The Madagaskar Plan (17 page)

“I was bored. Got into a fistfight.”

“And is this your son?”

“Fuck, no! My sister’s boy. I borrow him for business meetings—adds an air of … innocence, in case someone’s watching. And I assume this is business.” He spoke with an impudent drawl that had earned him nightly beatings from the
sous-officiers
in those first days of the Legion. “Your telegram was intriguing.”

Tünscher beckoned the waitress over, glanced at her cleavage, and ordered cherry schnapps for himself, a Reich Kola for the youth.

“How did you know I was here?” he asked after the drinks arrived.

“Patrick.”

“I’ve not seen him in years.”

The two of them had fallen out in Spain and never spoken again; Burton had no idea why. “He kept tabs on you. Said you were back.”

“And how is the old Yankee bastard?”

“Didn’t you hear? It was broadcast across Africa.”

“I don’t listen to the radio. All that good news, the victories and everything, it depresses me.”

“Patrick’s dead.”

A pause. “When?”

“Last year, in Angola. We were on a job together.”

Tünscher fished in his pocket—underneath his jacket, he was wearing a woolen cardigan—and removed a cigarette packet. “I always hoped we’d square things one day,” he said, lighting up. His expression remained inscrutable. “The dead are happier dead.”

“He had a daughter, in America.”

“I didn’t know that.” For the first time, Tünscher caught sight of Burton’s empty sleeve. “Your contribution to the Angolan front?”

“Fishing accident,” replied Burton. He hurried on: “What about you, Tünsch?”

“The body’s still in one piece, but the heart and head have suffered. I joined the SS.” He smiled—a line of crooked yellowing teeth—and watched Burton’s reaction before his smirk broadened to a laugh. “Relax, Major, I’m no blackshirt. I joined up for the fight. A Waffen brigade.”

“You were at Dunkirk?”

“The East; stayed after Barbarossa. I spent the last three years in the Urals and Siberia.”

“What’s it like out there?” asked Burton.

“Vast. Too vast ever to control. Cold. Desolate.”

“I meant the war.”

Tünscher sunk into his cardigan and considered his reply. “Like a good-time girl when the navy’s in port,” he said at last.

“What?”

“Fucked in every way. The Soviets are beat but don’t know it; then there are the Eastern Jews…” He blew smoke. “I had to get out of there. Somewhere warm, civilized. So I thought I’d come home.” Like Burton, Tünscher had grown up in Africa.

“And now?”

“What is this, an interrogation?”

“Just catching up with an old friend.”

“I work for Section IX-c, the tourist department. The SS swallowed it up several years back. I take party chiefs to the Serengeti. Big-game hunting. They love going with old soldiers—gives them a heroic stirring.”

“And the rest of the time?”

“I guess that’s why you’re here,” said Tünscher. The boy next to him finished his Kola, sucking noisily through the straw. “The Section pays a pittance, but DOA is a good place to get rich.”

“Smuggling.”

“Booze, cigarettes mostly. Never girls, that’s not my racket.”

“You go to Madagaskar?”

“From time to time. Nosy Be is a good run.” Nosy Be: an islet off the northwest coast of Madagaskar that the SS used for leave when not returning to Europe. It was notorious for its bars and brothels. “They turn a blind eye to keep the garrison happy.”

Burton glanced around and produced a small box from his jacket. He slid it across the table. Tünscher removed it immediately, opening it in his lap: a tiny searchlight winked in his eyes.

“Five carats,” said Burton. Inside the box was a single diamond from the pouch he’d hidden on the farm. “I need your help, Tünsch.”

“That depends. Five carats doesn’t get you far in this part of the world.”

“I have more.”

It had stopped raining; the café was getting busier. Tünscher drained the last of his schnapps, made a “stand up” gesture to his nephew, then turned to Burton. “I know a better place to powwow.”

*   *   *

They walked at a brisk pace through the Tiergarten, passing the elephant house and the pink ranks of the flamingo lagoon. The last time Burton had been to a zoo was with Madeleine in Germania, when the ground was scattered with daffodils. By the big cat enclosure was a billboard that showed one of Lazinger’s fantasy portraits: Hitler in safari garb towering over a slain lion with Semitic features.

Whereas Kongo was a trove of mineral wealth, Deutsch Südwest Afrika functioned as the administrative center of the continent, and Muspel hid sand-lashed camps and military bases, DOA initially struggled to find a role beyond sisal production and fisheries. That it had once been a German colony, surrendered to the British after Versailles and not returned to the Reich until the Casablanca Conference, meant that Germania was keen to make it a glittering example of what National Socialism could achieve. It was the KdF that transformed it.

Kraft durch Freude (KdF: Strength Through Joy) was the Nazis’ leisure organization, one of its goals to make travel available to even the lowliest factory worker—as long as he joined the party. It offered subsidized package holidays and by 1937 had become the biggest tour operator in the world. There were hiking trips to the Alps, a huge beach resort on the Baltic, and, most popular of all, a fleet of twelve cruise liners that conveyed passengers in spartan luxury to the fjords of Norway, the Mediterranean, and North Africa. As the Reich expanded below the equator, ever more exotic possibilities were offered; it was one of the inalienable rights of conquest. Hitler approved: “Every worker will have his holiday … and everybody will be able to go on a sea cruise once or twice in his life.”

Robert Ley, founder of the KdF and later governor of DOA, first proposed developing the colony as a tourist destination. Its endless white beaches and German heritage made it an obvious choice. In five years from 1945, the capital, Roscherhafen (formerly Dar es Salaam), was transformed into a gleaming resort that accommodated half a million visitors a year from the cities and garrisons of German Africa. A new generation of cruise ships, big as aircraft carriers, brought a further three hundred thousand guests from the Fatherland itself.

As the number of vacationgoers increased, so did the need to occupy them. While safaris were the preserve of high-ranking officials, more immediate diversions had to be created for the masses. To the south of the city, KdF built its first “education and entertainment park”—a colossal site consisting of the zoo, the botanical garden, a military museum to commemorate Germany’s East African campaign during the Great War, and a sprawling amusement park that offered the thrills of Oktoberfest all year long beneath broiling African skies. The British, with their decaying seaside towns and holiday camps, could only look on in envy.

Tünscher guided them to the fairground. The air smelled of wet cobbles and engine grease. There were shrieks from the log flume and the ghost train, the tinkling grind of merry-go-round music. If the crowds were aware of the war raging in Kongo, it didn’t show in their smiles. Rising from the center of the park was the Roscherhafen Riesenrad, a monumental Ferris wheel; as with everything, it was the largest in the world, at over a hundred meters tall. Tünscher bought a string of tickets so they would have a cabin to themselves.

“I never feel comfortable in these things,” he said, stuffing a handkerchief into the light fitting as they began to move. “Microphone,” he explained. “Now we can talk.”

“What about the boy?” replied Burton.

Tünscher leaned toward his nephew and sang to the tune of the “Horst Wessel Lied,” the Nazi anthem:

When Der Führer says we is the master race

We quack quack quack in Der Führer’s face

When Goebbels says we own world and space

We quack quack quack in the doctor’s face

It was from a Donald Duck cartoon, a song that was banned everywhere in the German-speaking world. You could get five years in a concentration camp for letting it cross your lips. The boy offered a blank grin.

Tünscher gave his hair a playful tousle. “Stone deaf.”

“What about the Jungvolk uniform? I thought you had to pass a medical.”

“He failed. Bastards. I bought the clothes; he wears them when we go out together. You never saw a kid so happy.”

The car was rising. With all the Führertag bunting, the park below appeared like a scarlet crater. To the east it gave way to a strip of beach and drab blue waves: what Burton still thought of as the Indian Ocean. He was keen to start negotiating but felt cautious, remembering how loose his old friend’s tongue could be; his war record didn’t help.

“It takes four minutes and forty-one seconds to go round,” said Tünscher, unstrapping his watch. “You’d better be quick.”

“I need to get to Madagaskar. To find someone.”

“A Jew, I presume.”

“Who else?”

“There are several SS brigades on the island. Perhaps you want to save one of the Schutzstaffel from himself.”

“A Jew.”

“They pay well?”

“Nothing.”

“You sure? There are stories of treasure troves on the island. Hoards of gold smuggled from Europe.”

“This is coming from my pocket.”

A humph. “What town?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sector?”

Burton shook his head.

“Getting you on the island should be simple enough—for the right price. But without a location, forget it.”

“There must be some way.”

“It might help if I knew who this person was.”

Burton would have preferred not to say, but the truths he’d withheld from Patrick remained livid inside him. He explained about Madeleine as quickly and with as little emotion as he could, then waited for Tünscher’s contempt. In Bel Abbès, if a fellow legionnaire received a perfumed letter or admitted to falling for one of the prostitutes at Madame Maxine’s, Tünscher was always the first to scorn.

Instead he stared out of the window and nodded gravely. The wind whistled and clanged around the wheel as they reached the highest point. “There may be a way to find out where she is, but I’ve never tried it. I’ll have to ask around.”

“I need to go tonight.”

Tünscher let out a blast of laughter; next to him, his nephew gave a silent, gormless grin.

“The baby was due in February,” said Burton. “I wasted weeks getting here. Anything could have happened—they could be sick, starving. Every single day matters.” The thought had punished him since he’d left Britain.

“At least wait till after Führertag.”

“And if she dies the night before? If I could have got there?”

Tünscher banged his sternum. “I should never drink schnapps, gives me indigestion. How many of those diamonds you got?”

“Keep the one I gave you,” replied Burton. “That’s your down payment. Help me find Maddie and the baby, get us all off the island, and there are four more.”

“How do I know they’re not fakes?”

“You don’t.”

“I’ll do it for ten.”

“Five. That’s my only offer. Unless you want to spin for it.”

Tünscher’s expression darkened, as if he might lash out. “I gave up the gambling,” he said. “It cost me too much.” He wrapped his jacket round himself, fighting off an imaginary cold, then chased the anguish from his face and lit a cigarette. “No one cares if you’re smuggling in brandy, Major. Jews are a different matter. Ten diamonds: I’ve got some serious debts to pay off in the East.”

“Does brandy pay better?”

“No.” He glanced at Burton’s wrist, his eyes glassy. “But there are fewer fishing accidents.”

“I can push to six.”

“Nine.”

“Seven. We have to live afterward, and the stones are all I got.”

“They’re worth nothing if you don’t get off the island. Eight.”

Burton tugged at his upper lip, feigned indecision as though weighing up who held the stronger position. It was a con—there were no more diamonds; he’d spent the last of them getting to DOA.
“Seven,”
he said. “That really is it.”

The wheel was completing its revolution. Burton smelled pretzels and sausages wafting through the window. “You’re lucky I’m so bored,” said Tünscher, putting his watch back on. “Bored and broke. You just bought yourself Section IX’s finest.”

“I also need a gun,” said Burton. “A pistol.”

“What happened to that Browning of yours?”

“Gone.”

“That’ll be straightforward.”

Tünscher retrieved his handkerchief. They got out of the cabin and meandered into the crowds.

“Give me twenty-four hours and I’ll see what’s possible. No promises, and”—he slapped his pocket—“I keep the diamond either way. Where can I find you?”

“Msasani Beach,” replied Burton, giving the name of his hotel.

“You and ten thousand other people.”

Tünscher nudged his nephew, pointed to his mouth, and mimed,
Wurst?
An excited nod. Then another gesture, indicating that they were going their separate ways. The boy turned solemnly to Burton and gave him a Nazi salute.

It was like the whole fairground was watching. Burton replied in kind, a fleeting raise of his good arm.

“I’ll be in touch,” said Tünscher, disappearing into the throng. There was a finality to his words, as if the meeting was a one-off.

“Wait!” Burton called after him. For the first time, he noticed Tünscher’s feet: the hems of his trousers were frayed and ended in paratrooper boots. “Can I trust you?”

His old comrade flashed his yellow teeth. “No. But you can trust those diamonds.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Roscherhafen, DOA

17 April, 11:00

“IT COULD HAVE been worse,” his wife had told him.

Brigadeführer Derbus Kepplar sat with his jackboots on the desk, staring at the wall, and became aware that the rain had stopped. He was an exemplary Aryan specimen: cropped blond hair, blue eyes, leanly muscular. To either side of him were towers of paperwork that he couldn’t face: the minutiae of border patrol, customs, and immigration in Deutsch Ostafrika. The blinds were down, casting the room in a frowsty shade. Although his shirt clung to his back, he couldn’t be bothered to switch on the overhead fan. He felt his victimhood strongly.