Stateless (45 page)

‘I wasn't sure until he came to our village and spoke to us, telling us not to be full of anger when our land is carved up. But when I saw him, I knew. I knew it was him. I remembered his face.'

‘What are you saying?' asked Mustafa.

‘Your friend, the Jew . . . He was the one at the airfield. I saw him with my own eyes. He was the one who drove the truck . . .'

Mustafa brushed away the half formed accusation with a wave of his hand and pushed himself to the ground to continue his work. But Shamil stood over him, silhouetted against the sun.

‘He was the one who set off the bomb that burned my cousin alive!'

‘You're mistaken. You must be,' said Mustafa angrily.

‘Ask him. Ask your friend . . .'

‘I did!'

‘And what did he say, Mustafa?'

Mustafa said nothing.

‘War is coming. Our Arab brothers will be arriving soon with guns and tanks and planes and your Jew-friend and all the others will be driven out. Friends tell the truth. And Jews are liars . . . And soon they will be gone!'

Lydda RAF Base

27 December 1948

S
halman drove the borrowed car along the dusty road heading west, down the steep and winding road away from Jerusalem towards Tel Aviv and the sea.

He drove towards the RAF air base outside of the Palestinian town of Lydda, where international aeroplanes had just begun to fly passengers into and out of the region. He was heading there to meet his family.

Soon after arriving and parking the car on an open field, he was searched by British soldiers. They went over every inch of his car, made him remove his jacket and patted down his trousers. Finally, and almost begrudgingly, they moved him on. He and a dozen other people then waited in the Customs and Excise Hall, a disused aircraft hangar, for the transport plane from Turkey to land.

Shalman watched as the plane drew closer, transforming from a distant smudge in the brilliant blue of the sky to a giant metallic bird, feet outstretched, landing with a bump and a bounce. The propellers roared and spluttered as the plane wheeled around in a wide arc before coming to a halt. Ground
crew strode out to place large chocks under the wheels to hold the aircraft in place as the propellers slowed down.

Judit was one of the first to appear at the top of the stairs, which had been wheeled up to the fuselage. Shalman watched as she walked from the dark interior and stepped into the sun. She raised one hand to shield her eyes while her other hand held baby Vered close to her body. Shalman walked out onto the grass and watched his family descend the stairs. His mind was fraught with mixed emotions. Love for his child, longing for his wife, yet fear, mystery, worry and questions, always questions.

When Judit arrived at the bottom of the stairs, Shalman extended his arms and wrapped them around both her and Vered. They embraced without speaking. But it was a cold embrace and relinquished quickly. They hardly spoke to each other. Shalman's attention shifted straight to his daughter and he scooped her out of her mother's arms and kissed her warmly. He turned to face Judit but she had already turned away towards where the baggage was being removed from the plane.

Shalman reversed the car out of the grass field and steered it towards the road that linked Tel Aviv with Jerusalem and which would return them home. Vered was in the back seat, resting in a cot. Judit sat next to Shalman in the front bench-seat, staring out the window; the landscape seeming so foreign because of where she'd been, and yet so familiar.

They said nothing for some time, each alone in their thoughts, until Shalman finally broke the strained silence. ‘Did you see your family?'

In truth he knew almost nothing about his wife's family and had no idea what to expect in her answer. But he knew that family had been her pretext for travelling to Moscow and so it was an obvious question to ask.

‘Are they well?' he continued when Judit did not answer straight away.

‘They're dead,' Judit said, and the cold obliqueness of the answer surprised him. ‘They passed away.'

‘I'm . . . I'm sorry . . .' stammered Shalman. ‘I don't know what to say . . .' He reached out his hand to take hers.

‘I'm still here . . .'

Judit was desperate to tell Shalman the truth. She wanted to tell him all she had done, all that had happened, all she must do. Of her meetings with Beria, with Molotov, her moment with Stalin when he'd walked into the room, smiled, shaken her hand and walked out again without speaking; of receiving Russia's highest civilian award; that she was being groomed for high office in the new nation and with that came a past she must hide.

Judit's silence compelled Shalman to say something he'd been holding back until now.

‘Immanuel Berin asked about you.'

The statement rattled Judit and surprised her, but she held her gaze out the window and when she spoke she fought to keep concern out of her voice. ‘I thought you were having nothing more to do with Lehi and the Irgun and the fight. I thought you wanted to put that behind you.'

‘I do. I have . . . It's nothing.'

At any other time, the mention of Berin's name would have been ordinary but at this moment the name Immanuel Berin was more than ordinary – a senior leader of the Irgun and the final target for Judit under orders direct from Molotov himself.

‘What did he want?' Judit asked.

‘He just . . . He just asked how you were, where you had been . . .'

‘And did you tell him?'

‘I said you had travelled to see your family. That was the truth . . .' The final word hung in the air.

Judit's mind raced over the things that she had done and said before she had left for Moscow. Why the hell was Berin asking him about her?

‘That was the truth, wasn't it?'

‘Of course,' she said, but her response was delayed a fraction too long.

‘Why the hell are you lying to me, Judit? I'm your husband. Tell me the truth. Why were you in Moscow? What's going on in your life that you have to lie to me?'

He fell silent, praying that she'd answer him with the truth, and put an end to all his doubts. But after a long and painful moment of silence, she said softly, ‘I was visiting my family. Believe me, Shalman. Please believe me. But to find both my parents dead, without a word from my brother or sister . . . it was heartbreaking. I'm sorry if I don't meet your expectations, Shalman, but . . .'

They drove for ten or fifteen minutes up the hill towards Jerusalem in complete silence. But instead of thinking about how she was endangering the love between them, she only thought about what Shalman had said about Berin.

She thought back to conversations and meetings, but she was always so careful. She had been meticulously trained in how to separate her normal life from the clandestine life she led. She'd been taught how to divide the personas she presented to the world into distinct compartments in her mind, and only to allow those thoughts and events to rise to the surface when she was in control of her situation.

Even when she met one of her agents incidentally in the street, their eyes would never meet; they never faltered in their
gait; they never turned around after they'd passed each other. And yet they would fully and completely recognise each other.

No, she thought, there was nothing that could have given anybody in the Irgun the remotest clue about her role. She had been so careful. Hadn't she?

Shalman knew he couldn't take the issue any further without causing a catastrophe in his marriage. He had seen his parents' life ruined by his father's arrest by the British when he was little more than a boy. The people on the kibbutz had told him repeatedly that his dad was a hero who'd sacrificed himself for the lives of others. But Shalman had still lost his father and the loneliness and yearning never left him. He had then watched his mother slowly sink and almost will herself to death from grief. Family dissolved around him and he knew with utter certainty that if he pushed Judit too far, she'd walk out on him and Vered. And that was a lifelong trauma that he had no desire to ever cause for his beloved daughter.

Jerusalem

7 January 1948

‘I
need to be absolutely plain to you about the coming war.'

Immanuel Berin spoke to the men and women of his North Jerusalem forces of the Irgun gathered before him.

‘Our best advice is that when the UN vote for partition is passed, the Arab armies will not hesitate. They are gathered and well armed and have made their intentions clear. Their target will be Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a symbol and it's been easy for Arab leaders to motivate fighters from abroad – from Egypt, from Jordan, Syria and Lebanon – to fight with that one target in mind.

‘Should we fail to defend Jerusalem then Israel will fall, no matter what other territory we manage to keep. If we lose Jerusalem, we've lost the war.'

Berin knew he was giving a speech, but all of the younger men and women in his division were listening intently. Nobody needed to be reminded of why they were fighting.

‘For the past six months, Palestinian Arabs have been conducting a guerrilla war against us, hoping they will frighten
us away. Small targets: homes, businesses, kibbutzim. But this is not the real war and will not prepare us for what is to come. You've seen the map a thousand times. We are surrounded. North, east and south, with our backs to the sea. When they come, it will be a massive pincer movement.

‘The two armies that most concern us are the Jordanians and the Egyptians – the other Arab armies are not nearly as dangerous. The more medals the generals wear, the less professional they are. Not so the Jordanian army. It was trained by General Sir John Glubb, a highly regarded British military strategist who rose to fame as commander of the Bedouin Desert Patrol. He has done much to galvanise Arab fighters, who are often more focused on internal, tribal fighting than external enemies. He's now commander of the Arab Legion and effectively the Trans-Jordanian army, and we have to be very wary of him.

‘The Arab Legion is a serious force to be reckoned with. They've got modern equipment and are well trained. They'll be a problem for us and the Palmach. The other force that concerns us is that of Egypt. Egyptian soldiers are poorly trained and are known to be cowards on the field, but they've been whipped up into an Islamic jihad religious frenzy by crazy members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and into nationalistic fervour by the Arab Higher Committee. In case you don't know that one, it's led by Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, Adolf Hitler's best friend. And one of their best field officers, Gamal Abdul Nasser, is under his sway.'

He saw that the young men and women looked incredulous at the mention of Husayni's name.

‘Let me just remind you of the real enemy we're facing. This bastard, the former Mufti of Jerusalem, is a vicious piece of work. He aligned himself closely with Hitler and led a vitriolic anti-Semitic political campaign before the war. He was expelled by the British and now that he's in Egypt under the protection
of King Farouk, he's had ample time to instil a religious as well as a nationalistic Islamic fervour into the armed forces. They're being impelled to fight because they're being told that they have to free Jerusalem from Jewish hands, because Jerusalem is the third holiest site in Islam. Not so. Jerusalem isn't mentioned once, not one time, in the Koran. Jerusalem only becomes important to the Muslim when it's used as a political weapon. Remember that when you hear Islamic war cries.'

As he spoke, Berin knew he had yet to tell his men and women about the biggest problem: that of logistics, which might well eclipse any religious or strategic issues. The British had embargoed the importation of more sophisticated weaponry to the fledgling armed forces of the soon-to-be created nation. Against British- and Russian-supplied tanks, artillery and aircraft, the Israeli forces would be largely equipped with small arms. Or as Berin had drily observed to his other commanders, ‘kitchen knives and pitchforks'.

The young men and women of the Irgun listened carefully to what their regional commander told them. He held nothing back. This would be a life-and-death struggle. But sadly this was nothing new; many of the soldiers who now listened to Berin had, until two years earlier, been refugees from the genocide of the Nazis.