The Madagaskar Plan (28 page)

Madeleine thought of Alice and the twins and hoped their children wouldn’t be able to find Madagaskar on a map. She was unable to contain herself: she raised her hands and clapped. Another pair joined her, then another, missing the irony of her applause. Next moment it was taken up by everyone. There was an ebullient roar, whistles. The Jews on top of the train tossed handfuls of lychees into the throng. Jacoba crossed her arms.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to join them,” she said as the cheering subsided.

“You should take Danuta and go to Zimety.”

“Danuta has plenty of mothers, and I’m not going to live with a tribe of blackies. I want to go back to Antzu and my daughter.” She put on her hat. “We could go together.”

“I’m heading north. To Mandritsara.”

“If they let you,” replied Jacoba.

The Vanilla Jews were marshaling the others: to the rear of the train for Zimety; in front, where pineapples were being skinned and doled out, to join the fight. The valley echoed with barked orders. Jacoba shook her head. “They sound as bad as the Nazis.”

“They won’t stop me,” said Madeleine. “I need water and supplies. Abner will help.”

“Abner?”

She indicated the Jew who had taken over from Ben-Ze’ev. He remained astride the roof, wearing his familiar round spectacles now, and seemed to be scanning the crowds for someone.

“Why would he help?”

Madeleine was suddenly self-conscious. “He’s my brother.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Northwest Madagaskar

18 April, 16:50

ONLY FOUR OF them made it ashore.

Reuben Salois crawled through the surf and collapsed; his muscles didn’t have a single stroke left in them. More than once his arms had failed and he had let himself sink, the urge to open his lungs to the sea irresistible. Cranley hauled him back onto the barrel, chided him to keep swimming:
Too many Yids have died already.
Now it seemed impossible that there was solid ground beneath him: thirty meters of salt-white sand leading to the jungle. Each breath was sweet and painful. For several minutes, no one moved.

The memory of arriving in Mozambique foamed in Salois’s thoughts. By then he’d lost count of the days since he’d escaped Madagaskar, drifting across shimmering gray waters, time measured by the withering of skin around vanished muscle. Sharks circled and sang him songs: first in the voices of beautiful young women, later a raucous chantey of drunkards accompanied by a fiddle and timbrel. He woke to find the raft nudging the shore. Rolled himself off and almost drowned in a hand’s depth of water. He dragged himself away from the ocean, pausing every meter to sink his face into the sand and summon the dregs of his spirit. Ahead, always out of reach, was a succulent strip of purple.

Salois shook off the memory and rose from the waves to check the others. His boots remained around his neck, salt burned his mouth; he imagined gorging on ripe papaya or crushing a lime onto his tongue. Of the marines, only Denny and Private Grace were with him. A dozen meters away lay Xegoe, clutching his purse to his chest, his beret lost.

“Where’s Cranley?” asked Salois, his lungs jagged. The force of the currents had split the group apart as they approached the shallows. “The rest?”

No one replied.

Salois freed his boots as if unwinding a garland, then scanned the shoreline in both directions: there were no figures emerging from the waves. Out to sea, the Nazi patrol boat continued to drift and smoke. He ordered the marines to their feet, and they dragged their equipment out of the surf, to the remnants of a crater blasted in the beach. Its sides were smooth, the bottom scattered with pink shells. The men huddled together.

“What did we salvage?”

Denny rummaged through the bags. “Explosives … smoke flares … hand grenades. They seem dry enough. Detonators. No radio.”

“Cranley had it.”

“Medical kit … some ammunition. That’s all.”

“What about ration tins?”

“Nothing.” Denny picked the sand out of his ears. “What do we do, Major?”

“Find the others. Then continue as planned.”

“And if they didn’t make it? Diego’s pointless unless there’s someone to take out the radar.”

Private Grace spoke up: “The sergeant’s right. It was over the moment the Nazis boarded the boat.”

Grace—Gracovitz—was a fellow Jew who had escaped Madagaskar as a teenager; he’d considered himself uniquely experienced until Salois joined the mission. He was tough, angry, depressive. The other marines called him the “golden Jew” because of his hair. He sucked incessantly on aniseed candies. “The only thing to do now,” said Grace, “is cross the island. Get to the extraction point.”

“No, Cranley’s alive,” replied Salois. “If we can’t find him, we find a way to call the radio.”

“How?”

“First we get off this beach.”

While Denny divided the equipment between the rucksacks, Salois pulled on his boots and walked over to Xegoe, who was lying in the surf. Salois offered his hand to help him up. The captain swiped him away and stood upright, stowing his purse.

“You are the cause that go kill my sailors,” he roared in Salois’s face, “sink my boat.” He shoved Salois back, flashed a dagger with a curved point. “You and your devil skin!”

Before he could attack, Grace swept the captain off his feet. Xegoe stumbled, cursing in his native tongue, then scuttled up the sand.

“No, wait!” yelled Salois. “You can’t survive on this island without us.”

Grace aimed his pistol at the retreating captain. “If the Nazis capture him—”

There was a deep crump; the ground shook beneath Salois’s boots.

Xegoe vanished. In his place, a stalk of writhing smoke.

An instant after the land mine detonated, offal and a sprinkling of gold reichsmarks rained down on them. The patter of gore ended as abruptly as it began. The only sound was the beat of the waves and
mesite
birds calling from the jungle.

Grace wiped the blood from his eyes. A spasm ran up his neck. “Why did I come back?”

“Same reason as me. Three nights from now, Diego Suarez will light the sky. The whole island will see. The Americans will come.”

Xegoe’s knife lay on the ground, his hand still attached to it. Salois pried the fingers loose and followed the captain’s path, stepping only where Xegoe’s footprints dented the sand.

“What about the kit?” asked Denny.

“Leave it. Once we’ve secured a path, we’ll come back.”

“I’ll take the explosives,” said Grace, wanting to make up for his misgivings. “In case we get stuck. We can’t blow Diego without them.”

When Salois reached the smoking crater, he lowered himself onto his belly and delicately slid the blade into the sand until it was buried to the hilt. He withdrew it, shuffled forward, and inserted the knife again, probing for mines.

Probe. Secure. Shuffle.

Probe. Secure. Shuffle. They edged forward in centimeters.

The land between Kongo and Rhodesia was said to be mined. Salois had heard stories that when the Waffen-SS invaded, Jews were in the vanguard: a shipment from one of the penal gangs of Steinbock, sent to central Africa and ordered to stamp their way across the border, five hundred men abreast. The advance was rapid, the Germans not losing a single vehicle.

Grace, then Denny, followed his path. The air was heavy and hot. They had covered ten meters before the tip of the knife contacted metal. As the breath solidified in Salois’s lungs, he eased the dagger from the sand.

“Here,” he said to the others, marking an X in the sand.

“Now what?” asked Grace, his voice barely a murmur.

“You don’t have to whisper. They’re not that sensitive.”

“You’re not wearing a backpack full of dynamite.”

Salois prodded the ground to his left, tested the entire length of his body, and, when he was confident it was safe, slid over. He repeated the procedure three times before edging forward once more. They’d covered another five meters when Salois stopped again. The taste of salt was acrid on his tongue; he should have asked Grace for one of his aniseed candies. His fingers trembled.

“Another mine?” asked Denny.

Salois’s face was feverish. “I just need a few minutes.”

He pressed his cheek into the ground. The crust was warm, but below the sand was cool and moist, as it had been in Mozambique when he’d crawled up the beach. At the top he had found a carpet of purple and blue flowers and gorged on the petals till his saliva ran magenta and his stomach boiled. Then he slumped, gazing stolidly across the Mozambique Channel, ready to die. He counted numbers to himself. As the sun reached its zenith, a fisherman chanced by. He was wizened, wore his nets over his shoulders like a cloak. When he bent in close, Salois tasted his ethereal breath.
A morte não o quer mesmo levar,
he had said and laughed.

“Major!”

Salois brought himself back, mopped the gritty sweat from his face, and slipped the dagger into the sand. He heard a distant drone, like a hornet trapped in a can.

“Major! We have to move.”

“This can’t be rushed.”

“We don’t have a choice.”

Across the ocean, the clouds were darkening to gray. Circling above the stricken S-boat was a Walküre helicopter. It dipped its nose and headed toward land.

Salois stabbed the knife into the ground, moving as swiftly as possible till the blade nicked something hard. “Another mine,” he said, pricking the area to his left and changing course. It was fifteen meters to the trees.

The gunship reached the shore, screamed low overhead, its downdraft whipping grains into Salois’s nose and mouth.

“It missed us?” said Grace.

“No,” replied Denny. “It’s coming round for a better shot.”

Probe, shuffle, probe, shuffle.

The knife touched metal. The mines were becoming more concentrated, their purpose to kill men escaping the jungle rather than those emerging from the sea.

The Walküre completed its loop, came low over the breakers, its front minigun perfectly lined up with them.

Grace scrambled to his feet and sprinted. Salois reached out to stop him as he darted past, kicking up puffs of sand.
We’re always running,
thought Salois,
running to the Germans’ starting gun.
The protective shade of the jungle beckoned to Grace.

A crimson geyser. Then, a fraction of a second later, a blast wave as the explosives ignited.

Salois shielded his face from the debris, crying out when something bit into his forearm.

The Walküre opened fire, its cannon whipping the sea. Denny scrambled to his feet.

“Walk!” commanded Salois, taking the lead as he followed Grace’s tracks. He made each stride as long and measured as possible, as if pacing out dimensions.

The ground reverberated as the helicopter’s guns chewed into it. Salois kept focused on the gloom in front of him: he could already distinguish vines and patterns of bark. There was an explosion, another scream. Blood and sand lashed his neck.

One more stride—and he was beneath the boughs.

The Walküre slowed, hovering above the canopy. Its rotor blades battered the trees. Leaves and brightly colored birds whirled around Salois, streaks of white, emerald, indigo. He ran, following forest paths that split and crossed at random, stumbled on roots, felt branches bounce off his head. He kept running till the forest darkened around him and he could no longer hear the chop of the gunship. Only then did he stop.

Salois’s caftan was sodden—though whether with sweat or blood, he couldn’t tell. A throb trilled up his forearm to the elbow, and he lifted the sleeve to examine it. Buried in the skin was a molar, complete with its roots, a nugget of mercury in the center; Grace—Gracovitz—and his aniseed sweets. It made a popping noise as he extracted it. A familiar guilt washed through him, the chastisement for being alone, and he heard the laughter of the fisherman who found him in Mozambique.
A morte não o quer mesmo levar.

The old man had saved his life, fed him peppery broth and sheltered him, before Salois was taken along the coast to the mission at Inhambane. There, one of the Jesuits spoke French, and he had asked what the words meant. The missionary offered him a scornful, earnest eye.

Death doesn’t want you.

Salois rolled the tooth between his fingers, like a jeweler, then tossed it into the undergrowth.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Tana–Diego Railway

18 April, 17:00

“ABNER?”

He was standing over a pile of dead Germans as Madeleine approached, his back toward her. Other Vanilla Jews were stealing the trousers from the bodies. They had collected a stack of weapons.

Her brother twisted round. A searching look from behind his glasses, followed by a blossom of recognition; finally, blankness descended. Up close he was more ravaged, his skin walnut-red from sun and cyclone, the flesh below his cheeks sunken. The cake-plump boy she’d last seen fifteen years earlier was long gone. His lanks of hair were ridiculous; she always remembered him with cropped back and sides.
You look like one of those Nazis,
their mother used to scold.

“Do I know you?” he asked. The black of his waistcoat shimmered like a peacock’s feathers.

“It’s Madeleine.”

His stare remained blank.

“Madeleine Weiss,” she said, suppressing a pang of hurt that became embarrassment. “Your sister, for God’s sake!”

“My sister’s in England, married to some big man.”

“You received my letters? But I never heard back from you.”

“We used to write all the time before the rebellion…” He massaged his jaw and scrutinized her. “Leni?”

One day, when she was twelve or thirteen, Abner returned home from his wrestling class and started calling her Leni. Soon he had pestered the rest of the family to adopt the name, all except her father. She hated it. Nobody had used it since she fled Vienna. An unexpected sob rose in her; she covered her mouth to hide it.

“Leni? Madeleine?” He was incredulous, laughing, cross. “It can’t be.”