Mirage
Page 3
The older man grinned. ‘A mangled foot and you lost a lot of blood. The surgeon says you’ll be okay but you’ll have to give the foot a month or so.’
Daniel became aware of the dead weight of a plaster cast that was pinning his left foot to the bed. He nodded and closed his eyes as the memories flooded back like opened sluice gates. The image of the mutilated sailor was always there - floating on the surface of his reason like a bloated, decomposing carcass. ‘What happened to my Mirage?’
‘Burnt out.’
A corner of Daniel’s mind replayed the fireball as the Mirage’s fuel caught fire. He nodded. ‘I tried to save it.’
‘The war’s over,’ said Emil shortly.
Daniel looked surprised. ‘Over? How long have I been in here then?’
Emil chuckled richly. ‘A day. The war lasted six days.’ Suddenly his grey eyes were alight and shining. ‘You’ve done it, Daniel! You and men and women like you have done the impossible! Sinai right up to the canal is ours! The Heights of Golan are ours! The West Bank and the entire old city! It’s the most stupendous victory in our history.’
‘And the Western Wall?’
‘Oh yes. The Wailing Wall was the last to be captured. That was the day before yesterday. It’s now ours. That’s something the United Nations will never make us give up.’
Daniel nodded. He had been too involved in the lightning war to know what was happening. He had little time for religion but he was delighted that his fellow Jews would now have the right of access to the foundations of the Temple which had been denied to them since its seizure by the Arabs during the War of Independence. ‘Where’s mother?’
‘Back home. She’s coming to see you this afternoon. She sends her love.’
‘What about the ship?’
‘Ship?’ Emil frowned. ‘What ship?’
‘The Egyptian ship we were sent to attack. Except she wasn’t Egypt—’
‘I don’t think you should be discussing this with me, Daniel.’ Daniel closed his eyes. ‘I think you know more about what’s going on than most people, dad. There was a spy ship we attacked off Gaza—’
The sudden hard edge that Daniel knew from his childhood entered his father’s voice. ‘This is not something I should know about. Discuss it with your commanding officer - not me.’
‘Okay ... okay .... So what did you do during the war, dad?’ ‘Oh,’ said Emil lightly, refusing to rise to the sarcastic edge in his son’s voice, ‘I took on the
massed battalions of our politicians and civil servants and defeated them single-handed with a devastating barrage of paperclips.’
Daniel smiled. It was the sort of flippancy he was used to from his father when
questioned about his work. In truth, he had no idea what his father’s job was but he suspected that his father’s reticence was due to his sensitivity about a deskbound job in Tel Aviv when his colleagues had active service commands. Perhaps that was why he rarely wore his uniform.
‘Where am I, dad? What is this place?’
‘The Rothschild Hospital, Haifa. There’s a magnificent view across the bay from the gardens.’
‘This is a private room?’
‘That’s right. Nothing but the best for my Daniel. Most of the nurses are out in
the field hospitals which is why the good sisters are helping out.’
‘Didn’t it occur to you that I might prefer to be in a military hospital?’
Emil laughed and gave Daniel a playful jab on the chin. ‘So you can go chasing
nurses with that ankle of yours? Anyway, you should see the conditions in them. Beds crammed together in the corridors and no air-conditioning.’
Daniel felt too weak to argue. Besides - he rarely won arguments with his father. ‘How bad’s the foot. Will I be okay to fly again?’
‘I don’t suppose the ChelHa’Avir are going to allow a steel pin to come between
them and a trained pilot. Even if he did break a Mirage.’
Sister Veronica came bustling cheerfully into the room. ‘Sorry, Mr Kalen. I’ve got
to throw you out now.’
Emil listened attentively to the nun outlining the care that Daniel was going to need as they strolled along the corridor. ‘A tremendous improvement since you saw him yesterday, Mr Kalen. I expect the surgeon told you that there’s going to be no sensation in his sole and heel. He’ll have to learn to walk as if his foot’s gone to sleep but he will. The young are so adaptable.’
‘But there’ll still be pain?’
‘Bound to be for several weeks. A permanent limp is a possibility, of course.’
Emil nodded. ‘Better that than losing the foot.’
‘It would help if he was allowed to see his girl friend. Or don’t you approve of her?’
Emil frowned and tried to think which one of Daniel’s current circle he disapproved of. ‘I don’t understand you, sister.’
Sister Veronica’s cheek dimpled. ‘Forgive me, Mr Kalen. I’m being nosey. Just before Daniel came to he kept mumbling something about her being an American. I got the impression that someone doesn’t approve of her.’
Emil gave an easy laugh. ‘I’d like my son to marry an Israeli girl,’ he replied.
In the hospital car park, Emil opened all the doors of his nondescript Ford Corsair and allowed the interior to cool before sliding behind the wheel. He was entitled to a driver and a staff car but that would have drawn attention to himself. In any case he disliked the idea of having a driver to himself when the IDF needed every man and woman it could lay its hands on. Emil was one of those rare individuals who had little need of obvious privileges to prop up his ego, which was one of many reasons why the Prime Minister, Levi Eshkol, had appointed him Memuneh - a term known to very few in the Israeli hierarchy.
Major-General Emil Kalen was one of the most powerful and influential men in the tiny, beleaguered State of Israel. He was the head of Mossad - the Israeli secret service: the organization that from its beginnings as Mossad le-Aliyah Bet - a small unit that screened would-be Jewish immigrants before smuggling them into Palestine during the grim days of the British Mandate - had grown into a much-feared and respected organization that had carried out a series of spectacular international espionage coups such as the kidnapping from South America and bringing to justice of Adolf Eichmann. An earlier triumph in 1956, and one that had taken the CIA and MI6 by surprise and caused them to start taking Mossad seriously, was when Israel had obtained an advance copy of Khrushchev’s astonishing speech to the Soviet Communist Party Congress in which the Russian leader had denounced Stalin. A succession of brilliant Memuneh had culminated in the appointment of Emil Kalen. He was no less brilliant than his predecessors, but he was very different.
For a start he had arrived in Israel nineteen years previously in the company of a band of armed revolutionaries who were determined to overthrow David Ben Gurion and the fledgling State of Israel.
5
MARSEILLES June 1948
It was a hot, humid Saturday night and even hotter in the packed cellar of the candlelit waterfront bistro on the Quai de Rive Neuve where over two hundred members of the Irgun Zevai Leumi (National Military Organization) had crowded to hear their leader speak. It was the third such rally Emil had attended that week. A host of late-comers squeezing themselves in had forced him to the back of the windowless room where he could no longer see the blonde translator who was the real reason for his interest in the Irgun.
‘Ben Gurion’s so-called peace treaty with the Arabs,’ the speaker was proclaiming in good English, ‘is to spit on the graves of all those Jews who have given their lives to see the founding of Israel become a reality.’
There was a buzz of agreement in a variety of languages from the gathering. Emil caught a glimpse of blonde hair. His heart quickened and he began pushing his way through the horde of bearded, sweaty toughs who looked a pretty frightening lot even by the standards of the grimy back streets and scruffy bistros of Marseilles.
The speaker waited until the sporadic applause had died away. Cursing his slight build, Emil managed to work his way to within earshot of the blonde. She was translating the speaker’s words into French for the benefit of a group of wide-eyed youngsters who looked barely out of their teens. She was a tall, angular girl with exquisitely chiselled aristocratic features. Her expression was taut with concentration. She talked quickly - sometimes racing ahead of the speaker and giving a brief smile of embarrassment when she had to correct herself. She wore a cheap cotton dress with additional gores worked skilfully into the skirt in imitation of Christian Dior’s new A-line. Her fair hair dropped straight down her back in a single gathered hank in the manner of the American ‘pony tail’. As on the two previous occasions when he had managed to get near her, Emil realized that she was older than she looked. He guessed she was about twenty-seven - perhaps even thirty. It was difficult to tell. Certainly she was far from Emil’s idea of a revolutionary - especially a Jewish revolutionary. Nevertheless he was utterly captivated by her. The girl realized that she was being stared at and coolly returned Emil’s gaze, forcing him to return his attention to the speaker. Undeterred, he managed to shuffle his way through the crowd until he was standing beside the girl. She ignored him at first and continued her whispered translation.
The man addressing the crowd was even shorter than Emil - a diminutive, studious young man who would have looked more at home addressing a class of schoolboys rather than a motley crowd of would-be revolutionaries. And like a schoolmaster, he had a habit of occasionally glaring around - on the lookout for listeners who were paying less than rapt attention. Emil guessed that he was not overendowed with a sense of humour.
His speech appeared to be impromptu for he spoke without notes. Nor did he thump the table before him or use gestures to drive home his points. Instead he kept his hands firmly in his jacket pockets with the thumbs hooked on the outside which, in a curious way, tended to add to his authority and undoubted sincerity. He spoke quietly; the only theatricals he employed were occasional pauses to allow his words to sink in. Menachem Begin had the makings of a politician of consummate skill: he judged well a European audience that had had its fill of tub-thumping ranters.
‘The rabbis told us not to fight back when the Arabs attacked our settlements,’ said Begin mildly. ‘Jews do not bear arms, they said. And we listened to them ... heeded them .... And we died in our thousands! ... We listened to the United Nations when they told us that the British would protect us ... and the British machine-gunned us on the beaches of our promised land .... And we died in our thousands! Now we are nearing the end of a decade in which we did not lift a hand to the most evil aggressor the world has ever known .... And we died in our millions!'
The girl joined in the enthusiastic cheering. What about Warsaw? Emil wondered. He expected some heckling from the Poles in the audience but none came.
‘And now, my friends,’ Begin continued, raising a languid hand for silence, ‘I tell you that the time for listening to those who have betrayed us is over. Now is the time for us to listen to our hearts. And what do our hearts tell us? They tell us to fight! To fight with a terrible tenacity so that our enemies know that they can always expect the most terrible vengeance if they lift their hands to us again. We fight! And we keep on fightingl Not to our death - not this time ~ but to theirs!'
The last sentences of Begin’s speech were drowned by a sustained roar of cheering, applause and wild feet stamping. This time Begin permitted himself a theatrical gesture: he seized a rifle and held it aloft in one hand. ‘Thus so!’ he bellowed above the uproar.
The meeting was over. The crowd emptied noisily out of the humid cellar and dispersed thankfully into the open-air bars and restaurants that lined the waterfront. Fishermen working on their jostling boats in the congested harbour ignored the sudden uproar. Emil checked that his bicycle and camping gear were still padlocked to a nearby lamppost before sitting at an empty table and ordering coffee - he disliked all alcoholic drinks. The rich smell of bouillabaisse - the local fish soup - wafted from neighbouring tables as dour-expressioned brawny waitresses dumped steaming tureens before their laughing, unruly customers. Emil studied the revellers with interest. Despite the logic behind Begin’s stirring speech it was incomprehensible to him that fellow Jews, after all they had suffered, should already be advocating, and probably planning, the armed overthrow of David Ben Gurion’s new State of Israel.
He read carefully through yet another leaflet that had been handed out at the beginning of the meeting. The Irgun’s apparent long-term aims were a political alliance with the Palmach - the crack strike arm of the Haganah. Until Israel’s independence the previous month, the Haganah had been an illegal organization of clandestinely equipped Jews fighting a guerrilla war against the Arabs and, more recently, the British. Now the Haganah were the legal army of Israel but the Palmach were a problem: for years they had lived and worked in the kibbutz - farm labourers one day, soldiers the next. They were imbued with David Ben Gurion’s concept of an army so fully integrated with the community it was defending that it was impossible to draw a distinct line between the military and civilian populace. Ben Gurion had always argued that a man or woman who has worked the soil will fight that much harder for it. He was right: Arab terrorists and fedayeen commando units infiltrating from Jordan, Syria and Lebanon soon learned the penalties of attacking those kibbutz where a Palmachi unit was established. Putting into practice the training of a British army officer - Orde Wingate - Palmachi soldiers would relentlessly pursue the terrorists for days if necessary, tracking them across borders to their villages, and even into their bedrooms where they would exact the most fearful and bloody revenge. On one occasion a Palmachi unit attacked a Syrian village and butchered all the males old enough to grow beards, having first forced them to watch the mass rape of their womenfolk. The younger males they castrated - the Palmach commander carrying back the trophies of the gruesome operation in a Callard and Bowser butterscotch jar.
And now the government of Israel was finding the existence of the Palmach an embarrassment and wanted to absorb it into the newly- formed regular army - the Zahal.
Emil was lost in thought for some moments. He knew from bitter, first-hand experience how political reversals could turn the heroes of yesterday who helped achieve such reversals into the nuisances of today. His train of thought returned to the blonde girl at the meeting. His original purpose in cycling to Marseilles had been to buy a passage on one the cargo ships that offered passages to Haifa. Seeing the girl had changed all that. For once Emil was at a loss. He realized that he had no clear idea of what he wanted to do other than that he wanted to see more of the girl.
He was startled by a shadow falling across him. He looked and swallowed. It was the girl. She was carrying his order. She sat uninvited in an empty chair.
‘With the compliments of the owner,’ she said, setting a brimming cup in front of Emil. ‘Nothing’s been added because I know you don’t like liquor.’
‘How do you know?’ Emil asked, his relaxed broad grin hiding his concern. His ears had not detected her approach: he was getting slow.
‘Easy,’ said the girl. ‘This is your third visit to an Irgun rally. Afterwards you’ve always ordered coffee.’
Emil’s grin broadened. ‘It’s all I can afford,’ he said cheerfully. The girl’s presence did not impair his acting ability, but he was so devastated by the fact that she was actually talking to him that he failed to sense right away that she was playing with him. ‘What else do you know about me?’
> The girl traced the tablecloth’s gingham pattern with her forefinger. Emil saw that her hands were hard and calloused. Grime was ingrained into the cracks in the skin. They were hands that knew hard, physical labour.
‘We know that your full name is Emil Joannes Kalen,’ said the girl, speaking slowly. ‘That you’re twenty-seven. That you’re Dutch. That you come from Eindhoven. Correct?’ She looked into his grey eyes and saw a cold inner strength that belied the lazy grin.
Emil gave an unconcerned shrug. That much the Irgun could have learned easily enough from the manager of the camping site who was holding his passport.
‘We also know that you were one of Philips’ best draughtsmen, therefore the Germans allowed you stay in the Philips’ drawing office .... Your parents weren’t so lucky.’
Emil chuckled. It was the same story he had told the camping site manager. The story was the truth; by relating it, the girl had unwittingly disclosed the source of her information.
‘You think that is so amusing?’ the girl queried.
‘No,’ said Emil seriously. ‘But when you’ve lived under several years of German occupation, you learn not to let your face speak your thoughts. My smiles have kept me out of more trouble than they got me into.’
‘You collaborated with the Germans?’ Her probing stare was answered with a bland, uninformative smile but she was for a moment disconcerted by the hard light in the grey eyes.
‘Hardly,’ said Emil quietly.
‘Were you in the resistance?’
Sensing trouble, Emil nodded.
‘You can use a gun?’
‘I can learn.’
‘Why are you in France?’
‘I thought you knew all about me?’
‘Not everything.’
‘I’m staying at a camping site near here,’ said Emil easily. ‘I cycled here from home. My first holiday since before the war. There’s a ship calling in a few days that’s going on to Haifa. I’d like to spend a few days in Israel.’