by Guy Saville
“Feast,” he breathed, and died.
Salois pried the tin from his fingers. In the days and delirium that followed, he bound some planks together, dragged them into the surf. Sea mines the size of tanks bobbed past; he drifted beneath patrols that ignored the skeleton on the raft. Tiny nibbles of sardine sustained him, the oil thickening his tongue. The whole time, he recited numbers to himself, like funeral rites. To the west, the coast of Africa beckoned.
It was only later that Reuben Salois regretted his escape.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Kongo
1 April, 12:00
THE JUNGLE STREAKED past, dense with shadows and fever trees. Whether this was German territory or under the insurgents’ banner, Salois no longer knew. For three years he had been fighting as a guerrilla, first as part of the insurgency against Nazi rule in Kongo, lately in the war that had spread across the north of the colony. A life of scavenging in the jungle, ambushes, and killing the enemy wherever he could. Now he sat in the rear of the jeep, shirt clinging to the seat, hands cuffed in his lap. On either side of him were military policemen in the uniforms of the Force Publique. His legs were unbound. If the guards had been German, he would have kicked the driver in the back of the head, thrown himself out of the vehicle, and run till they shot him. Instead, he sat resignedly.
“Where are you from?” he asked the boy on his left.
“Stanleyville.”
“I mean the old country.”
“Antwerp.”
“My hometown,” said Salois, and laughed. For seven centuries, it had been the center of Jewish life in Belgium. All he had left of the place was a smudged impression.
“What’s so funny?” asked the policeman.
“That you found me. Arrested me.”
The Nazis had retaken Stanleystadt in a ferocious counterattack, then driven deep into the surrounding jungle, routing out the insurgents; mustard gas had been used against the guerrilla stronghold of Bambili. Salois heard rumors of a second rebellion in Madagaskar and bloody reprisals. Yet in the midst of this carnage, someone had ordered these boys to track him down for a crime committed a lifetime ago.
“You’re not being arrested.”
Salois rattled his cuffs. “Then why these?”
“Orders.”
The jeep turned off the level tarmac of the German highway and joined the old Belgian road, navigating its way through a tunnel of trees. Through chinks in the canopy, Salois saw the sun reach its peak and begin to descend. Later the forest gave way to baked grasslands.
“Are we in Sudan?” he asked. There had been no demarcation line, but they had driven relentlessly north.
“Almost there,” said the driver.
The sky was ocher when they reached a dusty track that ended in brick pillars and a gate. A sentry waved them through to a convent with an imposing bell tower. Parked outside were tanks and military lorries.
Salois was escorted inside, toward the rear of the building. The air smelled chalky, and beyond he detected meat and gravy, not individual platters but the bawdy aroma of a mess kitchen. They reached a door set in a stone wall. The policeman from Antwerp knocked while the other undid Salois’s cuffs and gestured for him to enter. He was in a large, bare room bathed in a tricolor of light: gold, red, and blue. The only furniture was a conference table, at its head an officer in navy whites. He stood and spoke in stiff French with a British accent.
“Ah, Major Salois, we’ve been expecting you.”
“Sal-loire,” he replied, correcting the officer’s pronunciation.
“I’m sorry if our Belgian colleagues alarmed you, but we couldn’t send British soldiers and feared you might scarper if you weren’t cuffed.” He had a face like the sides of a candle left to burn through the night, bags of flesh tugging at his eyes. “My name is Rolland. Vice Admiral Rolland, Royal Navy. Will you sit?”
Salois didn’t move. “We’re a long way from the sea.”
A curt, bronchial laugh. “It was an invitation, not an order.”
There were two other men at the table: one swarthy as an Arab, dressed in a blue-gray uniform Salois didn’t recognize, the other in a suit, younger and well fed, with silver hair. He stifled a yawn behind his hand. Both reeked of suds and soft sheets, a life Salois hadn’t known for a long time. He took a chair opposite them.
“First, a delicate matter,” said Rolland, also sitting. “Not everyone speaks French, nor English, for that matter. In fact, our only common language is, well, German.”
“Deutsch ist gut,” replied Salois.
“Excellent.” Rolland gave the table a congratulatory tap. “Would you like some refreshment before we begin? Tea? A drop of the stronger stuff? I find a little Scotch cools the blood at this time of the afternoon.” He spoke German more fluently than French.
“What about food?”
The admiral picked up a phone on the table. “We can find something.”
Salois’s eyes roved around the room. There were three ceiling fans above him, only one turning. Behind the table was a stained-glass window that depicted Abraham binding Isaac; it had no openings. Salois felt the heat soak through him, though he didn’t loosen his collar or roll up his sleeves. It was not for these men to see the story his skin told.
For the first time, he became aware of a fourth person in the room, perched by the window, a half silhouette against the dipping sun and harlequin squares of color. He was wearing a linen suit that looked as if it had never known a patch of sweat, a silk shirt, no tie. His face was shaded by the brim of a Panama. Their eyes locked, the man scrutinizing him.
“It took an age to track you down, Major,” said Rolland.
“Why were you looking?”
“You’re a legend among the guerrillas of Kongo. The invincible Jew! The only man to have escaped Madagaskar.”
“Am I really the only one?” The thought depressed Salois.
“No,” said the man at the window. “But the only one foolish enough to stay in Africa.” His German was impeccable, arrogant, and accusatory.
“I had no choice.”
“Personally, I would have gone to America.”
“If you’d seen what I have,” retorted Salois, “you’d know that was impossible.”
“You want redemption?”
“Madagaskar won’t be free till Africa is. Hate kept me here.”
“A misunderstood virtue,” said Rolland. “You’ll forgive my colleague. He thinks your involvement will only complicate matters. I, on the other hand … Your military record is remarkable, Major. We need your expertise.”
“This is a debriefing?”
The admiral steepled his fingers. “Not exactly.”
There was a knock on the door, and a staff sergeant entered carrying a tray laden with tea things. A plate of corned beef sandwiches was placed in front of Salois. He picked one up, a tongue of mustard easing from the bread, and chewed hungrily. In the jungle, he subsisted on a diet of wild yams, caterpillars, and monkey flesh.
“Sorry about the china, Admiral,” said the sergeant as he poured the tea. “We’re still waiting for the proper stuff from Khartoum. One of the Belgians nabbed this as they retreated from Stanleystadt.”
The cups were as thin as petals, rimmed with a frieze of swastikas, gold on red.
“Good enough for a simple sailor.” Rolland took a sip and let out a rumble of satisfaction. “You were telling us about the war, Major.”
“The Germans can’t win it.”
“They’ve taken back Stanleystadt.”
“For now. And it cost them dearly. Meanwhile, Elisabethstadt is under British control. The Nazis don’t have the manpower, not while they’re also fighting in Angola. Not unless they want to bleed their other colonies dry.”
“So you guerrillas are in the ascendancy?”
Salois tugged at his collar; the heat was insufferable. “We don’t have enough heavy weaponry. Or tanks. We can wound the beast but not slay it.”
“
What if the British joined the war?” asked Rolland. “Not just in Elisabethstadt or the south; I mean the whole of Kongo. A spearhead from Sudan.”
“The Heydrich-Eden Pact killed that possibility. It’s a border dispute, remember? No escalation.”
“Major Salois,” said the admiral, “we’re planning an operation. Top secret. Something that could change everything in Africa—”
Salois put up a hand to silence him. “Last year, a commander of the Force Publique summoned me like this. He had something top secret. Promised it would change things. Do you know what?”
“To kill Americans,” said the man by the window. “A team of oil workers to be exact, prospecting in the Kosterman district.”
Salois had slit their throats as they slept, spared one man, and paraded around him in a black uniform, flashing his swastika armband.
“I assume the plan was to provoke the United States,” continued the man at the window, “drag it into Africa. Very clever. Unfortunately, your witness made it back to Stanleystadt and was handed over to Governor Hochburg. He understood the delicacy of the situation and had him shot. The Americans were none the wiser.”
“How do you know this?”
“I’ve been secretly arming the Force Publique for years.” In the haze of the sunset, he may have been smiling. “When I told them we were looking for you, they furnished me with plenty of details.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You should be gratified that we’ve taken such an interest in you.”
Rolland intervened again: “Hear us out, Major. Official policy is to endorse the Heydrich-Eden Pact. We don’t want the war to escalate or, heaven forbid, spread to Europe. However, there are those of us who think that’s an inevitability. Unless we shift the balance of power.”
“You mean fight a bigger war?”
“For the greater peace, yes.” He drained his cup. “Bringing men from Europe isn’t feasible. Not only would it leave us exposed at home, we couldn’t move a force of any size through Suez without Germania knowing. Nor can we round the Cape—not unless we want to sail past every Nazi base on the west coast of Africa. Which leaves one alternative.”
Salois understood immediately; he showed no expression. “Diego?”
The admiral glanced at the other men around the table and nodded.
Diego Suarez: on the northern tip of Madagaskar, one of the largest natural harbors in the world. The Nazis had militarized it as soon as they took control of the island, transforming the decrepit French port into a state-of-the-art naval fortress. Salois had worked in the gangs that built it, a minuscule dot of flesh among the stone and steel, like one of the slaves who toiled on the treasure cities of the pharaoh, aware that every brick laid, every girder hauled on blistered backs was reinforcing the Nazis’ grip. He had sabotaged a batch of cement; when it didn’t set, the guards had selected a work detail at random—twenty-five men—and shot every one. It was from Diego that the Reich’s East Africa Fleet dominated the shipping lanes of the Indian Ocean.
“We have thousands of soldiers stationed in the Far East,” said Rolland. “It would take a fraction of this force to make the difference. We’re already preparing supply lines through Kenya and Sudan to this forward station. Once we land, we can have our troops on the border with Kongo inside a week, faster than the Germans can mobilize. If we join with the Force Publique, we could take back Stanleystadt.”
“Then what?” said Salois.
“We drive toward Elisabethstadt, squeezing the enemy from the north as well as the south.”
“But you can’t get your men to Africa.”
“Precisely. For two centuries, the Royal Navy has commanded the Indian Ocean.” Rolland’s mouth sagged with distaste. “Now we have to share it.” He poured himself another cup of tea before leveling his eyes on Salois. “We want you to destroy the base at Diego Suarez.”
Salois said nothing. He took another sandwich; the mustard burned the roof of his mouth.
“A large-scale operation is out of the question,” continued Rolland. “Stealth and secrecy are our only hope. You will lead a team of four.”
Salois shook his head. “Diego’s huge, bigger than a city.”
“We’re aware that you know the terrain, Major. This is your chance to free Madagaskar.”
“There would be reprisals. Worse than anything Globocnik did before.”
“Think of it like gangrene,” said the man at the window. “Sometimes one has to lose a limb to save the body.”
Salois shifted his look toward the light. “Easy to say when it’s not you on the butcher’s block.”
“After you torched a few vanilla farms, thousands joined the struggle. Strike at Diego and the whole island will rise.”
There was truth in what he said. Salois also heard the impatience in his voice, the cynicism of his appeal. He turned back to Rolland. “Five men are not enough.”
“Now is the time,” replied the admiral. “A whole brigade was transferred from the island to fight in Kongo. Security will never be so thin.”
“But five men.”
“Your task would simply be to incapacitate the air defenses. We’ll do the rest, from above.”
“A bombing raid?”
The admiral indicated the dark-skinned man opposite Salois. “Colonel Turneiro, of the Mozambique Air Force.”
“I didn’t know they had one.”
The airman puffed himself up. “A squadron of Lancasters, sold to us by the British.”
“It will bring you into the war.”
“Lisboa has decided. It’s time we joined our Angolan brothers—what better way than with a famous victory.”
Salois was thinking about the flat, scrubby hills above Diego: there was a runway that could land the latest jet fighters. “If I take out the guns, there must be a hundred Messerschmitts at Diego. The bombers will never get through.”
“Which is why I’m leading a second team,” said the man by the window. “To destroy the radar station at Mazunka. Once it’s done, the whole west coast will be blind. By the time our planes are over Diego it’ll be too late.”
Salois glanced at the finish of his jacket. “You might get your suit dirty.”
He let out an empty laugh. “Don’t let this fool you,” he replied. “I’m as happy in uniform. Happier, wouldn’t you say, Admiral?”
Salois leaned back in his chair, feeling the upholstery shift around him, and tried to remember the last time he’d sat on anything so comfortable. He wanted to believe these men. Outside, the sun continued to sink, spraying the floor with color through the stained-glass window. He shook his head again.
“None of it makes any difference. Even if you can destroy Diego, even if you can land thousands of new troops, you and the Germans will slaughter yourselves to a stalemate.”
“What would you suggest then?” asked Rolland.
“The one thing every Jew knows: America.”
“You’re ahead of us, Major. Something you proved when you killed those oil workers. Kongo is huge. If we fight in the north and south, that still leaves the west. Which is why once we open up this new front, the United States plans to attack from the Atlantic. It has been agreed at the highest levels.”
Salois’s eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Just because I’ve been in the jungle doesn’t mean I don’t hear the news. I know how Taft won the election; Americans don’t want adventures abroad.”
“Winning and governing are not the same. Fifteen years ago, their economy was in ruins. They rebuilt; now it’s waning again. They need fresh resources, and Africa has them in abundance.”
“Neutrality bought them a share.”
“Which the Germans control,” said the man at the window. “They could be choked off on Der Führer’s whim.”
“I still don’t buy it,” said Salois.
“What did Churchill say? ‘America will always do the right thing, after exhausting all the alternatives.’”
“You see,” said R
olland, “our paths may be different, but they wind to the same point.” He offered a rheumy smile. “You’re the best man to lead the operation, Major. The only man.”
“And if I refuse?”
“This isn’t the SS—we can’t force you … However, there is one, well, awkward matter.”
While the admiral took a sudden interest in his empty teacup, the man by the window stepped forward and removed a sheet of paper from his jacket. He slid it across the table. Salois saw him clearly for the first time and felt a twist of sympathy. Half his face was scar tissue, the color of plum flesh. Salois glanced at the photostat he’d been offered.
The ancient remorse filled him. No matter how deep he buried it, it was only a scratch away.
“Where did you get this?” he asked, hiding his nausea.
“Like I said: the Force Publique furnished me with everything I needed.”
Salois studied the document. It was dated Antwerp, 1928, when he’d been at university studying veterinary medicine. His name was emblazoned on it—not Reuben Salois but his real name, the one he’d abandoned when he fled the country to join the Foreign Legion and a decade of brutality in the desert.
“It’s meaningless,” said Salois, pushing away the warrant for his arrest. “That Belgium doesn’t exist anymore.”
“True. In your case, however, I’m sure they’d honor it. The new Europe is prosperous, clean, law-abiding. It has no time for criminals.”
“Except in Germania.”
The warrant lingered in the open for a few moments more before it was stowed in the man’s pocket; he returned to his perch. The movement reminded Salois of the furtive bartering in Madagaskar: a handful of salt, some bread, or a scrawny rooster briefly displayed, then hidden from sight until a price was settled upon. With so much hunger, the buyer was always the loser.