Stateless (49 page)

The gamble Golda had made was that the Kremlin might hand over their agents as a peace offering for future cooperation with Jerusalem if they believed it was a more secure bet. Having twenty minutes before her car took her to the airfield, Golda opened the lid of her suitcase and took a small code book from a hidden pocket in the lining. She sat with a pencil and piece of paper, cross-referencing the names on the list with the codes she had to use to transmit them to Jerusalem.

Judit and Anastasia sat in deep armchairs in a luxurious safe house. It had been purchased by a Russian Jew who had managed to emigrate to America but was still covertly a communist. While he lived in America waiting for the State of Israel to be created, the Soviet intelligence agencies used the abode as a safe house for clandestine meetings.

The windows were barred, the curtains closed and they'd entered the house by a side door. And for additional security, one had entered the house an hour after the other, and they'd leave at different times.

The women appeared relaxed but in truth were pondering carefully the next steps they would need to take.

Anastasia's spies had confirmed what Judit had suspected since she had been picked up from the airport by Shalman. Immanuel Berin was suspicious, though neither of them knew how much he suspected or really knew. Judit had spent the past days wondering what had prompted that suspicion but it was Anastasia who worked out the source.

‘The truth is that you were careless, Judita.'

The rebuke from her handler, a woman so much a mother figure to Judit, stung her almost physically.

‘You must have been careless and you were seen.'

‘By whom?' demanded Judit, wanting so much to be able to deny the charge, yet knowing that Anastasia would not have made the statement had she been anything other than certain.

‘A young Irgun woman named Ashira. I assume you know her?'

Judit remembered back to the Lehi raid on Goldschmidt House, the British officers' club. The girl had been so young,
naïve, but darkly determined. Ashira had also been there on the night of the vote, listening to the radio. That was the night Judit had killed the Jewish professor in front of his family. Anastasia vocalised the next thought in Judit's mind.

‘That was the night she must have followed you. You were careless.'

Anastasia leaned over and put a hand on Judit's knee. ‘But I understand. I don't expect perfection. I expect diligence.'

‘How dangerous is she to us?' Judit asked.

Anastasia took another sip of wine and reached over to the table to refill it. ‘I'm afraid she must be dealt with.'

‘Is that necessary? She's just a kid. She has no influence. She can't be sure what she saw. No one listens to her or takes her seriously.'

‘Berin might . . .'

This simple answer brought the argument to a halt, but inside Judit was torn. She had killed many times over but the thought that she herself would be asked to remove the young girl filled her with self-loathing.

Anastasia, as if reading her thoughts again, reassured her. ‘Don't worry. It won't be you. We must keep you clean and away from such things, focused on higher duties.'

Judit simply nodded. Her path had been carefully constructed by Moscow. She would be a heroine of the coming war between Arabs and Jews, and from that public status be elevated to office. There she would orchestrate the special relationship between the new nation and the Soviet Union. The Americans would be apoplectic but only Anastasia, Molotov, Beria and perhaps even Stalin himself would know the truth about Judit.

But now, because of one small error, a naïve girl called Ashira threatened to unbalance an entire geopolitical plan. To Judit, in that moment of thought, it all appeared so fragile.

‘And Berin?' asked Judit.

‘You have your orders, your plan, your disguise . . .'

Anastasia was referring to the simple dark Arab dress and head scarf that would cover Judit's body and face when she made her move against Berin, the disguise that would ensure Arabs were blamed. Implicit in the plan was that Judit must be seen by onlookers to be the killer. When the police investigated, it would be a Jordanian Arab woman who would be blamed.

‘But, we still need time and so we remove Ashira from the equation. We have to plan this carefully so that no suspicion can fall on you. One way is for you to have a meeting with Berin when we put an end to Ashira. But knowing him, he'll be suspicious of the coincidence. So I'm afraid that at the same time as Ashira goes to meet her god, Berin will have to suffer the same fate. You'll have to be responsible. His death is too important to be left to an underling.'

Anastasia swallowed the rest of the wine and returned her hand to Judit's leg.

‘Then, when these dark clouds have departed, we can finish what we started . . .'

It was darkly overcast and late in the day. In such light Ashira was very good at being invisible. She was nondescript in many ways, ordinary in height, gait and shape. As a young woman in Jerusalem, few saw her as a threat and her dark Tunisian features made her appear as much Arab as Jewish. The effect was that neither side immediately saw her as the ‘other' and she dressed accordingly, wearing nothing that marked her as decidedly Jewish or observantly Arab. She blended in easily.

Had she been trained as Judit had been, Ashira may well have been a master spy. But her only training had been a harsh life and a determination to survive. For now it was enough as she lay on her belly atop a low hillock, nestled behind a tall tuft of grass and rubble, with a small but powerful pair of binoculars pressed to her eyes.

She kept a long distance between herself and Judit as she followed the woman she once revered. But she had stayed on high ground, rooftops and embankments, using her binoculars to follow Judit without being near enough to be seen. It had not been easy and she had lost her target several times, having to guess her trajectory and scan furiously to find her again. But now Ashira lay looking down at a house into which Judit had disappeared.

Just weeks ago, when she had followed Judit into the streets, she had been enamoured with the woman who epitomised everything she wanted to be – strong, committed, defiant. But the assassination of the professor in front of his family had turned her reverence for Judit into rage.

Through the twin lenses of the binoculars a lone figure appeared at the side of the house and slipped casually across the garden to the street. Ashira barely had to study the figure to know it was Judit. She had seen her enter the house an hour earlier and had been waiting patiently for her to emerge since. Ordinarily this would have been the cue to follow but Ashira's intentions were different. It wasn't Judit who was important this time; it was who Judit had been speaking to.

Ashira had confided what she knew to Berin, his approval and acknowledgement important to her in ways she still didn't fully understand. But he remained somewhat sceptical and seemingly unwilling to act. Shalman had revealed to him that his wife often went out to places and meetings he knew nothing about. Berin had wanted to know with whom Judit was meeting when she slipped away from her apartment and Ashira was hoping to find out now.

Ashira didn't follow Judit but waited and watched.

A further hour passed with no sign of anyone leaving the house and the light dimmed as night fell. A car, silent and still, had sat in front of the home since before Ashira had arrived at
her vantage point. The road the house was on ran only in two directions, away from Jerusalem and back towards Jerusalem, with nothing but small tracks and dusty dirt roads deviating from that path. Ashira knew that whoever came out of that house would be unlikely to head away from the city, but instead return to it. Ashira also knew that not far down the road was a British checkpoint through which any car heading back towards the ancient city would need to pass. This was her plan. But she would need to be fast.

Through the binoculars she saw a shadow of movement – not from the front door, but from the side of the house. The sky was getting dimmer and there were no exterior lights on the home nor street lights to illuminate the scene.

The person moved slowly. Very slowly. Not creeping but with small steps. High heels on grass and stone, thought Ashira. A tall and lean woman. Ashira would have to be quick. She watched as the tall, slow-moving woman paused before turning her direction slightly towards the waiting car.

This was the cue; Ashira could wait no more. She pushed herself to her feet and ran. She would have to sprint if she was to make it to a vantage point near the British army checkpoint before the car arrived there.

Ashira carried no bag; she was light and ready to run. She left the binoculars on the dirt where she had been lying, choosing to have nothing to weigh her down except for a Leica camera securely slung over her shoulder in a leather holster.

Her legs pumped as she sprang over the ground. The road swung a wide arc around the low hills and the car would have to pass around that arc while Ashira ran across country, a dirt path through shrubs and a small field. It was a straight line to the checkpoint and if she was fast she could beat the car there.

As she ran she could hear the faint sound of a car engine behind her and in the near distance, but had no way of
knowing if it was the car carrying the tall woman she had seen leaving the house. She ran on, holding the camera close to her body with one hand to stop it flapping about and slowing her down.

Up ahead, in the fading light, she could see the checkpoint and the rumbling of a petrol generator. The British imposed a curfew after dark and this added another pressure to Ashira's task. She needed to get to the checkpoint before the car did and be away and home again before curfew began or she was in danger of being dragged to a holding cell by British Tommies.

She drew up towards the checkpoint, her breath coming hard, but she knew she couldn't just enter the checkpoint. Instead she'd scoped the area earlier that day and knew exactly the spot. The dim light of dusk hid her as she crept around the checkpoint manned by only three British soldiers and nestled herself between two large sandstone rocks that concealed her from both directions yet gave her a clear view towards any car that approached the boom gate of the checkpoint.

Because she was short of breath, it was difficult to steady herself, but she had to in order to stop the image through the telephoto lens bouncing around. She tried to control her breathing.

And then she saw the car. She steadied the camera and, with the tips of her fingers, adjusted the focus ring. The woman she saw was dark and severe but beautiful, her hair pulled back in a tight bun like a ballet dancer. Ashira's finger hovered over the shutter release, about to depress and capture an image of that face. But in that moment a solider stepped between Ashira's camera and the woman, blocking the view. Ashira swore under her breath and felt the urge to get to her feet and shift position, but there was nowhere to go that wouldn't reveal her presence. She had to stay wedged between the rocks. She held the camera in position, kept the focal length the same and prayed for the soldier to move.

The boom gate rose, and Ashira swore again, trying to shift her body over as far as it would go, attempting to see around the body of the solider obscuring her view.

Finally he stepped aside and the woman came into sight through the windscreen of the car. Ashira did not hesitate and squeezed the shutter release like a sniper executing a target. Her thumb dexterously wound the camera on and she took another, and another. Three, four, five in quick succession until the car had passed by.

The young woman waited, her breath slow and calm now and her mind praying that she had what she needed to show Berin.

When the soldiers returned to their smoking and banter, Ashira slipped away. She wound back the film into the canister and plucked it from the open chamber of the camera. If she was questioned by any soldiers as she made her way back to Jerusalem they would likely confiscate the camera and she did not want to lose the film. She took the film roll and stuffed it into her underpants, securing it between her legs, and set off back to the city.