“Or you could have taken a few pennies from your own money!”
Brodsky looked at him coldly.
“The only money I have is the money you gave back to me. The rest went to Wolf for any expenses he might need when he left Felsdorf with the group. And we don’t need to spend money when we can walk.”
“I know. God gave us feet,” Grossman subsided into a disgruntled silence for a moment and then exploded again. “One night! One night! I stay one night and then I’m heading north!”
“You can head north right now,” Brodsky said shortly. He was tired and in no mood for Grossman’s temperamental outbursts. “Right now you’re going in the wrong direction. North is the other way.”
“One night,” Grossman said direly, threateningly, and fell silent.
The Corso Italia seemed endless; the climb up the Via Felice Cavalotti from the Piazza Nettune to the Via Caprera was brutal. They paused at the top, the square they assumed to be the Piazza Sturla visible to their right, their hearts pumping, their leg muscles trembling, and caught their breath. Below them the sea stretched endlessly to a hazy horizon, a stainless-steel sheet under the glaring sun; to the southeast they could see tiny docks in the far distance, and boats of various sizes tied up at them. Nervi was in that direction, Brodsky knew from studying maps at Felsdorf; possibly the Naomi was there, might even be one of them. The thought put strength in his legs; he started off again, walking rapidly. God! If he had come this far only to miss the boat by a few hours! Grossman came limping after, cursing under his breath.
The Via Sclopis rose at a steep angle from the Piazza Sturla, the tall stone and stucco houses climbing one above the other as if each were attempting to brace itself against the mountainside and obtain a better view than its lower neighbor. The two men came to the address they wanted, and slipped off their knapsacks gratefully, wiping the sweat from their faces. The street was deserted, its cobbled pavement hot under the afternoon sun that reflected itself from the pastel plaster and the shaded windows of the houses. Possibly everyone was having a siesta, Brodsky thought, and drew back the bell pull set in the center of the heavy door. There was a faint tinkle, muffled by the door’s bulk; then a window shade was pulled to one side enough to allow a cautious eye to examine them carefully. A moment later Morris Wolf had opened the door and was pulling them hurriedly inside. He grinned at the two men broadly, the grimace twisting his scarred face into a macabre distortion. He reached up, patting Brodsky on the back, nodding at Grossman.
“You made it!”
“And you’re still here,” Brodsky said with profound relief. He hadn’t realized how tense he had been. “I was afraid I’d get here too late and miss you.”
Wolf’s grin disappeared abruptly. He shook his head.
“Come upstairs and we’ll talk about it.”
The three men climbed the narrow steps one at a time to the next floor. A door at the end of a passage opened and the scowling face of an old woman in black, heavily mustached, glared at them a moment before the door was slammed shut. Brodsky looked at Wolf inquiringly.
“Our charming hostess,” Wolf said in explanation. “She hates our guts. Not anti-Semitic, I think, or at least not only anti-Semitic. She’s just anti-people. But her husband keeps her in line, or at least has so far. He likes money. Fortunately,” he added, “the old lady doesn’t know where the boat is, just that it’s somewhere south of here. Well, so is Naples.”
He opened a door and ushered them into a large room with cots and sleeping bags scattered about, although at the moment the only occupant of the room was a husky man sitting at a desk in one comer, writing something. He looked up as the door opened and then came to his feet, smiling broadly, his hand outstretched.
“Max!”
“Davi!” He turned to Grossman. “Davi Ben-Levi of the Mossad. You missed him at Belsen and at Felsdorf. Ben Grossman.”
“I’ve heard of Ben Grossman,” Ben-Levi said, and shook hands. “So you’ve changed your mind?”
“No,” Grossman said shortly. “I’ll be going to Switzerland tomorrow. I’m just staying for the night.”
“However,” Brodsky said quickly, “I’ll be going to Palestine with you.”
Ben-Levi sat down on one of the cots. “If any of us go,” he said somberly.
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve got trouble,” Ben-Levi said, and then paused as if trying to calculate exactly where to start. He took a deep breath and began. “To start with, the British have patrols all over this area, foot patrols on shore, patrols out to sea. Anything that looks like a ship capable of heading for, or reaching, Palestine is checked out thoroughly. They also have all the Italian carabiniere—the police—checking constantly as well. The carabiniere are afraid not to; a lot of them were fascisti and the British are capable of putting on some vicious pressure. And they also offer bounties that not only interest the police but people, too. So it isn’t easy. If anyone thinks a ship looks the least bit suspicious, they search it. If they find the slightest thing that even smells of an attempt to reach Palestine, the ship is interned and the crew is given a hard time. If they aren’t put in jail, they stand a good chance of being put in an internee camp if they aren’t Italian. So it’s been almost impossible to get Italian captains or crews; we’ve had to depend on our own people, and they are not experienced sailors.”
Brodsky frowned. “It’s been that way for some time,” he said slowly. “We’ve always known the British aren’t going to let us get to Palestine if they can help it.” He had put his knapsack to one side and was sitting opposite Ben-Levi.
“Yes, we’ve always known that. So this time we got together and figured out a way to fool them. The boat we have was originally a fishing boat, a trawler, so every day we would take it out and fish. Our captain is an Italian Jew dead set on getting to Palestine; he’s had a lot of experience in ships. Unfortunately, he’s about the only one. We also have two or three others who speak enough Italian to get by if we’re ever hailed; I’m one of them. Sometimes we’d take the boat out in the daytime, sometimes at night, whenever the fish are running, which is the way the fishing boats do around here. And while we were trawling, we had men inside working on putting up bunks where people could sleep, building toilets, putting in a small kitchen for cooking, a small dispensary. And after our day’s—or night’s—fishing, we’d come back to the dock and take ashore our catch—”
“You actually fished?”
“Of course.” Ben-Levi smiled briefly. “It’s been the mainstay of our food, and we’ve also sold quite a lot. The old man here handled it for us.” His smile faded. “We figured the British would get used to our going out and coming in at all hours, our unloading fish and stretching our nets, and eventually they’d pay no attention to us.”
“And it didn’t work out?”
“It worked out fine. It worked out just the way we figured. We also thought if we tried to bring all our people from the camp and from the safe-houses at one time—most of them have been at an Allied camp outside of Rapallo like Felsdorf, except the British treated the camp as a concentration camp, not like the Americans at Felsdorf—the British would become suspicious and figure something was up. And search every boat in the area. So over three weeks ago we began bringing our people out, three or four at a time, putting them up here for a day, some in other houses, getting them on board one at a time at night—”
“Three weeks ago?”
Ben-Levi nodded somberly.
“That’s right. Some people have been living on that boat for over three weeks …”
“But, how—?”
Ben-Levi took a deep breath and went on.
“We picked the strongest, of course, or those with any carpentry ability, because they were the ones who finished the bunks and the kitchen and everything else. They’d take turns coming up on deck when we were out of sight of land, or when we couldn’t see any other ship. But when we got back to port they had to stay below, keeping qui
et, not showing a light or making a sound …”
“Three weeks?”
“Yes. Some have been on board that long, some a few days less, some two weeks or more. And lately we’ve been bringing the women and children aboard. We thought we were ready to sail. The morale is getting low …”
Brodsky frowned. “How many people are on board right now?”
“About two hundred …”
“And why haven’t you sailed?”
“We’ve been in port two days, all set,” Wolf said bitterly, cutting in. “We have trouble with our engine, and our engineer is sick in the hospital. And nobody else knows a damn thing about the engine. Jews! If we needed accountants, we could float the ship to Palestine on balance sheets!”
“And we don’t dare bring in an outsider,” Ben-Levi said. “We can’t get out to sea to air the place out, or to dump our waste, or even to cook a decent meal. We have no electricity—the batteries ran down. We don’t even have a fan—it’s like an oven in there. It’s only a matter of time before the British begin to get suspicious and check out this ship that never sails, or never repairs its engine. Or until they even begin to smell us. Or,” he added bitterly, “until we have to bring some of the children out and get them into a hospital!”
“Where’s your captain?”
“At the hospital with our engineer right now. He’s all right at sea, but he isn’t an engineer. He sees to our supplies, which keeps him busy. He comes back to the boat every night.”
Brodsky frowned at the floor for several minutes while everyone waited for his opinion. He looked over at Grossman. “Ben, do you know anything about engines? Marine engines?”
Grossman hurriedly held up a hand.
“No! No! I’m not getting involved in this! Tomorrow I’m leaving for Switzerland. You and your boats and your Palestine and Zionism have nothing to do with me!” He looked aggrieved. “I’ve said that often enough, you know that.”
“I know,” Brodsky said quietly, “but you can’t get to Switzerland without money. You pretend to think you can, but we both know better. There are no free rides in Italy just by wearing a little cap with a few stripes on it. No free meals. No friendly truck drivers. The British are here in force, and you can’t speak either Italian or English. How far do you think you’d get? If you could have jumped the train in Bolzano or Trento, you couldn’t have made it. Make it from Genoa? Don’t make me laugh!”
Grossman felt himself get hot. “I—”
“You won’t get a mile out of this town without being picked up by the British or the Italians and deported back to Germany. Or put in a detainee camp. Look at you! Without me, you’d still be in Germany! You can’t even beg for food; you don’t know the words!”
“A truck driver gives you a lift and asks where you’re going,” Wolf said, getting into the act. “You think he’s offering you something to eat and you say ‘Salami.’ He takes you to Bologna.”
“Ben,” Brodsky said with finality, “without money you just can’t make it.” He slapped his forehead. “Why are you so stubborn?”
“I can get by,” Grossman said, but he didn’t sound so confident.
“‘By’ is right,” Wolf said. “You went by Switzerland once, you’ll go by it again.” He personally considered Grossman a shit to want money to help the Mossad, but he knew this was not the time to mention the fact.
Grossman considered, then looked up. “How much money?”
Brodsky looked at Davi Ben-Levi.
“Fifty American dollars,” Ben-Levi said without hesitation. “And a ride out of Genoa on a truck, as far as Tortona. That will get you well on your way. You can catch a train or a bus north with that much money, and have plenty left over.”
“What if I can’t fix the engine?”
Again Ben-Levi didn’t hesitate. “You’ll still get the fifty dollars, just for trying.”
Wolf looked irked; there was no expression at all on Brodsky’s face.
“And the ride to Tortona?”
“And the ride to Tortona.”
“What have I got to lose?”
“Nothing,” Wolf said bitterly. Only my respect, he added to himself, and you lost that a long time ago!
Grossman and Brodsky changed to outfits Ben-Levi had, similar to the ones he and Wolf were wearing. They were the clothing of fishermen, worn trousers stuffed into the tops of rubber boots, heavy sweaters that itched uncomfortably in the heat, and knitted caps that were greasy and smelled of fish. All the clothes smelled of fish, for that matter. An old man, summoned from the back of the house where he could be heard in altercation with his wife, disappeared with a toothless smile to reappear a few minutes later before the house, at the wheel of an ancient Chevrolet stake-body half-ton truck. The truck also stank of fish. The truck waited while they climbed in, shaking itself from side to side with ague. If this was the truck that was to take him to Tortona, Grossman thought, he would have to rebuild it in all probability to get them out of town.
The old man put it in neutral and let the truck coast down the steep Via Sclopis, gathering speed. It shot across the Piazza Sturla, narrowly missing an omnibus, two trucks, a wagon selling tortoni Napolitano, and a group of schoolchildren who scattered screaming before his wheels. He steered the truck into the Via Dei Mille without any visible concern and let it continue to coast at breakneck speed to the bottom and across into the Via Cinque Maggio, swinging the wheel negligently around a slower vehicle here and there, applying the accelerator only when his speed had diminished slightly on the level oceanside road. He turned and grinned at the men in the open stake body, speaking through what had once been an isinglass window of the cab but was now open space.
“Buono, no? Combustible costoso …”
It occurred to Grossman that for a few extra dollars the old man might be willing to take him all the way to Lago Maggiore; or he might agree to the trip for a motor tune-up, something the old truck could stand. Things were looking up once more! What was Brodsky always saying about his God? Well, it seemed his God had broken down their engine to help him, not the Jews. The thought made him smile and he stared out at the level sea, preferring its view to watching the traffic scatter as the old man bravely wound his way through it as fast as he could, the engine coughing and sputtering. There was no sign that the vehicle had any brakes at all, or at least the old man never applied them.
The truck coasted to a stop a bit off the road at a point where the coastal highway came closest to the cliffs leading precipitously down to the Portoccilio, the small port of Nervi. The old man remained behind to guard his truck against vandals or thieves while the four men climbed down the steep flight of rickety steps that led to the narrow shingle beach and the small pier below. There was only one ship there, which Grossman had to assume was the Naomi. He stared in disbelief. Two hundred people on that? The ship was no more than sixty or seventy feet long with a beam of less than fifteen feet, an old trawler with the general air of failure, with flaking paint, an ensign drooping in disgrace, and laying so low in the water that it appeared to be sinking in place. Grossman calculated quite correctly that it was not its load that made it so precariously low, but the fact that its bilge pumps were not working, or were not capable of containing the leakage if they were. The ship carried a small deckhouse forward, with a rooftop that may have once served as a flying bridge in better days, but whose railing had long since succumbed to high waves or rolling seas. On either side of the engine well that lay between splintered coamings aft of the deckhouse, davits angled out for securing the trawls. A narrow companionway led below from the confined space between the engine well and the deckhouse. The entire ship smelled of age and disaster.
The odor struck them as they climbed the narrow gangplank and stepped on deck. Any doubts Grossman had had about the capacity of the ship were dispelled; it had to take at least two hundred people to produce that stench. He tried to hold his breath as he walked to the engine well and looked down. The hatch had been removed and n
ow leaned against the ship’s rail. He stepped down into the well; here at least the odor of diesel fuel overpowered the smell from below decks.
He bent over the engine, studying it. There was a sudden wail from below decks, brought from an open porthole, instantly muffled. He could imagine the heat below, and the discomfort; but that was no problem of his. Wolf and Brodsky had disappeared below. Above him Davi Ben-Levi waited and watched.
“Well, what do you think?”
“I don’t know. Let me look a minute, will you?”
The engine was a four-stroke single-acting cross-head design, going back, he calculated, to the time of the First World War or earlier. Still, someone had given it rather decent care. The engine itself was spotless, the side rods shone, there was no puddle of lubrication oil in the well to expose either poor packing or sloppy consideration for the engine, the bearings holding the eccentrics to the crankshaft were snug and looked as if they had only recently been babbitted. He pressed the eccentrics back and forth, noting the solid feel as they refused to give. He looked up.
“Externally it seems all right. Exactly what seems to be the trouble?”
Ben-Levi shrugged. “It doesn’t start.”
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean. I’m telling you—you throw the lever over to start it and nothing happens. Mr. Grossman,” Ben-Levi said, “if we knew what the trouble was, we’d be halfway to Palestine by now.”
Which I doubt in this piece of junk, Grossman thought sourly, and bent back into the engine well again. He found the air line that fed the caps of the cylinders and began to trace it. It disappeared from the well, running under the deck planking in the general direction of the small cabin. He came to his feet and investigated. Inside the deck housing was an air receiver and off to one side an air compressor. The gauge on the receiver read zero. He walked to the bank of storage batteries and read the instruments, shaking his head at the ignorance of this bunch of amateurs who hoped to get to Palestine on this wreck of a ship; in his opinion they should not have been allowed to take a rowboat out on the Nekkar. He walked back to BenLevi, shaking his head.
Pursuit Page 18
