Stateless (34 page)

Something so small, yet inside a fuel truck it would radiate out to cause immense damage. These thoughts stayed with him as he thought about what would happen on the tarmac of the airfield.

His fingers slowly and dextrously felt around the explosive for the switch. It was rudimentary, just a break connector that would join two wires and begin a clock countdown. But he'd always been told the best bombs were simple. He pressed his finger against the switch, felt its resistance, then he pushed and felt a distinct click.

Two minutes. Not long, but enough.

From around his neck Shalman loosened a thin woollen scarf and, looping it around the steering wheel, he tied the other end to the thick door handle and pulled it tight so the wheel would not turn either way. Satisfied the truck would hold its course, he eased his foot off the accelerator and leant down awkwardly to feel the brick on the floor. He manoeuvred the brick into position to lean against the pedal, maintaining the pressure to keep the lorry moving forward, inexorably, slowly, and aimed squarely at the aircraft.

Shalman had no idea whether the bomb would explode before or after the truck crashed into the plane, but it didn't matter. It was full of fuel, and there was no way that the British could stop it happening. Double-checking that the truck was driving itself and was on the right course, Shalman opened the driver's door and jumped out onto the tarmac. The driver's door faced away from any of the few soldiers on the airstrip, and being late at night with the truck lights turned off, he was reasonably certain nobody would see him or the truck until it entered the umbra of the lights surrounding the aircraft.

His feet hit the ground and he rolled as he'd been trained, taking the impact and momentum in the tumble. The truck was moving slowly but still the force of the jump blew the air from his lungs and, as he came to a crouch in the thin, long grass by the side of the airstrip, he struggled to find his breath.

Shalman flattened himself down further and lay stationary, watching. He took out a small pair of binoculars from a pouch at
his waist and adjusted the screw until he could see the underside of the plane clearly. There were four British soldiers standing underneath the plane, smoking and chatting to somebody. He couldn't quite see who and shifted the lens side to side to find the other figure. The truck rolled closer. Any minute now one of the soldiers would see the truck and become concerned that it was not slowing. Shalman continued to look through the binoculars, taking in each of the men. He remembered Dov's words, ‘No civilians, just hardware.' In that moment he realised Dov's play on words. Shalman had accepted blowing up a plane but not four soldiers and his heart sank as he breathed out slowly. Soldiers, not civilians . . .

And then he saw the boy.

A short boy, his distinctly Arab clothes and dark skin visible through the binoculars under the lights of the airfield. Shalman was overcome with dread as he watched the boy hold up a jerry can. One of the soldiers seemed to be laughing with him, and patted him on the head. The boy was asking for fuel . . .

Shalman had no idea who the boy was, no sense of where he came from, but the simple act forced his mind to race through a narrative – the son of a local farmer, sent to the airfield to scrounge for scarce petrol, a boy known to the soldiers, a familiar face . . .

Shalman wanted to scream to the boy to run. He never intended for anyone to get hurt, just for the plane to be destroyed as the orders stated. But because the soldiers were laughing and joking with the boy, they hadn't noticed the truck moving quietly towards them, shrouded in the darkness of the airfield, its cabin empty, the bomb's mechanism slowly moving forward in time and space, on a collision course with the plane.

Shalman watched in horror. The only way for them to escape would be for Shalman to shout a warning. But he couldn't bring the cry to his lips. He half stood in a crouch and moved to run
away from the tarmac. But he couldn't and felt compelled to turn back and watch. He raised the binoculars once more. The idiots still hadn't heard the truck coming towards them. It was now so close, they surely must . . .

But it was all too late.

Shalman turned and ran towards the outskirts of the airfield. There was only a rudimentary barrier surrounding it, and it was easy for him to climb over. As he slipped to the other side of the fence Shalman looked up once more to the distant aircraft. The truck had almost arrived at the target. It had veered slightly to the left, but would still collide with the right-hand wheel of the massive undercarriage. It was then that the British Tommies noticed the truck coming towards them without lights,; and they began to shout when they saw that nobody was driving it.

The soldiers scattered away from the plane to protect themselves. But the Arab boy was just staring, transfixed, rooted to the spot. Shalman screamed out, ‘Move!' in Arabic, but he knew that he couldn't be heard from such a distance.

The British soldier furthest away raised his rifle and began firing into the cabin of the truck. It must have been an instinctive reaction because all he accomplished was to shatter the windscreen and side glass panels. And then the truck careened into the wheels of the undercarriage, at the same time as the timing mechanism of the bomb counted down to zero. A massive ball of flame erupted out of the truck's cabin. The momentary inferno spread to the cargo of fuel, exploding with an almighty boom, lighting up the entire airfield, the hangars, the control buildings and the periphery where Shalman was standing.

He couldn't see, but he knew that the fireball had engulfed not just the plane and the truck but the young Arab boy, and almost certainly some of the soldiers. He screamed, ‘NO!' at the top of his voice, but nobody was listening.

The heat from the explosion hit him and he smelt the heavy, greasy stench of the kerosene. The plane was on fire and the remaining fuel in its tanks exploded, adding a second fireball to the sky.

His only thought now was escape and so he turned and ran.

With the explosion and flame behind him, Shalman's feet carried him across the grass to where he'd left his bicycle: his only means of escape. As he pedalled furiously away he saw in his mind's eye the body of a young Arab child, alight in a pyre of aircraft fuel.

Jerusalem

1947

S
halman now counted the times of happiness in the house in terms of hours, rather than days. He looked at his wife, Judit – beautiful, confident and calm – and knew that things had changed for them both.

Since he had come back from the archaeological site with Mustafa, the change in Judit was subtle yet noticeable. Something had happened to her and the more she brushed aside his concerns, the deeper they grew. What he had always seen as a deep calm in her now struck him as a certain coldness. She seemed driven and focused in a way he couldn't understand. And at night she disappeared, returning sometimes by dawn and at other times not for days.

He loved her still with all his heart and ached for the Judit he'd married only a couple of years ago. Yet he knew that they were growing apart. For he had changed too. They no longer spoke of Lehi and their objectives. Shalman assumed Judit knew about the mission to destroy the airfield, but she never asked about it and he never spoke to her of the young Arab boy engulfed in flame. And he never asked where she went or what she did in the dark hours of night. When she first disappeared in
the evenings, or for a few days, he'd asked, indeed demanded, to know, but she was evasive and told him that these matters went to Lehi's secrecy. So he stopped asking and bore a resentment at the growing isolation between them. The house was filled with silence broken only by the occasional tears and tantrums of their daughter, Vered.

It was this that hurt Shalman the most. Was whatever grand objective or cause she was undertaking more important than being a mother?

Their beautiful Vered's attachment was almost exclusively to Shalman. He was mother and father and entire family to their daughter. He fed her, read to her, dressed her, nurtured her. When Judit was in the apartment she would play with Vered but even the little girl clearly sensed that her mother's mind was elsewhere and would seek her father out instead. And Shalman would watch as Judit asked Vered what she'd like to do, and the child would look at her father for permission. It was heartbreaking.

He confronted his wife one night in their bed.

‘Something has changed in you, Judit.'

She just scoffed and rolled away from him to face the wall.

‘Is the fight so great that it's more important than your family?'

‘The world is bigger than just this apartment, Shalman. Bigger than just this family,' she said in a detached voice.

‘What does that mean? Where do you go at night? What do you do?'

At this, Judit fiercely rolled back to face Shalman.

‘What must be done, Shalman. I do what must be done.'

‘What you need to do is be here, with us, with Vered!'

Shalman's voice had strengthened in volume and, as the walls were thin, Judit replied with a harsh whisper.

‘And what of you and your expeditions into the past? Digging in the dirt – for what? What happened to you out there? The
Arabs want you dead and the British grind you under their heels and yet you're scrounging around caves with an Arab!'

‘He saved my life,' said Shalman flatly.

Judit tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. It was a look that once upon a time he had found so alluring. But now it just seemed jaded.

‘If it wasn't for him, I'd be dead.'

‘So it's guilt. You spend time with this Arab because you feel guilty?'

‘No!' Shalman had raised his voice again but quickly lowered it. ‘No. It's feeling indebted. It's a debt I can repay.'

‘How?'

‘I'm teaching him. What I've learned at the university. I'm teaching him.'

‘So he can be an archaeologist like you? You have to be kidding me, Shalman! If there is to be a nation of Israel, it will need builders, workers, engineers, not people who play in the dirt looking at an irrelevant past.'

At other times there would have been so much to say, so much to argue, but Shalman had not the words or strength.

‘You're more interested in the fight than you are in your family. We're almost there, Judit. Israel will soon be declared as a new nation. Can't you come back home and be a wife and a mother again?'

‘And when Israel's declared, you think there'll be doves of peace flying through rainbows in the sky? Don't be naïve, Shalman. When Israel is declared, war will follow. Your Arab friend will quickly be your enemy. Where will you stand then?'

‘And what of you, Judit?' Shalman shot back. ‘Where will you stand? You fight for Lehi but I know your heart. I know there is something else in you. Who do you really fight for? I've seen you when you're with people from Russia and the way you
speak of Moscow and Stalin with nostalgia. Sometimes I think you'd prefer to be back there than here.'

Judit suddenly sat up. ‘How could you say that? Have you any idea what those Russian bastards – '

‘What else can I say? It's like I don't even know who you are anymore. I'm not sure I ever did . . .'

Judit's face showed no emotion. But inside, she trembled. She looked at her husband, a man who lived his life with a transparency she didn't have and never would. He said what was on his mind; she said what she had been taught to say to avoid telling the truth.

She remembered her mother's life, brutalised by a drunken and violent husband; her own life as a child, always in fear; then Beria and Anastasia and the power they had given her over her life. They made her capable of anything and the fear of being that girl under the table again had hardened her.

‘There's so much I want to tell you, Shalman. But I can't . . .'

Peterhof, the Palace of Peter the Great

Leningrad, Russia

October 1947

R
ubble-strewn, dilapidated, literally a shell of its former self, Peterhof, the once proud summer palace of Tsar Peter the Great, somehow remained standing. Despite the attempts by the Nazis to destroy all that wasn't German, and despite the cost of tens of millions dead, Mother Russia had triumphed over the Germans.

Since his incarceration as a rabble-rouser in Landsberg Castle, since his rise to chancellor, and since his Nuremberg speeches spitting hatred, Adolf Hitler had defined any race east of Germany as sub-human: the Slavs, the Russians, the Asiatics. Not, though, the Japanese, who were useful allies in the war; but Stalin often speculated how long it would have been before the madman Hitler tried to exterminate them, had he won.

It was only during the relative equanimity of the opening months of the war, when the pact between Germany and Russia held fast, did the Nazi leader refrain from defining the Russians as sub-humans. But since he'd instigated Operation Barbarossa and invaded Russia, laying a murderous siege to Leningrad and a scorched-earth policy in the rest of the western territory of the
nation, his visceral hatred of everything that wasn't Hunnish and German had been evident for all to see.

It had taken years, and the bodies of more than twenty million Russians, but the invading German armies had been repelled. From that time, the might of the Soviet army had slowly ground down Nazi Germany. Yet despite the victory, the pride of Russia's greatness had been badly damaged, and Stalin had promised himself that the palaces that had once belonged to the privileged classes would be rebuilt and used as Soviet offices and for museums. One of the most pressing of all was the palace that Peter the Great had built for himself, over the water from Leningrad on the shores of the Gulf of Finland.

For two hundred and fifty years, Peterhof had been the honoured sentinel of Russian magnificence, positioned as the entryway to Leningrad and from there to the rest of the nation. Its restoration would be a symbol of Russia's re-established place in the world.