Leon Uris (6 page)

“DESCRIBE ...!”

“We made desperate efforts but the survivors were so emasculated and diseased that thirteen thousand more died within a few days after our arrival.”

“DESCRIBE ...!”

“Conditions were so wretched when we entered the camp that the living were eating the flesh of the corpses.”

The moment Bruce Sutherland had completed his testimony at the Nuremberg war crimes trials he received an urgent message to return to London at once. The message came from an old and dear friend in the War Office, General Sir Clarence Tevor-Browne. Sutherland sensed it was something out of the ordinary.

He flew to London the next day and reported at once to that huge, ungainly monstrosity of a building on the corner of Whitehall and Great Scotland Yard which housed the British War Office.

“Bruce, Bruce, Bruce! Come in, come in, man! Good to see you. I followed your testimony at the Nuremberg trials. Nasty bit of business.”

“I am glad it is over,” Sutherland said.

“Sorry to hear about you and Neddie. If there is anything at all I can do ...”

Sutherland shook his head.

At last Tevor-Browne led up to the reason for asking him to come to London. “Bruce,” he said, “I called you here because a rather delicate assignment has come up. I must give a recommendation and I want to put your name up. I wanted to talk it over with you first.”

“Go on, Sir Clarence.”

“Bruce, these Jews escaping from Europe have posed quite a problem. They are simply flooding Palestine. Frankly, the Arabs are getting quite upset about the numbers getting into the mandate. We here have decided to set up detention camps on Cyprus to contain these people—at least as a temporary measure until Whitehall decides what we are going to do with the Palestine mandate.”

“I see,” Sutherland said softly.

Tevor-Browne continued. “This entire thing is touchy and must be handled with great tact. Now, no one wants to ride herd on a bunch of downtrodden refugees, and the fact is ... well, they have a great deal of sympathy on their side in high quarters—especially in France and America. Things must be kept very quiet on Cyprus. We want nothing to happen to create unfavorable opinion.”

Sutherland walked to the window and looked out to the Thames River and watched the big double-deck buses drive over the Waterloo Bridge. “I think the whole idea is wretched,” he said.

“It is not for you and me to decide, Bruce. Whitehall gives the orders. We merely carry them out.”

Sutherland continued looking out of the window. “I saw those people at Bergen-Belsen. Must be the same ones who are trying to get into Palestine now.” He returned to his chair. “We have broken one promise after another to those people in Palestine for thirty years.”

“See here, Bruce,” Tevor-Browne said, “you and I see eye to eye on this, but we are in a minority. We both served together in the Middle East. Let me tell you something, man. I sat here at this desk during the war as one report after another of Arab sellouts came in. The Egyptian Chief of Staff selling secrets to the Germans; Cairo all decked out to welcome Rommel as their liberator; the Iraqis going to the Germans; the Syrians going to the Germans; the Mufti of Jerusalem a Nazi agent. I could go on for hours. You must look at Whitehall’s side of this, Bruce. We can’t risk losing our prestige and our hold on the entire Middle East over a few thousand Jews.”

Sutherland sighed. “And this is our most tragic mistake of all, Sir Clarence. We are going to lose the Middle East despite it.”

“You are all wound up, Bruce.”

“There is a right and a wrong, you know.”

General Sir Clarence Tevor-Browne smiled slightly and shook his head sadly. “I have learned very little in my years, Bruce, but one thing I have learned. Foreign policies of this, or any other, country are not based on right and wrong. Right and wrong? It is not for you and me to argue the right or the wrong of this question. The only kingdom that runs on righteousness is the kingdom of heaven. The kingdoms of the earth run on oil. The Arabs have oil.”

Bruce Sutherland was silent. Then he nodded. “Only the kingdom of heaven runs on righteousness,” he repeated. “The kingdoms of the earth run on oil. You have learned something, Sir Clarence. It seems that all of life itself is wrapped up in those lines. All of us ... people ... nations ... live by need and not by truth.”

Tevor-Browne leaned forward. “Somewhere in God’s scheme of things he gave us the burden of an empire to rule....”

“Ours not to reason why,” Sutherland whispered. “But I can’t seem to forget the Arab slave markets in Saudi Arabia and the first time I was invited to watch a man have his hands amputated as punishment for stealing, and somehow I can’t forget those Jews at Bergen-Belsen.”

“It is not too good to be a soldier and have a conscience. I won’t force you to take this post on Cyprus.”

“I’ll go. Of course I’ll go. But tell me. Why did you choose me?”

“Most of our chaps are pro-Arab for no other reason than our tradition has been pro-Arab and soldiers are not in a position to do much other than follow policy. I don’t want to send someone to Cyprus who will antagonize these refugees. It is a problem that calls for understanding and compassion.”

Sutherland arose. “I sometimes think,” he said, “that it is almost as much a curse being born an Englishman as it is being born a Jew.”

Sutherland accepted the assignment on Cyprus, but his heart was filled with fear. He wondered if Tevor-Browne had known he was half Jewish.

That decision, that horrible decision he had made so long ago was coming back to haunt him now.

He remembered that afterward he began to find solace in the Bible. There were those empty years with Neddie, the painful loss of the Eurasian girl he loved, and it all seemed to plunge him deeper and deeper into a longing to find peace of mind. How wonderful for a soldier like him to read of the great campaigns of Joshua and Gideon and Joab. And those magnificent women—Ruth and Esther and Sarah ... and ... and Deborah. Deborah, the Joan of Arc, the liberator of her people.

He remembered the chill as he read the words:
Awake, awake, Deborah; awake, awake.

Deborah! That was his mother’s name.

Deborah Davis was a rare and beautiful woman. It was small wonder that Harold Sutherland was smitten with her. The Sutherland family was tolerant when Harold sat through fifteen performances of
The Taming of the Shrew
to watch the beautiful actress, Deborah Davis, and they smiled benevolently as he went over his allowance on flowers and gifts. It was a boyish fling, they thought, and he’d get over it.

Harold could not get over Deborah Davis, and the family stopped being tolerant. She defied an edict they issued for her to appear at Sutherland Heights. It was then that Harold’s father, Sir Edgar, traveled to London to see this amazing young woman who refused to travel to Sutherland Heights. Deborah was as clever and witty as she was beautiful. She dazzled Sir Edgar and completely won him.

Sir Edgar decided then and there that his son had been damned lucky. After all, the Sutherlands were known to have a tradition of inclining toward actresses and some of them had become the grandest dames in the family’s long history.

There was, of course, the touchy business of Deborah Davis being a Jewess, but the matter was closed when she agreed to take instructions in the Church of England.

Harold and Deborah had three children. There was Mary, their only girl, and there was moody, irresponsible Adam. And there was Bruce. Bruce was the oldest and Deborah’s favorite. The boy adored his mother. But as close as they were she never spoke of her own childhood, or of her parents. He knew only that she had been very poor and run away to the stage.

The years passed. Bruce took up his army career and married Neddie Ashton. The children, Albert and Martha, came. Harold Sutherland died, and Deborah moved along in age.

Bruce remembered so well the day that it happened. He was coming to Sutherland Heights for a long visit and bringing Neddie and the children. Deborah would always be in the rose garden or the conservatory or floating about gaily on her duties—smiling, happy, gracious. But this day as he drove up to Sutherland Heights she was not there to greet him nor was she anywhere about to be found. At last he discovered her sitting in darkness in her drawing room. This was so unlike mother that it startled him. She was sitting like a statue, looking at the wall, oblivious to her surroundings.

Bruce kissed her on the cheek softly and knelt beside her. “Is something wrong, Mother?”

She turned slowly and whispered, “Today is Yom Kippur—the Day of Atonement.”

Her words chilled Bruce to the bone.

Bruce talked it over with Neddie and his sister, Mary. They decided that since Father had died she had been alone too much. Furthermore, Sutherland Heights was too big for her. She should move into an apartment in London where she could be closer to Mary. Then, too, Deborah was getting old. It was hard for them to realize, because she seemed to them as beautiful as when they were children.

Bruce and Neddie went off for his tour of service in the Middle East. Mary wrote happy letters that Mother was getting along fine, and the letters from Deborah told of her happiness to be in London near Mary’s family.

But when Bruce returned to England it was a different story. Mary was beside herself. Mother was seventy years old now and acting more and more strangely. A creeping on of senility. She could not remember something that had happened a day ago, but she would utter disconnected things about events that took place fifty years ago. It was frightening to Mary because Deborah had never spoken of her past to her children. Mary was most alarmed of her mother’s strange disappearances.

Mary was glad that Bruce had returned. He was the oldest and mother’s favorite and he was so steady. Bruce followed his mother one day on one of her mysterious walks. It led to a synagogue in Whitechapel.

He thought it all over carefully and decided to leave her alone. She was old; he did not feel it proper to confront her with things that had happened over fifty years before. It was best to let it pass quietly.

At the age of seventy-five Deborah Sutherland lay on her deathbed. Bruce got back to England just in time.

The old woman smiled as she saw her son sitting on the edge of the bed. “You are a Lieutenant Colonel now ... you look fine ... Bruce, my son ... I haven’t too many hours left ...”

“Hush now, Mother. You’ll be up and about in no time.”

“No, I must tell you something. I wanted to be your father’s wife so badly. I wanted so much ... so very very much to be the mistress of Sutherland Heights. I did a terrible thing Bruce. I denied my people. I denied them in life. I want to be with them now. Bruce ... Bruce, promise that I shall be buried near my father and my mother ...”

“I promise, Mother.”

“My father ... your grandfather ... you never knew him. When ... when I was a little girl he would hold me on his lap and he would say to me ... ‘awake, awake, Deborah; awake, awake ...’ ”

Those were the last words Deborah Sutherland spoke.

Bruce Sutherland sat in numb grief for a long hour beside the lifeless body of his mother. Then the numbness began to thaw under the nagging burn of a doubt that would not be kept out of his mind. Must he be bound by a promise he had made a dying woman? A promise he was forced to make? Would it be breaking the code of honor by which he had always lived? Wasn’t it true that Deborah Sutherland’s mind had been going on her bit by bit over the past years? She had never been a Jewess in life, why should she be one in death? Deborah had been a Sutherland and nothing else.

What a terrible scandal would be created if he were to bury her in a shabby run-down Jewish cemetery on the poverty side of London. Mother was dead. The living—Neddie, Albert and Martha and Mary’s family and Adam would be hurt deeply. The living had to be served.

As he kissed his mother farewell and walked from her room he had made his decision. Deborah was put to rest in the family vault at Sutherland Heights.

The sirens!

The sirens from the convoy of refugees!

The sirens shrieked louder and louder and louder until they tore through his eardrums.
Bergen-Belsen ... Marina ... Neddie ... caged trucks ... the camps at Caraolos ... I promise, Mother ... I promise, Mother ...

A burst of thunder rocked the house to its very foundation, and the sea outside became wild and waves smashed up the shore and raced nearly to the house. Sutherland threw off the covers and staggered about the room as though drunk. He froze at the window. Lightning! Thunder! The raging water grew higher and higher!

“
God
...
God ... God
...
God
...!”

“Brigadier Sutherlandl Brigadier Sutherland! Wake up, sir! Wake up, sir!”

The Greek houseboy shook him hard.

Sutherland’s eyes opened and he looked about wildly. The sweat poured from his body and his heart pounded painfully. He gasped for breath. The houseboy quickly brought him a brandy.

He looked outside to the sea. The night was calm and the water was as smooth as glass and lapped gently against the shore.

“I’ll be all right,” he said. “I’ll be all right ...”

“Are you sure, sir?”

“Yes.”

The door closed.

Bruce Sutherland slumped into a chair and buried his face in his hands and wept and whispered over and over, “... my mother in heaven ... my mother in heaven ...”

B
RIGADIER
B
RUCE
S
UTHERLAND
slept the sleep of the tormented and the damned.

Mandria, the Cypriot, twisted and turned in a nervous but exhilarated sleep.

Mark Parker slept the sleep of a man who had accomplished a mission.

Kitty Fremont slept with a peace of mind she had not known in years.

David Ben Ami slept only after reading Jordana’s letter so many times he knew it by memory.

Ari Ben Canaan did not sleep. There would be other times for that luxury, but not now. There was much to learn and little time to learn it in. All during the night he pored over maps and documents and papers, absorbing every fact about Cyprus, the British operation, and his own people there. He waded through the stacks of data with a cigarette or a coffee cup continuously at hand. There was a calm ease, a sureness about him.