Zion (Jerusalem)

by Colin Falconer

  When Asher reached them, he grabbed the boy, who was unconscious, supporting him under his left arm. He followed Netanel, swimming across the undertow. After almost a quarter of an hour they had still not reached the back of the break, and Netanel had slipped behind.

  Asher saw the trailing end of a rope snake across the surface of the water. He grabbed it. They started to haul him in. As soon as he reached the shallows men splashed through the waves and took the child from his arms.

  Asher coiled the rope over his shoulder and swam out again.

  The undertow had carried Netanel and the woman back towards the reef. It was as much as he could do to keep their heads above the water now. Another few minutes and they would both drown.

  “I’ll take her!” Asher shouted. “Grab the rope!”

  Netanel coiled the lifeline around his wrist, his eyes wide with exhaustion.

  “Hang on!” Asher shouted. He trod the dragging water, waiting for the men on the beach to see them and haul them in.

  Haifa-Acre Road

  Hughes stood up in his jeep and pointed a finger at the man in the woolen yarmulka. “Get your fookin’ animals off the fookin’ road, fookin’ now!”

  The man spread his hands and answered him in Hebrew.

  “What did he say?” Hughes asked Shapira.

  “He said that God in His wisdom made sheep before he made motor cars.’

  Hughes snarled and climbed out from behind the wheel. There must be at least two hundred sheep milling around his jeep. It was the middle of the night. “God in His Almighty fookin’ wisdom also made fookin’ machine-guns and that’s what I’m goin’ to use on his fookin’ sheep if he don’t get them out the fookin’ road!”

  Shapira translated, approximately, what Captain Hughes had said. The shepherd blinked in the headlights. “Tell him he is most welcome,” he said to Shapira. “As you yourself know, for it was your suggestion, I stole them from an Arab. I shall not be upset if the British captain slaughters every last one of them and barbecues them over an open fire.”

  “He says go ahead and shoot,” Shapira said to Hughes.

  Hughes turned to the driver of the truck behind him. “Drive straight through,” he roared. “Straight fookin’ through!”

  Asher heard the convoy approaching, saw the headlights arcing across the sky from beyond the hills. “Hurry!” he shouted to Ben-Carmel. “Here they come!”

  They carried the unconscious man up the beach and rolled him over the tailboard of the nearest truck.

  “Go!” Asher shouted. He ran up and down the line of trucks and taxis, kicking doors closed, screaming at their drivers. “The British are here! Get out of here! Go!”

  When Hughes arrived he ordered his corporal to turn on the searchlight mounted on the back of his jeep and aim it at the beach.

  “Fookin’ hell,” he muttered.

  The sand had been churned by a thousand footprints. There were men and women still floundering in the water, or clinging together in human chains to try and reach those who no longer had the strength to swim.

  Heads bobbed on the grey sea. He could make out the silhouette of the Eretz Israel just beyond the surf.

  Hughes turned to his corporal. “Tell Sharpe to position his platoon along the road and stop anyone trying to leave this fookin’ beach. Then get Alderson and Finch and tell them to get ready to get their boots wet.”

  “What are you going to do?” Shapira asked him.

  “I’m not a fookin’ animal. There’s people fookin’ drowning out there!”

  “It’s your fault. They survived the Nazis just to die a hundred yards from Palestine.”

  “No, Sergeant, it’s not my fookin’ fault. Maybe it’s fookin’ Bevin’s, or maybe it’s fookin’ Ben- Gurion’s, but it’s not fookin’ mine. All right?”

  Fook them all, he thought. What a horrible fookin’ mess!

  FOOK-THEM-ALL!

  Jerusalem

  Sarah shivered and tucked her fingers inside the sleeves of her woolen jersey. Outside, by Damascus Gate, a cold wind whipped the robes of the Arabs milling around the buses. Little Jewish children hurried home from school in long trousers and woolly hats, cheeks burnished bronze from the cold.

  She looked at her watch. He was late. The serving boy poured her more coffee and she held the tiny handleless cup to her face and warmed her nose and cheeks with the steam.

  “A thousand apologies,” he said, in Arabic. “There were business matters I had to attend to.”

  Sarah indicated a chair. He seemed to make a point of being late, as if he wanted her to know he was still in control. Hard for an Arab to talk terms with a woman, she supposed.

  He had told her his name was Ishmael. He had short, curling hair, flecked with grey, and the sort of Chaplinesque moustache affected by Arabs with pretensions to the effendi class. His clothes were well cut, even if his taste was execrable. His ties were all made of embroidered silk and painful on the eye.

  Her other contacts attempted anonymity, but Ishmael was by far the most conspicuous single individual in the café, if not all of Damascus Gate. In all likelihood he wanted other Arabs to think she was his mistress. It would not readily occur to anyone that she was a member of Shai, the intelligence arm of the Haganah.

  It was getting dark outside. The cries of the muezzins echoed from the minarets calling the faithful to the evening prayer.

  After the serving boy had brought him coffee, Ishmael lit a cigarette and smiled, revealing a golden eye tooth. “You have brought the money?” he said.

  “I told you, Ishmael. There will be no money until you provide us with something worthwhile. We are not paying you just to sit here and drink coffee.”

  “How do I know I can trust you?” he said.

  It was an astounding proposition for a traitor to put forward. “Without trust, what is life?”

  He dropped his eyes insolently to her breasts. He switched to English. “You are a beautiful woman,” he said.

  These Arabs, she thought, they try and penetrate you with their eyes. “We are here to do business,” she said.

  “Why don’t we go somewhere and fuck?” he whispered.

  Typical of a town Arab. They think using words like that is a sign of sophistication. She held his gaze with her eyes and did not answer.

  “There is a hotel just round the comer,” he said.

  “All right. You go ahead.” She sipped her coffee. “If I’m not there in half an hour, start without me.”

  He laughed, a cheerful sound that came from deep in his chest.

  Now his masculinity has been established, Sarah thought, perhaps we can begin. “We have been meeting here every week now for a month. You have still to tell me anything really useful.”

  “I told you it might take time.”

  “This is a simple transaction, Ishmael. You are the merchant, I am the buyer. I pay nothing until you offer me something valuable.”

  Ishmael leaned forward, holding his cigarette near his lips in a furtive posture that announced to the entire café that he was about to impart a secret. “One of your buses is to be attacked.”

  Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Which one?”

  “The morning Egged service to Tel Aviv. They plan to kill all the passengers, loot their belongings and burn the bus.”

  “When?”

  “Two days’ time. It will be ambushed in the Bab el-Wad.”

  “How many men? What kind of weapons?”

  Ishmael drew on his cigarette, and the tobacco crackled like firewood. “About a dozen,” he said. “Don’t worry about their weapons. They’ll probably do themselves more harm than anyone on the bus.”

  “How did you come by this information?”

  His face became sulky. “You wanted something you could use. I have given it to you. Now you pay me.”

  Sarah shook her head. “If the bus is attacked, we will pay you. I’m not giving you money for some story you just made up.”

  “You think I would do that?
”

  “I am sure of it.”

  He smiled. “You’re right. But this time I’m telling you the truth. What are you going to do?”

  “We will take precautions.”

  He stubbed out his cigarette and switched back to Arabic. His eyes speculated. “Perhaps I do not want to be paid in money . . .”

  “That’s all we are offering.”

  “A pity.” He looked at his watch. It was expensive, she noted, an American Rolex. “I have to go.”

  “Evening prayers?”

  He grinned, but his eyes were cold. She watched him leave. Information, she had been taught, was important, but knowing what motivated your contact was just as valuable. You could not control the flow of information unless you understood its source. So what had made Ishmael seek out the Haganah? she wondered.

  Some Arabs informed because they heard there was easy money to be made; that’s what made the city effendis an especially rich seam to mine. They were softened by city living and addicted to the city’s pleasures; their loyalties were blurred by the dictates of self-interest.

  For others it was a game, as if the outcome of the conflict would not affect them or their families. Greed blinded them to the future.

  Others used the Haganah to settle old grievances. Let the Jews kill my enemy, the reasoning went, and spare my family the consequences of a blood feud should I do it myself.

  She wondered to which category Ishmael belonged.

  In the corner an Arab in a dirty white abbayah fingered his tespi beads, quietly reciting his prayers. His name was Levi Bar-Ayal; he was a Shai agent, like herself. Sarah nodded to him. He got up and followed Ishmael through the crowds outside the Damascus Gate.

  Haifa

  The old Fiat wound its way up the slopes of Mount Carmel, past the Arab-style brownstones and apartment buildings, leaving the teeming streets of the waterfront far behind. Asher parked the Fiat outside a pension house almost hidden from the road behind a tall stand of pines. He went inside.

  The owner, Levitski, took him up to a room on the second floor. Netanel sat in a chair by the window, staring at the port through the mist of rain. The wind rattled the window in its frame, moaning around the eaves.

  “Shalom.” Asher held out his hand. “My name’s Asher Ben-Zion. I am with the Haganah.”

  Netanel looked up at his visitor, but if he recognized him from the previous night he gave no sign of it. “Shalom.”

  Asher sat in the chair next to him. There were dark shadows under his eyes. “Forgive my appearance. I have not been to bed for nearly forty-eight hours. There has been a lot to arrange.”

  Netanel nodded, but said nothing.

  “What is your name?”

  “Rosenberg. Netanel Rosenberg.”

  “Do you remember what happened last night, Rosenberg?”

  “I remember I got very wet.”

  “There are at least half a dozen who owe you their lives.” He studied this Rosenberg more closely. A scar on the right side of his face had healed badly and pulled the lid half closed over the eye. His lip had once been badly tom in two places and now pulled down the corners of his mouth in a permanent sneer. More like the face of a villain than a hero, Asher thought.

  How old was he? There was white in his close-cropped hair, and his face was lined. Perhaps forty.

  Levitski had provided him with fresh clothes, but the shirt was too small for him and the shirtsleeve did not conceal the blue tattoo on his forearm. His hands were never still, Asher noticed. But the most unsettling thing about this man was his eyes. They were lifeless, like the fish heads down at the market at the waterfront. “You are a brave man,” Asher said.

  “Is that what you think?”

  Asher shook his head. “Well, it’s what I thought at first.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I wonder if you weren’t almost hoping you would drown.”

  Netanel shrugged. “How many did you save last night?”

  “Of the five hundred and forty-six people on board we estimate that just over three hundred made it to the shore. The rest either drowned or were arrested this morning by the British.”

  “You managed to hide the rest?”

  Asher shook his head. “Unfortunately not. The British may have picked up perhaps as many as a hundred, from the village or at roadblocks. The rest are scattered all over the northern coast, here in Haifa, in Acre, or on kibbutzim away from the coast. There are eight of your comrades in this pension alone.”

  “So. Only two hundred?”

  Asher bristled at the implied criticism. “In the circumstances, it was more than anyone could have hoped for. It is two hundred more Jews in Palestine who otherwise would be rotting away in DP camps in Europe. Europe doesn’t want any more Jewish refugees. We do.”

  “You really think the British will give us our own Jewish state here?”

  “I don’t think that’s what they want to do. We will have to persuade them.”

  “You will use force against them?”

  “We’ll employ whatever means necessary. This land was promised to us by God in the time of the Pharaohs and by Balfour in 1917. Imagine that! We have the word of both Jehovah and the British! Palestine is our twice-promised land.”

  “Then why do they want to stop us coming now? They fired on us last night. I saw two men lying on the deck with British bullets in them. I thought they were on our side. I thought it was just the Germans who wanted to kill us!”

  “They don’t hate us. It’s not personal, it’s just politics.”

  “Everything is just politics. Hitler and Streicher were just politics. Gassing children is just politics.”

  Asher shrugged. “The British want Arab oil, they are frightened of Russian expansion, they want to keep their airfields here. So even though they feel sorry for us, and cry their tears in buckets in public, they have decided to court the Arabs. The thing you have to learn about the British, Netanel, is they know only two political positions. They are either bending over making you to lick their ass, or they are on their knees licking yours.”

  “What have you people done about it so far?”

  “When Ernest Bevin, their Foreign Minister, cut immigration to one thousand five hundred a month the Jewish National Council declared a one-day protest strike. It had the effect of a mosquito bite on a camel’s rump.”

  “And so?”

  “And so the council has decided it is time to fight. During the Arab riots in 1936, the Haganah was used only for defense. Look what happened. The British gave in to the Arabs. The lesson is clear.”

  “You think you can beat the British?”

  “Not in a proper war; but we do not intend to fight a proper war. Sooner or later the British will have to go. We want them out, and so do the Arabs. Afterwards, one of us will rule Palestine. Personally, I would rather eat a mountain of camel turds than live under the rule of any Arab. So we have to win. We have nowhere else to go.”

  “We needed men like you in Germany, twelve years ago.

  “It was what happened twelve years ago in Germany that made men like me.” He fished in the pocket of his jacket and produced a manila envelope. “This is for you.”

  “What is in here?”

  “New identity papers. You’re a free man now, Netanel Rosenberg. What do you intend to do with your new freedom?”

  Netanel sat forward and the dullness in his eyes was gone. “There is only one reason I came to Palestine. I want to help build a homeland, a place where a Jew can be safe. A place where he knows he will not lose his business, his home, his children, his woman, his parents, his family, and his life just because he is a Jew. What I have lived through must never happen again. I don’t want freedom -I want to chain myself to your cause. Our cause.”

  Asher considered. “It isn’t easy, Rosenberg. As an army we have no rank, officially we have no existence. We have few weapons, and if you are found in possession of one of the few guns we do have the British will throw you into
Acre prison for the next five years. At the moment, all we have is our hopes and dreams.”

  “After three years in Auschwitz, hopes and dreams are an embarrassment of riches.”

  “How old are you?”

  Netanel had to stop to think. “I was born in 1916.” Good God! Asher thought. Not yet thirty! Young enough to fight with the Palmach.

  “No family?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Asher stood up. “Good. Be ready to leave here at ten minutes’ notice. Consider yourself Haganah. We are your family now.” He went to the door, hesitated. “In a way, you know, I am sorry. We need men like you, as many as we can find. But in a way it doesn’t seem fair. You come from one war, and now you find yourself in a new one.”

  Netanel shook his head. “It’s not a new war. It’s the same one. It started a long time ago, and it’s about time we finished it.”

  Jerusalem

  Sarah’s flat was in Rehavia, in the middle of the Zion quarter, a few hundred yards from the Jewish Agency. A stand of pine trees grew close to her window and she could hear the branches creaking in the wind.

  It was the seventh night of Hanukkah, marking the triumphant revolt of the Maccabees in 167 BC. An eight- tipped menorah stood on her dining-room table, seven of its eight candles alight. In the windows of the flats opposite she could see the lights of many other menorahs like her own. From the flat along the corridor she could smell someone frying latkes, potato pancakes.

  There was a knock on the door. She looked at the clock. Nine o’clock. “Who is it?” she shouted.

  “Levi.”

  She opened the door. Levi Bar-Ayal had discarded his robes and keffiyeh - a wise precaution in Rehavia - and now wore a knee-length coat and a scarf. He slipped past her and sat down at the table.

  “It’s cold,” he said.