The Afrika Reich

by Guy Saville

  He staggered, winded, and spun round. The other Hauptsturm-führer rushed at him. Burton managed to duck out of his way. Gwiwar – an elbow into chest bone – gwiwar yarfe. The back of Burton’s hand slammed into his nose. Slammed again, leaving a lump of blood and gristle.

  Suddenly Burton fell to his hands and knees.

  Someone had tugged the chain round his ankle. It was Rottman, aiming his Browning at him.

  Burton tugged back.

  Rottman stumbled. Misfire.

  Burton snatched up a rock from the ground. Smashed it against Rottman’s shin. Smashed it again even harder. Felt the tibia snap.

  The Browning clattered to the ground. The German cupped his jackboot, face streaming.

  Burton was back on his feet. He charged Rottman, using his head as a battering ram. Both men collapsed to the ground. Burton lassoed his leg-chain around Rottman’s neck. Tightened it. Tightened it. Tightened it. Rottman hissed and spat, his slanted eyes bulging. He reached round, clawed at the letters burned into Burton’s arm.

  Burton ignored the pain. Pulled tighter still. Thought of what men like Rottman had done to Maddie in Vienna. He was lathered in sweat.

  The scratching at his forearm became weaker.

  Finally Rottman went limp.

  Burton let a grim satisfaction dance in his chest. He shoved Rottman off and searched his body. He found the keys to the ankle cuff, the extra clip, Patrick’s pipe and lighter: his lucky pipe! Working its magic again. He unchained himself, searched for his pistol. It had fallen several feet away.

  Burton picked up the Browning, clutched it to his mouth and kissed it. The handle came away bloody.

  He stood and peered over the edge: below, the tunnel and auto-bahn were a furnace. He saw men staggering around, their bodies ablaze. Smelt skin and hair burning. He thought of his parents’ orphanage on the night it had burned down. The screams of the children as they were trapped inside. His father unmovable as the flames took him …

  Burton slipped the pistol behind his back, making sure it was secure in his belt, and dived into the hole once more.

  Something landed in front of Neliah.

  It was a skull-troop, bloody and broken from his fall.

  She looked up, her fingers letting go of the grenade pin.

  On a ledge above her men were fighting. A prisoner and guards in black. The prisoner fought like a diaboli, snarling blood. She recognised the rungiro at once – it beat in his breast just like hers. He killed the Nazistas.

  And vanished.

  Where had he gone? Neliah sheathed the panga on her back, scrambled up the rock-wall after him. Then she saw it. Her heart roared.

  There was a hole in the stone.

  She began climbing as fast as she could.

  Beneath her the flames surged into the escape-hole. Found the dynamite.

  Burton was much quicker this time. He crawled through the darkness to the hollow. There was no sign of the Pole but a sallow light shimmered through the rent above him. Burton felt the breeze on his face. It smelt of dank rock, and also something sweeter.

  Air warmed by sunlight.

  Above him the roof scraped and shivered. There was a rushing sound, like a subterranean waterfall.

  Burton grabbed the sides of the hole and pulled himself up. He was in a burrow, beyond it another opening smashed though the rock. He shimmied forward … into the light.

  And out.

  Something moved in front of Burton, blocking his path. Two black columns.

  He looked through them to the scene below. Another avalanche of fallen debris, more workers toiling to remove it, the white surface of the PAA … Burton followed its path to the grasslands outside. Another fifty miles and he’d be at the border with Northern Rhodesia.

  Rhodesia!

  He felt a tingle of freedom.

  His eye returned to the columns blocking his path. They were the colour of night, shiny but scuffed. Made of leather.

  His heart sagged.

  Jackboots.

  AFTER the Casablanca Conference handed western Africa to the Nazis, Churchill started telling a bitter joke. If you wanted to get rich on the continent forget diamonds or copper or gold. Invest in jackboots.

  It was going to be the growth industry.

  Burton hoped never to see another pair again.

  Very slowly, very carefully, he stood up, keeping his arms wide of his body to show he wasn’t carrying a weapon. He could feel the Browning hidden against his back. He stared at the Lebb in front of him. This one’s name-badge read: Untersturmführer Schenka. Another ‘ethnic German’, another drone off the SS production-line. Behind him were several guards with BK44s, exhausted workers. He glimpsed the Pole whose face he had seen earlier; his head was bowed.

  Burton made his voice authoritative, urgent; put on his best Prussian accent – something to intimidate Schenka’s yokel background. ‘My name is Sturmbannführer Kohl. I’m Gestapo.’

  He was useless at this type of thing, aware of how he must appear – the filthy trousers, torn shirt, blood-soaked face – but it was all his flagging brain could muster. Hierarchy was everything to the Nazis.

  Schenka looked him up and down, placed his hand on his holster.

  Over his shoulder Burton could see the PAA continue its journey south. He thought of Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia’s capital, with its airport and flights to Europe. On their first night in the country he and Patrick had stayed at the Grand. Crisp sheets, air-conditioned restaurant, swimming pool. How civilised it all seemed. How normal.

  ‘Bullshit,’ said Schenka. ‘Guards!’

  Burton fixed him with a stare, raised his voice so everyone could hear; there was the slightest tic in his jaw. ‘Listen to me, Untersturmführer.’ He made the word drip contempt. ‘A team of commandos has attacked the tunnel, the same commandos who assassinated the Governor General. You must have heard the shots. I need your help to stop them.’ He gestured towards the hole behind him. ‘Through there.’

  Schenka’s face creased. ‘I wasn’t told of any operations.’

  ‘Of course you weren’t!’

  ‘I’ll have to radio back to—’

  ‘I haven’t got time for this. Help me now and I guarantee you promotion. Fuck up: and you’ll spend the next five years in Muspel.’

  ‘Gestapo?’

  ‘Department A4.’

  ‘How do I know you’re not one of the terrorists? Or escaped from the Unterjocher?’

  ‘Guarding sand dunes will give you plenty of time to reflect on it.’

  Schenka hesitated. ‘Check his arm,’ he said to the guards.

  Before they reached him Burton had tugged up his sleeve and showed off his unblemished skin.

  ‘Sturmbannführer: the mark is always on the left side.’

  ‘Of course.’ Burton began to roll up his other sleeve. Schenka stepped forward to inspect it.

  Kai duka. Dambe’s most savage move.

  The headbutt.

  Schenka dropped, hands clutching his face. Blood streamed between his fingers.

  The guards rushed in. Burton floored the first, but there were too many. He’d never fight his way past.

  He hit the deck, rolled backwards and did the only thing left to him.

  He crawled back into the hole he’d emerged from.

  Burton moved fast, praying that none of the guards would stuff a BK after him, praying for a way out of the firestorm on the other side. He felt hands snatch at his boots.

  Suddenly there was a face in his way.

  A black girl was trying to push past him. Burton smelt smoke in her hair. She looked straight through him, struggled forward. ‘Avanca! Agora!’

  ‘No,’ he said, not understanding her. ‘There are Germans. Nazis.’

  Before he could say anything else, Burton was dragged backwards. He held out his palm to ward off the girl but she crawled after him.

  Above them a patter of dust and falling stone.

  Burton was pulled out of the hole, b
anana-guns trained on him. Schenka stepped forward still holding his bloody nose. ‘Unterjocher scum. You’re fucking dead. Tie him!’

  ‘Untersturmführer,’ said the guard by the hole. ‘There’s another one. A … a darkie.’

  ‘It can’t be.’

  The guard dragged her out by the ears. Burton saw that she was young, no more than a teenager, with a cruel scar down her temple. Her eyes were wild, flashing like onyx – just like Maddie’s did when she was angry.

  She snarled at the guard, struggled to free herself.

  Schenka looked down at her, his mouth curling with disgust and fury. He kicked her in the chest. She fell backwards, head bouncing against the rock. Schenka raised his foot to stamp on her skull.

  ‘No!’

  Burton hurled himself at the Untersturmführer, knocking him off his feet. He felt a boot crack into his kidneys, blows to the back and head. Then the muzzle of a rifle between his shoulders. He was forced to his knees, next to the black girl. There was a gash on the side of her face, a line of blood running from her nostril.

  Schenka ran his sleeve across his own bleeding nose, dredged his lungs and spat a gob of phlegm on the black girl. ‘There’s only one thing I hate more than niggers,’ he said, turning to Burton, ‘and that’s nigger-lovers.’

  The girl was saying something in her strange language. It sounded familiar to Burton, wasn’t an African tongue.

  ‘Since he likes her so much, tie them together. We’ll take them back to Uhrig. I’m sure the Standartenführer will know what to do with them.’

  The guards bound a rope round Burton and the girl’s wrists. Pulled it tight. Burton felt the blood slow in his arm.

  The girl was still talking. ‘Tenos que correr.’

  ‘Quiet!’ said Schenka.

  Burton realised she was talking to him. He concentrated on what she was saying: it sounded like Spanish; Patrick had taught him a few phrases after his time in the Civil War. Correr.

  To run.

  Her eyes were fixed on the road below. No, not the road – the wall of the tunnel. Carved into it Burton saw a doorway, some type of emergency exit. She tugged on the rope around their wrists, looked straight at him, bobbing her head up and down in encouragement. ‘Agora,’ she whispered, tugging on his wrist again. She was lifting off her knees to run.

  Schenka pulled out his Luger and aimed it straight at her. ‘Say another word and—’

  From deep within the rock there was an explosion.

  A sound so loud Burton felt rather than heard it, a boom pulsing through the nerves in his jaw. His ears popped, then a high-pitched whine.

  Dust cascaded from above.

  A beat, a beat and a half, and Burton was blasted off his knees.

  Either side of him the Nazis and workers fell to the ground.

  The rock beneath him began to vibrate and crumble … gave way. He tumbled downwards in a landslide of rubble, the black girl still bound to his wrist.

  They landed in a tangle of limbs, black and white.

  Burton was on his feet instantly, the girl next to him blinking as if she had just woken. He pulled her up, urged her to follow, half dragged her along with him.

  Schenka struggled to stand, his face a furious mask of blood and dust. He fired his Luger, the bullet sparking on the ground near them, the sound muffled in Burton’s ear.

  And then something else.

  A terrible cracking noise. Fissures were appearing in the roof of the tunnel. Jets of hissing water. And with them a new sound.

  A rushing gurgling. The stamp of a hundred horses, like a cavalry charge. Five hundred. A thousand.

  Ten thousand.

  They reached the emergency exit; there were rungs in the rock. Burton began to climb, his free hand grasping the treads, the one tied to the girl held low so she could follow. Her eyes were wide open now.

  The tunnel collapsed.

  The river flooded in. A ferocious wave of unrelenting water.

  The ladder shook beneath Burton’s grip. He was climbing in slow motion. Could hear his mother reading from the Bible: and God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh is come, for the earth is filled with violence.

  He glanced down. The bottom of the shaft was already a whirlpool. He looked into the eyes of the black girl expecting terror. The water was tearing at her waist.

  She seemed to be smiling.

  The water surged over her. Burton managed a final, clawing breath. A lungful of metallic air.

  Then everything went black.

  NORTH ANGOLA

  The White man’s salvation lies in the furnace … Let the flames redeem our souls, let the flames wipe Africa clean

  WALTER HOCHBURG

  Private Journal, 1932

  Wutrohr Labour Camp, PAA

  17 September, 10:25

  A flashlight pierced the gloom.

  ‘I can’t see him.’

  ‘He’s got to be there.’

  The light scanned the dead bodies more studiously.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Pull up the chain.’

  Click-click-click-click-click …

  Patrick watched the guards above him as they wound the ratchet. He was tearing off his clothes: boots, pants, blood-spattered shirt. Everything. He yanked the shirt over his head down to his wrists, ripped the last bit over his handcuffs. Then he took his boots and hurled them towards the darkest corner of the platform above.

  ‘What was that?’

  The light spun wildly before making another pass over the corpses. It flashed right over him.

  Patrick froze, his naked body pressed against the corpses around him. He could feel their icy flesh, feel the heat leaching out of his own skin.

  Dropping into the pit had been like plunging into a lake of frozen limbs. At first he screamed, the horror almost impossible to control. The stench of putrefaction filled his lungs till they were solid. Then the detached part of his brain took over, saw an opportunity for escape. The corpses were supporting him: the chain around his ankles had gone slack. He eased himself off the hook, managed to untie his feet and slithered deeper into the bodies until he was hidden from sight. His skull was pounding with blood. He began to take off his clothes.

  His nakedness would be his camouflage.

  Click-click-click-click-click.

  The guards continued to wind the ratchet until the hook was level with the gangway.

  ‘He’s gone!’

  ‘He can’t have escaped.’ Another pass of the beam. ‘We’ll have to go down there, find him.’

  ‘Fuck that.’

  ‘Or would you rather tell Uhrig we lost his prisoner?’

  Silence, then one of the guards shouted out. ‘Amerikaner, there’s no way out. Stop fucking us around and show yourself.’ His voice echoed around the chamber. ‘We promise not to hurt you.’

  Patrick pushed himself deeper. His body was growing colder by the second, his breath vapour. All around glassy eyes stared right through him.

  A rattle of chains. The ratchet began clicking again. One of the guards was lowered into the pit, his feet supported by the hook.

  Click-click-click.

  Patrick glimpsed upwards, saw the soles of the soldier’s boots as they descended. He clutched a BK44, the muzzle trembling.

  From outside, the retort of gunfire.

  The chain juddered to a halt. ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘What if the rebels are attacking us too?’

  ‘Just keep lowering me.’

  Click-click-click.

  The guard descended until he skimmed the surface of the bodies. He fumbled with the flashlight, trying to penetrate the dimness of the chamber.

  Patrick was twenty feet away. He reached for the corpse next to him, tried to straighten its arm but it was locked with rigor mortis. He pushed harder, heard the elbow joint snap as he straightened it. Patrick held it up – a dead man’s salute to the Führer.

  Catching the movement, the guar
d started. Fired off a few rounds.

  Patrick heard the dull smack of bullets burying into flesh. The smell of cordite and ground meat.

  ‘What are doing?’ shouted the guard above.

  ‘I saw something.’

  ‘You crazy? Shoot him and Uhrig will stick you in the crusher.’

  ‘What the fuck am I supposed to do?’

  Patrick slid closer to the soldier above him. Raised another corpse’s hand. Let it drop.

  The guard swung round; the clink of chains.

  ‘There! Something moved.’ He flashed his light. ‘Lower me down.’

  Click-click.

  Patrick became still, held his breath – one more motionless body among many. He used to have nightmares about all the men he’d killed, now he couldn’t even remember their faces.

  ‘Perhaps we should get some back-up,’ said the guard on the platform.

  ‘You heard Uhrig, everyone’s gone to the tunnel. No, we do this alone. He’s one old man.’

  Patrick leapt up, grabbed the guard and dragged him into the bodies. A flurry of bullets. Patrick felt a blaze of heat across his shoulder.

  The chain swung wildly. The beam of the flashlight bouncing off the walls.

  From above: ‘What’s going on?’

  Patrick chopped hard against the guard’s wrist, making him drop the BK, then shoved the whole of his hand into his mouth. Fought against the gnashing teeth. Pulled down with all his force.

  The Lebb’s jaw snapped instantly. He made a strange aw- aw-noise.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Patrick turned his finger to a point and drove it into the German’s eye. Twisted it like a key.

  ‘Jenzer, what’s happened?’

  The voice from the platform sounded frantic.

  Patrick reached for the hook and fastened it to the guard’s tunic. Killed the flashlight.

  Darkness.

  ‘Jenzer?’

  Click-click, click …

  The dead soldier was yanked upwards. Body twitching, eye streaming jelly. Patrick grabbed the fallen BK44, hugged it to his chest and resumed his face-down position among the dead.

  Click-click-click.

  Somewhere in the complex more gunfire, the distinctive clap of a grenade exploding.