The Reckoning

by Patrick Bishop

  Tova moved around in her housecoat, laying the table for breakfast. It was the same one they always ate, a ‘three-storey’ sandwich made up of bread, cheese and jam, washed down with a cup of tea. She cleared away the plates and put a joint of meat in the oven in the galley kitchen to roast for the following day’s Shabbat supper. Then she tidied away the bedding and lay down on the sofa to read. A few feet away, Stern sat at the table, blue carpet slippers on his feet.17 The table was covered with strips of white paper. His pen moved steadily over them, covering them with his neat handwriting.

  Tel Aviv was by now properly awake. Outside in Mizrachi Bet Street the vendors had set out their stalls and were chatting among themselves and bantering with the shoppers. The cafés were full of people drinking coffee and reading newspapers. All the news, it seemed, was bad. The Japanese were at the gates of Singapore. In Libya, Rommel was building up supplies for another push on Egypt. From German-occupied Europe leaked awful tales of Jewish persecution − massacres and round-ups, disease and famine. The columns combined to radiate a mood of impending crisis.

  That morning Geoffrey and Alice Morton set off as usual from their mellow stone bungalow at Sarona for their places of work. The drive took about ten minutes, south along the Haifa−Jaffa highway. The cold, wet night had given way to a bright day. To the left as they drove stood orange groves and Arab villages, looking much as they had for centuries. To the right, the modernist apartment houses and office blocks of Tel Aviv gleamed clean and white in the morning sun. The car pulled up outside CID headquarters and Morton alighted and entered the building. The Jaffa High School for Girls, where Alice taught geography to Arab students, was only a short walk away.

  Morton’s day got off to a bad start. The surveillance of the Levsteins’ home in Rambam Street had taken them no nearer to Tova Svorai and her mysterious guest. That line of inquiry seemed to have reached a dead end. Half a mile away at the Government Hospital, Moshe Svorai and Yaacov Levstein’s stay was almost over.18 Now they were about to exchange a hospital ward for a cell in the Jerusalem Central Prison, whose high, cavernous rooms and wide, flagged corridors had once been the Marianskya, a hostel for Russian women pilgrims to the Holy Land. Levstein was in surprisingly good spirits. ‘It was a beautiful spring day, full of sun and the singing of birds,’ he remembered.19 ‘I was happy to be recovering and looked forward to seeing my mother. I knew she would feel much better once she saw me. After all, she had once said that prison was a safe place for me, since she did not have to worry constantly something was going to happen to me.’

  According to Morton’s official report, Mrs Levstein arrived at the hospital at 9.30 a.m. with clothing for her son. She was met by Sergeant Daly who ‘took her into the courtyard of the hospital and took the clothes from her, pointing out to her the window of the [ground floor] ward in which her son was accommodated’. He ‘subsequently allowed Mrs Levstein to stand in such a position as she could carry on a clandestine conversation with Zvorai [sic]’. Daly then ‘entered the detention ward and appeared to be busy with the other prisoner’.

  Yaacov Levstein’s account differs slightly. He says that he and his mother talked first. They were speaking in Russian and Daly ordered them to switch to Hebrew. Aware the policeman spoke this well, Levstein was careful not to say anything revealing. ‘Once he realized that he did not stand to gain anything from my mother’s visit, he motioned to her it was time to leave,’ he wrote. It was then that Svorai made his fatal intervention. Levstein claimed that ‘as my mother was about to leave Svorai turned to her and said in a clear voice: “Perhaps you can give my regards to my wife who lives at 8 Mizrahi B[et] Street.”’

  The effect on Daly was electric. He ‘lunged across the room as if bitten by a snake’, rushing to a telephone outside the door of the ward. Levstein recalls: ‘I fell back on my bed, my heart pounding violently. I knew something terrible was going to happen.’

  Svorai never denied the essentials of the story. In a conversation with Stern’s biographer, Ada Amichal-Yevin, he said that when Mrs Levstein appeared at the window he let Yaacov speak first and ‘then I asked her, did you see Tova? She told me no, she hadn’t as she didn’t know where she lives.’20 When Moshe was arrested Stern had been installed chez Svorai for four weeks. Everyone knew the arrangement was a bad one and the last thing he had heard was that plans were in hand for him to move to Jerusalem at the beginning of February. ‘I did not imagine that on 12 February he would still be in the apartment,’ he claimed. ‘So I said what I said – Mizrachi B 8.’

  In Geoffrey Morton’s official report, Daly heard Svorai give Mrs Levstein the address more precisely as ‘8 Mizrachi B Street – on the roof’. He also says that, rather than phoning, ‘he obtained a relief from Ajani Police Station [the nearest to the hospital] and came and reported the matter immediately to me’.

  When Daly reached CID headquarters with the information, Morton ‘immediately dispatched Inspector Wilkin and a party of CID personnel to visit the roof … following myself a few minutes later’. Normally he was the first to rush to the scene of any drama, but as he explained later, he was expecting an important call from Jerusalem. Despite the colourful circumstances in which it was obtained, the information was after all fairly slight. The ‘guest’ might turn out to be an innocent party. Or he might be worthy of police attention, but have already flown the coop. After a dozen years of police work Morton was well used to false alarms and dud tip-offs.

  So it was Wilkin who set off first, along with his assistant and friend Sergeant Bernard Stamp and other policemen. When Wilkin arrived at 8 Mizrachi Bet Street, Morton reported later, he immediately threw a cordon round the house to prevent anyone escaping. Then he and Stamp mounted the stairs to the little flat on the roof. Tova was reclining on the sofa where she would lie to ease the pain in her inflamed liver, when she heard a ‘light, delicate knock on the door. Yair got up from the quiet of his chair. His blue slippers with the soft soles did not make any noise. He went straight to the wardrobe and got in. I closed the door after him. Only then did I approach the outer door and open it.’21

  Standing there were ‘the red-haired English officer Wilkin’ and two other detectives. Tova appeared to have met Wilkin before – possibly during the raid on the flat in Keren Kayemet Street – for she was familiar with his ‘sweet-talking’ manner. According to her account he asked her: ‘Tova, why didn’t you come to see the injured Moshe?’ She ‘evaded an answer or gave a short reply’. Wilkin continued: ‘I’ve come to take clothes for Moshe. He’s moving today to the prison in Jerusalem.’

  Tova went into the living-room-cum-bedroom and fetched vests, pants and handkerchiefs from a drawer and took down Moshe’s suit hanging on the back of the door. She gave them to Wilkin who seemed in no hurry to leave. Instead, she said, he kept up his ‘smooth-tongued’ chat. ‘“Take my advice,” he said politely. “Persuade Moshe to give up his fight against the British. What good is it doing him? After all, he’s got a sick wife and a little girl. It’s time he took care of them because he’s never going to defeat the British.”’

  Tova was desperate not to prolong the encounter and said nothing. Her apparent serenity ruffled Wilkin for, she claimed, his ‘face became red with anger’ and he shouted ‘you are murderers, you are thieves, all of Stern’s people!’ He ended the tirade by promising that, like Zak and Avraham, they would all end up in Nahalat Yitzhak, the cemetery on the eastern edge of Tel Aviv. This provoked Tova into an outburst of her own. She ‘could no longer be silent and I said in a strong, confident voice: “Wilkin, listen to what I’m telling you. It will be my privilege to see all of you running away from our country.”’

  Now Wilkin decided it was time to search the flat. According to Tova there were more than two detectives in the party. One of them left to fetch more residents of the building, so as to have witnesses to back up the police if anyone tried to claim they were planting evidence or mistreating Tova. Wilkin sat down to examine the papers lying on the hall
table. Meanwhile, according to Morton’s report, the other detective – Bernard Stamp – started to work his way through the apartment, opening and shutting cupboard doors first in the kitchen, then in the bed-sitting room. By the end there was only one place left to investigate … the wardrobe in the corner.

  ‘When he opened the door,’ wrote Tova, ‘Yair couldn’t be seen at all. The closet was filled with suits, dresses and a coat. But then he reached in with his hand. Of course it came in contact with the body of Yair. He pulled him towards him.’

  Later, Morton could not disguise his satisfaction at the ignominious circumstances in which Stern had been discovered. ‘This tough gangleader, master-mind of terrorism, organiser of mass murder and assassinations by the dozen, arch-enemy of Britain and the war effort, this would be Quisling, had been found hiding in the wardrobe under the petticoats of his hostess,’ he wrote.22

  Tova claimed that as Stamp pulled Stern out he saw the policeman’s hand move to his hip pocket and she assumed he was going for his gun. ‘I sprang up … and stood between Yair and the detective,’ she wrote. ‘“Don’t shoot,” I said. “Or if you do, shoot me.”’23

  She had no reason to fear. Wilkin was in the room now and standing in front of Stern. He was ‘shaking his finger and saying “Avraham, Avraham” like a good father scolding his child.’ Stern stood ‘pale and quiet’ saying nothing, his nostrils quivering slightly. The detectives sat him down on the sofa. Stamp stood over him, holding his two wrists in one big hand and covering him with his pistol with the other. Another detective stood in the door, his gun drawn. Wilkin ordered Tova to sit next to Yair on the couch. He showed the neighbours one of the Stern ‘wanted’ portraits and referred to him as a ‘murderer’. This provoked further histrionics from Tova who urged them not to believe him. The frail figure sitting next to her was ‘a great Jew who loves his people and land’. Stern at last spoke. ‘Tova, it’s not worth replying to him,’ he said. Then he asked for his shoes, which were lying in a corner. She brought them over, ‘black shiny shoes’, and Stamp released his grip so that Stern could put them on. Tova noticed the clock on the sideboard next to the sofa. It read 9.40 a.m. Then there was a commotion and ‘at once the place was filled with English detectives, tall with light faces and hair. Their mood was exuberant …’ Geoffrey Morton had arrived.24

  The first thing Morton says he did on reaching the flat was to order ‘the removal of Mrs Svorai to CID headquarters’. A later report written by Alan Saunders for the benefit of the Chief Secretary claimed she was ‘hysterical and began tearing off her clothes’.25 Tova maintained that a policewoman took her into the kitchen and searched her. Then she changed her housecoat for a dress and was escorted down the stairs by two policemen. A small car stood alongside the kerb. She was surprised to see Wilkin standing next to it. Parked across the street was a van which she assumed was there to take Yair to the police station. The escorts ordered her to get into the car. She saw Wilkin gazing up towards the rooftop apartment which was hidden by the parapet of the building. Nonetheless she, too, pressed her face against the window and stared upwards.

  In that cramped flat Geoffrey Morton was looking for the first time on the face off the man he had been hunting for so long. The atmosphere in the room can only be imagined. From the door to the window set in the far wall the distance was twelve feet eleven inches. From side to side it measured just over twelve feet. In it were crammed a divan, a wardrobe and a sideboard. The tiny space was crowded with big British bodies. Morton and Stamp were both six feet tall and there was at least one other policeman present, all towering over the small figure hunched on the couch.

  The truth of what happened next would be endlessly disputed. For the next fifty-four years of his life, Geoffrey Morton would find himself again and again having to defend his version of events, fighting several legal actions to defend his honour when his account was contradicted. The basic story was told when he sat down the day after the event to compose his report for his superiors in Jerusalem. The document does not lie in any of the official archives but was discovered tucked away among the papers of Alec Stuart, which, after his death, Morton arranged to be placed in the Department of Documents at the Imperial War Museum, London.26 It is written in flat police language, devoid of drama or emotion. After Tova Svorai’s departure he wrote that he ‘instructed Stern to exchange his slippers for walking shoes’. (According to Tova he had already done this, though the detail does not seem important.)

  At the time ‘Stern was sitting on the edge of a settee and just as he finished lacing his shoes he took a leap towards the window opposite which he was sitting. He dived under the arm of No. 67. B/Con. Hancock, S.N., who was covering him with a revolver and passed behind Sgt Stamp who was examining the contents of the buffet [sideboard].’ Stern was ‘halfway out of the window when both Hancock and myself fired practically simultaneously’. He was hit immediately, ‘the first bullet catching him on the side of the head by the ear’. Then ‘he swung round and received other bullets as he fell one of which passed through his heart’. It seemed to Morton that ‘he died immediately’.27 From the back of the police car Tova heard the shots. She screamed to the people in the street: ‘Plainclothes police have murdered Yair Stern!’28

  When Alan Saunders came to write a long report on the evolution of the Stern case for Chief Secretary Macpherson, he described the killing in the same way that it had been presented to him by Morton in his initial account. Stern was ‘half-way out of the window when he was shot by two of the three policemen in the room, bullets entering the side of his head near the ear and the left side of his chest’. These two reports would form the basis of the official explanation of the shooting, to be repeated in press statements, internal documents and responses to parliamentary questions. It was summed up in a sentence that, by now, as Morton was the first to admit, was discredited: Stern had been shot while trying to escape.

  The detectives gathered up the papers scattered on Stern’s desk to take them away for translation. A journalist from the newspaper HaBoker who arrived on the scene reported seeing two plainclothes policemen, one of them a Jewish officer carrying the body down the stairs, covered in a grey sheet.29 It was put in an ambulance and taken to the Government Hospital in Jaffa.

  There was a procedure that had to be followed before Stern could be buried. Moshe Svorai and Yaacov Levstein were in bed in the detention ward waiting to be moved to prison when a Jewish detective called Yosef Brenner entered with another officer and told them they had a duty to perform. Brenner led Svorai to a room in the hospital where a body lay stretched out under a cover. Morton was waiting for them. The cover was pulled back to reveal the body of Avraham Stern. Svorai was asked if he recognized it. He replied that he did not. The process was repeated with Levstein. He, too, claimed he did not know the man.30

  That afternoon, at four o’clock, Stern’s wife, mother and brother gathered at an open graveside in the Nahalat Yitzhak cemetery. Roni had heard of her husband’s shooting on the radio. She travelled from her home at Ramat Hashavim about ten miles north of Tel Aviv to the apartment in the city where Stern’s brother, David, lived with their mother, Liza. David set off in search of more details, ‘hoping that Yair was only wounded and arrested’. He returned to find policemen in the flat, come to tell them that Avraham was dead. The body arrived at the cemetery in a car of the Chevra Kadisha religious burial society and was taken into a room for ritual purification. Then it was taken to the grave and lowered in. As David recited the Kaddish prayer for the dead, British police watched from a distance.31

  Before it left the hospital, a photograph was taken of the corpse. It shows the body stretched out on what looks like a concrete slab, on top of a blanket. The head rests on a metal plate. Three bullet-entry wounds are visible on Stern’s thin, narrow torso – one below his left shoulder blade, one over his heart and one in his left side. There appears to be another through his left ear. His thick hair falls back in waves and his cheeks are clean-sha
ven. His eyes are half shut – but they seem almost alive. His mouth is relaxed; you sense the beginning of a smile. He looks strangely contented.

  TWELVE

  ‘The Blood of Your Brethren Is Calling to You from the Grave’

  For a day or two after the shooting the official telegrams that whizzed incessantly between Jerusalem, Cairo and London purred with satisfaction at a job well done. When the news reached the Colonial Office in London, a senior official, Sir Stephen Luke, circulated a report in which he expressed the hope that the killings of Stern and his henchmen might serve ‘not only to stamp out the Stern group itself but also seriously to discourage terrorism of the type to which the group resorted’.1 One of the recipients scribbled a note in the margins of his report: ‘Most satisfactory’. Another crowed ‘the Stern gang has been liquidated’.

  Major-General Douglas McConnel, the army chief in Palestine, was equally delighted with the outcome. He informed the War Office that ‘within the short space of three weeks since the Schiff murder the untiring efforts of the police have resulted in practically the entire destruction of the brains of the gang …’2