by Guy Saville
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Nachtstadt
20 April, 20:45
“I HEARD A nasty rumor about this place,” said Tünscher. Forming the words seemed to require an effort. He was lying down but kept twisting and rolling, as if no position was comfortable. His skin was sallow and damp, and the dark patches beneath his eyes were spreading like mold.
Music and carousing drifted up to them; in the distance, thunder.
“What rumor?” replied Burton distractedly.
They were on a hill across from the Totenburg. Burton had caught sight of Madeleine’s horse grazing beneath the towers and was now scanning the valley below through Tünscher’s telescope.
“I heard it belongs to Himmler.”
Burton lowered the lens. “It doesn’t look well guarded.”
Tünscher shrugged. He had fished out the locket from round his neck and was nibbling the end to ward off his pain. “Some of my liquor must have ended up here. It’s a Vit B post.”
Vitamin B boys were the sons of party officials who got safe placements for their national service. No frontline duty; instead a year in some dull garrison before returning to their place in the bureaucracy.
Burton put the telescope back to his eye. Apart from the celebrations in the far corner of the camp, the place appeared deserted. He moved from the buildings to the sties; the herd must number in the thousands. Alice had wanted some pigs in Suffolk, or sheep or cows. It’s not a proper farm unless there are animals, she had told him, crossing her arms. Burton glimpsed someone moving among the pens. He sharpened the focus: it was Madeleine’s brother. Abner dragged a piece of equipment into the open, then held something up to the clouds as if taking a weather reading. Burton couldn’t see properly.
“I’m going down there,” he said.
Tünscher was passing his last Bayerweed beneath his nostrils, inhaling deeply. He had smoked the other an hour before and vowed to save this final one till they found Madeleine. He dropped it back into the packet. “I’m coming with you.”
Burton helped his old friend to his feet. Tünscher grimaced as he got up, holding his side, and stood lopsided. The bandage round his midriff was soaked through, and now dark blotches were forming on his tunic.
Guilt tugged at Burton. He still carried the stain of Patrick’s blood; he didn’t need any more. “You should stay here.”
“I’m good.”
“You’ll slow me down.”
This was half-true. Riding through the night, Burton had hoped to catch Madeleine before she reached the glow of Nachtstadt, but Tünscher had to keep taking breaks, clutching his guts and folding so low his chin brushed his horse’s mane.
“I said I’m good,” replied Tünscher tetchily. “It doesn’t help me if you get caught. I’m looking out for my investment—”
There was a burst of automatic gunfire, the noise careering indiscriminately around the hills. The music didn’t skip a beat.
Burton squinted through the telescope again. He saw nothing but shadows and mud, pigs bumping into each other, agitated by the shots … then another muzzle flash outside a building crowned with radio masts; soldiers surrounded it. There was no sign of Madeleine.
“Wait here,” said Burton, handing his friend the telescope.
“Forget it.”
“You’re in no state, Tünsch.”
“This isn’t the Legion, Major. You can’t give me orders. Those diamonds don’t leave my sight.”
“There aren’t any diamonds.”
The words had come quickly, quietly, before Burton knew what he was saying.
“What?”
Burton’s eyes swept to the ground. “I lied. To get your help.” He braced himself. “There are no diamonds.”
“But you gave me one.” His friend let out a small laugh, trying to reassure himself. “I had it checked: five carats, from the Kassai mines.”
“It’s all I had.”
Tünscher rubbed his blood-spotted flank and absorbed Burton’s confession, shaking his head. He seemed to deflate.
Below, Burton saw a cloud of red smoke envelop the radio building. “I’m sorry, Otto.”
“How could you do this?” All of a sudden his voice was molten. “I need those diamonds.”
He reached for his Luger, prodding it against Burton’s chest. The movement was weak, without conviction. Tünscher’s eyes were tinged yellow, dull and exhausted. An expression of hatred spilled across his features, then desolation.
Burton brushed the pistol away. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Madeleine was everything. I had no choice.”
“I know…” Tünscher replied. “I know.”
His voice carried such understanding that Burton felt a deep plunge of regret. At the same time, he was aware that if Tünscher had betrayed him, his friend would have shrugged it off. How many times had he seen him flash his yellow teeth at some dupe and say, You’ll be wiser next time?
Gunfire swirled around the hills once more.
“What will you do now?” asked Burton.
“Does it matter?” He slipped his locket beneath his tunic; his jaw was tense. “Get to Nosy Be. Or find a patrol: say I was ambushed by Jews, hand myself over—”
“They’ll throw you in the brig. You know how much you hate bars.”
“They can’t connect me to any of this shit. I can be back in Roscherhafen by the end of the month, back to safari duties and smuggling till I’m rich.” Once more, loathing and devastation swelled in him. “I needed that money, Burton. More than you can know.”
“If I ever get it, Tünsch, I’ll find you.”
Tünscher emitted a bark of resentful laughter that caused him to flinch and press his wound. “Remember when it used to be you, me, and Patrick? He said you were the best of us. The only decent one.” He shook his head. “Stupid Yankee bastard.”
The clouds opened.
Rain beat through Burton’s hair. He wanted to part as they had met: with a pumping handshake and mutual bravado—two men who had once belonged to something. The zoo seemed an age ago. Burton offered an ashamed half salute and began sliding down the hill.
Tünscher called after him: “If you find her, don’t go to Mandritsara. Make for those fishing boats at Varavanga. It’s your only chance off the island.”
“I’ll try.”
“Bon courage, Major.”
Burton went to wish him the same—but Tünscher was already limping away, obscured by sheets of rain.
* * *
Salois heard boots climb the stairs. He told Cranley to stand by and crossed to Madeleine. She was gawping at the radio, her eyes hazy, as if someone had struck her across the face. Halfway up the steps was an Untersturmführer. He froze when he saw Salois, staring at his rolled-up sleeve and indigo arm.
The Untersturmführer ran back down. Salois grabbed the rifle from Madeleine and aimed it between his shoulder blades. He thought of Steinbock, where the prisoners wore uniforms with X’s painted on the backs to make it easier for the guards if they tried to escape. He lined up the shot—then relaxed the weapon, calculating that the report would bring others more rapidly than the Untersturmführer could rouse them.
Salois returned to the microphone. “Cranley?”
“What’s going on? Over.”
“Nothing.”
“Are you in position?”
“Heading for train RV. I’ll be at Diego by zero four hundred. Where are you?”
Madeleine joined him, bending close to the speaker to hear every word. She pestered Salois to say something, but he blocked her.
“Mazunka,” replied Cranley. “Radar station in view. We’re all set.”
“How many are you?”
“Three, including Corporal Manny from your team.”
So they had made it ashore. Exhilaration surged through Salois. “Do we proceed?”
“Have contacted Rolland: weather all clear for bombers. Mission is go. We’ll do our bit; the rest is up to you. Copy?”
&nb
sp; “Affirmative.”
“Good luck, Major. Out.”
As soon as Salois relaxed his grip on the microphone, Madeleine snatched it up: “Jared? Jared?” Only static replied. “Bring him back,” she demanded Salois.
“He’s gone.”
“You’re with him?” Her face was ashen. “He sent you to find me?”
Salois didn’t understand. “I’m here to destroy Diego.”
“But with Cranley … Where is he now?”
“Mazunka, on the west coast. You know him?”
“We were married.” She looked at Salois in a daze of incomprehension. “He’s a civil servant … swore to look after Alice…”
Salois was equally confused. “He can help find your children—”
She let out a shout of laughter, so vehement it stung.
An alarm began to ring.
Salois secured his rucksack and reached for Madeleine. She refused to be pulled away; she was gripping the microphone as if she expected Cranley’s voice to come through it again.
Salois left her for the stairs. Soldiers were converging on the radio hut from every direction. They ran in crooked lines, stumbling and chortling, some wearing party hats. All were armed—but this was sport, not a serious security threat.
“Take the rifle,” he shouted at Madeleine. “Open the hatch.” In the ceiling was an access point so that engineers could maintain the aerials on the roof.
Salois had two smoke canisters left. He tossed the first down the stairs, shrouding the legs of the building in mist, then toppled over a filing cabinet to block the door. Madeleine levered down an aluminum ladder built into the hatch. She fastened it and climbed, Salois following her. He tore the pin out of the final smoke grenade, dropped it into the room below, and slammed the hatch shut. He still had green canisters in the pocket of the rucksack—but these were for Diego and as precious as the explosives.
They were on the roof, surrounded by radio masts that rattled and moaned in the wind. Red smoke wafted up on all sides. Salois saw the water towers clearly for the first time: one was new, made of steel that had yet to tarnish in Madagaskar’s climate; the other was wooden, rotting, no longer in use. The railway line started at the base of the metal tower, curving its way out of the farm before vanishing into the darkness of the hills. On the far side of the tracks, camouflage netting concealed two helicopters.
“Is it Cranley’s boat?” asked Madeleine. The light on top of the highest aerial flashed down on her, casting her face red—black—red—
“Yes.”
In the alternating shadows, a hopelessness swept across her. He had seen that expression—the hanging of the mouth, the emptying of the eyes—many times before. In the hours that followed it, men often died: too lazy or despondent to care for their lives anymore. As much as he desired the same, his own features had never been marked by it.
Suddenly Madeleine’s face was refreshed, as though she had swallowed something delicious and cold. “This is my chance, maybe my only chance. I’m going to wait for him at Kap Ost, and kill him.”
Salois grunted; he’d been right about the hate in her eyes. The damaged and the damned could always recognize each other. “As long as he destroys the radar station first.”
The soldiers were laughing below. One took a BK44 and fired at the windows. The sound of breaking panes. Salois and Madeleine ran to the edge of the roof: the next building was no more than a meter away. They leapt across.
More shots rang out, in the direction of the pigs this time. Over the rooftops Salois saw the workers breaking out of their barracks. They overwhelmed the few guards on duty and began to kick down the doors of the other huts. Some stormed the barbed-wire fence. The accordion continued its jaunty tune.
Salois and Madeleine reached the end of the building; the next roof was too far away. He swung over the side and clambered down, fingers clawing timber, and dropped the final meters. It began to rain, fat globs hitting his head and dissolving the smoke that had screened their escape. He caught Madeleine as she landed, and they ran.
A voice shouted after them.
They wove beneath the buildings, toward the railway track, the soldiers from the radio hut pursuing, roaring and joking. Bursts of fire flashed around them, the bullets erratic.
From the opposite direction came a squad of soldiers in breeches and suspenders, their shirts loose. One carried a bottle instead of a rifle. Salois skidded in the mud and rain, spinning around for any means of escape.
“The water tower,” said Madeleine.
The wooden one was nearest. It was built on four legs, thick as tree trunks, with a ladder leading to a platform at the base of the tank. She scrambled up it, Salois behind her. He saw no alternative but already feared they had trapped themselves. The platform at the top ran the circumference of the tank; some of the slats beneath their feet were broken or missing altogether. The entire structure was warped and covered with patches of algae. Next door was the steel tower, but the gap between the two was too wide.
Ten meters below, the soldiers gathered around the base, a whiff of sweat and alcohol rising through the rain.
“The tower’s dangerous,” shouted one of them. “Come down before you break your necks.” This was greeted with a round of laughter. “Join us for a drink,” shouted another, followed by “A glass of wine for the lady.” More howls.
They began to chant: “Runter, runter, runter!” Down, down, down!
Someone threw a bottle. It shattered above Madeleine’s head, showering her in glass. Then a volley of bullets aimed high, like the wedding celebrations Salois had witnessed in the Sahara where Arabs blasted the sky.
A soldier stepped away from the group, toward the ladder. He was greeted with cheers and song as he climbed:
When Jewish blood splashes from the knife
Hang the Yids, put them against the wall.
Heads are rolling, Jews are hollering.
Salois remembered the lyrics from the work gangs at Diego. To relieve the monotony, the guards had arranged a soccer match: the Chosen Race against the tribes of Israel, they called it. Eleven Jews had taken to a makeshift pitch beyond where the runway was being constructed. They’d been exhausted, nothing but gristle, yet somehow they had beaten the Germans, pulling ahead till the spectators’ songs were replaced by moody silence. Afterward, the victorious side was never seen again. The Nazis claimed to have been so impressed by their spirit, they sent them to Antzu as a reward; everyone pretended to believe the story.
The soldier was nearing the top of the ladder. Madeleine unslung her rifle and thrust it at Salois. He leaned over the side, rain pelting him, and took aim. The face of a boy looked up at him, startled and rosy with drink. Salois fired.
Click.
He squeezed the trigger again. Click, click. The weapon wasn’t loaded.
The soldier continued his ascent.
Salois swung the rifle butt into the soldier’s head. It cracked his skull, knocking him off the ladder. He landed on his back in an explosion of mud.
The singing stopped.
While several of the soldiers tended to their comrade, another raked the tower with a BK44. The Untersturmführer who’d first discovered them at the radio room stepped forward and stopped him.
“We want them alive for this,” he said, loud enough for his voice to carry. The rain hissed around him. He issued an order, and the soldier sprinted away.
Salois searched for a way off. There was nowhere to jump to, nowhere to hide. A detachment settled on him like a silent fall of snow. At the same time he heard the ancient fisherman: Death doesn’t want you.
Madeleine tugged at his rucksack. “Use the dynamite.”
“I need every stick for Diego.”
“You won’t get to Diego.”
“It’s too powerful. It’ll bring the tower down.”
She looked at the men below, her eyes blazing and fearful. “We can’t just wait for them.” She was soaked to the skin.
There
was splashing below, and the soldier returned carrying a bundle of sticks. He handed them out. Salois felt Madeleine clutch him in alarm. Not sticks: axes. The soldiers gathered around the legs of the water tower—and began to chop, resuming their song. Heads are rolling, Jews are hollering …
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Governor’s Palace, Tana
20 April, 20:50
THE REICHSFÜHRER HUNG up without wishing him happy birthday or even saying good-bye. Globus held the receiver against his head for a few moments, brooding. His office was vast, with a cool stone floor and mahogany furniture; the desk alone was as wide as a stage. In the room beyond, his typing pool was silent. Usually there were a couple of secretaries at this time of night, gossiping or preening, but he had dismissed them. From outside the window came the noise of carpenters.
Globus rocked in his chair—imagining Himmler’s sorrow if he toppled over and broke his neck—and stared ruefully at the telephone. It was half-hidden by presents: gifts from the sector governors and admirers in Europe; a magnum of vintage Pol Roger from President Vargas of Brazil. Globus had forbidden news of Antzu and the growing rebellion from being transmitted beyond the island, but he had little control over Nightingale’s communications. The American had dispatched his diplomatic tittle-tattle across the Atlantic, from where it had found its way back to the Foreign Ministry in Germania and then SS headquarters. Himmler was contemptuous: You can’t contain the Jew any more than you can influenza. The only way to stop the contagion is to eradicate the virus. I thought you were the man for the job, Odilo; I staked my reputation on it. He never used Globocnik’s first name.
The phone rang.
Globus snatched it up, hoping it was the Reichsführer calling back with more sympathetic words. There was a time, during the afterglow of the first rebellion’s defeat, when Himmler phoned with nothing but pleasantries and his schoolboy jokes, encouraging Globus to seek the governorship of Ostmark. Globus invited his secretaries to be present at the calls and lay on his back raising alternate legs, saying “Ja” every time he agreed with the chief of the SS. How they delighted at it.
Globocnik put the phone to his ear. It was Rear Admiral Dommes, the base commander at Diego Suarez. He was one of those quietly superior types with a neat, pointed beard and ice-floe eyes, respected in Germania and adored by his sailors; Globus found him grating. Dommes launched into a lecture about the security situation before the governor of Madagaskar interrupted, reminding him that the island came under the SS, not the navy.