Danny’s enthralled look was a scowl by the time Herschel was finished. “Sounds like you expect me to babysit a bunch of college kids whenever they aren’t researching at the library—”
“Danny, it’s an important job—”
“Bullshit. An old lady could do it if she happened to be a machinist.” Danny’s eyes widened. “That’s it, isn’t it, Kol? You and Leo were just making the flying stuff up, weren’t you? It’s my machinist’s background that interests you.”
“Flying comes later,” Herschel said weakly.
“Bullshit.”
“And there is much more to do. What we have so far purchased is in temporary storage all over the country. We must consolidate our purchases here in New York and figure out a way to get them to Palestine without alerting the authorities. There is much more to be bought, but some of it is so clearly designed for making munitions that I, as a foreigner, don’t dare approach the owners. I need somebody who is American and has the technical ability to judge the merchandise. That’s you. In New York I can fit in, but in most of your country I would attract too much attention. It is I who will be the babysitter, waiting here for your telephone calls.”
Danny toyed with his coffee cup. “You know, I think I got an angle on that warehouse problem.”
“Wonderful.”
“I’m not saying I’ll do it.”
“There is so much you could take care of for me.” Herschel paused. “I’m going to tell you a great secret. You must tell no one, even if you don’t wish to help. What we’ve so far purchased will help make Palestine secure in the future, but what is needed is an innovative approach to a light automatic weapon, one that can be manufactured in existing factories. We need a gun every man can keep with him in his home so that when the alarm goes out he can take it from beneath the bed and stand ready to defend his homeland.”
“Sure,” Danny nodded. “Like the Bren and Sten guns and the MA31 submachine gun.”
“Yes, but how did you know?”
“Hey, I was in the army, remember? I got some training with the MA31—we called it the grease gun because that’s what it looked like. It was really cruddy—cast and stamped out with a minimum of machined parts. It worked, though. I think they got the inspiration from the Sten.”
“That’s what I always thought,” Herschel replied. “You see, Danny, we are almost like brothers. We share the same thoughts and have the same interests.”
Danny did not reply for a moment, and then he said, “All this talk about sneaking around, smuggling guns, and prison. I guess we really would be breaking the law?”
Herschel had been waiting for this last hurdle. “Danny, technically we are breaking the law. Morally I think we are justified, but you know the arguments for Zionism as well as I. You will never be asked to do your country harm. You must decide if it is worth the risk.”
Danny thought about his options, joining the machinists’ union and shuffling papers for his big siser. He shook hands with Herschel and said, “Okay, I’ll get started on our warehousing problem.”
Within two weeks Danny had a clear picture of their storage needs. He telephoned Benny Talkin. As a kid Danny had suffered a case of hero worship for the popular, brawny young gang leader. Benny had always been cordial to Danny, but the great difference in their ages kept them from making friends. During his teens, Danny hoped that his sister and Danny would resume their romance so he might someday work for the trucking king with his glamorous rumored connections to the mob.
Danny spent an hour with Benny in his warehouse office on the Manhattan side of the Hudson, exchanging reminiscences about growing up in the old neighborhood, about Danny’s military experience, about how prosperous Benny was looking. They even talked about Becky.
“Lucky girl,” Benny observed. “Marrying Carl Pickman put her right up on top.”
Sort of like marrying Stefano De Fazio’s daughter, Danny thought, but all he said was, “I guess she’s made her own luck.”
Benny’s smile was blinding. “I can go along with that. Now what can I do for you, Danny boy?” He shot his cuffs, planted his elbows on his desk and rested his jaw on his clasped hands. “If I’m in luck you’re here for a job, because I could do with a sharp guy like you.”
Danny blushed and tried not to stare at Benny’s cuff links. They were glittering gold and the size of buffalo nickels. “I’m not here for a job, but thanks anyway. I’m here to talk business. Have you been following the action in Palestine?”
“Who hasn’t? The news is full of it.”
“Here’s the story, Benny. I’m working for Zionists, but I don’t want to go into detail. We need a warehouse. It’s got to be the kind of place where people have learned not to be too nosey. It’s got to have concrete floors and a loading dock (Strong enough to support heavy machinery. It’s got to have good access to the piers—”
“You’re talking to me, kid, but you’re not saying much.”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Something shady for sure. Look, Danny, when it comes to Palestine, I’ve done my part and I’ll do more if I can. A few months ago I got a call from a guy who’s working with Ben Hecht, the big Hollywood writer. He’s fund-raising for the lrgun, and me and a lot of my associates anted up. Everything those lrgun guys can dish out to the British they deserve. I say we’ve negotiated long enough. Negotiate is just another word for begging. The Jews have begged enough. Those poor saps in Germany probably begged all the way into the gas chambers, and what did it get them?”
He shook his head. “That’s how I feel and I don’t mind saying so, but I still want you to level with me about what you and your friends are planning to do with the warehouse. I’ve got to know what I’m getting myself—which means Stefano—involved in.”
Danny leveled with him. When he was done Benny said, “Renting you warehouse space would be just the beginning of it. Stefano owns the docks, and that means you’re going to need us to get this stuff of yours out of the country.”
Danny tried Herschel’s argument. “Nothing we’ve bought so far is technically against the law.”
Benny scoffed. “Take it from me, there’s plenty of guys in jail on technicalities. You on the War Assets Administration’s mailing lists?”
Danny nodded. “We have people going to all the auctions—”
Benny’s smile turned hard. “Tell me, kid, you think the Feds aren’t there as well, watching to see who buys what and for how much? Sooner or later you guys are going to get a nice visit from the FBI.” He shook his head. “What I told you before about being contacted by some Hollywood guys to contribute to the lrgun—well, maybe those movie moguls have been watching their own gangster pictures too long. Maybe they expected us to ship our old tommy guns over there or something. Now, that’s been done on a small scale, but maybe I looked into the profitability of a privately arranged large-scale arms shipment to Palestine. You know, make a few bucks and help our people out at the same time.”
“What happened?” Danny smiled at the thought of how Herschel would drool over such a bonanza.
“That kind of deal, there’s no way to do it without spreading the bribes all the way to the top. There are just too many officials involved. Anyway, I put some feelers out to a contact in Navy Intelligence—we did them some favors during the war—and the word came back. No way. No one would touch a bribe for that; the official word is that our country is neutral.”
“Which means screw the Jews,” Danny remarked, “just like always.”
“Truman wants to keep things nice and cozy with England while they try and put Europe back together. My contact in Navy Intelligence said that when the limeys finally pull out”—Benny pointed his finger—“and that’s when, not if—Truman is going to slap an arms embargo on the Middle East.”
“Yeah, that’s neutral all right,” Danny growled, “except that the Arabs already have guns.”
“And ve vas only neutral too.” Benny mocked. “Ve only pu
t dem in der gas chambers, ve didn’t tell dem to breathe.” He looked at Danny as he made up his mind. “Sorry, kid. It’s too risky.”
Danny imagined how it would be to tell Herschel he’d failed. “Listen, Benny. The machinery I told you about is a lot less obvious than tommy guns. Your plan called for officials to pretend they didn’t see weapons. All we need is for them not to look too hard. We’ve got plenty of perfectly legal stuff for camouflage.”
“I still think that as soon as the Feds suspect you intend to ship your stuff to Palestine they’ll be all over you.”
“Then I won’t let them find out. Now, you want to talk business or no?”
Danny called Herschel from a pay telephone around the corner from Benny’s office. “We’ve got ourselves a warehouse in the Bronx.”
“How much?”
“It’s perfect for us. It’s got everything we need.”
“How much?”
“Five thousand.”
“Oy! Danny, go back and see if we can lease instead of buy—”
Danny closed his eyes. “That is to lease.”
“Impossible! You told me this so-called friend of yours was a Jew.”
“Look.” Danny struggled to control his temper. “This isn’t Palestine and the Jews here aren’t Socialists—not the ones we need to do business with at least. Here people want to make a profit when they do business, and that means we have to pay them to take this big a risk. It’s only fair, and besides, if we hurt feelings and make enemies, somebody will inform on us and we’ll be washed up before we even get started. In this particular case I believe my friend is in a position to do a lot more for us than just lease us a warehouse. Maybe some of that five thousand is going for that, okay?”
Herschel sighed; in the past two weeks Danny had come to be amazed at just how eloquent the Palestinian’s exhalations could be.
“I think Leo knew what he was saying when he told me that I needed you. Thanks.”
“Hey, somebody’s got to look out for a greenhorn like you,” Danny replied. When they hung up his heart was racing. Somebody needed him. It was weird, wonderful, and it made him feel ten feet tall.
Chapter 54
As the months passed and Herschel and Danny’s working relationship deepened, the Palestinian’s respect and admiration for his assistant increased. The two seemed to compensate for each other’s shortcomings. When Herschel lost his temper over some petty mishap, Danny was quick to calm him down and restore his perspective. When Danny’s pessimism flared and he began complaining that something couldn’t be done, Herschel’s enthusiasm restored the younger man’s spirit.
It was strange to feel so close to the boy and yet know so little about him, but the less they knew about any of their associates the better. Herschel had even encouraged Danny to use phony identification when he attended the war surplus auctions, open only to U.S. citizens.
The majority of their purchases were from private dealers. If the seller was Jewish, an Institute phone call would smooth the way for Herschel and his assistant buyers. Meanwhile, his staff of student researchers continued to compile the technical information to manufacture munitions.
As their warehouse filled up Danny turned his attention to smuggling. A great deal of what they were shipping was innocuous and could go out as agricultural or textile machinery. This would not do, however, for the more specialized items. There was no way to make a cartridge-loading machine look like a lathe. A method of camouflage had to be devised.
They came up with two ideas. The first was Danny’s and stemmed from his childhood. He explained to Herschel about his youthful passion for assembling model airplanes. They went and bought a kit. Each numbered part, considered by itself, could have been a component of anything at all, and the kit came with an exploded schematic diagram as well as step-by-step instructions for its assembly.
The Institute supplied them with more student volunteers, who began the laborious process of dismantling the machinery and code-numbering the parts. Others looked over their shoulders and compiled instructions for reassembling it, after which they randomly scattered the pieces into harmless-looking crates.
The second idea was Herschel’s. It was to use a technique perfected by Ehud Avriel, owner of a machine shop in Warsaw. Over the last decade Avriel had shipped thousands of weapons to kibbutzim by stripping down tractors, filling them with contraband, and then welding the bodies back together. In the same manner Herschel and Danny bought boilers, transformers and other large industrial machines that could be hollowed out and filled with contraband.
Their Institute connections came up with sympathetic export companies to furnish them their licenses, and Danny cajoled Benny Talkin into supplying his trucks and his father-in-law’s influence to move the cargo through the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the Port of New York.
Neither system would have been sufficient on its own, but together the two served to transport tons of clandestine cargo into Palestine.
* * *
In June the Anglo-American Committee, formed at President Truman’s suggestion to resolve the deadlock on immigration between the British government and the Jews, issued its report. On one hand it called for the repeal of all immigration restrictions to Palestine; on the other it called for the immediate dissolution of all private armies; in other words, Haganah and the lrgun. The British government rejected the committee’s findings and announced its intention to use Palestine as a military base.
The “private armies” responded by blowing up bridges and railroad tracks, by raiding British arms caches, by doing everything in their power to obstruct the British in Palestine. The British struck back with massive sweeps, carting off thousands of Jews to detention camps.
In July Herschel’s contacts warned him to prepare for trouble. On July twenty-second Irgun forces blew up Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, the social center for the British. More than ninety people were killed and the explosion razed the hotel.
Moderate Jews all over the world denounced the attack. Ben-Gurion, safely in Paris, specifically denounced the lrgun as the enemy of the Jewish people, although the lrgun had executed the attack with Haganah’s approval. Now Begin’s force was ordered to bear the blame; it was hoped that the British could then find their way to a politically acceptable compromise with Haganah.
Instead the British invaded. An additional twenty thousand troops joined the established ten thousand. A white paper was released; it detailed Haganah’s involvement in terrorism. A curfew for Jews was instituted; violators were to be shot on sight. When lrgun prisoners were flogged, British officers were kidnapped and whipped. In America Jews began to boycott British businesses, and in England Winston Churchill himself accused Bevin’s government of acting dishonorably.
The British government, stung by worldwide disapproval, announced the death penalty for terrorists. The lrgun attacks continued, the curfew was maintained and the British retreated into highly guarded security zones. They rarely traveled without large armed escorts. Palestine was their prison.
The increased violence worked against Herschel and Danny in two ways. First, the bloodshed frightened off many of the more moderate members of Sonneborn’s Institute.
Second, the increased British activity in Palestine caused the Haganah to modify its original plan. It had been thought the military supplies would be reassembled and put into operation at once in order to begin a stockpile of home-grown weaponry for the day the British left and the Jews would have to defend themselves against the Arabs.
That was now too risky. The British had increased their anti-terrorist activities, which meant there was an increased risk of the machinery being discovered and confiscated. Accordingly, Zionist leadership’s attention turned to its operatives in Europe, who had been concentrating on ready-made arms, reasoning that a cache was easier to hide than a factory.
Herschel Kol found himself feeling unaccountably slighted and jealous now that his sphere of operations had been nudged out of the limelight.
He, Danny and many others had been working to give Palestine an arms industry. Now they would not know if they had succeeded until the British were gone, which meant that there would be no time to get the machinery unpacked, assembled and running before the Arabs were upon them.
As far as Herschel was concerned, that just made his own pet project—an easily and cheaply manufactured submachine gun—all the more important.
As soon as he decided he could delegate authority to Danny, Herschel turned his attention to his gun. In February an Institute contact informed Herschel that he’d found the man for the job.
Wilbur Burns was a sixty-five-year-old semi-retired gunsmith who lived with his wife in Providence, Rhode Island. In his youth Burns worked for a local company on light machine guns.
The go-between, a Rhode Island businessman who had been in the arms business during the war, intimated to Burns that he would be interested in sponsoring an effort to design a new kind of submachine gun. Burns, who’d come to think his gunmaking days were over, leaped at the opportunity. A few days later Herschel took the train to Providence to meet him.
Burns met Herschel’s train and drove him in his battered, rusting Ford to his two-family clapboard house on a modest side street.
Herschel concentrated on his host’s personality and character. This was New England, and Burns, with his pale blue eyes, long, thin face and grey crew-cut, with his flannel shirt and corncob pipe, was a WASP. Herschel wondered whether the man would be so friendly when he found out what the gun was for. Herschel would have to tell Burns everything. He wanted the gunsmith to design not only the weapon, but the machines that would be needed to manufacture it. For that Burns would have to take into account the workplace.
Mrs. Burns was a stout, cheery woman with grey hair tinted blue and horn-rimmed eyeglasses studded with rhinestones. She made tea, set out cookies and retired to the parlor so the two men could talk business over her oilcloth-covered kitchen table.
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