The Madagaskar Plan by Guy Saville Read Free Book Online

half-spoken by soldiers as they hunkered down in preparation for the Belgians’ next attack. Worst of all, his generals were beginning to murmur it, the same generals who four months earlier had been poised to conquer Rhodesia and then all of southern Africa.
    Surrender.
    “Oberstgruppenführer, they’re coming!”
    Hochburg raised his binoculars and scanned the far shore: it was the Otraco district, with its rotting cathedral—the undeveloped part of Stanleystadt. He was on the opposite embankment of the River Kongo, in one of the gun emplacements hidden among the palm trees. Around him the city boomed and shook. The thunderclap of artillery hadn’t left his head since he’d escaped the inferno of his garden. Combat fatigues were his uniform now, the material streaked like green tiger fur. Through the smoke he glimpsed a dozen inflatables laden with men, the same mélange of Belgian and negroid faces he’d seen in the Schädelplatz. The boats were marked with SS runes.
    “The order was for everything— everything —to be destroyed on the far side.”
    “They took us by surprise,” said the Hauptsturmführer next to him. “There wasn’t time.”
    “These guerrillas have nothing. If they defeat us, it’ll be because we gave them the means.”
    The air stank of tar and petrol. Hochburg wondered if the men in the boats could smell it. They were almost across the river, the sluggish current drawing them toward the wreckage of the Giesler bridge, the city’s main crossing. Hochburg had ordered it dynamited the previous night; only stumps of concrete were left above the waterline. He’d always thought it too small; they’d rebuild with six lanes instead of four.
    “Now?” said the Hauptsturmführer. He held an MG48 machine gun in a tight embrace.
    “You see that?” said Hochburg, pointing to a wrecked kiosk. Only weeks before, it had served pretzels and Lebkuchen to Stanleystadters strolling along the embankment. “Inside are engineers. They await my signal.” He revealed a flare gun. “Not a single shot is to be fired until then.”
    “But if they land—”
    “You’re eager to kill, Hauptsturmführer. That’s a welcome change. But wait for my command.”
    A shell burst farther along the embankment. Palm fronds quivered above them.
    Hochburg didn’t need his binoculars now. He could make out the faces on the boat: the wild-men eyes and ruffian brows. Those Belgians with any wealth had fled abroad before the German invasion of 1944; the guerrillas mostly consisted of miners and stevedores, men with little option other than to stay and resist the Nazis. They had endured years of hardship in the jungle, fighting an insurgency. But then it was those with the least who made the most tenacious warriors. That was the lesson Hochburg was learning. It had made the Belgian guerrillas strong while the new German population—with their air-conditioned apartments, refrigerators, and shiny Volkswagens—had become complacent.
    The first of the inflatables ran ashore. Boots hit mud, then slipped on a slope of oil.
    Hochburg reached for the flare gun. The Belgians’ expressions were a jumble of relief and suspicion that they were landing unopposed. He let the insurgents struggle halfway up the bank, their trousers weighed down with sludge, before he fired the flare. At his sign, the entire shore exploded in flames. The shore, the steps leading to the embankment, even the river itself, with its film of gasoline.
    Hochburg stood mesmerized, the skin on his bald scalp wrinkling with the heat. The fire towered over Stanleystadt; it had a holy, shimmering quality. And as he watched it burn, a notion seized hold of Hochburg’s mind.
    If only he had the means to engulf the whole city. The whole of Kongo.
    *   *   *
    Hochburg’s jeep weaved through the streets, the driver spinning the wheel to avoid piles of rubble. Hardly a window had survived anywhere in the city. Chains of tattered lanterns festooned the