At second glance, he knew who it was. As a message, they’d cut out his tongue.
Brand didn’t stick around to find it.
8
With the dry season came the heat, and the khamsin, whipping in from across the desert, topping the walls, chasing through the alleys of the four quarters, sending whirlwinds skirling down the lanes of the suburbs. The sky was gray and freighted with dust, the cypresses rustling in advance of a storm that built all day, promising relief, yet never arrived. At night the air was suffocating, and it was impossible to sleep. In his skivvies Brand sat at his window, smoking black market Gitanes, looking down on the huddled domes of the Old City. The cuckoo sent up its two-toned call like a broken clock.
Asher was in hiding, probably in Tel Aviv, pulling strings like Begin. Victor was their contact now, Gideon their commander. The killing of Lipschitz was official, a necessary security measure, a proclamation as blatant as the memorial handbills pasted about town, a plain black border containing his alias, at once a tribute and a warning. The Post identified him as Yaakov Ben Mazar, a watchmaker’s apprentice and lifelong member of Congregation B’nai Avraham of Zikhron Moshe. He would always be Lipschitz, squinting behind his glasses.
Eva tried to defend the murder to Brand, as if he were an innocent. She didn’t like it either, especially the execution, but they couldn’t take the chance. Lipschitz had cracked and given up Asher, compromising all of them.
She knew that for a fact?
They knew it, and she believed them. They had people inside the CID.
What if they were wrong? Brand asked.
If they were wrong, they’d be forgiven.
So killing was no longer a sin?
Not in the cause of freedom. He was being impossible. He wanted a revolution without bloodshed.
No, he wanted a revolution that was just.
Just. What did they do with informers in Latvia? In the camps?
Brand was unconvinced. Lipschitz visited him nightly, begging him to plead his case. Jossi, it wasn’t me. To his eternal shame, Brand hedged, condemning him. That wasn’t what happened, the conscious Brand argued, but as the days passed, he grew to understand he’d betrayed him by his silence, as he’d betrayed Koppelman and Katya and everyone he loved. He had the selfish habit of saving his own life.
He needed to rely on it now. As Lipschitz’s go-between, he was suspect. At the garage, while Pincus was chatty as ever, Scheib was quiet, and Brand wondered how much they knew. Victor didn’t have a role for him in their next operation, which didn’t make sense. He was the only one with a car. Following protocol, while the rest of the cell met at the high school, Brand waited outside in the Peugeot. On the drive home, Fein and Yellin sat in back. Though he hadn’t seen them in weeks, they had nothing to say. No one spoke of Lipschitz, as if he’d never been their friend.
“Of course no one knows what to say,” Eva said. “We’re in shock.”
She didn’t tell him what the job was. He understood. Because she was with him, she was suspect. If anything went wrong, she’d take the blame. From the minute he recognized Lipschitz beneath his disguise, that was exactly what Brand was afraid of. There was no one he could appeal to, no way to explain. So the murder had worked. From then on, they all kept their mouths shut.
He thought the operation might take place on Lag B’Omer and involve a fire around sundown, in accordance with the story. There were oil refineries and pipelines everywhere, stores of kerosene. The British had the same idea, and tightened security as the day neared. At five they called curfew and closed the gates of the Old City, prompting a riot among the younger Hasidim they countered with mounted police. The post office that burned in Mahane Yehuda was the spontaneous act of a mob, though the next day the Post gleefully pointed out the symbolism.
The train station. The YMCA. It was impossible not to speculate. His passengers parroted the same rumors that had been circulating for months.
The British held off sentencing the Sarafand prisoners, afraid it might trigger riots. The khamsin was blowing, and the whole country was restless. In Jaffa and Tel Aviv the telephone workers went on strike, Jews and Arabs both. No one blamed them. During the war prices had skyrocketed while wages stayed the same. The civil servants walked out in sympathy, followed by the railway workers and longshoremen. When the shipping lines tried to bring in strikebreakers, there were bloody skirmishes on the docks.
Brand’s American fares worried about the communists’ influence.
“People just want to eat,” Jossi reassured them.
Monday he was back driving Eva to the King David, imagining the man balling his socks and shutting the closet door. Their affair had gone on too long for simple blackmail. She had to be gathering information on the Secretariat, maybe on the floor plan, which offices belonged to what branch of the Mandate. The elevator was a natural place for an assassination. He could walk right in as if he were looking for her, press the button and watch the arrow slowly sweep through the numbers, though the lobby was probably seeded with plainclothesmen. Once in the elevator, he’d choose the preordained floor, then draw his gun, aiming for the center of the doors at chest level—or eye level, since the high commissioner was tall. Neither of them would survive, but there would be that exhilarating descent, knowing he’d struck a blow for his people. The next day his name would be on light poles and kiosks up and down the Jaffa Road.
Daydreaming Brand, waiting for her, as always. She was late. He tried not to let it bother him. He pretended to read the paper, watching the front doors and the drive behind him in the mirror. He hadn’t seen the Daimler since the museum, but kept an eye on the new arrivals. He wondered if the heiress was with Asher in Tel Aviv, the two of them shacked up in a seaside tourist court like Bonnie and Clyde. He wondered if she knew about Lipschitz and his tongue.
When Eva finally came out, she was with Edouard from the Kilimanjaro, laughing at some joke, a hand on his arm. To Brand it seemed dangerous, the two of them meeting in public. Even off-duty, in the midday sun, Edouard wore a morning coat. She kissed him on both cheeks and he set off down the drive toward the guardhouse.
“Does he want a ride?” Brand asked.
“He’s not going that far.”
She was struggling with the catch of the pendant, her head bent, her chin tucked to her chest. He wanted to ask what they were laughing about—how could she after having just been with her Englishman?—but knew it would end badly. With a professional patience, he waited for an explanation.
“Really, don’t be jealous. He was just having his hair cut.”
“Here?”
“They’re very good, but very expensive. It’s impossible to get an appointment. Not for Edouard, of course. He knows everyone. I wish you liked him more.”
“I like him enough, I just don’t know him very well.”
“He’s a darling, that’s all you need to know about him.”
They left the hotel grounds and turned up the broad boulevard of Julian’s Way, crossing Abraham Lincoln Street. Again, like a teacher, he waited.
“We had a drink, just one. I think I’ve earned one drink.”
“You have.” That explained the laughter, and the glibness. He doubted it was just one.
She had a double brandy at her flat, and poured herself another before he said he had to get back.
“Stay with me,” she said. “Take the day off.”
“I wish I could.”
“I hate when you’re like this.”
“Like what?”
“Mad at me. Do you want me to tell you what it is? Is that what you want?”
“No.”
“It’s where they fix the trains.” The railyards in Lydda. His first thought was that it was too far, they had to pass too many checkpoints.
“I said I didn’t want to know.”
“I told them you should drive. They said they already had someone.”
“Stop it.”
“It’s not my fault. You’re the one who want
ed me to tell them.”
It was true. He’d put her in the same position Lipschitz had put him. “I know it isn’t.”
“Then why do you make me feel like it is?”
“If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I didn’t know.”
“What did you think was going to happen?”
“I didn’t think they’d kill him.”
“That’s your problem—you don’t think. You shouldn’t have given your friend those notes.”
“Pincus.”
“It’s not his fault,” she said. “He was just doing what he’s supposed to.”
Pincus, Greta. He wondered when the call from Lipschitz had come in. They’d given the killer the address and a head start. That was why there were no booby-traps. Lipschitz thought it was him at the door.
“He trusted me.”
“It would have happened anyway,” Eva said. “Now you have people worrying about you.”
“And you.”
“And me. So stop wallowing and start thinking. You don’t want people worrying about you.”
He agreed, he needed to be smarter. Then why, he wondered afterward, did she tell him about the job? He suspected it was a test. At the garage he played dumb, palling around with Pincus and Scheib as if nothing had happened. As he drove, he planned the operation like a tactician. A night raid on the repair sheds, their faces blackened with greasepaint. Unlike the tracks, the engines were irreplaceable, new diesels shipped from England. Every evening she was unavailable, he waited for the radio to confirm it, and then, one morning the week after Shavuot, as he was delivering a Lebanese couple to the Pool of Bethesda, the Voice of Fighting Zion celebrated another glorious victory at Lydda Junction. Freedom fighters had blown up a locomotive and burned a dozen coaches belonging to the occupation. The announcer said nothing about the roundhouse or the fuel depot, nothing about the repair sheds themselves. Brand expected more damage.
“It was a mess,” Eva said. “Two of the charges didn’t go off, and one barely did anything. We needed you and Asher.”
And Lipschitz, he thought.
He couldn’t ask who else had gone along, and listened to find out. Fein, Yellin, Victor—all that was left of the cell. The driver’s name was Thierry. Another Frenchman. Again, Brand wondered if her drink with Edouard had been a coincidence.
“Victor had us pull back when the charges didn’t go off. Asher would have stayed and fixed them.”
“Asher’s would have gone off.” So, no Gideon. Why was he surprised?
“I wish you’d have been there.”
“Me too.”
He thought he shouldn’t be so pleased the action was a failure. Though it proved nothing, he counted their misfortune toward his case for reinstatement. Asher had chosen him for the substation and praised him after the train. What had changed?
The Lydda raid prompted the usual curfews and searches, leading to the usual random arrests. Despite the radio’s claims, it meant little strategically, except that the revolution had become a war of gestures. The British were through being humiliated. A few days later, a military court found the Sarafand prisoners guilty and sentenced them to death. The women received ten years each. In retaliation, a gunman in the back of a speeding cab sprayed a group of soldiers patrolling Julian’s Way, killing two. Brand cursed the news, knowing it would make things harder for him.
That night, minutes after he’d come back from the Alaska, Mrs. Ohanesian’s phone rang. It was Fein, earning Brand the fisheye.
“This is Mr. Grossman. My train comes in at eight fifteen and I need a ride.”
“Certainly, sir.”
There was no eight fifteen, and no Grossman, only Fein himself waiting at the station, dressed in black, as if for a funeral, carrying a familiar valise. He kept it balanced across his knees in the backseat.
“Where are we going?” Brand asked.
Fein had him head north toward the city, then turn into the grid of Yemin Moshe, long, low stucco apartment blocks gliding by on both sides. The streetlights were out, and the moon cast shadows over the road. In the gray light, as the same buildings repeated, regular as barracks, it struck Brand that the neighborhood was laid out like the camps.
“Up here,” Fein said, pointing to a corner block. “Flash your lights.”
As they rolled to a stop, the front door of a villa opened and three figures scurried across the yard, hunched as if under fire. Fein shifted noisily to make room. Brand stretched for the passenger door and let in Gideon, dressed, like Fein, entirely in black. In back, Victor and Yellin wore the same uniform. Brand thought they could have told him.
The car was full. They weren’t taking Eva, and he understood the operation was yet another test. While he resented the implication, he was grateful for the chance to prove himself again. Wasn’t that all Lipschitz had wanted?
“We need to go east,” Gideon said.
This time of night, five men in a taxi would never get through a checkpoint. Brand avoided the Old City, detouring through the American Colony and out the Jericho Road. While they were busy evading patrols, the moon outraced them, hanging bright as a spotlight above the desert. In its pale glare, every shadow might be hiding a jeep. Beside him, in Gideon’s lap, a nickel-plated pistol glinted. Brand wished he had his. He couldn’t ask where they were going. He had half a tank of gas, and scourged himself for not filling up after work. It didn’t matter that they’d given him no warning. He was a soldier. From now on he needed to be prepared. As the Peugeot ate up the miles, no one spoke. He thought they should be monitoring the radio, but drove in silence, his eyes on the road, all the while figuring out his best play, as if he were their hostage.
They came down from Bethany into the Jordan Valley, dipping below sea level, the descent making his ears pop. It was Arab territory, the terraced hills dotted with whitewashed villages. He’d driven the road dozens of times, though never at night, for fear of bandits. The tourists had to see the tomb of Lazarus and the walls of Jericho and finally the River Jordan, wading its brackish shallows with their cuffs rolled up, filling vials to take home, as if the slimy water were a curative. Ahead on their right stood the Inn of the Good Samaritan, who’d helped the man fallen in with thieves. On the hilltop above it loomed the ruins of Qa’alat ed-Dum—the Castle of Blood, a trap for weary travelers and highwaymen alike.
“Take the old road,” Gideon said.
It would be harder on the car, plus they’d look suspicious, Brand wanted to protest, but slowed and eased the front wheels down over the lip of the pavement onto the rocky hardpan, the suspension juddering. The Romans had built the road, and no one had fixed it since. Ditches ran on both sides. He kept to the crown, deeply incised by the spring rains. Every so often the nose of the car dropped into a trough, pitching them forward. Gideon braced himself against the dash. In back Fein clutched the valise to his lap. Brand supposed that after the Lydda fiasco, Asher had packed the charges himself. Brand understood. You could trust others only so far.
He thought the target would be in Jericho, a local armory or provincial court, but they kept going, skirting the town limits, angling north along the border across the salt flats, following a road impassable any other season. Behind him Yellin coughed as if he’d swallowed something wrong. Victor thumped his back and Fein laughed.
“I’m all right,” Yellin said. “Stop.”
“Enough,” Gideon said.
There were no trains out here, no British installations, only the sluggish river on their right, the banks lined with thirsty willows and tamarisks. They weren’t far from the Franciscan chapel commemorating John’s baptism of Jesus, always good for a few pictures. Dead south of them, on the main road, the Allenby Bridge was modern, guarded by a manned blockhouse, the span marking the gateway to Trans-Jordan. Here, where the river was a trickle, there was only an ancient stone arch used by goatherds whose loyalties were tribal. In the morning they drove their goats into Palestine, and in the evening drove them back again without v
isa.
“Slow down,” Gideon said, checking his watch, confirming Brand’s guess.
The bridge might have had a troll living beneath it. Over the centuries, generations of masons had slapped mortar over the stones haphazardly, giving the walls the appearance of lumpy stucco. Brand clenched his jaw and was glad for the darkness. For this they risked their lives?
“Keep it running,” Gideon said, getting out.
The rest followed, leaving their doors open to the cool night air.
Brand dimmed his lights. The engine chugged, the low idle providing cover for anyone who might be sneaking up on him. It was just nerves. They were alone out here—no patrols, no bandits lurking in the shadows, nothing but hoofprints and dung, the sewer-like stink of the river. By electric torchlight, Fein set the valise on the ground and divvied up the charges. Gideon and Victor crossed to the east bank. Fein and Yellin ducked under the near side. For a moment Brand couldn’t see any of them, and then Gideon and Victor came loping back over the bridge, their faces floating ghostly in the darkness. Fein and Yellin returned and took their places again, Fein resting the valise on his knees.
“Everything good?” Gideon asked.
“Everything’s good,” Fein said.
“Okay,” Gideon told Brand, and he hit the lights and started off.
It was faster coming back. Now that he knew the road, he could push the car harder. A moth thumped the windshield, leaving a powdery smudge.
“We’ve got lots of time,” Gideon said, and Brand slowed. We. Had he passed the test? But he’d done nothing.
Against instinct, he held back, rocking along, anticipating the blast in his rearview mirror. The British would call curfew and throw up roadblocks. He’d have to drop everyone in the desert and take his chances. Maybe the test was just being there, one of them again. He didn’t have to be a hero. He was a driver. He drove.
They went on across the salt plain, retracing their own tracks, sneaking past sleepy Jericho. Asher must have used a timer. As with the substation, Brand never heard the charges go off. Sooner than expected they reached the main road and turned for Jerusalem, cruising over the smooth asphalt, racing the moon. For miles the highway was empty, the first set of headlights a shock, as if they’d been caught—a semi headed for the potash works. Beside him, Gideon slipped his gun into his pocket.
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