Israel (76 page)

The guards left. Herschel glanced up at the man taking the chair across the table. The newcomer was heavy-set with broad shoulders and close-cropped thinning hair. He had high cheekbones that lent an almost Oriental cast to his features and a parrot's beak of a nose. He wore a black patch over his left eye.

“Herschel,” the man said brightly, “I apologize for how you've been treated. I've been very busy, else I would have gotten to you before now. I say, it has been a long time, yes?”

Herschel rubbed his sleepy eyes. “Do I know you?”

“We were quite good boyhood friends, but my family moved from Degania in 1922. I'm Moshe Dayan.”

Dayan! Herschel was only ten at the time, but he well remembered his old friendship.

“Moshe, of course I remember you now,” Herschel said truthfully, thinking fast. “For old time's sake, can you get me out of here?”

Dayan laughed. “You're certainly an Irgunist, I see. There's nothing you won't exploit.”

“You have no reason to act superior,” Herschel said harshly. “Not when Haganah seems to be arm in arm with the CID. The British arrested me, and yet here I am in one of your safehouses. Tell me, do you really think it prudent to let the CID know your hideouts?”

“They don't know where our hideouts are, Herschel. This place and others like it are being used specifically for this operation. The British have no idea where Haganah goes to ground.”

“You going to let me go or not?”

Dayan nodded. “You are free to go,” he began, but when Herschel stood up, he added, “after you hear me out.”

“Either I'm free or I'm not.”

“Please don't make me summon the guards.”

Herschel shrugged and sat back down.

Dayan's one eye sparkled with amusement. He looks more like a parrot than I first thought, Herschel mused, watching the way Dayan cocked and turned his head to focus upon him.

Kol indicated the eyepatch. “What happened?”

“In '39, when the political winds changed and the British began to worry about the Axis influence on the Arabs, they decided to prove how evenhanded they were by arresting some Haganah men. I got five years. In '41 they let me out the same as you, because I volunteered for a commando mission. We were in Syria and I was looking through a pair of binoculars.” He shrugged. “Some sniper got in a lucky shot and my eye was gone.”

“You made out better than Raziel at any rate,” Herschel said. “What is it you want to talk to me about? Make it quick, please. I'd like to get out of here.”

“And you will, Herschel, that I promise. Whether you agree to what I ask or not, you'll be free to go. We need your help, my old friend.”

Herschel began to laugh. “Haganah—Ben-Gurion—
needs my help? What for, Moshe? You've got the British, yes? They will hand Haganah a little piece of Palestine because you have behaved and asked politely. So why should you need the help of a—what have you called us?—a maniac, a gangster, a terrorist?”

“The British will give us nothing. They will not make good on any promises. We all know that.”

“We do?”

“The British have told us what is expedient. Once the war is over they refuse to antagonize the Arabs and risk driving them into the Russian fold.”

“Then why have you helped them?”

“Because terrorism will rob us of sympathy. Herschel, what's happened between our organizations is ugly, I don't deny it, but it has been necessary. If we give the world an excuse to hate Jews, they will gladly take it. It's far more convenient for the powers that be to focus on Moyne's assassination than on the plight of the refugees in internment camps.” Dayan frowned.

“You see, lrgun ideas are right, but the timing is all wrong. We must bide our time until the British reveal themselves as liars. Then we can begin to drive them out. Given a couple of years the British will withdraw from Palestine, confident that the Arabs will accomplish what has so far proved to be beyond Hitler's reach. The white paper's goal of an Arab Palestine will have been realized. Nobody will blame the British, and the world will go on merrily enjoying the region's output of petroleum.”

“It sounds to me like Ben-Gurion owes Begin an apology.”

“What's befallen the lrgun is its own fault,” Dayan insisted. “Begin was given every opportunity to fall into line behind the establishment. He had his chance—”

“Like I'm having mine?”

Dayan regarded him. “I told you you'd be released no matter what, and I meant it. I am offering you a chance
to aid your organization by helping us. So far we've been able to hold our own against the Arabs, but Jewish boys repelling a Bedouin raid on an agricultural settlement is one thing; the Jewish people defending themselves against tens of thousands of British-trained soldiers of the Arab Legion is quite something else. We—Haganah, lrgun and LEHI—can train the manpower, but we don't have the guns.”

It was all true, of course. Herschel had just spent a year at various lrgun training camps and had helped write a manual on the Bren gun, but not enough of these weapons were available. Fewer than one in ten had been issued a weapon, and most of those were revolvers.

“You said that by helping you, I can also help the lrgun. How so?”

“The three resistance organizations will all be in the same boat when the British break their word. They—we—will form the core of the army that will win the homeland. Don't you agree?”

“I suppose,” Herschel replied, “but where do I fit in?”

“You've become something of a weapons-expert in the last year. You know not only how to use existing weapons but how to make rudimentary arms. Isn't that correct?”

Herschel shrugged. “Pipe bombs, very primitive single-shot pistols, a crude mortar—I tell you, Moshe, it was more for morale than anything. You give a man a weapon—any weapon—and he doesn't feel so powerless.”

Dayan nodded, smiling. “Yes.” His fingertips nervously tapped the tabletop. “Before I tell you what it is we want from you, I'll tell you what we can do for you. Our relationship with the British is such that we could get you a pardon. Your record would be clean. There'd be no more threat of prison.”

“That would be very nice for me. Now suppose you tell me what it is you want.”

“We are establishing a network all across the world to search for weapons. We will import all we can. Some of our people are finding guns and others are finding the money to pay for them. The arms we acquire will be distributed equally.”

“So you want me to act as the Haganah's arms buyer?” Herschel asked.

“As one of them, yes. As I've said, there will be a network and you would be a part of it.”

“Why are you doing this? For me, I mean. Here you are offering me what amounts to a full pardon to join in a cooperative effort that could proceed very well without me.”

“We have no shortage of volunteers, but not so many are technically knowledgeable. We will come across many arms brokers who want to sell us junk, so men like you, who can tell what's good from what isn't, are very valuable.” Dayan looked down at the table. “But it's more than that, Herschel. You see, I remember a conversation we had when we were boys. I was bragging about being named after a hero. You shamed me by telling me about your father. ‘He's the real hero,' you maintained.”

“I remember that very well,” Herschel said. “I was still mourning him, I suppose.”

“I'm offering you an opportunity to be just as much of a hero as your father. He did not shirk his duty and you must not. You speak English and you have the technical expertise to do the job, and so you must do it. The old generation were giants, and now we must be giants if the dream is to endure.”

“Enough.” Herschel smiled. “I'll do it. After all, my father did not hesitate to go to the rescue of his Moshe.”

“Good.” They shook hands, but when Dayan mentioned that Herschel should join Haganah, he refused.

“No more oaths. What use are they? Is it kiss the Bible and touch the pistol or the other way around, comrade?”

“You needn't join if you don't want it,” Dayan said neutrally.

“You mentioned speaking English as a qualification for the job. I take it you're sending me to London?”

Dayan shook his head. “America.”

Carl left the lobby of the East Side apartment building and after a moment's indecision decided to walk home. He had given his driver the weekend off and taken a taxi to Sonnebom's brunch. The temperature was in the nineties on this Sunday afternoon in July, but he was dressed for the weather in a white linen suit Becky had coerced onto his back. Well, he guessed man could not live in dark blue tropical worsted alone, and his suit did tie in with the festive mood of the city since V-E Day. Besides, linen was rather comfortable if one was intent on strolling Manhattan during a heat wave.

He did his second-best thinking on his feet. He did his best thinking on horseback, but it was late in the afternoon, too late to squeeze in a ride and still be on time at Becky's.

As he walked up Fifth Avenue, his mind went back over the extraordinary events of the morning. He had only a nodding acquaintance with Rudolf Sonneborn. He knew the family had made its money in oil and chemicals and that Sonneborn had an interest in Palestine. Carl doubted he
would have thought to invite him if it hadn't been for their mutual friend Wendell Pearlmutter.

Wendell had a chain of tanneries and had supplied shoe leather to the government during the war. Yes, it was Wendell who got him the invitation to the brunch, although at this point Carl wasn't at all sure he appreciated it.

There were twenty or so others there. Some of the men Carl more or less knew from around town or at Jewish affairs. Others from out of town he knew by reputation only. The guest of honor was an elfin, white-haired little Palestinian who would have made a good Santa Claus for Pickman's Christmas season—If Ben-Gurion consented to grow a white beard and exchange his open-necked shirt and baggy pants for a red suit and cap.

Carl and the others listened to the spokesman for the Jews of Palestine. His speech was one part history lesson and one part predictions for Zionism.

“As the Jews have been betrayed before, they will be betrayed again. The Jews of Palestine can no longer beg the world's permission to survive. The world in which we all live is a barbaric place, and we Jews must make our own way and fend for ourselves if the homeland is to exist. The refugees will be brought to Palestine in defiance of the British, and a Jewish army will be formed to defend its people when the British turn loose the Arabs to do their dirty work.”

Carl and the others listened, leaning forward in their chairs and straining to make out what the fast-talking, emotional Ben-Gurion was saying in his thick English as he restlessly paced the parquet floor of Sonneborn's crowded penthouse apartment. A cloud of smoke hovered in the still, sweltering air although the windows were thrown open in the hope of catching a breeze.

From where Carl was seated he could see a barge
peacefully making its way along the East River. He watched it and was mesmerized by its wake as the talk of DP camps and duplicitous British officials and fairytale armies marching under the Star of David swirled around him. Finally he lost himself in thoughts of Becky.

How exquisite it was to make love to her. How delicious it would be to make love tonight. He'd been bedding her at her little aerie overlooking the Hudson twice or thrice weekly. He was a silver-haired stallion perhaps, but a stallion nevertheless. He almost always used precautions, but occasionally not. Those were the warmest, sweetest, best times, when Becky said it was safe for her. Carl secretly hoped she was wrong and would get pregnant. He fully intended to ask her to marry him when his divorce was final. Perhaps if she was pregnant she'd accept.

When he was with her he hadn't a care in the world, but as soon as they parted the most awful ruminations entered his mind: that she would succumb to the charms of a damnable young war hero with a brawny chest full of medals.

If such adolescent heartsick pangs were unseemly for a man of his age and stature, so be it. Carl was marking his sixtieth year, and so he welcomed this second adolescence as a gift.

It was Becky who persuaded him to accept Sonneborn's invitation. He didn't want to come, but the plight of the refugees and Palestine in general was very close to Becky's heart. She said he should go to the meeting, and so he had. He could refuse her nothing, even if his instincts had warned him that something more than his money was going to be asked of him.

Wendell, seated nearby, jolted Carl out of his fantasies by loudly questioning Ben-Gurion. Carl blushed as if his romantic reveries were revealed to the room at large. At that point he brought his attention back to the present.

“All this talk about fighting the Arabs.” Pearlmutter looked both angry and disgusted. “With all due respect, we
Americans
have just fought a war, and it looks as if we still have a nasty time ahead of us in the Pacific. When that's over we'd like to forget about fighting.”

“You must not,” Ben-Gurion said. “It was the Jews' tendency to avoid violence, to abhor fighting, that led them to the extermination camps.”

“Very well,” Pearlmutter allowed grudgingly. “We all mourned the loss of our President in April, but since Truman was inaugurated there's been some flexibility on the United States' position concerning the refugees. Truman has ordered Eisenhower to alleviate conditions in the European DP camps, and he's pressuring London to reopen Palestine—”

“Listen to me,” Ben-Gurion broke in. “In February, when Roosevelt—may he rest in peace—was returning from Yalta, he stopped to pay a visit in Saudi Arabia, where he told the king that the United States supported an Arab Palestine. Your State Department is not so much in love with Jews, I think, and they wish America to have its share of Arab oil. Roosevelt was a nice man. Truman is a nice man as well, I suppose, but his good intentions will not bring about the homeland. That we must do for ourselves.”