Birthright

by Alan Gold

  He stooped and ran with the rifle back to the vehicle. Shalman followed.

  • • •

  The following night, Shalman and the man with the Polish accent met in a café on Ma’alot Ir David, close to the center of Jerusalem. The older of the two, though himself only twenty-two, nodded without smiling to Shalman as he entered the café. It wasn’t until he stood near the table before sitting that Shalman realized how diminutive the man was. Not that Shalman was particularly tall, especially compared to the British soldiers, but this young man only reached Shalman’s shoulder. Shalman knew that it was the difference between the healthy life and food on a kibbutz and the dark, claustrophobic, and sunless world of a European ghetto where Jews were locked into walls like animals in a pen.

  They looked at each other, not speaking a word, the man’s face a mask of indifference. A waiter came up, and the Pole said curtly, “Wodka. And falafel.” The waiter looked at Shalman, who said, “Just a falafel, thanks. Oh, and a black beer.”

  Shalman was unsure what else to say. The Pole had asked to meet for a drink, and Shalman could find no reason to say no. As he pondered what to say, the man took the lead.

  “Last night. Big problems caused by you. Disobey order. Bad for you, bad for comrades. If this were normal war, you’d be shot. But this no normal war . . .” He shrugged casually and threw back the vodka the waiter had just placed on the table.

  Shalman made no response, though his hackles rose at the idea of being thought a coward.

  The Pole pressed on, not waiting for Shalman to reply. “I could report you, but you’re a kid.” Then he looked around the room before leaning forward and lowering his voice. “Why are you doing this? Why not stay school or kibbutz? Why join gang?”

  “Same reason as you,” Shalman said, adjusting to the Polish man’s awful Hebrew. He looked around the café to see if anybody was listening, but all the other people seemed to be eating and drinking or engaged in intense conversations. He then said, “To kill British.”

  “Hmmm,” said the Pole. “Not for country, not for people? Just for killing?”

  Shalman wanted to object, to explain his nationalism, but instead said, “Your Hebrew is terrible. Would you prefer to speak in Polish?” Shalman’s kibbutz was made up of people from all over the world, and he’d picked up a workable command of Polish as a kid.

  The Pole nodded. “I’ve only just started to learn Hebrew. It’s very difficult.”

  “You didn’t learn any Hebrew in Poland?”

  “I went to school in Ruzhany before the Soviets came. But I liked girls and other things too much.” The diminutive Pole gave Shalman a wry wink.

  As well as languages, Shalman had learned many other things from life on the kibbutz, especially stories of escape. Everyone who came to the community had a story. Some were full of adventure and funny circumstances that would have everyone rolling with laughter in the evenings over dinner. But most were dark and full of despair. So when the Pole said the simple words “before the Soviets came,” Shalman knew what that meant.

  At the start of the war, the Soviet secret police deported hundreds of thousands of Poles to the gulags in the frozen north. It wasn’t the forced labor that was terrible so much as the cold. Many lost fingers, legs, and arms to frostbite, and many more simply died of exposure. Shalman recalled a story of a man who wrapped his fingers and hands and feet in straw and horse shit, so as it rotted, it warmed the flesh. Shalman involuntarily looked down at the hands of the Polish man in front of him, saw the fingers intact, and wondered if he’d done the same.

  Such stories and images were the intimate personal details of much larger political maneuverings. When the Nazis broke their non-aggression pact with Russia, Stalin was desperate for allies, knowing that the German war machine was about to be unleashed toward Stalingrad. He signed the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement, and overnight all those Poles who had been rounded up into forced labor by the NKVD found themselves soldiers in the service of the Soviet Socialist Republic and formed into a ragtag Polish army some twenty-five thousand strong.

  “Some of us were made officers, given shiny uniforms and extra food. But not me. I couldn’t be bothered. I just wanted to kill. Russians, Germans, Arabs, British. I didn’t care. Everybody was my enemy,” said the Pole as he washed down the falafel with another shot of vodka.

  Shalman wanted to ask questions but held back, unsure of the intentions or motives of his companion. He didn’t even know the man’s name. So he asked.

  The Polish man merely looked at him and said, “Names are for the bourgeoisie. No better than lord or earl or sir or mister. A man should be identified by his deeds. I’m known to my comrades because I can kill without blinking an eyelid, not because of what I’m called. So you call me comrade, or in Hebrew, chaver.”

  Shalman shrugged. He’d find out from the others. In the meantime, he thought of what his new comrade had told him about the life of Poles in Hitler’s Europe and Stalin’s Russia. He found himself connecting this man’s stories to the flood of Poles into Palestine in recent years.

  The Pole continued: “Anyway, the Russians couldn’t feed us, so Stalin shipped most of us out to Iran to serve with the British.” He sneered as he said it. Shalman had no doubt that had they been outdoors, the man would have spat alongside the words. “You know, we had to walk all the way, in the freezing cold and across mountains, without food and drink, from southern Russia to Iran. Can you believe it? Thousands died. Starvation and sickness. We couldn’t bury them. We just had to keep on marching. At least the vultures had a good feast.” The broad smile at his own joke unsettled Shalman because it seemed genuine. “And that’s how we got here. Poles all over Palestine.”

  Shalman nodded, beginning to understand the anger of a young man who’d traveled so far from his home, with so much violence and hardship, and just why he was able to kill without any compunction.

  The Polish man sat quietly for several moments, then threw back another glass of icy cold vodka, as though clearing his throat of the filth of the road he had to travel to get to Palestine. Then he turned to Shalman and said, “You want to know my name? It’s Yitzhak. Yitzhak Shamir.”

  Leningrad, USSR

  1944

  DURING THE YEAR since she was escorted from the school by the tall and terrifying NKVD men, Judita had embraced her training. Initially, it had taken place in Moscow, but the later training in more advanced spycraft was conducted in one of the most spectacular palaces in Leningrad, a city just beginning to recover from the murderous siege of the Nazis.

  Judita had turned out to be a brilliant student, absorbing all the facts and figures, the philosophies of communism, and the geopolitics of the world like a sponge. She’d been trained well. Languages came naturally to her, but as she soon discovered, so did many other skills. Photography, cryptography, forgery, weaponry, ballistics, covert communication, dead-letter drops, and much else of spycraft all spoke to her agile intellectual mind. It was her newfound affinity with marksmanship and the handling of firearms that surprised not only her but also her handler.

  Anastasia Bistrzhitska had watched over Judita as her protégée. A beautiful but severe woman, ink-black hair pulled tight back from her forehead in the bun of a Leningrad Kirov ballet dancer, she felt an empathy with the young Jewess, more so than with her many previous students.

  Judita relished Anastasia’s companionship, which provided a friendship and a depth of trust she had never found in her own family. Judita had loved her mother with all her heart, but as the girl grew into a young woman, she came to resent her mother’s lies. Lying about her husband’s violence, lying about how everything would one day be all right. These lies, however well intentioned, broke the trust. But with Anastasia, trust was clear, trust was expected, trust was not to be questioned.

  Along with the skills she would need as an NKVD agent, Judita was also schooled in Soviet socialist policy, the doctrine of Lenin, and the values and aspirations of the workers’ republi
c. Judita had been a student of schools of the state and was a believer before being caught up in the NKVD; but her time in training, with the resources she was afforded and the knowledgeable teachers who lectured to her and the others, expanded her love of the Soviet.

  Her father’s drunken rants about the failings of the Soviet state only validated her trust and faith in the communist system of which she was now an integral part. Whatever he hated must be good.

  All this had delighted Anastasia and transformed her student into a protégée. While Anastasia encouraged all the other students, even though they were Jews and many of them were exceptional, Judita’s knowledge, skills, and dedication had caused Anastasia to form an unusually close bond with her. But now the time was approaching when the training and shelter of the NKVD would end and Judita’s real purpose would begin. Today she was to meet Comrade Beria, the chief of the NKVD and, next to Stalin himself, the most powerful man in the country. In thinking about the meeting, Judita had asked Anastasia what skills, of all she had learned, would be most valuable in the tasks ahead. Anastasia had put a hand on her shoulder and said simply, “Disguise.” It was this word Judita pondered as she stood in front of the ornate door that led to the office of Comrade Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria.

  Judita knocked on the door, clear and firm, and within moments it swung open. Her heart was beating fast, and she was surprised to see Anastasia standing there, smiling and nodding encouragement. Anastasia leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “Don’t be frightened, my little dove.”

  Judita walked into the massive room. It was in the center of Mariinsky Palace, where Beria housed himself when he came to Leningrad. Around the colonnaded walls hung exquisite paintings, portraits of noblemen and -women, massive pictures of soldiers on horseback and elegant ladies in ball gowns. She was surprised to see the portraits of the nobility. When she’d been to museums in Moscow, such pictures had been removed, replaced by Soviet heroes and heroines.

  Anastasia noticed her look of surprise, and as they walked forward, the older woman whispered, “Comrade Beria likes to keep these portraits on the walls so that he can sit in the chairs and work at the desks these parasites once used and remind himself and others of how these so-called aristocrats once ruled our land while their peasants starved.”

  Judita nodded and smiled. She continued to survey the room, and she walked toward the desk where a man whose face she knew all too well from the newspapers was seated. He was surrounded by men in the dress of senior army officers. All were watching as she and Anastasia walked down the length of the reception room.

  Yes, she was frightened. Everybody was terrified of Beria. His balding head reflected the lights in the ceiling, and it was impossible to see his eyes because of the reflection in his rimless glasses. But she knew with absolute certainty that he was examining every step she took.

  They stood in front of the desk, and Beria continued to look closely at Judita. He didn’t say a word but simply stared at her. Was he trying to make her nervous, uncomfortable? Her training had prepared her to steady her mind and focus. She drew on that now and waited.

  “So, you’re the young Jew who has excelled in our instruction,” he said. His voice was higher than she’d anticipated, and from his position in the huge chair, it was apparent that he was also a lot shorter than she’d realized. It was well known in Russia that the diminutive Stalin had a hatred of men taller than he, especially in the upper echelons of the military and the government.

  “Yes, Comrade Beria.”

  “My wife was born Jewish, though of course she eschewed her religion, as have all right-thinking communists.”

  “Yes, Comrade Beria.”

  He looked down at the dossier on the desk and read a few paragraphs. “Top in logistics, top in languages, top in spycraft, top in . . . top in . . . top in . . . You’re a very good student. You excel. Have you always excelled, Judita Ludmilla?”

  “I’ve always tried to excel for the good of Mother Russia,” she said.

  Beria nodded. “There is a task you must do. For the first time since you arrived here, you will be out of our sight. You have been briefed on your mission?”

  “Yes, comrade.”

  “Do you understand what is expected of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you understand that you must succeed in everything we ask of you? That there are consequences for failure?”

  “Yes, Comrade Beria.”

  For a long moment Beria continued to stare at Judita, but she did not flinch or look away and indeed tried very hard not to blink. Finally, Beria gave a curt nod to Anastasia and said, “Good. Then I wish you fortune, in the name of the Soviet Socialist Republic. You will be flown today to Moscow, where you will undertake your mission.”

  He looked down again at her dossier. The interview was over. The warning had been given.

  She turned and walked out of the room without another word.

  • • •

  Later that night, as she was driven through the Moscow streets in a black car with darkened windows, Judita pondered what Anastasia had said about the skill she would need the most: “Disguise.” True to that word, she was in disguise tonight. Though she was only fifteen, she had the body of a grown woman, a body now clothed in an expensive dress, high heels, and stockings, with her face painted in expensive cosmetics the likes of which she’d never seen but knew were used by the wives of the party leadership. Both her age and her true purpose were clearly disguised.

  Her training had been the best possible, and she knew what was expected of her, but how she’d achieve the result, given the unpredictability of the situation, was something for which she couldn’t be trained. She would have to rely on her intelligence, her instincts, and her natural cunning.

  “You’re a child of the Moscow streets,” Anastasia reminded her. “Cunning is in your blood. That’s part of the reason you’ve been chosen for your mission. The other Jews in your class have been taken to their home cities for their missions.”

  Judita had been told that the American diplomat was in the consulate in Moscow alone and away from his wife and children. And he was known to be a womanizer. No American diplomat’s family was sent to Moscow during the war. He’d been sent here in November 1941, shortly after Operation Barbarossa was launched by Hitler to invade Russia. During the three years, the people of Moscow and Leningrad had fought bravely, despite hideous losses.

  Now the Germans were being pushed back, and Russia at long last could begin to breathe freely again. But the movements of troops and battlefronts were not things of her concern. Judita’s task was specific and focused. The target was not an army or a strategic piece of land but a single man and the information he held. Anastasia told her the Americans had a name for it: a “honey trap.”

  The leaders of England and America, Churchill and Roosevelt, were to meet in Yalta in the Crimea in a few months’ time, and there they would make plans to carve up Europe after the war. The diplomat who was Judita’s target held information about that meeting.

  Anastasia dropped her off by car at the hotel the American diplomat was known to frequent. As Judita entered, she blinked at the heavy clouds of smoke in the air and found her way to a table. It was past eleven, and the bar was half full of Muscovites, reporters from America and Britain and Canada, and the usual sprinkling of prostitutes, both male and female.

  Judita ordered a vodka and tomato juice from the waiter and when he returned, she took out her purse, full of rubles from Anastasia, and gave him some money. It was far more than the drink cost, but she smiled at him and said, “Keep it.”

  He looked at her in surprise. “I owe you an apology, miss. I thought you were a barfly.”

  She laughed. “How do you know I’m not?”

  “Girls who work here don’t tip the waiters. They usually start off with cheap soda water and wait for men to buy them expensive drinks.”

  The waiter turned to leave, but Judita caught his hand with a gentle but f
irm touch. He stopped and she lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m a widow. My husband was killed in Leningrad. I’m looking for someone to help me.” This was one of the many rehearsed scenarios imprinted in Judita’s mind. “I’m looking for a fresh start somewhere else. Maybe America.”

  The waiter smiled and looked Judita up and down before saying, “Avoid the reporters. It’s the diplomats who have real power,” and he nodded in the direction of a tall, muscular, but aging man on the far side of the room. “Just don’t hold your breath. Promises are nothing. They’ll tell you anything to get you into bed, but you’ll wake up alone and ashamed. If you take my advice, young lady, you’ll go home and suffer like the rest of us. I’m sorry, but whatever promise you hear from the mouth of an American diplomat, assume that it’s a lie.”

  Judita stroked his hand softly. “Thank you for your concern, but I know what I’m doing. All I need is for you to point out a diplomat. I’ll do the rest.”

  • • •

  Two hours later, Judita was sitting at a table, one arm around the shoulder of Henry Clifford, the American diplomat who was her mark, the other arm fending off his attempt to put his hand up her dress.

  After ten glasses of vodka, his spectacles were askew, his tie pulled down, his shirt no longer tucked into his trousers. Judita’s waiter looked at her in concern and mouthed, “Shall I stop him?” but she shook her head and gave him a wink.

  Henry was tall and strong, but the drink had weakened his concentration, and his words of affection and less than subtle innuendo—delivered in poorly constructed Russian blended with English—were slurred. Judita had coyly shared with him her story of being the young widow of a Russian academic killed by that “monster Stalin,” and the narrative seemed to be holding up.

  She allowed his hand to remain at the top of her stockings, but held it firmly so that it went no higher. She whispered in his ear above the din of the room, expanding on her story. “I spent time with my husband in New York, and it was glorious. I just want to go back there, to the white picket fences and the roses in the gardens and the way the leaves turn red in the fall.”