The Madagaskar Plan (39 page)

Abner climbed the front steps of number 1138 and knocked on the door. It was a cinder-block hut, weathered and brown, rust from the roof running down the walls. There was no reply. “Do you have the key?”

“I lost it.”

Her brother examined the frame. “It’s not that strong. I should be able to break it.”

“No, wait,” said Madeleine.

She joined him and removed the knife from under her trousers. It had rubbed against her thigh as they walked to Antzu till the skin was tender; every time it made her wince, she pictured Cranley. She eased the knife between the frame and the lock, twisting it until the latch gave. Inside, everything was how she had left it ten weeks earlier. Abner went to enter, but she barred him and turned to Jacoba.

“Will you come in? Rest?”

“I want to see my daughter first.”

Since they’d met at the slurry lake, Madeleine had spent every day with Jacoba. Squeamish, snobby, accepting Jacoba; Jacoba, who had encouraged her through the previous night despite her own exhaustion, who’d let her cling to the hope of escaping the island even though she believed it impossible. The thought of being parted was more wrenching than Madeleine had imagined. She embraced the older woman. There was something so normal about the gesture—like two friends parting after lunch and a matinee or an afternoon’s shopping, far from their sour clothes and the muddy streets of Antzu—that Madeleine felt tears rising. Jacoba gave her a final peck on the cheek and whispered, “I wish I could make it better.” Then she slouched down Boriziny, taking one of the side streets in the direction of the river.

“I don’t trust her,” said Abner, entering the house.

“She looked after me.”

“Do you ever think why? She’s not family.” Abner peered around the dingy interior. There was a small window with a fine mesh to keep out the mosquitoes, but only the houses of the Jewish Council had windows with panes; glass was a rare commodity. His eyes came to rest on the crate Madeleine had planned to use as a cradle.

“I’m going to the council,” he said, “to pass on our news about the reservations. There’s also a transmitter there—I need to speak to Ben-Ze’ev, tell him about the Ark.”

“What about Mandritsara?”

“They burned our records, Madeleine. No one will care about your children now.”

“You promised.”

He offered a pathetic shrug.

“I’ll go alone,” she said, too tired to be persuasive.

Abner opened the door, letting in a waft of bread and sewage. “Then go. Back the way we came, left up the hill toward the governor’s house, then on to the main road.” He sounded more annoyed with each word. “From there it’s forty kilometers, except a lone woman will raise suspicions, especially on Führertag. So you’d better go cross-country.”

Madeleine hung her head and noticed that one of her laces was caught in a knot.

“You were slow from the train, Leni, white with hunger, and the terrain was easier than it will be between here and Mandritsara.”

“Someone has to help me.”

“Why? Thousands need help, millions—why are you so special?” He sighed, scratching a sore on his hairless head, and seemed to be calculating something. “Let me go to the council, speak to them on your behalf. But you have to promise to stay here.”

“I want to come with you.”

“This place is safest. Stay and get some rest.”

He clomped down the steps, boots thick with mud, and walked off in the direction Jacoba had taken. Then stopped. “It’s a nice house, Leni. Better than anything we had here, or how Mutti and Leah live now.” He stared into the sky. “You should be grateful for what you’ve got.”

Madeleine followed his gaze. She could see nothing through the mist but heard the approach of a helicopter. It clattered over the city and came in to land near the governor’s house. When she looked back to the street, Abner was gone.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Antzu

20 April, 15:20

MORE FUCKING HORSES,
thought Hochburg as Kepplar opened the helicopter door. Tufts of straw whirled around them.

The Flettner had landed in the stable block behind the governor’s villa. A groom in a khaki shirt appeared and led Hochburg and Kepplar into the house, taking them first through a tack room, then into a vestibule adorned with vases and paintings and silver ornaments. There was a sickly scent of frangipani and ylang-ylang.

“To cover the stink of the city,” explained the groom.

He passed them on to an adjutant, who escorted them up the stairs and knocked at a door. Hochburg pushed past him into a dining room: more tawdry opulence, more looted treasures, the air frosty. He had come across this before, Europeans who judged their status by the degree to which they could cool tropical air. Hochburg glanced at the lunch spread and felt nauseous. It was the new German way: excess, people stuffing their mouths till they couldn’t breathe; a poor example from the upper ranks that was filtering down to the masses. Soon everyone would want this lifestyle.

The table was bowing, laid with the traditional Führertag meal of roast lamb with juniper sauce, ham wrapped in bread, potato salad, and red cabbage. There was a conurbation of wine bottles. For a decade, the authorities had encouraged citizens of the Reich to eat spicy nut loaf at this time of year, in keeping with Hitler’s dietary preferences; it had never been popular. Jewish maids flitted around the room serving an obese woman with blond ringlets and five pudgy kids in uniform. The family were all draped in fox furs against the chill; jewelry flashed on their fingers, none of it costume. At the head of the table, his face as fat as a teapot, was a Brigadeführer: the sector’s governor, Felix Quorp.

“Herr Oberstgruppenführer,” said Quorp with lavish insincerity, “this is an honor. We have just drunk a toast to your forces in Kongo.”

“I must speak with you in private,” said Hochburg.

“Surely you can join us for a plate first?”

“Immediately.”

Quorp let out a jowly sigh and indicated the French windows. They opened onto a veranda that circled the upstairs of the house. Hochburg was glad to feel the humidity against his cheeks again. Beyond the walls of the villa, half-sunk in the mist, was a bricolage of rooftops.

“Governor Globus phoned me earlier,” said Quorp, shutting the door behind them. His tone was instantly aggressive. “He said you might show up. I’m to offer you no assistance. The city is jittery enough because of the Ark.”

“I need a dozen of your men.”

“Odilo and I are old pals, from our Carinthian days.” He hid a belch behind his hand. “Loyalty means everything.”

“This is a matter of the highest state security. Who do you take your orders from, Globus or the Reichsführer?”

“Both. And you are neither.”

Hochburg turned back to the dining room. Kepplar was awkwardly rejecting Quorp’s wife as she offered him a glass of champagne. Beneath the table, two red setters gorged on bowls of meat. “Your family, I presume.” He looked forward to being reunited with Fenris.

“Of course.”

“How old is your youngest?”

“Emilia is four now. She was born here, at Mandritsara; the facilities are excellent…” He caught Hochburg’s single black eye.

Hochburg made no threat, simply allowed his voice to convey a gamut of possibilities. “Nice family,” he said.

“You … you wouldn’t dare,” replied Quorp as if a bone were stuck in his throat.

Fifteen minutes later, Hochburg stood impatiently at the gate of the villa. The house, painted acid green, was surrounded by Bismarck palms and situated on top of the city’s only significant hill. A simple barrier with two sentries led to a paved road—north to Diego, southwest to Mandritsara—and a third track headed down to the river and Antzu itself. It descended into thin, drifting mist. Hochburg smelled freshly baked bread. He twirled Burton’s knife between his fingers.

“I’m eager to find Cole again,” said Kepplar as they waited for their escort. “In Roscherhafen, I missed my chance to have a proper look at his skull. I predict a Category Four, possibly even a Five, wouldn’t you say, Herr Oberst? Like a negroid.”

Hochburg made no reply. He saw the mania in Kepplar’s eyes. How little he understood of their mission in Africa. It came from too much indoctrination: his former deputy was dedicated but incapable of thinking for himself. Hochburg was growing weary of men like him. Of all men. He appreciated how his superweapon would free him from having to rely on drones.

The front of the villa was decorated with baskets spewing scarlet bougainvillea. A line came to Hochburg:
If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever.
Who had written that? A melancholy welled in him; he seized upon Feuerstein’s predictions to chase it away. The scientist had spoken of an eye-shriveling flash as the device exploded.

“I will win back Africa for you, my love,” he whispered to Eleanor.

America’s interest in the bomb suddenly became clear to Hochburg. Nultz had been right: it was a form of insurance. Whatever pressure the American Jewish Committee was exerting on Taft, he had repeatedly vowed to remain neutral. The United States wanted the bomb not in order to attack but as a deterrent. Every time Globocnik crushed a township or sent more Jews to the reservations, America risked being drawn into conflict with the Reich. The threat of the bomb would curtail Globus, reduce him to a mere administrator. The AJC would be pacified, and Washington would have no need to embark on adventures abroad.

The clatter of boots roused Hochburg; four youths had arrived. They stood at attention clasping BK44s—all fresh and pink from Europe, heads shorn, excited to be carrying weapons. “Is that it?” said Kepplar. “Stable lads?”

“The lowest are often the keenest,” replied Hochburg. Quorp had refused him any soldiers from the garrison.

“But can we rely on them? If the Jews—”

Hochburg silenced him, glancing at the villa. “Name me
any
man I can rely on. They wear the skull and palm tree; that is enough.” Quorp was watching them from the dining room, his daughter at his knees. “He will have contacted Globocnik by now. We haven’t much time.”

Hochburg ordered the barrier lifted and marched toward the mist, slipping Burton’s knife inside his uniform and removing Madeleine’s file. He addressed the recruit next to him: the same groom who had met their helicopter when they first arrived.

“Do you know the city?”

“Yes, Oberstgruppenführer.”

“Good. Take me to Boriziny Strasse.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

THE ARGUMENT WITH Abner had robbed Madeleine of the last of her energy. She understood that he wanted to keep her safe, but she did not need his protection; it was bound to something selfish, a desire to prove himself. The only person who’d ever made her feel safe was Burton.

Madeleine closed the door, securing the lock as best she could. The air was saturated with an earthy, damp smell. For the first time in months, she was alone. In the abattoir she had craved moments of solitude; now it seemed deafening. Her house—the luxury that was Boriziny—consisted of a single room with a partition at the back that hid buckets and a hole to squat over; water came from a standpipe down the street. The walls, painted a coral pink by a previous occupant, were moldering, the floorboards rough and laid with banana leaf matting. The only furniture was a bed, the makeshift cradle, and a second crate she used as a table. A thought sneaked into her mind: that her brother had tricked her into returning to this place. Madeleine sat down on the bed, the frame creaking as if it would snap.

Perhaps her antagonism toward Abner was because he was right. There was no warrior spirit in her. If she wanted the twins, she should leave immediately and march straight for Mandritsara. She reached for the cradle, a sob filling her lungs.

“I’m too tired,” she said aloud to ward off the silence. “I need to rest … just for a few minutes. You’ll forgive me that.”

She didn’t know whether she was speaking to her babies, Burton, or herself. The sugar from the honey cake, so restorative a few moments earlier, coursed through her blood, making her heart palpitate. A sense of utter hopelessness was building inside her: finding the twins would be impossible; there was no escape from the island. Even if she did stand before Cranley again, he would bat her away like a bad smell. She wanted someone to blame: Burton for his recklessness, her husband for exiling her, Hochburg … If it wasn’t for Hochburg, Burton would never have been drawn to Kongo. Madeleine thought of those weeks she’d spent waiting for him to return from Africa. More than once she’d been on the verge of taking Alice and leaving. Why had she been so foolish as to stay?

Behind her eyes it felt as if her face were crumbling. It was the exhaustion talking.
Never think when you’re tired,
Burton used to tell her.
The world will seem black.
She needed to calm her mind, get some sleep. The flaking pink walls had guarded her children during her pregnancy; no harm would come to her here.

Madeleine yanked off her left boot, then turned to the knotted right one, trying to unpick it. Her fingernails were useless, blunt and soft with rain. She considered using her knife, but whole lengths of lace were too precious.

The second time she met Burton Cole she had been struggling with a knot. It was the autumn of 1949, a bright, breezy day on the coast. Later she reflected that all the important events of her life—fleeing Vienna, meeting Jared, the birth of Alice—happened as the year began to turn. Madeleine was walking along the beach, as she did most days when encamped in Suffolk. There were steep banks of shingle, the view empty in every directions except for a lone sail out to sea; inland were dunes and marshes. She wore the latest hiking fashions and a sturdy pair of Ayres & Lee boots. It was a relief to be free of the house and alone; the nanny was taking care of Alice, and Jared was in London till the end of the week. Time to fill her lungs and get her pulse hammering. The local countryside was too flat for proper hiking, the type she’d enjoyed as a girl; nevertheless, the exercise reminded her of her father. She wished he were there to confide in.