The Madagaskar Plan (45 page)

*   *   *

Burton caught a fleeting glimpse of Madeleine. He stumbled: exhilarated, horrified. The mist around her was darkening, like wine poured into milk.

“That her?” asked Tünscher.

She was emaciated, her body nothing but hard angles, as if her bones had been recarved; her hair—her luxuriant, flowing black hair—was stubble. Worse than the physical decline, he sensed a newborn savagery in her. His image of Maddie, plump and radiant in cornflower blue, had propelled him across oceans and continents, even though he understood that it was a necessary illusion.

Its shattering was harder than any physical blow.

He recognized the dress she was wearing; it was an old favorite. The white material would cling to her thighs if they got caught in a shower on the farm; “my seduction frock,” she used to call it, with a single-note laugh. It was smeared with muck. She had three companions: one with the familiar bearing of a soldier, an old woman dressed in a work uniform, and a third who was balding, the same age as Burton. He kept close to Madeleine, running protectively by her side in a way that made Burton want to pry them apart. There was no time to dwell on the absence of a baby.

In a blink she was gone.

“Madeleine!” he roared. His voice bounced off the alley walls, the mist deadening it. “Madeleine!”

He chased after her, Tünscher at his heels, into a maze of passageways thick with smoke. The sound of running clattered and echoed around him till it was impossible to tell what direction it was coming from or whether Madeleine was its origin. Burton stopped in a ramshackle square where numerous alleys met and spun round, not knowing which one to take. The air was scarlet and swirling. “Which way?” he demanded of Tünscher.

“I don’t know.”

Burton continued spinning, struggling to decipher the echoes and—

He stopped dead. Tottered backward into Tünscher.

A figure had emerged from the smoke, materializing like a djinn. He was dressed entirely in black, and half his skull was obscured by bandages. The faintest smile danced on his lips.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

EVERYTHING SEEMED DARKER. The alley walls crowded in, the smoke as thick and opaque as blood. Through it came the crackle of burning timbers, the sound reminding Burton of his childhood home as it was gutted. The breath lodged in his throat, and sank. This was the moment he had waited years for. He groped for the Beretta and wished he was reaching for the familiar handle of his Browning. The buzz of mosquitoes was unnaturally loud.

Hochburg.

Burton expected to see hatred in his single black eye. Instead: relief, a simmering, victorious pleasure. What had Madeleine called him all those months ago? A ghost. Don’t resurrect him, she begged. If Burton had listened, he wouldn’t be standing in this stinking muddy lane, his left sleeve would not be pinned at the wrist. Patrick would be alive, Tünscher not wounded and marooned on rhinestone promises. Burton, Madeleine, and their baby would be safe—if not surrounded by the Suffolk fields they dreamed of, then in some secret spot far beyond the reach of Cranley.

A second black figure joined Hochburg: the one-eared Nazi who’d hunted him in Roscherhafen. Then excited cub soldiers with shorn hair and machine guns.

“He must not be killed,” said Hochburg. “Or harmed. That’s my harp to play.”

Burton’s fingers contacted with the Beretta.

All he had to do was draw the weapon, aim at Hochburg’s heart, and fire. But that ancient desire was gone … like the quince orchard: hacked down, exhausted by rage. That it had consumed him for so long made him feel dizzy and ashamed now; it was a kinship he should never have sought. Each step toward Hochburg was a step into the past, a step away from Madeleine. She was so close they were breathing the same air again. Burton heard his father from the pulpit, bellowing at orphans who sat quaking or indifferent:
To embrace him is death.

Burton ran.

Tünscher kept close, his hand pressed against his flank. A volley of bullets sang over them. Burton heard Hochburg’s voice—resonant, formidable—boom orders, and darted down a side passage, navigating through contorted backstreets till Tünscher guided him to a different alley. “This way.”

“How do you know?” asked Burton as they were heading up an incline.

“If she’s trying to escape, the main road out of town is at the top.”

“And if she’s not?”

“Then stay and check every fucking house. But not with me.”

Ahead was a dead end. Tünscher ducked to the left, into an alley clad with scaffolding. It was so narrow that they kept bumping into the poles, the planks above wobbling. Another pocket of red fog swallowed them; Burton glimpsed a spent smoke canister in the mud. The clap of boots seemed everywhere, amplified and distorted—one second behind them, the next to either side, as if the soldiers were running along parallel streets. Above the boots Burton thought he heard Hochburg, but he couldn’t be sure if it was in his head: a memory from the mission in Kongo, or further in the past.

Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman …

In front was another dead end, this time with no alternative route. “Back,” said Tünscher.

Burton found the path blocked.

“Herr Oberst! I have him.”

The one-eared Nazi was framed in scaffolding, a BK44 in his grip aimed low; it would shred their feet and shins.

“Oberstgruppenführer! Come quick.” His voice was shrill and demented. “Hands behind your neck, Cole. Your friend, too.”

Slowly, Burton raised his arms; Tünscher did nothing.

“Take off your hat,” said the Nazi.

“What?”

“Do it! I want to see your head.”

When Burton refused, the Nazi fired into the mud inches from Burton’s toes. He tugged his cap free and let it drop. The Nazi scrutinized his skull before a look of disgruntlement filled his face.

Tünscher, whose hands remained at his sides, stepped forward till he was abreast with Burton. He was pallid and breathless, the skin above his lip beaded with sweat. The Nazi flicked the point of his machine gun at Tünscher’s chest.

“The Oberstgruppenführer’s orders were only not to harm Cole.”

“We charge him,” said Tünscher.

Burton checked the distance between them and the BK’s muzzle. “I thought you didn’t want to die today.”

“He won’t fire.”

“Why not?”

“I can see it in his eyes, like when I signed up for Russia. You could tell who was going to spend the war behind a desk. Trust me.”

“Silence.” The Nazi called behind him: “Oberstgruppenführer! Anyone! Quick, while I have them.”

Burton lowered his hand and stump.

The three of them stood staring at each other. Mosquitoes buzzed through the air.

“What do you think happened to his ear?” said Tünscher.

Humiliation and fury flashed across the Nazi’s face as he raised a palm to cover his mutilated lobe. Tünscher hurled himself forward, knocking the Nazi into the bamboo struts holding up the scaffolding. The poles collapsed, flinging boards and paint in all directions.

*   *   *

Jacoba avoided the front gate of the governor’s house and sloped along the garden wall, leading them through thickets of spiny aloes. They were on the asphalt highway that led south, winding three hundred kilometers through onion-growing country to Mazunka. The wind had picked up, chasing away the mist. Across from the wall Madeleine could see empty meadows rolling down to the river. Jacoba kept looking up and diagonally to the roof of the house, searching for something.

“Here,” she said at last. “Blind man’s bend.” It was a curve in the wall, dipping with the natural contour of the ground; the spot was hidden from the villa and its solitary guard tower. “Servants in the house would come here to sneak out food to their families. There used to be a basket. I’d smuggle out beetroot and peaches for my daughter.”

Madeleine had forgotten about Jacoba’s daughter. “Did you find her?” she asked.

“I saw her for a few moments. Then I heard Salois and had to fetch you.”

“I’m grateful.” She squeezed the older woman’s bony hand. “Will you come with me?”

Fear and apology tussled in Jacoba’s expression. “I’ll help you with the horses … but after that I’ll only slow you down.”

“You can’t stay here.”

“I’m not going to Mandritsara.” She extracted her hand from Madeleine’s. “Antzu’s not so bad. When all this has quietened down, I’ll be happy enough. It’s paradise compared to those pigs and Poles.”

Jacoba offered a shaky smile, but Madeleine sensed her heartbreak. “If I can’t make the boat,” she replied, “I’ll come back; we can live together in Boriziny.”

“You’re not coming back, girl.”

Salois scaled the wall, using pockmarks in the mortar to climb. Madeleine doubted whether she or Jacoba would be strong enough to do the same. When he reached the top he asked Madeleine if she still had her knife. She passed it to him. He cut a gap in the barbed wire and pressed himself flat against the brickwork, his rucksack a hump over his shoulders. “I can see the stables,” he said. “They’re deserted.”

“It’s too high for us to climb,” Madeleine called up.

“I’ll find something,” he replied and vanished over the other side. Madeleine heard the impact of his boots—
crunch
—then his footsteps rapidly fading.

From the city came the echo of gunshots. An alarm was ringing on the far side of the green house.

“That’s the barracks,” said Abner. “Your new friend better be fast or we’ll be overrun.”

They waited, crouched low by the wall, mosquitoes feasting on them. Madeleine rubbed at her calves: they were covered in scratches from the aloe thorns. Whenever she cut herself on the farm, Burton dabbed the wound with iodine, wincing along with her.

A coil of rose rope landed next to her, twisted with leaves and thorns. Abner picked them off and tugged it taut. “Jacoba, you go first.”

“No,” said Madeleine. “Me, Jacoba, then you.” She worried that if they were left alone he would insist that she stay in Antzu, maybe cosh her into submission.

Before he could argue she grabbed the rope and climbed, the muscles that had carried her children straining. At the top she looked out over Antzu: a reddish haze hung over the streets they had run through, and the synagogue was on fire. She beckoned Jacoba to follow. Fruit trees had been espaliered against the other side of the wall; she used the branches to descend, landing on a gravel path. Jacoba joined her, then Abner. They stood with their mouths crumpled in disbelief.

“The Mered Ha-vanil began over a handful of rice,” said Abner. “The Nazis told us there wasn’t enough food.” His shoulders slumped. “I’ve seen men—grown men, soldiers, killers—cry like children for a bowl of soup.”

“This is just for the governor’s house,” said Jacoba.

They were in a kitchen garden. Madeleine had planned to grow one behind the farmhouse, but at a fraction of the size of the monstrosity in front of them. It expanded through a series of square sections, each dedicated to rows of vegetables and fruits of every imaginable kind. There were eggplants, pumpkins, sweet corn, bushes of red, orange, and gold chilies, melons, and pink pineapples. Not just tropical plants but European crops modified by Nazi agronomists to grow in the local climate: celery, turnips, cabbages. And coolhouses, temperature- and humidity-controlled glass structures for delicacies such as kale and berries.

“When I worked here,” Jacoba continued, “the bins overflowed. Whole meals untouched and thrown out. The servants were so healthy because they ate the leftovers. Until Quorp forbade it.”

A sob emerged from Abner like Madeleine hadn’t heard since childhood when he was punished for some perceived injustice. He ran into the beds kicking and stamping on the crops, tearing up sweet potatoes. He broke off a supporting cane from some beans and stumbled forward, whipping zucchinis and cabbages till he reached a coolhouse spilling over with blueberries. He raised the cane to shatter the walls.

Salois caught his arm before it descended. “Cabbages are silent; glass isn’t.”

The gardens were empty and drizzly with mist. They passed a Jew tending some beds with a hoe. He glanced up, then fixed his eyes back on the earth. Gunshots continued to ring out from the city.

“We have to watch for the grooms,” said Jacoba as they approached the stables—but the yard was empty except for a helicopter and its pilot. He scurried into the house as they approached. The rich smell of manure and bran mash hung over the cobbles.

It was too risky to go to the tack room. They found some bridles in the yard but only two saddles. Jacoba said the others should have them while she would ride bareback, and selected the horses, slapping their hindquarters to encourage them out of the stalls. She swung herself on top of a chestnut mare and in an instant was transformed: she sat confidently, with an elegance to her spine despite her lack of saddle.

“Can you ride?” she asked Salois as he levered himself up onto his own horse.

“I can ride a camel,” he replied.

The only person Madeleine had known who could ride a camel was Burton. She fastened her saddle and mounted her horse. Riding lessons had been a gift—an expectation—from Jared.

“What about me?” said Abner from the ground. “I don’t know how.”

Madeleine offered her hand.

He didn’t take it. “It’s not too late to stay.”

A black smudge appeared in the clouds. It approached rapidly, the thump of its rotors unsettling the horses.

“I never asked you to come with me,” said Madeleine.

Abner climbed on behind her, his sleeves catching as he put his arms around her waist. She glanced down at the tattoos on his forearm. The three horses clip-clopped through the yard to the front entrance; the guards were missing.

“We need the southern road,” Abner shouted at Jacoba, who was in the lead.

They wheeled left through the gate, and Madeleine thought she was going insane. It must be the exhaustion and lack of food, the sheer stress of the past days. Or maybe the taste of Hochburg, still cold and sweet in her mouth, poisoning her mind. For the second time she thought she heard Burton’s voice—as real and clear as birdsong.