Stateless (35 page)

Yesterday, a thousand workers had been feverishly hammering and sawing and screwing and building and repairing, clambering over the walls and gardens like a frenetic nest of ants. Today, only two men stood in the long garden, viewing the damage from the sea wall, slowly walking up the vast lawns, lakes and canals towards the distant bombed- and burned-out palace that stood sorrowfully on the high hill. A hundred guards were strategically placed out of sight in the woods, ensuring the safety of the two most important people in Russia – Comrades Stalin and Beria.

The two men inspected the rebuilding work slowly, taking in the devastation. They walked from the sea to the remnants of the palace as though they were the only people on the land.

Stalin spat a globule of phlegm onto the ground as if that was all that needed to be said of Hitler and the destruction he had wrought.

The two men continued to walk along the long gardens towards the wreck of the palace.

‘When will this be ready?' Stalin asked quietly.

‘We hope in a year or two. It will be restored, and then we'll use it as an administrative centre for Leningrad.'

‘And the other matter?'

Always wary, Beria didn't want to ask what particular matter, but searched his mind for recent conversations so that he didn't give the wrong answer.

‘It's going according to plan,' he said, stretching out the conversation so that a clue might reveal what was in Stalin's mind.

‘And is the group achieving its aim?'

Beria still had no specific clue. Of all the myriad plans they had in place, not least the growing difficulty of tensions with the Americans in Berlin, he had no idea what in particular Stalin was talking about.

The Supreme Leader of all of Russia turned and looked at his second in command. ‘It has been some years now since they left for Palestine . . .'

At last, the clue he needed. Beria's agile mind slipped into gear.

‘The natural leader is the Jewess Judita Ludmilla. She's about to take command.'

‘Is it wise for a Jew to take over a leadership position?'

Beria thought for a moment, so it appeared he was considering the great man's question with utmost precision. ‘In this one isolated case, comrade, it is wise. This will be the land of the Jew, and to have a non-Jew in control would look and feel wrong. It would raise suspicions.'

Stalin nodded. They continued to walk towards the palace. ‘This girl. Will she achieve the objectives of Operation Outgrowth? Much depends on it. The discussion about the
future of Palestine will soon be taken at the United Nations. She and the other agents must be ready. When it comes to a decision, we will vote for the partition of Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state. And she and the other agents will be our puppets, yes?'

‘Yes, Secretary General. But there are those in Palestine, Jews of course, who are showing some signs of resistance and leaning towards British and American interests. So strategic targets are currently being selected for extermination. Once their voices are silenced, then the road will be clear.'

‘And do you think that this girl is capable of turning the Jewish population in our direction?'

‘Alone, no, Comrade Secretary General. But she has a number of highly trained agents under her, and we are keeping our eye very carefully trained on her. Her handler, Anastasia Bistrzhitska, has been moved to our Mission in Jerusalem in order to coordinate the operation. She was one of our top people in Washington and I ordered her back to put her in charge of training the Jews for this mission. She's done an excellent job.'

They reached the hill that rose towards the shell of Peterhof Palace. ‘Good,' said Stalin. ‘Very good. And who knows, maybe I can get the Jews and the Muslims to love each other. They once did, you know, Lavrentiy Pavlovich. A thousand years ago, in Baghdad. Now, let's see what damage those Nazi bastards did to my building.'

Acre, north of Haifa

1947

T
hey arrived at different times, and on different days. They stayed in different boarding houses, some in cheap dockside hotels, some with sympathetic supporters, and some in lodgings as though they were students here to visit the antiquities of the city. By design, some spoke Hebrew, some French, some Russian, some Yiddish and some German. They went unnoticed by British security.

Yet by design, thirty-four freedom fighters from the combined Irgun and Lehi forces gathered together in order to break their comrades out of one of the most secure and impregnable citadels in the Middle East.

The date of the assault had deliberately been advanced by more than a week, in order to cause maximum embarrassment to the British. It was decided by the Irgun leader, Menachem Begin, that the assault on the prison, and the release of a hundred incarcerated freedom fighters, should coincide with the meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations that had been specially convened to discuss the British mandate and the entire Palestinian issue.

There were many nations among the fifty-seven member states who would vote against the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab nations, but Menachem Begin and other leaders were certain that if enough damage was done to the reputation of the British army, then votes could be swayed away from a further mandate.

The mood of the men and women who met late in the evening at the home of an Irgun supporter in the upper reaches of the Neve Sha'anan region of Haifa was one of restrained fury. Only two or three weeks earlier, four Irgun freedom fighters had been hanged in the prison. The death of the men was the spark that ignited the decision to bring forward the operation to free the other people incarcerated.

To prepare for this mission it had taken days and days of intense study of the fortress, the roads around it, and the most vulnerable access points.

It was Judit who had been instrumental in sourcing much of the information. She'd seduced a sergeant major in the British army in order to acquire plans of the Acre Fortress so that the Irgun's bomb makers could estimate the type and quantities of explosives necessary. The sergeant major had subsequently died in a road accident.

Judit was also put in charge of stealing British uniforms, buying jeeps, trucks and ordinary motor vehicles, and then arranging their painting in British army colours and insignia.

To her comrades she was a fierce strategist for the cause of Lehi who'd do anything necessary to achieve their ultimate goal of a free Jewish Israel. But to herself she was a servant of Soviet Russia who at this moment saw a clear alignment of both ideals.

In the past month, she'd caused accidents – road, boating and gunshot – that had led to the deaths of five prominent people on the list she'd been given by Anastasia, people whose
right-wing and ultra-nationalist ideas would put them at odds with the ambitions of Moscow in a future Israel, a friend of the USSR. People who said publicly that they saw no point in replacing Britain with Russia; people who would have stood in the way.

In a week's time, she'd have to find an excuse to travel to Tel Aviv to meet with Anastasia and the Russian team of which she was now leader, to receive their reports and mete out punishments to those who had failed in their missions. But in the meantime, she had an Irgun mission in which to participate, helping her colleagues to blow up a British prison to hell, and free dozens of imprisoned Irgun soliders. And by coincidence, one of the men still on her list was participating in tomorrow's assault on the fortress at Acre.

Dov was dressed in the uniform of a lieutenant in the Engineering Corps of the British army in Palestine. He was supervising five NCOs laying telephone and electricity cables close to the southern wall of the citadel above an old underground Turkish bath. Dov stood and pondered why he so favoured the operational name he'd chosen.

All Lehi and Irgun fighters adopted operational names, partly out of security and partly out of bravado. He'd chosen as his nickname ‘Shimshon', known to the British he was so often fighting as Samson. He had been the character from his childhood stories in Riga who had embedded himself in Dov's imagination. In bed at night, beneath the covers, he'd fantasise about being Samson – a great judge, brave, daring and relentless against his enemies, slaying a lion with his bare hands, killing
an entire army with the jawbone of an ass, and destroying a pagan temple using his strength alone; then appearing before the people and lauded as a hero.

Dov's life hadn't been so heroic. He'd stolen weapons, bombed rail-lines, shot British soldiers and fought off Arab attacks, but always in the dark and the quiet. Something in him longed to be a hero.

He glanced over at his colleague, Ariel Waxman, a right-wing firebrand journalist whose articles in the
Palestine Post
were becoming increasingly militant, calling for the British to withdraw immediately, and allow Arabs and Jews to decide the fate of the new nation. Waxman's membership of the Irgun was something he even hinted at in his articles, and he'd only just been released from imprisonment in this fortress for inciting revolt.

Dov looked at his watch and hoped that the other Irgun troops under his command stationed at the other sides of the walls of the prison weren't meeting resistance or scrutiny. They each knew precisely how to perform their roles, as did the prisoners inside the gaol. It had been planned to begin at precisely 4.22 pm, when the day guards were tired and distracted, thinking about what they'd do during the night, and the evening shift workers were not yet in place to take over.

The first explosion would be in the one weak spot of the prison in Acre, where he and his men were pretending to lay cables. When the Ottomans had conquered Acre, they'd built a Turkish bath in the basement of the citadel, and had significantly weakened the structure above. It was the only point in the walls of the vast fortress that was vulnerable, a weakness discovered by Judit.

The minutes ticked on, and at 4.10 pm, in the most British voice he could muster, he said, ‘Alright, chaps, that's enough. Clear up. Our work's done here.'

It took them three minutes to pick up their tools, leaving the explosive they'd planted inside the hole they'd made in the wall covered with rocks and debris. They'd buried it in a cavity that would ensure that the explosive forces expanded upwards, downwards and into the building, and would not dissipate uselessly into the street.

Bundled into the British Army Engineering Corps truck, they trundled north and then into a side road near the market to wait. Dov peered steely-eyed through the windscreen. Around him the men were silent. No longer naïve boys driven by anger and ambition, they were now veterans; experienced guerrilla fighters. It hadn't been easy and they'd lost many along the way – imprisoned or dead. But those that were here were reliable.

He glanced at his watch then back through the windscreen. His mind ticked away the remaining moments. And then he heard a massive explosion. The sound was deep and resonant, though there was almost nothing visual to show for its scale. The damage was contained and focused and a signal to those inside.

The moment the explosion in the walls above the Turkish bath was heard and felt throughout the prison, the inmates who knew of the raid – members of Irgun – went into action. For days, TNT had been smuggled inside by Jewish cooks; it had been fashioned into hand grenades and bombs, and as the external bomb was detonated, bombs inside the prison were set off, blasting off doors, and breaching the internal structures adjacent to where Shimshon and his men had fractured the external walls.

Though a carefully guarded secret operation, the moment the sound of the explosions ripped through the prison, hundreds of Arab and Jewish inmates immediately knew that there was a gaol break happening. They rushed to the sound of the explosions while Irgun and Lehi prisoners, armed with the grenades, blew open iron grilles and doors and held the stunned British guards at bay.

Within minutes, the inside of the prison became a smoke-filled, ear-splitting maelstrom of explosions, gunfire, screams from wounded and dying men, orders yelled, feet running and yelps of panic. But the prisoners of the Irgun and Lehi knew precisely what they should be doing, and for which exit point in the wall they should be heading. Some Jews knew that their task wasn't to escape but to form a vanguard to hold the British soldiers in position so that their colleagues could climb out of the breach; it was a suicide mission for four of the men, knowing that they'd either be killed by the guards or hanged for their participation in the escape.