The Madagaskar Plan (54 page)

The branches above shook, scattering them with raindrops, as Abner slid down the trunk. “The train,” he said breathlessly.

Salois picked up his BK44 and one of the rucksacks, slinging it over his shoulder, it was heavy with dynamite and detonators. Abner took the other; he wasn’t traveling to Diego but had offered to help Salois get aboard.

“After everything I told you,” said Burton, “you’re still going?” He had explained what had happened to him in Kongo and Cranley’s involvement.

“Destroying Diego is the only chance this island has.”

Burton’s jaw was tight. “You can’t trust him.”

“The train’s here, like he promised. It will be different this time.”

“How can you be sure?”

Salois gave them both an apologetic smile. “I’m not having an affair with his wife.” He fastened the rucksack. “He’s not the only one running the show. There’s Rolland and the Mozambicans. The agreement with America. Even if Cranley is what you say he is, I can depend on the others. We want the same thing.”

A whistle blast.

Salois had nothing else to add. He offered his hand to his fellow legionnaire, then took Madeleine’s.

“Can I keep your knife?” he asked.

She nodded and pressed her cheek against his. “It doesn’t seem right to say good-bye.”

“After Mandritsara, you’ve got four days to get to Kap Ost and the boat. They won’t wait.”

“We’ll be there.”

Salois sensed that she wanted to say more—but there was another blast of the whistle. “Look after her,” he told Burton, then left the cover of trees, Abner at his side carrying the second rucksack.

They raced across the grass—waist deep and wet as a paddy field—until they reached the raised bank of earth along which the railway ran. There was a set of points: the line divided here for several kilometers so trains could pass each other as they headed in opposite directions. The single yellow eye of the locomotive trundled toward them. Cranley had arranged for the train to slow at this spot so the team could clamber aboard. It was reducing its speed.

“Good luck with Diego,” said Abner. “I wish I were coming. The Americans are long overdue.”

Madeleine joined them. “Do this for me?” she said, placing something in Salois’s hand. “In case I don’t make it from the hospital.” He glanced down: it was the pen and paper clip she had taken from the radio room. “For Jacoba.”

He nodded.

She hugged him fiercely. He put an arm around her shoulders, the other keeping hold of the BK44. “Perhaps it’s not a punishment,” she whispered in his ear, her words mixing with the sluicing-steel sound of approaching wheels. “Perhaps you’ve been spared, Reuben. Spared for some great deed. They call this railway the ‘Line of Fates.’”

“Find your children,” he whispered in reply. “And never come back.”

The track was vibrating. Salois let the carriages chug past, counting them till the tail of the train was in sight. The second from last, Cranley had told them during his briefings. Salois started to run, Abner following.

“We’ll watch for the skies,” Madeleine cried after him.

There was a narrow platform at the end of the carriage; Salois reached for it, half-leaping, half-dragging himself onto the train. Below, Abner was sprinting to keep up. He reached out with the second rucksack, holding it above his head like an offering. Salois caught the straps and hauled it on board.

Instantly, Abner and his sister began to recede into the moonless night. Salois saw Madeleine wave good-bye and raised his own hand in farewell.

He was alone again.

Salois opened the door to the carriage and shoved in the equipment. He was expecting a cattle truck; instead he found upholstery, an empty buffet table, a stainless steel urn, and stacks of crockery that rattled with the sway of the train. The air smelled of tobacco, bananas, and coffee dregs. Cranley had chosen the guards’ carriage for the team, not him; he imagined their complaints about traveling like Jews. There were kerosene lamps set in the walls. Salois made sure the blinds were closed, lit a single wick, and began preparing the explosives. He removed the dynamite from the rucksacks and spread it out on the table; next to it he made a pile of detonators.

For the raid on Mazunka, Cranley had equipped his team with radio-controlled detonators, the latest technology. He’d offered the same to Salois, but Salois preferred the type he’d been using for two decades. His detonators were mechanical, connected to a timer with a clock face and a counter that could be set from ten seconds to fifty-four minutes.

The train was picking up speed. Gold tassels shook on the furniture.

Salois tested each detonator in turn, a tiny spark flaring between his fingers. Satisfied, he pulled off his caftan and cut the sleeves into ribbons. He used them to bind together the individual sticks of dynamite—four to each bundle—then pressed the detonator into the dynamite and secured it with another strip of material. When the counter reached zero, it would spark, triggering a blast. He worked till all the dynamite had been prepared, then divided it between the two rucksacks. He selected a cup from the stack of crockery and sat down. Since it would be another two hours before they reached Diego, he should rest—but first a promise to keep.

He poured the ink from the pen Madeleine had given him into the cup and took the paper clip between his fingers. Apart from his face and hands, there were only a few patches of his body that weren’t indigo; they looked incomplete, as though ravaged by a disease that bleached the skin. Even the soles of his feet were crisscrossed with numbers; the Jesuits had helped tattoo his back. He sharpened one point of the paper clip, then dipped into the ink and lanced a spot below his left ankle, meticulously adding Jacoba’s number. He had done it so many times he was numb to the sensation.

As more of his skin vanished, he thought of Madeleine and wished he’d laid down his weapon to hold her with both arms before he left. She wasn’t the first person he had confessed to. There had been previous times when it seemed death had finally come for him and he wanted to unburden himself. Those who shared his secret never lived long. If death wasn’t hungry for him, it was voracious for his companions. Had he abandoned her to the same fate? An unsettling sense of responsibility crept up on him—but, no, she had her brother to protect her, and now Burton, too; only the barest details had passed his lips.

He rarely thought back to the day of his crime—it had obsessed him for too long to have any meaning or the power to move him. It was breakfast time. His memory had painted the kitchen scarlet: the floor, the ceiling, the furniture, everything. He knew this wasn’t true—the table was stripped pine, and it had been the bluest of mornings outside—but he could recall these events only in red.

Frieda was barefoot, the bulge of their child hanging low around her belly. When she’d started showing—unmarried, barely in her twenties—her family disowned her. She didn’t care as long as she was with him. They were arguing. He lashed out (his usual response), his fist catching one tooth, breaking the skin between his knuckles. It was one of those sliver cuts that bleed profusely. Blood pattered onto the kitchen floor. Frieda offered him a look of such forgiveness, such pity, that all he could do was hit her again. He couldn’t bear those ache-filled eyes. The second time he didn’t punch her; he struck her open handed across the face with enough ferocity to swipe her off her feet. The unfamiliar weight of the baby caused her to lose her balance and keel over. He heard the crack of her neck against the kitchen table as she fell. The sound stayed in him; he knew at once he’d killed her. He cut some bread. Toasted it, buttered it, savored it. Then he bent down to Frieda and told her to stop pretending. When he checked her pulse, her skin was already cooling … yet he sensed some tiny vibration in her that said all hope was not lost. He lifted her nightdress and, in the years and nightmares that followed, was convinced he had seen tiny fists beating against her abdomen, the final throes of their drowning baby.

Salois’s throat was gnarled and dry. He finished Jacoba’s number, blotting the drops of blood with the remains of his caftan. He had shared barely a dozen words with Jacoba, none at all with the many corpses whose tattoos he had memorized on the beach—yet they continued to exist on his body. For Frieda and their unnamed child, there was nothing, only the arrest warrant Cranley had produced and Salois’s memories: disconsolate, seldom acknowledged, washed in red. He considered Madeleine’s parting words. In kinder moments he’d also wondered whether he was being saved for some greater good; it was a comforting explanation for his survival.

But the world was not kind. Whether he succeeded or failed at Diego he was resigned to the certainty that he would endure. If years of hardship had let him forgive himself for striking Frieda, the source of their argument, its pettiness—its irony in this new world order—remained. There was to be no release for Reuben Salois.

*   *   *

Salois napped, his head jerking every time he began to slide into deep sleep. When he judged an hour had passed, he got up and peeked through the blinds. Looming out of the darkness was Die Teekiste, a vertical-sided, flat-topped mountain that had been fortified by the French during the colonial period and saw their final stand against the Nazi invasion. Waffen-SS paratroopers eventually seized it, descending on the fortifications with nerve gas. The railway skirted the mountain; on the far side was Diego Suarez.

Salois stretched, his upper body knotted, and checked his watch: 03:45. Cranley would hit the radar station in fifteen minutes. The bombers were already high above the Mozambique Channel. He pictured Colonel Turneiro at their base, pacing the runway, and Rolland hidden inside his control center, waiting for the radio to bring news, a glass of whiskey cooling his nerves.

There were a few stale lumps of bread left in the pockets of the rucksack. Salois wolfed them down, drank some cold, muddy coffee from the urn, then searched the carriage until he found a duffel bag stuffed with Kriegsmarine uniforms—exactly as Cranley promised it would be. Whatever his motive, he wanted the base destroyed as much as Salois did.

“Do you know why the first rebellion failed?” Cranley had asked the night they left Mombasa. His tone was uncharacteristically chummy, conspiratorial.

“We had rocks and knives, they had gunships. The world stood aside.”

Cranley shook his head. “You Jews are brave; you hate—but you don’t fear.”

Salois emitted a bark of scornful laughter.

“Not like the Nazis,” continued Cranley. “They’re terrified of you and everything you are. A deep primordial fear—like the fear of death itself. Only when you learn to fear them more than they fear you will the tide turn.”

Despite Burton’s warning, he had no doubts about the man.

Salois stripped and put on the Kriegsmarine uniform. If he weren’t so tense, he might have laughed: white trousers, white jacket, belt with a shiny buckle. Perfect for moving through the shadows. The only concession to the hour was a striped midnight-blue neckerchief. There were three other uniforms in the bag; Salois laid them aside with a pang of regret.

He extinguished the lamp and crouched by the window. Outside, scrubby fields gave way to a shantytown. This was where the Jews who serviced Diego lived: the men who stoked the coal bunkers and swept the streets; the gangs of stevedores; the maids who tended the officers’ villas. It remained separate from Globus’s domain. Jews were considered menial but essential to the running of the base and were treated as such. There had been no rebellion here. Next came an industrial area of factories and workshops, the skyline obscured by chimney stacks. Then a brief interlude of barracks. Few sailors were quartered on the base itself, most living in an area to the east called Französinnenbucht.

There was a burst of noise and color. Salois ducked beneath the window as the train passed into the center of town. The beerhouses were still rowdy with sailors celebrating Führertag. If any of Turneiro’s bombers dropped their payloads early, these streets would be obliterated.

Good,
thought Salois.

The carousing was left behind. The locomotive slowed as it entered the vast marshaling yard around the docks. Salois glimpsed warehouses and the long necks of cranes. Diego was home to a substantial merchant navy as well as the East Africa Fleet. Vanilla, cocoa, and ships laden with pig carcasses began their journey to the Reich from here. The train was at walking pace now, the wheels and couplings clanking. The whole carriage shunted forward as it hit the buffers, shook, then came to a halt. There was a final, weary exhalation of steam … then silence.

Minutes later the drivers walked past, chatting. Their voices faded.

Salois opened the carriage door. Under the mercury lights of the yard the landscape was bluish green, empty. He dropped to the ground and fastened the rucksacks to himself, one on his back, the other on his front. “You’ll be the fattest Jew on the island,” Abner had joked.

The air smelled of propulsion, of coal, diesel, and greased steel, and on the breeze the tang of the ocean. Several hundred meters away, the yard ended in a wire fence and a short cliff that led to sea level. Salois darted between trains and wagons, the weight of the rucksacks making his movements cumbersome.

He thought he heard a noise and stopped, pressing himself against a cattle truck. In front was a stack of concrete pipes tall enough for a man to walk through. He squinted into the darkness. The yard was deserted.

Salois was preparing to move when he heard the noise again. This time it carried clearly. Someone was calling his name.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Western Sector (North)

21 April, 02:30

THE HELICOPTER PILOT shook Kepplar awake and indicated his headphones: “Emergency broadcast.”

Kepplar sat up, disoriented by the blackness below; he hadn’t meant to fall asleep. In his lap was the coin-stuffed bird he’d fetched from Lava Bucht. He put on his own set of headphones and heard Hochburg’s voice.