Zion (5 page)

“So. Only two hundred?”

Asher bristled at the implied criticism. “In the circumstances, it was more than anyone could have hoped for. It is two hundred more Jews in Palestine who otherwise would be rotting away in DP camps in Europe. Europe doesn’t want any more Jewish refugees. We do.”

“You really think the British will give us our own Jewish state here?”

“I don’t think that’s what they want to do. We will have to persuade them.”

“You will use force against them?”

“We’ll employ whatever means necessary. This land was promised to us by God in the time of the Pharaohs and by Balfour in 1917. Imagine that! We have the word of both Jehovah and the British! Palestine is our twice-promised land.”

“Then why do they want to stop us coming now? They fired on us last night. I saw two men lying on the deck with British bullets in them. I thought they were on our side. I thought it was just the Germans who wanted to kill us!”

“They don’t hate us. It’s not personal, it’s just politics.”

“Everything is just politics. Hitler and Streicher were just politics. Gassing children is just politics.”

Asher shrugged. “The British want Arab oil, they are frightened of Russian expansion, they want to keep their airfields here. So even though they feel sorry for us, and cry their tears in buckets in public, they have decided to court the Arabs. The thing you have to learn about the British, Netanel, is they know only two political positions. They are either bending over making you to lick their ass, or they are on their knees licking yours.”

“What have you people done about it so far?”

“When Ernest Bevin, their Foreign Minister, cut immigration to one thousand five hundred a month the Jewish National Council declared a one-day protest strike. It had the effect of a mosquito bite on a camel’s rump.”

“And so?”

“And so the council has decided it is time to fight. During the Arab riots in 1936, the Haganah was used only for defense. Look what happened. The British gave in to the Arabs. The lesson is clear.”

“You think you can beat the British?”

“Not in a proper war; but we do not intend to fight a proper war. Sooner or later the British will have to go. We want them out, and so do the Arabs. Afterwards, one of us will rule Palestine. Personally, I would rather eat a mountain of camel turds than live under the rule of any Arab. So we have to win. We have nowhere else to go.”

“We needed men like you in Germany, twelve years ago.

“It was what happened twelve years ago in Germany that made men like me.” He fished in the pocket of his jacket and produced a manila envelope. “This is for you.”

“What is in here?”

“New identity papers. You’re a free man now, Netanel Rosenberg. What do you intend to do with your new freedom?”

Netanel sat forward and the dullness in his eyes was gone. “There is only one reason I came to Palestine. I want to help build a homeland, a place where a Jew can be safe. A place where he knows he will not lose his business, his home, his children, his woman, his parents, his family, and his life just because he is a Jew. What I have lived through must never happen again. I don’t want freedom -I want to chain myself to your cause. Our cause.”

Asher considered. “It isn’t easy, Rosenberg. As an army we have no rank, officially we have no existence. We have few weapons, and if you are found in possession of one of the few guns we do have the British will throw you into Acre prison for the next five years. At the moment, all we have is our hopes and dreams.”

“After three years in Auschwitz, hopes and dreams are an embarrassment of riches.”

“How old are you?”

Netanel had to stop to think. “I was born in 1916.” Good God! Asher thought. Not yet thirty! Young enough to fight with the
Palmach
.

“No family?”

“Not anymore.”

Asher stood up. “Good. Be ready to leave here at ten minutes’ notice. Consider yourself Haganah. We are your family now.” He went to the door, hesitated. “In a way, you know, I am sorry. We need men like you, as many as we can find. But in a way it doesn’t seem fair. You come from one war, and now you find yourself in a new one.”

Netanel shook his head. “It’s not a new war. It’s the same one. It started a long time ago, and it’s about time we finished it.”

Jerusalem

Sarah’s flat was in Rehavia, in the middle of the Zion quarter, a few hundred yards from the Jewish Agency. A stand of pine trees grew close to her window and she could hear the branches creaking in the wind.

It was the seventh night of Hanukkah, marking the triumphant revolt of the Maccabees in 167 BC. An eight- tipped menorah stood on her dining-room table, seven of its eight candles alight. In the windows of the flats opposite she could see the lights of many other menorahs like her own. From the flat along the corridor she could smell someone frying
latkes
, potato pancakes.

There was a knock on the door. She looked at the clock. Nine o’clock. “Who is it?” she shouted.

“Levi.”

She opened the door. Levi Bar-Ayal had discarded his robes and
keffiyeh
- a wise precaution in Rehavia - and now wore a knee-length coat and a scarf. He slipped past her and sat down at the table.

“It’s cold,” he said.

“It’s winter. Any luck?”

He nodded. “After he left you he took a taxi from Damascus Gate to a house in Katamon. He was there for a couple of hours. I made some enquiries. It’s owned by a woman, an Austrian. Her neighbors say she’s a prostitute. Could be they’re just jealous, I don’t know.”

“So now we know how he spends his money.”

‘Well, maybe. Afterwards he got another taxi back to the Old City. He went into a small olive oil factory. That was where it got really interesting.”

“An olive oil factory?”

“I made some enquiries in the coffee house a few doors away. Don’t worry, I was discreet. The owner only needed a little encouragement; he told me about everyone in the whole street.”

“What did he say about Ishmael?”

“He thinks he’s a . . .” Levi stopped himself. “. . . he implied he engages in unnatural sexual practices. It also seems the olive oil factory is a family concern. Owned by the Hass’an family from Rab’allah, a little village about twenty miles outside Jerusalem.”

Sarah felt the blood rush from her face. “Yes, I know it.”

“Our friend’s name is Majid, Majid Hass’an. It seems he provides all the money, his brother does all the work.”

“What’s his brother’s name?”

Levi was puzzled by the question. He frowned, trying to remember. “Rishou, I think. Rishou Hass’an. Why? Is it important?”

Sarah lay in bed, her hands behind her head, and watched the stars blink their cipher through the branches of the pines outside her window. The cold sheets and the aching loneliness of the bed depressed her. She wondered what Asher was doing tonight. After all these years she had almost persuaded herself that she loved her husband.

And now, suddenly, that name again.

Rishou!

She had not seen him since the night of the ambush. The next day he had disappeared and she had heard nothing more of him until tonight.

But if she closed her eyes she could still smell the apple trees and the soft desert wind; his skin, she remembered, had a dusty scent like cardamom and good tobacco. She thought about how he looked at her, those black eyes that seemed to look right into her soul. The devil had been in her when she was young. She had dared to cross borders, to touch the forbidden. It had liberated her, as nothing she had ever done since.

Rishou!

His face, his memory, his name; he was inextricably entangled with her youth, with feelings far more powerful than anything she had ever felt before or since. He was in her blood. In every way.

She winced; she felt his loss like a physical pain in her chest. She could not sleep, it was hopeless. Instead she lay awake, long into the night, planning.

Chapter 4

There were only eight tables in Fink’s, but more rumors, lies and betrayals had been whispered over each of them than in all of Jerusalem’s other restaurants combined. Ever since it opened in the early thirties it had become virtually a private club for the British intelligence community.

Major Ian Chisholm sat by the window, smoking cigarettes, nodding occasionally to colleagues entering or leaving by the street door. David Rothschild, the proprietor, welcomed him personally. He left a beer and a plate of schnitzels on the table.

Despite his rank, Chisholm had the hard, raw-boned appearance of an NCO, his nose flat, his face seamed with scars. He looked like a street fighter; in fact, his nose had been broken playing grammar school rugby, and the scars on his face had been caused by flying glass during the Blitz.

But otherwise the war had been good to Ian Chisholm. Without Hitler he would probably have spent most of his army career as a junior officer. His father had been a greengrocer; hardly the sort of pedigree his regiment was looking for. But breeding did not stop bullets or deflect shell fragments, and by the time of Germany surrendered the greengrocer’s son was a major.

He looked at his watch. Late.

A few minutes later Majid strolled in. He was wearing a pinstripe suit and a red silk tie. Chisholm groaned aloud. For God’s sake. He looked like a gangster.

“Hello, old boy,” Majid said. “Sorry I’m late.” He sat down and clicked his fingers in Rothschild’s direction. “Beer over here.”

Chisholm clenched his jaw. Who the hell did this little gyppo think he was? He hated wogs at the best of times, but a wog with an English accent affecting public school airs was, in his opinion, worse than a black or a bog Irish.

“How are you today, Mr. Hass’an?” Chisholm said, forcing himself to be polite, if not pleasant.

“Splendid. Just splendid.”

“I’m pleased to hear it.”

Rothschild brought Majid his beer. Chisholm raised his own glass and said, “Cheers.”

The things he did for king and country. He had heard a lot of funny rumors about this one. There were whispers that he was dealing quartermaster’s stores on the black market; there were other stories too, nasty ones, about him and some toffee-nose on the High Commissioner’s staff.

Still, orders from above were clear: fraternize with the Arabs, harass the Jews. Harass them! If the government let the army do their job properly they’d do more than just harass the bastards. It was a British Mandate,
British territory
, and if the kikes didn’t toe the line they should be given a few lessons at the sharp end of colonial diplomacy. What was it they said? “You can do anything with a bayonet except sit on it.” Still, orders were for a softly, softly approach. And
fraternization
. Yes, we must remember to fraternize.

“What have you got for me?” he asked Majid.

“Trouble,” Majid whispered.

“Where?”

“On the Bab el-Wad road. The morning Egged bus to Tel Aviv.”

Chisholm nodded slowly. “When?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“What is it? Ambush, bomb, what?”

“Ambush.”

“I see.” As far as he was concerned, the Arabs could do what they liked as long as no British soldiers were hurt and the process of government was not disrupted. As it was, the army sent a patrol up the Bab el-Wad every morning and every evening to ensure the road stayed open. But the morning patrol would be back in Jerusalem by the time the Egged bus reached the
wadi
. The wogs and the kikes could blow each other to kingdom come.

“You will not send troops to intervene?” Majid asked him.

“Intervene in what?” Chisholm said and he drained his beer.

“Splendid,” Majid said. And he thought: Allah, help me in my sorrow! All this deception is a strain on the health! But what could he do? He was a loyal Arab; but good sex was so expensive these days.

Judean Desert

Netanel was less than fifty yards away when they saw him. The gazelle raised their heads, their ears twitching, and then darted away, skipping over the stones in the dry river-bed.

Yaakov Landauer appeared at Netanel’s right shoulder. “Not bad. For a beginner.”

“What did you expect? They’re wild animals.”

“A good
Palmachnik
would have grabbed them by the tail and told me what they had for lunch.” Yaakov took off his khaki slouch hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead, exposing the mahogany brown skull and the fringe of white hair.

How old is he? Netanel wondered. Fifty-five? Sixty? Older than my father was when he died, certainly. Yet look at him. No softness on him anywhere. Hard and gnarled like the trunk of an olive tree.