Birthright

by Alan Gold

  The air seemed to be heating up before him as the fanatics who inhabit every group of sane men began to whip up their brothers. Urban saw before him the beginnings of a frenzy. This was good, but he would need the dukes and the earls, the kings and their knights, to galvanize the forces of the Church.

  “We must raise an army and create a new pilgrimage to go to Constantinople and then on to Jerusalem and rid our lands, our holy lands, of this plague among mankind. I will call this pilgrimage a Crusade, named after the very cross on which our Christ suffered for our sins.”

  Ever the strategist, Urban knew that war needed to make promises to those who partook in it; war needed to speak to both greed and aspiration.

  “Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels and end with victory this war that should have been started long ago. Let those who for a long time have been robbers now become knights. Let those who have been fighting against their brothers now fight in a proper way against the barbarians. Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for pay now obtain the eternal reward. Let those who have been wearing themselves out in both body and soul now work for a double honor. For all who join in my Crusade and wear the cross of a fighting pilgrim, for those who take up sword and lance, bow and arrow, and fight against the heathen, you will be absolved of all your sins, and when you die, you will pass through the golden gates of heaven and live an eternal life.”

  And now the crowd was his. The ruling class saw in the Crusade power and profit; the masses saw advancement and absolution.

  “Some of you may ask by what authority I call you and your congregants to arms. To those who dare to question me, I say that it is I, Urban, by the Grace of God Almighty, pope and pontiff and vicar of Christ, who commands this. For in my prayers I heard the voice of God demanding the cleansing of His house in Jerusalem. And so I say to you Deus Vult! God wills it.”

  As one, the three hundred clerics, scores of dukes and kings’ envoys, and thousands of laymen and -women fell to their knees on the frozen ground, their voices reaching to heaven, and shouted aloud, “Deus Vult!”

  • • •

  Deep in the crowd were two white-haired men, bent from a lifetime of service. They fell to their knees with the crowd, but they were not Christians. Jacob and Nimrod were Jews in the service of the duke of Champagne, Meaux, and Blois. They were listening to the pope at the duke’s request and were to report back to him.

  As they knelt on the ground with the echoes of “Deus Vult” around them, they looked at each other, fear for the future clear on their faces.

  Moscow, USSR

  1947

  WHEN SHE WAS dragged out of her class in the basement Hebrew school, she was Judita Ludmilla Magidovich, daughter of Abel Abramovich Magidovich and his wife, Ekaterina Davidovna Magidovich. Six months of training in Moscow and Leningrad transformed her into another person, one called Judita Magid, daughter of Muscovites who had escaped the Stalin regime and who was making her way out of Russia, south to Palestine and a new life.

  It had been no direct route. To ensure that her travel documents held up to scrutiny, Judita traveled from Leningrad to Moscow so that her passport and other papers were properly stamped, then by train to the Ukraine before a boat from Odessa, through the Black Sea, to Istanbul. From there, she’d traveled by train north through Bulgaria to the most northerly part of the Adriatic Sea and the international port of Trieste, where she presented herself as a Jew fleeing the aggressions of totalitarianism and the privations of a Russia bruised and battered by a murderous war against the Nazis.

  In Trieste, she had joined hundreds of German, Austrian, and Polish Jews, and a menagerie of other nationalities trying to board a boat bound for Palestine. It had taken her three weeks of queuing, negotiating, demanding, and begging, but eventually, she managed to find passage with dozens of other refugees fleeing the remnants of war-ravaged Europe.

  During that journey, Judit’s intense training as a spy transformed her. She metamorphosed slowly and cautiously from an angry young Jewish girl, demeaned by a society that hated her, to a woman of stature, potent and commanding.

  But since then, her identity had changed again. Today she was Judit Etzion, a married woman, a mother, and a citizen of a Palestine that would soon become Israel.

  As she pondered her reconstructions, Judit was struck that even her mode of transport had changed and seemed to embody the heights of her renovation. From cattle cars and leaky ships and waiting in long and interminable lines of people, to how she was traveling today, returning to Russia not by train or boat or car but in an airplane. The Russian Lisunov Li-2 was once fitted out as a light bomber, with explosives and machine guns. But the one Anastasia and Judit traveled in was made for passengers and felt like futuristic luxury to Judit. Nor was she concerned by leaving Shalman. When she’d told him of her decision to visit her parents and take Vered, he’d welcomed the idea. Having no parents of his own, he wanted Vered’s only grandparents to enjoy the delights of the little girl. Silently, Shalman prayed that when she was in Russia, Judit would think back on her relationship with him and the joys that being in a family could bring her. He kissed her tenderly at the airport and wished her a wonderful visit to Moscow.

  The journey took them by plane from the Tel Aviv airport to Cyprus, then to Ankara in Turkey. From there they’d flown to Sochi on the shores of the Black Sea, where they stopped for the night and had been given a very private conducted tour of Stalin’s favorite dacha.

  The following day, they’d flown directly north onto a concrete landing strip in a field near the village of Domodedovo, twenty-five miles south of Moscow. Here a ZIS limousine was waiting to pick them up. Traffic along the route was cleared for them by motorcycle outriders as they entered Moscow central. Their car skirted the wall of the Kremlin, drove to the right of the Bolshoi Theater, and came to a halt outside the entry to the Metropol Hotel.

  Holding Vered, who was fast asleep in her arms, while porters scurried to take their bags, Judit looked around the marble columns and the grand ceilings of the famous and exclusive Metropol, then at Anastasia. “We’re staying here?”

  Anastasia smiled and nodded, whispering, “Yes, my lamb. And there are many other surprises for you.”

  Fifteen miles north of Jerusalem

  1947

  AS JUDIT AND Anastasia were being shown around the Metropol Hotel by sycophantic staff, sixteen hundred miles to the south of Moscow, Ashira sat on a low wooden bench outside a café in a western suburb of Jerusalem and waited, holding her breath because she was so nervous.

  Weeks had gone by since the UN vote; it had also been weeks since Ashira had followed the woman she idolized, Judit Etzion, out into the streets of Jerusalem. The city had been infused that night with a mix of celebration and rage, yet what Ashira had seen made the city feel deathly quiet save for a single piercing gunshot.

  The young woman, so eager and yet so naive, had spent the weeks wrestling with her conscience, wondering what to do with the knowledge she held, the thing she had seen Judit Etzion do. She’d been back to the house and confirmed it was a Jewish home. A home in mourning because, according to the British police, some Arab madman, furious at the UN vote, had gone on a rampage that night and shot the scion of the family.

  Whom should she tell? What would she say? And the more she asked the questions, the more she felt doubt creeping in. What had she seen? Was it really what she thought? Perhaps there was a reason, a plan, that she was not privy to and could not understand.

  Yet in the end it was the great weight on her conscience that she could no longer carry. It was then that Ashira had contacted the leadership of the Irgun and asked to meet with Immanuel Berin, head of the North Jerusalem division of the Irgun.

  Ashira had been told to wait at the café until somebody came to collect her. The situation in Jerusalem had escalated into open violence between Arabs and Jews; shootings into cafés, roadside bombs, an
d cold, brutal attacks on the streets. As the British planned their withdrawal, the chaos was expanding. Attacking the British never sat well with Ashira, but fighting the Arabs with whom she associated all her hatred felt right. And it was this, perhaps more than anything, that had compelled the girl to speak up about what she’d seen that night. When the bullets of the Irgun should have been spent on Arabs, why had Judit Etzion killed a Jewish man from a Jewish family in a Jewish home?

  The door to the café opened and Ashira was summoned to enter by a tall thin man who told her to follow him.

  He pushed open a door at the far end of the café, and they exited to a laneway. He beckoned her into a car, which drove only two streets before depositing her in the garage of a nondescript house. The garage doors were closed immediately, and she was told to get out and follow two men holding guns.

  Inside the heavily guarded house, she found Immanuel Berin seated behind a small and cluttered desk. In the corner was a fan panning slowly but achieving little more than dispersing the thick cigarette smoke more evenly about the space.

  Ashira coughed.

  “I’m told you have something important you wanted to tell me,” said Immanuel. He was known as a direct man but also a cautious and deliberate one. Less the freedom fighter and more the methodical strategist than many of his counterparts. “I’m afraid that I can only give you a few minutes. Sit down.” He gestured to a stool.

  How should she begin? She’d been practicing what to say all morning, not wanting to sound stupid or hysterical. But now that she was confronted by one of the Irgun leaders, she was lost for words.

  “I . . . I mean . . . I don’t know whether I should . . . I saw a . . .” She devolved into silence.

  Berin looked at her and forced a smile, trying to put her at ease. “You’re pregnant?”

  She looked at him in shock. “What? No!”

  “You want to convert to Islam?”

  Her eyes widened as she stared at him.

  “Well, if it’s neither of these, then you won’t shock me. Just tell me what’s on your mind.”

  She smiled. “I’m sorry. I must seem very stupid to you.”

  “Not at all. You seem nervous. So just start at the beginning, one word in front of the other.”

  She nodded. “It’s about Judit Etzion.”

  Now he was surprised, but he remained silent, nodding and encouraging her to continue.

  “I joined the Irgun in part because of Judit. She’s such a hero in the movement. She’s so brave . . . I . . .” Ashira stumbled again.

  “Go on. What about Judit?”

  Ashira swallowed and continued. “The night of the UN vote, I followed her. I just wanted to . . . I don’t know. I followed her hoping that I could be with her, learn from her.”

  Ashira looked down at the table, unable to continue. Immanuel knew from the look on her face that the young girl was wrestling with a dilemma she desperately wanted to be free of. Before the Nazis and his arrival in Palestine, Berin had been a psychiatrist in Vienna. While far from a practical skill in times of war, it had nonetheless proved a valuable asset for a leader in understanding the minds of his people. He knew this was a moment when he had to remain silent, putting gentle pressure on Ashira to continue.

  “She . . . I don’t know why . . . I followed her. I was going to catch up, just to talk with her, be with her . . . but something made me hold back. I don’t know what. She walked quickly, as though on a mission, but there was no mission for her that night. She was hiding in the shadows. Then she turned down smaller and smaller streets. And soon she came to a street with houses, Jewish houses. People had been celebrating. You could see people through the windows. They were all so happy with the partition news. And then I saw her go into a garden. She took out a sniper rifle from inside her overcoat, and then she . . .”

  “She what, Ashira?” asked Berin, his voice barely above a whisper.

  “She fired a shot into the house. In front of his entire family. She just stood there hidden by a tree and fired. She murdered the man. He was a Jew. A professor. Then she walked away. She didn’t see me. I just stayed in the shadows. I was stunned. I didn’t know what to do. I could hear screaming from inside the house. The window into the front room was shattered. I could see his wife and children screaming. I walked toward the house and knew immediately that it was a Jewish house. There was a mezuzah on the doorpost.”

  Unable to continue, Ashira began to cry. She buried her head in her hands and sobbed. Immanuel looked at her and could understand her inner demons. The child was hideously conflicted. But he knew of the incident. Everybody knew of the murder of Professor Durace in front of his entire family on the night of the UN vote. And like so many, Berin had assumed it was an Arab attack. Or at best a stray bullet with no deliberate target.

  Berin’s mind began to spin. Judit? Judit Etzion? How could this be? Was Ashira mistaken? It didn’t make sense. What was the motive? Why would Judit kill a Jewish professor?

  “Ashira, you’ve done well to bring this to my attention.”

  Ashira verbalized the questions in his mind. “Why? Why would Judit do this thing?”

  “I am a methodical man and we are a methodical people,” said Berin, standing and putting a hand on Ashira’s shoulder. “We shall not jump to conclusions.”

  “But I know what I saw.” Her worst fear of not being believed rose up inside her.

  “I don’t doubt you. But we shall be methodical, and I will need your eyes for that, Ashira.”

  The young woman looked up at Berin, uncertain what he meant.

  “I need you to be my eyes so we might learn the whole truth. And part of that learning is this must remain between us until we understand what happened. You mustn’t discuss this with anybody—I mean anybody at all.”

  Ashira nodded, feeling a weight lifted from her shoulders now that she’d unburdened herself.

  Metropol Hotel, Moscow, USSR

  1947

  JUDIT AND ANASTASIA sat in the dining room of the Metropol Hotel in Moscow, with Vered in a pram. They were eating breakfast on their second day in the city and marveling at the sophistication of their surroundings. A harpist on the stage was playing for them. A marble fountain cooled the middle of the room. Both women looked up at the stained-glass ceiling high above them, painted with motifs.

  To Anastasia, Judit looked like a country girl visiting the city for the first time. “You know,” Anastasia said, “Fyodor Shalyapin sang here . . . right here. And Lenin himself made speeches here. And the Englishman George Bernard Shaw stayed here and extolled the virtues of the Soviet people.”

  “He was Irish,” Judit said.

  Anastasia frowned. “Irish. English. What does it matter? This is a place for special people.”

  Judit looked around the room, examining the other diners. Many of the older, more overweight men had young women at their tables. Others had wives and children.

  Anastasia lowered her voice. “They’re party officials; some from the provinces—they’re the ones with their fat wives and snivelly kids. The wives insist on coming to Moscow so that they can show off to their friends back home how important their husband is. The others are here with their ‘nieces.’ ”

  Judit turned to her handler quizzically.

  There were times when Anastasia was reminded of how young Judit was, despite the role she played and the things she had done in Palestine.

  “Prostitutes, my dear, although some of them, the taller, thinner ones, are ballerinas from the Bolshoi just over the road. The ballet is the zoo where our leaders go to find their next pet.”

  Judit looked shocked. “But prostitution is illegal.”

  At this Anastasia laughed out loud. “Yes, it is, my dear. But this is Moscow, and for some women, working on your back is better than standing in poverty.”

  “But the system should provide. For everyone.” Judit’s concern was genuine. Her memories of childhood poverty were always sharp, but now that she was back
in Moscow, they were particularly focused.

  “The system should provide. It can. But sometimes . . . not so much. There have been hard times since the war.”

  “Are people starving?” Judit asked.

  “Not like in the winters after the Revolution. You were too young, but I remember the winter of 1932, when I was in the Ukraine. Seven million people were deliberately starved to death by Kaganovich, just so he could provide his Moscow masters with grain. They were dark times. I’m ashamed to say that we can’t be proud of all the things the Soviet has done in its past, but things are no longer like that.” Anastasia leaned closer almost conspiratorially. “But you and I are women, Judit. We’re not like men. We’re far more pragmatic and strong. So if it was the difference between hunger and cold and dining here in the warmth on caviar . . .” She sat back and cast her arms wide at the magnificence of the hotel. “I know what I’d do. If I were starving, then for a good meal, I’d let them have me.”

  Listening to these words, Judit found herself doing something she rarely did any longer: She thought of her family. Not Shalman and Vered but her parents and her siblings and the life she had left behind. She looked to the “nieces” laughing and smiling at the tables of privileged fat men and wondered if that might have been her fate. Was she as pragmatic as Anastasia was suggesting? If her father had died and left the family alone, what choice might they have had? In that moment Judit was struck by how sentimental she felt.

  “This will be an exciting time for you, Judit. You are now in the bosom of Mother Russia; you are intrinsic to her success. And Russia intends to show you her love.”

  Anastasia went on to tell Judit of the important people she would need to meet with and the places she would need to visit. Lenin’s tomb, the Alexandrovsky Gardens, the Kremlin.