Zion (18 page)

Netanel lowered the revolver.

Meodovnik stood up, slowly. “If you informed us of your operations, this sort of thing would not happen,” he said. He turned and marched back up the road. The others followed.

“How are we supposed to get back to Jerusalem?” Asher shouted after him.

“Try walking!”

Asher looked at Netanel, who spread his hands in a gesture of resignation. Asher sat on the running board and put his head in his hands. Poor Henry Talbot.

The Hill of Evil Counsel

Talbot looked at his watch. Ten minutes past six. He stared at the driveway leading from the main gates, watching the shadows lengthen. He felt strangely calm. The day had lasted a century, a hundred years of fretting and sweating, his attention fixed on the inexorable passage of the hands of the clock.

And, in the end, his reprieve had not come.

The door opened and Chandler looked in. “Still here, Henry? Time to go home, you know.”

“Got a few things to catch up on.”

“Feel like dropping over for a few drinks tomorrow night with Elizabeth? I’ve asked the Rogersons.”

“Love to. What time?”

“About eight. That all right?”

“I’ll mention it to Elizabeth.”

The door closed. He turned back to the window. The Haganah had betrayed him. Oh my God. What am I to do now?

Chapter 14

New City

Marie’s eyes were gritty from exhaustion. She looked at her watch. Almost two in the morning; she had worked over seventeen hours straight. The little office was thick with cigarette smoke and the single light bulb did not throw enough light. Someone brought her a cup of coffee but she was too tired to drink it. The typewriter keyboard swam in her vision.

When I am finished here, she promised herself, I am going to go home and sleep for two days.

The Histadruth executive had put their entire staff at the disposal of the Haganah at the start of work that morning. They were typing lists, names and addresses, from photographic negatives. Haganah members, Marie supposed. Each typist had a mirror placed next to her typewriter so she could read the negative in the glass. It was a strain on the eyes and the nerves.

Marie moved on to her last batch of negatives. It was increasingly difficult to concentrate, impossible to type too fast without making a mistake.

RONSKI,

Age:

Address:

Shlomo

23

16 HaHavazelet Street

Jerusalem

New City

Haganah Reserve

Michael

ROSEN,

Age:

Address:

38

Flat 8

120 Ben Yehuda Street Tel Aviv

Known Stern Gang member

29

ROSENBERG, Netanel

Age:

Address:

Apartment 6D 213 HaNasi Street Rehavia

Palmach: Platoon Commander ROSENTHAL, David . . .

Marie stared at what she had just typed. Netanel.

She remembered the last time she had seen him, at the House in the Woods, when she had given him the silver Star of David.

Netanel!

At last, she had found him again.

Talbieh

The sun rose over the city, chasing the shadows down the tombs on the Mount of Olives. The
muezzin’s
voice carried across the city from the minaret of the Al-Aqsa.

Allahu Akbar, la illaha Allah, Al-salat khayr min al- naum!

God is most great, there is no God but God, prayer is better than sleep!

Well then, I shall pray, Talbot thought, because I certainly can’t sleep.

It was not yet dawn when he heard his household come awake: he listened to the clink of cutlery in the dining-room, the sweep of the broom in the courtyard, the smell of coffee roasting in the kitchen. The daily ritual he had always ignored now seemed so precious on this last, lonely time.

The
hamsiin
rushed through the leaves of the fig tree outside the window. “Another hot day,” he imagined Chandler saying.

Then he heard something else, something outside the normal routine; a vehicle drew up outside the house, and footsteps ran across on the cobbled court below. Something was at the front door. Then the footsteps receded and he heard a motor car driving away, very fast.

A few minutes later Moussa entered carrying the briefcase. “Someone left this at the front door, Talbot effendi.”

“Thank you, Moussa,” Talbot said. He accepted the briefcase and unfastened the straps. A manila envelope lay on top, “TALBOT” written in capitals in red ink on the front. He opened it.

Inside was the postcard of himself and Majid. A photographic negative had been stuck on to it. There was a scrawled, handwritten note:
“We are sorry."

“Aren’t we all?” Talbot said aloud.

He tore the postcard and the negative into small pieces and went to the double doors that opened on to the patio. He threw the pieces into the air, and let the
hamsiin
carry them away.

Rehavia

“Moshe Meodovnik,” Sarah said. “He’s a Russian émigré, came here in 1928 with his family. Maths professor, of all things. He was arrested by the British in 1938 for illegal possession of a firearm and was sentenced to five years in prison. In 1941 he was given the option of finishing his sentence or fighting with the Jewish Brigade. He served with distinction in North Africa and Italy. After the war we invited him to rejoin the Haganah as a regional commander. Instead he joined Irgun Zvai Leumi.”

“Couldn’t we have told them what we were doing?”

“We never tell the Irgun anything. Officially we have disowned them.” The coffee pot boiled in the kitchen. “More coffee?”

She got up. Asher finished his eggs, wiped his mouth with a napkin and threw it on the table in disgust. The Irgun and the Stern gangs were loose cannons that were a danger to everyone, including the Haganah.

“What’s going to happen now?”

“By tonight every regional commander will have copies of the file. We even have copies for the Irgun and Stem. They are on our side after all.”

“Are they . . . ?”

“Within the week every piece of intelligence the British have about us will be obsolete. As for us, we had better pack up and get out of here today.”

“What’s going to happen to Talbot?”

Sarah did not answer. Asher rubbed at the sticking plaster over his eye and on his forehead. The heat was making the wounds itch.

She returned with a fresh pot of coffee. “He’ll probably spend the rest of his life in prison. And he has me to thank for it.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. No, check that. There is someone to blame. Meodovnik!”

“It doesn’t help.”

“Look, Sarah - ”

“It’s all right, I’m not going to tear my hair and cover myself in ashes. If I had to do the same thing again, I would. I just hope no one expects me to feel proud of it.”

She poured the coffee.

“It saved the Haganah.”

“If we had got the briefcase back in time, we could have saved Henry Talbot as well.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s funny. I’d grown quite fond of him in a way. He seemed kind and he had a sort of dark sense of humor, once you got to know him. I feel responsible.”

They drank their coffee in silence. A dark sense of humor! Asher thought bitterly. Well, the poor bastard is going to need one.

The Hill of Evil Counsel

Henry Talbot arrived at the Residency at eight o’clock. Chandler’s car was already there. Moussa pulled up in front of the main steps and Talbot got out, the briefcase clutched in his right hand. He went inside.

Perhaps there was still a chance.

He went up the echoing marble steps to the second floor and walked smartly along the corridor to the desk sergeant.

“Talbot!”

He turned around. It was Chandler.

“Good morning, sir. Looks like a hot day.”

Chandler’s face was grey. There was a voluminous white handkerchief in his right hand and he used it to dab at the sweat on his face and neck. He walked quickly down the corridor, two soldiers wearing the yellow and red insignia of the Royal Suffolks in step behind him. “Talbot ...” The he just stood there, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.

“I had a word with Elizabeth,” Talbot said. “I don’t think we’ll be able to make it for dinner tonight.”

“What’s in your briefcase, Henry?”

“The missing files, sir.”

Chandler snatched it out of his hand and tore open the straps. He quickly checked the contents and put the case under his arm. He nodded to the two soldiers with him. “These men are going to put you under arrest, I’m afraid.”

Talbot nodded. “I see.”

Chandler looked as if he might cry. “How could you do this?”

“How could you ignore Rolf Emmerich?”

“Is that all you have to say?”

Talbot felt curiously light-headed. He wanted to laugh out loud, relieved that it was finally over. “There is one thing, sir.”

“Yes?” Chandler’s lips formed a tight, white line.

“Does this mean I shan’t be taking over from you as Acting First Secretary?”

Rehavia

It had been so long. Would he have changed? What if he had found himself another woman?

She reached her flat at four that morning, red-eyed and unable to sleep. She sat at her kitchen table, drinking endless cups of coffee, waiting for dawn. As soon as it was light she ran downstairs and found a taxi.

. . . 213 HaNasi Street, Rehavia . . .

The block of flats was like a dozen others all around it. She ran up to the sixth floor, but when she reached his flat her courage deserted her, so she hid in the shadows under the stairwell and waited.

She had no idea how long she had been standing there when she heard noises on the other side of the door. A man dressed in white shirt and blue denim shorts and sandals ran out and leaped down the stairs, two at a time. As he passed her, she stepped out from the shadows.

He had already reached the first landing when he sensed the movement. He stopped and looked up.

She could not be sure.

His hair was cropped short these days, and peppered with white. A scar distorted ran down one side of his face. He was gaunt, and there was a haunted, hunted look about his eyes.

She tried to remember.

Netanel,
her
Netanel had been blond, and his hair had been neatly parted. He had had such a sweetness about him, an innocence. He dressed in woolen business suits and polished black shoes.

They stared at each other.

He started back up the stairs.

“Netanel?” she whispered.

“Oh my God.” His face turned grey.

She held out her arms. “I’m back from university,” she said, but he made no move towards her and finally she dropped her arms and they surveyed each other from a distance, two ghosts in a limbo world, lost of their physical form.

Acre

The British prison at Acre was a former Ottoman citadel, built on the ruins of a Crusader fortress. Talbot’s cell was eight feet by ten feet, and there was no electric light and no toilet. The ceilings and walls dripped with water night and day. The outside wall was sixteen feet thick and the only light filtered in through an archer’s slit, a foot high and a few inches wide. Through it he could just make out the tops of the trees on Napoleon Hill.

Although he was allowed neither newspapers nor access to a radio, the cockney warden was a talkative fellow and seemed to be better informed than both the Jerusalem Post and the BBC World Service. His chatter helped keep him sane.