by Guy Saville
There was a volley of gunfire above him: it chewed into the trees. Some of the other prisoners were cheering him on.
Twenty feet.
Burton tripped again, held his cuffed hands out to cushion the fall. Pain burst through his wrists. He staggered but maintained his footing. His knee was putty.
Limp-run, limp-run.
Fifteen feet.
A rifle butt slammed into his back.
Burton dropped.
The butt came again. Another joined it, and another. The cheering had stopped. He tried to thrash out with his feet. Something cracked against his skull. Spots of fire swam in front of his eyes, threatening to overtake him.
‘Stop!’
The voice seemed to come from a long distance away.
Burton was yanked to his feet. His mouth swilled with blood. Rough hands dragged him back to the convoy; his boots trailed the ground.
Rottman was waiting for him. ‘The only reason you’re still alive is that I need my quota of workers for the day.’
Up close Burton noticed his hair. It was greasy black, the roots showing ginger. He dyes it, he thought, and almost laughed. He could hear Madeleine: hail the Master Race!
‘But try that again,’ continued Rottman, ‘and I’ll cripple you for life.’ He yanked Burton’s head back. Burton felt the nerves in his neck grind between vertebrae, his windpipe was horribly exposed. ‘Understand?’
Burton refused to reply.
‘Understand? Or do I have to break the fingers of every last prisoner?’
It was a bluff: he’d already told him he needed the workers. ‘I understand,’ croaked Burton.
‘Good.’
Rottman swung his fist into Burton’s chest. Hit him full in the solar plexus.
Burton collapsed to his knees and puked violently: a mess of mango juice, strudel and blood. Some of it splattered Rottman’s boots; he took a sliver of satisfaction in that.
‘Hmm. This one’s exactly what we need at the tunnel,’ said Rottman to the guards. ‘A tough bastard. Chain his ankles, make sure he doesn’t escape again.’ He headed towards the lead vehicle. ‘Let’s get rolling.’
Once clear of Stanleystadt the convoy joined the PAA.
The Pan African Autobahn.
It had been one of the crowning achievements of the Casablanca Conference: a joint Anglo-German enterprise to link the continent from Cairo to the Cape, Neu Berlin in the west to Roscherhafen (formerly Dar es Salaam) in the east. The ‘Friendship Road’ they called it. Six lanes wide, more than six and a half thousand miles long. Hitler had taken a personal interest in the project, poring over the plans, insisting the camber be at least twenty-five centimetres thick. The German section, built by the SS using forced labour and secret construction methods, had been finished in record time, opened that March; the British were still years away from completing theirs. Further proof of the ‘superiority of the National Socialist model’ as Goebbels was fond of reminding the world. The Nazis were outpacing the British in every aspect of economic and technological development.
Burton sat hunched and bound, watching the PAA flash past him. A blur of white concrete. His whole body was turning numb and purple; dark patches had soaked his trousers around the knees. His mouth was parched, tasted of bile and copper. Above him the sun beat through the mesh of the cage, slowly boiling his brain. Either side of him the two guards had parasols to shield themselves from the heat. Pink, ladies’ parasols. In their other hands they clutched their BK44s.
It took them three hours to reach the town of Kasongo where the autobahn split. Burton glimpsed clean pavements and a branch of Deutschebank; settlers who turned away as the convoy passed. There was also a massive white road sign in German and English:
PAA (South) INTERNATIONAL TRAFFIC
Ankoro
200 km
Bukama
425 km
Elisabethstadt (border-control, N. Rhodesia)
700 km
Lusaka
1250 km / 775 miles
Salisbury
1650 km / 1025 miles
Cape Town (opening 1957)
4100 km / 2550 miles
PAA (South-West) PROHIBITED,
AUTHORISED TRAFFIC ONLY
Lusambo
325 km
Sandoa
800 km
The lorries turned south-west in the direction of the lowering sun.
An hour after dusk they reached a checkpoint. The guards got out, visited the latrines and mess hall. Burton heard the sound of a football being kicked about. Later one of the Unterjocher came round with a bucket of water and ladle. He dipped it and let each prisoner take a few gulps. When he got to Burton he laughed and spat into the water. Burton drank eagerly, held the warm liquid in his mouth – a Legion trick to fight off the sensation of thirst. He ignored the lump of phlegm that bobbed against his tongue.
The lorries refuelled and drove through the night, heading due south now. Occasionally they overtook lines of stationary tanks (Burton noticed the skull and palm tree insignia of the Waffen-SS); other than that the road was empty.
Empty and completely straight.
It reminded Burton of a childhood picture book: of the endless road Jack had to walk to find the ogre’s castle.
Eventually the jungle began to thin out, giving way to open grasslands dotted with boulders and dembos. In the moonlight Burton glimpsed vast banana and pineapple plantations. Nowadays every German – from Aachen in the west to the furthest garrisons of the Urals – expected tropical fruit on the table. It was one of the rights of conquest.
The Reich Farm Laws of 1933, which awarded land to farmers on a hereditary basis, were extended to the colonies following the Casablanca Treaty in a bid to ‘Germanise’ Africa. Thereafter anyone who could prove Aryan ancestry back to 1800 was eligible (including the emigrant communities of America and Brazil). Free tracts of land – five hundred, a thousand, five thousand hectares – were parcelled out along with a limitless supply of native labourers. For the first few years profits were high and life, on comfortable haciendas, easy. Then came the Windhuk Decree and all the blacks were sent north. Drudgery followed for the plantation owners. But when complaints reached Himmler he issued a typically disparaging rebuke: the racial hygiene of the continent was paramount. If settlers needed extra farmhands, let them bear children. A dozen per family. The more Germans born in Africa the better. It would secure the future.
Burton watched the plantations till they dwindled and the landscape became so monotonous the convoy might have been standing still. The Nazis may have developed the cities but this was frontier country, as untamed as Germany’s eastern empire in Russia. Without the insulation of the trees the temperature plummeted. Burton sat shivering and tried to calculate where they were.
Along with his Browning the Lebbs had taken his watch in the cellar. That had been – what? – seven hours ago at least; they were travelling at fifty, sixty miles per hour. Which meant they must be almost four hundred miles from Stanleystadt now. Burton pictured his map – the one he had left in the Ziege – the one with its spider web of black lines. They should be somewhere between Luluaburg and Kanda-Kanda, on a latitude with Loanda.
Loanda: Ackerman.
Was he there now? Burton imagined him tucked up in bed – in warm, freshly laundered sheets. Could almost smell the starch and citrus cologne. Did he know about Rougier yet? Was Ackerman the one who had betrayed them like Patrick said? Or was he simply a stooge for some Angolan spy? Why had British intelligence wanted to assassinate Hochburg? What about Peace for Empire?
And why, of all people, had they wanted Burton to do it?
That last question puzzled him the most. Yet no matter how Burton looked at it, he couldn’t find a solution. He decided that if he got out of this he’d be paying a visit to Her Majesty’s consulate in Angola.
There were too many questions pecking away inside Burton’s head. The shackles were burning his wrists and ankles. Never think at ni
ght, son, his father used to tell him. It will only bring makabere Gedanken. Ghoulish thoughts. But he had nothing else for company.
Burton’s mind wandered from Ackerman to Hochburg. He dredged his heart for some type of feeling. All he found was his mother’s cold, abandoned room. Killing him hadn’t brought her back, hadn’t answered the mysteries that dogged his past. Hadn’t atoned for all those others Hochburg had murdered. It had simply added to a pile of corpses. Lapinski, Nares, maybe Dolan and Vacher. Maybe Patrick. All the men he’d killed in the previous few days. All those before that: a lifetime of bloodshed to soak away the past.
How many more had to be slaughtered to make up for it? When would there be enough to let go?
When he could cobble an entire square from their skulls?
Ghoulish thoughts for sure.
Madeleine had been right. He remembered their conversation on the farm, their final night together: there’s nothing for you in Africa … Hochburg’s a ghost … Don’t bring him back to life.
She was always right.
Now every second, every mile, was taking him further from her.
After their exchange in the arbour they had wandered indoors. Burton made her a mug of Ovaltine (two sugars) and they lay silently in bed, listening to the wind-chime outside.
‘Do you remember what I told you about my family?’ said Madeleine after a long time. ‘About Madagaskar.’
He pulled her close. ‘Of course.’ It was part of the special bond he felt towards her. He recognised the sadness that sometimes emptied her smile, the private moments of staring into space. They both knew what it was like to have family stolen. To be left with unanswerable questions.
‘After they were shipped there, I heard nothing. No letters, no Red Cross reports. Gornisht. At first I was desperate, visited the embassy and Foreign Office every day. No one could tell me anything. Nobody even cared. It was like they had disappeared, four names among ten million.’ She stared into his eyes. ‘I learned to live with it, Burton.’
He considered her words. ‘Because you’re stronger than I am.’
‘No. Because I realise the truth can be worse than not knowing. That you don’t need the truth to live your life—’ she kissed him, her cheeks damp ‘—or be happy.’
If only he had listened to her. He’d give anything to go back there, to cast Hochburg and his parents from his mind for good. Never leave her. Revenge hadn’t given him a future, it robbed him of one.
Burton hung his shoulders, breathed on his hands to warm them. The night was growing colder. Then a realisation.
‘Oh, Maddie,’ he whispered to himself, ‘I’ve been asking the wrong question.’
It wasn’t how many he had to kill to atone for the past. It was how many more to secure the days ahead. The answer was obvious.
Enough to get back home. Enough so he could join Madeleine again in their mildewy bed. Wrap himself around her, feel her soft, naked body against his, hot as a coal. Cup her belly with his calloused hands, feel the struggles of the child inside her.
That was how much blood he had to spill. There was rage enough in him yet.
And when it was done he’d fill the holes in the driveway. Harvest his quinces, plucking each one by hand, precious as any Kassai diamond. Never yearn for anything beyond the fireplace and farm again.
The convoy continued south, vanishing into the darkness.
Lulua River, Kongo
16 September, 22:30
‘YOU hear that?’
In the darkness Neliah caught the panic in her sister’s voice.
They were drifting with the current of the Lulua River. Zuri was the stronger swimmer but each stroke brought new dangers to her ears. Below them was ten metres of murky water, below that the tunnel they had come to destroy. Neliah pictured it: the fallen stone and earth, slaves toiling to move it. Somewhere in the night she heard the echo of pickaxes on rock.
And the sounds of the river. There had been a loud splash in the water ahead.
‘Did you hear that?’ whispered Zuri again, she kicked against the current until they were side by side. ‘What was it?’
‘Nothing,’ replied Neliah.
‘It sounded like a crocodile.’
‘There aren’t any here.’
‘You promise?’
‘You should have stayed with the others. Waited for the scouts.’
Her sister fell silent.
‘Keep swimming,’ said Neliah. ‘Not much further now.’
They continued with the current, Neliah following the glimmer of the German lights to judge their position. She was using only her legs to swim, her hands held out of the water to keep the haversack dry. Her panga was sheathed on her back like a metal fin.
Finally she reached out for Zuri. ‘There,’ she said and they headed towards the shore, wading through thick papyrus on to the river bank. Neliah felt the mud between her toes. There was a stench of rotting vegetation.
When they were clear of it, she crouched down and opened the haversack. Inside were the bundles of dynamite. Despite Penhor’s orders it had been simple enough to vanish from the camp. Neliah had clumped Ligio on the back of the head with a log, left plenty of caporotto for the boy-guards to get drunk on.
‘They’re dry,’ breathed Neliah as she lifted out the first bundle. Each one was made of eight dynamite sticks and a radio detonator. Neliah turned the priming switch: a red lamp came on.
‘What does that mean?’ asked Zuri. Water dripped from her long hair. The night air had the breath of tarazu in it: she was shivering.
‘It’s working. You turn this switch and when we’re ready, press this.’ She lifted a box from the haversack. ‘This is the detonator. It works by radio.’
Zuri wrinkled her nose. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’
‘Trust me. Papai used the same thing.’
When they were growing up their father wanted his girls to be as well schooled as any Portuguese senhora. He even talked of taking them to Lisboa and startling people with his bright little meninas. Zuri was taught Latin and history and mathematics. But by the time Neliah was old enough, the rich days in marble had come. There were no more lazy afternoons for lessons. So Neliah’s special treat was to go with Papai when he was blasting new quarries. He would show her the dynamite, the reels of ‘detchord’ like thin white worms and, best of all, the plunger. At the end of the day he would let her push it down. She approached it as solemn as a priest, Papai chuckling. Then silence for that terrible moment. The first explosion had made her scream and cry. Later they would be the happiest moments of her life.
Neliah reached for the next bundle of dynamite. This time the lamp didn’t illuminate. She tried another, and another. ‘I told them,’ she said, her fury rising. ‘But none listened.’
‘What?’
‘Not to trust the British. They’re snakes – this is trick-stuff.’
‘Then why are we here? Destroying the tunnel is to help them.’
‘Only to save ourselves. We can’t let what the Nazistas did in the south happen to all Angola.’
Neliah checked the remaining charges. Only eight from twenty worked. She reached into the haversack for some twine. ‘We tie them together. Make bigger bundles.’
‘Will that work?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Neliah irritably. ‘Yes.’
When they were done they put the charges back in the haversack and continued up the bank of the river until they reached a bush of barbed wire. They picked their way through it to the rim of the tunnel. There was a drop of ten metres, a ledge a dozen paces wide, then another ten metres of brickwork to the road below.
Neliah and Zuri peered over the edge at a door in the rock. ‘That outcrop,’ said Neliah, ‘is where the escape-holes are. There’s a passageway leading to them. That’s how I got in last time.’
‘What about soldiers?’
Neliah stared into the darkness. There were three tanks on the road outside, patrolling skull-tro
ops, but the door to the passage was unguarded.
Neliah turned to her sister. ‘You go first. I’ll keep watch.’
Zuri cautiously lowered herself over the edge.
‘The faster you go, the easier,’ said Neliah.
‘I’m trying,’ her sister hissed back.
‘When you get down, stay close against the wall.’
‘What about the door?’
‘Don’t! Wait for me.’ Neliah scrambled after her. She had almost reached the bottom when Zuri pulled the handle.
Neliah smelt it at once: the smoke of tobacco.
Startled, the skull-troop spat the cigarette from his mouth. Grabbed his rifle and shoved it into Zuri’s belly.
‘Wer zum Teufel bist du?’
Neliah leapt, crashed down on the soldier’s back. They hit the ground, rolled close to the edge. In one movement Neliah stood and kicked the German. He tumbled backwards, through the door into the passageway. There was a flash of steel. The middle of his chest opened red.
Neliah fell on the soldier. Drove the panga through his heart. Twisted the blade till it dug into the ground. Then she pushed herself away, panting.
‘Ich schwöre dir … mein Führer …’
The skull-troop was speaking his final words.
‘What’s he saying?’ whispered Zuri, face full of fear like she was being cursed.
Ina had known the tongue of the Germans. When there was no time for Neliah to be taught Latin, she gave her lessons in the other to make up for it. Neliah spoke for the soldier in Herero: ‘It’s an oath. I swear … to you, my leader … to obey till the death …’
The breath vanished from him. He said no more.
Zuri crouched next to the wall, her eyes rain clouds ready to burst.
Neliah knew she hated the Nazistas as much as she did, but she lacked the rungiro – that hunger to avenge, to taste blood. Papai had made her heart too gentle.