The Madagaskar Plan (5 page)

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.

“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 husband. 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.