Leon Uris (7 page)

The British had said many times that the Palestinian Jews were a match for anyone on matters of intelligence. The Jews had the advantage that every Jew in every country in the world was a potential source of information and protection for a Mossad Aliyah Bet agent.

At daybreak Ari awakened David, and after a quick breakfast they rode in one of Mandria’s taxis out to the detention camp at Caraolos.

The compounds themselves stretched for many miles in an area that hugged the bay, midway between Famagusta and the ruins of Salamis. The garbage dumps were a contact point between the refugees and the Cypriots. The British guarded them loosely because the garbage detail was made up of “trusties.” The garbage dumps became trading centers where leather goods and art work made in the camp were exchanged for bread and clothing. David led Ari through the dumps where the early morning bartering between Greeks and Jews was already going on. From here they entered their first compound.

Ari stood and looked at the mile after mile of barbed wire. Although it was November it was chokingly hot under a constant swirl of blowing dust. Compound after compound of tents were stretched along the bay, all set in an area of low-hanging acacia trees. Each compound was closed in by ten- to twelve-foot walls of barbed wire. On the corners there were searchlight towers manned by British guards armed with machine guns. A skinny dog began following them. The word “BEVIN” was painted on the dog’s sides—a bow to the British Foreign Minister.

It was the same scene in each compound they visited: packed with miserable and angry people. Almost everyone was dressed in crudely sewn purple shorts and shirts made from cloth that had been torn from the inner linings of the tents. Ari studied the faces filled with suspicion, hatred, defeat.

In each new compound Ari would suddenly be embraced by a boy or girl in the late teens or early twenties who had been smuggled in by the Palestine Palmach to work with the refugees. They would throw their arms about him and begin to ask questions about home. Each time Ari begged off, promising to hold a Palmach meeting for the whole group in a few days. Each Palmach head showed Ari around the particular compound he or she was in charge of, and occasionally Ari would ask a question.

For the most part, he was very quiet. His eyes were searching the miles of barbed wire for some key that would help him get three hundred people out.

Many of the compounds were grouped together by nationalities. There were compounds of Poles and of French and of Czechs. There were compounds of Orthodox Jews and there were compounds of those who banded together with similar political beliefs. Most compounds, however, were merely survivals of the war, with no identity other than that they were Jews who wanted to go to Palestine. They all had a similarity in their uniform misery.

David led Ari to a wooden bridge that connected two main portions of the camp by crossing over the top of the barbed wire walls. There was a sign on the bridge that read:
WELCOME TO BERGEN-BEVIN
. “It is rather bitter irony, Ari, this bridge. There was one exactly like it in the Lodz ghetto in Poland.”

By now David was seething. He berated the British for the subhuman conditions of the camp, for the fact that German prisoners of war on Cyprus had a greater degree of freedom, for the lack of food and medical care, and just for the general gross injustice. Ari was not listening to David’s ranting. He was too intent on studying the structure and arrangement of the place. He asked David to show him the tunnels.

Ari was led to a compound of Orthodox Jews close to the bay. There was a row of outside toilets near the barbed wire wall. On the first toilet shack was a sign that read:
BEVINGRAD
. Ari was shown that the fifth and sixth toilets in the line of sheds were fakes. The holes under the seats led under the barbed wire and through tunnels to the bay. Ari shook his head—it was all right for a few people at a time but not suited for a mass escape.

Several hours had passed. They had nearly completed the inspection. Ari had hardly spoken a word for two hours. At last, bursting with anxiety, David asked, “Well, what do you think?”

“I think,” Ari answered, “that Bevin isn’t very popular around here. What else is there to see?”

“I saved the children’s compound for last. We have Palmach headquarters there.”

As they entered the children’s compound Ari was once again pounced upon by a Palmachnik. But this time he returned the embrace with vigor and a smile on his face, for it was an old and dear friend, Joab Yarkoni. He whirled Yarkoni around, set him down, and hugged him again. Joab Yarkoni was a dark-skinned Moroccan Jew who had emigrated to Palestine as a youngster. His black eyes sparkled and a huge brush of a mustache seemed to take up half of his face. Joab and Ari had shared many adventures together, for although Joab was still in his early twenties he was one of the crack agents in the Mossad Aliyah Bet, with an intimate knowledge of the Arab countries.

From the beginning Yarkoni had been one of the wiliest and most daring operators in Mossad. His greatest feat was one which started the Jews of Palestine in the date-palm industry. The Iraqi Arabs guarded their date palms jealously, but Yarkoni had managed to smuggle a hundred saplings into Palestine from Iraq.

David Ben Ami had given Joab Yarkoni command of the children’s compound, for it was, indeed, the most important place in the Caraolos camp.

Joab showed Ari around the compound, which was filled with orphans from infancy to seventeen years of age. Most of them had been inmates of concentration camps during the war, and many of them had never known a life outside of barbed wire. Unlike the other compounds, the children’s section had several permanent structures erected. There was a school, a dining hall, a hospital, smaller units, and a large playground. There was a great deal of activity here in contrast to the lethargy in the other areas. Nurses, doctors, teachers, and welfare people from the outside, sponsored by money from American Jews, worked in the compound.

Because of the flow of outsiders, the children’s compound was the most loosely guarded in Caraolos. David and Joab were quick to capitalize on this fact by establishing Palmach headquarters in the compound.

At night the playground was transformed into a military training camp for refugees. The classrooms were turned from standard schools into indoctrination centers in Arab psychology, Palestine geography, tactics, weapons identification, and a hundred other phases of warfare instruction.

Each refugee receiving military training by the Palmach had to stand trial by a kangaroo court. The pretense was that the refugee had got to Palestine and had been picked up by the British. The Palmach instructor would then put him through an interrogation to try to establish that the refugee was not in the country legally. The refugee had to answer a thousand questions about the geography and history of Palestine to “prove” he had been there many years.

When a “candidate” successfully completed the course, the Palmach arranged an escape, generally through the children’s compound or the tunnels, to the white house on the hill at Salamis, whence he would be smuggled into Palestine. Several hundred refugees had been sent to Palestine that way, in groups of twos and threes.

British CID was not unaware of the fact that irregular things took place inside the children’s compound. Time and again they planted spies among the outside teachers and welfare workers, but the ghetto and the concentration camps had bred a tight-lipped generation of children and the intruders were always discovered within a day or two.

Ari ended the inspection of the children’s compound in the schoolhouse. One of the schoolrooms was, in fact, Palmach headquarters. Inside the teacher’s desk was a secret radio and transmitter which maintained contact with Palestine. Under the floor boards weapons were hidden for the military training courses. In this room papers and passes were forged.

Ari looked over the forgery plant and shook his head. “This counterfeit work is terrible,” he said. “Joab, you are very sloppy.”

Yarkoni merely shrugged.

“In the next few weeks,” Ari continued, “we are going to need an expert. David, you said there is one right here.”

“That’s right. He is a Polish boy named Dov Landau, but he refuses to work.”

“We have tried for weeks,” Joab added.

“Let me speak to him.”

Ari told the two men to wait outside as he stepped into Dov Landau’s tent. He looked over at a blond boy, undersized and tense and suspicious at the sudden intrusion. Ari knew the look—the eyes filled with hate. He studied the turned-down mouth and the snarling lips of the youngster: the expression of viciousness that stamped so many of the concentration-camp people.

“Your name is Dov Landau,” Ari said, looking directly into his eyes. “You are seventeen years old and Polish. You have a concentration camp background and you are an expert forger, counterfeiter, and duplicator. My name is Ari Ben Canaan. I’m a Palestinian from Mossad Aliyah Bet.”

The boy spat on the ground.

“Look, Dov, I’m not going to plead and I’m not going to threaten. I’ve got a plain out-and-out business proposition ... let’s call it a mutual assistance pact.”

Dov Landau snarled, “I want to tell you something, Mr. Ben Canaan. You guys aren’t any better than the Germans or the British. The only reason you want us over there so bad is to save your necks from the Arabs. Let me tell you—I’m getting to Palestine all right and when I do I’m joining an outfit that’s going to let me kill!”

Ari did not change expression at the outburst of venom that erupted from the boy. “Good. We understand each other perfectly. You don’t like my motives for wanting you in Palestine and I don’t like yours for wanting to get there. We do agree on one thing: you belong in Palestine and not here.”

The boy’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. This Ben Canaan was not like the others.

“Let’s take it a step further,” Ari said. “You’re not going to get to Palestine by sitting here on your arse and doing nothing. You help me and I’ll help you. What happens after you get there is your business.”

Dov Landau blinked with surprise.

“Here’s the point,” Ari said. “I need forged papers. I need piles of them in the next few weeks and these boys here can’t forge their own names. I want you to work for me.”

The boy had been thrown completely off guard by Ari’s rapid and direct tactics. He wanted time to look for a hidden trick. “I’ll think it over,” he said.

“Sure, think it over. You’ve got thirty seconds.”

“And what will you do if I refuse? You going to try to beat it out of me?”

“Dov, I said we need each other. Let me make myself clear. If you don’t go along with this I’m going to personally see to it that you’re the last person out of the Caraolos detention camp. With thirty-five thousand people ahead of you, you’ll be too old and feeble to lift one of those bombs by the time you get to Palestine. Your thirty seconds are up.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“Because I said you could.”

A faint smile crossed the boy’s face, and he nodded that he would go to work.

“All right. You get your orders from either David Ben Ami or Joab Yarkoni. I don’t want you giving anyone a bad time. If you have any problems, you ask for me. I want you to report to Palmach headquarters in a half hour and look over their plant and let David know what special materials you’ll need.”

Ari turned and walked out of the tent to where David and Joab waited. “He’ll report to work in a half hour,” Ari said.

David gaped and Joab’s mouth fell open in awe.

“How did you do it?”

“Child psychology. I’m going back to Famagusta,” Ari said. “I want to see you two boys at Mandria’s house tonight. Bring Zev Gilboa with you. Don’t bother to show me out. I know the way.”

David and Joab stared in fascination as their friend, the remarkable Ari Ben Canaan, crossed the playground in the direction of the garbage dumps.

That night in his living room Mandria, the Cypriot, waited, along with David, Joab, and a newcomer, Zev Gilboa, for the appearance of Ari Ben Canaan.

Zev Gilboa, also a Palestinian Palmachnik, was a broad-backed farmer from the Galilee. Like Yarkoni, he, too, wore a large brushlike mustache and was in his early twenties. Zev Gilboa was the best of the soldiers among the Palmach Palestinians working inside Caraolos. David had given Zev the task of heading military training for the refugees. With zest, with improvised weapons, and by using the children’s playground at night he had taught his trainees nearly everything that could be taught without actual arms. Broomsticks were rifles, rocks were grenades, bedsprings were bayonets. He set up courses in hand-to-hand fighting and stick fighting. Mostly he instilled tremendous spirit into the spiritless refugees.

The hour grew very late. Mandria began pacing nervously. “All I know,” he said, “I gave him a taxi and a driver this afternoon.”

“Relax, Mr. Mandria,” David said. “Ari may not be back for three days. He has strange ways of working. We are used to it.”

Midnight passed and the four men began to sprawl out and make themselves comfortable. In a half hour they began to doze, and in an hour they were all asleep.

At five o’clock in the morning Ari Ben Canaan entered the room. His eyes were bleary from a night of traveling around the island. He had slept only in brief naps since he had landed on Cyprus. He and Zev Gilboa hugged each other in the traditional Palmach manner, then he set right to work without offering excuse or apology for being eight hours late.

“Mr. Mandria. Have you got us our boat yet?”

Mandria was aghast. He slapped his forehead in amazement. “Mr. Ben Canaan! You landed on Cyprus less than thirty hours ago and asked me for a boat. I am not a shipbuilder, sir. My company, Cyprus-Mediterranean Shipping, has offices in Famagusta, Larnaca, Kyrenia, Limassol, and Paphos. There are no other ports in Cyprus. All my offices are looking for a boat for you. If there is a boat on Cyprus you will know it, sir.”

Ari ignored Mandria’s sarcasm and turned to the others.

“Zev, I suppose David has told you what we’re going to do.”