The Madagaskar Plan Read online

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  Once again

  to

  my own Cole

  I hope the concept of the Jews will be completely extinguished through the possibility of a large emigration to Africa or some other colony.

  —HEINRICH HIMMLER

  Memorandum to Adolf Hitler,

  25 May 1940

  Despite the Führer’s ideological misgivings, it is my belief that this weapon can deliver us the final victory in Africa.

  —WALTER HOCHBURG

  Top-secret communiqué to Germania,

  22 March 1953

  Those with a detailed knowledge of northern Madagascar will notice that I have taken certain liberties with the geography—this has been for the sake of the narrative. For the same reason, I have simplified the tussling array of organizations, departments, and individuals that the Nazis would have employed to run their “Madagaskar Plan.” I hope experts in both fields will indulge this license.

  The World, 1940–52

  FOR A FEW hours in May 1940, it was hoped that British forces at Dunkirk might escape. Then Hitler gave the order to destroy them.

  The disaster that followed saw thousands of British troops killed and a quarter of a million taken prisoner. Prime Minister Churchill resigned. He was succeeded by Lord Halifax, who judged the public mood of dread and sued for peace. In October that year, Britain and Germany came to terms, signing a nonaggression pact and creating the Council of New Europe. The occupied countries—France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway—were granted autonomy under right-wing governments and took their place alongside Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Although weakened, Britain’s empire continued to span the globe.

  With his western borders secure, Hitler launched a surprise invasion of Russia in 1941; two years later the Soviet Union was no more. The Reich now extended from the Rhine to the Ural Mountains; its capital was renamed Germania. Those around the Führer began calling for the reacquisition of the colonies Germany had lost after the Versailles Treaty. “On the day when we’ve solidly organized Europe,” Hitler told an expectant SS audience in response, “we shall look toward Africa.”

  The armies of the Reich marched to the equator, conquering a vast swath of land from the Sahara to the Belgian Congo. As this new territory edged nearer the borders of the British Empire, Hitler and Halifax agreed on further peace accords guaranteeing the two countries’ mutual neutrality. The culmination was the Casablanca Conference of 1943, during which the continent was divided—Churchill said “cleaved”—between the two powers. Britain would retain its interests in East Africa; Germany would take the west. Other negotiations granted Mussolini a small Italian empire, while Portugal kept its colonies of Angola and Mozambique.

  Throughout these upheavals the United States remained staunchly isolationist.

  Germany’s African empire was divided into six provinces. Gradually civilian and military administrations were replaced by SS governors, answerable to Himmler but semi-autonomous and with almost unlimited power. The most ambitious was the governor of Kongo, Walter Hochburg. The builder of gleaming new cities and an African autobahn network, Hochburg ruthlessly exploited the continent’s natural resources to “stiffen the sinews of Europe.” He was also responsible for the wholesale deportation of the black population to the Sahara and a fate few dared to question.

  Despite a decade of peace and prosperity, Hochburg remained restless: he wanted the swastika to fly over all of Africa. In 1952, he attacked Portuguese Angola and began preparing to invade British Northern Rhodesia. The Colonial Office in London, along with elements in Germania who feared Hochburg’s growing power, decided to move against him. They arranged a botched assassination attempt to provoke Hochburg into invading Rhodesia prematurely, forcing him to fight on two fronts and overextend himself. Defeat would mean the end of his ambitions.

  On 21 September 1952, even as the German army was bogged down in Angola, Hochburg ordered his panzers into Rhodesia. He assured Hitler of a swift victory …

  Hampstead, London

  4 October 1952, 01:15

  THERE HAD BEEN no news since the morning they parted. No telegrams, no letters, no breathless messengers arriving with the dawn. Not a word from Burton in five weeks and a day, only radio reports that she didn’t want to hear: war in Kongo and thousands slaughtered. She had struggled not to count every single hour.

  Madeleine Cranley lay on her side, sheets wrapped around her, and tried to sleep. Her long dark hair spilled over the pillow. Inside she sensed the fluttering of the child she was carrying. She was five months now, the baby due in February. Whenever she ate with her husband she made a display of gorging herself, hoping the extra weight would disguise her belly. Her throat was constantly stuck with unwanted food: cakes and puddings and gravy churned with acid. Her jaw ached from grinding.

  In the hallway the clock chimed the half hour, then two o’clock. Madeleine flickered in and out of consciousness; at some point she reached over and switched off the light.

  The tension in her face began to slacken, warmth enveloped her … and as dreams offered their respite, she heard distant footsteps. She imagined they were Burton’s. He had gone to Africa to kill the SS governor of Kongo, his heart unshakable with revenge; she’d pleaded with him not to. Now he was back … sliding into bed like he did on their rare nights together, his body cold and welcome, smelling of musk and wood smoke. Before she relented to his arms, she wanted him to know how furious she was with him, how he had driven her almost insane with worry. He whispered an apology—but she no longer needed it; to have him home was enough. They were going to spend the future together.

  A guttering breath escaped her: Burton would never come here.

  Her mind roamed over the other possibilities of the household. She didn’t recognize the familiar pad of the servants, and it couldn’t be her husband; he was away tonight on business. Nor did the footsteps belong to her daughter, Alice. They were too clodding, too cumbersome.

  There was a stranger in the house.

  Madeleine turned on the lamp and strained to hear. The house creaked quietly. Had she imagined the footsteps? For years after she’d arrived in Britain as a refugee, the sound of boots on hollow stairs had fractured her dreams.

  She thought she’d heard them come from the floor above, pass her door, and go down the main staircase. Thick soles muffled by carpet.

  Madeleine untangled herself from the bedsheets and, mind still fuzzy, went to the landing. The light was on, though the house should have been in darkness. She climbed the staircase, aware of the unwieldy weight of her stomach. There were two levels above her: at the very top the servants’ quarters, below that the floor where guests stayed and Alice’s room.

  She opened the door as silently as possible, in case she’d been dreaming all along. Her lungs tightened. Alice’s bedside lamp was on, illuminating the tumble of her daughter’s room—but the bed was empty. Madeleine slid
her hand beneath the covers: the mattress was baby warm.

  “Elli?” It was her pet name for Alice. “Elli?” For some reason, she was whispering.

  There was a connecting door to the playroom. Madeleine opened it: nothing but darkness and the glint of rocking-horse eyes. Fog pressed against the window. Back in the bedroom, she checked the wardrobe. Sometimes Alice would stow away beneath piles of blankets and teddy bears. It, too, was empty. She thought of the time Elli had gone missing on Burton’s farm. Don’t worry, he’d said, we’ll find her. His tone was so confident, so settling.

  Madeleine returned to the floor below and hung over the balustrade. “Elli?” she called.

  The housekeeper, Mrs. Anderson, appeared: black dress, hair in a tight black bun. She possessed a servility that made Madeleine tense, aware that as the mistress of the house she was more foreign than the Polish gardener.

  “Have you seen Elli?”

  Mrs. Anderson let a rare smile shrink her lips. “Alice”—she enunciated the syllables—“is with us downstairs.”

  “What’s she doing?”

  “Nothing you need concern yourself with, Mrs. Cranley.”

  “It’s the middle of the night! My daughter should be in bed.”

  “As should you.”

  “What did you say?”

  Another smile tautened Mrs. Anderson’s face; then she was gone.

  Madeleine strode to her room to fetch dressing gown and slippers; she wanted her toes covered before confronting the housekeeper. She pushed through the door and stopped short. Her arms clutched her belly.

  On the bed was a suitcase. The battered suitcase she had fled Vienna with fourteen years earlier, after the Anschluss, when the Nazis took over the country.

  “I thought I told you to throw this away. Yet Mrs. Anderson informs me it’s been hidden in the cellar since you moved in.”

  It was her husband, Jared.

  He was a senior civil servant at the Colonial Office and dressed in his uniform of charcoal-black pinstriped suit and waistcoat; the smell of the night lingered on the cloth: autumnal, damp, penetrating. Brilliantine darkened his blond hair. His eyes looked rheumy, as if he had recently wept. He was packing the case.

  Madeleine said, “I thought you were away tonight.”

  “I had some good news: rushed back to share it with you.”

  “Is that why Elli’s downstairs?”

  “You really mustn’t call her that. It sounds too German. People talk enough as it is.”

  Jared continued to pack. There seemed no logic to the items he chose: summer dresses, wool stockings, her favorite cardigan. He reached for a silk camisole, scrunching it in his fist. “I don’t remember buying this. It looks cheap.”

  Madeleine recognized it as a gift from Burton. Heat prickled her cheeks. In the past month there had been plenty of such innocent provocations. At breakfast Jared had taken to reading aloud headlines from the Times—“NAZIS BEATEN BACK TO KONGO BORDER”; “SIEGE OF ELISABETHSTADT BEGINS”—and asking what she felt about so many soldiers being butchered in Africa. But he couldn’t know. How could he sit there eating toast, sipping his tea, with the knowledge that across the table his wife was pregnant with another man’s child? Exhaustion was making her paranoid.

  She made her voice as sweet and light as possible: “Are we going somewhere?”

  He ignored the question and buried the camisole deep in the case. Unsure what to do, Madeleine waited in silence for her husband to finish, hands continuing to protect her abdomen, her bare feet growing cold. Finally he threw in some bottles of perfume, snapped the lid shut, and lifted the suitcase to test its weight.

  “We don’t want it too heavy.” He looked her in the eye. “Not in your condition.”

  Madeleine felt the press of her bladder. She forced a laugh. “What condition?”

  Jared let the case drop and crossed the room until he was looming over her. She wanted to take a step back—but refused.

  He reached for her pajama top. She’d bought three new pairs recently, all a size too big, with Empire lines to hide her waist. He teased the ends, then began to undo the buttons. His movements might have been seductive if not for the rawness of his eyes. His smooth, manicured hands encircled her stomach, only a thin barrier of skin separating his splayed fingers from her baby.

  Madeleine couldn’t help herself: she retreated.

  In response he leaned forward as if to kiss her ear and whispered something. It was so soft, Madeleine could hardly catch it.

  It sounded like I know.

  * * *

  From somewhere the bitter tang of cigarettes. Madeleine took another step back and found herself against the door. The fingers ensnaring her belly pressed harder, till the pressure rose into her rib cage. The baby kicked.

  “Jared, please, you’re hurting me.”

  He spoke again: this time a declaration. His face was like cold wax, the nonchalance of the previous weeks gone. “I know about you and your lover—”

  A rushing in her ears, simultaneously high-pitched and deafening, a low rumble. She needed to sit down.

  “—the farm. The little life you were planning together. I’ve known since the spring.”

  Madeleine shook her head.

  “Everything I gave you,” he continued, “and this is how you repay me.”

  For a long time she’d known this moment would come and had rehearsed her response. She wanted to rebuke him for the way he had shrunk her world even as it expanded to ball-gown dinners and hotel suites in the capitals of Europe. The way he told her not to eat as though she were a navvy, or his disapproval if she smiled too graciously at a doorman. Everyone should know their place, Madeleine. How she had spent years playing the part of a wife—gladly at first, sincerely—without believing his role as a husband. Madeleine felt no urge to justify, she just wanted to explain. Burton wasn’t the cause of their estrangement; he simply offered her the life she wanted. But now, seeing Jared’s eyes ringed with tears, the remorse welled in her.

  “It was never like that.” More than once, the guilt had made her spurn Burton. She reached for her husband, grazing the dark fabric of his jacket. “I’m sorry, Jared. I…”

  He snatched his hand away, showed his back. His shoulders gave a slight judder. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Madeleine thought she heard someone behind the door, listening in on them; that hint of cigarettes again.

  “I shall give you a choice,” said her husband. “You can either leave tonight or”—he swallowed, his throat clicking as if the next words were rancid—“or I’ll forgive you everything. We can continue as before. A termination would be best, but if that’s too much I’m prepared to raise the child as my own. No one need ever know.”

  Madeleine found herself dumb.

  “Well?”

  “Jared, I … I…”

  “Choose.” When she didn’t reply, he repeated himself; this time she heard something creep into his tone. Contempt, brutality.

  She stepped forward and reached for the case. “I need to get dressed.”

  “You’d really choose him over all this?” He motioned to the room. Madeleine followed his hand, held open like an emperor’s: the Spink & Edgar bed, linen from Peter Reed, wardrobes choked with this season’s fashions, drawers that hid the diamond rings and pearls she’d never cared for. She thought of the drafty, bare rooms of the farmhouse and how comfortable she was there.

  “I’m sorry, Jared. I love him.”

  “Did you ever love me?”

  “I can’t remember anymore.”

  He removed the case from her grip, set it down. “There’s one other thing. Before you make your decision—”

  “It’s too late for that.”

  From his jacket he produced an envelope and placed it in her hands. “I told you I rushed home. I’ve been expecting this for weeks, and couldn’t wait to share it.”

  The seal had been broken. There was a cover letter and a dozen typed pages of names.

>   “I don’t understand,” said Madeleine.

  It was a communiqué from the Admiralty about a British warship in the Gulf of Kamerun. HMS Ibis. Sunk, presumed torpedoed by the Kriegsmarine, the German navy. The Ibis: it meant nothing to her, and yet there was a stirring in Madeleine’s gut that wasn’t the baby. Thirty men had been pulled alive from the water. All other hands were lost.

  She looked up at Jared.

  “The second sheet,” he said. “A list of the deceased.”

  Madeleine turned to the page, scanned the names. It was at the bottom: Burton Cole.

  Suddenly the whole world was sliding to one side, as if she were on the stricken ship herself. The papers tumbled from her hand, floating across Cranley’s shoes. She struggled to breathe, each lungful shallow yet needing all her effort.

  “Everything went wrong in Kongo,” said her husband, the tiniest shard of delight audible in his words. “He had to flee—to Angola. And then a ship back home. Or so your lover thought.”

  “Kongo.” She could barely speak. “How do you know about Kongo?”

  “Who do you think sent him there? Planned his reunion with Hochburg?”

  “You?”

  “Cole was the perfect tool for the job, though kept unawares about the Colonial Office. He snared Hochburg in our trap of invading Rhodesia and, once he’d served his purpose, was left to die.”

  She was shaking, almost doubled over, seeing the man who had been her husband for the first time. It was like that one occasion he had lashed out. A single blow to the stomach that put her on her knees; she couldn’t even remember what she’d done. Afterward Jared apologized for his lapse in control, swore it wouldn’t happen again as he filled the house with enough lilies to make her nauseous. She never told Burton about it.

  “It should make your decision easier.” His tone was businesslike, the civil servant briefing his minister. “I presume you’ll be staying. I’m sure we can put this silly little affair behind us—”