Leon Uris (67 page)

“Mr. Ben Canaan checked out at six.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“Mr. Ben Canaan never says where he is going.”

“Perhaps he left a message for me?”

The clerk turned around and pointed to the empty key box.

“I see ... well ... thank you very much.”

D
OV
L
ANDAU FOUND A ROOM
in a dilapidated fourth-rate hotel on the Street of the Chain in the Old City of Jerusalem. As instructed, he went to the Saladin Café on the Nablus Road near the Damascus Gate and left his name and hotel to be given to Bar Israel.

Dov pawned the gold rings and bracelets he had stolen from the faculty at Gan Dafna and turned to the job of studying Jerusalem. To the ghetto rat and past master of thievery Jerusalem was simple. Within three days Dov knew every street and alley in the Old City and the immediate business districts around it. His sharp eye appraised and his deft hands lifted enough objects of value to keep him sustained. The matter of escape through the narrow alleyways and crowded bazaars was ridiculously easy for him.

Dov spent much of his money for books and art material. He walked along Jaffa Road searching the many bookstores for texts on art, draftsmanship, and architecture.

He locked himself in his room with his books and art material, some dried fruits and bottled soft drinks, and waited for contact from the Maccabees. Dov studied by candlelight. He was unaware of the pageantry that took place outside his window on the Street of the Chain which ran between the Jewish and Moslem quarters to the Dome of the Rock and the Wailing Wall. He would read until his eyes burned and he could read no more, then he would lay the book on his chest and stare at the ceiling and think of Karen Clement. Dov had not realized how badly he would miss her nor that missing her could cause an actual physical pain. Karen had been with him for so long he had forgotten what it was like to be away from her. He remembered every moment with her. Those days at Caraolos and on the
Exodus
when she lay in his arms in the hold of the ship. He remembered how happy she was and how beautiful she looked that first day at Gan Dafna. He remembered her kind, expressive face and her gentle touch and her sharp voice when she was angry.

Dov sat on the edge of his bed and sketched a hundred pictures of Karen. He drew her in every way he remembered her but crumpled each picture and threw it on the fioor, for no picture could show how beautiful she was to Dov.

Dov stayed in his room for two weeks, leaving only upon necessity. At the end of the second week he needed some more money and he left his room with some rings to pawn. As he reached the entrance to the building he saw a man standing in the shadows. Dov wrapped his hand around his pistol and walked past, poised to spin around at the first sound.

“Don’t move, don’t turn,” a voice from the shadows commanded.

Dov froze in his tracks.

“You made inquiries for Bar Israel. What do you want?”

“You know what I want.”

“What is your name?”

“Landau, Dov Landau.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Gan Dafna.”

“Who sent you?”

“Mordecai.”

“How did you get into Palestine?”

“On the
Exodus
.”

“Keep walking out to the street and don’t look around. You will be contacted later.”

Dov became restless after the contact was made. He rose to the point of chucking it all and returning to Gan Dafna. He missed Karen terribly. He started a half dozen letters and tore each one up. Let’s get it over with ... let’s get it over with, Dov said to himself again and again.

He lay in his room reading and began to doze. Then he roused himself and lighted fresh candles: if he fell asleep and the old nightmare came he did not want to awaken in a dark room.

There was a sharp knock on his door.

Dov sprang to his feet, picked up his pistol, and stood close to the locked door.

“It is your friends,” a voice said from the hallway. Dov recognized it as the same voice that had spoken to him from the shadows. He opened the door. He could see no one.

“Turn around and face the wall,” the voice commanded from the darkness. Dov obeyed. He felt the presence of two men behind him. A blindfold was tied over his eyes and two pairs of hands led him down the stairs to a waiting car where he was shoved on the back floor and covered and driven from the Old City.

Dov concentrated on sensing where he was being driven. The car screeched into King Solomon Street, followed the Via Dolorosa to Stephen’s Gate. It was child’s play to Dov Landau, who knew his way through a hundred alternate routes in the blackness of the sewers under Warsaw.

The car shifted into a lower gear to make a hill. They must be driving past the Tomb of the Virgin toward the Mount of Olives, Dov calculated. The road became smooth. Now Dov knew they were driving past the Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical Center on Mount Scopus.

They drove another ten minutes and stopped.

Dov accurately pinpointed their position in the Sanhedriya section near the Tombs of the Sanhedrin, the ancient supreme court of Hebrew rabbis, almost to the precise part of the block.

He was led into a house and into a room filled with cigarette smoke where he was made to sit. He sensed at least five or six people. For two hours Dov was grilled. Questions were fired at him from around the room until he began to perspire nervously. As the questioning continued he began to piece it together. The Maccabees had learned through their infallible intelligence sources that Dov had extraordinary talent as a forger, and it was badly needed by them. He had obviously been brought before some of the highest members in the Maccabees, perhaps the commanders themselves. At last they had satisfied themselves that Dov’s qualifications and security checked.

“There is a curtain in front of you,” a voice said. “Put your hands through it.”

Dov pushed his hands through the cloth. One of his hands was placed on a pistol and the other on a Bible. He repeated the oath of the Maccabees:

“I, Dov Landau, do give my body, my soul, my being, without reservation or qualification, to the Freedom Fighters of the Maccabees. I will obey any and all orders without question. I will subordinate myself to the authority over me. Under torture, even to death, I will never divulge the name of a fellow Maccabee or the secrets entrusted to me. I will fight the enemies of the Jewish people unto the last breath of life in my body. I will never cease in this sacred battle until realization of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River, which is the natural historical right of my people. My creed to mine enemies shall be: Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, burning for burning. All this I swear in the name of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachael and Leah and the prophets and of all the Jews who have been slaughtered and all my gallant brothers and sisters who have died in the name of freedom.”

The blindfold was taken from Dov’s eyes and the candles on the Menorah before him were blown out and the lights went up in the room. Dov looked into the eyes of six grim men and two women. They shook hands with him and introduced themselves. Old man Akiva himself was there and Ben Moshe, their field leader, who had lost a brother fighting for the British in the war and a sister with the Palmach. Nahum Ben Ami was one of seven brothers. The other six were in the Palmach. These men and women banded together because they were neither capable or desirous of the self-restraint of the Yishuv.

Old Akiva stepped up before Dov. “You will be of value to us, Dov Landau. That is why we took you without the usual training.”

“I did not join to draw pictures,” Dov snapped.

“You will do what you are told to do,” Ben Moshe answered.

“Dov, you are a Maccabee now,” Akiva said. “You are entitled to take a name of a Hebrew hero. Do you have such a name in mind?”

“Giora,” Dov said.

There was some laughter about the room. Dov gritted his teeth.

“Giora, is it? Akiva said. “I am afraid there are others ahead of you.”

“How about Little Giora,” Nahum Ben Ami said, “until Dov can become Big Giora?”

“I will become Big Giora soon enough if you give me the chance.”

“You will set up a forgery plant,” Ben Moshe said, “and travel with us. If you behave and do as you are told we may let you go out on a raid with us now and again.”

Major Fred Caldwell played bridge in the main lounge of the British Officers’ Club at Goldsmith House in Jerusalem. Freddie was finding it difficult to concentrate on card playing. His mind kept wandering back to the CID Headquarters and on the captured Maccabee girl they had been interrogating for some three days. Her name was Ayala and she was in her early twenties and fetchingly pretty. She had been a music major at the university. At least she was pretty before the questioning started. Ayala had been another tough Jewess and she had spit defiance at the CID. Like most of the captured Maccabees she spent her time quoting biblical passages, predicting their eternal damnation, or proclaiming the righteousness of her cause.

This morning their patience had run out and Ayala began to get the third degree.

“Your play, Freddie,” his partner said across the table.

Fred Caldwell looked at his cards quickly. “Forgive me,” he said, and played a bad card. His mind was on the inspector standing over Ayala and flailing her with a rubber hose. He heard it thud into the girl’s face time and again until her nose was broken and her eyes blacked and swollen almost shut and her lips puffed and distorted. But Ayala would not break.

Freddie considered that he didn’t give a damn if Ayala never broke: the thought of the smashing of her Jewish face delighted him.

An orderly walked up alongside the table.

“I beg your pardon, Major Caldwell. There is a telephone call for you, sir.”

“Excuse me, chaps,” Freddie said throwing his cards face down and walking off to the phone on the other side of the lounge. He picked up the receiver. “Caldwell here.”

“Hello, Major. This is the sergeant of the guard at CID, sir. Inspector Parkington asked me to phone you right away, sir. He says the Maccabee girl is ready to talk and thought you’d best come over to headquarters right away.”

“Righto,” Freddie said.

“Inspector Parkington has already sent a car for you, sir. It will be there in a few minutes.”

Caldwell returned to the card players. “Sorry, chaps. Have to leave. Duty calls.”

“Bad luck, Freddie.”

Bad luck, hell, Freddie thought. He was looking forward to it. He walked outside Goldsmith House. The guards saluted. A car pulled up to a stop and a soldier jumped from behind the wheel, walked to Caldwell and saluted.

“Major Caldwell?”

“Here, boy.”

“Your car from CID, sir.”

The soldier held the rear door open. Freddie got into the back seat and the soldier ran around, got behind the wheel and they drove off. Two blocks beyond Goldsmith House he pulled the car over to a curb at an intersection. In a second the doors were flung open and three men jumped into the car, slammed the doors, and the car picked up speed again.

Caldwell’s throat closed with fear. He shrieked and tried to leap across Ben Moshe. The Maccabee in the front seat turned around and slapped him with a pistol barrel and Ben Moshe snatched his collar and jerked him back into his seat. The Maccabee driver took off the military cap and looked up in the mirror.

Caldwell’s eyes bugged in terror.

“I demand to know what this is all about!”

“You seem upset, Major Caldwell,” Ben Moshe said coldly.

“Stop this car and let me out immediately, do you hear?”

“Shall we let you out the same way you threw out a fourteen-year-old boy named Ben Solomon in an Arab village? You see, Major Caldwell, Ben Solomon’s ghost called out to us from his grave and asked us to make retribution against the guilty.”

The sweat poured into Caldwell’s eyes. “It’s all a lie ... a lie ... a lie ...”

Ben Moshe flipped something on Caldwell’s lap and shined his flashlight on it. It was a photograph of the decapitated boy, Ben Solomon.

Caldwell began to sob for mercy. He doubled over and vomited in fear.

“It appears that Major Caldwell is in a mood to talk. We had better take him to headquarters and let him give out with his information before settling Ben Solomon’s account.”

Caldwell blurted out all he knew about the British army plans and CID’s operations and afterwards signed a confession of the murder of the boy.

Three days after his abduction Major Fred Caldwell’s body was found on Mount Zion at the Dung Gate of the Old City. Pinned to his body was a picture of Ben Solomon and a photostat of Caldwell’s confession and across it were scribbled the words:
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
.

Major Fred Caldwell received the same fate that Sisera, the Canaanite, met at the hands of Jael when he fled from the scene of his battle with Deborah and Barak.

T
HE REVENGE MURDER
of Major Fred Caldwell had a shattering effect. No one seemed to question its justification, but the Maccabee method was more than many could condone.

In England people had become disgusted with the entire situation and were bringing pressure on the Labour government to give up the mandate. Inside Palestine the British garrison was at once enraged and worried.

Two days after Caldwell was found by the Dung Gate, a Maccabee prisoner, the girl named Ayala, died of internal hemorrhages from the beatings she had received during questioning. When the Maccabees learned of Ayala’s death, there were fourteen days of wrathful retribution. Jerusalem reeled under the impact of terrorist raids. On the last days the raids were climaxed by an audacious daylight attack on Criminal Investigation Division headquarters.

During “Hell’s Fortnight,” as the Maccabee’s wrath came to be designated, Dov Landau had displayed a reckless courage that awed even the toughest of the terrorists. Dov went out four times on raids, the last time as one of the leaders of the final assault against the CID. During Hell’s Fortnight a legend of “Little Giora” was born, in which his name became synonymous with wild fearlessness.