by Guy Saville
He gave Patrick a final, piercing look with his blue eyes and headed in the direction of his helicopter.
‘Very good, Herr Gruppenführer,’ said Uhrig, watching him stride away. As soon as he was gone he turned back to Patrick. Unbuttoned his tunic and began rolling up his bloody sleeves.
Lulua Tunnel, PAA
17 September 09:45
DURING those first months as a boy soldier in the Legion all Burton seemed to do was brawl: scuffles in barracks, fist-fights in the drinking holes of rue de Daya. He wanted recompense for what had happened to his parents, for the childhood he’d been robbed of. If Hochburg couldn’t pay then other people’s blood seemed the best currency. One night, in Bar Madagaskar, his nose had been broken and jaw dislocated; Patrick refused him any treatment. Years later, back in England, he snapped his wrist while training at the Exton Depot. He had been beaten black and yellow, been slashed with a bayonet, had shrapnel pepper his flesh but nothing – nothing – compared to the pain of the brand.
Burton screamed through his teeth as it pressed harder; spit bubbled in his mouth.
‘Not so tough any more,’ said Rottman.
Burton struggled to pull away but strong hands clamped him to the spot.
Rottman gave the iron a final dig, twisting it into the forearm. Burton screamed again, the sound exploding from his throat, raw and animal.
Then the brand was gone, Rottman moved to the next man.
Burton slumped forward, gasping; his forehead grazed the dirt. If it still hurts, it’s not that bad: Patrick’s mantra at Sidi Bel Abbès. The Red Cross doctor splashed his iodine rag against the wound and bound it with a meagre bandage. A numbness was chewing at Burton’s arm, spreading through his body. He felt it in his gums: a deep, burning throb. His arm was still smoking.
Rottman branded the rest of the prisoners before giving them a few minutes rest. The bucket and ladle came round again, followed by hunks of rye bread. Burton was too queasy to eat. In his mind he was with Maddie. Often when they lay between the sheets she would trace the scars on his body. Other women he’d known had been impressed, sometimes horrified, by his exploits. Not Madeleine. She simply accepted them, as she did all his wayward past; there was great solace in that. What would she make of the triangle and its two letters? Reminders were important to her: they taught you to value the present. She still kept her Star of David armband, even though her husband had told her to throw it away. It was hidden on the farm, in an empty jewellery box beneath their bed; the same place he stowed his Browning.
Guards went down the ranks of prisoners undoing their handcuffs. Picks and shovels were tossed at their feet.
Rottman scooped up one of the shovels. ‘There are more than twenty soldiers here as well as the Unterjocher. You can’t escape, but should you be tempted …’ He brought the shovel down against a rock, hard enough to shatter concrete. ‘Now move out!’
The prisoners were herded into the tunnel, past the tanks parked on the roadside.
Burton’s arm felt as if it were ballooning with molten lead. He could barely grasp the spade he’d been given. Rottman had dropped the shovel, had picked up his jambok again. It was coiled in his hand, a sleeping viper.
The autobahn continued inside the tunnel for several hundred feet before it was blocked by a wall of fallen rock. The interior was lit by Klieg lights; there was the chug-chug of generators. Burton saw men working at the rock face, struggling to remove chunks of stone with bloody hands, and suddenly thought of Halifax’s eulogy on losing India. Civilisations cannot be built on the servitude of others. What did he mean by that? Was it a prediction for the future of Nazi Africa …? Huge iron props held up the roof. The place smelt like a mineshaft, of deep earth and rushing water.
There were guards everywhere.
Another Untersturmführer came to meet Rottman and led him up the rock face to where several prisoners were working. There seemed to be a gap through the debris. A worker, shirtless and grimy, emerged from the hole and collapsed with exhaustion. Rottman nodded, pointed back to his own contingent of labourers and climbed down to them.
He addressed his captives. ‘My orders are to get this road reopened in the next twenty-four hours. Remember what I told you.’ His face stretched into a ghastly smile. ‘Work brings freedom.’ The guards began leading the men away. ‘You: come with me.’
The prisoners looked pityingly at Burton.
‘I’ve got something special for you.’
Burton felt a BK44 prod him in the back. He was led to the hole in the rock face above.
‘Him?’ said the other Untersturmführer. ‘He doesn’t look so hard.’
‘Hmm. This one thinks he shits steel,’ replied Rottman. He forced a miner’s lamp on to Burton’s head and shoved him backwards. ‘Get in there. We’re almost through.’
Burton crouched by the hole. It was no more than a man’s width, two or three feet high and quickly narrowed. The roof seemed to be shifting constantly, tiny fragments of rock pattering down from it.
‘And if I don’t?’
Rottman thumped his forearm with the jambok.
Beneath the bandage Burton felt the brand flare and scream. The urge to grab his spade and swing it into Rottman’s head was almost overwhelming. Only the number of soldiers dissuaded him.
Burton lowered himself to the ground, rolled down his sleeves to protect his arm and began crawling into the hole. Almost at once he heard the rock groaning and creaking; the hiss of water.
‘Stop!’ said Rottman. He took a manacle, clamped it around Burton’s ankle and attached it to a chain. ‘Just in case you get any stupid ideas.’
Burton continued crawling into the hole, his spade pushed ahead of him. He was soon in a cavity barely big enough to move in. His lungs felt crushed. Each wriggle forward chaffed his forearm against the ground. But already his mind was whirring: if he could get through to the other side …
The rock around him grew damper. He could see rivulets of water flowing down the sides. Then a whisper of air. Fresh air. The passage widened till Burton was able to get back on his knees again, then his feet. He was standing in a hollow.
There was a tug on the chain around his ankle. ‘Have you found something?’ Rottman’s voice echoed round the rock.
Burton ignored it.
‘Why have you stopped?’ There was a tug on the chain, dragging Burton back.
‘I’ve reached the end of the passage,’ Burton shouted. The sound of his voice caused a shimmer of dust. ‘I’m going to dig.’
The pressure on the chain eased.
The wall in front of him was riddled with tool marks. The previous worker had been close to breaking through. Burton wondered how long the unlucky bastard had toiled for. There were tiny holes letting in air, the sound of the wind beyond like men’s voices. Burton took the spade and began scraping at the rock. As he dug he kept glancing down at the chain around his ankle. Would he be able to break it with the spade? He chipped away at the wall.
Suddenly a pickaxe came crashing through above him. It missed his face by inches. The roof of the hollow shuddered. Pebbles tumbled down.
‘Stop!’ yelled Burton.
The pickaxe was prised out. Came smashing down again.
‘Stop!’
From far away Rottman’s voice: ‘What’s going on?’
The chain snapped rigid, dragging Burton to the ground. He was pulled backwards.
The pickaxe above broke through the roof again. The sound of groaning rock. Tiny fissures were opening in the ceiling.
Then another noise, from the direction of the tunnel. Tinny and distant. For an instant Burton couldn’t decipher it.
Gunfire.
Long after their screams rolled away, the stink of roasted meat hung in the air.
Neliah had spent the night on the ridge overlooking the tunnel. She stayed awake while Tungu and Bomani slept, watching the moon disappear into the earth, whispering kumbus for her sister. Trying not to let the words of Gonsalves
haunt her mind. She was more than just a cook-girl! She would destroy the tunnel, show them all. Destroy the tunnel and smile. Finally the sun had climbed in the sky and with it a new-born thought. A trickster thought about Penhor and the dynamite … Then the lorries had arrived below and the men were seared like heads of cattle.
Now the prisoners were stumping towards the tunnel to be worked till their backs broke. They would be killed with the others when she fired the explosives. More skulls around her neck.
As if guessing her thoughts, a voice spoke in her ear: ‘If we make explosion now they will live.’ It was Tungu. She was Herero, a mountain of flesh with heartbroken eyes.
Neliah looked at the height of the sun. ‘It’s too soon. Zuri won’t be at the chimney-camp.’
‘She’s had plenty time.’
‘The plan was to wait,’ said Neliah. ‘Wait for the Nazista machines.’
‘And if no machines come?’
Neliah turned her eye back to the men being herded into the tunnel. She could still smell their burned skin. ‘My family deserved to live. So did yours.’ She looked from Tungu to Bomani. ‘And yours. We wait.’
The other two women nodded and resumed their silent watch. They were still hidden in the enga-grass. To the east the waters of the Lulua rippled in the sunlight.
‘I hear something,’ said Bomani.
Neliah listened. There was a noise like bees – coming from the direction Zuri had taken. Not bees … a machine.
She lifted up her head from the grass and stared down the road. It was empty. Her eyes rose to the sky. ‘Stay down! Stay down!’
They pressed their bellies to the earth.
A zenga-zera, a whirr-bird, roared overhead.
‘Did it see us?’
‘No,’ said Neliah, watching the helicopter swoop low over the river.
The zenga-zera made a circle as if coming in to land. Then bore down on them.
The ground burst upwards. Shreds of grass and smoke.
Down by the tunnel a whistle blew. Soldiers pointed towards them, some already climbing upwards.
Neliah reached for the haversack and took out the detonator.
‘The Nazistas are coming!’ said Bomani.
Neliah pulled the detonator aerial. ‘Tungu, get your bow.’
Tungu took up position on the edge of the grass, stabbed a dozen arrows in the ground ready to be picked up and fired. The first went in the string of the bow. She pulled it back, her chest swelling.
The whirr-bird had landed, the wind from its engines blowing the tents over. A man dressed in black was running from it, pointing at them, screaming.
Neliah turned a switch, breathed in, waited. Her fingers nervously brushed her scar.
A red lamp came on above the detonation button. She looked at the others. ‘Cover your ears, open your mouths. The blast will tear the breath from you.’ She thought back to when she was a girl, Papai’s beaming face: Go on, menina, you can do it …
Neliah hunched up against the explosion. Pressed the button.
Nothing happened.
Neliah pressed it again.
Still nothing.
Silence except for the whirr of the helicopter, the sound of boots scrambling up rock.
A roar emerged from her throat. ‘Penhor!’ The scream echoed and swirled around her.
She hurled the detonator down, breaking it into a thousand pieces.
Bomani was on her feet. ‘We go.’
Below them the sound of an engine starting. Fumes belched from one of the tanks.
‘No,’ said Neliah, her chest heaving. She was thinking of Gonsalves. Gonsalves, Penhor, all the white soldiers laughing at her. Of Ina swinging from the tree. ‘The tunnel. We must destroy it.’
‘But nothing happen.’
‘If I can get to the dynamite …’ Neliah held up the grenades she had taken from the dead skull-troop. She could use them as a detonator. ‘Tungu, watch us with your bow. Bomani, follow me.’
‘I’m scared.’
Neliah reached over, clasped her fingers. ‘We go together.’
In Bomani’s other hand was a spear, the point was shaking.
‘Think of Muspel,’ said Neliah. ‘Think of your brothers and sisters. Make your heart roar!’
Neliah grasped her panga, the steel singing as it left its sheath. She glanced to the sky, whispered a word to the god Mukuru.
And ran.
Wutrohr Labour Camp, PAA
17 September, 09:55
IT was like being at the bottom of a well. A well of stamping boots.
Blows rained down on him: his head, back, legs. His Dunkirk scar felt like it was going to split. Patrick curled himself into a ball, arms protecting his skull, and let them work him over. He’d had worse. During the Spanish Civil War, when he’d still been idealistic (or stupid) enough to go fight the Fascists, he was captured by the Condor Legion; had endured several weeks of interrogation. It was there he learned the most valuable lesson of being tortured: if you gave no reaction, if you tried to tough it out, they beat you harder. The dodge was to look weak, pathetic. Somebody not worth the effort.
And all the while you hid inside your mind.
With each kick Patrick whimpered and begged for them to stop. He thought of Hannah. Thought of Ackerman, how he’d betrayed them: the Rhodesian was going to pay for this.
They couldn’t have beaten him for more than five minutes before Uhrig stopped them. ‘Enough, enough,’ he said, sounding bored. He pushed through the assembled soldiers and dragged Patrick up by his hair. ‘What do you think this is? The fucking Spielhaus? Goethe?’
Patrick couldn’t focus properly: Uhrig was a blur in black uniform. ‘Please, no more,’ he sobbed.
‘You think I’m falling for this pigshit? You’re clever, Amerikaner, but Uhrig – Uhrig’s got brains for ten. An old soldier like you needs to be broken a different way.’ He picked his teeth, hawked, then broke into a wide grin. ‘I’ve got just the thing.’
He strode off, twirling his baton. ‘Bring him!’
A BK44 was shoved into Patrick’s back and he was led away into the factory. He moved stiffly, joints bawling. They passed a shuddering conveyor belt covered in ballast; huge rotating pipes. The air felt thick in Patrick’s nostrils, smelt of quicklime and something sickly sweet, almost like candyfloss. They were heading into the factory’s interior.
‘You should have seen the production levels when I was first sent here,’ Uhrig said, ducking below a girder. ‘We were at the bottom of the DESTA tables. I doubled things in a month. Quadrupled them in six. And what thanks have I got? Fuck all.’
He stopped, turned to face Patrick. This close Patrick could see the pockmarks in his face; his cheeks looked like they had woodworm. His skin was pasty white.
‘You’re my ticket out of here, Major Whaler. I find this friend of yours, they’ll put me back where I belong: on the front line. Just in time for Angola, or maybe Rhodesia.’
‘Rhodesia?’
‘You’ll see. Myself, I’d prefer Angola. More niggers to deal with there.’ He laughed. ‘They’re blacker too.’
They resumed their journey into the heart of the factory, Uhrig humming snatches of the ‘Pilgrims’ Chorus’ from Tannhäuser as they went. Finally they reached a door marked STRICTLY AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY.
‘You’re very lucky, Amerikaner,’ said Uhrig, reaching for a bunch of keys. ‘No one outside the SS has ever seen inside.’
They entered a cylindrical chamber. It was dim, cool, still. From somewhere came the steady hum of condensing units. The guards seemed spooked. But what struck Patrick most was the stench. He breathed through his mouth.
‘Ah!’ said Uhrig, drawing in deep lungfuls. ‘Just like Russia, the autumn of ’42, when we turned the tide against the Bolsheviks. You fight in the East, Amerikaner?’
Patrick shook his head.
‘Lucky you. I still have nightmares.’ Uhrig snicked a light switch.
They were on a metal gangway
suspended in the air. Below them a pit of—
Patrick forced his eyes upwards, struggled to control his breathing.
I’m dead, he thought. I’m dead.
The guard next to him vomited.
Uhrig spun on him. ‘Get the fuck out of here.’
The guard scurried away, clutching his mouth.
‘I’ve been setting up my own commando unit,’ Uhrig said to Patrick. ‘The SS Wutrohr Wolves. Anything to fight off the boredom. But I can’t find enough men here. Too many useless cocksuckers like him. “Ethnics”, not proper Germans.’
‘My heart bleeds,’ said Patrick.
Uhrig peered over the edge. ‘You know, I’ve never met an Amerikaner before. Is it true what they say? That your country is full of pacifists.’ The word came out with a mix of contempt and bewilderment, as if he couldn’t comprehend the idea. ‘Jews and gangsters. That every woman is a slut.’
Patrick saw his house in Las Cruces, the rolling desert hills. ‘You tell me. I’ve not been back for a long time.’
‘That your President was a cripple.’
‘A long time.’
‘Know what I think, Amerikaner? I think you stayed out of the war because you knew you’d lose. Were no match for us.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Is that why you didn’t fight the Japs?’
‘You got it. We’re the United Cowards of America.’
Uhrig searched his face for any sign of sarcasm, then turned back to the pit below. ‘You’re not looking.’
‘I already saw enough.’
Uhrig grinned and cracked his baton into the small of Patrick’s knees. He dropped. Next moment Uhrig had him by the hair, forced his face downwards. ‘See some more!’ The Nazi’s breath was hot in his ear, reeked of salami.
The meagre contents of Patrick’s stomach came bursting out.
Uhrig let go of him and laughed. ‘Uhrig will get you talking yet, Amerikaner.’ He looked at the mass below him. ‘Truly one of the Governor General’s greatest ideas!’
Patrick wiped the puke from his mouth, the cuffs grazing his chin. ‘Is he really still alive?’
‘How the fuck am I supposed to know? Yes. Someone like Kepplar doesn’t come all this way without an order.’ Uhrig peeled off his tunic, then reached for some chains hanging from the ceiling. ‘At least I hope he’s still alive. The Governor’s a generous man. Rewards hard work. I find this friend of yours, he’ll get me out of this shithole.’ He placed his jackboot on the back of Patrick’s neck and forced him to look downwards again. ‘So what do you think?’