Amos remembers his excitement that hot June night when the Altalena came into view near the Tel Aviv shore. He rushed to the beach in the morning and found an eager crowd already gathered to watch the unloading of the vessel. Eli had told him that Menachem Begin, the head of Irgun, had made an agreement with Ben-Gurion, the head of the new government of Israel, that twenty per cent of the weapons and ammunition were to be allocated to the fighters of Irgun so that Jerusalem could be saved.
As he stood watching the cargo being unloaded, he noticed two corvettes moving towards the Altalena. They stopped a short distance away and he wondered why vessels from the Israeli navy had suddenly appeared on the scene. He supposed they’d come to protect the Altalena. Suddenly he heard a burst of fire. It seemed to come from somewhere on the beach. He turned, trying to figure out where the explosion had come from, then he heard a blast of heavy machine-gun fire. It was unbelievable, but there was no doubting its target: it was aimed at the Altalena.
If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it. The gunfire came from the corvettes. There were shouts and screams from the crowd. People turned to each other in confusion at what they had just witnessed, debating what it could possibly mean. What was going on? Who could be responsible for such an outrageous action? Who had made such a shocking mistake? Heads would surely roll. But whose?
Amos stood there, frozen with shock. He watched as the Altalena started sailing towards the shore, but to his horror it was fired on again, and this time it returned fire. Boats crammed with passengers from the vessel were coming ashore, but suddenly gunfire exploded once again, and he heard himself yelling ‘Stop! Can’t you see, boats are coming ashore, the captain is on the bridge waving a white flag!’ Everyone was shouting, cursing, protesting, lightbulbs were exploding as newspaper cameramen took photographs, and a reporter who had appeared on the scene was scribbling notes in shorthand to his right. But the firing from the shore continued. Amos couldn’t swallow. His knuckles were white as he clutched the railing on the shore’s edge. A rumour went around the crowd that it was Palmach, the military wing of the government, that was firing on the Altalena. A fellow standing beside him said he thought the commander was someone called Yitzak Rabin. It was unthinkable, incomprehensible, but it was happening before his eyes. He only had one thought: Eli. He wasn’t on the boats that had landed on the Tel Aviv beach. Was he still on board?
But worse was to come. Smoke rose from the stricken ship, and someone shouted that a direct hit had caused a fire to break out in the cargo hold containing explosives. He could see men jumping off the vessel and starting to swim for the shore, but the firing continued as explosions erupted on board. Knowing Eli as he did, Amos was certain that he’d be one of the last to abandon ship, and he scanned the sea, squinting to catch sight of his brother, his eyes darting from one small figure in the water to another, searching for some familiar feature.
Eli was a good swimmer, he would definitely make it to shore. Any moment now he would emerge from the water. He could imagine how outraged his brother would be at the loss of the cargo that had been purchased at such great cost in the hope of relieving Jerusalem. Now the cargo that would have brought them victory was lost, and the holy city’s fate was sealed.
As he stood there, flames rose from the stricken vessel, and he heard more explosions. There would be no-one left on board now. But where was Eli? Panic-stricken, he ran from one group to another, asking about him. Had he made it to shore further away? Had Amos missed him? He brushed past the reporter who wanted to know who he was looking for. A young woman with springy reddish hair and a white nurse’s apron spattered with blood sat on the sand, her head in her hands, sobbing. ‘The bastards,’ she kept repeating. ‘The bastards. Our own people and they fired on us.’
A cold dread took hold of him. She had come ashore on one of the boats. He had to know. ‘Do you know Eli Alon? Do you know if he came on one of the boats or swam to shore?’
She looked at him as if she didn’t understand what he was saying, and he had to restrain himself from shaking her, to make her understand. ‘Eli,’ he began, ‘Eli Alon,’ but before he could say any more, the look in her eyes silenced him.
She stared at him with tears flowing down her cheeks, and shook her head. He knew then he would never see his brother again.
He also knew that he would never forgive the treachery of those who had fired on the Altalena. Most of all, he would never forgive Ben-Gurion, with his bushy white hair and deceptively avuncular manner, the leader of the newly established Jewish nation, who had made the decision to fire on his fellow Jews. That day on the beach in Tel Aviv, Amos made a promise to his brother that no matter how long it took, one day he would avenge him.
*
The warmth of the risen sun has dissolved the delicate wisps of colour, and the sky is its usual cloudless blue. The blessed silence of dawn is shattered by car horns, shouts and arguments. Somewhere from the direction of Jaffa, a muezzin calls the faithful to prayer. It was going to be another hot and noisy day.
Walking back to his office, Amos quickens his pace. He senses that the strange case that has so fortuitously come his way will finally provide him with the opportunity for revenge that he has been waiting for.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Tel Aviv, 2005
Annika is studying the woman in front of her, trying to imagine this diminutive grey-haired grandmother as a teenage terrorist.
‘But that’s what I was, according to the British and our Haganah leaders,’ Shula Stein says and laughs, throwing her head back so far that the wrinkles on her neck disappear. ‘You should have seen me in those days. I was seventeen when I joined Irgun, and I couldn’t wait to kick the British out of Palestine so we could set up our own homeland. Of course the boys in Irgun thought I was too young and too small to be any use, besides which I was just a girl, but when they saw that I could handle a gun, they started to take notice of me.’ She pauses and her eyes soften with nostalgia. ‘I remember it was a German Luger.’
Inside Shula’s cramped little apartment, every surface is covered with photographs, sketches, piles of china plates, heaps of newspapers, silver ornaments, and tiny pots of cactus. Annika listens enthralled as the past comes to life in this woman’s surprising story.
It was Dov who put her in touch with Shula. He called her the day after she had started reading the file on Amos Alon and the Miklós Nagy case in the Law Library. But before she could find out the lawyer’s connection to Miklós Nagy, the librarian told her that as it was Friday afternoon, they were about to close and would remain closed the following day, so she would have to wait until Sunday to continue reading.
Frustrated at another delay, she decided to spend the day strolling around Neve Tzedek, which the guidebook described as a charming part of old Tel Aviv that had been gentrified in recent years. Charm was not a word she would have associated with this noisy beachside city with its modern buildings and busy thoroughfares, which struck her as functional rather than aesthetic, so she was curious to explore an area that retained its original character.
She strolled along shady tree-lined streets, past studios and boutiques where artists, jewellers and fashion designers displayed quirky designs, and little galleries exhibited avantgarde paintings, statues and installations. The forecourt of the building that housed the dance company was decorated with brightly coloured parasols hanging upside down, and its walls were covered in murals depicting Israel’s history. The whole area had a bohemian atmosphere. A touch of Paddington in Tel Aviv.
At Ronit’s café on Shabhazi Street, she ordered stuffed zucchini and minced lamb with dried figs and apricots, and chatted with the owner, who wanted to know where she came from, how long she planned to stay, and what she thought of Tel Aviv. From her table on the upstairs verandah she looked down at a busker in torn jeans strumming Spanish tunes on his guitar; a large tabby draped over one shoulder like a striped shawl challenged passers-by with its unblinking g
reen gaze.
Lunch over, Annika stopped beside the unusual duo, patted the cat and asked its name. ‘Shnorer,’ the busker said. She flicked through her Hebrew-English dictionary and burst out laughing. It meant bludger.
‘That’s an amazing cat,’ she said, and put a few shekels into the cap on the pavement.
‘That’s nothing. You should hear him play the guitar,’ the busker retorted.
Still smiling, Annika strolled along the street, peering into the boutiques and galleries. Looking up, she saw a woman with hair the colour of fairy-floss tied with a big green bow arranging six rag dolls in various ballet poses on the railing of her tiny wrought-iron balcony. Catching Annika’s eye, the woman waved. ‘Come up! I won’t bite! Just have a look!’
At the top of a steep, narrow staircase, Annika stood in an atelier covered from floor to ceiling with rag dolls in tutus, caftans and angel wings, dolls lying on tables, propped against walls, and sitting on shelves. ‘I sell them to toy shops and puppet and marionette shows,’ the woman said. ‘Sometimes people walking past buy them for their kids. You got kids? No? So maybe you want to buy one for someone else’s children?’
‘I might buy one for myself,’ Annika said, and selected a miniature doll in a meringue-like Cinderella ball gown. ‘That’s me, waiting for Prince Charming.’
The woman tilted her head to one side, so that the bow brushed her shoulder, and gave her a slow, penetrating look. ‘Maybe you met him already and you don’t know it. It happens.’
Annika looked up and read the sign on the wall advertising ‘Tamar’s Tarot readings’. So the doll-maker was also a clairvoyant, but this time her prediction was way off the mark. ‘I don’t think so,’ she laughed. ‘No Prince Charming in my life.’
From the way Tamar was studying her, it looked as if she was keen to probe further into her love life, so Annika decided to change the subject.
‘This area is very different from the rest of Tel Aviv,’ she said.
‘You should have seen Neve Tzedek years ago, before they tore the old buildings down or fixed them up. My God, what a dump. Back then, no-one wanted to live here, and now no-one can afford to.’
It was while she was waiting for Tamar to wrap the doll, that Dov called. ‘You wanted to know about the Altalena,’ he said. ‘Would you like to meet an activist who was on board?’
That’s why at four o’clock that afternoon she is sitting inside Shula Stein’s apartment in Ben Yehuda Boulevard. Before she can sit down, Shula bustles around clearing away piles of magazines and books from the settee, apologising for the mess. ‘Housekeeping isn’t my forte,’ she says. ‘Life’s too short to dust furniture.’
Although Annika protests that she isn’t hungry, Shula insists on cutting her a slab of honey cake, demurring that she isn’t good at baking either. Having swallowed a mouthful, Annika suspects that Shula forgot to add the honey. After a polite attempt to eat it, she turns it into crumbs and pushes them around on the plate.
Shula isn’t offended. ‘I told you I couldn’t bake,’ she says cheerfully. Despite her age, which Annika calculates must be around seventy-six, she moves with the energy of a much younger woman. ‘I want to show you something,’ she says and, jumping up, takes a framed black-and-white photograph from the walnut sideboard.
It’s a photo of a young girl with springy hair and a wide smile, dressed in white. ‘That’s me at seventeen,’ Shula says proudly. ‘In my nurse’s uniform.’
Annika looks puzzled. ‘I thought you were a fighter.’
Shula laughs again, clearly relishing this opportunity to talk about her past. ‘I was nurse and fighter. Have you heard about the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem?’
Annika nods. She remembers reading about a gang of terrorists who blew up the hotel, killing British officers. Now that she thinks about it, perhaps she saw it in an old movie with Paul Newman.
‘I took part in that bombing,’ Shula says. Her tone is matter-of-fact, but she can’t suppress a note of pride.
Annika stares. So she really was a terrorist. What a story this would make for one of the Australian newspapers, an encounter with a former terrorist. She wishes she had her tape recorder. ‘I’d love to hear about it,’ she says.
Shula doesn’t need persuading. Sitting on the edge of her chair, she says, ‘It happened on July 22, in 1946. Irgun, the group I joined, made an incredibly daring plan to destroy the records the British kept in their headquarters in the hotel. They used those records to round our people up, but the trouble was, the hotel was practically impregnable.’
‘You were very young,’ Annika breaks in. ‘What did your parents think of you joining an underground military group?’
‘My parents practically disowned me as soon as they heard I’d joined Irgun. They were horrified, they threatened and cajoled, but nothing they said made me change my mind.’ She pauses. ‘What’s the word to describe something you know you have to do in life?’
‘A mission?’
‘That’s it, a mission. I felt it was my mission to do whatever I could to kick the British out. Anyway, this is what we did: ten of our men disguised as African servants carried big milk cans on their shoulders into the kitchen, but there wasn’t any milk inside, only explosives with a time fuse. I was the one that brought the bombs and ammunition and transferred the TNT into those milk churns. Anyway, when the British soldiers saw them, they got suspicious but luckily our guys managed to escape. Of course the milk churns got left behind with the explosives inside them.
‘Now, here’s something you probably never heard. Our leaders phoned British headquarters three times to warn them ahead about the explosion. The first warning said, Your hotel is mined and will be blown up in twenty minutes. Evacuate the building. There were three warning calls. I bet you never heard about that. Hardly anyone did.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because the Chief Colonial Secretary got on his high horse when he heard about the warning calls. He said: “I’m here to give the bloody Jews orders, not to take them.” He ordered his men to stay inside British headquarters and forbade anyone to leave, but luckily some officers did slip out. At exactly 12.30, twenty minutes after the first warning, the hotel blew apart like a house of cards. Ninety people were killed and dozens were injured, but we succeeded: those records were destroyed. Naturally the British condemned us as ruthless terrorists, but their Colonial Secretary never reported our warnings, or his arrogant response which caused the unnecessary deaths of all those officers.’
She falls silent and Annika’s mind is in too much turmoil to speak. It’s impossible to blot out the fact that this likeable old woman took part in a terrorist act, warnings or no warnings.
‘How did you feel when you found out that so many British officers had died because of what you did?’ she asks.
‘How did I feel? We were all elated. Listen, we were like David when he overcame Goliath. Of course I was sorry for the men who died, we never meant that to happen, that’s why we warned them ahead, but don’t forget, this was a struggle for independence. The British were against us, they oppressed us, sided with the Arabs and caused the deaths of so many of our people when they turned away our boats during the Holocaust.’
Shula sighs and looks down at her hands, which are veined and covered in brown spots, and Annika notices that her nails are short and unpainted. So different from her grandmother’s beautifully manicured and scarlet-polished nails.
This woman’s turbulent and idealistic youth, and her lack of concern with appearances, were such a contrast with Marika’s superficial values. She can imagine her grandmother shuddering at Shula’s messy apartment, her lipstick-free face, and terrorist past.
‘Have you heard the proverb about winning the battle and losing the war?’ Shula asks. ‘Well, even though Irgun won a victory in the King David Hotel, we lost the support of the other Israeli group, Haganah. They repudiated us, and treated us like enemies even though we succeeded where they had failed. They eve
n turned our fighters over to the British. But what happened two years later was even worse. It was horrible. Unimaginable.’
Annika looks up. ‘The Altalena. How did you come to be involved in that?’
‘I’ll tell you all about it but first let’s have some tea.’ Shula bustles about in her tiny kitchen and Annika hears dishes clattering, pots banging, a series of drawers slamming, and a kettle whistling. A few minutes later Shula comes back with unmatched mugs of steaming black tea. She sits back, both hands around her mug.
‘It feels as if it happened yesterday, but at the same time, it’s as if it happened in another lifetime, to someone else. Did you know that the Altalena was a troop and cargo carrier that had taken part in the D-Day invasion? It was due to arrive in Tel Aviv but it anchored off the coast of Kfar Vitkin instead. At the time, we couldn’t understand why its destination had changed, but it turned out that Ben-Gurion had given that order.’
She pauses for dramatic effect. ‘Later we discovered that it was a trap. Anyway, the passengers disembarked, and I boarded the ship, along with other Irgun members, to help with the unloading. But we’d only unloaded part of the weapons and ammunition when we were fired on without any warning. The captain decided to sail out to the open sea but before he could get very far, two navy corvettes fired on the Altalena with heavy machine guns.
‘You can’t imagine the confusion and shock we felt. No-one could understand what was going on, why Israeli guns were firing on a ship that was bringing guns and ammunition to supply the army at a time of war. But I didn’t have time to think about it. I had my hands full trying to help the wounded. Beside me, one of our guys fell onto the deck. Blood was spurting from an artery in his neck, and the poor fellow died before I could stop the bleeding. I was running from one injured fighter to another trying to give them first aid, but five of our comrades died.
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