by Martin Hand
The Palestinian translator must have been the best of their English speakers. He was certainly keeping pace in translating Fionn’s monologue.
Fionn paused between sentences. An audience would have thought this was for effect. Martha thought that his exertions first with Ahmed, who had christened him the Holy Man, and then with David’s afflicted eyes, were the cause.
Even with the pauses Fionn was going to have his say. ‘So one day, be you an English crusading king or an insane German dictator, you decide enough is enough. Sure, anyway, didn’t they kill the son of God? And all the better if we avenge Jesus’ death by looting the better-than-us Jewish civilisation. The hypocrisy of it! Avenging Jesus, the very man who wanted anything but vengeance, blood and viciousness. Crusades me arse, and Third Reich me brown arse. English and German blood-thirsty killing machines, no less. Western civilisation, I ask ye!’
The ‘party’ was coming to an end before it had even begun. The Irish guys had gathered a little closer together, partly because this was stuff they had never heard Fionn sound off on and because the translator’s tone had shifted the mood of the forty-odd Palestinians present. The Irish were getting nervous.
Sergeant O’Brien intervened: ‘That’s enough for now, Private. We’re in enough of a mess here without digging deeper.’
‘No, Sarge, I’ll have my say. As you say, we’re in a mess, and who knows if I’ll get to speak my piece again?’
Sergeant O’Brien’s mouth just hung open yet again. He thought, only in the Irish Army. Do you think a British Army private would answer back? Not on your life.
Fionn and his translator continued: ‘Even here in this unholy of holy cities where there is mayhem and dividing walls, the Jews in the 1960s were humiliated into having the narrowest of access to their venerated Wailing Wall. A pressure keg cemented by the Palestinians and Jordanians together. Of course it was going to blow apart.’
Sergeant O’Brien couldn’t help himself: ‘Might as well insult the one Jordanian ally we have while you’re at it.’
Fionn was in no hurry to reply but he did after a pause. ‘The truth is never an insult.’
That was enough. Rami and Elias had by then withdrawn behind their translator. Two and then a third tin cup flew towards the increasingly encircled Irish troop. Larry and Michael readied themselves to deliver a few bruises before they got bruised themselves.
From nowhere a high-powered jet of water doused the fire, sending smoke, steam and hot debris everywhere. Fortuitously, or maybe by design, this created a gap between the newly formed warring factions. The gap was immediately widened when the jet was used to corral the Arabs into the far end of the cell, where they were offered some protection from the spray of water.
The usual eight to ten sub-machine-gun-pointing Israelis were again on hand, this time to extract the seven damp Irish from the cell, with poor Ahmed left to his own devices with his Arab brethren. With the cell door firmly closed again, the now-familiar Israeli captain ushered the troop back through the same labyrinthine passageway they had earlier emerged from.
The captain addressed O’Brien, without stopping him, as he passed.
‘Really, Sergeant, you Irish should come with a robust health warning.’ The words health warning were semi-shouted for effect, as O’Brien had passed five or six paces in front, by then.
The disorientating march led the troop to another cell, this one in a more sanitary condition and in a modern section of the building. It had an open stainless-steel toilet bowl in the corner. No windows and no knowing if they were above or below ground.
Not knowing when they would be called for interrogation and in what order made for a very uncomfortable Friday morning in jail. O’Brien made it clear that all chat among them would be kept general. He felt the cell was certainly bugged and they were to give nothing away that would endanger Sergeant Doyle’s troop, wherever they made it to.
Fionn was apparently not finished talking. ‘Ahmed will be fine. The Muslims take God a bit more seriously than us Christians. He has faith and thinks God was the instrument of fixing his broken back.’
‘How did God manage that? I thought it was you that did the fixing,’ said Sergeant O’Brien.
‘Maybe, Sarge, both you and Ahmed are right. I did what God directed me to do.’
‘Ah here, are you telling us you’re being directed by God?’ O’Brien asked.
‘We’re all being directed by God. Jews, Muslims, Christians, the lot. That’s probably the only thing we all agree on. I do think God is giving me strength I never knew I had and I’m getting stronger. I was meant to be in Jerusalem.’
No one said anything. Fionn had them spellbound. He’d earned that. Even the most sceptical of observers would have to add up the events, the happenings, and conclude they couldn’t all be happenstance, circumstance, coincidence. They had dismissed Fionn’s appearance on the detained vessel as an error of perception. Now it was becoming clear that Fionn had appeared on the boat for a reason. A reason that was as yet unclear.
Fionn slept on the floor, oblivious. Martha at one point asked for privacy when the need to use the toilet arose. The lads, on the other hand, didn’t give a toss when they wanted to go. They were served one bland rice-based meal at about midday – meagre rations. But Fionn couldn’t be roused for it anyway. Even if he could, O’Brien knew he couldn’t talk to him about changing boats. There were listening ears.
Chapter Ten
Fionn’s rest didn’t last long.
‘You two follow me,’ the Israeli captain ordered. He was addressing Sergeant O’Brien and Private O’Toole. ‘The rest of you are afforded the dignity of rest before our Sabbath.’
Rest me hole, more likely they were busy collecting intelligence to make the pending interrogations more effective, the sergeant thought. He knew well enough that the Sabbath was from sundown Friday until Saturday evening. There would be no further rest for him and Fionn on the Sabbath, it seemed.
Before leaving, the sergeant gave an instruction: ‘Pete, you’re in charge.’
‘Now we will start with finding out how your small detachment of illegal Irish soldiers seem hell-bent on starting a holy war.’
Disorientated by the comment, O’Brien replied, ‘We’re not Irish, we’re United Nations.’
‘You’re illegal and you have caused big trouble,’ said the captain. ‘We like to repay troublemakers in this country.’
The man and the boy were again led down the labyrinth.
Pete had been unlucky in his career. He always meant to be a good soldier. Somehow things had always got in the way. Being in with the wrong crowd had got him passed over for stripes twice. The army doesn’t give third chances. It didn’t matter that Pete convinced himself that he would be the exception to the rule. He hadn’t been. He felt nearly relieved that Fionn was gone, for the moment. He felt burnt-out and not just from the stresses of the previous night. He had watched Fionn become an emblem that he had originally thought he might keep pace with, stand beside. Pete couldn’t dismiss what had happened on that boat with the Israelis: Fionn’s appearance from nowhere. Nor could he dismiss the Glen. Even with the highest regard for Fionn, he had to back away. This was about having to admit that you were in the presence of someone extraordinary. While the boys and girl endured their new prison cell, Pete was glad of the respite. The sarge and Fionn were taking the heat from whatever interrogation the Jews were dishing out. His head needed a bit of peace.
‘What do you think is going on?’ Martha asked.
‘I’m guessing they’ll be drilling them for info on our boys,’ said Michael.
‘Lads, you can be as sure as bejaysus we are being listened to. Let’s keep that in mind,’ Pete reminded them.
‘Sure. Sorry, Pete,’ said Paul, apologising on behalf of Michael.
‘Do you think we’ll all be rolled in, Pete?’ asked Larry.
�
�Not you, Lar, anyway. They’d be afraid of your head-butt antics,’ replied Pete, still trying to keep the spirits up. There was a bit of a disheartening silence for a moment after Pete’s attempt at a joke, so he continued: ‘It’s still a bit surreal. We’re in jail in the most important religious city in the entire world.’
This seemed a bit lost on the youngsters. Their experience of Jerusalem pretty much amounted to incarceration in what for all the world looked and smelt like a medieval dungeon, and now they were in a modern prison cell, complete with one toilet bowl.
‘Look, if they call you in, give your name, your rank and state that you’re a member of a United Nations official mission. Then keep saying you have nothing else to say,’ said Pete.
The excessively large mirror on the back wall was a clichéd giveaway. The emotionless captain ushered the two men into the room where the suited two-man interrogation team were already seated.
‘Sergeant O’Brien and Private O’Toole, good afternoon to you. I am Mr X, and may I introduce my colleague, Mr Y. Both of us have been assigned to your case. Because you have committed multiple crimes, it has been a toss-up as to which agency gets you first. Your attempted clandestine landing in our country has drawn much interest from our intelligence agency. On this occasion we trump both the civil and military authorities.’
Mr X was betting the soldiers knew that they were dealing with Mossad and no names or niceties would be required.
Fionn was having none of it. ‘Well, whatever authority you have,’ he said, ‘I reserve the right not to deal with this X and Y Tarantino bullshit.’
The sergeant intervened: ‘That’s enough, Private. As a military commander I wish to observe my rights to discuss my unlawful detention with the Israeli military.’
‘Perhaps, Sergeant, you should have thought of that before the attempted murder of an Israeli cadet whose father, incidentally, is a senior military officer himself.’
‘Nonsense,’ responded a somewhat riled Sergeant O’Brien. ‘The bloody eejit was tossing what for all we knew was a live grenade into our transporter. And anyway this boy beside me, who you have chosen to pick out separately, expertly tended to the kid. If it was me, I know the tending I would have given him.’
Mr Y, the younger suit, now entered the fray. ‘Brave talk indeed, knowing that an Israeli soldier is blinded for life.’
‘He could hardly be blinded,’ said Fionn.
‘Very young to be a medical orderly, are you not?’ said Mr X.
It wasn’t clear to O’Brien who was the good suit and who the bad. The sergeant felt so wired now that he thought maybe they were both just bad, with a lot more badness behind that glass.
‘I meant he was only injured in one eye, and in any event, I tended to his eye,’ said Fionn.
Mr Y seemed a little unnerved. The Irish way of speaking, bastardising the English language, was not to everybody’s satisfaction. The words Jaysus, feck and eejit seemed to be thrown in everywhere like verbal grenades.
Mr X stepped in with a change in interviewing tack. ‘Your Private Martha O’Dowd’s mother is proving to be a most interesting character.’
The knowledge that these men had on O’Brien’s troop was thorough, darkly impressive and designed to be disconcerting. What was equally disconcerting to O’Brien was not knowing the fate or whereabouts of Sergeant Doyle and his troop. O’Brien knew he would have to be careful that he or Fionn did not give the Israelis any intelligence that might put their comrades in danger. They must especially keep secret the fact that their planned destination was Bethlehem. If the Israelis went into Bethlehem who knew what would kick off.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ was O’Brien’s pissed-off reply. ‘Never met the good lady.’
‘Well, perhaps you will someday,’ Mr Y said, rather menacingly, having regathered himself.
‘Mrs O’Dowd finds herself in the media with outrageous claims that this man’ – Mr Y pointed at Fionn – ‘brought her daughter back to life. Something about unexploded bombs in a training camp. Us Israelis tend not to leave unexploded ordinance lying around. You never know who would pick it up.’
Both Sergeant O’Brien and Sergeant Doyle knew something had happened in Wicklow. Something that had cemented Fionn as the unofficial leader of the group, albeit with Mark as a dissenter. Now was not the time to show his lack of information. The best O’Brien could do was to say, ‘We train all our boys to put their comrades before themselves.’ A bit lame, he thought.
‘Your media has started, since lunch time, reporting the detention of six UN peacekeepers. When last I counted, it was seven,’ stated Mr X.
Mr Y took his turn again. ‘Indeed, they seem to be of a view that one of your soldiers is missing. I wonder who that could be.’
Mr Y trained his eyes on Fionn.
O’Brien recognised the tactic of further unsettling the interrogatees. But what the sergeant was realising was that he was indeed unsettled. He didn’t hold out much hope that the sanctity of life was important to these polished tough nuts. They were menacing, full stop. Building a rapport was not on the agenda. Why were they in such a hurry?
O’Brien wanted to change the direction of the conversation if he could. ‘Before ye carry on with any more of your the-world-has-it-in-for-us nonsense, you might do well to remember that this young lad nearly took a beating in that hell hole of a cell for defending the Jewish people.’
‘As you have found, Sergeant, from your swift arrest and detention, the Jewish people need very little defending,’ said Mr X.
Mr X and Mr Y were operating like a ping ball machine at this stage. When one of them spoke, then it was a given that the other would speak next. O’Brien could only think that referring to yourself by a letter of the alphabet was too clever to be stupid. As the hours elapsed, he became more confident that he and Fionn would give nothing up. A mistake might come through tiredness. However, what really worried him was how the rest of his boys and girl were getting on. On their own they didn’t have his experience or Fionn’s resilience to rely on. O’Brien’s guess was that this interrogation would be halted because one of the other lads had cracked. But he was wrong.
They were endlessly asked the same questions, again and again in different ways. Where were you based in Jordan? For how long? What was the size of your platoon, etc., etc. Bethlehem was not mentioned specifically, but it was clear that the Israeli intelligence was excellent. The very fact that the troop structure platoon was repeatedly mentioned said a lot. Six soldiers and a commander was a troop, not a platoon.
By early Saturday morning Mr Y, either by plan or by needing a break from the frustration of getting nowhere, declared, ‘Perhaps we have heard enough for the moment.’
Both interrogators stood up as the door behind the sergeant and Fionn opened and a couple of burly armed military police entered to encourage the captives to exit. The sergeant was shoved along the corridor but soon realised the man-handling was to disguise the fact that Fionn had been separated from him. The sergeant was unceremoniously shoved through the corridors and then through the cell door, behind which his five privates were being held. Private Larry responded naturally to seeing his commander roughly handled: he let a fist fly in the direction of the nearest Israeli soldier to the door. He missed. Maybe the Israeli military were becoming wise to the unpredictable Irish.
‘Now, Private Fionn, we can perhaps have a more private talk in the absence of your sergeant,’ said Mr X. ‘Your work since coming close to us has not gone unnoticed. This media rubbish from Ireland does not concern us. You stirring things up in Israel and its neighbouring countries does.’
‘I have only helped where I could, only did the job I was sent to do,’ replied Fionn.
‘Your name is being mentioned on world news channels and we see how you even stirred the Bedouin up in Jordan,’ said Mr Y.
‘Is there anything worse, for a parent th
an a sick child? What would I be if I did not do my best to help?’ he replied.
‘What help were you offering those Palestinian criminals earlier then?’ asked Mr X.
‘They were misguided in their hatred of all things Jewish and I wanted to explain. The Jews are a chosen people, and what a mess has been made of it all! In the name of God, I ask you.’
These straightforward answers had a cryptic nature to them, which was frustrating for the interrogators. Their lords and masters were gathered, listening, behind the mirror as the Saturday morning sped on, going nowhere.
Mossad’s head of intelligence, Mr Z, had arrived at lunch time on Saturday from Tel Aviv. While in transit he had issued the command for a Knesset member to announce that no Irish soldier was missing. He stipulated that the announcement be made only after a UN statement was issued. The dance was being choreographed. Any mistake was to be put squarely at the Irish Army’s door. Therefore, anti-Israeli sentiment about them not searching the Dead Sea for a dead boy would look stupid.
Mr Z took his leave of the room behind the mirror to make a scheduled call to the prime minister. After the call Mr Z, or David as the prime minister addressed him, had Mr X and Y temporarily excuse themselves from the ongoing interrogation.
‘The PM has given us till midnight to extract a full story from the prisoner. A failure to do so may, I am told, have fatal consequences.’
‘I had perhaps not grasped the gravity of the situation,’ the senior Mr X replied.
Mr Y said nothing.
David continued, ‘To review, we need answers. Where are his other colleagues? How did he change boats in the Dead Sea? What are his links to the Arab nations? What are his links to the tribal Arabs? The prime minister is clear that this man, this boy, will not be allowed impede us. You have limited time, gentlemen.’
Mr X and Mr Y returned to the interrogation room.
‘Tell us Fionn,’ said Mr X, adopting a conciliatory tone. ‘How many and in what location will we find the rest of your number?’
