by Alan Gold
Shalman wanted to kill. He had every reason to kill. But something inside weighed him down and slowed his response. And it was in this delay that Shalman heard a series of short, deadened pops in bursts of three. With his eye still down the barrel he saw the bodies of the men twitch like puppets whose strings were being pulled by some monstrous kid, and begin to fall to the ground. First to fall was the one that he had in his gun sights and who he was yet to shoot. His gaze and his rifle sight shifted to one of the other men but even before his eyes focused, he saw that man, too, stumble forward in the instant of the metallic bullet pops. He shifted his gun sight immediately to the third man and found him already face-down in the alley.
Amazed, he scanned the three bodies again. They were all splayed like animal carcasses on the ground or against a wall; two were still twitching, while one lay still. Shalman hadn’t even had time to squeeze his trigger, and Judit had shot each and every one.
He turned to face her, but she was still looking down the barrel of her gun. She squeezed the trigger once more and fired into the body of a soldier on the ground and then the other two a second time each.
She turned to look at Shalman staring at her, his mouth open. Judit said softly, as though discussing a recipe for a cake, ‘Always make sure the job is done. A sniper must never be satisfied with the first shot. You can’t tell from this distance whether you’ve wounded somebody, or killed them. Best to shoot once or twice more, just to make sure. Now, let’s get the hell out of here.’
Shalman sat drinking orange juice in a café, waiting for Judit to arrive, and pondering the events of the night before. But it wasn’t the bullets or the mission that was exercising his mind, rather the young woman who had been with him and who, truth be known, had surprised him with her attitude towards her job. Since joining Lehi, he’d killed a couple of British soldiers, but each time, it had made him feel sick to the stomach. When he killed it was always with the greatest reluctance; yet Judit killed with the clinical approach of a surgeon performing an operation.
Shalman still felt guilty about the night Yitzhak Shamir had covered for him and so he had been the first to tell the Lehi operations leader what Judit had done, how she’d killed three Tommies before he’d even had a chance to squeeze the trigger.
Shamir had simply laughed out loud and slapped him on the back saying, ‘She’s quite something, isn’t she?’ Shalman had been expecting a reprimand but evidently Shamir saw the news as evidence of Judit’s prowess rather than the young man’s failure.
The café door opened and a draught of air blew into the room. Judit sauntered over to where he was sitting. He looked at her closely. She was very beautiful. Her features were fine, her face slender, her eyes deep-set and sparkling and as black as night, and she had a radiant smile.
‘Shalom, Shalman. How are you?’
Before he could answer, the waiter appeared and Judit ordered food and drink. Shalman joined her, ordering a plate of dips and pita bread.
‘So, what have you been up to?’ she asked, as though they were on a date. In fact, they were on a date of sorts. Returning from the mission the night before, they’d settled into an animated and easy discussion about history as they passed under the white stone walls of the old city. It was the history of ancient Jerusalem that had fascinated Shalman ever since he was a boy.
His father had fostered this love in him from an early age and Shalman had since filled his nights with every book he could scrounge to feed his thirst for knowledge about Israel’s past. For her part, Judit was an enthusiastic audience and encouraged him to tell her more as they walked the long way back, steering clear of British soldiers. She was evidently intelligent, and knew much of the world, and Shalman found himself wondering how she knew so little of the city’s history. Or was she just being polite?
Whatever it was, it filled him with a confidence he rarely had and before he knew what he was saying, Shalman found himself asking this mysterious young woman to have lunch with him, to continue their discussion.
And now here they were. The excitement of it, entranced by her as he was, made Shalman forget about his misgivings about the attack the night before and his own hesitation to pull the trigger. But Judit, for her part, raised the topic none the less.
‘That wasn’t easy for you last night, was it?’
Shalman didn’t answer the question, though he knew exactly what she was referring to.
‘It’s okay,’ she continued. ‘It shouldn’t be easy. We have to remember that we’re not killing sons and brothers and fathers, but targets. It’s never easy, Shalman, but it has to be worth it.’
Shalman pondered what that meant. Was the creation of a nation of Israel, a land of history and culture, morals and intellect, worth being rebuilt on the blood of British soldiers? Was the way Lehi performed its goals worth the grief that would be caused to soldiers’ families? Both ideas seemed right and yet both were hideously flawed in his mind. And these thoughts, at this moment in the restaurant, were a distraction from what he wanted to be thinking about: enough of war and killing: all he wanted to think about was peace and calm and the beautiful girl in front of him whom he so desperately wanted to know better.
Shalman tried to change topics and asked about her family, where she was from, how she came to Palestine. Remembering her training, Judit told him the story that had been created for her. She answered openly and honestly in a light-hearted way, as best she could about her family, but of course said nothing about her training, her enlistment into the spy ranks of the Soviet Secret Service. What she told him, and the way she explained things, denied the gravity of her story. Her tone made even horror stories seem bright. Her attitude entranced Shalman even further and he found himself gazing at her.
‘So tell me, do you have a girlfriend?’ she asked.
He was stunned by her question. What could have caused her to ask? No, surely . . . but while he knew he should answer, all he could manage was to shake his head.
Judit filled the void left by Shalman’s silence. ‘I don’t have a boyfriend. Mind you, that’s because I’ve not been here long. Some of the guys in Lehi are sniffing around, but I’m not interested in them. You fascinate me, Shalman. You’re so reluctant as a soldier, I don’t understand why you’re here.’
He told her about the British arresting his father, about his mother’s grief, and about Dov enlisting him in the youth group of Lehi. She nodded, and reached across to hold his hand. Hers were warm and dry, and he thrilled at her touch.
‘Tomorrow night,’ she said, matter-of-factly, ‘there’s a film being shown at the cinema on Ben Yehuda. It’s called Here Comes M. Jordan, and it’s about a boxer who goes to heaven but he’s not supposed to be there and he’s sent back. I love romance and comedies, and this is both! We never had films like this in Moscow. Will you take me?’
Shalman looked at her in amazement. But she continued talking, as if it was the most natural thing.
‘Back in Russia, the films were all so serious. And how can you be interested in a two-hour movie about tractors and great leaps forward and Stalin’s next five-year plan? But here you have Hollywood films. When shall we go? Shall I tell you where I live? Do you want to go for some food before or after the movie? I don’t mind, because I’m used to being hungry, but you might need something to eat before the movie starts.’
He looked at her, and realised that he hadn’t said a word in minutes. He was sitting in a café in Jerusalem, with a girl who just the previous night had killed three soldiers, and now she was talking excitedly about going out to see a movie. And Judit wanted Shalman to take her.
Kedron River
161 CE
‘You must swear that you’ll never ever tell them, even if the end of the world happens and everything around us is destroyed – not even then. Swear it to me, Abram. Swear . . .’
‘I swear.’
‘By the most Holy?’
‘By the most Holy. How do you get past the guards and into Jerusalem
?’
It was the morning following the meal he’d eaten at her parents’ home, and in the sunshine, their feet were dangling in the Kedron River. Ruth smiled and looked up to the white city, gleaming in the sunlight on top of the hill.
‘I put on a special dress, made of the wings of seraphim, and I fly over the gate at night and I become one of the teraphim and I smite the Roman soldiers and leave many dead.’
Abram looked at her, his eyes wide. Everything about her seemed so extraordinary that even the tale might have been true.
Ruth held the moment before bursting out with laughter.
‘You’re silly, Abram Nothing. There’s an old disused tunnel that leads from the floor of the valley, up into the city. Nobody goes there. It comes out in the middle of Jerusalem, at the foot of where the old temple used to be. I’ve climbed the tunnel. The Romans don’t know about it because the entrance in the valley where the water trickles out is covered with rocks and grass and rubble . . . why are you looking at me like that?’ she asked, suddenly aware of Abram’s strange gaze on her.
‘That’s the tunnel . . . That’s the tunnel the rabbi sent me to look for,’ he said. ‘That’s . . . that’s . . .’ He was speechless.
‘You mean you do have a sacred quest? I was right! I thought you were special, Abram Nothing. What is it? What do we have to do?’
The sudden presence of the word ‘we’ made Abram recoil and look away.
‘It’s very simple, Abram Nothing: if you don’t tell me, I won’t show you the tunnel. You won’t complete your quest and I won’t get to go on an adventure. And neither of us will get what we want.’
It was all so matter-of-fact that Abram told her before he could stop himself. ‘I was given something to put back in the tunnel by Rabbi Shimon. The rabbi and his son live in a cave near my home, hiding from the Romans.’ Despite the caution he’d shown since leaving home, and the injunction from the rabbi not to speak to anybody about the seal, Abram took it out of the special inner pocket of his clothes and showed it to her.
She held it towards the sun so that it caused shadows to fall across the letters. ‘I can’t read it. What does it say?’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Abram honestly. ‘But I know what it is. The rabbi told me. It was made by the man who built the tunnel for King Solomon of blessed memory, and when the rabbis escaped from Jerusalem, they took the seal to protect it. Now they want me to put it back so that God will know that the tunnel is ours, and not the Romans’. The rabbi said it was something to do with our birthright. That Jerusalem and all of Israel is ours and not the Romans’.’
Abram took the seal back from the hands of Ruth and slipped it inside his shirt once more. ‘I have to return it.’
‘But of course God will know. He knows everything,’ she said.
Abram shrugged. ‘But the rabbis have given me a special mission to put it back.’
Ruth seemed to ponder this for a moment before saying, ‘Why?’
It was a very simple question but Abram found his mind blank for an answer.
Ruth pressed on. ‘Why do you have to return it?’
‘Because it’s important . . .’ It was all Abram managed to say but the answer was unsatisfying to Ruth. She put a hand on his shoulder and turned him just a little to face her more squarely, probing for more.
And then he confessed. Her brilliant purple eyes made him open his heart and tell her the truth. ‘Because it makes me feel important . . .’
All his life Abram had been a nobody. A small boy in a small village, in a tiny outpost of the Roman Empire, a family under the heel of conquerors. But with the seal tucked inside his shirt and the task before him, he didn’t need to feel like a nobody anymore. He was a man, and he had a mission for the Children of Israel.
‘Because it makes me feel important . . .’ Abram said again as if saying it twice made it more real, more honest.
Ruth tilted her head and gave him a wicked grin.
‘And because it’s an adventure . . . our adventure!’
She thought for a minute, and said softly, ‘You’ll still be my Abram Nothing, even when we’ve put the seal back in its place, but if we succeed, I might let you kiss me.’
After they’d eaten their midday meal, Ruth and Abram wandered off, and now they stood inside the ancient tunnel. Until they’d struck their flints and lit the wicks, producing a thin but welcome light, the tunnel had been as black as pitch and as silent as a grave. The entrance had been almost impossible to see, covered in rocks and scree and vegetation. But weeks earlier, Ruth had traced the source of the water coming from the mountain, and she’d discovered the narrow opening into the mountain.
The only noise that they could occasionally hear as they rounded a bend was the distant sound of running water and the irritating plop of droplets that fell from the roof onto the slippery floor. Sometimes the droplets fell onto their heads or backs, but usually they fell onto the sodden, moss-covered ground and made ascending the tunnel treacherous.
Ruth had taken two large oil lamps from her home, secreting them away inside her cloak so that her father didn’t see. She knew she was disobeying him and knew too well the rage that would descend should he learn what she was doing. But this knowledge only quickened her heart and set her skin tingling with excitement.
The oil lamps lit their faces and the walls, floor and ceiling in their immediate vicinity, but the light was soon overwhelmed by the enveloping blackness around them. Abram had never been anywhere as dark. In his life, he was blessed with light, either from the sun or from the plethora of stars that illuminated the sky above the Galilee. But the tunnel ahead stretching upwards, and the tunnel behind falling to the floor of the valley, was blacker than anything he’d ever known.
‘What happens now?’ whispered Abram. ‘Which way does the tunnel go?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Ruth.
‘But you said that you’ve been up and down this passage many times.’
She remained silent.
‘Ruth?’
She was still silent.
‘Ruth!’
He could barely make out what she said next. ‘I’ve only been to the entrance in the valley floor. I was too scared to go further. I didn’t have a lamp. I’ve never been this far. I don’t know what happens now.’
He should have been angry, but her voice was so soft, so different from the confident and arrogant Ruth of the open air, that his anger soon dissipated.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, trying to sound confident. ‘According to the rabbi, this tunnel was used by lots of people for many years. It takes the water from the city, so it must be safe.’
They climbed and slipped, rested and continued, climbed and slipped again, until they were hungry. They placed their oil lamps on a rock ledge and sat down to eat the food that Ruth had taken from her home along with the lamps. Simple bread and olives but they ate them greedily.
Ruth seemed lost in thought as she chewed the bread, and Abram found himself staring at her. When she saw his gaze, she looked him hard in the eye. ‘Do you like me?’ she said.
The question stunned him and seemed loaded like a slingshot but his answer was given without any thought. ‘Yes.’
‘Do you want to kiss me?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Have you ever kissed a girl before?’ As an afterthought, she added quickly, ‘Not your mother or your sister.’
He didn’t reply.
‘I’ve kissed a boy before. His name is Uriel and he lives half a day’s walk from my home. We were in a field and we lay down and I rolled over and kissed him. He enjoyed it and he kissed me back; twice. Then I went home. I haven’t seen him since and that was four months ago. I suppose he’s still thinking about me and that kiss.’
‘Why are you telling me this, Ruth?’
‘If you want to kiss me, you can. But only once.’
He tried to find a suitable response but grasped nothing but air. He looked away and quickly began
to get to his feet and put away what was left of the food.
‘We have a tunnel to climb and I have to find the place for the seal.’ The response sounded weak and he was suddenly worried that the opportunity might be lost. But it was the wrong time and place to be thinking about kissing Ruth.
‘If we succeed and find our way out, then I’ll kiss you,’ he stammered in an effort not to let the opportunity be lost forever.
‘When we’re back in my home, and we’re safe, I might not want you to then,’ she warned.
They climbed higher and higher into the tunnel, ascending all the while, slipping on ground that was almost totally covered in an ugly, spongy black moss, and squeezing through gaps in the rock that were little wider than their slim bodies. At one point, they had to walk sideways and bend almost double because their shoulders were too wide for the gap and the rock seemed to have fallen in an ancient slide. But after what seemed like an eternity, they eventually ascended to a larger and more open space. They felt like they’d climbed from the bottom to the top of a mountain, but in reality, they had no idea of how far up into the city of Jerusalem they had climbed.
After a final steep ascent, up steps that had been carved out of the rock and were little more than half the length of their feet, Abram and Ruth rounded what appeared to be a bend in the tunnel. Here, out of the deadened silence, punctuated only by their footfalls and their breathing, they heard a noise.
