The Madagaskar Plan Read Online Free Page B

his pocket and pulled out a banknote. “You can drop me here,” he said, offering it through the window.
    “No way I got change for five bob.”
    “Take the rest of the day off, buy yourself a drink. And if anyone asks, you never came out here. Or saw me.”
    “Is it the law?” The driver looked uncertainly at the money.
    “Jealous husband,” answered Burton with a forced wryness.
    The driver gave an understanding nod and crumpled the note in his hand. “Couple of pints and I can’t remember a thing.”
    Burton lifted out his haversack and shut the door. He was unshaven, wearing a sheepskin jerkin under a secondhand suit. The trousers and jacket were cut from scratchy brown rayon; sweat from a stranger’s body lingered in the cloth. When Hitler had returned the Dunkirk POWs to Britain, rather than sending them in uniform, he’d ordered a quarter of a million of these “ dove suits” hastily made. Few of the homecoming prisoners wanted their new clothes. They were to be found heaped up in rag-and-bone stalls, promised to clothe generations of vagrants.
    The taxi made a three-point turn and accelerated away in the direction of the railway station where Burton had arrived earlier that afternoon.
    Moments later—silence.
    As soon as he was alone, Burton reached into his haversack. He took out his Browning HP pistol, inserted a clip, then secured it in his waistband. He was less than a mile from home, and knew this spot well. Before he bought the farm he’d parked here with Madeleine on several occasions. It was a discreet place to leave the car while they vanished into the trees to feel a bed of leaves beneath them. Perhaps the Riley belonged to a couple looking for some privacy.
    He crossed over to it and touched the bonnet: the metal was cold. Peering through the window, he found nothing except an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. All the doors were locked.
    Burton tugged the collar of his jacket around his neck; his breath smoked the air. This was no weather for lovers.
    The mud revealed footprints—two pairs, men’s—that had left the car and joined the road heading toward the farmhouse. Burton followed them, his pace soon quickening, boots drumming a lonely sound. They were the ones he’d acquired in Angola, taken from the feet of a dead man, the laces badly tied. He’d never imagined how difficult it would be to do one-handed.
    He had been a fool to send the telegrams.
    The first was from Cape Town, before he was admitted to the hospital, when he was delirious with exhaustion and self-recrimination. The message had been dispatched to Madeleine’s house in London, all caution abandoned. Her husband had sent Burton to his death in Kongo—what might he have reaped back in England? YOU ARE IN DANGER, it read. LEAVE IMMEDIATELY! ON MY WAY BACK TO YOU. Even in his fevered state he changed the last words before they were tapped in: ON MY WAY HOME . He sent another from Mombasa and then one more from Alexandria, on Christmas Eve, the words identical, each message increasingly desperate. It was probably too late, but he couldn’t bear any more days of unresting seas creeping by while he was impotent to help; he didn’t dare to think what might have happened. There were no replies.
    Woodland gave way to open fields. Ten minutes later, Burton was staring at a weather-beaten sign: Saltmeade Farm. This moment had sustained him on his long journey. He’d clung to the image of the windows burning bright, the smell of applewood curling from the chimney, Maddie opening the door in her cornflower-blue dress, her belly swollen with the baby she would soon have. Their first child. He would clasp her and sink to his knees, beg forgiveness for leaving her to kill Hochburg in order that he could forgive himself.
    The sign brought neither relief nor welcome, only anxiety and the anger that had throbbed inside him since he’d left Africa.
    Five hundred yards of potholed driveway led to the farm; from here the house