Leon Uris (3 page)

“I read your coverage of the Nuremberg trials, Parker. You have that terrible American tendency towards being overdramatic. Corny is the word, I think. Besides, old boy, I don’t have a wife.”

“You boys are polite.”

“Remember, Parker, you are on vacation. I’ll give Brigadier Sutherland your regards. Cheerio.”

Mark smiled and shrugged. Then it came back to him. The sign at the airport....
WELCOME TO CYPRUS: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
. The full quote was—“Welcome to Cyprus, goats and monkeys.”

D
URING THE HOURS
in which Mark Parker awaited his long-delayed reunion with Kitty Fremont, two other men awaited a reunion of a far different sort in a different part of Cyprus. Forty miles away from Kyrenia, north of the port city of Famagusta, they waited in a forest.

It was cloudy, socked-in, with no light from the sky. The two men stood in utter silence and squinted through the dark toward the bay a half mile down the hill.

They were in an abandoned white house on the hill in the midst of a forest of pines and eucalyptus and acacias. It was still and black except for a wisp of wind and the muffled unsteady breathing of the two men.

One of the men was a Greek Cypriot, a forest service ranger, and he was nervous.

The other man appeared as calm as a statue, never moving his eyes from the direction of the water. His name was David Ben Ami. His name meant David, Son of My People.

The clouds began to break. Light fell over the still waters of the bay and on the forest and the white house. David Ben Ami stood in the window and the light played on his face. He was a man of slight build in his early twenties. Even in the poor light his thin face and his deep eyes showed the sensitivity of a scholar.

As the clouds swept away, the light crept over fields of broken marble columns and statuary that littered the ground about the white house.

Broken stone. The mortal remains of the once-great city of Salamis which stood mighty in the time of Christ. What history lay beneath this ground and throughout the fields of marble! Salamis, founded in times barely recorded by men, by the warrior Teucer on his return from the Trojan Wars. It fell by earthquake and it arose again and it fell once more to the Arab sword under the banner of Islam, never to arise again. The light danced over the acres and acres of thousands of broken columns where a great Greek forum once stood.

The clouds closed and it was dark again.

“He is long overdue,” the Greek Cypriot forest ranger whispered nervously.

“Listen,” David Ben Ami said.

A faint sound of a boat’s motor was heard from far out on the water. David Ben Ami lifted his field glasses, hoping for a break in the clouds. The sound of the motor grew louder.

A flash of light streaked out from the water toward the white house on the hill. Another flash. Another.

David Ben Ami and the forest ranger raced from the white house, down the hill, and through the rubble and the woods till they reached the shore line. Ben Ami returned the signal with his own flashlight.

The sound of the motor stopped.

A shadowy figure of a man slipped over the side of the boat and began to swim toward the shore. David Ben Ami cocked his Sten gun and looked up and down the beach for signs of a British patrol. The figure emerged from the deep water and waded in. “David!” a voice called from the water.

“Ari,” he answered back, “this way, quickly.”

On the beach the three men ran past the white house and onto a dirt road. A taxi waited, hidden in the brush. Ben Ami thanked the Cypriot forest ranger, and he and the man from the boat sped off in the direction of Famagusta.

“My cigarettes are soaked,” Ari said.

David Ben Ami passed him a pack. A brief flame glowed over the face of the man who was called Ari. He was large and husky, in complete contrast to the small Ben Ami. His face was handsome but there was a set hardness in his eyes.

He was Ari Ben Canaan and he was the crack agent of the Mossad Aliyah Bet—the illegal organization.

T
HERE WAS A KNOCK
on Mark Parker’s door. He opened it. Katherine Fremont stood before him. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. They stared at each other silently for a long time. He studied her face and her eyes. She was a woman now, soft and compassionate in the way one gets only through terrible suffering.

“I ought to break your damned neck for not answering my letters,” Mark said.

“Hello, Mark,” she whispered.

They fell into each other’s arms and clung to each other. Then for the first hour they spoke little but contented themselves with looking at each other, with quick smiles, occasional pressing of hands, and affectionate kisses on the cheek.

At dinner they made small talk, mostly of Mark’s adventures as a foreign correspondent. Then Mark became aware that Kitty was steering all the conversation away from any talk of herself.

The final dish of cheeses came. Mark poured the last of his Keo beer and another of the many awkward silent periods followed. Now Kitty was obviously growing uncomfortable under his questioning stare.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s take a walk to the harbor.”

“I’ll get my stole,” she said.

They walked silently along the quay lined with white buildings and onto the sea wall and out to the lighthouse which stood at the narrow opening of the harbor. It was cloudy and they could see but dim outlines of the little boats resting at anchor. They watched the lighthouse blink out to sea, guiding a trawler toward the shelter of the harbor. A soft wind blew through Kitty’s golden hair. She tightened the stole over her shoulders. Mark lit a cigarette and sat on the wall. It was deathly still.

“I’ve made you very unhappy by coming here,” he said, “I’ll leave tomorrow.”

“I don’t want you to go,” she said. She looked away out to the sea. “I don’t know how I felt when I received your cable. It opened the door on a lot of memories that I have tried awfully hard to bury. Yet I knew that one day this minute would come ... in a way I’ve dreaded it ... in a way, I’m glad it’s here.”

“It’s been four years since Tom got killed. Aren’t you ever going to shake this?”

“Women lose husbands in war,” she whispered. “I cried for Tom. We were very much in love, but I knew I would go on living. I don’t even know how he died.”

“There wasn’t much to it,” Mark said. “Tom was a marine and he went in to take a beach with ten thousand other marines. A bullet hit him and he died. No hero, no medals ... no time to say, ‘tell Kitty I love her.’ Just got hit by a bullet and died ... that’s it.”

The blood drained from her face. Mark lit a cigarette and handed it to her. “Why did Sandra die? Why did my baby have to die too?”

“I’m not God. I can’t answer that.”

She sat beside Mark on the sea wall and rested her head on his shoulder and sighed unevenly. “I guess there is no place left for me to run,” she said.

“Why don’t you tell me about it.”

“I can’t ...”

“I think it’s about time that you did.”

A half dozen times Kitty tried to speak, but her voice held only short disconnected whispers. The years of terror were locked deep in her. She threw the cigarette into the water and looked at Mark. He was right and he was the only one in the world she could confide in.

“It was pretty terrible,” she said, “when I got the telegram about Tom, I loved him so. Just ... just two months after that Sandra died of polio. I ... I don’t remember too much. My parents took me away to Vermont and put me in a home.”

“Asylum?”

“No ... that’s the name they give it for poor people ... they called mine a rest home for a breakdown. I don’t know how many months passed there. I couldn’t remember everything. I was in a complete fog day and night. Melancholia, they call it.”

Suddenly Kitty’s voice became steady. The door had opened and the torment was finding its way out. “One day the veil over my mind lifted and I remembered that Tom and Sandra were dead. A pain clung to me. Everything every minute of the day reminded me of them. Every time I heard a song, every time I heard laughter ... every time I saw a child. Every breath I took hurt me. I prayed ... I prayed, Mark that the fog would fall on me again. Yes, I prayed I’d go insane so I couldn’t remember.”

She stood up tall and straight and the tears streamed down her cheeks. “I ran away to New York. Tried to bury myself in the throngs. I had four walls, a chair, a table, a swinging light bulb.” She let out a short ironic laugh. “There was even a flickering neon sign outside my window. Corny, wasn’t it? I’d walk aimlessly for hours on the streets till all the faces were a blur, or I’d sit and look out of the window for days at a time. Tom, Sandra, Tom, Sandra ... it never left me for a moment.”

Kitty felt Mark behind her. His hands gripped her shoulders. Out in the water the trawler was nearing the opening between the arms of the sea wall. She brushed her cheek against Mark’s hand.

“One night I drank too much. You know me ... I’m a terrible drinker. I saw a boy in a green uniform like Tom’s. He was lonely and crew-cut and tall ... like Tom. We drank together ... I woke up in a cheap, dirty hotel room ... God knows where. I was still half drunk. I staggered to the mirror and I looked at myself. I was naked. The boy was naked too ... sprawled out on the bed.”

“Kitty, for God’s sake ...”

“It’s all right, Mark ... let me finish. I stood there looking in that mirror ... I don’t know how long. I had reached the bottom of my life. There was no place lower for me. That moment ... that second I was done. The boy was unconscious ... strange ... I don’t even remember his name. I saw his razor blades in the bathroom and the gas pipe from the ceiling and for a minute or an hour ... I don’t know how long I stood looking down ten stories over the sidewalk. The end of my life had come but I did not have the strength to take it. Then a strange thing happened, Mark. I knew that I was going to go on living without Tom and Sandra and suddenly the pain was gone.”

“Kitty, darling. I wanted so much to find you and help you.”

“I know. But it was something I had to fight out myself, I suppose. I went back to nursing, plunged into it like crazy. The minute it was over in Europe I took on this Greek orphanage ... it was a twenty-four-hour-a-day job. That’s what I needed of course, to work myself to the limit. Mark ... I ... I’ve started a hundred letters to you. Somehow I’ve been too terrified of this minute. I’m glad now, I’m glad it’s over.”

“I’m glad I found you,” Mark said.

She spun around and faced him. “... so that is the story of what has become of Kitty Fremont.”

Mark took her hand and they began walking back along the sea wall to the quay. From the Dome Hotel they could hear the sound of music.

B
RIGADIER
B
RUCE
S
UTHERLAND
sat behind a big desk as military commander of Cyprus in his house on Hippocrates Street in Famagusta, some forty miles from Kyrenia. Except for small telltale traces—a slight roll around his middle and a whitening of the hair about his temples—Sutherland’s appearance belied his fifty-five years. His ramrod posture clearly identified a military man. A sharp knock sounded on the door and his aide, Major Fred Caldwell, entered.

“Good evening, Caldwell. Back from Kyrenia already? Have a chair.” Sutherland shoved the papers aside, stretched, and put his glasses on the desk. He selected a GBD pipe from the rack and dipped it into a humidor of Dunhill mix. Caldwell thanked the brigadier for a cigar and the two men soon clouded the room in smoke. The Greek houseboy appeared in answer to a buzz.

“Gin and tonic twice.”

Sutherland arose and walked into the full light. He was wearing a deep red velvet smoking jacket. He settled into a leather chair before the high shelves of books. “Did you see Mark Parker?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do you think?”

Caldwell shrugged. “On the face of it we certainly can’t accuse him of anything. He is on the way to Palestine ... here to see that American nurse, Katherine Fremont.”

“Fremont? Oh yes, that lovely woman we met at the governor’s.”

“So I say, sir, it all appears quite innocent ... yet, Parker is a reporter and I can’t forget that trouble he caused us in Holland.”

“Oh, come now,” Sutherland retorted, “we all made blunders in the war. He just happened to catch one of ours. Fortunately our side won, and I don’t think there are ten people who remember.”

The gin and tonics arrived. “Cheers.”

Sutherland set his glass down and patted his white walrus mustache. Fred Caldwell wasn’t satisfied.

“Sir,” he persisted, “in case Parker does become curious and does decide to snoop around, don’t you think it would be wise to have a couple of CID men watching him?”

“See here, you leave him alone. Just tell a newspaperman ‘no’ and you’re apt to stir up a hornet’s nest. Refugee stories are out of style these days and I don’t believe he would be interested in their camps here. None the less we are not going to run the risk of arousing his curiosity by forbidding him to do anything. If you ask me I think it was a mistake for you to see him today.”

“But, Brigadier ... after that trouble in Holland ...”

“Bring the chess table, Freddie!”

There was something absolutely final about the way Sutherland said “Freddie.” Caldwell grumbled under his breath as they set up the chessmen. They made their opening moves but Sutherland could see that his aide was unhappy. He set down his pipe and leaned back.

“Caldwell, I have tried to explain to you that we are not running concentration camps here. The refugees at Caraolos are merely being detained on Cyprus until those blockheads in Whitehall decide what they are going to do with the Palestine mandate.”

“But those Jews are so unruly,” Caldwell said, “I’m certainly in favor of some good old-fashioned discipline.”

“No, Freddie, not this time. These people are not criminals and they’ve got world sympathy on their side. It is your job and mine to see that there are no riots, no outbreaks, and nothing that can be used as propaganda against us. Do you understand that?”