  Scalding filaments flared along Burton’s shoulder. Russell withdrew the knife and went to thrust again. Burton fired. At such close range, the bullet whipped the fat man’s body over. Burton rolled him back—his chest was a quagmire—and clamped his hand on the wound to stem the flow. Russell was convulsing, disbelief in his eyes. He sucked in sodden gulps of air.

  “Where did you take her?” begged Burton. He applied more pressure to the wound and put his mouth against Russell’s, desperately trying to breathe the life back into him. “Where?”

  The blood between his fingers slackened and stilled. Russell stared through him, his lips locked in a cruel, self-satisfied rictus.

  Burton sat up, wiping the dead man from his mouth, then reached around to check the wound in his shoulder. His shirt was sopping; pins and needles teemed the length of his arm to his stump.

  “If it still hurts,” said Burton, flexing the elbow, “it’s not that bad.” One of Patrick’s sayings: the wisdom of the Legion. Patrick had been his commanding officer.

  He returned his attention to Russell, checking his pockets for any indication of Madeleine’s fate. Inside his jacket he found a money clip (four crimson-moist notes) and what felt like a wallet. He flicked it open and found himself staring at a photo of Russell. Opposite was a badge: Metropolitan Police, Special Branch.

  * * *

  Burton dragged the two bodies out to the septic tank, lifted the cover, and dumped them, watching their faces as they were sucked into the shit. The violence had purged him: he felt calm, focused, the howling anxiety held at bay. He returned to the house and searched it by flashlight. Every room was the same.

  It was as if Madeleine had never been here.

  Her clothes were gone. Clothes, coats, shoes and stockings, woolen scarves, her toiletries, the bottles of nail polish, toothbrush, the hot-water bottle she kept in the airing cupboard and had nicknamed Clarissa. All the things she was gradually moving in, ready for the day she left her hus
band. Her books were no longer on the shelves, each volume removed individually, leaving only Burton’s; the bookcase looked like a smile smashed by a knucklebuster. In the sitting room there should have been a painting of the synagogue where her parents had married, one of the few possessions Maddie managed to bring from Vienna. A lack of relics from the past was something she shared with Burton. Cranley disapproved of the picture, so Maddie had brought it to the farm. Burton skimmed his hand over the wall: whoever had taken the painting had also removed the nail that held it up.

  He grew more frantic, needing to find some proof that they had shared this house. Even the Weetabix she ate in the morning with spoonfuls of white sugar was missing. Burton tried the cloakroom under the stairs. There was a long oval mirror on the wall where Madeleine combed her hair, the area beneath it always patterned with dark strands. Burton got to his knees and shone the flashlight the length of the skirting board. Someone had swept the floorboards dustless.

  He traced the smooth grain of the wood, hoping to discover a stray hair, then rushed back upstairs to the main bedroom, lifted the bedstead, and heaved it over. The sound reverberated through the silent house. The effort made him wince: the pain in his shoulder was spreading. In the gloom, his fingers followed the grooves between the floorboards until he found the loose one, pried it up, and reached into the cavity below. Cobwebs brushed his hand. Out came the jewelry box; this was where he hid his gun when Alice stayed. He opened the box.

  Inside was a pouch of diamonds: the initial down payment to assassinate Hochburg. When he’d accepted the mission, he had no idea that Cranley was behind everything or that it would provoke a war. He shook the pouch and heard the stones rattle against one another before shoving them into his pocket. He dipped into the box again and pulled out something much more precious.

  In the flashlight’s beam, the yellow looked jaundiced. It was Madeleine’s Star of David armband, the one she’d been forced to wear in Vienna. He lifted it to his nose, hoping to inhale her scent. Nothing but an ancient mustiness.

  “Oh, Maddie,” Burton whispered. “What happened?” He slipped the band into his jerkin, wanting it close to his skin. “Where are you?”

  But he was kidding himself. The final look on Russell’s face had told him everything.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Stanleystadt, Kongo

  28 January, 12:30

  EVERYWHERE HOCHBURG WENT, a single, detested word was only a breath away.

  It was on the lips of the citizens, half-spoken by soldiers as they hunkered down in preparation for the Belgians’ next attack. Worst of all, his generals were beginning to murmur it, the same generals who four months earlier had been poised to conquer Rhodesia and then all of southern Africa.

  Surrender.

  “Oberstgruppenführer, they’re coming!”

  Hochburg raised his binoculars and scanned the far shore: it was the Otraco district, with its rotting cathedral—the undeveloped part of Stanleystadt. He was on the opposite embankment of the River Kongo, in one of the gun emplacements hidden among the palm trees. Around him the city boomed and shook. The thunderclap of artillery hadn’t left his head since he’d escaped the inferno of his garden. Combat fatigues were his uniform now, the material streaked like green tiger fur. Through the smoke he glimpsed a dozen inflatables laden with men, the same mélange of Belgian and negroid faces he’d seen in the Schädelplatz. The boats were marked with SS runes.

  “The order was for everything—everything—to be destroyed on the far side.”

  “They took us by surprise,” said the Hauptsturmführer next to him. “There wasn’t time.”

  “These guerrillas have nothing. If they defeat us, it’ll be because we gave them the means.”

  The air stank of tar and petrol. Hochburg wondered if the men in the boats could smell it. They were almost across the river, the sluggish current drawing them toward the wreckage of the Giesler bridge, the city’s main crossing. Hochburg had ordered it dynamited the previous night; only stumps of concrete were left above the waterline. He’d always thought it too small; they’d rebuild with six lanes instead of four.

  “Now?” said the Hauptsturmführer. He held an MG48 machine gun in a tight embrace.

  “You see that?” said Hochburg, pointing to a wrecked kiosk. Only weeks before, it had served pretzels and Lebkuchen to Stanleystadters strolling along the embankment. “Inside are engineers. They await my signal.” He revealed a flare gun. “Not a single shot is to be fired until then.”

  “But if they land—”

  “You’re eager to kill, Hauptsturmführer. That’s a welcome change. But wait for my command.”

  A shell burst farther along the embankment. Palm fronds quivered above them.

  Hochburg didn’t need his binoculars now. He could make out the faces on the boat: the wild-men eyes and ruffian brows. Those Belgians with any wealth had fled abroad before the German invasion of 1944; the guerrillas mostly consisted of miners and stevedores, men with little option other than to stay and resist the Nazis. They had endured years of hardship in the jungle, fighting an insurgency. But then it was those with the least who made the most tenacious warriors. That was the lesson Hochburg was learning. It had made the Belgian guerrillas strong while the new German population—with their air-conditioned apartments, refrigerators, and shiny Volkswagens—had become complacent.

  The first of the inflatables ran ashore. Boots hit mud, then slipped on a slope of oil.

  Hochburg reached for the flare gun. The Belgians’ expressions were a jumble of relief and suspicion that they were landing unopposed. He let the insurgents struggle halfway up the bank, their trousers weighed down with sludge, before he fired the flare. At his sign, the entire shore exploded in flames. The shore, the steps leading to the embankment, even the river itself, with its film of gasoline.

  Hochburg stood mesmerized, the skin on his bald scalp wrinkling with the heat. The fire towered over Stanleystadt; it had a holy, shimmering quality. And as he watched it burn, a notion seized hold of Hochburg’s mind.

  If only he had the means to engulf the whole city. The whole of Kongo.

  * * *

  Hochburg’s jeep weaved through the streets, the driver spinning the wheel to avoid piles of rubble. Hardly a window had survived anywhere in the city. Chains of tattered lanterns festooned the buildings; serpents of tinsel, now clogged with brick dust, were coiled around lampposts. The battle of Stanleystadt had begun with a surprise bombardment the night before Christmas, or Julfest, as Nazi Party ideologues insisted it be called.

  He returned to SS headquarters on Eiskeller Strasse and was met by Zelman. Even in the gritty smoke, his deputy’s eyes remained unblinking. Sometimes Hochburg wanted to snap his fingers in front of them or find Zelman’s wife and have her shot while he was forced to watch—anything to elicit a bat of the eyelid.

  “Are my generals still here?” demanded Hochburg as they strode into the vestibule.

  The space was dominated by von Kursell’s portrait of Himmler: twenty-eight square meters of oil on canvas. The Reichsführer’s face was askew and peppered with shrapnel, as if he were suffering from shingles. Despite the Reichsführer’s eyes being in every public building, Hochburg ran Kongo with limited interference from Germania. So long as boats brimming with minerals, timber, cotton, and green bananas continued to flow to the Reich, Hochburg administered the colony as he saw fit, even if that meant war. To extend the borders of Kongo farther into southern Africa was Germany’s right, he told Himmler. Its destiny.

  Zelman handed Hochburg a damp towel. “The generals are waiting in the conference room.”

  “No tactical withdrawal to the bunker then?” he replied, mopping his neck.

  A weak smile. “If you recall, Oberstgruppenführer, you locked them in.”

  The lift wasn’t working. Hochburg bounded up the staircase, past bandaged soldiers slumped on the steps.

  Zelman continued his update: “Insurgent units have surrounded the enti
re city. Every district reports heavy shelling. All roads out are blocked.”

  “And elsewhere?”

  “Elisabethstadt says the siege is worsening. By the hour. They can’t hold on much longer.”

  “What about the Reichsführer? Have you made contact yet?”

  “We’ve opened a line to Wewelsburg, but communications are proving problematic.” Wewelsburg: Himmler’s castle in Westphalia, the spiritual headquarters of the SS. “We’re still trying to connect.”

  “I want to know as soon as you have his office on the phone,” said Hochburg.

  He continued his rapid ascent, with Zelman struggling to keep up. Occasionally the building shuddered. On the seventh floor he stormed into the conference room. The blast curtains were drawn, leaving the room in a murky light. Most of the generals were huddled together over a map. Shaking heads, murmuring. They straightened their backs as he entered. In the corner was a decorated fir tree that no one had bothered to remove; beneath it lay Fenris, dozing with one eye half open.

  “I hope you put my absence to good use,” said Hochburg, taking his place at the head of the table. He gestured for everyone to sit. “What plans for the counterattack?”

  Nobody replied.

  Hochburg scanned the faces in front of him. The air-conditioning had stopped working. They all glistened, the collars of their uniforms wet. Outside: the relentless beat of artillery.

  It was General Ockener who finally spoke for the group. He had a hewn face and thinning white hair atop a beach-resort tan. “Hochburg, we feel this is unacceptable.” He spoke with the measured tone of a man who wanted to scream. “To leave us in here with no refreshment, nowhere to relieve ourselves—”

  Hochburg smelled urine. “It would appear that one of you can’t control his functions.”

  “You locked the door,” shrieked a voice from the other end of the table. “This is the biggest target in the city. We could have been killed.”