The Madagaskar Plan (15 page)

Every pod of resistance was crushed. If five Jews defended a hut by hurling stones, twenty SS troops were sent in with machine guns, grenades, and flamethrowers. The settlements of Kandreo, in the Western Sector, and Brickaville, in the Eastern, as yet untouched by the rebellion, were razed to the ground as a warning to the civilian population. Salzig was retaken street by street, any Jew captured alive strung up from the palm trees that lined the seafront; clouds of gulls massed above the port. Within three months of his arrival, Governor Globocnik had regained control of the island, and ships laden with their human cargo were docking again. The following year, on 14 May 1948, Hitler gave an ecstatic speech to the Council of New Europe, declaring that his life’s mission was complete. After two millennia, Europe was
Judenfrei
. In Germania, Globocnik was admitted into the pantheon of heroes; however, he was not yet finished with Madagaskar.

“The Jews blame everyone and everything for the uprising,” he said in a speech to SS business leaders visiting Tana, the capital, that autumn. “Us for giving them a homeland, our European neighbors for letting them leave, America for abandoning them. Other times it’s a lack of food, or housing, the climate, disease. Even the ring-tailed lemur is vilified!” Thunderous laughter from the audience. He became stern: “The true cause was idle hands. With nothing to fill his days, the Jew’s mind will always turn to mischief.”

With Heydrich’s approval, Globocnik set the population to work, building new roads, dams, and a railway that ran the length of the island. Industries were established by the WVHA, the SS economic department, from bootlace manufacture to meat processing. Jews were permitted to own small businesses and pocket farms as long as they employed no more than five workers. To avoid spreading their “mercantile contagion” to the rest of the world, goods could be sold on the island, not traded internationally. There was only one buyer for their wares: the SS.

Under the original plan, Madagaskar was divided into four districts that equated to regions of Europe. The common languages of each district had allowed the Jews to conspire, declared Globocnik; along with Idle Hands, he set Operation Babel in motion, “to stir up the ethnic soup.” The population was split between three sectors, with families randomly moved from one location to another.

The southern part of the island, with its spiny deserts, was partitioned along the Tropic of Capricorn and became Steinbock, the penal sector. Jews who had settled there were ordered north to join other communities or sent to work on the Betroka Dam, thirty kilometers beyond the new boundary. Meanwhile, another column was marched in the opposite direction, tramping barefoot into the arid hills with little water. These were the prisoners of the rebellion to be exiled in the south, far from the eyes of those they might inspire. For some this meant slave labor in mica and sapphire mines; for the majority: death. When the American Jewish Committee tried to intervene, Germania was unequivocal: these were criminals and terrorists. On clear days, workers at the Betroka site saw towers of smoke stretching toward the heavens.

Salois was roused by the ghostly caterwaul of a harmonica.

A guard patrolled the edge of the ditch, playing to ward off the quiet. Salois tracked his pacing till the sky darkened and the Nazi abandoned his post. Once he was alone, Salois checked his chest where the bullets from the firing squad had hit him—there was not a trace of a wound.

Corpses pressed around him, legs and lacerated feet at bizarre angles, arms locked rigid as if reaching for something. A butcher’s harvest. He crawled through them to the air and listened for the Germans: silence except for the wind and ocean. The stench of petrol stung his nostrils, but no match had been struck. Near his face were the closed eyes of a dead man. They opened, the soul ready to flee, and for an instant Salois thought he was staring at his wife; she had been dead for so long he barely remembered what she looked like. With a trembling hand, the corpse reached inside the rags of his shirt and produced a tin of sardines in oil.

“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?”