Stateless

by Alan Gold

  Judit nodded again and turned to Ashira standing behind her. They picked up their bulky weapons and followed the men out of the door. It was two in the morning, but none of the men or women was tired. They were alive with the task ahead.

  The two women climbed into the back of a lorry, which had been painted the previous day in the colours of the British army. It was not a perfect imitation but in the dark of night to a casual observer it would pass.

  Judit and Ashira, along with ten men, sat silently on wooden benches either side of the lorry’s tray. The other three men had stepped into a waiting taxi. The plan was that the taxi would drive past the Officers’ Club, and if there were no vehicles parked in front of the building, they’d stop and pretend to pay the driver while the lorry pulled up behind them.

  One of the men was Dov, the man who’d brought Shalman into Lehi; she’d once met him with Shalman, but now that her husband was no longer as intimately part of the group, more father to their child than freedom fighter, she and Dov had developed their own friendship. She enjoyed her infrequent moments with Dov, listening to the kind of boy Shalman had been on his kibbutz.

  Theirs were among the very few vehicles on the road that night due to the curfew. Judit wasn’t frightened as they drove at a normal Jerusalem speed towards King David Street. She had reconciled herself years ago to the fragility of her existence and now had come to terms with the possibility of being killed during one of these operations. It was for this reason alone that she had deliberately distanced herself from her daughter, Vered. It pained her; she could not deny who she was as a mother. But she had been trained to remain focused on larger objectives; if the future for her daughter was to live within a safe and unified communist state under the protection of the Soviet motherland, then it would take people like Judit to make such sacrifices.

  Her solace for both her private and political lives was that, on the one hand, she was not the only agent of Beria and the NKVD in Palestine and, on the other, the way Shalman doted on their daughter she knew deep down that if her existence was snuffed out by a British bullet, Vered would be safe and loved with her father.

  It was these recognitions that steadied her resolve as she rode in the truck towards the British Officers’ Club in Goldschmidt House.

  Judit glanced over at Ashira and saw that the young woman was nervous. She leaned forward, and smiled at her. ‘Don’t worry. It’ll go like clockwork. We’re taking them by surprise.’

  Ashira nodded and while the nervousness didn’t dissolve, the fierce determination to see it through was evident in her eyes.

  Ashira had escaped anti-Semitic gangs murdering the ancient Jewish communities in Tunisia and had been gang-raped on her journey on foot across the top of Africa by Bedouin, who’d left her for dead. Somehow, she’d survived and had managed to cross from the west to the east of Egypt to reach Palestine. Once she arrived, she was quickly taken into the bosom of Lehi and her hatred was given focus. But her reasons for the fight differed from those in the truck with her. She joined Lehi to fight Arabs, not the British. She would follow orders; she had no other choice, no other family. But to Ashira at the moment, Sten gun in hand, she felt like her real enemy was still waiting.

  The two vehicles reached the intersection with King George Street, checked that there was no traffic, and turned right. They drove slowly north towards the Officers’ Club. But the taxi drove past when he saw three jeeps parked outside. The lorry trundled past. One of the officers standing on the pavement looked at the lorry, full of servicemen in British uniform. Instantly Dov stood and shouted out ‘tenshun’ and saluted. It was a gesture returned by the officer, who gave a desultory salute, little more than a wave of his hand, as he walked into the grounds, past the guard post and barbed wire.

  The vehicles drove three streets away, and then turned left, and left again. The taxi stopped for ten minutes and the lorry pulled up behind it in the small side street, all of the expectant occupants nervously waiting for the agreed-upon time to elapse before they could try again.

  With a nod from Dov, the taxi driver started the engine, and the convoy drove to the end of the street, then turned left twice until they were back on King George. This time, the road ahead was clear and the vehicles outside the Officers’ Club had driven away. The taxi drove up to the entrance and three Jewish men dressed in British officers’ uniforms got out, carrying fully laden cases. The lorry pulled over to the other side of the street, and as the uniformed NCOs jumped down from the tray, Judit and Ashira carefully positioned their machine guns on the left-hand side of the vehicle.

  The three disguised officers pretended to pay the driver and the taxi drove off. They then walked across the pavement towards the guard post. One of them appeared to take out his identity papers, and after the two guards had saluted, they waited without any concerns for the men to prove their identity before going back inside.

  Suddenly two dull and muted cracks fractured the silence of the night, the pistols’ silencers preventing any but those closest from hearing anything. Both of the British soldiers guarding the club fell down dead, and Judit watched anxiously as the three Irgun and Lehi men crossed the large external courtyard. The other men followed quickly, their rifles and machine guns poised for immediate firing.

  As they burst through the doors of the club, the sound of gunfire echoed off the buildings in the street. Judit looked carefully and saw flashes of light illuminate the interior of the darkened lobby. She looked upwards to the higher levels where the officers’ bedrooms were located; no lights had yet been turned on. Bullets were a common sound in the Jerusalem night air.

  Judit and Ashira scanned the road to the north and south, their machine guns now placed onto tripods as they made ready to blast any approaching British army vehicle with round after round of fire, but it was the early hours of a Jerusalem morning, and there was no traffic on the roads.

  Suddenly, the gunfire inside the building became more intense as night staff realised that they were under attack and came running towards the vestibule of the club to defend the building.

  Inside, Dov and three of his compatriots were taking the bombs out of the cases, and standing them against pillars that supported the upper floors. Dov made sure that the first of the bombs, one planted by him, was primed and ready and that the timer clock was counting down the 120 seconds before exploding. Quickly he placed a mattress around the pillar, completely covering the bomb, and then secured the mattress in place with wire so that when the bomb exploded, most of its force would be directed inwards to the structure instead of outwards into the air.

  He then ran, risking being shot in the cross-fire, to the other three pillars, making sure that all of the timers were working properly before he placed mattresses around them. Then he barked at his colleagues, ‘Let’s go. Now!’

  With that, they all turned and ran crouching towards the door, their exit covered by a merciless barrage of rifle fire from the men dressed as privates and corporals who’d entered the building to provide armed support so that the bomb planters could set their devices.

  As Dov and his three companions ran, he shouted, ‘Follow us – forty-five seconds.’

  They emerged into the night air, straightened up, and ran across the courtyard for the barbed-wire entry. For the first time, he felt secure enough to turn and ensure that his men were safe. The three bomb planters were by his side, and he looked anxiously for the rest of the team of ten to escape. Then, thirty seconds before the bombs were due to explode, they came scampering out of the building and into the courtyard.

  Judit looked up, and now she saw several lights being turned on in the rooms above. More and more men had been wakened by the hellish commotion in the lobby below. She saw a couple of men in pyjamas going to the windows of their rooms, and looking down onto the street. Then the men in her troop came running across the road towards her lorry. She and Ashira jumped down, leaving the machine guns on the floor of the tray. Dov shouted to the lorry driver to go.
He started the engine, and drove as quickly as he could to a wadi, three miles west of Jerusalem. Once there, the plan was to push the vehicle down the cliff, along with the machine guns. After a night of such devastation, the last thing the freedom fighters wanted was to be caught at a road block wearing British uniforms and in possession of such weaponry.

  Judit watched the lorry drive off, and turned to look at the building. It suddenly seemed as though somebody had turned on a massive arc light inside the darkened lobby of the club. From all of the lower windows, a brilliant light burst out, illuminating the trees and shrubs in the gardens. And then the windows blew out, releasing most of the hellish fury as flame, smoke and a blast of ear-shattering din. The other three bombs went off within seconds of each other. And above the nightmare tumult of the explosions came the screams of men who were thrown out of windows, of NCOs whose bodies were suddenly aflame in the conflagration, of kitchen staff trying to escape the inferno.

  Dov pulled at her sleeve and shouted, ‘C’mon, we’ve gotta get out of here. Now!’

  But Judit continued to stare at the site. It looked as though the normally sedate and calm building had suddenly given birth to a monstrous being – a brilliant, fiery, stinking denizen of some alien world within. It expanded out of the confines of the lower walls of the building, out of the windows, the doorway, the cellars, its broiling arms reaching out of every opening and enveloping everything nearby.

  And then she heard a series of further explosions on the upper floors, as gas fittings detonated and radiators burst and flames leapt out of bedroom windows. Men continued to scream, and as she watched in horror and fascination, she saw figures on the upper floors attempting to open windows, but the moment they did, the air intensified the flames and the blast grew into an all-consuming Gorgon.

  But that was only the beginning because the violence of the bombs had caused the supporting pillars on the ground floor to buckle, fracture and bow. The weight of the upper floors made the building sag in the middle, and then it collapsed onto itself, hurling men in burning pyjamas out of windows to be dashed to death on the ground below. The building suddenly looked as though some huge mischievous child had brought down his fist on the roof, pushing the upper floors into the ground.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Judit, c’mon. Now!’ said Dov, grabbing her arm and pulling her backwards into a laneway so that they would escape the arrival of soldiers and security guards from other barracks.

  She ran, separated from her colleagues, fleeing down predetermined routes, finding the safe houses they’d been allocated. She lost sight of the others, but quickly found her way to where she was spending the night. As she ran towards the house, the door opened, and she rushed inside and was suddenly enveloped in silence.

  Jerusalem

  1947

  Judit felt a degree of trepidation as she walked towards the apartment in North Jerusalem. It was five in the evening, an hour before the British imposed their curfew. If the meeting lasted longer, then it would be sensible for her to stay the night, but that would cause difficulties for the woman who was looking after little Vered.

  ‘Damn Shalman and his stupid archaeology. Damn him for falling over,’ she said to herself, and then immediately felt guilt for her unworthy thoughts. It had been days since he’d had his accident, but she’d been so busy with her work for Lehi that she simply hadn’t had time to go to the Arab village and see him. Every other day, he sent her a note, telling her of his progress, and with each note, she felt guiltier and guiltier. She just hoped that he would understand.

  If only he hadn’t fallen down that hillside. Shalman had said he’d be gone for two nights, three at the most, yet two days after he’d gone on his expedition, some Arab had thrust a note into her hand when she opened her front door. Perhaps, if things calmed down a bit, she’d ask a friend if she could borrow a car, and go and visit him.

  In the meantime, things were hotting up on the international stage. The United Nations had sent a Commission of Enquiry to examine the partition of the land into separate nations of Israel and Palestine. Now was the time to exert maximum pressure.

  And in the middle of washing the feeding bottles for Vered that morning, somebody else had knocked on her door, and another note was thrust into her hands. She asked who had given the note, but the little girl just shrugged, and showed some money in her hands, and then ran off.

  Judit read it immediately. It was from somebody who called himself ‘A Friend’, reminding her of how ‘beautiful everything was in the summer before last’.

  Just looking at it, re-reading it, came as a shock, and an unwelcome surprise. For months and months, she had not been contacted by Moscow. In the beginning, she’d expected new instructions every day; then every week; but as the months rolled past, and then the year changed from one to the next, Judit grew more and more into her role as a freedom fighter with Lehi, and Moscow and its mission seemed to recede further into her past. She was still a passionate communist, but with the daily life-and-death environment she was living in, Moscow’s geopolitics seemed something of the distant past.

  But now, it was present again, front and centre. As she read the note, her training in Leningrad and Moscow, her drilling in spycraft, her education as a covert operative, came flooding back into her mind. She had to sit down on a chair and brace herself. It felt that she’d seen a ghost. And not even Vered’s whimpering broke through the images whirling around her head.

  The code was simple enough. It was an instruction for her to go to a safe house to meet with the handler she’d been assigned by Moscow Central. She’d never met her handler, never been contacted since she arrived in Palestine. She’d been told that she wouldn’t be contacted until Comrade Beria’s plans were ready to be put into place. Yet just reading the Palestine Post, she knew that some militant Zionists had met with terrible accidents or had been assassinated by unknown assailants, such as Arab snipers. Of course, she had put two and two together and realised that other covert operatives were in action in the country, but she still hadn’t been activated. And now she had been tapped on the shoulder. Now she was about to fulfil the mission for which she’d been trained. She read again the code that called her to a meeting with her unknown Russian handler.

  Judit looked at the numbers of the houses and apartment blocks as she walked down the road later that night. Her spycraft came to the fore – long in the recesses of her mind during her time with Lehi where spying wasn’t an issue, but guns and bullets and explosives and timers and trip-wires were. Judit knew not to look directly at a number on a door as though searching because that might alert a passer-by that she was a stranger. Instead, she walked at a normal pace down the road, keeping away from the kerb, and casually glancing at the numbers of the houses one or two in front of her.

  So when she found she was approaching the nominated house in Rehov Jabotinsky, she turned into the path that led to the front door as though she’d lived in the house forever. She knocked casually, not looking around to see if anyone was watching her. That was another sure give-away that she was a stranger, and she’d been taught that strangers are always remembered by inquisitive neighbours.

  The door opened almost immediately, and it was all she could do not to gasp. She hadn’t known who or what to expect, but before her was now Anastasia Bistrzhitska.

  Anastasia beamed and almost pulled Judit inside into the hallway. She closed the door quickly so that nobody in the street could see inside the house. Then she held both of Judit’s hands, took a step back, and admired her.

  ‘You left Russia a girl, and now you’re a woman. And a beautiful woman. My God, but you’ve grown into a beauty. What’s happened? Is it motherhood? Is it this husband of yours? Is it the sun in this hot land?’ And then Anastasia threw her arms around Judit and kissed her. Not on the cheek but full on the lips. Then just as quickly she said, ‘But come inside and meet your comrades. Some you may have seen around the place; others you won’t have because they’re operating a
long way away. Now that the United Nations idiots are here, it’s time to push our plans forward, Judita.’

  She then opened the door and entered the room.

  Judit smiled at the ten men and two other women, some of whom she recognised from her training time in Leningrad and Moscow. Others were new faces. But her mind was flooded with thoughts of Shamir and Begin. Suddenly she was no longer a Lehi comrade, but a spy for the Soviet Union. Would she be ordered to kill them or any other of the freedom fighters she now worked with?

  She knew two of the men in the room were working with the Haganah – a Jewish resistance group from which the more radical Irgun and Lehi had split. But though she recognised them from Moscow, she didn’t know where the other men and women worked. Judit whispered to Anastasia, ‘I don’t know most of these people. They were not in Moscow.’

  ‘My little dove, some that we trained have been killed fighting in this country; some turned out to be duds and have been liquidated, and some have been enlisted by us since you left Mother Russia. This is a much bigger operation than you know.’

  Anastasia smiled at Judit’s reaction and said aloud to the group in Russian, a language Judit had barely heard in recent years: ‘Now our group is complete. Good. For those who don’t know her, may I introduce Judita. She’s just made the observation that she doesn’t know some of you. This is true. Some of you trained together, some of you separately in different places. It was vital that this first time you meet as agents of the Soviet Socialist Republic, that you now begin to know one another. The reason that this is the first time you are meeting was determined two years ago in the Kremlin by Comrade Stalin himself; he was concerned that if you worked together before Moscow Central’s plans were in place, then Zionists could have been warned in advance of a cabal. Secrecy and subterfuge are paramount.