The Madagaskar Plan (23 page)

The notebook was foolscap, bound in buckskin. It had taken Hochburg considerable effort, in the stationers of Germania, to find one that didn’t bear the swastika. Feuerstein opened the cover, his eyes blurring, and caressed the paper. It was thick and luxurious, the color of fresh cream.

“Are you still an animal?” asked Hochburg, reaching inside his tunic for his fountain pen. With its black ink he had signed the documents that created Muspel and Kongo. He’d put his signature to the Windhuk Decree when everyone else at the table—Himmler and Globus included—had refused. “Write me the details of your wife and children, and you will all be free by nightfall.”

“I can’t give the Reich this weapon.”

“You’re not. You’re giving it to me, the regime will be unaware.”

“I can’t!”

“Then you condemn your family.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking. Millions will die.”

“If you don’t, you will die. Your wife will die; your sons and daughters.Which means more?” Hochburg slipped the pen between the Jew’s gnarled fingers. “Write.”

Feuerstein hesitated, then put the nib on the paper, as gently as a father kissing his newborn son. Hochburg watched him scrawl the name Evelyn—hesitantly, the muscles only half-remembering how—and weep.

“I haven’t written in years … Not a single word.”

“You take my life,”
said Hochburg,
“when you take the means whereby I live.”

This time there was no retort from the scientist. He completed the names of his children, finishing with a full stop but not lifting the pen. A blot spread out from the nib.

He whipped the page over.

Began scribbling words, numbers, equations. They might have been coherent, they might have been nonsense; Hochburg couldn’t tell. He filled a page, then another, then—

“Enough!” Hochburg slammed his hand on the book with such violence that the mirrors rattled. Shivers of light darted around the tent. “How quickly could you build this weapon?”

“It depends what type of resources you’ll give me.”

“Everything Africa has to offer.”

He wiped the tears from his face. “Three, maybe four years.”

“You’re unwise to mock me. I give you six months.”

“Impossible. Every aspect of the technology has to be developed from nothing.”

“Eighteen,” said Hochburg, masking his disappointment.

“Two years. And there can be no interference. Mistakes are inevitable. Punishments won’t help; they’ll only set the project back.”

“You have my word.”

“And I can’t do it alone,” said Feuerstein breathlessly. “I will need other men. Colleagues, Jews. If they’re alive, there are some brilliant minds on this island.”

“You have your book: write the names. I will find them.”

“Their families, too.”

“Don’t push your luck, Herr Doctor.”

“A man works best if he knows his family is safe.”

Suddenly, Hochburg understood.

What had Feuerstein said?
I knew one of you would seek me out
. He must have played this scenario in his head a thousand times. Rationalized the ethics till he knew he would agree: anything to avoid a pickaxe in his blistered hands again; to be free of a life measured only in gnawing hunger, exhaustion, and, for the lucky, death. His refusal had been to win as many concessions as possible. Hochburg had misjudged the Jew.

“The cargo hold of my plane will take fifty people,” he said. “Choose your names wisely.”

Hochburg left the table and stood apart, catching a dozen reflected images of Feuerstein hunched over the notebook. If he was returning to the Ark, he would need to conceal his tracks from Globus. He took out Burton’s knife and began cutting the cords from the mirrors. Behind him came the scratch of pen on paper.

CHAPTER TWENTY

OAO

18 April, 14:30

IT HAD BEEN renamed by the Germans in 1943: no longer the Indian Ocean but the Ostafrikanischer Ozean, or OAO, as Nazi maps showed it. Salois had traveled its fickle, azure waters before. The first time was during his deportation. It was like crossing the Styx.

The Wannsee Conference designated the ports of Trieste, in Italy, and Gotenhafen, on the Baltic, as the “primary expulsion conduits” for the Jews. When they failed to cope with the numbers, Marseille, in France, and Salonika, in Greece, were added, and later Constanta, to remove Romanian and Bulgarian Jews. A special fleet was created from the North German Lloyd and Hamburg-American lines, supplemented by the KdF’s older cruise ships: 120 vessels in total. The initial route to Madagaskar was via the Cape of Good Hope; after the Casablanca Conference, Britain opened up the Suez Canal, reducing the journey to thirty days. Relays of ships chugged through the Red Sea and down the eastern coast of Africa to the processing stations of Diego Suarez, Mazunka, and Salzig, a journey of at least six thousand miles. They headed to the equator tottering on the waterline; returned empty.

After Salois’s capture at Dunkirk, he spent the summer as a POW before being identified as a Jew (a fellow Belgian gave him up for a handful of cigarettes) and taken to the Breendonk labor camp. He was finally shipped to Madagaskar in December 1942, in the first weeks of the monsoon season, on seas so violent his blood ran yellow. He was a lucky one, assigned a cabin at the top of the ship, sharing sixteen square meters with as many strangers. Thousands were crammed below, where the floor sloshed with vomit. Talk of mutiny was silenced as soon as they were herded on board, the captain informing them that the hull was mined: any trouble and he would scuttle the ship. The decks were patrolled by kapos, Jewish criminals used by the SS to keep order. They were armed with whips and notorious for their brutality.

To reach the targets set by Wannsee, 83,500 Jews had to be shipped from Europe each month, initially men of working age—known as pioneers—to build the new towns and military bases of Madagaskar; later women, children, and the old followed. Thousands never arrived, dying of suffocation or dysentery from the bubbling toilets or simply because their spirits could no longer endure the endless plunge and roll of the voyage. Eighty kilometers from arrival, the liners stopped to disgorge their dead. A rabbi was permitted to say a few words; then the
splosh—splosh—splosh
of weighted bodies hitting the waves. In these stretches of water, it was rumored, the sharks were too fat to swim.

The dhow carrying Salois, Cranley, and the marines had left Mombasa three days before. It was a rickety spicer, honeycombed with smuggling compartments, its sails alternately billowing with downpours and hot wind. At present the sun was beating between the clouds. Salois sat at the stern of the vessel, by the kitchen, cross-legged in the shade. They had eaten at noon, but his belly was soon aching for more. He’d filled a bowl with leftover rice, okra, and scraps of fish in an oily red sauce and was loading his mouth. Cranley and the marines were at the prow, sharing round a pair of binoculars; they seemed expectant, jittery. Cranley detached himself from the others and headed toward Salois. Even though the swell was gentle, he swayed with each step.

“We’re approaching the first of the Rings,” he said. His burnt face was peaky.

The Rings of Madagaskar, “a marvel of our nautical engineering,” as Governor Bouhler once described them, were a triple chain of sea mines, five kilometers from the shore, that encircled the island to prevent ships from approaching. Each mine was set twenty meters apart; as long as the waves remained calm, the dhow was small enough to slip between them.

“Can you see land?” asked Salois.

“On the horizon. Take a look yourself.”

Salois returned to his food. “We’ll be there soon enough.”

Cranley joined him in the shade, mirroring his position. He was already in camouflage fatigues and had insisted that everyone else dress the same, despite Salois’s advising against it. The plan was to pass through the Rings and reach the first landing point on the northwest coast by sundown; there, Salois and his men would disembark. Next, the dhow would turn south and drop Cranley’s team in the mangroves around Mazunka. Although it would have been less conspicuous to wait till after dusk to change, Cranley had been eager to get into his combats. It proved something.

Cranley watched him gorge. “I don’t know how you can stomach it,” he said.

“You’ve never been hungry,” replied Salois, not raising his eyes.

“I’ve had lean times. When I was in Spain, fighting with the Nationalists, we had days when there was nothing except potatoes.” He considered this. “You’re right, I don’t know hunger.”

“I’ve beaten men for a piece of orange peel,” said Salois, “gnawed bones after dogs have finished with them.” He chased the last grains of rice round the bowl. “That kind of hungry never leaves you.”

After he was finished, he dabbed his lips with his sleeve and studied Cranley. In their time together, the Englishman had offered no explanation for his burn marks. The fire had spared most of his hair except for his eyebrows, which were bald. The left side of his face was charred, the skin taut, poreless, and matte; when the sun became too fierce, he smeared himself in cold cream. Despite his disfigurement, he remained handsome. He had a strong jaw, with an unblemished lath of flesh under the bone. When he addressed the men there was an affable superiority to him. Yet he unsettled Salois.

“I still can’t see why you’re with us,” he said.

Cranley smoothed his camouflage. “This doesn’t persuade?”

“Rolland’s a uniform man, Turneiro with his airplanes. But you…”

There was a belch of noxious smoke, and the engine started. The dhow’s crew of Indians and Arabs began furling the sails.

“Last year,” said Cranley, “I planned an operation to curtail the Nazis—”

“Like this one?”

“We wanted to save Africa from itself. If you don’t bridle faraway lands, one day faraway lands will bridle you.” Something furious darkened his gaze. “It was almost a disaster. I can’t let the same happen in Madagaskar.”

“But you don’t care about Jews.”

“My department has been supplying the Vanilla Jews for years. Weapons, medical supplies. I don’t condone what happened to your kind, or you being shipped to the tropics.”

“Britain could have stopped it.”

“Or the CONE
*
,” Cranley replied impatiently, “or America. In which case every last one of you would have been transported to Siberia. Perhaps you’d rather freeze.”

“Madagaskar’s no better.”

“The past can’t be undone.” His voice was level again. “Diego is the key to Africa now. That was our mistake during the Casablanca Conference: not involving the United States. It pains me to admit it, but we need their intervention to redraft the world; Britain is no longer the power she was.”

“During the Ha-Mered, we prayed for America to join the struggle. Or rein in Globus. Each new atrocity convinced us they would. There was only silence.”

“Then you misunderstand their politics. Americans only back winners. That’s why we have to squeeze Kongo: so they’ll land in the west.”

“You and Rolland are no different. You’re not fighting for Africa, whatever you say. You just want to keep Britain at the trough. That’s the real reason you’re here.”

“Think what you will. I’m on this boat because I fear for the future. What parent doesn’t?”

Salois was surprised; it seemed an unlikely justification. “You have children?”

“A daughter.”

“How old?”

“She’ll be seven this year. Such an intelligent child. I’ll have to watch her when she gets older.” His voice was tender, boastful. “She already speaks French and German. Plays Schubert on the piano. A few months ago, I thought she’d been taken from me. It was the most wretched thing I could imagine.”

“What happened?”

“For the first time, I understood what it was to hate. To want to punish. I thought I knew before, but those few moments alone were an education. After I’m gone she’ll be wealthy, cosseted. But I want to leave her more: a nation, a homeland, she can be proud of, Reuben, not a relic of a once great empire.” He had never used Salois’s first name before; there was a hint of irony in it.

Salois snorted. “You’re an idealist.”

“Nothing of the sort. I’m selfish. The seed of all idealism.”

“And your wife?”

“Dead.”

He said it abruptly, as if the word, with its finality, its hinterland of grief, anger, and yearning, had no significance.

“I was married once,” said Salois. “Or going to be.”

“In Madagaskar?”

“When I was at university. Her name was Frieda. She was pregnant—the child would be an adult now.” He had nothing to prove that his former life had existed; even the memories no longer convinced him.

“So why leave and join the Foreign Legion?”

“You saw my arrest warrant.” Salois held up his hands as though they were still bloodied. “I had no choice: it was North Africa or the hangman.”

“You were only young,” replied Cranley. “As a student, you must have been from a respectable enough family.”

“A Jewish family.”

“Which means money. You could have bought your way out.”

“I had a hateful temper. Was arrogant, vicious.” The desert had cured him of all three. “I didn’t deserve leniency.”

“Then you should have surrendered yourself.”

Salois thought of the document Cranley had placed in front of him in Sudan. “If I’d said no, would you have used the warrant against me? Sent me back to Belgium?”

One of those barren smiles. “Of course—”

“Colonel Cranley! Major!”

It was Sergeant Denny, at the front of the boat, clutching a pair of binoculars. He had dark hair, a matinee idol’s jawline, cauliflower ears; he’d boxed at the 1946 Olympics in Nuremberg. He beckoned them urgently.

Salois and Cranley hurried to the prow, the huge knobbly orb of a sea mine drifting past on the starboard side. Ahead, set five hundred meters apart, were the next two rings and, several kilometers beyond them, a dark wall of jungled shore. The clouds were knitting together. Salois had expected a well of emotion on seeing the island once more—terror, defiance, shame, possibly the cold thrill of hope. There was a hardening in his chest, nothing more. It was just rock, the same rock his people might have seen a millennium before. When the bureaucrats had presented Hitler’s plan for Madagaskar to the Council of New Europe, they had summoned a wealth of anthropological evidence proving that the first inhabitants of the island were Jewish.