Guy Saville - The Afrika Reich

Patrick grunted.

Burton settled back into his seat. It was only then that he realised he was gripping the stock of his BK44. Gripping it so hard his wrist stung.

It took them forty minutes to reach Mupe, exactly as they had planned. Burton spent the time wiping sweat from his eyes, trying not to think of the tears he had shed in Hochburg’s study. He kept glancing in the rear mirror, but there was no swarm of German lights. Lapinski remained hunched over the wheel. With his thin moustache and slick hair he could have been a spiv’s apprentice. Like all the team he was wearing an SS uniform, the cloth clearly distasteful to him. Every now and then he muttered something in Polish. Prayers or complaints, Burton couldn’t tell.

Mupe was a disused airstrip on the flight path from Stanleystadt to Irumu in the east. When SABENA, Congo’s original airline, had set up its network of airfields in the 1920s it also built emergency landing-grounds dotted through the jungle. These were now shrinking back into the trees, ideal for covert extractions. The Nazis had abandoned most of the old Belgian infrastructure to construct bigger, better facilities: monuments to conquest. A network of airports connected the six colonies of German Africa, with hubs linking the continent to the Fatherland. In the Schädelplatz region every aerodrome was now redundant to the new international terminal at Kondolele that could accommodate military aircraft and the latest Lufthansa Junkers. Private jets also used the tarmac, whisking in SS dignitaries who marvelled at Hochburg’s square before flying out again vowing never to return to the squalid heat of Africa. Burton had flown into Kondolele earlier that evening; already it seemed a lifetime ago.

‘Keep the engine running,’ said Burton when they reached the airfield. He slipped out of the jeep, Patrick following, his face still obscured by his insect-head. The two of them jogged to the tree line.

Behind them, Dolan’s vehicle ground to a halt. At the wheel was Vacher – the fifth member of the team, a Rhodesian. Burton motioned to both of them to stay put. Dolan threw up his hands in exasperation.

‘Looks smalty enough,’ said Patrick, scanning the silent perimeter of the airfield. ‘How long?’

Burton glanced at his watch, struggling to read the dials in the swamped light. Their plane was scheduled to touch down at 02:20. ‘Another ten minutes.’

‘Assuming they even left.’

‘Ackerman wouldn’t dare,’ replied Burton, trying to reassure himself as much as Patrick. ‘I’m going to check out that building. You keep the others here. I don’t want Dolan thundering around.’ He left the cover of the trees.

‘Wait!’ said Patrick, fishing inside his pocket. ‘You might need this.’ He tossed something towards him. Burton caught it. It was his Browning, still warm from Patrick’s body.

Burton nodded, then put the pistol into his waistband. With the BK44 in the other hand, he crouched down and moved silently to a caved-in building on the far side of the airfield. It reminded him of the apple store back on the farm.

There was no door, just a frame. Inside it smelt of orchids and wet plaster; cockroaches teemed on the floor. Everything of value had long since been stolen. Screwed to the wall was a portrait of Leopold III of Belgium, former ruler of the colony. Someone had added a toothbrush moustache and engorged penis to the picture; another, a hangman’s noose. There were swastikas daubed on all the walls, but crudely as if drawn by children.

Burton moved to what was once the control room. Broken windows looked out on a runway of compacted dirt. They’d need to light some markers for the pilots. Even with night-vision sights a landing like this was fraught with—

A noise.

Burton strained to hear it. For an instant his spine turned to ice. It sounded like Hochburg. The gait of his step as he strode in for dinner. Then it came again, something much more earthly: the clink of webbing. Burton pushed himself hard against the wall. Raised his hand, ready to swipe any intruder off his feet and slam the hard bone of his wrist on to their neck. The hannu was as effective as a club.

A footfall. Then another. And a broad figure lumbered into the room. Burton had him on the floor faster than a heartbeat, raised his hand to strike.

‘It’s me!’

He recognised the booming Welsh voice at once. ‘You were supposed to stay with the others.’

‘Bah! That’s what the old man said.’ Dolan had developed a wary lexicon of contempt for Patrick: old man, Yank, (if he was out of earshot) chickenshit-bollocksucker. Their dislike had been instant and mutual, the type of animosity that only kindred spirits can find. That America had stayed out of the war seemed to affront Dolan further, as if Patrick were personally responsible.

Burton helped him off the floor. Even in the darkness, even with his face covered in camouflage cream Dolan still looked ruddy. ‘Keep your voice down! Major Whaler was acting under my instructions.’

‘I needed to know. Did you get the Kraut bastard?’

Burton had a flash of tears and blood. That curious belching sound as the knife tore into Hochburg’s windpipe. An unanswered question.

‘He’s dead.’

In the darkness, Burton could make out Dolan’s teeth as he grinned. He had too many of them, set like pillars in his mouth; a cannonball head; body as wide as two kegs roped together. The Welshman, an explosives expert, had been the original team leader before Ackerman visited the farm, something he bore with resentful good grace. At that moment he chuckled and gave Burton a triumphant thump round the shoulder. ‘Did you catch my handi -work? BOOM! Must have bagged at least twenty Krauts with that.’ He chuckled again.

‘There’ll be time for that later,’ said Burton uncomfortably. ‘For now, I want two flares. One at the top of the field. Another at the opposite end. You and Vacher get to it.’

A mock salute. ‘Yessir.’

Burton watched him hurry away. He had known soldiers like Dolan before, boys who had never seen real combat, who considered the 1939–40 conflict a disgrace. They thought war was a rough and tumble game. Bulldog with grenades. In the Legion the sous-officiers would have had him spitting teeth by the first night but now, with all the wars over, discipline was slipping.

Following Hitler’s surprise attack on the Low Countries and France in the spring of 1940, the British Expeditionary Force had been encircled at Dunkirk. For a few brief hours it was hoped that the troops might be evacuated, then came the order from Führer headquarters to smash the British into the sea. Forty-five thousand were killed, almost quarter of a million taken as prisoners of war, with fewer than five thousand managing to escape. ‘The whole root, core and brain of our army destroyed’, as Churchill admitted after he was forced to resign as Prime Minister.

In his place came Lord Halifax – cool-headed, pragmatic – who judged the public mood of dread and proposed a summit with the Führer to decide the future of Europe; there was no appetite for a protracted war, no repeat of 1914–18. Hitler agreed, declaring, ‘If there’s one nation that has nothing to gain from this conflict, and may even lose everything by it, that’s England’. Despite rumbles of protest, Halifax’s position was strengthened by the press and their ‘Bring ‘em Home’ campaign. All that summer, as Spitfires and Messerschmitts battled over Britain, headlines called for the return of the Dunkirk POWs in exchange for peace. Mothers and wives took to the streets outside Parliament demanding their men back. Less publicly, ambassadors from the conquered nations of Europe were arriving in London and urged the Prime Minister to negotiate a settlement that might restore their independence.