Leon Uris (12 page)

Gideon watched Ibn Yussuf coming through the fields toward the abandoned part of the monastery. Ibn Yussuf was a fragile man with tiny features encompassed by gray hair and a gray beard. He looked about to make certain he had not been followed, then entered the building. Gideon beckoned him from the doorway of a monk’s cell. Out of sight but within earshot, Orde Wingate strained to listen.

Ibn Yussuf had pieced together the elaborate plan of Kaukji and his rebels to attack Tabah. Two diversions would coordinate with the main attack. In Lydda and Ramle the Mufti’s preachers would incite riots to tie down the British garrisons there. A separate attack would be made on a remote Arab village with a handful of men to bring the British out of Latrun up a twisting dirt mountain road that could easily be blown up behind them and trap them for hours.

With the British tied down with riots and answering a false alarm, the target area of Tabah would be clear. Gideon worked slowly with Ibn Yussuf to ascertain the number of troops, map coordinates, times, and places. Kaukji would be using up to three hundred men, an enormous operation. The importance of Tabah’s demise was obviously the priority of the rebellion.

When Ibn Yussuf left, Wingate came out of the shadows and flopped on the hard wooden bedframe of a bygone monk. He stared long and blankly at the cob-webbed ceiling as Gideon looked through the slit of a window and watched Ibn Yussuf mount his donkey.

Whenever Wingate steeped himself in concentrated thought, he unconsciously withdrew a toothbrush from his trouser pocket and rubbed it softly over the hairs of his chest. He jerked himself to a sitting position suddenly. ‘How far do you trust that one?’

‘I understand what you’re trying to say, Wingate. They don’t all lie and cheat.’

‘Oh sure, they’ll do business with you for years, but when the crunch comes they’ll sell you for tuppence.’

‘But they sell their own people for tuppence, as well,’ Gideon said. ‘If we expect to remain in Palestine, we’re going to have to work out an accommodation.’

‘Ibn Yussuf and every last Arab is a total prisoner of his society. The Jews will eventually have to face up to what you’re dealing with here. The Arabs will never love you for what good you’ve brought them. They don’t know how to really love. But hate! Oh God, can they hate! And they have a deep, deep, deep resentment because you have jolted them from their delusions of grandeur and shown them for what they are—a decadent, savage people controlled by a religion that has stripped them of all human ambition ... except for the few cruel enough and arrogant enough to command them as one commands a mob of sheep. You are dealing with a mad society and you’d better learn how to control it.’

‘It is so terribly against our nature,’ Gideon said sadly.

Wingate changed the subject abruptly. ‘The whole plan is too sophisticated for Kaukji,’ he said.

‘I know that,’ Gideon agreed. ‘I am tempted to alert your command.’

‘Didn’t you hear a damned word I said?’ Wingate shouted.

‘You’re not giving a pep talk to one of the boys in the Special Night Squad.’

‘I’m telling you that since you Jews returned to Palestine you’ve never stopped hiding in your stockades. Now that we have the independence to act, you’re becoming very tense. To hell with the British Army. Let them go chasing all over Judaea. Good Lord, man, can’t you smell the dirty hand of some British officer plotting this operation for Kaukji?’ He sprang to his feet and paced, stopped before Gideon, and pointed his toothbrush under Gideon’s nose. ‘Realize their thinking. Kaukji and this British officer ... they’re saying—are they not?—the Haganah won’t budge out of Shemesh Kibbutz. The Jews think solely in defensive terms. Once the area is cleared of British troops, there is nothing to stop the attack on Tabah. The Haganah won’t interfere. They’re positive, utterly, utterly positive of it.’

Gideon Asch was a man of fifty-three who still had the stamina to go tracking in the wilds with the youngest, hardest soldiers of the Jews. He had walked a lifetime through that labyrinth of the Arab mind, seeking accommodation, friendship, and peace. It had all eluded him. His first exhilaration with the Special Night Squads had been slowly overtaken by a sense of tragedy. The illusion of brotherhood with the Arabs was also overtaken by the reality that if the dream of Zion were to come to pass, the Jews must go on an offensive repugnant to their souls.

The cell became as quiet as though the bygone monk were meditating in it.

Gideon sighed ponderously. All right, they’d take the fight to the Arabs now because the Arabs would never stop persecuting them if they didn’t. But how long, how terribly long would it go on? And during that time would the basic decency of the Jewish people be corrupted along the way? The road seemed incurably endless, but it was the price that the dream Zion demanded.

‘Well,’ Gideon said, ‘this is what we all came here for, isn’t it?’

‘Indeed, the moment of Zion is at hand.’

‘I’m not sure what plan that head of yours is concocting, Wingate, but Haj Ibrahim is a proud man. He would rather lose everything than accept our help.’

‘That, in one sentence, my friend, is the story of the Arab nation,’ Wingate answered. ‘Well, I won’t give Haj Ibrahim any options.’

Wingate, garbed in the blue work clothing of a kibbutz member, climbed to the top of Tabah’s knoll through the fields from the rear side to avoid the village proper.

‘You there,’ he called to a daydreamer sitting near the prophet’s tomb, ‘get yourself down to the village instantly and fetch Haj Ibrahim.’

The peasant was startled to hear the sudden stream of perfect Arabic.

‘Get along, do as I tell you,’ Wingate prodded authoritatively.

Fifteen minutes later Haj Ibrahim appeared and stopped behind the stranger who scanned the hills through binoculars. ‘Do you know who I am?’ Wingate asked, neither turning nor lowering his field glasses.

‘The crazy British officer.’

‘Precisely. But you’ll note that I’m not in uniform. What I have to tell you is from one friend to another.’

‘Perhaps I allow a friendship longer to develop than you.’

‘No time for quaint sayings. You’re going to get clobbered tonight and there won’t be anyone home at Latrun to bail you out.’ Wingate lowered the glasses, turned, smiled, and walked past Ibrahim to another viewpoint. ‘By God, the chaps who put this village on this spot knew what they were doing. No real way to get close, except up this knoll from the rear. Even so, you can’t defend it. Kaukji has too many men. They’ll come on their bellies, using the tall grass as cover until they’re fifty yards from where we stand. They’ll start shouting obscenities and your men will be converted into quivering masses of immobile flesh.’

‘We will make an accounting.’

‘To Allah, perhaps. I suspect you’re in the market for some good advice.’

‘If you mean asking the Jews to help, I won’t have it.’

‘Wouldn’t think of suggesting it, Haj Ibrahim.’ Wingate’s deep brown eyes continued to be transfixed down the slope. ‘The wind will be coming from the sea,’ he said. ‘It will be blowing downhill. The grass is dry. It will ignite to appear like ... like Joshua making the sun stand still. Things will get rather hot underfoot for Kaukji’s men.’

‘Burn the fields?’

‘Of course burn the fields, man; of course burn them.’

‘That is the most stupid tactic I’ve ever heard of,’ Haj Ibrahim said.

‘Oh? I thought you’d rather fancy it.’

‘It’s stupid.’

‘But Haj Ibrahim, that is what your great general, Saladin, did to the Crusaders at the Horns of Hittim. Maneuvered them against a bluff, caught them downwind in their armor, and burned the fields. Those who were not roasted alive or who choked to death tried to break out and get to the Sea of Galilee, for they were also parched, but Saladin stood between them and the sea.’ He turned away. ‘Of course, it takes imagination to be a Saladin.’ With that, Orde Wingate retraced his steps down the knoll and out of sight.

When darkness ended the fitful day, Kaukji’s troops spilled out of Fakim and headed down the Bab el Wad on a trail that had once served as the Roman road to Jerusalem. Earlier in the day he had dispatched the diversionary unit to a small village deeper in the wilds, which would lure the British from Latrun. At the same moment in Ramle and Lydda the mobs in the mosques were being whipped up.

Orde Wingate moved his Special Night Squad out of Shemesh Kibbutz, sending them crisscrossing through fields and over hills in a crazy-quilt pattern. If they were detected, no one would be able to ascertain their direction. They assembled at the mouth of the Bab el Wad, found cover, and froze. In an hour the advance scout of the party reported back to Wingate that Kaukji’s men were coming down toward them.

‘Good, they are right on schedule,’ Wingate said. ‘Don’t breathe, don’t budge. Try to get a count of them.’

The Jews were scattered on a steep little cliff directly above the old Roman road. They heard the tinkle of canteens and the clicking of dislodged rock, followed by the aroma of hashish. Then came voices, charging up their blood for the coming battle. Kaukji’s rebels passed directly beneath the Special Night Squad and moved out of sight into the Valley of Ayalon.

Wingate waited a full hour after they had passed, then whistled for his boys to assemble. They had counted somewhat over two hundred and fifty of Kaukji’s men who would take part in the attack on Tabah.

Wingate spread a map. ‘We stay off the path. Keep in the hills. Here at this point, two miles before we reach Fakim, we will set up the ambush.’ The plan was to give a reception to Kaukji’s forces when they returned from the attack on Tabah. The men of the Special Night Squad knew that in order to avoid detection, the rest of the night would be one, long, murderous uphill climb. Wingate glanced at Gideon, who nodded that he, despite his age, would make it just fine.

At two in the morning, Kaukji’s rebels fanned out at the base of the knoll of Tabah and crawled upslope toward the village.

Haj Ibrahim had long second thoughts about his strange encounter with the British officer, then gathered his people and ordered them to carry the village supply of kerosene up to the prophet’s tomb. Taking full credit for the plan, he had the perimeter soaked so the dry grass begged to be ignited.

At half past two, a rebel officer stood up near the top of the knoll, held his rifle aloft, and screamed the ancient battle cry, ‘Allah akbar!’ A roar went up from the rest, followed by a volley of fire and a charge.

Haj Ibrahim arced the first torch into the grass and fell to his stomach. One after another his people ran to the perimeter, each flinging a torch at the onrushers. Within seconds a grumble of fire mixing with fuel belched into a roar and a titanic blaze leaped heavenward. The wind swept over the knoll, pushing the fire downhill toward the attackers almost instantly. Curses changed to horrendous screams while one human torch after another ignited. Men leaped up and down as the ground turned into a broiler. Some fell to the ground gagging from the rushing cloud of angry black smoke, others tumbled downhill, frantically trying to outrun the advancing wall of flame. They were cross-whipped with hellfire and scattered in utter panic. Twenty-five men had been burned or choked to death within two minutes of ignition. Another hundred were badly charred.

The balance limped back into the sanctuary of the Bab el Wad toward Fakim, dazed after an insane all-night retreat. By dawn they began to enter a narrow defile a few miles from Fakim, overcome with exhaustion, barely able to hang on.

The Special Night Squad had arrived at the defile hours earlier after the vicious forced march and were deployed in an executioner’s ambush. The survivors of the charge on Tabah now faced a pair of machine guns set up to mangle anything caught in their crossfire. Those who survived the first burst flung down their weapons and scattered through the hills, never to return to battle again.

T
HE OFFICE OF THE
Waqf served as headquarters for the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. It was located just outside the great plaza known as the Haram esh Sharif, the former Temple Mount of Solomon and Herod. The Haram esh Sharif held Islam’s first major edifice, the Dome of the Rock, which dominated all else in Jerusalem. The mighty dome was thirteen centuries old. It was the site of Abraham’s sacrifice, of the Holy of Holies of the Hebrew Temple, and the rock from which Mohammed made his legendary leap to heaven. Hovering in its shadows was a small replica of the Dome of the Rock known as the Mosque of the Chain, which had served as the model for the larger building. The Mufti claimed the Mosque of the Chain as his personal place of worship. Several times a day he crossed from the Office of the Waqf to attend to his spiritual needs.

He sat on his prayer rug in cross-legged meditation.

‘Your Eminence!’ a voice echoed behind him from the shadows.

The Mufti slowly opened his eyes and came out of his trance.

‘Your Eminence!’ the voice repeated, reverberating off the marble.

The Mufti turned to see Gustav Bockmann, dressed clumsily as an Arab. ‘Can’t you see I’m at prayer!’

‘You must go at once,’ Bockmann said. ‘The British are rounding up your council and all your commanders. There is a warrant for your arrest.’

The Mufti grunted to his feet and looked about in confusion. ‘Quickly,’ Bockmann said, ‘you must hide.’

The two ran out of the mosque over the Haram esh Sharif to its other great building, the Al Aksa Mosque, entered, and fast made their way down a narrow stone staircase into the hidden caverns beneath the building. The mustiness of the ages mingled with the scent of gunpowder that had been stored for the revolt.

‘You must not move until I return,’ Bockmann instructed.

A day and a night passed until the German returned with several bundles beneath his arm. He brought food and drink, a shaving kit, and clothing.

‘What is going on out there?’

Bockmann rattled off a long list of those in his council who had been hauled in. Some leaders had escaped, but a dragnet was over the entire country. The rumor had it that the British were going to ship the captives off to the Seychelles Islands, somewhere out in the Indian Ocean.