The Madagaskar Plan (63 page)

“Piggyback? Like with Elli on the farm?”

“Like with Elli.”

“Promise me you’ll take care of her.”

“We can make it, Madeleine. You’ll have to fight for every hour, but we can make it.”

Her voice was bleak. “Jacoba was right. There’s no way off this island.”

“We use the fishing fleet at Varavanga.”

She was silent for several moments, her face buried in the mud, then asked, “What about the hospital?”

He shook his head.

“Do you think the twins were—”

“Nothing can happen to them anymore.”

“I wish you’d seen them, that I could have passed them from my arms to yours. Just once.”

“We’ll mourn them when we’re far away.” He lay flat. “Climb on, we’re nearly there.”

At first he thought she was refusing or had given up and wanted to wait and die; then he realized she was building herself up to it. She rolled on top of him, crying out before she settled, her hands gripping his shoulders.

Burton continued upward, half-crawling on his hands and knees. They had left the waterline, but their clothes were soaked and heavy. Every time his stump disappeared into the earth, a shard stabbed through him. The ascent was agonizingly slow, the mud as sludgy as fresh cement.

Suddenly Madeleine’s weight was gone.

He watched her flailing legs disappear over the brow of the hill, into the light, as she was lifted up and away. Burton struggled after her—before a huge, brutal hand was thrust into his face.

“Take it,” said a familiar voice.

Burton was too exhausted to fight. He let out a sigh that emptied his throat, then grasped hold. There was something almost reassuring about its strength and solidity. He looked up: a single black eye bored into him, as black as the devil’s hangman.

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Diego Suarez

21 April, 05:10

SALOIS HAD FAILED.

The heavens were full of planes—but they were Me-362s, their tail fins spotted with swastikas. He watched them take off from the runway at Kap Diégo in silver pairs, then circle low over the base. A cauldron of jet engine roars, repeating over and over, with moments of quiet before the next fighters screamed past. Their vapor trails were gray threads against the lustrous sky.

Rolland would not be able to sail thousands of fresh troops to Africa; the war on the continent would slaughter itself to a stalemate. America, the distant hope of every Jew, would remain a bystander to their extinction.

The last wisps of green smoke for the bombers were fading. Salois tightened the tourniquets that were keeping his life trapped inside his legs. He felt no anger. Or injustice or blazing disappointment.

Yet he was aware that something had been extinguished inside him. Should he have heeded Madeleine and Burton? In preparation for Diego, Cranley had commissioned an intricate model of the base for Salois and his team to study. At the end of one briefing, Cranley rested his hand on it.

“When it’s over, I’ll have this installed at home, to remind us of our achievement.” He offered a smile to Salois, and for once it was full of humor. “Much better than a medal.”

Why come all this way on a pretense? During their last radio contact, Cranley said he was in position near Mazunka. His raid could have failed; he could have been captured or killed. A storm front might have swept across the Mozambique Channel, forcing the bombers back to the base. Or maybe they had run into a random Messerschmitt patrol. Salois thought how often he and his fellow guerrillas had stumbled across Nazis in Kongo and the intense gun battles that followed. Battles that left the jungle littered with bodies, while he remained untouched.

Salois searched himself and knew that Cranley hadn’t betrayed him.

Across the water in Weissfelsenbucht, the aircraft carriers had slipped their moorings and were reversing out of port, heading toward the darkness and security of the ocean. The arsenal on the quayside below had spent most of its munitions; it sounded like a wet log dumped on a fire now: thrumming with heat, popping and cracking occasionally. Its beauty was no longer spellbinding—but cruel. A reminder of how close he’d come to success. Teams of firefighters doused the blaze. Yaudin watched the scene without triumph.

“You should go,” Salois said to him, “while there’s a chance.”

“Where to?” replied the Jupo chief. “I’ll never escape. As soon as you didn’t surrender, Major, I knew it was up for me.”

“You could have stayed in Antzu.”

“Just because we don’t want to fight the Nazis doesn’t make us cowards.”

Salois wondered who Yaudin had been in his previous life. His rough accent could encompass anything: builder, tram inspector, hoodlum.

“What will happen to your family?”

“The same as Antzu.” He was choked with anguish. “As the whole of Madagaskar. It’s a disaster—”

Salois cast his eye over the intact base. “Doesn’t look like it to me.”

“We both failed, Major. There are terrible days ahead; Globocnik will ship us to the reservations for this. Or worse.”

“That could still bring the Americans.”

A bitter snort. “Is that the best you Vanillas can wish for? To soak this island in blood and hope that a distant land might save us? We’ll never defeat the Nazis; we can only try to live with them.”

“A dupe’s promise.”

“Before I left Antzu, I gave my wife two pots: one of poison, one of honey.” His voice was plaintive now. “Honey is so rare, I’d been saving it for a special occasion. If the worst happens, I told her, mix it with the poison … for her and the family to feast. I don’t want them to suffer or starve; I don’t want my children to see murder. Let them go quietly.”

“That’s the best you can wish for? To go quietly?”

“All I wanted was to preserve the thin slice of life we have. To keep death at bay.”

“The hardest punishment of all,” replied Salois.

He reached for the tourniquets around his legs, unbuckled the first belt—but didn’t loosen it.

“I don’t want you to see me die,” he said.

Yaudin moved away, to the edge of the steps: a shadow against the fulgent light of the bay and the dying flames. Jet fighters continued to patrol overhead, flying so low that the missile battery trembled with each pass.

At least mine won’t be a quiet death,
thought Salois. He undid the belt around his left thigh, then the right. Immediately he felt heat soaking through his trousers, spreading across the ground, as if he were an old, incontinent man. A mortal man. And behind it the first hint of a deep, pitiless cold. So this was the hand of death.

He had been dazed by the speed with which Frieda’s body lost its heat. It leached out of her, out of the whole room, till the air numbed him. Of all the deaths he would come to witness, hers was the most pointless. The most meaningless. He had killed Frieda over what to call the child growing inside her.

He had been named after his father and his father’s father, a choice that veiled the family background; it was a tradition he expected to continue. Frieda was too free a spirit for such conventions; she was proud of her heritage. She had something else in mind.

—So now you don’t like my name,
he’d said. His temper was slipping, flaring. He enjoyed the power it gave him.

—Of course I do! That’s why I want us to marry, so I can take it.

—But not my first name.

—I want to call the baby Reuben.

—What if it’s a girl?

—He’s a boy.
Frieda patted her belly.
He’s a Reuben.
She smiled, but he saw that she was nervous.
Listen close and you’ll hear him say it.

He wouldn’t be contradicted.
No son of mine will ever be called that. He’ll sound like a Jew.

—We are Jews.

—The world doesn’t need to know.

She looked so crestfallen; it enraged him further.

—We’re not calling him Reuben,
he had yelled, the devil rising in his heart.

They were the last words Frieda Salois, the woman who was going to be his wife, heard.

Troops with machine guns had gathered at the base of the steps leading to the missile battery. They began to climb.

A band of intense orange dawn was breaking over the ocean. There was a whiff of ylang-ylang in the air.

Salois took out Madeleine’s knife. She’d wondered if he’d been spared for some great deed; she was wrong. There was no redemption. His death would be as meaningless as the millions before his, and the millions after. At least she and Burton and Abner had Kap Ost and the boat to freedom. He cut open his trousers, then peeled off his jacket and hurled it away. He was naked except for his boots. Blood continued to gush from his legs. When the Nazis found him, he wanted them to see the color of his skin. Somewhere on his forearm, lost among thousands of other digits, was his own number. He had gladly let it be obscured: it was a number that belonged to a man who never existed.

When he had arrived in Algeria to begin his service—the “ride on the tiger” they called it—all recruits were instructed to adopt new identities; it was the Legion way. That suited him well; the life he’d once lived was over. No one—his family, his few friends, the authorities—would be able to trace him. He stood in line, the sun hammering down on him, waiting for the clerk
d’engagements
to fill in his papers. It was hotter than he had ever known, hot as hell. A fitting location for his penance.

When he reached the clerk, it was obvious what name to assume. He would give life to the dead. “Reuben Salois!” he declared.

The clerk copied it down. “Fucking Jews,” he muttered under his breath.

Yaudin cocked his head. “They’re coming, Major.”

Shouts and the thump of boots were rising from the steps. Yaudin threw down his rifle and lifted his hands in surrender.

“Turn around!” ordered a voice.

Yaudin did as he was told, repeating his family’s names to himself. He avoided Salois’s stare.

There was a burst of automatic gunfire. A guard dragged Yaudin’s body out of the way and put a final shot through his skull.

The rest surrounded Salois: a semicircle of men roused from sleep or celebrating Führertag. They aimed their weapons at him but kept their distance, not wanting to step into the glossy dark pool creeping from his body.

Salois watched his blood with immense gratitude; it was a relief to meet this moment. A stillness settled on him. There were worse things than death.

That had been his last thought as he stood on the beach before his execution during the Mered Ha-vanil. He closed his eyes and remembered the firing squad and his miraculous escape from Madagaskar. The mass of numbers he’d recited as he drifted across the waves to Africa.

It was time to leave the spell of this bare island again. Salois spread his arms and offered his indigo chest.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

Mandritsara

21 April, 05:20

HOCHBURG LIFTED MADELEINE and carried her across the mud, into the refuge of the Totenburg. Once her eyelids flickered and she stared at him with dull pupils—but she was too spent to fight and retreated into semiconsciousness. Feuerstein jangled on his wrist, still cuffed to him; Burton followed close behind.

There’s a dying woman in my arms,
thought Hochburg,
a Jew wizard and a vengeful son on my tail.
He figured there must be a parable in it, a lesson he could take back to Africa, or maybe some tragic, convoluted joke.

Kepplar’s Walküre flew over the granite pillars and came in to land. Hochburg glimpsed him in the bubble cockpit, anxiously peering below. Hochburg’s own gunship was parked close by, its searchlight switched to full power, illuminating everything in an eerie glow.

He laid Madeleine down inside the Totenburg, next to the bronze obelisk. Dawn approached, its rays kindling the bronze; the reflection caught Madeleine’s face, giving her an orangey hue, full of mocking vitality. Soldiers stood in pairs at the bases of the towers; they had automatically positioned themselves, as though guarding the names of the fallen. The air smelled autumnal, of earthy vegetation and skin pressed against metal.

Hochburg removed his jacket, warm from his chest, and draped it over her body. “What happened?”

“She’s been shot,” replied Burton. His face was marked with vicious cuts, swabbed clean from the flood. The soldiers had disarmed him and given Hochburg his pistol. “A stomach wound. I can save her if I get medical help.”

“There’s nothing around here.”

“I need to stop the bleeding.”

“But there is the hospital at Lava Bucht.”

“It’s too far, it’ll take hours—”

“Not if I fly her. She can be in surgery in thirty minutes.”

Burton let out a crushing, hopeless breath of air. He hid his face, and nodded.

“It’s an SS hospital,” said Hochburg. “She’ll receive the best care.”

He raised her up, legs dangling over his elbow. Madeleine gave a little cry and arched her chest to reveal a thin, pale throat.

“Careful!” hissed Burton.

Kepplar’s helicopter had landed, its rotors buffeting the air. Hochburg strode through the wind and noise, beneath the towers of the dead … and was transported to a different time, a different setting, far to the west of Madagaskar. He heard Eleanor’s closing breaths, shallow and broken, as if he were clasping her again. Was overwhelmed by his incapacity to save her …

A silence descended within him.

He looked at Madeleine. Then Burton, their eyes reaching into each other’s.

The boy understood at once, in a way that only a fellow traveler on the same hard road could.

Burton’s mouth shriveled in panic. “No. Please, no.”

Hochburg knelt, laying Madeleine gently back on the ground, Feuerstein bending with him like a supplicant. He folded his tunic around her to keep her comfortable. Here was the vengeance he had been seeking since he ordered the
Ibis
torpedoed. Since he lost Eleanor.