The Madagaskar Plan (52 page)

Globus picked up another bottle and drained it, the coolness of the alcohol mixed with a hint of rainwater pulsing through him. The time had come to wrest back his career before the population ran amok or the Kriegsmarine intervened; losing control of Madagaskar to the navy would be equally humiliating. Heydrich’s containment policy had proved a disaster. Who cared whether the Yids were gone in a generation if they were dragging the island toward catastrophe now? The Reichsführer had always been his sponsor.

Only he had clarity of vision when it came to the Jew.

It was also worth reminding himself about the persistent rumors of the Führer’s ill health. In the days that followed his death, it would be Himmler who ascended the throne, not Heydrich

He smashed the second bottle, enjoying the tinkle of glass more this time, and strutted toward the radio room. He had defeated the Vanilla Rebellion, he would defeat this Pig Rebellion. On the way he met the farm commandant.

“Obergruppenführer, the ringleaders have been executed,” he said. “The remainder are ready to be transported.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” replied Globus. “Shoot them.”

“All of them?”

He thought of some advice Himmler once gave him:
If you’re underresourced, my dear Globus, all you can use is brutality
. “Yes: all. We need to be more ruthless than we were during the first rebellion. That’s been my mistake. Overwhelming force will win the day.”

Globus climbed the steps to the radio hut. Inside, everything was dusted with a fine red powder. He was connected to Tana and reeled off commands: all leave was canceled; every man must report for immediate duty; every Walküre was to be fueled and armed.

He continued briskly: “Inform the regional governors that they must begin the mass transportation of their sectors to the reservations. No resistance to be tolerated.”

“Tonight, Obergruppenführer?” said the operator.

“Tonight.” He gripped the telephone. “I also want external communications from the U.S. envoy’s residence shut down; not a squeak leaves him.” Globus wasn’t intimidated by Nightingale and his threats, but he didn’t want him mouthing off to Washington either, not till order had been restored. “Then contact the Sofia Dam. Tell them to collect all the TNT they can find and prepare for my arrival. I’ll need extra men, so have the garrison at Mandritsara sent to the dam.”

While the operator confirmed the instructions, Globocnik glanced at the clocks above him. There were four: one told the local time, the second the time in Germania. The other two covered “the span of empire”—showing the hour in Dakar, Deutsch Westafrika, the Reich’s westernmost city, and Ufa in the Ural Mountains, its farthest east.

In Madagaskar, it had turned midnight: officially, it was his birthday. He would allow himself one treat—a gift to his party guests from the absent host. Globus grinned and gave a final order:

“And hang Hochburg’s Jews.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

Nachtstadt

21 April, 00:40

WITH EACH PUNCH, Kepplar’s hopes drained away. He pressed his good ear against the cell door, listening to the blows land. The grooms were vigorous, vicious—yet every thwack and squelch, every grunt of pain, was followed by silence. He needed to take over the interrogation personally. Hochburg had offered him everything he desired, if only he could find the will to grasp it. His master demanded a show of blood. Kepplar massaged his knuckles in preparation; they felt spongy.

The prisoner’s belongings were piled on the floor. He rifled through them: a tropical uniform splattered in the same paint as his own, a standard-issue Luger from the East, a lighter, and a crumpled pack of Bayerweeds containing a solitary cigarette. One of the grooms had ripped a locket from the prisoner’s neck. Kepplar undid the clasp; inside was a photo of a girl with plain, Slavic features.

Something slammed against the door, making Kepplar jump.

He decided to give the grooms a few minutes longer and moved to the next cell, locking himself inside, glad there was no one to see him. He was shivering with adrenaline, felt a desperate urge to shit.
I believe in our mission,
thought Kepplar,
I understand the value of physical punishment. What went wrong with me?

At the academy in Vienna he was an enthusiastic participant in peer discipline. Every intake of cadets produced one
Versager
who let the rest down. After lights-out, the unfortunate recruit would be taught a lesson by the others. Kepplar was among the first to put his bar of soap inside a sock and administer a drubbing. If only he could retrieve that enthusiasm.

The cell was dark, barely large enough to contain a man, the walls stained brown—though whether with dried blood or excrement, it was impossible to tell. A wooden bunk was the only piece of furniture. Despite the recent downpour, the air was oppressive.

Kepplar felt feverish at what he must do next.

He stripped to the waist and lay down, concentrating on the noises from next door: the muffled percussion of fists and stamping boots, yelps and sharp intakes of breath. And mixed among them an occasional, contemptuous snort, as if the beating were nothing. That’s what he feared the most.

His thoughts were interrupted by a firing squad outside: the workforce was being liquidated.

Kepplar had pursued Cole from Antzu, the grooms tracking hoofmarks through the twilight until they came across his companion, the one who’d dared to ask about his ear. He was wounded and gratefully gave himself in, until he realized they weren’t a regular patrol. The grooms suggested Nachtstadt, with its punishment block, as the nearest place to interrogate him. They waited till Globus departed before riding in.

Kepplar needed something to calm his nerves and retrieved the Bayerweeds. His father had taught him to smoke as a teenager, though he abandoned the habit after the Führer spoke against it: “Smoking is the wrath of the Red Man against the White.” Kepplar inhaled a lungful … then exploded in coughing and stubbed out the rest. His brain tingled. He sensed the extremities of his body and a nascent weariness, not from the past few days but the months prior. He had expended a deep store of energy for a single, insignificant man, not to mention the resources and lives of many others. The reasons were like this cell: spooled in shadow. Kepplar considered what might have been achieved if that resolve had been directed to winning the war in Kongo.

“I hope it’s worth it,” he said aloud, as though Hochburg were next to him on the bunk. He let his disillusionment fill the cell.

Kepplar could hold off no longer.

He stood and dressed, tugging all the loose creases of his uniform until they were sharp, methodically fastening every button and buckle, conscious that he was delaying. The paint on the front of his tunic had dried; it flexed and cracked with his movements. He resumed his position by the door. The prisoner was trying to say something:…
am … an … SS officer
. Every word was met with fresh blows. Kepplar had left the academy with the same fervor as these boys yet had lost it somewhere in Africa. As a young officer in Muspel, he’d been exposed to a mantra not found in lectures and textbooks: nowadays you had to be a technician to be a killer.

He entered the cell. The air was glutinous with sweat and exertion. Gobs of blood spattered the concrete floor. Kepplar hoped the hammering in his Adam’s apple wasn’t visible.

“Enough,” he said.

The grooms withdrew from the prisoner. He was naked, curled in the shape of a question mark, hands protecting his groin; his left ankle was manacled to the wall. When he realized the beating was at an end he heaved himself onto his knees, then his feet. Instead of weakening him, the beating had provoked a stubborn streak. He was shivering, but it didn’t seem to be from fear or pain. Blood flowed out of his nose, his lip was split, and there were dozens of welts across his body that would turn black in the coming days, like the markings of a cheetah. Kepplar didn’t have the stomach for anything so crude. He would target what Hochburg called “the morsels”: fingers, toes, ears and eyes, the kidneys, the genitals.

“So you’re the prick in charge,” said the prisoner.

“Brave words from a man in your position. I am Brigadeführer Derbus Kepplar. And you?”

“Obersturmführer Tünscher, Section IX-c, Roscherhafen. Before that I served three years under Standartenführer Kanvinksy. You can check my record.”

The grooms exchanged admiring glances, a respect they had never shown Kepplar.

Kanvinksy was infamous. A renegade colonel who had been one of Globocnik’s deputies in Siberia, he was the only officer ever recalled by Germania because his methods were too extreme.

“Your record is irrelevant. I want to know where Burton Cole is.”

Tünscher’s expression soured—but he said nothing.

Kepplar unfastened his tunic, passed it to one of the grooms, and rolled up his sleeves in a manner he hoped suggested was his prelude to violence. He wished he were wearing gloves: a tight leather barrier between him and the prisoner. “You ruined my uniform,” he said with menace. “In Antzu.”

Tünscher regarded him more closely, noticed his missing ear, and for the first time seemed to recognize who he was. Was it Kepplar’s imagination or did a smirk ripple across that bruised face? Kepplar curled his fingers into fists and searched for something to stoke his fury. He saw the Madeleine woman kissing Hochburg and felt again his dismay—his disgust—at the spectacle. The image was displaced by Hochburg’s laughter in the Schädelplatz and the smell of sparks, as vivid as the day it happened. It should have caused him to erupt; instead he was consumed by humiliation.
The paperwork.
Was that really all that had spared his life?

Tünscher appraised him with the same expression he’d used in Antzu, as if he understood what was going through his mind.

“I’ve known Burton half my life. We trained together, fought together; we share the same
esprit
. I can’t give him up to you … But there is another way.”

“Another way?”

“A way that will be easier for you.”

There was a shrapnel wound below Tünscher’s ribs, gently weeping. If Hochburg had been there, he would have plunged his hand in and corkscrewed it around: a simple, effective method to get the Obersturmführer talking. All Kepplar had to do was insert his finger.

He understood his mistake. He should have started pummeling the prisoner’s face as soon as he entered the cell. Now he was thinking too much, and his thoughts—no matter how angry or shameful or goading—had frozen him.

“Leave us,” he said to the grooms.

They didn’t move.

“Go! You’ve done well—it’s time to rest.” He realized his fists had gone flaccid and locked them behind his back. “I wish to speak to Obersturmführer Tünscher alone.”

Kepplar waited for the footsteps to fade before circling his prisoner: he had shoulders almost as broad as Hochburg’s and a Category 1 skull. He was unperturbed by his nakedness.

Tünscher sniffed him. “You got Bayerweeds?”

“I smoked your last one.”

“Too bad.”

From outside came another volley of shots.

“You were going to tell me about Cole,” said Kepplar eventually. A fatigue was creeping up on him and the interrogation had yet to begin.

“We served in the Foreign Legion together. We’re bound by a code.” He made it sound contemptible. “Like there is between you and me.”

“There’s nothing between us.”

“We’ve sworn the same oaths to the Führer.”

“Go on.”

“You can … you can buy my honor,” said Tünscher.

“You know where Cole is?”

“I know where he’s headed. Burton promised me a lot of money to get him to Madagaskar. Diamonds worth thousands of marks. He lied.”

“You’re willing to sell me the information?”

There was a queasy twist to Tünscher’s mouth. He nodded. “I just want off this island.”

“And if I find your suggestion demeaning?”

“Then it’s going to be a long night.”

A flood of intolerable emotion tumbled through Kepplar: gratitude toward Tünscher that he might be able to find Cole without bloodying his hands; shame that he felt so grateful; anger that Hochburg had left him in this position. “Let’s say I buy this information—how do I know it’s true?”

“How can you be sure if you beat it out of me? In the East, during interrogations, I saw partisans say anything for a breather. The time we wasted on bullshit confessions.”

There was logic to Tünscher’s words, but Kepplar resisted, aware of how keen he was to acquiesce. Yet they could torture him for days before he gave up Cole … or Kepplar could learn his quarry’s whereabouts at once. He remembered the previous year, in Kongo, when they captured one of Cole’s fellow assassins and beat him till his teeth sprinkled the floor—he hadn’t revealed a thing. Kepplar had lost valuable time; if he’d got him to talk faster, he might have caught Cole and not failed Hochburg.

Kepplar’s mind turned to the embalmed parrot he had confiscated from the dhow and its breast of golden coins; he had left it for safekeeping at Lava Bucht. There were helicopters stationed outside.

“The lousy bastard cheated me,” said Tünscher. “I need that money more than anything.”

“For what?”

“Debts.”

“What kind of debts?”

Despite the chain round his ankle and his bruised body, the reply was impudent: “That’s my business.”

“If you expect me to pay, you need to convince me.”

Tünscher lowered his head. Blood was still dripping from his nose. He spoke quickly, in a whisper. Kepplar’s stomach bulged with contempt. The explanation was like one of those tawdry novels his wife enjoyed, stories of life on the Eastern frontier, so nauseating, so sentimental it could only be true.

Tünscher sensed his scorn. “It’s a big island,” he said, toughening his voice. “You’ll never find Burton without me. This might be your only chance.”

“I’ll think about it,” replied Kepplar, and left the cell.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE