Leon Uris (5 page)

“I know you two have much to talk over,” Mandria said between sobs. “I hope you find your room comfortable, Mr. Ben Canaan. We will have your uniform, papers, and a taxi by morning. Good night.”

The instant David and Ari were alone they threw their arms about each other. The big man picked the little man up and set him down as though he were a child. They looked each other over and congratulated each other on looking well and went into another bear hug.

“Jordana!” David said anxiously. “Did you see her before you left? Did she give you a message?”

Ari scratched his jaw teasingly. “Now let me see ...”

“Please, Ari ... it has been months since I have received a letter ...”

Ari sighed and withdrew an envelope which David snatched from his hands. “I put it in a rubber pouch. The only thing I could think of tonight when I was swimming in was that you would break my neck if I got your damned letter wet.”

David was not listening. He squinted in the half light and slowly read the words of a woman who missed and longed for her lover. He folded the letter tenderly and carefully placed it in his breast pocket to be read again and again, for it might be months before she could send another. “How is she?” David asked.

“I don’t see what my sister sees in you. Jordana? Jordana is Jordana. She is wild and beautiful and she loves you very much.”

“My parents ... my brothers ... how is our Palmach gang ... what ...”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. I’ll be here for a while—one question at a time.”

David pulled out the letter and read it again, and the two men were silent. They stared out of the french doors at the ancient wall across the road. “How are things at home?” David whispered.

“Things at home? The same as always. Bombings, shootings. Exactly as it has been every day since we were children. It never changes. Every year we come to a crisis which is sure to wipe us out—then we go on to another crisis worse than the last. Home is home,” Ari said, “only this time there is going to be a war.” He put his arm on the shoulder of his smaller friend. “We are all damned proud of the work you have done in Caraolos with these refugees.”

“I have done as well as can be expected, trying to train soldiers with broomsticks. Palestine is a million miles away to these people. They have no hope left. Ari ... I don’t want you antagonizing Mandria any more. He is a wonderful friend.”

“I can’t stand people patronizing us, David.”

“And we can’t do the job here without him and the Greek people.”

“Don’t be fooled by the Mandrias all over the world. They weep crocodile tears and they pay lip service to our millions of slaughtered, but when the final battle comes we will stand alone. Mandria will sell us out like all the others. We will be betrayed and double-crossed as it has always been. We have no friends except our own people, remember that.”

“And you are wrong,” David snapped back.

“David, David, David. I have been with the Mossad and the Palmach for more years than I care to remember. You are young yet. This is your first big assignment. Don’t let emotion cloud your logic.”

“I
want
emotion to cloud my logic,” David answered. “I burn inside every time I see something like that convoy. Our people locked up in cages like animals.”

“We try all sorts of schemes,” Ari said; “we must keep a clear head. Sometimes we are successful, sometimes we fail. Work with a clear mind, always.”

Even now they could still hear the sound of sirens over the breeze. The young man from Jerusalem lit a cigarette and stood for a moment in thought. “I must never stop believing,” he said solemnly, “that I am carrying on a new chapter of a story started four thousand years ago.” He spun around and looked up at the big man excitedly. “Look, Ari. Take the place you landed tonight. Once the city of Salamis stood there. It was in Salamis that the Bar Kochba revolution began in the first century. He drove the Romans from our country and re-established the Kingdom of Judah. There is a bridge near the detention camps—they call it the Jews’ Bridge. It has been called that for two thousand years. I can’t forget these things. Right in the same place we fought the Roman Empire we now fight the British Empire two thousand years later.”

Ari Ben Canaan stood a head taller than David Ben Ami. He smiled down at the younger man as a father might smile at an overenthusiastic son. “Finish the story. After the Bar Kochba revolution the legions of Rome returned and massacred our people in city after city. In the final battle at Beitar the blood of murdered women and children made a crimson river which flowed for a full mile. Akiva, one of the leaders, was skinned alive—and Bar Kochba was carried off to Rome in chains to die in the lions’ den. Or was it Bar Giora who died in the lions’ den in another revolution? I can get these revolutions mixed up. Oh yes, the Bible and our history are filled with wonderful tales and convenient miracles. But this is real today. We have no Joshua to make the sun stand still or the walls to come tumbling down. The British tanks will not get stuck in the mud like Canaanite chariots, and the sea has not closed in on the British Navy as it did on Pharaoh’s army. The age of miracles is gone, David.”

“It is not gone! Our very existence is a miracle. We outlived the Romans and the Greeks and even Hitler. We have outlived every oppressor and we will outlive the British Empire. That is a miracle, Ari.”

“Well, David—one thing I can say about the Jews. We certainly know how to argue. Let’s get some sleep.”

“Y
OUR MOVE, SIR
,” Fred Caldwell repeated.

“Yes, yes, forgive me.” Brigadier Sutherland studied the chessboard and moved his pawn forward. Caldwell brought out a knight and Sutherland countered with his own. “Dash it!” the brigadier mumbled as his pipe went out. He relit it.

The two men glanced up as they heard the dim but steady shrill screams of sirens. Sutherland looked at the wall clock. That would be the refugees from the illegal ship,
Door of Hope
.

“
Door of Hope, Gates of Zion, Promised Land, Star of David
,” Caldwell said with a snicker. “I will say one thing. They do give those blockade runners colorful names.”

Sutherland’s brow furrowed. He tried to study out his next move on the board, but the sirens would not leave his ears. He stared at the ivory chessmen, but he was visualizing the convoy of lorries packed with agonized faces, machine guns, armored cars. “If you don’t mind, Caldwell, I think I’ll turn in.”

“Anything wrong, sir?”

“No. Good night.” The brigadier walked from the room quickly and closed the door of his bedroom and loosened his smoking jacket. The sirens seemed to screech unbearably loudly. He slammed the window shut to drown the noise but still he could hear it.

Bruce Sutherland stood before the mirror and wondered what was going wrong with him. Sutherland from Sutherland Heights. Another distinguished career in a line of distinguished careers that went on, the same as England itself.

But these past weeks on Cyprus something was happening. Something tearing him to pieces. He stood there before the mirror and looked into his own watery eyes and wondered where it had all begun.

Sutherland: Good fellow to have on your team,
said the yearbook at Eton.
Right sort of chap, that Sutherland. Proper family, proper schooling, proper career.

The army? Good choice, Bruce old man. We Sutherlands have served in the army for centuries....

Proper marriage. Neddie Ashton. The daughter of Colonel Ashton was a clever catch. Fine stock, Neddie Ashton. Fine hostess, that woman. She always has the ear of the right person. She’ll be a big help to your career. Splendid match! The Ashtons and the Sutherlands.

Where the failure, Sutherland wondered? Neddie had given him two lovely children. Albert was a real Sutherland. A captain in his father’s old regiment already, and Martha had made herself a splendid marriage.

Bruce Sutherland opened the closet and put on his pajamas. He touched the roll of fat about his waist. Not too bad for a man of fifty-five. He still had plenty of punch left.

Sutherland had come up fast in the World War II by comparison to the slow tedious advancements in the peacetime service. There had been India, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Middle East. But it took a war to show what he was made of. He proved to be an exceptional infantry commander. V-E Day found him a brigadier.

He put on his bedroom slippers and sank slowly into a deep chair and dimmed the lamp and he was filled with remembering.

Neddie had always been a good wife. She was a good mother, a tremendous hostess, and a woman cut out for colonial service in the army. He had been very fortunate. When had the break come between them? Yes, he remembered. It was in Singapore so many years ago.

He was a major when he met Marina, the olive-skinned Eurasian woman. Marina—born and made for love. Each man has a Marina hidden deep in his inner thoughts, but he had his in the flesh and she was real. Laughter and fire and tears and passion. Being with Marina was like being in a bubbling volcano ready to erupt. He was insane for her—he desired her wildly, madly. He threw jealous tantrums before her only to half sob, begging forgiveness. Marina ... Marina ... Marina ... the black eyes and the raven hair. She could torment him. She could delight him. She could spiral him to heights he never knew existed on this earth. Those precious, magnificent moments of their trysts ...

His hands had clutched her hair and pulled her head back and he had looked at her deep red sensuous lips ... “I love you, you bitch ... I love you.”

“I love you, Bruce,” Marina had whispered.

... Bruce Sutherland remembered the stunned hurt look on Neddie’s face as she confronted him with evidence of his affair.

“I won’t say this hasn’t hurt me deeply,” Neddie said, too proud for tears, “but I am willing to forgive and forget. There are the children to think of. There is your career... and our families. I’ll try to make a go of it with you, Bruce, but you must swear you’ll never see that woman again and that you’ll put in an immediate request for transfer from Singapore.”

That woman—that woman, you call her, Bruce thought—is my love. She has given me something that you or a thousand Neddies never could or never will. She has given me something no man has a right to expect on this earth.

“I want your answer now, Bruce.”

Answer? What could the answer be? A man can have a woman like Marina for a night, for a touch, but she is not real. There is only one Marina to a man ... one to a lifetime. Answer? Throw away his career for a Eurasian girl? Bring scandal on the name of Sutherland?

“I will never see her again, Neddie,” Bruce Sutherland promised. Bruce Sutherland never saw her again but he never stopped thinking of her. Perhaps that is where it all started.

The sounds of the sirens were very faint now. The convoy must be quite near Caraolos, Sutherland thought. Soon the sirens would stop and he could sleep. He began thinking of the retirement that would be coming in another four or five years. The family house at Sutherland Heights would be far too big. A cottage, perhaps in the country. Soon it would be time to think about a pair of good hunting setters and gathering rose catalogues and building up his library. Time to start thinking about a decent club to join in London. Albert, Martha, and his grandchildren would indeed be a comfort in retirement. Perhaps ... perhaps he would take a mistress, too.

It seemed strange that after nearly thirty years of marriage he would be going into retirement without Neddie. She had been so quiet, reserved, and distinguished all those years. She had been so sporting about his affair with Marina. Suddenly, after a lifetime of complete propriety Neddie burst out frantically to salvage her few years left as a woman. She ran off to Paris with a Bohemian chap ten years her junior. Everyone sympathized with Bruce, but it really didn’t matter to him much. There had been no contact and little feeling for Neddie for many years. She could have her fling. They were quite civilized about it. Perhaps he would take her back later ... perhaps a mistress would be better.

At last the sirens from the convoy stopped. There was complete silence in the room except for the muffled shushing of the surf breaking on the shore. Bruce Sutherland opened the window and breathed in the cool crisp November air. He went to the bathroom and washed and placed the bridge of four teeth in a glass of solution. Damned shame, he thought, losing those four teeth. He had said the same thing for thirty years. It was the result of a rugby game. He examined the other teeth to satisfy himself they were still in good shape.

He opened the medicine chest and studied the row of bottles. He took down a tin of sleeping powders and mixed a double dose. It was difficult to sleep these days.

His heart began racing as he drank down the solution. He knew it was going to be another one of those horrible nights. He tried desperately to lock out or stifle the thoughts creeping into his brain. He covered himself in bed and hoped sleep would come quickly, but it was already beginning to whirl around and around and around in his mind ...

... Bergen-Belsen ... Bergen-Belsen ... Bergen-Belsen ... NUREMBERG ... NUREMBERG! NUREMBERG! NUREMBERG!

“Take the stand and give your name.”

“Bruce Sutherland, Brigadier General, Commander of ...”

“Describe, in your own words ...”

“My troops entered Bergen-Belsen at twenty minutes past five in the evening of April 15.”

“Describe in your own words ...”

“Camp Number One was an enclosure of four hundred yards wide by a mile long. That area held eighty thousand people. Mostly Hungarian and Polish Jews.”

“Describe in your own words ...”

“The ration for Camp Number One was ten thousand loaves of bread a week.”

“Identify ...”

“Yes, those are testicle crushers and thumbscrews used in torture ...”

“Describe ...”

“Our census showed thirty thousand dead in Camp Number One, including nearly fifteen thousand corpses just littered around. There were twenty-eight thousand women and twelve thousand men still alive.”