The Madagaskar Plan (18 page)

It could have been worse.
They were the first words his wife said when he returned to Germania. She had perfect cheekbones, was a devoted and wholesome woman, but if the children hadn’t been lined up behind her, if his heart wasn’t so burnt, he would have removed his belt and thrashed her. She took to repeating her balm at every opportunity, till he snapped.

“How?” he demanded. “How could it have been worse?” The previous year, when he was still Hochburg’s deputy, he had been tasked with apprehending Burton Cole and his team of assassins. When he failed, Hochburg insisted he take six weeks compulsory leave; after that he was dispatched to DOA. The black uniform of Kongo ceased to be his right; a silver diamond was docked from his shoulder lapel, reducing him from the rank of Gruppenführer to Brigadeführer.

His wife shrank from his outburst. “They could have sent you to the East. Or one of those punishment battalions you told me about in Kongo.”

“Have you ever been to Kongo?”

“You know I haven’t, my darling.”

“Then don’t presume to tell me about it. You understand nothing of Africa.” His palm found his chest. “To serve anywhere in Kongo, even with mongrel ethnics, would be an honor.”

He stormed from the room, ordered her to sleep on the sofa after that, irate because she was right. His punishment could have been worse.

The security is atrocious in DOA,
Hochburg had said.
You’ll fit in well, Derbus.
It had been within the Oberstgruppenführer’s power to retire him to Germania for good.

Kepplar pushed himself away from the desk. The walls of his office were blank, except for two framed photographs. He took the first down while keeping the other in the periphery of his vision.

It had been taken eighteen months before, snapped by an official SS photographer while they were on a routine inspection: Kepplar behind the wheel of a stationary Mercedes; Hochburg leaning against the bonnet, sleeves rolled up, laughing.

Kepplar traced his thumb over the Oberstgruppenführer’s image; he wanted his laughter again. “Oh, Walter,” he whispered; he was talking to the picture more and more, reminiscing about all they had achieved together. “This is agony.”

Hochburg must have known it. An indefinite deployment to a corner office in the Zollgrenzschutz building was a sadistic punishment indeed.

Kepplar had devoutly followed the progress of the Kongo-Rhodesia war: wept when Elisabethstadt fell, bought champagne for his typing pool when the battle of Stanleystadt ended in victory. Several weeks earlier, he’d signed a dispensation for a flight stopping to refuel on its way to Germania that wanted to avoid immigration. The itinerary listed one passenger: Hochburg. Why his former master was bound for the world capital, Kepplar could only speculate; Walter hated the place as much as he did. He’d been tempted to visit the airport and plead with Hochburg for another chance. They hadn’t spoken a word since that final day in the Schädelplatz, 19 September.

All because of Cole.

He replaced the picture of Hochburg and stood before the second. It was a secret Gestapo photo that showed Cole and Patrick Whaler, the American. He studied Cole’s face as he had done innumerable times; his features were more familiar than Kepplar’s family’s.

His pursuit of Burton Cole was like a recurring nightmare. In the months since his failure to capture him he had reflected endlessly on his own shortcomings. What if he’d forced Cole’s comrades to talk sooner? Or driven himself harder during the hunt, sacrificing the physical needs of his body. He shouldn’t have involved the lower ranks, with their juvenile brutality; then again, perhaps a lack of brutality was Kepplar’s mistake. If he had employed harsher methods, been careless and copious with death, not only in his orders but personally, maybe the outcome would have been different. That thought troubled him the most—success might have lain in his hands the whole time, if only he’d been prepared to bloody them. He had exposed his limitations.

He turned his back on Cole and peeked through the window blinds into an overcast brightness. The city was an amalgam of ornate, vaguely Oriental buildings from the previous century and severe white structures erected over the past decade. In the distance, Roscherhafen’s most famous landmark, the giant wheel, rose from the KdF park like a shark fin. His eldest son begged to visit so he could ride on it. Beyond that were the dull waters of the OAO. He hated the ocean, perhaps because he was Austrian: there was something landlocked in his blood. Kepplar’s eyes dropped to street level.

There was a rap on his door.

On the pavement, a cripple lurched past. He was dressed in black, with braces on his legs and crutches under his arms; Kepplar had the impression of an oversized tarantula. What must it be like to be so deformed, he thought, so pointlessly weak, and yet not have been spared by euthanasia? He felt an impulse to run down to the street and offer the cripple a handful of reichsmarks. Later Kepplar would remember that moment. The party was hostile toward religion and Hochburg scoffed at any mention of God, but for Kepplar it was as if someone had heard his prayers. The spider below was an omen.

Another rap, more urgent.

Kepplar returned to his desk, opened a report at random, and pretended to pore over it. “Come!”

An Untersturmführer entered, letting in the clack of typewriters. “Sorry to disturb you, Brigadeführer. Normally I would have dealt with this myself”—he offered a telex message—“but it expressly names you.”

Kepplar took the sheet. According to the details at the top, the telex had been rerouted halfway across the continent: from Rovuma, in DOA, to Stanleystadt; to Windhuk; then back to DOA. A message in search of a recipient.

He read the first sentence and felt hot pins rise from his tailbone to the base of his skull. Kepplar reached for his right ear—the top half was missing, a subject never to be mentioned—and twisted the lobe. “Where did this come from?”

“Our border post with Mozambique—”

“Where in this building?”

“Third floor. Apparently it’s been sitting there for a couple of days. You know how busy things get before Führertag.”

Kepplar tore out of his office.

In the corridor, people froze to let him rush by. He didn’t bother with the lift; instead he leapt down two flights of steps and through a set of frosted-glass doors. If his office was in shadow, then the third floor was like stepping into a sepia-toned photo: brown floors, brown furniture, countless bureaucrats in brown shirts with their muddy thinking. There was a hint of turpentine in the air. He strode through ranks of desks to Fregh’s office.

The Standartenführer started as his door burst inward, spilling his midmorning coffee. On the desk was a plate of
Führerplätzchen,
a spiced biscuit popular at this time of year.

“Why wasn’t I informed of this immediately?” demanded Kepplar, shaking the telex centimeters from Fregh’s face.

“Herr Kepplar. What a surprise. Would you like some coffee? The biscuits are delicious.”

“Why?”

Fregh put down his cup and read the message, tracing the text with his finger.

Kepplar had been at the top of his class in craniology; he believed you could judge everything about a man from his skull type. There were five strains: Categories 1 to 3 were Germanic; 4 and 5 were the
untermenschen
, the subhumans. The minimum requirement for anyone in public office was a Category 3. Because it was obscured by a layer of fat, Kepplar had never been able to discern the exact shape of Fregh’s head. He suspected a trace of negroid in his hair, too. Fregh had married above himself, owed his position to his wife; it was well known that she had a taste for young eugenics students at Roscherhafen University.

Fregh nodded thoughtfully. “Ah, yes, very unusual. We received it on Wednesday.”

“Then why wasn’t I told?”

“Perhaps if you’d updated your orders, let them know you’re with us now, you might have been easier to find.”

During his pursuit of Cole and the American, Kepplar had issued a continent-wide alert to arrest them if they attempted to leave the borders of German Africa. It was unlikely that they would use a conventional crossing, but every possibility had to be covered. Now, seven months later, here was a telex saying that an American passport holder by the name of Patrick Whaler had been stopped trying to enter DOA from Mozambique at the border post of Rovuma Brücke.

“What can it mean?” asked Kepplar.

Fregh was staring wistfully at his biscuits. “Americans aren’t uncommon here. They enjoy the big game.”

“But this man, Whaler, was killed last year. Governor Hochburg saw the body.”

“A mistake?”

The telex was back in Kepplar’s hand. “It says ‘stopped.’ There’s no indication whether he was taken into custody.”

“It’s best to leave these things. You’re just making work for yourself.”

“I need to get Rovuma on the phone.”

Fregh opened his mouth to reply—a glimpse of coffee-black tongue—then thought better of it and dialed his secretary.

On the wall was a chart of Deutsch Ostafrika. Kepplar took down the map and spread it across Fregh’s desk.

Rovuma Brücke: a byword for lax standards and one of the most sought-after postings on the continent—even a man of the lowliest rank could get rich there. After he took up his new role, Kepplar made an inspection and found things worse than he’d feared. A week later he was invited to the residence of Robert Ley, governor-general of DOA; it was as louche and luxuriant as Hochburg’s study was austere. Over dinner they discussed the Führer’s health and reports of a second rebellion in Madagaskar; then, unexpectedly, the governor said:

“I hear you are making changes at the Rovuma crossing.”

“Security is a joke.”

“We’re known for our sense of humor in DOA.”

Kepplar stopped chewing and put down his fork.

“Execute the occasional smuggler, by all means,” continued Ley, “make an example of them, but remember, this isn’t Germany or Kongo. We have a different approach here.”

“You condone what happens?”

“Of course not. Sometimes, however, a more flexible approach to security has its benefits: to me, our most prominent citizens, the province as a whole.” He sighed. “If ever you rise to a position like mine, Gruppenführer, you will understand.”

Kepplar was obliged to explain his demotion.

He studied the map. From the crossing he could see only two obvious routes. One headed to the west and Songä; there was little there except tobacco plantations and archaeologists seeking dinosaur bones for the Linz Museum. The other road ran north, following the coast to Roscherhafen.

Kepplar pictured a team of armed troops swooping down on some innocent American who was in town to bag a lion’s head and trawl the brothels. He’d start screaming about his fucking rights. The U.S. embassy on Kelele Platz would demand an explanation—and Germania was keener than ever on good relations since President Taft’s visit to the Reich the previous month. They’d send Kepplar back to the Fatherland permanently this time, maybe give him a stint in a camp to calm his more erratic impulses.

But if he was right …

“We’ll need to check every hotel room in the city,” said Kepplar.

A belch of disbelief erupted from Fregh. “They say you never turn on your fan, Herr Kepplar, or open your windows. I think the climate’s gone to your head.”

“You will address me as Brigadeführer.”

“But every room! We haven’t the manpower.”

“I see thirty of your men on their backsides for a start.”

“They’re not yours to commandeer,” spluttered Fregh.

Six months earlier, no one would have dared speak to him like that. “I can get permission from the highest authority, but that will take time. Time you will be answerable for—”

The phone rang.

Fregh answered it, then proffered the receiver: “Chief of border control, Rovuma.”

Kepplar pressed it to his good ear. An indolent, heat-soaked voice answered his questions:
Yes, Whaler … he’d stuck out; most Americans fly into Roscher, so it was unusual … He’d been stopped and questioned … No, not in his fifties, more like thirties … Blond, blue-eyed? Affirmative. No, he wasn’t jumpy, his papers seemed in order … No, no other details—oh, except his hand. It was missing.

That gave Kepplar pause.

“Do you still have him?”

“No.”

“My orders were explicit.”

“And seven months out of date, Brigadeführer. We tried contacting you. When we heard nothing back…”

“You should have arrested him.”

The voice became more defensive. Kepplar wondered how many reichsmarks had exchanged hands. He was convinced it was Cole who had crossed from Mozambique. “On what basis? Keep the Yankees sweet, we’re told. Your instructions say to detain suspects
leaving
our borders. Not entering.”

“There must be a forwarding address.”

The records were checked. “The Kaiserhof.”

Kepplar knew it: a mock-Bavarian hotel close to the central train terminus. “You’ve been most helpful,” he said into the receiver. “I will be including this conversation in my report.”

He visited the Kaiserhof with two troopers carrying submachine guns. As he’d suspected, no one by Whaler’s name or Cole’s description had checked in. Afterward, he returned to the Zollgrenzschutz building and began organizing a city-wide search.

The breakthrough came ten minutes after four. Kepplar had spent the last hour in silence, his throat hoarse from bellowing orders. The staff on the third, fourth, and fifth floors were involved now, muttering to themselves when they thought he was out of earshot, glancing bleakly at their watches. The days before Führertag saw bands and pageants, balloons and scarlet cotton candy on the streets. That afternoon there was a parade along the waterfront; everyone wanted to be on the curbside with their families. The phone in Fregh’s office—now Kepplar’s temporary command center—rang. Fregh answered it with a blubbery sigh, wiped some crumbs off his shirtfront, then sat up.

“They’ve found him. At Msasani.” Msasani Beach, the colossal KdF hotel development to the north of the city.