“Things I haven’t been able to share with you. I apologize. But I can share them now. They will explain my absence.”
“What are you on the inside of? Palmach?”
Hugo laid a palm to his filled-out chest. “You flatter me. No, it seems I’m not Palmach material.”
“Then what?”
“Let’s leave that for last.”
“Whatever it is you’re doing, a lot of Jews are going to jail for it.”
“I’ve already had my share of imprisonment; I’m not jealous.”
“Why are you doing this?”
Hugo leaned back. The waiters kept their distance and seated no one near them.
Vince said, “I came a long way to have this conversation. I’m not guaranteeing I’ll stay. It’s got to be worth my while.”
“It will be.” Hugo checked his watch before signaling for another beer. Vince had barely touched his own. “Are you going to take notes?”
“No. Where have you been for four days?”
“Waiting for word that I could make contact. Following you.”
“I don’t like being followed.”
“Nor do I. I suspect it will happen again to us both.”
“Waiting for word of what?”
“Again, let’s save that for the end. The food will be here in a moment. I need to explain a few ground rules between us.”
“Go ahead.”
“You will report no real names. No exact locations. You’ll develop no other underground contacts in Palestine. When you want to meet, you’ll take a table on this patio, at this time. I’ll be informed and you will hear from me, only me. When I want to see you, I’ll know where you are and send word where to meet.”
“If I can’t use names, what do I call you?”
“Kharda. It’s Arabic for scrap metal.”
“Why?”
“Another time. Do we agree on the terms?”
“For now.”
Hugo leaned on his elbows, conspiratorial. “I’ll show you things, Vince.”
The waiter appeared with the hamburgers and Hugo’s beer.
Before he tucked in, Hugo rubbed his palms with delight. A year ago, this was something Vince couldn’t imagine he’d witness. Hugo checked his watch again.
“Are you a terrorist now, Hugo?”
“As I’ve been saying, I’d like to keep that for the end.”
“We’re at the end.” Vince pushed back his chair.
“Yes, Vince. I’m a revolutionary now.”
Vince didn’t rise but stayed clear of the table, to show Hugo he would walk if answers weren’t forthcoming.
“I guess that’s what you have to call yourselves. Why do you keep looking at your watch?”
Hugo pushed back his own chair. Some pretense of affability was broken.
“You can sit and wait, or you can go.”
“Who are you with, Hugo?”
“The Irgun.”
“What do you do for them?”
“They’ve assigned me to you. I’ve convinced them you can be an ally.”
“I’m not an ally. I’m a journalist.”
“The truth is a weapon.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“Wait.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“Because you’re not Irgun.”
The two sat like this, drawn back from the table. Hugo had promised to show something remarkable; Vince promised to leave if he didn’t.
Lunch patrons began to stand from their tables and move in bunches to the front of the patio, to peer across the street at the King David. On instinct, Vince rose too.
“Don’t leave the patio, Vince. No matter what happens.”
Hugo remained seated with fingers laced. Vince pushed into the crowd. Across the street, Julian’s Way, military police poured out of the hotel’s main entrance. Ten khakied officers veered left, racing for the sunken driveway and service dock at the rear of the King David. The first cop vanished behind a limestone brick wall. Shots rang out.
Hidden from view in the sunken drive, a gun battle erupted as the police rushed to the service driveway. The shots were single rounds until one long burp ripped, then another, fired from semi-automatic weapons.
Hugo appeared beside Vince. He lay a hand on Vince’s shoulder, to remind him to stay in place.
The gunplay grew louder. Five men dressed as Arab laborers rounded the berm that hid the sunken driveway and sprinted into the gardens in front of the King David’s entrance. The pursuing police took cover in the hotel’s landscaped bushes and trees.
The fighting spilled into Julian’s Way. Two more Arabs arrived on the road to pull Sten guns from under their robes; they let loose at the British cops among the bushes.
The seven Arabs ran off, east to the Old City. The British dashed after them on the road, taking only potshots in the populated area. Far-off tires squealed, ending the shooting. The Arabs had made good their getaway.
The echoes and smoke cleared quickly. The police faded back toward the hotel.
The lunch patrons, agog, traipsed back to their tables.
Vince turned on Hugo. “Tell me. Right now.”
The answer almost knocked Vince off his feet.
A blast swept across the face of the YMCA. On the patio, the concussion toppled umbrellas, shoved tables and customers over. Vince dropped to his knees, protecting his head. Hugo was blown onto his back.
Debris rained, a dust cloud swept over the patio. Slowly, the haze cleared. A bomb had blown outside an Arab souvenir shop next to the YMCA. The store’s façade was smashed to busted glass and strewn rubble. No bodies lay in the wreckage. An Arab stumbled out of the gaping hole in the storefront.
Across Jerusalem, klaxons blared. Hugo climbed to his feet, holding the back of his head. No one else on the patio appeared hurt. The staff dusted themselves off, then righted tables, umbrellas, and chairs.
In the street, traffic had stopped when the first gunshots were heard. A bus had halted directly in front of the souvenir shop; the blast had shattered all its windows. Passengers, all Arabs, tumbled out. Some sat in Julian’s Way clutching arms or stanching their bleeding faces with scarves. Drivers left their own cars to give aid. Police directed the wounded who could walk into the King David to be cared for. Many remained inside the bus, too injured or traumatized to come out.
With the bombing over, Hugo had disappeared.
Vince hurried down the patio steps to the bus. The carnage stunned him. Victims limped past, blood dotted the hot road and spattered the broken glass. An elderly Arab spread an arm across Vince’s shoulders and hobbled, bringing Vince with him to the hotel.
The wounded collected in the King David’s lobby. Vince kept an arm around the old man’s waist while British police patted down the Arab. Moving through the grand lobby, the old man admired the upholsteries, Oriental carpets, polished woods. His grey eyes fixed on the high, decorated ceiling.
The lobby swarmed with wounded, frightened passengers, police, and hotel staff scurrying to be of help. More Arabs from the bus flowed into the lobby; sirens continued to shriek across Jerusalem. Vince deposited the old man in an empty chair.
Vince was grabbed from behind.
He spun on dusty Hugo, who immediately said, “I told you to stay on the patio.”
“You knew about that bomb.”
“I did.”
“You’re a bomber now?”
“Let’s go back across the street. I’ll tell you everything.”
“No. Right here.”
Hugo backed away. The old Arab in the chair hadn’t lowered his gaze from marveling at the ceiling.
“Do you remember lifting me out of that barrack? Do you remember telling me to jump off the ship?”
“What’s
that got to do with this?”
“I trusted you, and I’m alive because of it. Trust me now.”
“What’s going to happen?”
Hugo retreated more. “Come with me now. Or we won’t talk again.” He walked away.
Hugo didn’t look back leaving the lobby. Vince didn’t follow.
Around him, people bustled, the hurt, their helpers, and the curious. He turned a circle in their midst, searching for evidence, a clue, anything to tell him what to do next. He could shout the alarm, maybe start a panic, maybe save lives, or maybe be ignored and arrested. He might die here shouting; he had no way to know what the moments might bring. Vince had only one fact: Hugo’s warning. Everything else was a guess.
Hugo was Irgun. Vince couldn’t trust him. But could he believe him?
He leaned down to the Arab he’d helped into the hotel. “Get out of here.”
The old man was comfortable in the leather chair, and he had a glass of water.
“No.”
Vince headed for the King David’s entrance; notions of the inconceivable chased him out the door. He hurried past faces he would not look at.
Outside, Vince crossed Julian’s Way. A cop blew his whistle, but Vince dodged through the back-up-and-moving traffic, stepping again over broken, bloody glass. He leaped up the steps to the YMCA patio, thinking he might punch Hugo in the nose. Hugo was nowhere to be found.
Alone, Vince watched the King David. The other patrons had left or gone back to their tables. Waiters swept up dust and served tea to return the restaurant to normal. Policemen probed the souvenir shop, taking notes, measurements, and samples. Vince didn’t know what he was waiting for; he supposed this was how it must have been for Hugo in Buchenwald.
The thickness of the King David’s pink limestone muffled the first blast. The explosion boomed out of the basement. One corner of the seven-story façade facing Julian’s Way expanded, as if inflated. For seconds, nothing more happened.
Then, the entire south wing of the hotel began to melt. The walls and windows of the upper tiers lost their balance and tottered top over bottom into open air. The lower half of the hotel’s corner dissolved straight down, sliding into a cumulus of dust in an ordered collapse. The rumble became a quake, a horror in the earth.
Boiling haze blinded the boulevard and the YMCA patio. Vince shielded his eyes from pelting dust and blast-blown bits. When he could see and breathe again, the damage to the hotel tripped him backwards, and he fell.
A slope of debris, stone and masonry, climbed up the mangled hotel and entombed the street. Vehicles were crushed or turned over; the Arab bus was consumed in the mound. The King David stood severed and in shock like an amputee. Tangled in the vast spill were tables, chairs, desks, plaster, doors, floorboards, pipes, linens, curtains, and bodies.
Vince wiped powder off his lips. An eerie, quashed silence settled over the scene so deeply the dust fell with the patter of snow.
Chapter 29
Rivkah
August 6
Massuot Yitzhak
Rivkah lay on her belly, cradling the long rifle Malik had given her last year.
Malik towered over her, dusty boots near her head. He spoke through the ringing in her ears. “We’ve been over this many times. You must hold the rifle like what it is. The one thing in the world that may save your life when nothing else can. Breathe out. Pull the trigger naturally, as if it is simply the next thing you will do.”
The target was a fifty-gallon drum at seventy yards, the size of a man’s torso. With the late sun stretched across her back, Rivkah shot through several magazines. Since the lessons began weeks ago, her aim had improved too slowly for Malik’s patience. She had no love of guns. Malik toed Rivkah’s ribcage with every miss. “Can you smell it? The burning of your fields?”
Malik kept her practicing until sunset, when Mrs. Pappel came to stop them. Malik bowed, whistled for his camel, which came grunting, then disappeared into the darkening land.
Paper lanterns had been strung between plum trees in the center of the kibbutz. With sundown came the end of fasting for Tisha B’av, the day of mourning to mark the destruction of the First and Second Temples. Dinner was a banquet for those who’d worked on empty stomachs in the fields planting, watering, plowing, or hammering in the quarry.
Once the meal was done and baths taken, the pioneers came under the flickering candles to rest on blankets and talk. Malik returned to sit with Mrs. Pappel at the perimeter of the candlelight. Malik was the lone Arab who visited Massuot Yitzhak. His twice-a-month appearances had become exotic events; his snooty camel even allowed itself to be petted by the young Jews, but never ridden. Malik, too, kept a distance about himself, though not from Mrs. Pappel. His robes swirled when he moved among the trees, on the smoothed earth—something stormy about him.
His gunrunning was an open secret among the kibbutzniks. Aharon and Ben Joseph had tunneled out a small underground chamber beside the schoolroom, a hiding place for weapons and ammunition. The ventilation shaft to the little underground armory, a steel tube poking out of the ground, was disguised as the fulcrum to a children’s seesaw.
Malik smoked a pipe, cool in his robes and headdress. Mrs. Pappel sat on a blanket with him outside the ring of pioneers, wreathed in his smoke.
For the past several days, the radio from Jerusalem had been filled with little else than news of the King David Hotel bombing. The death toll was in: ninety-one people killed, seventy injured. The victims included Arabs, British, Jews, Armenians, Russians, a Greek, and an Egyptian. Most of the casualties were civilian clerks and typists for the military office, hotel staff, and passersby on the street. The Irgun claimed responsibility.
Twenty minutes before the explosion, a smaller bomb had blown up an Arab souvenir shop across the road. The Irgun phoned the King David to tell them the first blast was a warning and to evacuate the building. The British military determined the call was a hoax. An official was quoted as saying he didn’t jump when Jews told him to.
The young settlers regretted the loss of innocent lives. A few said the British brought this on themselves. Malik and Mrs. Pappel sat off to the side in a silence which looked like wisdom.
A shooting star striped the night sky. Rivkah was eager for the conversation to veer away from bombs.
“May we ask Malik for a poem?”
The big Arab tapped his pipe on the ground to empty it, a short ritual of reluctance before rising. Other than the mule, Malik was the largest living thing in Massuot Yitzhak.
He held no notes; he carried all his poems in his head.
“I am sorry. The war has come a step closer. While I listened to your talk, I composed this.”
Malik spread his hands and turned a full circle under the candles, to see all the young settlers. When he stopped turning, with both hands over his heart, he faced Mrs. Pappel.
“The desert is not empty nor still.
Like the ocean it is vast.
It rolls at the pace of years.
The desert is not for the eyes or ears
But for the heart.
If a man’s heart is empty
The desert is not the place for him.
If a man is full, the desert is an intent listener.
The desert keeps a still tongue.
When it does speak
It comes for your life.”
Malik remained in the hush he’d made. He turned his creviced face to Rivkah to say that was for her, as well. Another falling star fired across the firmament.
To the south, a car’s headlights left Kfar Etzion. The road between the two kibbutzim was an unpaved track, rutted by the occasional rains and not an easy thing to travel after dark.
Mrs. Pappel stood to watch the car bounce out of Kfar Etzion, Malik beside her. For no reason she could name, Rivkah joined them. The rest of the haverim ignor
ed the headlamps working through the wadi; their hard day was done, and the lanterns made them sleepy.
The car, a taxi, climbed the slope; it stopped on the rim of the light. A tall girl with a small suitcase got out. The cab paused, but she waved it on.
The girl wore a skirt, her blonde hair fell past her shoulders. This was not a farmer. Approaching the lanterns with unsure strides, she gripped her valise with both hands.
The girl trod into the sallow candleglow. With all eyes on her, she set down the suitcase. She addressed all the settlers of Massuot Yitzhak.
“I’m looking for Éva.”
Chapter 30
Rivkah
Rivkah fell to her knees. Gabbi ran to her and buckled, and they embraced. The pioneers surrounded them.
Mrs. Pappel and Malik raised both girls to their feet, then walked them out of the crowd. Beneath the lanterns, Mrs. Pappel whispered, “Let’s get you two home, you can talk there.’ Malik brought the girl’s suitcase.
Clutching Gabbi, unsteady, Rivkah said her first words to her sister.
“Papa? Mama?”
Gabbi shook her head, a small gesture, not so dreadful for her; she’d known for years. But Rivkah needed her sister’s arms to keep from collapsing again.
On the short walk to the house, every step felt new in the world. So much more to know, even the pain of knowing. The touch of Gabbi’s hand made the answers, whatever they might be, bearable. What could Gabbi say beyond her arrival in Massuot Yitzhak, out of her own grave?
On the porch, Rivkah took a spot on the floor, knees pulled in tight. Mrs. Pappel sat in the chair behind her, to rest hands on Rivkah’s shoulder. Gabbi took the other chair while Malik stood off under the stars.
Mrs. Pappel spoke first. “Dear, how on earth did you find us?”
“Actually, I found you.”
“Tell us.”
Gabbi said to Rivkah, “A year after you left Vienna, we were made to sew yellow stars on our clothes. Living like that was awful. People stopped doing business with Papa, others forced us off of trains and buses. Papa kept saying it was temporary. The next year, the trucks came into the Jewish neighborhoods. Papa was taken away by German police. The last thing he said was for us to find a way to go. Leave Vienna. He told me to find you.”
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