Birthright

by Alan Gold

  The duke turned back to Nimrod and Simeon. “Yes. I shall find a way. I shall find a hole in the wall.”

  “But my lord—” protested Nimrod.

  “I shall find a way, and you, my good doctor, will come with me. I want a doctor and a Jew by my side when I find a portal into the city.”

  • • •

  Though there had been no arguing with the duke, Nimrod and Simeon had argued. Simeon insisted on coming to scout the walls, but Nimrod refused outright. The debt that Simeon felt he owed the older man was too large for him to remain behind. The danger in what the duke had proposed was obvious, and yet Simeon could not in good conscience let his friend go without him.

  But as was often the case with Nimrod, argument became philosophical examination, only this time his voice was filled with a strange sadness.

  “These may well be our last days, Simeon. And I have spent them as I have spent my life: in books seeking knowledge and wisdom. I have been reading the philosophies of the Gaonim, the wise Jews of ancient Babylon. They lived, like we do, under the rule of others—we under Christians and they under the Abbasid, followers of Mohammed. Perhaps it is that otherness that creates wisdom. Their work brings me much consolation. These Gaonim were the great minds of our people, and they changed the way we think. Unlike the Christians, they didn’t encase their faith in a golden casket, making it immutable. Instead, they looked at how it might adapt and change and be renewed with thinking, as thinking itself changes. But these Christians who are our earthly lords, they’re unwilling—no, incapable—of changing. They even find thinking difficult.”

  “Is this what we’ve come to, then?” asked Simeon. “Is this now our lot? To die with thousands of others in the madness that will be the end of this city as its walls are breached by the siege engines?”

  “We can’t stop them. An entire city can’t stop them. This has always been the end of our road. I foresee great slaughter in the coming days, and I am prepared to die rather than carry back to France the awful truth of tens of thousands of Jews and Muslims slaughtered by these Crusaders. I would—I will—rather die.”

  Simeon was not resigned, and so as Duke Henri, Michel Roux, the ten chosen soldiers, and Nimrod slipped out of the camp under cover of darkness, Simeon, son of Abel, followed them.

  • • •

  The small group of Christian soldiers and one slow-moving Jewish doctor circumnavigated the outer walls of the holy city of Jerusalem. The soldiers carried only swords, leaving behind shields and spears to keep their movement light and swift. Yet they were aware of their vulnerability to the guards who walked the ramparts above and, as a result, moved nervously along the path led by Duke Henri.

  The darkness of the night sky and the perpetual shadows of the city’s massive walls gave them some comfort; the lights of the torches burning atop the walls cast no illumination this far below. For hours they had been searching, not knowing what they were supposed to be searching for. The duke simply kept repeating, “There must be a hole in the wall.”

  Michel Roux’s narrow eyes darted like a wolf’s as he followed the duke. He also kept peering back at Nimrod, shuffling along behind, as if stalking prey. When the party rested, Nimrod heard murmurs of scorn among the soldiers that a “Christ killer” was among them and they were dismayed that their lord seemed to maintain such faith in Jews who, like the Muslims, corrupted the holy city. Such words could not hurt Nimrod, but the implications of darker actions quickened his heart.

  The journey around the walls seemed to drag on endlessly into the night. The men were silent save for the creak of their armor and weaponry. But Nimrod could hear the duke muttering to himself; he feared the demons of his lord’s addled mind now had free rein.

  “The bones will lead us . . . we should follow the bones . . .” mumbled the duke, and urged the troop, with exaggerated hand movements, to follow him down a small hillock. Then, with little warning, the duke let out a scream, guttural and incoherent, and broke into a run. The men were bewildered that such a mission of stealth should see their leader make such a racket.

  Nimrod watched the duke take off. His form was quickly swallowed by the shadows. Without thinking, Nimrod set off after his master.

  Was it loyalty that set him running? Was it fear of being left behind with the anti-Semitic soldiers and the cold and brutal Michel Roux? Whatever it was, Nimrod found himself focused on following the sounds of the duke in the darkness.

  Back at the top of the small rise, the soldiers looked at one another in bafflement. Roux quickly took charge and ordered them all to stay where they were. He alone set off into the dark after the duke and the doctor.

  Jerusalem

  February 6, 1948

  SHALMAN SAT IN the same small room, forearms on the same simple wooden table, where he’d sat when Immanuel Berin snatched him from the street to question him about Judit’s activities.

  Now he faced the stern Irgun leader with a very different weight on his heart. He had asked for this meeting with Berin and had been brought, blindfolded, to the secret headquarters.

  Shalman prayed that Berin would ask the questions and he could tell the truth. But Berin was not so forthcoming; he sat calmly waiting for Shalman to say why he’d asked for the meeting.

  Shalman swallowed and wiped his brow. He felt torn in two. He was now certain what Judit was, what she had done, and more pressingly, what she was going to do.

  The world around Shalman was a powder keg. War was inevitable, and Shalman was resigned to it. But retribution, revenge, killing to exert fear, this was what troubled Shalman’s soul. He had killed, he had fought for what he believed in. He had defended his home and his right to a home. But every death had weighed on him, every widow was his wife, every orphan his child. Worst of all was the image of an Arab boy in flames on an airfield. His soul was tortured every day by what he’d done. He could not bring back those he’d killed, and he could not stop the war and whatever would follow, but Shalman felt there was at least one thing that he could prevent.

  To do it, he would have to betray the woman he loved and the mother of his child. Shalman knew the price.

  “I’ve seen Judit.”

  Berin’s expression didn’t change. “When?” he asked.

  “Last night. And now she’s gone. I don’t think she’s coming back. I think she’s escaping. Is it you she’s escaping? What’s going on?”

  Shalman’s answer told Berin that Judit had found Anastasia’s body and the message had been received.

  Shalman tried to read Berin’s face, but it was an impassive mask. The information garnered in the Russian deal by Golda Meir had given Berin the names of the MGB assassination squad. Some had already been dealt with. Soon it would be Judit’s turn.

  “Where is she now?” asked Berin, his voice hardening.

  “I don’t know,” Shalman told him. “I just don’t know, but she has to be stopped. You have to stop her. She’s doing things that are—” He couldn’t continue.

  “We know,” said Berin softly. “We know all about her. You know she’s a spy for the Soviet Union, don’t you? She was working for Moscow Central, for the NKVD and then the MGB.”

  The expression on Shalman’s face spoke volumes.

  “Come on, you don’t expect me to believe that you knew nothing,” said Berin.

  Shalman opened his mouth to speak, but he was speechless.

  “You poor bastard. You knew nothing? Didn’t you even suspect?”

  “I . . . When she went out at night, I thought . . . I never met her friends, but . . .” He sank back into silence.

  “You’d better leave,” said Berin.

  “Not until you tell me about my wife. My wife! I have a right to know.”

  Immanuel Berin shook his head. His thoughts were in Vienna, long before the war, long before the Anschluss, to a city of light and laughter; to a family who lived in a beautiful three-story home in the Kaerntner Strasse: He was a young psychiatrist and she was a beautiful young
Jewess, her family scions of Viennese society. They were so happy. And at some stage, Shalman and Judit had been happy.

  How could Berin tell him the truth? How could he tell this decent, gullible young man that his wife was a merciless assassin who’d been responsible for the murders of innocent and important Jews?

  “Go, Shalman. Just go.”

  The young man sat there staring at Berin. Tears were forming in his eyes. Slowly, he stood and turned to leave. To return to a home he’d made for a family but now occupied only with a little daughter. Berin felt an awful draining sadness flood through his body as he watched Shalman leave. He knew that very soon, they’d find Judit and execute her for her crimes. Just as the Nazis had executed his own wife and children in some death camp. When would it all end? he wondered sadly.

  Central Museum Building

  16 Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv

  May 14, 1948

  THE INVITATIONS TO attend the meeting had been sent out by courier, and the message on the envelopes was “Top Secret.”

  They’d been sent to dozens of the most prominent Israelis, leaders in politics, academia, local government, the newspapers, and the editor and senior reporter of the new Israeli radio service, Kol Yisrael. All had been invited to hear the reading of the recently completed declaration, one day ahead of the United Nations decision to vote for the partition of the Palestinians and the Jews. The reason it was so secret was David Ben Gurion’s fear that if the British found out about the meeting, they might attempt to stop it. The other reason he and Golda Meir and others were wary of a crowd was because the Arab armies, poised to begin their massive invasion the moment the vote was taken, might misunderstand the import of what was about to be done in the Tel Aviv museum and roll across the borders a day early.

  Of course, it didn’t work, and at half past three in the afternoon, those invited were forced to fight their way through the massive crowd of expectant onlookers standing on the streets outside the museum, waiting for the beginning of the top-secret event.

  Ben Gurion got out of his car. “How the hell did they find out?” he snapped at his police protection officer.

  With a wry smile, the policeman shrugged. “They’re Jews. How do you stop them from finding out?”

  He entered the hall to begin the meeting at four o’clock so delegates could be home in time for Shabbat. He saw that Kol Yisrael had already set up microphones on the tables, so that this, their inaugural broadcast, would herald the way Israel wanted to be seen and heard, in public, in the light of day, open and transparent before the whole world.

  Ben Gurion looked at his watch, banged his gavel on the table, and began to speak but was immediately interrupted by the 250 delegates bursting into the national anthem of Israel, the Hatikvah. He wanted to bring down his gavel—the time and political pressures were enormous—but when he heard the amassed voices singing, he could barely speak. He listened to the words and joined in.

  As long as in the heart, within

  A Jewish soul still yearns,

  And onward, toward the ends of the east

  An eye still looks toward Zion;

  Our hope is not yet lost,

  The hope of two thousand years,

  To be a free nation in our land,

  The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

  Men and women stopped singing, and the hall descended into silence as people turned and hugged. Clearing his throat of emotion, Ben Gurion began to speak. “This scroll establishes the State of Israel. We have come on a long, long journey, a journey which has taken us two thousand years to complete. So let me read to you the agreed text.” He cleared his throat again and, like a town crier, began in a stentorian voice:

  “The land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious, and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance, and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

  “After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom . . .”

  He looked up from the scroll and realized that half of the delegates sitting around the hall had tears running down their cheeks.

  Immanuel Berin was sitting in the audience with tears streaming down his cheeks. Though he, more than most, realized the coming trauma from this declaration, of the war just hours away, it was the culmination of all his yearning, all his hopes.

  Hatikvah meant “The Hope.” The Jews had hoped for thousands of years that they could be a free people in their own land, free of hatred, free of fear. One day it would come about. Not today, when the declaration was read, but when the war was won.

  As the assembly sat, Berin repeated to himself in profound silence the last words of the anthem—to “be a free nation in our own land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem.” Not tomorrow, when some distant international body in New York determined it, but in the future, when Jews and Arabs sat down as equals, as brothers and sisters, in peace and harmony.

  Holy City of Jerusalem

  July 8, 1099

  NIMROD RAN FOR what seemed like a thousand steps, stumbling blindly in the dark, aware that at any moment his foot could fall into a rabbit hole and snap his leg. Up ahead he heard a noise, not the deep-throated yelling of the duke but, rather, a different voice—higher-pitched, more melodic. Nimrod was surprised by the sound, so he kept moving in that direction.

  Then came the sound of metal upon metal, a harsh clash of iron that echoed through the air. These new sounds gave Nimrod a clear bearing, and he homed in on the source. With a few more steps, he had moved out of the shadow of the walls, and the dim moonlight filtered over the ground to bring the figures before him into relief.

  Duke Henri stood with his sword raised high above his head and his mouth open in a roar. In front of him was a smaller, more nimble Arab warrior—presumably a scout returning from spying on the Crusader camp. The dark-skinned man held a scimitar shaped like the crescent moon atop a mosque. His clothes were lighter, his armor simpler and more flexible, his weapon faster and more agile. The Arab judged the huge armored figure of the duke, the breadth and weight of his sword. The Crusader might be slow and clumsy, but one hit would be enough to cleave him in two.

  The duke’s yell was a prelude to a charge, and his broadsword swiped down in a wide arc aimed at cutting the Arab into two. The Arab saw the attack coming and pivoted aside, spinning on his toes and bringing his scimitar whipping about in an arc parallel to the ground. The curved blade slashed across the duke’s back as his momentum carried him forward and past the Arab warrior. As sharp as the scimitar was, it glanced off the chain mail, leaving nothing more than bloodless bruising.

  The duke recovered and turned to face the Arab once more, broadsword extended and pointing at his opponent’s heart. The Arab bent his knees to lower himself for greater poise, ready to spring in whatever direction the Crusader might expose in his next attack.

  “You’re a walking corpse,” screamed the duke. He lunged again, this time thrusting forward, hoping to skewer the Arab on the point of his sword. The swiftness of the attack belied the duke’s size, and the Arab’s pivot was slower. The tip of the broadsword caught him under the arm, tore through the light armor, and sent a thin spray of blood to the ground at their feet.

  If the wound caused the Arab pain, he made no sound and swiped his scimitar through the air in defiance, ready for the next pass.

  The duke, spurred on by the strike against the enemy, rushed his next attack, lashing out wildly in a two-handed swing. The sword was long, but he overreached and was off balance. He stumbled as the Arab lifted his scimitar high above his head and brought it crashing down.

  Nimrod saw the reflection of the moonlight on the Arab’s gleaming blade, so much brighter than the dull and often rusted gray of Crusader weapons. He saw the sword slice the air an
d even imagined he heard the wind parting as it swished toward the body of the duke.

  The Arab had aimed his blow well. He knew where the thick Crusader armor of interlocking rings of steel was weakest. The joints at the shoulders were his target, and his blow was true. The curved scimitar, made for slicing rather than slashing and stabbing of French broadswords, slipped through the rings and into the flesh and bone and sinew of the duke’s shoulder.

  The duke of Champagne screamed at the pain of his nearly severed arm, his lifeless hand dropping the broadsword.

  Nimrod saw all this from behind the Arab warrior, saw the dark-skinned man’s back arch in victory as he raised his sword for a final blow on the duke, now with no weapon or limb to parry.

  Nimrod saw all this and ran. Not into the darkness or away in fright but straight at the warrior in front of him. He ran with all his might and all his speed and sent his body forcibly colliding into the torso of the Mohammedan warrior before the final blow could fall on his master’s head.

  The two figures tumbled into the dirt, arms and legs and feet in a melee of confusion and fury. The momentum pushed the Arab facedown on the ground but also carried Nimrod over the man’s body, knocking the breath from his chest.

  As Nimrod struggled to draw in air and find his way to his feet, his hands grabbed at his side and grew wet with blood. The Arab blade had somehow pierced him during the tackle. There was no time to contemplate the wound, as the Mohammedan was already standing and drawing a curved dagger from a sash at his waist. The man leaped toward Nimrod, who screamed and tried to roll away, but the Mohammedan was too quick. His knees pinioned Nimrod’s arms to the ground. Nimrod saw the dagger draw back, ready to be swept across his throat, and tried to remember the Jewish prayer for those in mortal danger, but it had left his mind.

  He closed his eyes and waited for the death blow. But it never came.

  Instead, there was a sickening wet thud and Nimrod’s eyes blinked open to see the Arab man’s body on the ground beside him, his face a mess of blood and fragments of broken skull. The body of the warrior shuddered and twitched beside the prostrate Nimrod.