The Madagaskar Plan (9 page)

He had no reply. The needle broke his skin again.

His aunt sewed in silence till she finished and knotted the thread. She put a pad doused with liniment over his shoulder, secured it with a bandage, and draped the spare shirt over him. Then she took the blood-soaked tea towels to the sink and rinsed them under the tap.

Burton watched his aunt and wished he had told her about his affair with Madeleine long before—but he’d heard too many tales of his errant grandfather to share that confidence. He guessed she was offended by the lack of trust. What bound them was as shallow as blood: she’d needed a nephew to spoil, and he’d wanted a place to seem like home. That, and a woman they rarely spoke about. Burton had a sudden sense of his aunt when he was away and there were no party guests, only Pebble and the remorseless thud of the sea. He understood that loneliness, and so had Madeleine—that’s why the two women had befriended each other.

His aunt wrung out the tea towels and flicked her hands dry. “You’re as selfish as your mother,” she said, speaking with an ancient resentment he had never heard before. “She went to Africa without a thought of what she left behind.”

“It wasn’t like that with Maddie. I needed the truth.”

“Did you find it?”

He shook his head. “But I had to try. I wanted to lock up the past for good, and Madeleine understood that.”

“Eleanor had her justifications, too.”

“You always said she was a good woman.”

“She was everything an older sister should be. Clever, beautiful, brave as a lioness.” His aunt took off her bloodstained apron. “She was also feckless. Impetuous. A stupid, romantic fool chasing her dreams and to hell with the hearts she broke.”

Burton met his aunt’s eyes and realized that he had been wrong. It wasn’t resentment; it was exhaustion, a lifetime’s worth flowing from her as hot as it was futile.

“Your mother butterflied from one fancy to another,” she continued. “When she found the church, that was the worst. I begged her to stay here and help me save this house. Later I begged her not to marry your father, because I knew that one day she’d wake up next to an old man while she was still young. There’s no mystery, Burton, she ran off with this Hochburg. Nothing bad happened. And when her next whim came along, I’m sure she flitted away again.”

Burton answered in a hollowed-out voice. “Two years after they’d vanished, Hochburg returned. Alone. Who knows what wickedness he’d done to her. He set our home alight, torched the orphanage. Father was trapped inside. The children were in their beds.”

His aunt fell silent.

“I’ll never forget the screams or the sound of the timbers crashing. I’ll never forget that smell. It’s what I think of first when I think of my childhood.”

There was an unbearably long pause.

At last his aunt spoke: “It’s too late to talk like this.” Her whole demeanor looked eroded. “I need to sleep. You should rest, too.”

They said good night. Burton went upstairs to his usual room and slid beneath the sheets. They were icy and reeked of musty lavender. He was still staring at the ceiling as dawn cut through the curtains.

*   *   *

“I just remembered this,” said Pebble, bringing in a package along with a fresh pot of tea.

They were at the breakfast table, the air savory with kedgeree and buttered toast. Burton felt warm and full, his hair damp from a bath. He was skimming the front page of the
Telegraph:
President Robert A. Taft, inaugurated in Washington the previous week, had announced his first visit to the Reich to voice concerns about the Jews in Madagaskar and reaffirm his country’s neutrality; he would pass through London on his return. Burton took the package and checked the postmark. Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia.

“It arrived last year,” said his aunt. “I’m afraid I opened it.” Her face was smooth, but the foundation failed to hide the charcoal smudges beneath her eyes.

Burton reached inside: two passports, his and Patrick’s. Prior to the Kongo mission, the team had been asked for next-of-kin addresses to send personal effects should the worst happen. He hadn’t wanted Madeleine to learn of his death that way, so he had given his aunt’s details; Patrick was of the same mind. He opened his old friend’s passport and saw a familiar face scowling at him. Patrick gone, Maddie gone: could it really be true? The world seemed lonelier than ever. Patrick was American with a teenage daughter in Baltimore. Burton decided that he would find her and explain everything that had happened to her father. Give her a share of the diamonds in his pocket. It was a small penance, but it was all he had.

“I hope you’re going to keep us company for a while,” said his aunt.

“I want to catch the one o’clock train.”

“So soon? You should stay—it’s been too long since you were a guest. Your shoulder will need a few days.”

“It feels better.” He rolled it stiffly to prove the point; there had been no blood on the bedclothes.

An hour later they were walking the length of the driveway, to where a taxi waited. A mist had crept off the sea, shrouding everything in a bright whiteness that burned his eyes. Pebble had found him one of her husband’s tweed jackets to wear: more dead men’s clothes.

“You always have a home here,” said his aunt.

Burton thought of the septic tank on the farm. “I know.”

“It’s what your mother would have wanted. I shouldn’t have spoken so freely last night. I’m sure she was happy with your father. He doted on her, wouldn’t have left her—that’s what she needed. I never knew about Hochburg.”

“I should have kept him where he belonged, buried in the past, like Madeleine said.”

There was nothing else to say; it was all too painful.

He leaned forward to give his aunt the customary parting peck on the cheek. She took hold of him, hugging him as though she knew they would never meet again. He caught a ghostly trace of his mother. What would she have been like if she’d lived? Apart from their golden-blond curls, there was little resemblance between the sisters. The taxi honked its horn. He let go of his aunt.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

Burton had returned to Africa for the truth; it had led him through a maze to where he started from. “I need to find out what happened to Maddie. I can’t grieve for her till I do.” He swung his haversack over his good shoulder. “Then America—I’ve a promise to keep there.”

“And Cranley?” Her eyes bored into him. “You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?”

Burton shook his head, a reassuring smile on his lips. “I want to hurt him more than that.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Kongo

29 January, 10:00

WALTER HOCHBURG READ with a single eye. The sign was peeling, pitted with open sores of rust:

Union Minière du Haut-Katanga

SHINKOLOBWE MINE

Est. 1922

“Good health, good spirits—and high productivity.”

A thick black cross was painted through the words. In the top left corner a skull stencil had been added, along with the letters DESTA, indicating the SS earthworks company. Beneath the sign were a roofless sentry hut and a wall of mangy barbed wire; no gate.

He spoke to the man slung over his shoulder. The Focke-Wulf, its fuel tanks empty, had landed hard despite Hochburg’s wrestling with the controls. It bounced off the savannah … then furrowed into the earth. One of the wings broke away; the cockpit buckled and shattered. The copilot’s neck had been broken, but the gunner survived. Ignoring his own injuries, Hochburg dragged him from the wreckage and carried him through the rain-soaked night, driven by his need to reach Elisabethstadt. At least the terrain was easy: this was cattle country: rolling hills, few trees. “I promised you deliverance,” he said.

When there was no response, Hochburg lowered the gunner and pressed two fingers against his jugular. His pulse was silent.

A girl emerged from the hut. She was no more than thirteen, with blond plaits and the fierce little teeth of a civet. Around her waist was a grimacing skull belt, in her hand a rickety Karabiner rifle.

Hochburg heaved the gunner back onto his shoulder and headed toward her. Fenris limped at his side.

“Halt!”

When he ignored her, the girl fired a single shot. Mud exploded centimeters from his boot. She drew back the bolt to reload the weapon.

“Identify yourself.”

Despite the burrowing pain in his eye and limbs steeped in exhaustion, the sight of her skull buckle was welcome. A weary indulgence took over him. In their first months together, he and Eleanor tried to conceive a child
. Let it be a daughter,
she used to say. Often when he came face-to-face with girls he would look upon them and ruminate. Would Eleanor still have left him for Burton if they’d had a baby?

“We are a dog, a dead man … and Oberstgruppenführer Hochburg, governor-general of Kongo.” Fenris sniffed around her knees. “And you, my young Fräulein?”

The girl’s eyes widened, but she did not avert them. “I am not yet worthy of a rank, Oberstgruppenführer.”

“But you wear the skull.”

Remembering herself, she cracked the rifle to her side with well-drilled precision and held out her arm. “Heil Hitler!”

Hochburg indulged her once more—“Heil”—and motioned for her to stand at ease. “You are lucky this morning. Normally Fenris eats little girls.”

They walked through the gap in the fence to a dirt avenue bordered by decrepit barracks. The ground was encrusted with the tracks of huge vehicles—but the impressions were old, like the clawmarks of prehistoric beasts. Above, the sky threatened to open again.

“How long has the mine been closed?” asked Hochburg. He recognized the name Shinkolobwe from the endless flow of paperwork that crossed his desk; there had been some export kerfuffle over it a few years previously.

“Since before I was born,” replied the girl.

“Then why are you here?”

“The DESTA guards were sent to the front line, so we were brought in.”

“Has there been news from Elisabethstadt?”

She shook her head.

“I need to send a message there at once and arrange a helicopter. It’s urgent. Where is your commander?”

A puddle blocked their path. It was too deep and wide to cross, so they went round it. Fenris paused to lap the water.

“Interrogating prisoners, Oberstgruppenführer.”

A prickle of despair. He should have pushed himself harder through the night and left the dying gunner. “The British are this far north already?”

The girl didn’t answer but led him to a wooden hut painted marmalade red. Before entering, he laid down the dead man. Inside was a young woman dressed in the tan uniform of an Oberhelfer. Although SS membership was closed to women, a special corps—the SS-Helferin—existed for auxiliary roles: administrative staff, radio operators, camp guards. It was a boon for proud parents who only had daughters. She was talking on the phone, her voice as clenched and damp as her face.

“… there must be someone with the authority. Try Stanleystadt again. You have to find me someone. I can’t take responsibility.”

She looked up.

“Oberhelfer Lampedo,” said the sentry girl, “this is Oberstgruppenführer Hochburg.”

Without another word, Lampedo replaced the receiver. Hochburg recognized her type at once. The Party liked to cultivate them, women who were wholesome, beautiful, but considered themselves plain to the point of indifference: effortlessly exploitable. She stood to attention and dismissed his escort.

“I shall see you are given the
Silberspange,
” Hochburg called after her. The Silberspange was a silver clasp awarded to women of distinction in the SS.

The girl left beaming.

He addressed the Oberhelfer: “My plane crashed.”

“There’s no doctor here,” she apologized, “but we do have medical supplies.”

When the Focke-Wulf’s cockpit had shattered, a shard of glass lodged in his left eye; by nightfall it was swollen shut, the throbbing as deep as his gums. “It can wait.”

“It looks bad, Oberstgruppenführer. You must be in pain.”

“My priority is Elisabethstadt. I have to stop them from surrendering. Can you get me a line?”

Lampedo was already picking up the phone.

“I hear you have prisoners,” said Hochburg as they waited for a connection.

“We captured them last night.”

“On patrol?”

She curled the telephone wire around her fingers. “In the mine itself. They had cut through the perimeter fence. Were taking samples.”

“How many of them?”

“A team of four. One was shot trying to escape. We’re holding the others.”

“What have they told you?”

“Not much. I did try, Oberstgruppenführer, but they refused to cooperate.”

“The arrogance of the British will be their undoing.” He dabbed a bloody tear from his eye. “Elisabethstadt is not yet theirs, and already they steal our treasures.”

Lampedo creased her forehead in confusion. “The British?”

“Your prisoners. You said they were taking samples. But they’ll have nothing more.”

“There has been some misunderstanding, Oberstgruppenführer. The prisoners aren’t British.”

“Then who are they?”

She glanced down, as if it were her fault. “Americans.”

*   *   *

Before interrogation, always a good breakfast.

Hochburg sent orders to Elisabethstadt to keep fighting; a helicopter was requested. While he awaited its arrival, he would chat with their American guests. Although supplies at the mine were short, teenage girls flitted in with salami, some stale
Schwarzbrot
, and coffee, most blushing and tongue-tied. His favorite sentry returned with some painkillers for his eye and a mango. Hochburg thanked them all and breakfasted heartily. He speared a slice of meat onto his fork, waved it beneath Fenris’s snout, but did not feed him. Saliva drooled from the dog’s mouth.

“Where are the prisoners now?” asked Hochburg, draining his coffee. A decade before, the Führer had insisted that the growing of coffee be a priority in German Africa: it would end the humiliation of having to import it from the British.