Leon Uris (69 page)

The girl stared at Kitty as though she had been slapped. For a moment she did not even understand or believe she had heard it right.

“Home? But ... but this is my home. I have no other home.”

“I want your home to be with me—always.”

“I want that too, Kitty. I want it more than anything. It is so strange.”

“What is, dear?”

“When you said home, in America.”

“But I am an American, Karen, and I miss my home.”

Karen bit her lip to keep from crying. “That’s funny, isn’t it? I thought we would go on like we were. You would be at Gan Dafna and ...”

“And you would go off into the Palmach ... and then to some
kibbutz
out on a border?”

“I guess that’s what I thought.”

“There are many things I have learned to love here, but this is not my country and these are not my people.”

“I guess I have been selfish,” Karen said. “I never thought of you as getting homesick or wanting anything for yourself.”

“That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

Karen poured two cups of tea and tried to think. Kitty was everything to her ... but leave?

“I don’t know how to say it, Kitty, but ever since I was old enough to read in Denmark I’ve asked myself the question about being Jewsh. I still don’t know the answer. I only know that I have something here that is mine ... no one is going to take it from me. Whatever it is, it’s the most important thing in the world. Someday I might know the words for it—but I can’t leave Palestine.”

“Whatever you have, you will still have it. Jews in America and I suppose Jews everywhere have this same belonging that you have. Going away won’t change that.”

“But they are exiles.”

“No, baby ... don’t you understand that Jews in America love their country?”

“The Jews of Germany loved their country too.”

“Stop it!” Kitty cried suddenly. “We are not that kind of people and I will not listen to those lies they fill you with!” She caught herself quickly. “There are Jews in America who love their country so much they would prefer death to ever living to see what happened to Germany come to America.” She walked up behind the girl’s chair and touched her shoulder. “Don’t you think I know how difficult this is for you? Do you believe I would do anything to hurt you?”

“No,” Karen whispered.

Kitty faced Karen and knelt before her chair. “Oh, Karen. You don’t even know the meaning of peace. In all your life you have never been able to walk in the light of the sun without fear. Do you think it will be any better here? Do you think it will ever be better? Karen, I want you to go on being a Jew and I want you to go on loving your land, but there are other things I want for you too.”

Karen turned her eyes away from Kitty.

“If you stay here you’ll spend your whole life with a gun in your hands. You’ll turn hard and cynical like Ari and Jordana.”

“I guess it isn’t fair of me to have expected you would stay.”

“Come with me, Karen. Give us both a chance. We need each other. We’ve both had enough suffering.”

“I don’t know if I can leave ... I don’t know ... I just don’t,” she said with a shaky voice.

“Oh, Karen ... I want so much to see you in saddle shoes and pleated skirts, going out to a football game in a cut-down Ford. I want to hear the phone ringing and you giggling and talking to your boy friend. I want you full of delicious nonsense as a teen-age girl should be—not carrying a gun in your hands or smuggling ammunition. There are so many things that you are missing. You must at least find out they are in the world before you make your final decision. Please, Karen ... please.”

Karen was pale. She walked away from Kitty. “What about Dov?”

Kitty took Dov’s letter from her pocket and handed it to Karen. “I found this on my desk. I don’t know how it got there.”

Mrs. Fremont:

This letter is being written by someone who knows more better how to say in English than I do but I copy it to show it is my writing. This letter must be sent to you in a special way for reasons you know of. I am very busy these days. I am with friends. My friends are the first I have in a long time and they are real good friends. Now that I am permanent situated, I want to write to you and to say how glad I am not to be at Gan Dafna no more where everybody makes me sick, including you and Karen Clement. I write to say I won’t see Karen Clement no more as I am too busy and with real friends. I don’t want Karen Clement to think I am going to come back and take care of her. She is nothing but a kid. I have a real woman of my own age and we live together and everything. Why don’t you go with Karen Clement to America because she doesn’t belong here.

Dov Landau

Kitty took the letter from Karen’s hand and ripped it to shreds. “I will tell Dr. Lieberman that I am resigning. As soon as we can straighten up matters here we will book passage to America.”

“All right, Kitty. I’ll go with you,” Karen said.

E
VERY FEW WEEKS
the Maccabee high command changed its headquarters. After “Hell’s Fortnight” and the assassination of Arnold Haven-Hurst, Ben Moshe and Akiva thought it would be best to get out of Jerusalem for a while. The Maccabees were a small organization, a few hundred full-time members and a few thousand part-time with a few thousand more sympathizers. Because they had to remain constantly on the move the headquarters command group carried no more than a half dozen of the top men. Now the pressure was so great that the command split up and only four persons went to Tel Aviv. There was Akiva and Ben Moshe and Nahum Ben Ami, the brother of David, and there was Little Giora—Dov Landau. Dov had become a personal favorite of Akiva. He had gained the inner circle of the Maccabee command by his fame in the raids and by the usefulness of his talents in forgery.

The four moved into a basement apartment owned by a fellow Maccabee, located on Bene Berak Road near the Central Bus Station and the old market, where there was great activity. Maccabee lookouts were posted around the apartment house and an escape route was worked out. It looked ideal—and could have been worse.

For nearly fifteen years Akiva had frustrated CID and British Intelligence. There was a period of amnesty during World War II when Akiva was free, but for the rest of that time he was wanted. He had always evaded them and had escaped many traps that had been set for him. Akiva was the biggest prize in Palestine with the price on his head running to several thousand pounds sterling.

It was coincidence that the CID was observing the activities of another apartment house on Bene Berak Road just three houses away from the new Maccabee headquarters. The suspects were a ring of smugglers who had been storing goods got past customs in the Jaffa port. The alert CID men watching from an observation point in a building across the street spotted the suspicious picket of watchmen regularly near the basement headquarters. With a telescopic lens camera they photographed all the lookouts and identified two as known Maccabees. While stalking smugglers, they had stumbled onto a Maccabee hangout. Their long experience with the Maccabees induced them to raid at once. They organized quickly and moved to effect complete surprise. They still had no idea they were going into Maccabee headquarters itself.

Dov was in one of the three rooms of the basement apartment forging an El Salvador passport. Only Akiva was with him. Nahum and Ben Moshe had gone out to meet Zev Gilboa, the liaison for the Haganah and Palmach. Akiva came into the room.

“Well, well, Little Giora,” Akiva said, “how did you manage to talk Ben Moshe out of taking you along on today’s business?”

“I must finish this passport,” Dov grumbled.

Akiva looked at his watch and then stretched out on a cot behind Dov. “They should be returning shortly.”

“I don’t trust the Haganah,” Dov said.

“We have no choice but to trust them for the time being,” the old man said.

Dov held the passport paper up to the light to study his erasures and see if they could be detected through the water marks and seal. It was a good job. Not even an expert could spot where he had worked over the name and description of the former owner. Dov bent close to the paper and etched in the signature of an El Salvador official, then put the pen down. He got up and paced the tiny room restlessly checking frequently to see if the ink was dry, then resuming his walking, back and forth, snapping his fingers.

“Don’t be so impatient, Little Giora. You will find that waiting is the worst part of underground life. Waiting for what, I often wonder?”

“I’ve lived underground before,” Dov said quickly.

“So you have.” Akiva sat up and stretched. “Waiting, waiting, waiting,” Akiva said. “You are very young, Dov. You should learn not to be quite so serious and quite so intense. That was always one of my faults. I was always too intense. Worked day and night for the cause.”

“That sounds strange coming from Akiva,” Dov said.

“An old man begins to see many things. We wait for a chance to wait. If they get us, the best we can expect is exile or life in prison. The hanging and the torture is getting to be standard procedure these days. That’s why I say ... don’t be so serious. There are many nice Maccabee girls who would love to meet our Little Giora. Have fun while there is time.”

“I am not interested,” Dov said firmly.

“Ah, hah,” the old man teased, “perhaps you already have a girl you have been holding out on us.”

“I had a girl once,” Dov said, “but no more.”

“I must tell Ben Moshe to find you a new one and you will go out and enjoy yourself.”

“I don’t want one and I’ll stay in headquarters. It is the most important place to be.”

The old man lay back again and he meditated. At length he spoke. “How wrong you are, Little Giora. How very wrong you are. The most important place to be is awakening in the morning and looking out at your fields, working in them—and coming home at night to someone you love and who loves you.”

The old man is getting sentimental again, Dov thought. He tried the paper and found it dry. He fitted the passport photo into place. As Akiva dozed on the cot, Dov began his pacing again. It was worse now that he had sent the letter to Mrs. Fremont. He wanted to go on raids. Another raid and another and another. Sooner or later the British would get him and hang him and it would be all over with. They didn’t know that his bravery came from the fact that he didn’t care. He almost begged to be hit by enemy gunfire. The dream was bad these days and Karen was not there to stand between him and the gas-chamber door. Mrs. Fremont would take her to America now. That would be good. And he would keep on going on raids until they got him, because it was no good to live without Karen.

Outside of the apartment fifty plain-clothed British police intermingled with the crowds near the bus station. They moved quickly, picking up the Maccabee lookouts and whisking them out of the area before they could give a warning. Then they cordoned off the entire block.

Fifteen police armed with shotguns, tear gas, axes, and sledge hammers slipped down to the basement apartment and stationed themselves around the door.

There was a knock.

Akiva’s eyes fluttered open.

“That must be Ben Moshe and Nahum. Let them in, Dov.”

Dov slipped the chain latch into place and opened the door a crack. A sledge hammer crashed into the door, ripping it open.

“British!” Dov screamed.

Akiva and Little Giora captured!

The word was on every lip in Palestine! The legendary Akiva who had eluded the British for more than a decade was now theirs!

“Betrayal!” cried the Maccabees. They placed the blame on the Haganah. Ben Moshe and Nahum Ben Ami had been meeting with Zev Gilboa. Either Gilboa or some other Haganah person had followed them to learn the Maccabee headquarters. How else could it have been found? The two factions were again at odds. The Maccabees voiced accusations. A hundred rumors circulated purporting to reveal how the Haganah had managed its alleged sellout.

The British High Commissioner for Palestine moved for an immediate trial to produce a quick sentence which would further demoralize the Maccabees. He felt that swift justice for Akiva would restore British authority and curtail the Maccabee activities, since the old man had long been the spiritual force behind the terrorists.

The high commissioner arranged a secret trial. The name of the judge was withheld for his own safety. Akiva and Little Giora were sentenced to be hanged within a fortnight of their capture.

They were both incarcerated in the impenetrable Acre jail.

In his eagerness the high commissioner had made a disastrous mistake. Newsmen had been barred from the trial, and in the United States in particular the Maccabees had powerful friends and financial aid. The guilt or innocence of Akiva and Little Giora were lost sight of in the passionate outbursts that followed. Like the
Exodus
incident, the sentencing of the pair was being turned into a focus for violent protest of the British mandate. Dov’s background of the Warsaw ghetto and Auschwitz was dug up and published, producing a wave of public sympathy all over Europe. There was indignation over the secrecy of the trial. Pictures of the eighty-year-old Akiva and eighteen-year-old Little Giora, the prophet and the disciple, captured the imagination of readers. Newsmen demanded to see the pair.

Cecil Bradshaw was in Palestine with UNSCOP. Having seen what could happen in the case of the
Exodus
he quickly went into a conference with the high commissioner and applied to the home office for instructions. The incident was creating ill will for the British at a delicate time, when the United Nations Committee was in Palestine. Instead of halting Maccabee activity the affair might trigger a new rash of terror. Bradshaw and the high commissioner decided to move quickly to show the world that British justice was merciful. Using the extreme ages of Dov and Akiva as an excuse they announced that they would allow the sentenced pair to make petitions for mercy and spare their lives. Their action put a halt to the storm of protest.

The high commissioner and Bradshaw themselves went to the Acre prison to see Akiva and Dov and tell them the good news. The latter were brought into the warden’s office where the two officials bluntly explained the proposal.