Birthright

by Alan Gold

  Dov pulled at her sleeve and shouted, “C’mon, we’ve gotta get out of here. Now!”

  But Judit continued to stare at the site. It looked as though the normally sedate building had given birth to a monstrous being—a brilliant, fiery, stinking denizen of some alien world within. It expanded out of the confines of the lower walls, out of the windows, the doorway, the cellar, its broiling arms reaching out of every opening and enveloping everything nearby.

  Then she heard a series of further explosions on the upper floors as gas fittings detonated and radiators burst and flames leaped out bedroom windows. Men continued to scream, and as she watched in horror and fascination, she saw figures on the upper floors attempting to open windows, but the moment they did, the air intensified the flames and the blast grew into an all-consuming Gorgon.

  That was only the beginning. The violence of the bombs had caused the supporting pillars on the ground floor to buckle, fracture, and bow. The weight of the upper floors made the building sag in the middle, and then it collapsed onto itself, hurling men in burning pajamas out of windows to be dashed to death on the ground. The building looked as though some huge mischievous child had brought down his fist on the roof, pushing the upper floors into the ground.

  “For fuck’s sake, Judit, c’mon. Now!” said Dov, grabbing her arm and pulling her backward into a laneway so they would escape the arrival of soldiers and security guards from other barracks.

  She ran, separated from her colleagues, fleeing down predetermined routes, finding the safe houses they’d been allocated. She lost sight of the other, but quickly found her way to where she was spending the night. As she ran toward the house, the door opened, and she rushed inside and was enveloped in silence.

  Jerusalem

  1947

  JUDIT FELT A degree of trepidation as she walked toward the apartment in North Jerusalem. It was five in the evening, an hour before the British imposed their curfew. If the meeting lasted longer, then it would be sensible for her to stay the night, but that would cause difficulties for the woman looking after little Vered.

  “Damn Shalman and his stupid archaeology. Damn him for falling over,” she said to herself, then immediately felt guilt for her unworthy thoughts. It had been days since he’d had his accident, but she’d been so busy with her work for Lehi that she hadn’t had time to go to the Arab village and see him. Every other day, he sent her a note telling her of his progress, and with each note, she felt guiltier and guiltier. She just hoped that he would understand.

  If only he hadn’t fallen down that hillside. Shalman had said he’d be gone for two nights, three at the most, yet two days after he’d gone on his expedition, some Arab had thrust a note into her hand when she opened her front door. Perhaps if things calmed down a bit, she’d ask a friend if she could borrow a car and go and visit him.

  In the meantime, things were heating up on the international stage. The United Nations had sent a commission of inquiry to examine the partition of the land into separate nations of Israel and Palestine. Now was the time to exert maximum pressure.

  And in the middle of washing the feeding bottles for Vered that morning, somebody else had knocked on her door, and another note had been thrust into her hands. She asked who had sent the note, but the little girl just shrugged and showed some money in her hands, then ran off.

  Judit read it immediately. It was from somebody who called himself “A Friend,” reminding her of how “beautiful everything was in the summer before last.”

  Just looking at it, rereading it, came as a shock and an unwelcome surprise. For months and months, she had not been contacted by Moscow. In the beginning, she’d expected new instructions every day; then every week; but as the months rolled past and the year changed from one to the next, Judit grew more and more into her role as a freedom fighter with Lehi. She was still a passionate communist, but amid her daily life-and-death environment, Moscow’s geopolitics seemed something of the distant past.

  Now, it was present again, front and center. As she read the note, her training in Leningrad and Moscow, her drilling in spycraft, her education as a covert operative, came flooding back. She had to sit down on a chair and brace herself. It felt like she’d seen a ghost. Not even Vered’s whimpering broke through the images whirling around her head.

  The code was simple enough. It was an instruction for her to go to a safe house to meet with the handler she’d been assigned by Moscow Central. She’d never met her handler, never been contacted since she’d arrived in Palestine. She’d been told that she wouldn’t be contacted until Comrade Beria’s plans were ready to be put into place. Yet just reading the Palestine Post, she knew that some militant Zionists had met with terrible accidents or had been assassinated by unknown assailants such as Arab snipers. She had put two and two together and realized that other covert operatives were in action in the country, but only now had she been tapped on the shoulder. She was about to fulfill the mission for which she’d been trained. She read again the code that called her to a meeting with her unknown Russian handler.

  Judit looked at the numbers of the houses and apartment blocks as she walked down the road later that night. Her spycraft came to the fore—long in the recesses of her mind during her time with Lehi, when spying wasn’t an issue, but guns and bullets and explosives and timers and trip wires were. Judit knew not to look directly at a number on a door as though searching, because that might alert a passerby that she was a stranger. Instead, she walked at a normal pace down the road, keeping away from the curb, and casually glancing at the numbers of the houses one or two in front of her.

  When she found she was approaching the nominated house in Rehov Jabotinsky, she turned into the path that led to the front door as though she’d lived in the house forever. She knocked casually, not looking around to see if anyone was watching. That was another giveaway that she was a stranger, and she’d been taught that strangers are always remembered by inquisitive neighbors.

  The door opened almost immediately, and it was all she could do not to gasp. She hadn’t known who or what to expect, but before her was Anastasia Bistrzhitska.

  Anastasia beamed and almost pulled Judit inside into the hallway. She closed the door quickly so that nobody in the street could see inside the house. Then she held both of Judit’s hands, took a step back, and admired her.

  “You left Russia a girl, and now you’re a woman. My God, but you’ve grown into a beauty. What’s happened? Is it motherhood? Is it this husband of yours? Is it the sun in this hot land?” Anastasia threw her arms around Judit and kissed her. Not on the cheek but full on the lips. Just as quickly, she said, “But come inside and meet your comrades. Some you may have seen around the place; others you won’t have because they’re operating a long way away. Now that the United Nations idiots are here, it’s time to push our plans forward, Judita.”

  She opened the door, and then entered the room.

  Judit smiled at the ten men and two other women, some of whom she recognized from her training time in Leningrad and Moscow. Others were new faces. Her mind was flooded with thoughts of Shamir and Begin. She was no longer a Lehi comrade but a spy for the Soviet Union. Would she be ordered to kill them or any other of the freedom fighters?

  She knew two of the men in the room were working with the Haganah—a Jewish resistance group from which the more radical Irgun and Lehi had split. Though she recognized them from Moscow, she didn’t know where the other men and women worked. Judit whispered to Anastasia, “I don’t know most of these people. They were not in Moscow.”

  “My little dove, some we trained have been killed fighting in this country; some turned out to be duds and have been liquidated; and some have been enlisted by us since you left Mother Russia. This is a much bigger operation than you know.”

  Anastasia smiled at Judit’s reaction and said to the group in Russian, a language Judit had barely heard in recent years: “Now our group is complete. Good. For those who don’t know her, may I introduce J
udita. She’s just made the observation that she doesn’t know some of you. This is true. Some of you trained together, some of you separately in different places. It was vital that this first time you meet as agents of the Soviet Socialist Republic, you begin to know one another. The reason this is your first meeting was determined two years ago in the Kremlin by Comrade Stalin himself; he was concerned that if you worked together before Moscow Central’s plans were in place, Zionists could have been warned in advance of a cabal. Secrecy and subterfuge are paramount.

  “Friends, comrades, or, as you say in this country, chaverim, in the next few weeks the United Nations commission will have completed its task and will recommend that Britain hand back its mandate. The chance that any nation in the world will want to pick up the mess that the government in London has made of its relationships with Arabs and Jews is very doubtful.

  “That means, comrades, that when the last British soldier gets on to a troop transport ship and sails down the Mediterranean, there will be open warfare between the Arabs who live here and the Jews who will soon call themselves Israelis. So we can anticipate war between the Arabs of six nations and the Jews of one, and a divided one at that. This presents the opportunity for us. All of you know that Mother Russia has clear need of a warm-water port for our glorious navy. It is this new land that must be open to us to create that port. It is this nation, when formed from the ashes of the war that is to come, that will be Mother Russia’s closest and most dependent ally.”

  A tall, thin, and handsome man named Mikhail spoke up. “But that depends on who wins this coming war when the British leave? Are we, as they say, hedging our bets? Or are we to be more proactive?”

  “If we support the Arabs who live here in British Palestine but the Jews win, then we may find ourselves without influence or power because of the strength of Zionism,” said another man. “If we support the Israelis but the Arab armies attack and allow the Palestinians to win, then Russia’s influence in the Middle East will be lost forever.”

  A woman named Rebekah, who had been stationed for two years in Syria, spoke up in a shrill voice that cut across the murmur of her comrades. “When two sides are at war, the only questions that concern them are those of supply and logistics. The moment the British withdraw, Arab armies will roll across the borders toward Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. I’m in Syria, and pushing the Jews into the sea is the topic of conversation in all the coffee shops. Israel will be one of the world’s smallest countries. A warplane, even those antiques flown by the Arabs, can cross from east to west in a matter of minutes. The Jews know this. The Jews have no standing army. They have at best a ragtag group of armed militia. Six Arab nations can field an army of a hundred thousand men in tanks, troop carriers, artillery, and infantry. The Jews cannot win. We must throw our support behind the Arabs.”

  People in the room nodded and spoke in agreement. It was all so obvious. But Judit noticed that Anastasia was observing and watching. Though Anastasia had instructions from the Kremlin, and especially Comrade Beria, on how Russia should approach the coming war, she was clearly waiting for her operatives to draw their own conclusions, to test their understanding of the situation.

  One of the men, a thirty-year-old Jew named Boris whose family had been exiled to Siberia by Dzerzhinsky, the head of the revolution’s secret police, said, “Then it’s obvious! We’ll be supplying and supporting the Arabs.”

  All the others nodded, some sadly, because they were Jews. Anastasia looked at Judit. “What do you think, Judita?”

  Judit took a moment to consider her answer, though she knew full well what she would say. “When the Arabs attack, the Jews will win,” she said coldly.

  Anastasia was surprised by the way her protégée had said “the Jews” as if referring to people other than her own.

  Every last person in the group smiled. Many shook their heads at her naïveté.

  Judit was unperturbed and continued. “The Arabs don’t need our help. They’ve already had enough help from the British, and the Trans-Jordanian army is British-trained anyway. So if we side with the Arabs, we’ll get almost nothing in return.”

  “Gaining little is better than supporting the losing army that has nothing,” Boris said curtly.

  “No,” Judit said firmly, more confident now that she’d had time to reflect. “The Jews have nowhere to go. They’ll be fighting for their lives. The Palestinians are small in number and without resources. The Arab army will be foreigners fighting only for something they’ve been told by their leaders. Their cause will be the removal of the Jews from what they’ve been told is Islamic land. This is their weakness. Once they start suffering casualties, they’ll consider this a foreign battlefield; they won’t view it as Islamic or Jewish or Christian land, but as a place where they don’t want to die so far from their homes. Their hearts won’t be in it. The Jews are fighting for a homeland with no retreat available. The Arab armies come from Damascus and Cairo and Amman. When the bombs fall and their limbs are blown off, they’ll want to crawl home. For the Jews, this is their home. They can’t go back to Europe, so this is the land they’ll defend with their lives. When war comes, the Jews will win. This I believe.”

  Judit looked at Anastasia to see whether her words had struck a chord. While all the others looked at her in surprise, bemusement, and ridicule, Anastasia was grinning from ear to ear.

  The older woman nodded. “There is great wisdom in this young woman, and you would all do well to take heed. Comrades, our consideration of the coming political situation and the advantage it will bring Mother Russia is that we will be approaching the leadership of the Haganah and their fighting force, the Palmach, with an offer of tanks, vehicles, arms, supplies, and any other weaponry they require. And with these gifts, we shall be the muscle and the power of the world’s newest nation. Any resistance we meet from Zionists who distrust us will be dealt with by you.”

  The Home of the Ninth Imam, Baghdad

  820 C.E.

  UNLIKE THAT OF the caliph, the home of Muhammad al-Jawad, the person identified by Hadir and known as the ninth imam in the Shi’ite faith, was unassuming and humble. As Zakki stood outside the house, his stomach in knots of hesitation, he reminded himself what was at stake. There was no mistake in Hadir’s threat to Zakki’s family. Equally, Zakki was aware how precarious it was to be a stranger in this city, even an invited one, if he was caught up in political infighting. It was an unwritten rule of the people that guests were welcomed and accorded respect, provided they remained guests and didn’t interfere in the activities of the land.

  Zakki had told himself that he was simply a messenger and the purpose of preventing civil war was a noble one. The murder of the imam would be an assassination that might trigger untold deaths, deaths he might now prevent with a warning.

  The imam he had come to visit had quite a reputation, though he was only nine years of age. The young theologian’s brilliance at answering even the most searching questions demanded of him by other spiritual leaders had been impressive. He had been interrogated in an effort to disprove his claim to be the next imam, and his responses had shown his followers that he was worthy of the role placed on his young shoulders by the death of his predecessor, the imam Ali al-Reza.

  It was these thoughts that overcame his fears as Zakki walked toward the porch of the home and knocked on the ornately carved latticed front door. Islamic architecture and carvings were a wonder to behold, strong but light as a feather, and the scholar in Zakki had him examining the design with his fingertips as he waited.

  The door was soon opened by a middle-aged woman who looked searchingly at Zakki, quickly asking who he was and what he wanted.

  “I am a scholar of the House of Wisdom. I wish to speak with he who is called the imam, Muhammad al-Jawad. My name is Zakki, son of Jacob, a family of doctors from Jerusalem.”

  “I am Sabika, the imam’s mother. Why do you seek my son?”

  “I have things of great importance that I am compelled to d
iscuss with him.”

  “My son is with the caliph. You cannot speak to him. But you may speak to the imam’s uncle. His name is Da’oud.”

  Zakki agreed. So long as he could talk to just one member of the family and give the warning he was charged to deliver by Hadir, he might yet see his task complete and the threat to his family lifted.

  Sabika invited him inside the home. It was comfortably furnished but far from ostentatious. Yet he had been told by Hadir that the imam received the most important visitors from throughout the world, who came to seek guidance and hoped to make treaties and agreements. To Zakki, this home did not seem suitable for such important meetings.

  Seeing the Jewish doctor looking around her home, Sabika repeated what she had said to many important visitors who appeared surprised that the imam didn’t live in a palace. “My family lives modestly, in sympathy with the poor of our world as commanded by our Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him. My son, the holy imam, spends most of his time in the palace of the caliph, where they determine great things. Though others may look upon him as a child, he has the heart of a lion and mind of a man. He is touched by Allah the All Merciful.”

  As she was speaking, a gaunt man entered the room. He bowed to Zakki, who returned the gesture. Sabika introduced Da’oud, the imam’s uncle, and retired to another part of the house, leaving the two men alone. They sat on divans, and then, without warning or introduction, two young women, their faces completely covered except for slits in the cloth for their eyes, appeared and placed carafes of juice, sliced apples and oranges, as well as a plate of nuts, olives, and seeds on the table between them. Bowing, they left the room as quickly as they had entered.