The Madagaskar Plan

by Guy Saville

  He ignored her and scooped up a handful of dough. “Make bread,” he hissed at the others. “Make bread.”

  * * *

  “What are these?” asked Hochburg.

  The vestibule was sunk in a dirty gray light. There were thousands of photographs pinned to the walls, some with messages or desiccated flowers. Identity-paper pictures, informal snaps, even miniature paintings. Some were family portraits with the faces cut out, then reassembled like jigsaws with one individual missing. Along the floor were piles of small stones.

  “Dead Jews,” replied the groom who had accompanied Hochburg and Kepplar inside the synagogue. Two geriatric painters had seen the women enter the building and readily snitched. The rest of the grooms were outside, guarding the exit. “They post them as memorials, like our Totenburgs. It gives me the creeps.”

  Hochburg plucked a photograph from the wall but didn’t look at it. The one picture he’d had of Eleanor had been a prized possession until a day came when he could no longer bear seeing it; he had incinerated it without regret. Hochburg screwed up the photo in his hand and tossed it away.

  Kepplar had found the staircase. They descended into the sanctuary, where a group of men were preparing loaves.

  A rabbi came forward, his shoulders bent low. “Froher Führertag, Oberstgruppenführer. We are baking bread for the hungry, to honor this day.”

  “It’s a long time since I read Exodus, but shouldn’t it be unleavened? The bread of affliction.”

  Unsure how to reply, the rabbi offered a loaf.

  Hochburg tore off a hunk. “It’s good,” he said, chewing. “Soft and salty.” He handed the rest back and examined the bakers in front of him. The stench of yeast made him think of Globus’s breath.

  “My name is Walter Hochburg, governor-general of Kongo. I mean no harm to you. I am looking for a woman by the name of Madeleine Cole.”

  “Women are not allowed in this part of the building, Herr Oberstgruppenführer,” said the rabbi. “It is God’s law.”

  Hochburg put a finger to his lips and scanned the tables.

  He expected her to hide or run. Instead Madeleine stepped away from the group. The bespectacled man next to her put out a warning hand, but she shrugged past.

  She was gaunt, anemic, her hair in clumps as if she had been exposed to a dose of radiation; Feuerstein had briefed him on the dangers of uranium. Hochburg preferred women to have complexions of honey and wheat, but there was a beauty to her darkness, even if it had been disfigured by hunger and exhaustion. Her eyes curtsied up and down, taking him in.

  “You are Burton’s wife?” he asked.

  “I took his name”—her voice cracked, then tightened—“after you took Burton from me.”

  She doesn’t know he’s alive, thought Hochburg, his expectations dashed for a second time. He calculated whether this could be used to his advantage—and failed; all he could hear was the unslakable grief of her accusation. He understood the pain of surviving, he wanted to comfort her.

  “Come closer,” he ordered.

  She crossed the floor till she stood in his shadow. Beneath her dress she wore boots like a laborer’s; her calves were just shafts of bone. The black-and-white photograph in her file had robbed her eyes of their color. As she stood before him, he recognized their hue immediately. Burton must have known it, too: so we are condemned to chase the past.

  Madeleine stared at him with defiance. Defiance, fear, loathing. And something else: a veiled dancing glimmer that was impossible.

  When he’d first met Eleanor, she had nursed his grief with the tenderness of a mother, let him confess his sins. Later they japed and argued as though brother and sister. The closed world of the orphanage—four white faces among so many blacks—was like being in a family again. The summer after he arrived, he taught Eleanor to swim, till one day, at the end of a lesson, she reached the shore and happened to glance back at him. It wasn’t that she held his gaze too long, it wasn’t the water trickling through her matted hair; it was the indecipherable need in her eye—the same as in Madeleine’s now.

  That night he described the event in his journal, hoping for the catharsis that ink on paper often brought. As she’d waded out of the river, he had averted his eyes from her back and buttocks and concentrated on her ankles: that narrow band where the paleness of her heel met skin darkened by Africa. The only word he could summon to describe the color was butterscotch. It felt illicit: the course of his life changed by something as unportentous and mundane as an adjective. He became feverish, unable to meet her gaze, castigating himself. Eleanor’s chaste, prohibited body spoiled his every waking thought; even sleep didn’t shield him. At first he was wretched with the surety that she shared none of his feelings, later by the tragedy that she did.

  Madeleine took another pace closer, her hands held primly behind her back. Hochburg stepped toward her, aware of Kepplar fidgeting close behind, till he could breathe in the scent of her. She was so emaciated, the weight of his body would crush her.

  The Jews were staring at them; the groom guarding the stairs swayed his BK44 in disbelief. Hochburg didn’t care.

  He thought he heard her whisper Burton’s name.

  Then she was in his embrace. Madeleine stood on tiptoe and guided him toward her. Her delicate fingers reached around the cold thickness of his neck. She pressed her lips against his and opened her mouth.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Boriziny Strasse, Antzu

  20 April, 16:15

  TÜNSCHER GAVE A harsh laugh and lit a Bayerweed. “Don’t tell me—she’s not in?” His face was sallow and sweaty, the rims of his eyes red. It had taken longer to march to Antzu than he’d promised: every hour he had to stop and rest.

  Burton came down the steps from Maddie’s house and joined him in the street. Mist wafted around them. If Burton hadn’t been so agitated, he might have relished the irony: just like when he’d reached the farm, he had traveled halfway round the world to find an empty room. The only sign that anyone had been there was the indent of a head on the pillow—that and the stench. He had a lurching sensation similar to when he was first getting to know Madeleine, waiting on the beach, unsure whether he’d meet her or be left disappointed. If they walked together, her voice stayed with him for the rest of the day.

  He opened Madeleine’s file, the paper still soggy from the jump off the Ark, and double-checked the house number—but he knew this was the right place. He recognized the musky fragrance inside. It was the last thing he had expected; it made him feel sick.

  The street was empty in both directions, the whole town seemingly deserted except for the jittery Jewish policemen they had encountered when they arrived. Tünscher had ordered them to open the gate, the bluff and pose of the actor in his voice again, and waltzed through. Who was going to question two SS majors emerging from the forest, caps low over their eyes, their sidearms on display? By then a bloodstain was also flowering across Tünscher’s tunic; every time Burton asked him about it, the question was shrugged off.

  Burton spied something in the periphery of his vision. Something dark and viscous, dripping from the shack opposite. He crossed the street and walked along the side of the building. There was a burst of crimson, like a child’s painting, on the wall. Tünscher stubbed out his cigarette in it; the butt sizzled.

  “It’s recent.”

  They searched underneath the property, then around the other side. There was no body, no other sign of a struggle.

  “Coincidence,” said Tünscher. “Nothing to do with your girl.”

  His tone was so reassuring that Burton felt a stab of shame at his deception. They returned to Maddie’s stoop. Tünscher feverishly checked his packet of Bayerweeds, then slipped it back into his pocket; he was running low. “So now what?”

  In the Legion, if you were separated from your unit, you stayed where you were and let the search party find you, rather than you looking for it. Otherwise, you both ended up missing each other in the dust and wind. />
  Burton eased his cap back and peered up and down the street, hoping to see Madeleine returning with the bundle of their child. Not a soul.

  “We wait.”

  They entered the house, and Burton’s nostrils stung again. He held his stump against his nose to block the smell. Tünscher flopped onto the bed, wincing, while Burton examined the room for any indication of where Madeleine might be. His gaze lingered over the makeshift cradle, his heart twisting. How had she coped? How had millions coped, uprooted from the order and modernity of Europe’s cities and dumped into this tropical ghetto? At least Burton had been born into humidity and the constant churr of insects, more comfortable with moonless nights than he was with electricity. In the years ahead, he would banish the memory of this place for her.

  “Varavanga,” said Tünscher suddenly.

  “What?”

  “I’ve been thinking it through. It’s home to a fishery station—that’s how we get you out.”

  Burton frowned. “But it’s part of the SS.”

  “Department VIII. Codheads from the Baltic, all nets and sou’westers, not razor wire. As long as they don’t think we’re Jews, we should be able to strike a deal.”

  “With what?”

  “One of your diamonds.”

  “You’re getting the last of them.”

  “I’ll forgo one to get you out.”

  Burton didn’t bother hiding his sarcasm. “Very noble of you, Tünsch.”

  “I know. I also know I won’t see a single pfennig if you’re stuck here.” He mulled over his plan. “It might work. We can pretend to be deserters. When they see there are no numbers on our wrists, they’ll know we’re not Jews.”

  “What about Madeleine? She’ll have a tattoo.”

  Tünscher glanced at Burton’s empty sleeve and flashed his yellow teeth. “Cut her arm off?”

  “That’s not funny.”

  He loved the slimness of Madeleine’s wrists but had never considered that she would be tattooed. It horrified him, and yet there was something perversely reassuring about it, too: they were both scarred now.

  Burton sat on the floor opposite Tünscher, who tossed him the remainders of the jerky they had taken from the hovercraft; it had sustained them through the trek to Antzu. Known locally as biltong, these strips of cured beef, laced with spices to preserve them, remained edible for months, even in Africa’s climate. Burton broke off a piece as thick as chewing tobacco and ate in silence. Afterward he asked Tünscher to light another Bayerweed. “To get rid of the stink.”

  When he first knew Madeleine, she used to hide behind a miasma of expensive French perfume. After they parted he smelled of her for days, no matter how he scrubbed himself—not the natural scent of her body but fragrances bought by Cranley. Burton never said a word; he didn’t want to sound possessive. As the months passed, Madeleine wore less and less perfume, till one day she stopped altogether. By then they were moving in and out of each other’s thoughts with ease. Her true smell—honeysuckle skin and breezy sweat—was as close to home as he could imagine. Yet the house on Boriziny Strasse reeked of a time long past. Burton could make no sense of it.

  Cranley’s assertion that the baby was his forced its way into Burton’s mind. It was a seed of wickedness, a doubt meant to torment Burton. He didn’t believe it; the proof was in the journey he’d undertaken … but the thought remained, hidden in the recesses of his brain like a tumor.

  Tünscher finished his cigarette with an elaborate exhalation. “Once I get my diamonds,” he said, taking in the rot and the warped timbers, “I might get a pad like this myself.”

  “You never did say what you wanted them for.”

  “I told you: debts.”

  “What kind of debts?”

  His friend went to reply, then changed his mind and sat up. A sharp intake of breath. He was looking paler.

  “Are you hurt?”

  Tünscher peeled back his uniform above the belt: his midriff was sticky with blood. He reached into the medical kit for some gauze and swabbed the skin. In the Legion he’d had training as a martin-pêcheur: a kingfisher, their name for a medic. “I got nicked when you hit that hovercraft.”

  “Is it bad?”

  “What did Patrick used to tell us? If it still hurts, it’s not that bad.” He grimaced. “It hurts plenty.”

  “Why didn’t you say?”

  Another of those shrugs that had accompanied them to Antzu. “What would you have done?” His earlier anger was gone, replaced by resignation. “Handed over my diamonds and waved me auf Wiedersehen?”

  He stripped off his tunic to reveal a hairless torso and a locket hanging from his neck. Burton watched Tünscher clean and bind the wound; it was no bigger than a ha’penny but still seeping. I should have left him in Roscherhafen, Burton thought. A catch-up drink, a few Legion stories—and nothing more. Or at least told him the truth about the diamonds. He’d seen men slowly bleed to death from less serious injuries.

  To ward off the guilt, Burton patrolled the floorboards, picturing the shock and relief on Maddie’s face when she arrived home. He would see his child for the first time. A girl, like Madeleine had hoped for? It should have made him beam, but his thoughts kept drawing back to Patrick and the daughter he had failed to get home to.

  The rhythmic creak of his boots was broken by a gunshot.

  He went to the door and listened: the sound echoed over the corrugated roofs of Antzu. It had the unmistakable retort of a BK. He fiddled with the brim of his cap.

  There was a second shot—then a barrage.

  “It can’t be anything to do with Madeleine,” said Tünscher.

  Burton was aware of the sloshing in his gut. “You’re probably right.”

  He gripped his Beretta, descended the steps, and began walking in the direction of the gunfire. Soon he was at full sprint.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  AT THE COLONIAL Academy in Vienna, racial hygiene classes were mandatory. Because Kepplar had applied for Africa rather than Madagaskar (which technically remained under departments of the European SS), his instruction was in the dangers posed by the negroid. However, all recruits were given a basic introduction to Jewry. A famous Hauptsturmführer who had worked closely with Jews in the East warned about the spell a Jewess could cast. Kepplar was unconvinced: those who succumbed were looking to excuse their weakness or secretly craved pollution of their blood. Now he realized such witchcraft did indeed exist. That it was Hochburg, of all men, who had fallen victim caused him an ache of profound disappointment.

  His skin felt dank, like he wanted to shed it.

  Kepplar had watched Cole’s wife from the moment she identified herself. He immediately sensed the threat and wanted to warn the Oberstgruppenführer. The Jewess was too fast; she put her scraggy arms around Hochburg and defiled his mouth. It was repellent to witness, yet Kepplar was unable to avert his eyes, like in Muspel when he’d seen the blacks rutting in their barracks at night and been magnetized by the horror of it.

  He thought of the sailors who had been killed on the patrol boat and, before them, the body bags of loyal SS filled in Kongo: what would these men have thought if they stood here now?

  Cole’s wife revealed a dagger behind her back. Swung it at Hochburg.

  Kepplar sprang forward, catching her wrist as the blade completed its arc. He wrestled her off, shoving her flimsy body to the ground; the knife clattered as it landed. Kepplar supported Hochburg as he emerged from the spell, and patted his superior’s uniform beneath the armpit where the blade had been aimed. His fingers came away dry. Hochburg swatted Kepplar away, a glint of loathing in his unbandaged eye.

  Cole’s wife had reclaimed her blade. It had a serrated edge, Kepplar noted gratefully, and was meant for sawing, with no point to penetrate.

  “Call the others,” he yelled at the groom guarding the door.

  Hochburg addressed the woman, his voice emollient: “Put down the knife, Madeleine.” The only time Kepplar had heard that ton
e before was when he was speaking to Fenris. “I mean you no harm.”

  She retreated. There was sorcery in her eyes, inviting Hochburg closer so she could slit his throat.

  From the balcony came the bang of the door being flung open. Panicky, raring-to-go faces stared down. Kepplar saw the groom who had shot the woman in Boriziny Strasse. When Hochburg had given him the order, Kepplar removed his Walther P38 and pressed it into the lad’s hand, as if such a task were beneath his rank; he feared that his expression betrayed him. The groom dispatched the woman as efficiently as a vet administering a vaccine, pleased with the opportunity to show that he was more than just a stable hand. Now he aimed his BK44 at the scene beneath him and fired a warning shot. It smacked into one of the old Jews gathered round the tables. Kepplar heard a wail and indignant shouts. Then a second shot, followed by a stream of bullets as the rest of the stable staff joined in. Another of the Jews threw over a table, ducking low behind it as a shield, and reached inside his rucksack.

  “Hold your fire!” shouted Hochburg, putting himself between the rifles and Madeleine.

  There was a blinding pop and a fountain of sparks; Kepplar shielded his face. The synagogue began filling with billows of thick red smoke.

  * * *

  Someone grabbed Madeleine’s arm—cruelly, angrily—and dragged her into the smoke. She pried herself from Abner’s grip, searching for Salois. Jacoba was huddled on the floor, arms covering her head, as the councilmen scattered and fell. Shots flashed in the scarlet murk despite Hochburg ordering his men to stop.

  She yanked Jacoba to her feet and raced after Salois, calling him. He headed toward an exit at the rear, rucksack bouncing on his back, a bundle of loaves in each arm.

  “The main entrance is the only way out,” said Abner as he followed.

  The firing stopped; boots thudded down the stairs.

  Madeleine ran in the opposite direction, chasing Salois along a passageway till he reached some steps and stopped. He broke the bread he was carrying into pieces and stuffed it into his rucksack. Behind them the corridor was empty except for creeping fingers of ruby mist.