by Alan Gold
Judita drew upon the steely determination she’d shown in all the other tests she’d been given. She bit the inside of her lip, and felt the rifle in her hands, cold and indifferent. She adjusted the telescopic sight until both of her parents were clear and sharp. Then she aligned the cross-hairs until her father’s chest was filling the entire circle, the intersection of the black lines crossing his heart.
She paused. Thoughts of her siblings, of their life without the income of a father, came to her and almost without physical intention her gun sight shifted so that it was in place over the heart of her mother.
Was living with violence better than dying of starvation? Was this the choice Anastasia was asking her to make? Was this the purpose of the test? No doubt Anastasia knew about her father, his violence, his drunkenness. No doubt her handlers might even know more about Judita’s childhood than even she remembered. This was a test, but what was it testing and what was the answer?
Judita steadied herself again but the cross-hair drifted – from the heart of her mother to the heart of her father and back again. The order was clear but the choice was not.
By reflex Judita found herself saying a short Jewish prayer. Something she had not recalled in what felt like a long time, but something imprinted onto her soul. She drew in a breath, holding it as she was taught, feeling her heart’s pulse in her temple.
She remembered hiding under the table, she remembered her childhood fear, her mother’s cries, the bruises on her face . . .
The cross-hair centred and held firm over her father’s sunken chest and she squeezed the trigger.
But there was no sound. No percussive pop, no kick in her shoulder from the recoil; only a dull metallic click. Through the viewfinder her father, still sitting there, talked animatedly at her mother’s bowed head. She pulled the trigger again, but still the dull click. Suddenly she felt the presence of a woman, warmth and perfume enveloping her. Anastasia reached down and took the rifle from her hand.
‘Come, Judita. No more tests. You’ve passed. And I’m so very sorry to have had to put you though this. Your loyalty is unquestionable. It’s time to go, my little dove . . .’
Inside the car, threading back through the Moscow streets, Anastasia and Judita sat in silence until finally Judita could bear it no longer.
‘Don’t you want to know who I chose?’
Anastasia turned to her, and put her gloved hand on hers. ‘I trust you made the choice that was right for you.’
It was at that moment that Judita knew she was capable of anything.
Passenger ship Agon,
Palestine, January 1945
Judita Ludmilla Magidovich looked at the distant shoreline of the city of Haifa, a hillside dotted with lights and a dockside ablaze with illumination. She stood amid 160 other men, women and children, many of them elderly and horribly emaciated after their lives in Nazi Europe. And now most of them were also rendered seasick during their journey from Trieste, through the Adriatic, into the Mediterranean and finally to the shores of Palestine. Judita watched with a focused eye so different from her fellow travellers as their ship was dwarfed by a British battle cruiser escorting them through the waters.
The British warship had sailed out of Haifa after a telegraph from Cyprus warning the authorities of the illegal refugee ship headed their way. The battle cruiser met the small Greek passenger liner some fifty nautical miles off the coast of Palestine and had transmitted a radio warning to the Greek captain that they would board and arrest him and his crew, and confiscate his ship, unless he put himself under British orders and sailed with them into the port.
He had no alternative. There were numerous examples preceding him of ships trying to smuggle Jews from the desolation of Europe into Palestine being boarded and impounded. He had been well paid by rich Jews from England and France, knew the risks and had taken them anyway. But he would not risk lives and so he shrugged his apologies to the passengers, and followed the directive.
The ship docked at the port and without delay the refugees were pushed and shoved down the gangplank onto the dock. They were a ragged group. Wearing old clothes that they hadn’t changed in weeks; exhausted, lice-infested, many of them emaciated from hunger, children limp in the arms of mothers, and sons supporting their elderly parents, most barely able to stand. They stood in the boiling sun under the dispassionate gaze of the British soldiers, waiting for the arrival of the commanding officer.
Many of the women were sobbing, their hopes and prayers of freedom from the Nazi terror of Europe, and now the hopeless aftermath of starvation and confusion, suddenly dashed by British soldiers. Several had fainted, and others had gone to their aid. When they moved, the British soldiers shouted harsh warnings for them to remain still. But these men and women were used to Nazi soldiers, and despite the raised rifles the British were no Nazis. So the passengers ignored the orders, knelt down, and gave comfort and water to the weakest of their own.
Eventually, the army commander, a self-important diminutive man called Lieutenant Colonel Pickford, roared up to the dock in a roofless military car. He stood up in the well of the passenger side, and turned to address the group. There was a babel of languages among the refugees but English was rare. To the predominantly German, Hungarian or Russian speakers, his words were gibberish. Judita, however, understood every word. And in that moment she was torn. Her training told her to remain quiet, unnoticed, unremarkable. To blend in and be nondescript. But her time on the boat with these desperate people compelled her to speak and calm their rising fear and panic. She began to whisper a translation into German for those standing closest her. Then into Hungarian, then Russian.
‘He’s saying that we’re illegal immigrants who have violated international laws by travelling to British mandate Palestinian waters without approval. Because we’re illegal, we’ll be taken to an internment camp and processed. From there we may be sent to another country in the Mediterranean, or else sent back to where we came from.’
The men and women standing around her looked at Judita in horror. But she continued with her translation, as Colonel Pickford, bellowing through a megaphone, continued to shout at the refugees.
‘Men and women will be separated and sent to different camps for processing. Children will accompany their mothers. This will happen immediately. This is a naval dockside and needed by the British navy for the war effort . . .’
As she finished the translation a dozen armed British soldiers walked towards the huddle of refugees, their rifles pointing at them from waist height, and began barking further orders. Judita lowered her gaze and shrank into the crowd, hoping she didn’t stand out. She had been carefully prepared for the journey, her NKVD handlers believing the best way to make connection with the Jewish rebel groups would be to arrive as a refugee with a clear backstory validated by fellow passengers. And yet for all her carefully rehearsed story, Judita could not physically hide the fact that she had not suffered through the horrors of Nazi Europe: she was healthy, her skin not drained of colour like all of the other people on board. Conscious of this, she pulled her scarf tighter around her head and shoulders.
From either translation or inference, the refugees now largely understood what they had to do and most of the men and women began to separate. They picked up their battered suitcases or bundles of possessions tied together in tablecloths or sheets, and followed a soldier away from the dock, forming long lines. Some women, however, screamed in their native language that they wouldn’t leave their husbands, and when this happened the Tommies moved in and forcibly separated them with the barrel of their rifles. The refugees were then marched to waiting trucks, where they were loaded in to be driven inland to a camp that had been created months earlier to deal with the increasing numbers of illegal Jewish immigrants arriving in Palestine.
As the people climbed on to the trucks, Judita moved from where she’d been standing outside of the group, translating the colonel’s instructions, and fell into line at the end of the que
ue of women. In front of Judita, an elderly woman was panicked in confusion and slumped to her knees. Judita knelt beside her and asked her where she was from, first in Russian and when that received only blank looks, she tried German and then Czech. The final language flared recognition in the old woman’s eyes and she clung to Judita’s arm as she was helped to her feet. Czech refugees were rare on this boat and the woman was travelling alone.
Focused as she was on the elderly woman, Judita did not see Colonel Pickford stop and watch her as he surveyed the lines of people. The old woman was quickly moved on by a solider and Judita hunched her shoulders and retreated further into her scarf to blend back in.
Suddenly the officer’s clipped British voice called her out. ‘You! Girl. Come here.’
She turned, and saw Colonel Pickford, standing next his car, pointing at her. ‘Come here.’ When she delayed, he shouted out, ‘Immediately, when I give an order!’
Judita walked over to where the colonel was standing. She wanted to stare him in the face, not to flinch or show any sort of deference. But she knew better, knew her mission was too important, so she lowered her eyes as it flashed in her mind that the officer was the same height as Beria. And that didn’t seem to be the only similarity.
‘What’s your name, girl?’
Judita told him. He then asked more questions about her origin and she told him her story, a story she’d learned by heart in her training in Moscow.
‘So, you come from Ruskie Land, do you? And how did you get here?’
She explained that she had managed to escape from Leningrad during the Nazi siege, crossed the border into Finland and had hidden in the woods. She’d made her way into Norway, where she’d been looked after by a family of evangelical Lutherans; then she had been given money for passage to Trieste in Italy, now that the Fascists had been defeated. Wanting to emigrate to Palestine, here she was. It seemed an extraordinary story and yet was entirely consistent with any that the people getting onto the British army trucks could tell.
‘And you speak a number of languages?’ said the colonel.
Judita was angry with herself, knowing that because she’d helped out the old woman it had made her stand out, and the officer must have heard her speaking in Russian, German and Czech.
‘All these damn refugees from everywhere but Timbuktu! I need a girl like you in my office.’
With that he turned to his sergeant, and said officiously, ‘See that this girl is fed and washed, and then bring her to my quarters.’
The sergeant saluted, and barked, ‘Yes, sir.’
Colonel Pickford got back into his car, and his driver roared away, leaving the sergeant, Judita and some soldiers on the dock. Everybody else had been taken away. The sergeant escorted Judita to a small truck. She remained silent, eyes downcast, yet her mind raced through scenarios of what might lie ahead.
As they were walking, much to her surprise, the solider said to her softly, ‘Listen, love. I got nothing against you Yids. Okay. But – ’ The solider stopped, cutting himself off mid-sentence, and looked around before continuing. ‘Look . . . Just do what he fuckin’ says, alright? And then he’ll leave you alone and you can go back to your people. Like it never happened.’
Judita imagined the confusion such an instruction might have had on any other young girl fresh off the ship. But she understood perfectly what he was saying. Though she did wonder if this solider had tried to warn or even help others. She considered staying silent but instead, seizing the small chance to understand her enemy better, said, ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘What?’ The soldier was genuinely surprised by the question. But Judita wanted to probe the nervous young man.
‘He’s your commander, so why do you tell me this? Aren’t you loyal to him?’
‘I don’t know. It just ain’t right. This army’s a fuckin’ joke. Just an old boys’ club. Them fuckin’ officers do what they like and we take the bullets and run their errands.’ The soldier looked Judita in the eye for the first time. ‘I got a girl back home. We’re gettin’ engaged when this palaver’s over. It ain’t right what he does to the refugees. They’re just kids. He shouldn’t do it, that’s all. I just wanted to warn ya. Just do what he says and then forget about it . . .’
‘I understand. And thank you. Your girl in England. She’s lucky to have a man like you.’
An hour later, washed and fed, Judita was shown to the top floor of the officers’ quarters. The sergeant knocked on the door, and nodded to the colonel. He smiled at Judita, pleased that she’d scrubbed up so nicely. She was, indeed, very pretty. One of the perks of the job, he had convinced himself, especially when he’d been stuck in this disgusting, stinking hell hole of a baking country when he should have been commanding a force of men, beating the living daylights out of the Krauts, or tending his roses back in Wimbledon.
Judita entered his quarters. They were sparsely furnished, no pictures on the walls, nor photographs on the credenza. It was the archetype of a bachelor’s apartment, cold, austere and friendless. The colonel barely invited her in. He hardly said a word to her or acknowledged her presence. Instead, he acted like a medieval warlord, nodding at her to take a seat on the distressed lounge, the bottom sagging close to the floor, the cushions looking dusty and unkempt.
He came over and sat next to her. This was no seduction, no smiling gentleman plying her with drinks or soothing her nerves with soft lilting words. To Judita it even felt very far removed from the drunken diplomat in the Moscow bar all those months ago.
He put his arm around her shoulder, and pulled her into him. ‘You know why you’re here, don’t you, girl?’
Judita said nothing but held his gaze.
‘Play your cards right, and I can do a lot for you. If you’re a good girl and please me, I can arrange to have you set free and you can join your other Jew friends in Tel Aviv or wherever you want to go. But act like a little fool and things will go very poorly for you. Do you understand me? I have the power to send you back to wherever I choose; and if you don’t do as I say, you’ll be very very sorry.’
Judita’s mind was desperately working out what to do next. Her training in Moscow stood her in good stead because the one thing she didn’t do was panic.
‘Good. Now, get your clothes off, my little Jew, and go inside into the bedroom. I’ll be in there shortly. Lie on the bed; don’t get in it because I’ve just had clean sheets put on.’
She stood, and walked towards the bedroom. As she crossed the floor, her eyes urgently searched for something she could use to protect herself. She deliberately walked slowly so that in those brief moments, she took in the landscape of where she was. As she passed by a simple kitchenette, with little more than a sink, a cupboard and a gas ring with a kettle, she saw what she wanted.
She turned, and asked, ‘Sir, might I have a glass of water?’
He was reading a report, but looked up momentarily, nodded and went back to his reading.
She turned on the tap, and while the glass was filling, the sound of the running water masked what her hand was doing. She slipped a short and fairly blunt knife from the cutlery drawer and pushed it up into the sleeve of her dress. She was amazed that this nasty little British man could be so arrogant as to give her, a hostage to his power, free run of the place. It was madness, but to her advantage. How could he be so stupid? Had the others girls he had brought here been so weak willed, so broken, as to blithely capitulate? Was he so conceited as to think each would simply comply?
After Judita had finished drinking, she put the glass back in the sink, and went into the bedroom. She stood behind the door and waited for the colonel to think that she’d done as instructed.
Standing behind the door, she heard him walking across the floor. She saw the handle of the door turning. She waited for him to come through. He entered with his back to her, walking into the bedroom, looked for her on the bed, assuming she’d be naked, her legs open, waiting for him.
She was cert
ainly waiting.
Judita observed his posture and saw a man with no conception of being in any danger, a man accustomed to safety and power. The very opposite of the refugees who had trundled off the boats only hours earlier. If this was the British in Palestine, then they would surely lose in the fight ahead.
The colonel walked forward to the base of the bed, then looked around the room. Judita had been trained in many forms of armed and unarmed combat in Moscow. She had also been schooled in her limitations – she would never have size or strength to overcome a large man, but she would always have speed and she could manufacture surprise. Although she was diminutive, here and now she had speed, surprise and a knife.
She sprang forward, whipping her arm around the colonel’s chin, her hand over his mouth. With her other hand, she twisted his neck as viciously as she could, not enough to snap the spine but enough to jolt his balance and shock his mind into panic, his body into an agony of pain. Using the weight of her body, throwing herself onto his back, his head at a murderously twisted angle, he was unstable and fell headlong to the floor. Acting quickly, she retrieved the knife from her sleeve.
She grasped it, and stabbed it sharply, through the gap between the jacket and trousers of his uniform, underneath his ribcage, tearing apart his diaphragm, and sticking the sharp point of the otherwise dull knife into his heart. She’d chosen a dull blade with a sharp point because she wasn’t using it to cut, but to pierce. The accuracy with which she drove the blade up through his body overcame its lack of sharpness.
Hand still gripping his mouth tightly, she held his body firmly as she felt it twitch for a couple of moments, as though he was struggling before his heart stopped beating. Then he became a dead weight and to any observer he could have been asleep on the floor at her feet. She waited for three long minutes for his heart to completely stop beating before she stabbed him twice more. She sliced his carotid artery and then thrust the knife once again up through his chest into his now un-beating heart. In her training, she’d been taught to ensure that a victim was definitely dead, and never to assume that the first strike had killed him. And the reason she’d waited for the heart to be completely still was so that when she sliced the artery in his neck, it didn’t spurt blood over the walls and the floor, which a beating heart would have caused. But the little British bastard was well and truly dead. She dragged his heavy body across the floor, opened the wardrobe, and stuffed him inside, closing the door. Then she straightened the mat in front of the bed, and covered the small stain of his blood and urine with some of his clothing from the drawers to make it look like he was just a messy individual. Anybody walking in and casually looking for the colonel would see nothing out of place.