“The Stern Gang? You’re letting them in on this? They’re assassins.”
“Our little brothers in the Lehi take a harder stance than we do, I accept that.”
“Are you sure about this?”
“They’ll bring forty fighters. We need their numbers. I want the village depopulated, but not destroyed entirely.”
“Tell the Lehi that.”
“I expect you will.”
“Does that mean you’re sending me?”
“If it’s your wish.”
“It is.”
“Then welcome back to the Irgun.”
“When?”
“In three days. I will let you know where to report. We’ll have a weapon for you.”
“A Sten.”
“Of course, Kharda. One last time, if I may.”
Pinchus raised the napkin from his lap to his lips. Hugo had never heard him say thank you or conclude a meeting with any sort of manners. Pinchus simply signaled that he was done. Hugo stood; Pinchus kept his seat.
“Be aware. Once the war is over, the Jewish Agency will look to sideline the Irgun in the matters of statehood. They’ve taken to calling us dissidents and terrorists. The Haganah have given us this chance. We must behave above reproach. Obey your better angels, Hugo.”
The magnified eyes blinking at Hugo believed angels, even the better ones, could still kill.
Before walking away, Hugo asked, “What’s the name of the village?”
Pinchus got to his feet and tugged down his vest. “A little place no one will remember. Deir Yassin.”
Chapter 102
Rivkah
Massuot Yitzhak
Rivkah pretended to have a letter from Vince. She read it by the moon, and on the silvery porch she held her hands apart for the page.
He told her he was healing. Hugo was with him, and both were fine. Jerusalem was holding out; he was in a hospital with plenty of food. He was sorry to write her like this, on moonlight, but he wrote her every day on paper and was saving the letters to deliver himself, soon.
Vince said Emile had died well. Rivkah would not imagine Emile’s death but felt Vince’s letter to be trustworthy. She pressed a hand over her heart for Emile. Rivkah would always hold him dear even though he’d been cruel; she would not let Emile go because once, in the water, he’d not let go of her.
Vince’s letter was short. It finished with “I love you.” Rivkah let it dissolve; she had no pen for the moonbeam to write him back. On the porch, she spread a hand on her belly, over the child. This was her letter to Vince. In Jerusalem, under the same moon, he would read it.
Chapter 103
Vince
April 8
Bikur Cholim Hospital
Jerusalem
The sun inched across the floor. By midday, Hugo still hadn’t come.
The old nurse arrived to change Vince’s bandages. She indicated the apple on his bedside table. “Where’s your little friend? The one who eats your apple every day?”
“You take it.”
“He’s not coming? He’s been here all week.”
“Take it.”
“I will. Let’s have a look.”
The nurse peeled back his dressing. She kneaded the exposed mouths of the tunnel, front and back. With forceps, she plucked out the packing that let the channel heal gradually. Vince bit his lower lip and looked away.
The nurse said, “No infection. Good.”
Sepsis was a concern throughout the hospital; penicillin had grown scarce under the siege. The nurse re-stuffed the wound, then wrapped his shoulder. Vince didn’t draw a full breath until she pocketed the apple.
He asked, “Did you talk to the doctor?”
“I did. You’ll be here another week.”
“I have to leave sooner.”
“You won’t. That shoulder needs to knit and be kept clean.”
“I’ll speak to the doctor myself.”
“Will you, now? What will you tell him?”
“That I’m needed.”
“In Gush Etzion.”
“Yes.”
Whatever the old nurse had lived in Palestine, hardships or joys, made her manner kindly.
“You just came from there, dear.”
“And I need to go back.”
“You won’t. The Arabs have blocked the road.”
“I’ll fly in.”
“Perhaps you could. You have connections. But let me tell you what will happen if you leave this hospital too soon. We’ll have no painkillers for you, no penicillin. What little we have stays here. You’ll need a great deal of care, if you want to keep that arm. Whoever’s waiting for you in Gush Etzion will have to provide it. Your medication will come from their thin supplies. Even if you stay here another two weeks, you’ll leave in a sling which you’ll wear for a month, or risk reopening your wound. So, tell me. Why would anyone want you in Gush Etzion, of all places, if you cannot fight?”
“Because my child is there.”
She patted his good arm. “There are children in Jerusalem. And grandchildren. Gush Etzion stands between them and the Arabs. If you want to protect children, especially your own, let a soldier fly there instead of you. Let weapons go, and ammunition. I’ll check on you later, Mister Haas.”
The old nurse put the apple back on the table and left Vince alone with the sun creeping up the wall.
Chapter 104
Hugo
April 9
Beit HaKerem
Every Irgunist was younger than Hugo. They sat in clusters or paced the wooden floors of the abandoned factory. They played cards, wrote letters they tucked inside their tunics, hid their fear, or wore it like a breastplate as if it might protect them.
Hugo tried to sleep, his back against a steel beam. He had a Sten across his lap, extra magazines tucked in his belt. Like the others, he was battle-dressed in Haganah hand-me-down khakis and a green waistcoat. A British steel helmet from World War I lay against his leg.
Three boys edged over. One asked if his name was Kharda. Hugo admitted to it and let them call him that. Soon, forty or more, half the force, gathered around as word spread that Kharda was among them. The other Irgunists kept to themselves, asleep or in surly silence.
Kharda. The driver at Goldschmidt House. Smuggler of oranges to Barazani and Feinstein. Judge kidnapper. Survivor of Europe, and death row.
Where did he go after prison?
Gush Etzion.
Did he know about the convoy of Ten?
He had been on it.
Had he seen the Lamed Hey?
He’d shoveled dirt on their graves.
What of the Arab attack on the Etzion bloc? A thousand, wasn’t it?
He’d been the first to sound the alarm.
Nebi Daniel?
Five thousand Arabs.
With every answer, Kharda became living proof that a man could dodge the reaper.
He asked them questions. What has been their training, their experience? None had been in a real battle. Yesterday they’d practiced inside a vacant building, thrown stones as grenades into rooms, then rushed in behind unloaded guns. Their commanders had passed a course in combat leadership. A quarter of the boys had no weapons; their plan was to pick up the guns of fallen Arabs.
Hugo asked, “You sound confident. Are you?”
Oh, yes. The Arabs were going to flee in their nightclothes at the first sounds of the attack. A loudspeaker just before the assault would alert the villagers and send them running. The Irgunists and Lehi would enter an almost empty town. Mopping up, they called it. That’s all they would have to do, Kharda. Mop up.
Hugo said, “Fewer than you think will run from Deir Yassin. A lot are going to fight. Do you know what to do?”
One Irgun boy answered softly, “Fi
ght back.”
Hugo said, “Kill them.”
He slouched against the girder and closed his eyes, with nothing more to say.
Chapter 105
Hugo
Deir Yassin
A misty pall blanketed the Irgunists creeping through an orchard. The trees and ground were damp and spooky. Beyond the trees, across a clearing, Deir Yassin slumbered behind shuttered windows and iron doors.
The fighters skirted a quarry among the trees. Hugo glanced into the depths. Stone cutting was tough labor. This was the work of the village.
The company halted a hundred yards south of the first houses. Every structure looked solid, built from the quarries, a hundred fifty homes on a dozen unpaved streets. Every Irgunist found a bush or a fruit tree’s shadow to hide inside. The dark would dissolve in the next hour. Hugo lay on his chest in the breathing hush of the fighters.
The commander of Hugo’s unit hissed to call him forward. Hugo inched his way through the squad to kneel beside the young man, a long-necked sort, balding early, with the look of a constant student.
“Kharda.”
“Yes.”
“I saw the men talking with you in the factory.”
“They were.”
The young officer had a pistol in hand though they were out of range from the village. It seemed to reassure him.
“You showed up last night out of nowhere.”
“I wish it had been nowhere.”
“The men know who you are.”
“Do you?”
“I do.”
“Then what can I do for you?”
“I may ask your help.”
“With what?”
“You’ve been in combat before.”
“I have.”
“I may ask you to help me keep order in the village. So that we don’t….”
The officer stopped there; he didn’t describe what he feared because he’d not seen it before, and Hugo had. The young man had no nightmares and didn’t want them.
Hugo said, “I understand.”
“Will you help?”
“No.”
With a dozen Irgunists, Hugo stole to within twenty yards of the first stone houses. It would be safest to lead the charge into the village, to be the first ones shooting before the Arabs could lift themselves out of confusion and shoot back.
One- and two-story homes lined a street parallel to the orchard. A slow, open incline ran from the trees and quarries up to the front doors. Hugo lay on the pebbly ground, the Sten under him. The submachine gun was bare metal and silver, a nice bit of handiwork. He covered it to keep the faint light from glinting off it and the three Arabs smoking in the road from seeing it.
Hugo lay close enough to hear their voices. The moon was down; the last, blackest hour ticked by. These three Arab guards, starred by their cigarettes, might be the first killed.
The young officer scuttled forward. With him came two Bren light machine gunners. While the gunners set up their tripods, the officer whispered to the forward squad. He had a dislike for Hugo now and didn’t look directly at him.
“We go in five.” The officer tapped one of the Bren triggermen on the back. “When you hear the loudspeaker, send a tracer burst over the village.” The gunner was smaller than Hugo; it was curious, to give the big Bren to this little fellow.
The officer rose to his knees to see ahead better, but he kicked free a small stone which skittered away and clacked against a larger rock. The officer froze, then flattened to the ground.
Out of the dark, an unseen voice called to the three guards. “Ya, Muhammad.”
The young officer whispered to Hugo, “Was that the password?”
“No.” The password was Ahdut Lohemet. Unity in battle.
“He said Ahdut. I heard it.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“It’s the Lehi.”
“Those are Arab voices.”
Despite Hugo’s warning, the officer cupped a hand to his mouth to utter into the night, just loud enough, the response, “Lohemet.”
Hugo rolled to his side to pull out the Sten.
The young officer smacked the Bren gunner on the back.
“Fire.”
The Bren sent a white-hot stream of tracers arching over Deir Yassin.
Hugo and the forward squad mowed down the three Arab guards before they could jump. Three spilled cigarettes glowed on the ground when Hugo ran past. The fourth Arab, the anonymous voice, had disappeared. Hugo heard nothing from the loudspeaker that would warn the villagers to surrender or flee.
Gunshots erupted. In eight-man squads, the Irgunists split off to assault their first targets. Hugo followed the young officer whose mistake had sprung the attack.
A large, two-story home anchored the center of the block. No lantern or candles burned inside. With his team, Hugo approached, the Sten at his hip. The big, dark house brooded with guns trained on it.
A slam startled Hugo. One of the Irgunists unleashed a burst against the stone façade as if to shoot the building for scaring him. Out a side door, into a weedy alley, ten Arabs emerged to dash uphill into the village. Hugo swung his Sten to shoot them in the backs and missed them all. Bare feet flickered away into the shadows.
At another, smaller house, the Irgunists used a grenade to blow the front door off its hinges. Before the smoke cleared, they tossed in two more grenades; the stone walls muffled the blasts. The Irgunists rushed inside, firing as they went.
From deeper down the dirt lanes of Deir Yassin came the crack of gunplay and the crump of grenades. Arab men and women screamed the alarm from house to house and the first wails of children reached Hugo. The young officer ran ahead; the battle called him onward.
With a smothered thud, a bullet struck the officer. A rifle report clapped as the officer fell over on a deadened leg. Hugo roared, “In the window!”
Volleys from the Irgunists forced a dark figure on the second floor to recoil; bullets smoked the wall around him. Two fighters dragged the bleeding officer out of the street. The squad raced back toward the dark orchard, shooting at the building over their shoulders. Without intending it, Hugo became the only one left in the street. He could run beneath the sniper back to the trees or dash the shorter distance, straight at the house. Movement in the murky window sent him speeding at the building.
Hugo arrived full tilt, ramming the wall to stop himself. A small overhang put him out of sight from the sniper. The front door was metal and decorative. A grenade would barely dent it.
Bawling voices came from inside, furious, perhaps panicked, but they were many. This building couldn’t be left in the rear. Hugo yelled, “Gelignite!”
From behind the orchard trees, his squad sparred with the shooter on the second floor. A second sniper joined from the roof. Hugo’s call for explosives was relayed; a sapper was found. Courageous and nimble, under covering fire from the orchard, the man sprinted to the porch. He skidded on his knees beside Hugo and doffed his backpack.
He pulled from the satchel a paper-wrapped sausage, four ounces of blasting gel, made in England, labeled Dangerous. A half-meter fuse trailed from one end. Hugo snapped his fingers, then held out his palm.
“Two more.”
The sapper hooked a thumb at the metal door. “One will open it.”
“I don’t want to go in there. Do you?”
Behind the door, voices scampered up and down stairs. The sapper licked his lips, then pressed a hand against the stone wall as if measuring it. Hugo peered with him into the opened satchel, at a hundred sticks.
The sapper said, “No, Kharda.” He pulled out three more.
With a steel wire, the explosives expert wrapped together the four tubes. He laid the bundle at the base of the door. “Fifteen seconds. Ready?”
He scratched a match down th
e stones and lowered the flame to the fuse. The white sparks held the same glittering beauty as the tracers. Then the sapper and Hugo ran.
Hugo and his squad scurried from house to house.
The Irgunists kicked in or blew down every door they came to, even the quiet homes. They tossed in grenades, then rushed behind the blasts into roiling, blinding dust. Foyers first, then room after room, they sprayed bullets at stunned and downed Arab fighters, shot at shifting shadows without determining what made them shift. The Irgunists emerged from the buildings shouting, “Secure,” and moved on.
Wherever snipers were met, if the resistance was too stout, sappers reduced the houses to rubble, collapsing stone walls on Arab shooters and whoever else might be inside.
Through the morning, the battle clawed uphill. The Arabs answered the Irgunists from windows with Stens, rifles, and pistols. Women hurried under fire out of embattled homes to gather guns from fallen fighters of either side. With the sun climbing into morning and the wounded and killed mounting on both sides, Arab resistance began to stiffen; as the Irgun’s supplies of explosives ran low, the attack began to bog down.
Two hours after dawn, the Irgunists had made little progress penetrating Deir Yassin. Few had the experience of soldiers; Hugo watched the young fighters fail to protect each other with covering fire or advance using the terrain, not like the Palmach, Haganah, and Field Force he’d fought alongside. Most of the Irgunists had been trained as saboteurs. Pinchus had sent them into the village knowing this.
The wounded needed to be evacuated, but no one could be spared to carry them out. Platoons complained about the dwindling stores of ammo and gelignite. Several fighters stayed behind in houses they’d taken, the ones not obliterated, to stop the Arabs from returning. The rest pressed on, storming house after house, tedious and perilous.
At nine o’clock, Hugo came to a tall stone dwelling where a sniper was being engaged. Irgunists lifted a bleeding comrade onto a door and hustled him off to the collection point near the village entrance. Three more kneeled at the building’s doorway, waiting for a sapper to come blow the door in so they could rush inside. All three looked unsure. Hugo darted into the open; the Arab sniper ignored him running to the wall.
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