The Madagaskar Plan (49 page)

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.

“On the understanding that you maintain order,” said the admiral. “This new rebellion is like wildfire.”

Globus responded furiously. “Are there Jews outside your door? Is Diego ablaze?”

“Not at present. But should the situation worsen, I remind you I have the authority to take whatever measures to defend my base. And the island.”

“That will never happen. I’ll deal with the bandits.”

“And if they do attack?”

“Then I burn them into the ground.”

“By then it will be too late,” said Dommes coldly. “You need to restore order now.”

“The Kriegsmarine needn’t worry; I’m tightening the noose. But can’t you see that this is the Jews’ plan: to set us against each other when we should be celebrating. What time shall I expect you and your officers later? You always enjoyed my birthday before.”

An incredulous pause, then: “I’ve too much to do here.”

The line went dead.

Globus leaned back in his chair again, teetering, daring it to give way. The walls of his office were covered with photographs of his many glories. At that moment, however, his focus was on a small picture of his father, hung in the space the door opened on to. His mother had given it to him when he became the gauleiter of Vienna; a reminder, she told him. At first he kept it out of sight, but after he was dismissed he started hanging it up wherever he was posted. His father had been a deserter during the Great War; Globus never wanted to shame the family like that again. Certainly not because of Jews.

There was a knock at the door, and Globus’s physician entered. He had the manner of a man with no worries in this world.
This is how my subordinates live,
thought Globocnik,
thanks to the burden on my back.

He offered his arm (he was still in the short sleeves of his riding kit) as the doctor opened a small case and removed a syringe and a vial. Globus had requested a double dose of his regular tonic, with additional testosterone to boost the vitamins and amphetamine. His head was thumping like the hammers outside. He needed to stay fresh. His last proper night’s sleep had been on the Friday when Hochburg arrived and roused him early from bed. Ruin had threatened since.

Globus looked away as the doctor administered the injection—he hated needles—his eyes returning to the walls. Pinned among the photos were the architectural plans for the governor’s mansion he proposed to build in Ostmark. They were based on his own sketches, another of his neo-Mesopotamian designs. He intended to live out his final years there and afterward bequeath the building to the SS—assuming he got out of this shithole. He feared that as a punishment Himmler would make him the lifelong governor of Madagaskar instead of dismissing him. What a place for a man to die.

The doctor finished the injection, wished him a happy birthday, and left.

Globus was thinking of Hochburg again. In the space of forty-eight hours, he had tipped the island from challenging to a fucking calamity. What was his game? Why come searching for Jews? Perhaps Hochburg wanted to destabilize the island in order to bring it under his own control. On the phone to Himmler, he’d asked outright what Hochburg was up to
. He’s in Kongo,
replied the Reichsführer,
winning the war. If only I could say the same for you.

Globocnik stood, screeching his chair out from his desk, and flexed his arm. It was time to pay his prisoner a visit.

*   *   *

Hochburg sat in darkness, hands cuffed behind him. Dull arcs of pain radiated from his dead eye, spreading across his skull like a map of shipping routes. The pain was aggravated by the noise outside: sawing, hammering, the cries of men at work. He took level breaths, each one flooding his nose with a fusty odor. The room he was being held in had the reek of a wardrobe stuffed with fur coats. It was too dark to see properly, but after he’d regained consciousness and his vision adjusted, he thought he could make out hundreds of eyes watching him. At his back he sensed a guard: a trunk of a man, trained in silence. Once Hochburg had spoken to him—but he made no reply.

From the corridor Hochburg heard bolts being snapped, then approaching boots and the ping of spurs. He was unconcerned: Globus had nothing to threaten him with; nor could he hold him prisoner indefinitely. Kepplar must be closing in on Burton, and once he captured the boy he would seek Hochburg. He cherished his release; his first act would be to court-martial Globocnik.

There were whispers outside the room, the door opened, and someone stood before him. He recognized Globus’s yeasty breath.

“Why am I being held here?” Hochburg demanded. “On what charges? When Heinrich learns of this—”

“There are no charges, Oberstgruppenführer; otherwise you’d be in a prison cell. You’re here for your own safety. You’ve had some kind of … nervous breakdown.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s no shame in it,” said Globus. “I had one myself in forty-three. All those things they made me do. It’s easy to give orders when you’re in Germania, far from the ice and offal. We’re decent men, but sooner or later these things take their toll. You must be under immense stress with Kongo.”

“I haven’t had a breakdown.”

“How else can I excuse your behavior? I told you not to go to Antzu, or the Ark, yet both times you defied me. Now there’s chaos. So you must be out of your mind … unless you have a better explanation.”

Globus switched on the lights and moved to a liquor cabinet while Hochburg took in his surroundings. A guard was pointing a BK44 at his chest.

“Impressive, no?” said Globus, pouring himself a glass of schnapps. He knocked it down his throat. “We’re deep in the palace; down here no one can hear us.”

The room was an Aladdin’s cave of taxidermy. A stuffed crocodile, tortoise, dozens of species of lemurs, some kind of bizarre big cat. Perched on the wall opposite, from floor to ceiling, were shelves of birds, their glass eyes reflecting the light.

“My private collection,” said Globus. “I shot each one myself, not just in Madagaskar but before.” He indicated behind Hochburg. “I had them brought with me from the East; they’re like old friends.”