by Guy Saville
Abner clasped Madeleine and shook her. “What were you thinking?” he shouted in her face, his mouth so wide she glimpsed his rotten molars. “You could have been killed.”
The moment Hochburg had announced his name, Madeleine had been possessed by what she must do, almost as though she heard Burton urging her to strike. As though the knife could lance her grief for him. If Abner was right, she’d never reach Mandritsara or find the twins; Cranley was thousands of miles away, protected from her hatred by locks and walls and his position in society. But she could finish this part of the story: it would be an act of devotion to the man she had lost. The night before Burton left, he’d showed her the silver dagger he planned to end Hochburg’s life with. She had hidden her horror, at the same time remembering the abuse her father had endured and feeling a shiver of satisfaction. Now she understood the full lure of revenge.
When Burton had described Hochburg, she’d pictured a man forged from the shadows, with coarse curls of hair and the reek of the jungle. Instead, he was merely flesh. As she’d stepped toward him, the bandage covering his head made her think of Claude Rains. He loomed over her; if she lunged directly at his heart he had the strength to snap her arm. Then she read the expression on his face, was sickened by how tender his desire appeared, and understood his weakness. Her mind was numb as their lips touched, as if she were below the ocean kissing Burton’s cold, dead mouth farewell.
There was a narrow, glassless window by the steps with a view of dirt: they were still below street level. Salois lobbed a smoke cannister in the direction they had come, and climbed the stairs, the others following.
They reached the next floor; halfway along was a door to a classroom. Inside there was another window. Salois opened the shutters onto banks of earth. He ran his fingers around the frame and seemed satisfied. From below Madeleine heard the baritone ring of Hochburg’s voice calling her name, queasy with his familiarity. Salois threw another smoke grenade into the corridor and secured the door.
“We have to barricade it.”
The classroom smelled of sap and damp, its walls made of rough timber. Around the edge, piled to shoulder height, were sacks of rice. At the front was a blackboard chalked with words:
Mein Name ist ______
Ich bin ein Jude
Ich werde gehorsam und ehrlich sein
Education was banned on the island, with the exception of arithmetic to five hundred and German lessons—“an elementary kind of mimicry” as Hitler described it—so Jews could comprehend their masters.
The four of them worked to block the entrance with the rice bags. When they reached the top of the frame, they began a second layer.
“We’re burying ourselves,” said Abner.
Madeleine lugged a sack with Salois; she refused to let the strain of the weight show. “Will you let me on your boat?” she asked him.
“What about the Oberstgruppenführer?”
“He’s nothing. I wish I’d killed him.”
“You’ve got guts, more than the whole council—but if he’s after you, that’s bad for me.”
“Then let’s get as far from Antzu as possible.” They dumped the sack; the barricade was already at waist height. On the other side of the door, she heard men coughing in the smoke and Hochburg issuing commands. “What do you need?”
“I’m going to Diego Suarez, to destroy the base.” He said “Diego” as if it were a person he knew and hated. “I can do it alone but will have more chance with two”—he glanced at Abner—“or three. I also need explosives. Your brother knows where they are.”
“She’s not going with you,” replied Abner. “Neither of us are.”
There was a burst of gunfire from the corridor, the bullets thudding harmlessly into the sacks. Then the bang-bang-bang of rifle butts against the door.
Madeleine grasped her brother’s hand. “You’ve got to help him.”
“What about your babies? How are you going to get from Diego to Mandritsara, all in time to catch a boat? Assuming it’s not torpedoed.” He sounded choked with frustration. “If he blows Diego the sea will be teeming with patrols.”
“It’s the only hope I’ve got,” she replied. “That or give up. What else can I do?”
“You can stay in Antzu: you’re safe here.”
The battering stopped, then started again with renewed ferocity. Something heavy was pounding the door.
“Safe?” She almost laughed.
Abner appealed to Salois: “It’s too far to Nachtstadt. You don’t have time—she’ll slow you down.”
“You could ride,” said Jacoba. She was shaking with fear and had to force the words out. “Take some horses from the governor’s stables.”
“And new boots and breeches,” snapped Abner. “A hamper for the journey.”
“When I worked there, they weren’t well guarded. Who would dare steal a horse?”
“You were going to stay with your daughter.”
“I want to help Madeleine first.”
Salois faced her brother. “It’s your decision. Our fates are in your hands.”
“You’re just using her.”
“The fate of the whole island.”
Abner swore; he removed his skullcap and tossed it away.
They finished stacking the rice, Madeleine keeping close to Salois. Normally when she was next to an islander, she recoiled from the odor of their body or filthy clothes or whatever was churning in their stomach. Salois was scentless. He took a hand grenade from his rucksack and told them to build another wall of bags to shield them from the blast. Then he pulled the pin and lodged it beneath the window frame. Madeleine ducked behind the sacks, pressing her face into the burlap.
“He’ll get you killed,” whispered her brother. “Stay here, it’s what Mutti wants. Papa too—you always listened to him.”
“This is the only chance I may get.”
“Not now. Please. It’s too dangerous.”
Madeleine covered her ears and heard her next words from inside her head: “If not now, when?”
The grenade exploded, punching a hole in the wall. The classroom was scattered with flames. Salois stood and bundled them outside.
Madeleine jumped, landing on the slope of the crater in which the synagogue sat. The climb was steep: scree and rubbish tumbled to either side of her, her hands digging into the mud till she was back on Nabi Daniel Strasse and the road that led to the docks. A column of smoke rose from the synagogue, its wooden walls sighing and cracking.
A soldier emerged from the hole in the classroom and aimed his rifle. Another, dressed in the same black uniform as Hochburg, leapt into the crater after them.
“We can still hide,” Abner said to her. “I know a place.” He grasped her arm, tugging her away from Salois and Jacoba.
She broke free and ran with the others toward the heart of the city. Rising above the roofs, green through wisps of fog, was the governor’s house.
“We can get in through the garden wall,” said Jacoba.
Salois released a smoke canister to conceal their direction and they dashed through the narrows of the Spanish quarter, weaving beneath scaffolding and past the alleyways that led to Boriziny Strasse. Madeleine didn’t think she’d ever see her house there again. If she died finding the twins, would her spirit haunt it? Or the house in Hampstead? Maybe eternity would grant her the farm. Was Burton waiting there? For an instant she thought she heard his voice, the cry so real it sent ice rippling down her back.
* * *
Burton caught a fleeting glimpse of Madeleine. He stumbled: exhilarated, horrified. The mist around her was darkening, like wine poured into milk.
“That her?” asked Tünscher.
She was emaciated, her body nothing but hard angles, as if her bones had been recarved; her hair—her luxuriant, flowing black hair—was stubble. Worse than the physical decline, he sensed a newborn savagery in her. His image of Maddie, plump and radiant in cornflower blue, had propelled him across oceans and con
tinents, even though he understood that it was a necessary illusion.
Its shattering was harder than any physical blow.
He recognized the dress she was wearing; it was an old favorite. The white material would cling to her thighs if they got caught in a shower on the farm; “my seduction frock,” she used to call it, with a single-note laugh. It was smeared with muck. She had three companions: one with the familiar bearing of a soldier, an old woman dressed in a work uniform, and a third who was balding, the same age as Burton. He kept close to Madeleine, running protectively by her side in a way that made Burton want to pry them apart. There was no time to dwell on the absence of a baby.
In a blink she was gone.
“Madeleine!” he roared. His voice bounced off the alley walls, the mist deadening it. “Madeleine!”
He chased after her, Tünscher at his heels, into a maze of passageways thick with smoke. The sound of running clattered and echoed around him till it was impossible to tell what direction it was coming from or whether Madeleine was its origin. Burton stopped in a ramshackle square where numerous alleys met and spun round, not knowing which one to take. The air was scarlet and swirling. “Which way?” he demanded of Tünscher.
“I don’t know.”
Burton continued spinning, struggling to decipher the echoes and—
He stopped dead. Tottered backward into Tünscher.
A figure had emerged from the smoke, materializing like a djinn. He was dressed entirely in black, and half his skull was obscured by bandages. The faintest smile danced on his lips.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
EVERYTHING SEEMED DARKER. The alley walls crowded in, the smoke as thick and opaque as blood. Through it came the crackle of burning timbers, the sound reminding Burton of his childhood home as it was gutted. The breath lodged in his throat, and sank. This was the moment he had waited years for. He groped for the Beretta and wished he was reaching for the familiar handle of his Browning. The buzz of mosquitoes was unnaturally loud.
Hochburg.
Burton expected to see hatred in his single black eye. Instead: relief, a simmering, victorious pleasure. What had Madeleine called him all those months ago? A ghost. Don’t resurrect him, she begged. If Burton had listened, he wouldn’t be standing in this stinking muddy lane, his left sleeve would not be pinned at the wrist. Patrick would be alive, Tünscher not wounded and marooned on rhinestone promises. Burton, Madeleine, and their baby would be safe—if not surrounded by the Suffolk fields they dreamed of, then in some secret spot far beyond the reach of Cranley.
A second black figure joined Hochburg: the one-eared Nazi who’d hunted him in Roscherhafen. Then excited cub soldiers with shorn hair and machine guns.
“He must not be killed,” said Hochburg. “Or harmed. That’s my harp to play.”
Burton’s fingers contacted with the Beretta.
All he had to do was draw the weapon, aim at Hochburg’s heart, and fire. But that ancient desire was gone … like the quince orchard: hacked down, exhausted by rage. That it had consumed him for so long made him feel dizzy and ashamed now; it was a kinship he should never have sought. Each step toward Hochburg was a step into the past, a step away from Madeleine. She was so close they were breathing the same air again. Burton heard his father from the pulpit, bellowing at orphans who sat quaking or indifferent: To embrace him is death.
Burton ran.
Tünscher kept close, his hand pressed against his flank. A volley of bullets sang over them. Burton heard Hochburg’s voice—resonant, formidable—boom orders, and darted down a side passage, navigating through contorted backstreets till Tünscher guided him to a different alley. “This way.”
“How do you know?” asked Burton as they were heading up an incline.
“If she’s trying to escape, the main road out of town is at the top.”
“And if she’s not?”
“Then stay and check every fucking house. But not with me.”
Ahead was a dead end. Tünscher ducked to the left, into an alley clad with scaffolding. It was so narrow that they kept bumping into the poles, the planks above wobbling. Another pocket of red fog swallowed them; Burton glimpsed a spent smoke canister in the mud. The clap of boots seemed everywhere, amplified and distorted—one second behind them, the next to either side, as if the soldiers were running along parallel streets. Above the boots Burton thought he heard Hochburg, but he couldn’t be sure if it was in his head: a memory from the mission in Kongo, or further in the past.
Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman …
In front was another dead end, this time with no alternative route. “Back,” said Tünscher.
Burton found the path blocked.
“Herr Oberst! I have him.”
The one-eared Nazi was framed in scaffolding, a BK44 in his grip aimed low; it would shred their feet and shins.
“Oberstgruppenführer! Come quick.” His voice was shrill and demented. “Hands behind your neck, Cole. Your friend, too.”
Slowly, Burton raised his arms; Tünscher did nothing.
“Take off your hat,” said the Nazi.
“What?”
“Do it! I want to see your head.”
When Burton refused, the Nazi fired into the mud inches from Burton’s toes. He tugged his cap free and let it drop. The Nazi scrutinized his skull before a look of disgruntlement filled his face.
Tünscher, whose hands remained at his sides, stepped forward till he was abreast with Burton. He was pallid and breathless, the skin above his lip beaded with sweat. The Nazi flicked the point of his machine gun at Tünscher’s chest.
“The Oberstgruppenführer’s orders were only not to harm Cole.”
“We charge him,” said Tünscher.
Burton checked the distance between them and the BK’s muzzle. “I thought you didn’t want to die today.”
“He won’t fire.”
“Why not?”
“I can see it in his eyes, like when I signed up for Russia. You could tell who was going to spend the war behind a desk. Trust me.”
“Silence.” The Nazi called behind him: “Oberstgruppenführer! Anyone! Quick, while I have them.”
Burton lowered his hand and stump.
The three of them stood staring at each other. Mosquitoes buzzed through the air.
“What do you think happened to his ear?” said Tünscher.
Humiliation and fury flashed across the Nazi’s face as he raised a palm to cover his mutilated lobe. Tünscher hurled himself forward, knocking the Nazi into the bamboo struts holding up the scaffolding. The poles collapsed, flinging boards and paint in all directions.
* * *
Jacoba avoided the front gate of the governor’s house and sloped along the garden wall, leading them through thickets of spiny aloes. They were on the asphalt highway that led south, winding three hundred kilometers through onion-growing country to Mazunka. The wind had picked up, chasing away the mist. Across from the wall Madeleine could see empty meadows rolling down to the river. Jacoba kept looking up and diagonally to the roof of the house, searching for something.
“Here,” she said at last. “Blind man’s bend.” It was a curve in the wall, dipping with the natural contour of the ground; the spot was hidden from the villa and its solitary guard tower. “Servants in the house would come here to sneak out food to their families. There used to be a basket. I’d smuggle out beetroot and peaches for my daughter.”
Madeleine had forgotten about Jacoba’s daughter. “Did you find her?” she asked.
“I saw her for a few moments. Then I heard Salois and had to fetch you.”
“I’m grateful.” She squeezed the older woman’s bony hand. “Will you come with me?”
Fear and apology tussled in Jacoba’s expression. “I’ll help you with the horses … but after that I’ll only slow you down.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“I’m not going to Mandritsara.” She extracted her hand from Madeleine�
�s. “Antzu’s not so bad. When all this has quietened down, I’ll be happy enough. It’s paradise compared to those pigs and Poles.”
Jacoba offered a shaky smile, but Madeleine sensed her heartbreak. “If I can’t make the boat,” she replied, “I’ll come back; we can live together in Boriziny.”
“You’re not coming back, girl.”
Salois scaled the wall, using pockmarks in the mortar to climb. Madeleine doubted whether she or Jacoba would be strong enough to do the same. When he reached the top he asked Madeleine if she still had her knife. She passed it to him. He cut a gap in the barbed wire and pressed himself flat against the brickwork, his rucksack a hump over his shoulders. “I can see the stables,” he said. “They’re deserted.”
“It’s too high for us to climb,” Madeleine called up.
“I’ll find something,” he replied and vanished over the other side. Madeleine heard the impact of his boots—crunch—then his footsteps rapidly fading.
From the city came the echo of gunshots. An alarm was ringing on the far side of the green house.
“That’s the barracks,” said Abner. “Your new friend better be fast or we’ll be overrun.”
They waited, crouched low by the wall, mosquitoes feasting on them. Madeleine rubbed at her calves: they were covered in scratches from the aloe thorns. Whenever she cut herself on the farm, Burton dabbed the wound with iodine, wincing along with her.
A coil of rose rope landed next to her, twisted with leaves and thorns. Abner picked them off and tugged it taut. “Jacoba, you go first.”
“No,” said Madeleine. “Me, Jacoba, then you.” She worried that if they were left alone he would insist that she stay in Antzu, maybe cosh her into submission.
Before he could argue she grabbed the rope and climbed, the muscles that had carried her children straining. At the top she looked out over Antzu: a reddish haze hung over the streets they had run through, and the synagogue was on fire. She beckoned Jacoba to follow. Fruit trees had been espaliered against the other side of the wall; she used the branches to descend, landing on a gravel path. Jacoba joined her, then Abner. They stood with their mouths crumpled in disbelief.