by Alan Gold
Abram was worried by the urgency of her voice. ‘I know. But there is something I must do.’
‘What could be so important you would risk death?’ asked Eli, his voice now softer, more kindly – the first genuine question he’d asked. But Abram realised that he’d said too much and took another sip of water.
‘His business is his own, Father. Perhaps he has a sacred quest he’s not allowed to tell us.’ Ruth’s voice rose in excitement.
Abram looked at her, and was worried that the strange and beautiful young woman was reading his mind. He looked at her and she gave him a wink. But the sweet moment was broken when Eli thundered, ‘I forbid it! You will not go. Now that you’ve eaten in my home, I will not have your blood on my hands. I forbid you to go anywhere near the city. Do you understand me? If the Romans catch you up there, and they surely will, they will put you to death without a second thought.’
Abram and Ruth remained silent.
‘Do you understand me?’ Eli said.
But still Ruth and Abram remained silent, simply lowering their eyes from his intense gaze.
Later, as Abram lay curled up on the floor in a corner of the room, he thought of Rabbi Shimon and touched the stone seal inside his shirt. The High Priest had tried to dissuade him and taken the stone from him, declaring that he should abandon his task. Abimelech and the followers of Jesus had scared him with their zeal and their desire to change who he was, telling him that his task was for nothing and what he did in this world did not matter. And now here in this house, he was being blocked again as Eli decried God himself and forbade him from entering the city. Abram felt as if he’d left his home in Peki’in and entered a world of madmen.
The youngster was confused and angry. He’d been brought up to trust the words of those men and women older than he was, to respect them. Yet now that he was older, and people were calling him a young man, he’d found that three people whom he should, by rights, have trusted, were acting against him and his mission.
But suddenly, he heard the shuffle of somebody moving in the pitch blackness of the sleeping household. He strained to hear what it could be, and nearly cried out when a blanket was dropped, unceremoniously, on top of his body.
Over him stood Ruth. But before he could say anything she crouched beside him and lowered her mouth almost to his ear, so close he could feel her moist breath on his cheek.
‘I can get you into Jerusalem,’ said the fiery young woman. ‘Trust me, it’s easy . . .’
Jerusalem, Palestine
7 May 1945
Although there were nearly twenty people in the room, there was a sudden silence, broken only by the static from the radio. The ceiling was blue with cigarette smoke, the table was groaning with bottles of wine and black beer, as well as piles of plates, knives and forks alongside the remnants of hastily eaten food. The young men and women, many red-eyed and exhausted from hours of duty, expeditions and danger, listened eagerly in case the clipped and very proper voice of the BBC announcer came back on. They and the rest of the world were waiting to hear what was happening in the red-brick schoolhouse that served as the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force in the champagne city of Reims in France.
All of the young Jewish men and women, fighters for the guerrilla force Lehi, had temporarily put down their rifles and side arms, their grenades and explosives, and gathered in the secret meeting room near to Ben Yehuda Street, in order to listen to the broadcast. Through a tinny radio speaker they would soon hear the announcement of the end of the Second World War. For the first time since the coming to power of Adolf Hitler in 1933, Deutschland would soon no longer be über alles, über alles in der Welt.
The BBC announcer was reading from hastily written notes, handed to him by his reporting staff who were on the telephone to their man in France observing the solemn proceedings. Hitler had killed himself a week earlier. His body, along with that of his new wife, Eva Braun, was burned to a cinder. Reichsmarshall Herman Göring decided to take control of the beleaguered nation, hoping that as the new Fuhrer, he’d be treated with respect by the British and the Americans; but he’d been peremptorily removed and replaced by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz.
It was left to the chief of staff of what remained of the German Armed Forces High Command, General Alfred Jodl, in France to sign the instrument of unconditional surrender and hand over power and the government of Germany to the representatives of England and America and the other allies. Soon, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel would sign a similar instrument in Berlin to the commander of the Soviet forces, General Georgi Zhukov. And then it would all be over. In Europe, at least, because Japan was too far away for the Jews of Palestine to worry about, and it was America’s and Australia’s problem, anyway.
Judit translated what the man from the BBC was saying. It had been four months since she had arrived by ship into Palestine and escaped from the internment camp. In that short time she had been readily absorbed into the fighting force of Lehi. She was highly valued for her ability with languages that in many ways united the linguistically disparate group.
As the radio voice excitedly reported what was happening, Judit translated the words of the announcer from English to Hebrew, and then quickly paraphrased into Russian and Polish. Many in the room loved to listen to the way she formulated the words, all with her deep and melodic Russian accent, using the idioms of their language that were music to their ears.
The overwrought announcer said breathlessly, ‘I’ve just been informed by my colleagues that . . . that . . . yes, General Jodl has just signed . . . and . . . yes, the instrument is being moved across the table to the British and American representatives . . . I’m informed that they’ve all now signed . . . General Jodl is standing and holding out his hand to shake the British and American generals’ . . . they’re refusing to touch his hand . . . they won’t shake . . . but now they’re turning to each other and . . . yes . . . they’re shaking each other’s hands . . . the Americans and the British . . . Jodl is looking downcast . . . they’re saying something to each other, but we can’t hear what they’re . . . now Jodl is being escorted out of the building . . . it’s over. The war in Europe is finished. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s over. It’s all over . . . grounds for celebration . . . count the dead in days to come . . . rebuild our future . . . His Majesty the King will greet the crowds gathering outside Buckingham Palace, even as I speak . . .’
People in the room suddenly began laughing, slapping backs, kissing, tousling one another’s hair, and drinking whatever alcoholic liquid was left in their glasses, shouting ‘Mazeltov’ at the tops of their voices.
Everybody was hugging and kissing and jumping in the air.
Almost everybody.
A diminutive man sat on a stool in the corner, looking at his young charges, wondering whether or not he should bring them down to earth now, or let them have their moment of happiness. Sitting beside him was another man, also short in stature, but with a face as hard as granite. Not even the news of Germany’s surrender could make him smile. The two men, Nathan Yellin-Mor, head of Lehi’s political wing, and Yitzhak Shamir, head of the organisation’s operational units, sat and watched the party. They looked at each other. Wordlessly, they knew what had to be done.
‘Chaverim v’chaverot,’ shouted Yellin-Mor, ‘brothers and sisters, calm down. Quiet. Brother Yitzhak Shamir has something to say.’
It was as though a cold blast of air had suddenly entered the room. All the exultant young men and women turned and looked at the two Lehi leaders, their faces impassive, their bodies relaxed. The reputation of these men was undeniable. Nathan Yellin-Mor had, just two years earlier, escaped from a British detention centre by digging an underground tunnel almost seventy-five metres long and taking nineteen men to freedom. Yitzhak Shamir may have been barely five feet tall but he enjoyed a fearsome legacy as a firebrand warrior within Lehi and the mind behind their strategic attacks, bombings and assassinations.
‘Mazeltov to us
all. The war with the Nazis is over. Good. Meantime, they’ve murdered millions of our people in their death factories. This will never be forgiven. This cannot be forgotten. One of the Jews’ enemies has been destroyed. Thanks to the sacrifice of the British and their recently engaged allies, the Americans, the greatest evil ever to befall the Jewish people, Adolf Hitler and his gang of thugs, has been destroyed. Excellent. Wonderful! But let us not lose sight of our goal, and that is to make Palestine into Israel so that whichever poor Jewish bastard remains alive in Europe after this Holocaust can find a place here, a home of safety and a sanctuary for the rest of his or her life. And that means that we have to persuade the British that their mission here is at an end, and that they have to pack up and go home.’
Shamir paused for effect and let the words sink in before continuing. ‘While ever they are here, in Palestine, ours is not free air to breathe. How can we create a Jewish State of Israel while there are British in command of our cities and our people? How can there ever be an Israel while we can be stopped in the street by a British Tommy who demands our papers; while we can be arrested just for looking like a Jew?
‘When this happens to us on our land, those who perpetrate such crimes against us are our enemy. The Nazis were never the enemy we had to fight here in Palestine. The British were and continue to be our enemy, as are the Arabs who reject our presence. Remember that the Mufti of Jerusalem is Hitler’s greatest ally; remember that the Mufti spent much of the war living in Berlin, being treated like some potentate.
‘While the Nazis were destroying our people in Europe, it was the British who refused to let our people flee to Palestine. They are as much responsible for the deaths before our brothers and sisters reached our shores as were the Nazis. Had they allowed our people to enter Palestine, thousands, perhaps millions, could have been saved.
‘Now is the time to send the British this message: that there will be no peace until they are forced out. Now is the time for us to strike, when they’re drunk on victory and distracted; now is the time for us to intensify our fight!’
Shalman sat in the back corner of the room watching Shamir make his speech. He knew he should have felt joyous at the news of the end of the war but for reasons he couldn’t quite grasp, he felt a strange melancholy. These people around him were his brothers and sisters and yet they were not like him.
It had been his guardian, Dov, who had brought Shalman to Lehi. With the nightmare images of his father being taken away by the British, ‘the Stern Gang’ had become his family. They had trained him and given him purpose when he felt aimless, given his anger a target and a name. But still he felt an outsider. These people all around him might be his brothers and sisters in the struggle to throw off the British, but he was different from most of them. They were refugees and migrants while Shalman had been born here in the land of Palestine. The childhood memories of jumping off sand dunes at Shabbat beach picnics with his parents were ingrained in his mental landscape. When his comrades fought for the land, it was because of what they wanted it to be, for they had enjoyed no childhood here, no memories of this place. This made Shalman feel different from the others. What he fought for was for the homeland he loved, the landscape of his childhood. He was fighting for what he knew.
So why did he find pulling the trigger so hard?
These were the thoughts on Shalman’s mind when, amid the noise of revelry, Shamir had taken him quietly and conspiratorially aside and introduced him to a beautiful young woman whom others called Judita, but who Shamir had renamed Judit after the Biblical heroine.
Before Shamir walked away to leave them together, he turned to Shalman, and whispered, ‘Be careful of this one; remember your Bible, and what Judith did to Holofernes . . .’ And for the first time that he recalled, Shalman heard Shamir laughing.
An hour later, in the early morning, the streets were empty and pitch black. It was usually warm in May, but tonight in Jerusalem it was unseasonably cool and they were grateful for their overcoats that concealed the Sten carbines they carried beneath. The barrels were elongated with silencers but still the compact weapons were hidden from view.
Earlier, before they left the group celebrating the end of the War, Shamir had given Shalman and Judit a mission. The official Armistice in Europe was a night of celebration for the British. With the Nazi menace now over, enlisted men and officers alike would be drunk and disorderly in the streets of the ancient city. And among them would be a specific trio of soldiers that Shamir had ear-marked.
When told of the order, however, Shalman had questioned it openly. Why these three men? What did they do? Why not bomb a train line, an airfield? Why three ordinary British Tommies?
Shalman had surprised himself with the questions and they seemed to come from nowhere. His beautiful comrade, Judit, eyed him quizzically but said nothing as Shamir answered. Bombing train lines and airfields hurt the British military machine, killing officers fractured the British command, but killing regular soldiers was about hurting the British soul. To blow up a train would make headlines, but to kill a conscript from Leeds or Birmingham or Manchester would send a shudder of disgust through the city; everybody in the city would identify with the dead soldier, his widow, his children. And soon the wails of anguish would be heard in London’s parliament, where decisions were made. The British, Shamir told them, were exhausted from a six-year war. The idea of more deaths so far from home was more than they would be able to bear.
‘On this night when they are thinking themselves invincible, we need to show them just how personally vulnerable they are. Rot them from the inside,’ Shamir had told them.
Now Shalman and Judit lay on the low roof of a closed and empty shop, surveying a narrow alley, preparing to cause that rot to happen. It was a precise location where Shamir seemed to know the three men would be heading at this particular time. A direct route from their barracks at the end of the duty shift to the enlisted men’s recreation hall at the end of the alley.
Shalman and Judit had got here by skirting the shadows of the night-time streets and avoiding the King David Hotel, the epicentre of British control in Jerusalem.
The spot where they were now lying was ideal because the flat roof joined three other roofs in easy stages. When they’d completed their assignment, they could scamper across the rooftops and disappear into a street behind that would take them far away from the shooting. By the time an alarm had been raised, Shalman and Judit would long since be gone.
Shalman glanced at the young woman next to him. The mixture of beauty and focus in her face turned his glance into a stare, which soon drew her attention away from the street below. Shalman quickly stammered a question to explain his gaze.
‘Have you ever used a rifle before?’ he whispered. It was a stupid question. The look Judit gave him told him that she had. Nervously Shalman elaborated. ‘I mean. Like this. To kill . . .’
In the moonlight, she was quite lovely. She wore no make-up, as was the habit of young Jewish women in Palestine, but her skin, her cheekbones, her deep-set eyes, her lustrous hair pinned beneath the dark brown scarf she wore, almost made the young man forget the reason he was there.
She smiled at Shalman, and gave him a reassuring nod. ‘I’ll be okay. Thank you for thinking of me,’ she said with a liberal hint of sarcasm to which Shalman was oblivious.
He continued to dig his hole deeper. ‘But if you become frightened, or nervous – ’
Judit cut him off, more with a look than what she said. ‘I’ll be fine, Shalman.’
Shalman retreated, feeling somewhat foolish. Judit sensed this and her voice softened as she said, ‘They’re not innocent, Shalman. I know men like these. Not enlisted men, maybe, but the officers commanding them. You don’t know them like I know them. And what they’re capable of doing.’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
She thought back to the time she’d landed in Haifa, when some awful little British nonentity of an officer had tried to rape her. But she
kept quiet. She didn’t explain further and at that moment he heard the distant sound of several men laughing and talking loudly. As Shalman and Judit listened, they heard the men walking nearer, their voices becoming more distinct. One was even singing.
Suddenly, the men stopped moving, even though the sound of voices continued. Judit strained to hear, and then turned to Shalman. ‘I think they’re pissing against a wall. Men always grow quiet when their dicks are out. Why can’t men piss and talk at the same time?’
Shalman looked at her in astonishment, having absolutely no idea what to say. Instead he turned back to look at the road. The noise of the men started up again and began to come closer to where they were stationed. Then, around a corner, they saw three men weaving around the pavement. They were carrying bottles of beer, drinking and stumbling and falling and laughing and shouting and singing. Shalman and Judit had been told that the Tommies would be on their way to drink, not drunk and leaving the barracks. Everything was out of kilter because of the end of the war. The news had prompted early celebrations and it would make their task all the easier.
Judit and Shalman readied their Sten guns for when the Tommies were close enough. They peered through the gun sights and held their breath. The noise of the men, fracturing the silence of the early-morning city under curfew, grew closer and closer. They slowed and swigged from their bottles, threw their arms around one another’s shoulders, then continued to walk. They ambled closer and closer until they were opposite the low rooftop where the two young Jews were lying.
Shalman drew in his breath, squeezed his left eye shut, and looked down the barrel of the carbine. At the end of the sight was a British solider who reminded Shalman of the day his father was taken away, of his mother’s grief. He reminded him of Dov and what he had said to him two years ago: ‘If we’re to keep this land, we have to fight for it; we have to take it, Shalman.’
The Tommies were close now, the line from his gun sight to their chests was clear and steady and the presence of Judit seemed to slip away, leaving Shalman in his own world. He lifted his finger to the trigger and could feel his hand twitch and shake as it drew close to the thin strip of metal. All he had to do was to press it, and it would unleash hell. As he held his breath, Shalman remembered the night with Yitzhak Shamir, when the Pole had taken the responsibility from him and shot the British officer when Shalman had hesitated. Shamir had been true to his word, telling others that Shalman had done the job. The Pole had given Shalman a wink and never mentioned it again.