Stateless

by Alan Gold

  She drew up towards the checkpoint, her breath coming hard, but she knew she couldn’t just enter the checkpoint. Instead she’d scoped the area earlier that day and knew exactly the spot. The dim light of dusk hid her as she crept around the checkpoint manned by only three British soldiers and nestled herself between two large sandstone rocks that concealed her from both directions yet gave her a clear view towards any car that approached the boom gate of the checkpoint.

  Because she was short of breath, it was difficult to steady herself, but she had to in order to stop the image through the telephoto lens bouncing around. She tried to control her breathing.

  And then she saw the car. She steadied the camera and, with the tips of her fingers, adjusted the focus ring. The woman she saw was dark and severe but beautiful, her hair pulled back in a tight bun like a ballet dancer. Ashira’s finger hovered over the shutter release, about to depress and capture an image of that face. But in that moment a solider stepped between Ashira’s camera and the woman, blocking the view. Ashira swore under her breath and felt the urge to get to her feet and shift position, but there was nowhere to go that wouldn’t reveal her presence. She had to stay wedged between the rocks. She held the camera in position, kept the focal length the same and prayed for the soldier to move.

  The boom gate rose, and Ashira swore again, trying to shift her body over as far as it would go, attempting to see around the body of the solider obscuring her view.

  Finally he stepped aside and the woman came into sight through the windscreen of the car. Ashira did not hesitate and squeezed the shutter release like a sniper executing a target. Her thumb dexterously wound the camera on and she took another, and another. Three, four, five in quick succession until the car had passed by.

  The young woman waited, her breath slow and calm now and her mind praying that she had what she needed to show Berin.

  When the soldiers returned to their smoking and banter, Ashira slipped away. She wound back the film into the canister and plucked it from the open chamber of the camera. If she was questioned by any soldiers as she made her way back to Jerusalem they would likely confiscate the camera and she did not want to lose the film. She took the film roll and stuffed it into her underpants, securing it between her legs, and set off back to the city.

  Hours later, and late into the night, Immanuel Berin swirled the photographic developing fluid in the tray in front of him. The dull red glow from the safe-lights overhead washed the room crimson.

  He had been brought a message that something important had arrived and he had ventured cautiously out of his home to the secret Irgun base to meet with Raffe. The thick-set fighter, softly spoken and stoic, leaned in to whisper into Berin’s ear as if afraid of being overheard, even within the underground base.

  ‘It’s from Ashira . . .’ And he pressed the small film canister into Berin’s hand without further explanation.

  The white paper began to darken into contrasts of black, grey and white. At first he couldn’t make out the image. But then, slowly, detail began to etch into the paper – a car and windshield and figure behind the wheel. Then slowly a face . . .

  With a small pair of tongs Berin lifted the paper from the bath and rinsed it in a second tray of water, washing the developing fluid from it and leaving it dripping as he pegged it carefully to a small wire line strung across the room. He reached up to manoeuvre the red safe-light more directly on to the photo.

  He looked hard at the woman in the photo through his small round glasses. He took in her features, her tightly drawn hair, her face . . . And Berin knew who she was. The information from Golda Meir was now confirmed. And Berin knew now that T’homi had been right.

  Jerusalem

  27 January 1948

  The café was quiet and ordinary. As she looked through the window at the people seated at tables, Judit pondered the word ‘ordinary’ within the extraordinary world she lived. The increasing violence, the tension in the streets, turned each ordinary day into an anxiety-riddled existence. Wake up safe, get through the day, go to bed. These were the tidings of a good day for most of the citizens of Jerusalem. That a café would even be open to serve coffee and food as if everything was normal seemed strange to Judit. It was a thought that she had not previously entertained and she wondered why she would be thinking these things as she prepared to execute the order she had been given.

  She sat across the road from the café observing with sharp eyes while she pretended to read the newspaper. At her feet was a leather bag that contained the costume and the hand-grenade that she would need to succeed in the task Molotov had set her.

  The café was one sometimes used for meetings by the Irgun; the owner was a sympathiser and he had an upper room where they could meet in secret. This also made it the perfect place for Judit’s plan as she waited and watched for signs that Berin had arrived.

  As she waited, she looked at the other people lingering nearby. Four of them were fellow Irgun, but only Judit knew that they were also MGB agents working for Anastasia.

  The attack needed to be public and visible but Judit also needed to survive and remain disguised. For that she would need these four men to bundle her away.

  The road was becoming noisier by the minute with street sellers and traffic, but Judit remained focused, tuning out all other distractions. She needed to see Berin, know he had arrived, but she needed, in turn, not to be seen.

  She detected a sudden movement and tilted her head to see Immanuel Berin’s lean frame stride toward the café from the opposite direction across the square. He was flanked by two of his bodyguards. This was all she needed. She stood and casually walked into a small alley. Once in the shadows and out of sight, she pulled an Arabic woman’s full-length head-to-foot dress out of her bag.

  It had been carefully chosen. Different Arab nations wore different patterns and colours; it was important that Judit be identified as a woman from west of Jerusalem – from areas that aligned their population with Jordan.

  She threw the ankle-length dress over her head. Next a headband holding in place a long scarf that fell to her waist and covered her shoulders. She pulled a scarf from her bag and drew it across her face, tucking it in to secure it.

  Lastly from the leather bag she pulled out Berin’s death warrant. It was what the British called a ‘Mills bomb’. The hand-grenade had a round metallic pin and a timer set to explode in seven seconds.

  Seven seconds, thought Judit. Seven seconds to get away. Seven seconds to kill and not be killed. She quickly pushed the grenade back into the leather bag and stepped back out into the laneway.

  No longer Judit, she now stood at the edge of the square clearly identifiable as an Arab woman of Jordanian descent. From above the veil she saw Berin seated in the back of the café with a cup of coffee in his hand.

  The plan was simple – walk towards the café slowly and not in a direct line, then enter as though she was a customer. While she stood there, apparently looking for a friend, she would time the distance in seconds between herself and where Berin sat at a far table. From within the bag she’d pull the pin from the grenade and count to three seconds before rolling it along the floor and exiting immediately.

  Judit knew she’d have approximately four seconds to get herself away from the blast and knew that in that time she would be held firm by the four MGB agents and bundled away from the chaos of the ensuing explosion.

  Judit was aware of her boots on the cobblestoned ground. They were not the boots of a Palestinian Arab woman but she had been careful to ensure the dress was long enough to conceal them beneath its thick folds of fabric.

  She entered the café, her heart beating fast. She was perspiring underneath the heavy cloth. She looked over and saw Beria twenty feet away. Through the slit for her eyes, she saw many of the customers were looking at her. There were other Arabs in the café, but most were Western Jews.

  Berin noticed her, but looked back at his companions, sharing a joke as he sipped his coffee. People m
oved around the edges of her vision but Judit was focused behind her veil. She moved further inside, moving her head as though she was looking for somebody. The café proprietor came walking towards her, an avuncular smile on his face.

  Judit put her hand into her bag and felt the grenade inside. And then she saw Shalman. He seemed to appear like an apparition at the edge of her sight. But his gait, his body, the way he moved and held himself was as familiar as her own shadow.

  Her hand, now moving of its own accord, slipped around the grenade in the leather bag and her thumb searched for the ring of the weapon’s pin. She had practised a dozen times how to pull the pin on the grenade with one hand. And now, even as she tilted her head to see her husband walking towards the café, muscle memory took over and her thumb penetrated the ring of the grenade’s detonator that would start the seven-second timer.

  Her heart stopped. Berin set down his cup. Outside the café the four MGB agents tensed, ready for the signal. But Judit found she could not take her eyes off Shalman and the bundle on his hip . . . Vered.

  Her thumb was in the pin of the grenade and with almost imperceptible movement the grease was dissolving the friction that held it in place as her thumb began to pull. She continued to look at Shalman in the street, coming nearer and nearer to the café. Oh dear God, the grenade’s blast would blow out the window and its fire and shards would engulf her husband and daughter. She couldn’t do it. She turned and walked hurriedly out of the café.

  Behind her, Berin turned back to his coffee, thinking no more of the strange woman who had obviously thought better of entering a café frequented by Jews. One day, he thought, this might be a land where no such racial hatred existed. One day.

  Shalman walked with his daughter past the café, and didn’t even notice the Arab woman striding rapidly away. Nor did he notice the way four men were watching her cross the road.

  Two suburbs away, Anastasia Bistrzhitska sat on a bench in a park and watched a young woman walk towards a bus stop to join half a dozen other people waiting for the arrival of an Egged bus. The young girl was Ashira.

  Anastasia looked at her watch. Years of patient practice forced her to remain calm and unnerved. She sat there, pretending to read the newspaper, while her eyes were looking directly ahead at the bus shelter.

  She heard a car’s wheels squeal as a vehicle rounded a corner at high speed. She looked cautiously up from the paper to glance at the car; it had been chosen carefully. An ageing stolen Ford pickup with three men sitting cross-legged in the tray on the back, holding on to the sides as it rounded the corner and gathered speed.

  It screeched to a halt opposite the bus stop, blocking Anastasia’s view. But she got to her feet in sudden horror as the three men, dressed like construction workers in red-and-white chequered keffiyehs, dusty jackets and trousers, suddenly pulled machine guns from underneath blankets. They fired volleys of bullets at the men and women standing waiting for the bus. The screaming of people in the nearby park joined with the screams of those at the bus stop. Men and women threw their hands up in a vain effort to defend themselves, but the bullets tore into their heads, chests, and stomachs. Before they fell to the ground, they shuddered like marionettes while the three men posing as Palestinian Arabs continued to shoot at them. The dead Israelis’ bodies twitched and trembled as more and more bullets hit them, or ricocheted off the ground.

  As death overtook her, Ashira looked at the men who were shooting at her as a bullet wound in her chest pumped her lifeblood onto the ground and light dimmed in her eyes. And as her blood mingled with the history of Jerusalem, the truck accelerated away.

  Only Anastasia knew where the truck was going. The problem of Ashira had been removed and at the same time revenge attacks against the Arabs had been assured. Just as the British had taken control of chaos in Palestine after World War I, so too Russia would soon become the dominant power to rise in the chaos of the war to come.

  Jerusalem

  2 February 1948

  A great sadness descended upon the young men and women Irgun fighters. Though daily surrounded by death and destruction, they had long held to being persistently upbeat and positive. But the North Jerusalem group, led by Immanuel Berin, had just attended the funeral of one of their own. Ashira had been cut down in a hail of bullets in a senseless attack by Arab gunmen on civilians at a bus stop. The fighters left the cemetery in a state of rage.

  Judit looked at the ground, and tried to feel some degree of emotion, some sadness. She told herself that it was tragic that the girl had died. If only she hadn’t tried to be so smart, so inquisitive, she’d still be alive. Yet in the game that she and Anastasia and others were playing, individuals would suffer to ensure a better future for everyone. A future she could shape and control.

  As Judit listened to the words of the rabbi at the graveside, vapid words which in essence were meaningless, she thought back to her days in Leningrad and her lessons in Maxist philosophy . . . a person’s nature isn’t abstract, a characteristic of a particular individual; it is the totality of all the social relationships . . . so society and how its future was created, was more important than any one person, even a young woman like Ashira. No matter how tragic Ashira’s death, all that mattered was the society Judit and Anastasia and her mentors in Moscow were trying to create for Israel and for the world.

  Judit had grown up in a home where violence was a nightly visitor; in the Soviet Union, it was such a common sight to see starving and exhausted people fall down dead in the streets that nobody any longer bothered to glance down when they passed. And she would make sure this never happened in the new Israel. She would create the future, regardless of how many hapless people were hurt.

  Without the Soviet Union as Israel’s backer, the fledgling nation wouldn’t last ten minutes in this sea of enemies. Ashira was the price to pay for that future. Judit looked up and waited for Immanuel Berin to begin the Irgun meeting. He looked directly at her in the silence before he spoke. She had missed her opportunity, though he was unaware of the attempt. Ashira had died for the greater good, yet Judit had aborted the killing of Berin to save her own family. The cold logic of spycraft told her that she should have gone through with it. But how could she kill her own daughter and husband, regardless of what Anastasia or Molotov or others might think? Surely some individuals were more important than the future of society.

  Judit shrugged off such thoughts. She would rendezvous with her handler soon enough and she would put forward her plan to try again for the death of Immanuel Berin. Judit kept her eyes on the floor and only raised them when Berin announced to the group that an assault was being planned on the recently militant village of Ras Abu Yussuf, in a quiet valley nearby. She knew this village, knew it was a place her husband often went to dig in the earth for his stupid statues and coins.

  ‘The village is in the back-blocks, but the local Arabs have recently taken up arms and are leading terrorist parties against nearby kibbutzim. They’re firing from hillsides into the kibbutz and Jewish children have been killed while in their kindergarten. There are good grounds to think that it was this village whose men killed Ashira,’ Berin said.

  It took less than half an hour for him to conclude the meeting, give instructions as to what guard or assault duties each would be undertaking in the next few days, and to clear the room. The twenty Irgun members left individually or in twos, and walked in different directions, keeping a close eye out for British troop carriers or even the occasional tank that rumbled through the narrow streets close to the Old City of Jerusalem.

  Judit opted to walk alone south and then east. But she quickly doubled back on herself, and, using the shadows cast by trees, she walked ten blocks to the building where she had arranged four days earlier to meet with Anastasia.

  She walked along the side of the road, staying close to the garden fences, stopping often to glance behind her to see if she was being followed. But at night in Jerusalem, people these days rarely came out on to the streets.
Before she walked down the alley that led to the back lane servicing the gardens of the four terraces in the row, Judit checked again to see if she was being followed. But she was the only person in the street. She slipped into the lane and quickly walked to the back of the safe house.

  It was when she entered the garden that she knew instinctively something was terribly wrong. The door to the kitchen, which led into the back rooms, was ajar. An agent of Anastasia’s pedigree would never have done something so careless. Judit weighed up the situation; she could leave immediately, but then she’d never know how things were; or she could enter the house and risk whatever might be waiting. She drew out a knife from inside her coat and held it by her side, ready to strike upwards into a body.

  Judit pushed gently on the door. Hiding behind the doorpost, she looked into the darkened maw of the kitchen. The moon only illuminated part of the room, but she could see sufficiently well to know that the room was empty.

  And then the smell hit her. It was the smell of death, of decay. It was accompanied by the buzzing of dozens of flies. She had heard that sound, smelled that stench, a hundred times passing dead bodies on the streets of her childhood in a Moscow summer. It was the acrid smell of dried blood, of body fluids that had leaked out of wounds, of trousers or dresses stained in piss and shit that had seeped out from terror.

  But Anastasia’s safe house always smelled of flowers, of roses and irises and lilies or whatever was in season. Judit walked into the kitchen, gripping the knife more tightly, and the further she walked into the house, the worse the smell became and the louder the buzzing of the flies.

  Keeping the lights off, her back close to the wall, she inched forward, feeling her way along the hall and into the front room. She knew all too well that there was a dead body in here. She knew all too well how death smelled.