John Davis: The Land God Made in Anger

JOHN GORDON DAVIS

The Land God Made

in Anger

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 1990

Copyright © John Gordon Davis 1990

John Gordon Davis asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The extract from The Encyclopaedia of the Third Reich by L. L. Snyder is reproduced by kind permission of Robert Hale Ltd. The extract from Who’s Who in Nazi Germany by Robert Wistrich is reproduced by kind permission of Weidenfeld and Nicolson. The Extract from The History of the Gestapo by Jacques Delarue is reproduced by kind permission of Macdonald & Co Ltd.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made reasonableeb every effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication .

Source ISBN: 9780007574421

Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780008119324

Version: 2014-12-16

To my dear sister, Jill Gordon-Davis Roomans

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Maps

Chapter 1

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Part Two

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Part Three

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Part Four

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Part Five

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Part Six

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Part Seven

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Part Eight

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Part Nine

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Part Ten

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Part Eleven

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Part Twelve

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Part Thirteen

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Part Fourteen

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Part Fifteen

Chapter 79

Keep Reading

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

Southern Africa is real. The characters, with obvious exceptions, are fictitious.

On these harsh shores it hardly ever rains. The sun beats down onto the desert coast, blinding white and yellow and brown and apricot and pink on the sand dunes that stretch on and on to the east. To the west the cold Atlantic seethes and crashes, stretching for thousands of miles to the Americas; this land is called the Skeleton Coast, for so many ships have wrecked themselves on its treacherous expanse, and so many shipwrecked men have perished. If they survived the savage sea, they died of thirst and starvation after they came crawling ashore. Here nobody lives. The only people who sometimes pass through this land are the strandlopers, hardy people from the hot hard hinterland of Namibia, who journey out of the vast desert to catch seals and shellfish.

This blinding day in June, 1945, two Damara strandlopers sat on the hot shore, resting. Before them, the vast Atlantic ocean was empty. Suddenly, something extraordinary happened.

Less than a thousand metres away, a man came out of the sea, like a demon. One moment there was nothing but the seething sea; the next there was a man, his arms thrashing. He started swimming frantically towards them. The two Damaras stared; then, to their further astonishment, another man erupted out. The two Damaras scrambled up and ran over the sand dune. They peered over the top.

The two demons were rearing up in the swells, disappearing in the white crashing thunder of the breakers. The man in front was the slower. He looked frantically behind him. He came labouring and gasping closer, then suddenly his feet found the bottom. He staggered upright and then collapsed as another wave hit him. He staggered up again, then came stumbling up onto the beach, the waves crashing about his exhausted legs. He looked back, his chest heaving, clutching a small package to his chest. Then he pulled a pistol out of his pocket. He pointed it wildly at the other man, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He turned and staggered off down the beach, trying to run, his legs buckling.

The second man came floundering towards the beach, wild-eyed. The two Damaras could see that blood was flowing from his head, flooding red into the crashing sea. He wrenched off a life-jacket; then he started trying to run after the other man.

The first man was fifty yards ahead, but he was slower. He staggered along, looking back wildly; then he could run no more. He reeled to face his adversary, and pointed the gun at him again. Again nothing happened. Then he hurled the gun. It hit the man a savage blow in the face, which caused him to lurch; and the first man pulled out a knife, and came at him. The second man recovered, and then went into a circle, crouched, his bare hands bunched, the blood streaming down his face. The first man circled after him, his face contorted, the knife in front, his other hand clutching his package; then suddenly he dropped it, picked up a handful of sand, and threw it. The second man staggered backwards, clawing the sand off his bloody face, blinded, and the first man lunged at him.

He came wildly, his killer knife on high, and plunged it deep into the man’s breast. He lurched backwards, one arm up to ward off another stab, but the knife flashed again, and sank into his shoulder. He sprawled onto his back, blood spurting, and tried to scramble up, and the first man crashed on top of him, and the knife lunged down again. He pulled it out, and stabbed and stabbed the man four more times, whimpering. Then he toppled off and clambered to his feet.