Zion (8 page)

Of course, James thought. Must have been hell. But then everyone wants to be in a war once it’s over. “He also serves, and all that.”

“You’re a little shit.”

His cheeks flushed. He picked up his wine and pretended to concentrate on it. Henry had always been the kind of older brother you had nightmares about. At school he was hopeless at sport, a swot, and a complete wash-out in a fist fight. But at home he was overbearing and fastidious. James had tolerated it because he didn’t want to upset their mother. But there was no damned good reason why he should take it anymore.

“Henry, if we weren’t in a rather fancy restaurant, I should have to ask you to take that back.”

“Don’t be an ass.”

“It’s ten years since you’ve been home. I’m not your little brother anymore.”

‘Just because you’ve got some pips on your shoulder doesn’t mean you’re all grown up. The Army’s a bit light on these days. If you can write your own name correctly two times out of three, they make you a brigadier-general.’

Oh, fuck you, James thought. I earned these. I have a Military Cross for valor and you didn’t have to spell your name on D-day you just had to take out a German machine gun with two new recruits for Cornwall and a sergeant who still remembered fighting in a trench. He had last seen Henry in 1936, eight years ago. He was still at grammar school then. He was still too young to realize his big brother batted for the other team. Now he knew why some of the other boys laughed at him.

“Here’s the food,” he said. A waiter brought two prawn cocktails - Hesse’s was famous for them - and they ate for a while in silence.

“I imagine you’re rather glad it’s all over,” Henry said at last.

“I wish it was.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning Palestine. I feel like a duck in a shooting gallery. At least when we were fighting the Germans there were rules.”

“This will blow over, Jimmy. The Jews and the Arabs are always sniping at each other.”

James put down his fork and leaned forward. “Blow over? It’s getting worse all the time. The bloody Jews are attacking forts and blowing up bridges and warehouses. The Lord alone knows what they’ll do next. In another couple of months they say there’ll be a hundred thousand British soldiers stationed here!”

Someone dropped a tray in the kitchen. Everyone in the restaurant had turned pale. Like Talbot, they had all started at the crash, thinking it was a bomb. “The government will work something out,” Talbot said.

“The government! How many fact-finding committees has Bevin sent over? No matter how many ‘facts’ they have, those clowns aren’t going to understand these fucking wogs any more than they do now.”

“I suppose you have all the answers.”

“Look, a few years ago we were supporting the Jews. Now we’re supporting the Arabs. We’ve twisted and turned this country so many bloody different ways it’ll take years to undo the knots! If ever!”

A man Talbot knew from the Commissioner’s office glanced over at their table. “Keep your voice down,” Henry hissed.

“It’s easy to be objective over here. None of you people saw the Nazis’ concentration camps.”

“I didn’t know you had.”

“Just one, a place called Belsen. That was enough.” He buttered his roll. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg had begun five months ago, and was still dominating international news.

“Is it true? The things one reads about?”

“This isn’t something I want to dwell on over lunch, but my one abiding memory is seeing a human skeleton in a striped uniform trying to cut flesh off a three-day-old corpse with the sharpened edge of a spoon. When our interpreter asked him what he was doing he said he was hungry. Form your own impressions.”

Henry put down his fork. Suddenly the seafood was a little too raw and pink. He pushed the bowl away. “Thank God we won,” he said.

“I don’t think it’s made much difference to the Jews. We don’t torture them or use them as slave labor but they still have to live in camps. We don’t want them, the Americans don’t want them, the Poles don’t want them, Russia certainly doesn’t want them. The only place that does want them they can’t get into.”

“This isn’t their country,” Talbot said. “The Arabs lived here before they did.”

“What difference does that make? We’ve only been here thirty years and we
run
the bloody place.”

“That’s beside the point, the thing is - ”

“I mean, is there a statute of limitations on ownership? The Romans forcibly repatriated the Jews two thousand years ago. Right?”

“What do you say to the Arabs who have lived here ever since?”

“In 1937 the Peel Commission advocated partition. That’s always seemed like a good idea to me.”

“That’s because you’re not an Arab and your
home
isn’t inside the proposed Jewish territory. How would you feel if the Americans came along and told you to move to Manchester so the French could take over Guildford?” He realized he had raised his voice and dropped it back to a whisper. “Look at it this way. Our family’s only lived in Surrey for forty years. Some Arabs can trace their roots in a village back to the time of Mohammed!”

James stared at his older brother, surprised by the sudden passion the subject had aroused in him. So unlike Henry. “You’ve changed color, Hal,” he said.

“I’ve been in Palestine a long time.”

“I hope not too long.”

“Don’t lecture me, Jimmy. At least my view of things coincides with my duty. A happy coincidence perhaps, but there you are. Don’t let your opinions allow you to forget what you’re here for.”

“I know what I’m here for. To fight another damned war.” He leaned forward and said in a whisper: ‘I’ve seen the files. In the thirties the
kibbutzim
instituted a compulsory premilitary training program for all boys and girls between fourteen and seventeen. The CID think the Haganah now has a membership of forty thousand, including an
elite
professional paramilitary unit of fifteen hundred highly trained men and women, called the
Palmach
. If they want to make trouble, Hal, they’ve had plenty of time to learn how to do it.”

“It won’t come to that.”

“You seem very sure so maybe you know something I don’t. But the one thing I would like to avoid is surviving D-day and the Ardennes and then coming here and getting shot in some stupid little war I don’t want to fight.”

“No one wants a war here.’

‘Really? Well I don’t know, I’m just new here. But if you ask me who wants a war? I’d say everyone does.’

Old City

The woman in the black
abbayah
stopped outside the Hass’an Olive Oil Company. She had passed the factory many times this particular evening, in order to familiarize herself with the location, but who would have noticed? A tool of enslavement, the veil also gave her the advantage of anonymity.

She stepped into the alley beside the coffee shop, turned another corner into the shadows of the laneway behind the factory. A wooden staircase led to a door on the second floor. She hurried up the steps and tried the handle. It was open. She took a Beretta from the folds of her
abbayah
and went inside.

Rishou Hass’an shut down the press and locked the doors. It was late, and no sign of his brother. He had hoped Majid might return so he could go home to Rab’allah for a few days but typically his brother had been delayed elsewhere. Probably with a mistress. Never mind. He would go tomorrow.

Majid was dependable in other ways. Money, for example. Without Majid the Hass’an Olive Oil Company would not be possible. Who knew where all this money came from? Some of it was profit from Majid’s dealings on the black market, some the proceeds from the taxi lease. Allah alone knew what else he was involved in.

It had been Rishou’s idea to use the olives from their orchards to start their own press. Now, at least, they would be able to leave something worthwhile for their sons even if the land around Rab’allah were swallowed up by the Jews.

As their father had predicted, the old ways were dying. Zayyad's influence was waning; it was money that mattered now. Money bought cars and suits and cigarettes. Money bought respect.

He looked at his watch. He would head upstairs to the office and write up the accounts and then he would go to sleep. He kept a mattress on the floor for such a purpose.

He lit a hurricane lamp and turned off the electric light. He went upstairs, shivering. Majid had pilfered a kerosene heater from the British stores. He would need it tonight.

He opened the door of his office and a draught of warm air met him. He stared at the glow of the heater, alarmed. Someone was here already! “Majid?” he said.

The door clicked shut behind him.

He swung around. There was a woman, an Arab woman, standing behind the door, holding a gun. He stared in astonishment.

“Put down the lamp,” the woman said.

Something familiar about that voice, he thought, even though it was muffled by her veil.

He put down the lamp.

The gun was pointing at his chest. “Just stay where you are.”

For a moment he was too shocked to move. Wait a minute, he knew that voice. He grinned and stepped towards her. “Sarah ...”

“I said stay where you are!”

“I can’t believe you’re here ...”

“I just want to talk. Don’t come any closer - ”

He ignored her, pushing the barrel of the gun aside. He put his arms around her.

“Don’t - ” she murmured.

The Beretta fell to the floor. It wasn’t loaded anyway.

Atlit

The ruins of the Crusader fortress brooded on the promontory above the beach. A full moon hung over the Mediterranean, a stairway of silver descending from a star-studded sky. The vast tent city was silent, but from the skeletal watchtowers fingers of light probed the darkness.

Asher looked at the luminous dial of his watch. Five minutes.

“Ready?”

Rebecca and Netanel lay beside him on the dune. “We’re ready,” Rebecca said.

“Get as close as you can. The show starts right on twenty-two hundred. Go for the wire halfway between the two towers.”

Rebecca and Netanel crawled away. Asher saw others follow them, slithering on their bellies, like black snakes.

The minutes passed slowly. He wanted to urinate badly, though he knew his bladder must be empty. It was always like this. The waiting was the worst part.

Shouts went up from inside the camp. A muted orange glow rose into the sky like a sunrise in miniature. They had started the diversion. He looked at his watch. Right on time.

The searchlights on the watchtowers swung away from the wire. Asher started to crawl forward, his Sten cradled in his arms. The rest of his command followed; one hundred and thirty of them, spread out in a skirmish line, all in black jerseys and black drill trousers, invisible against the night.

He heard the crackle of gunfire from inside the compound. Pray God the British are firing in the air! He peered towards the wire, at the spot where he knew Rebecca’s and Netanel’s platoons would be at work, but it all seemed quiet enough there.

The fire formed a corona of orange on the night sky. He heard one of the guards on the watchtower shout a warning. By now he would have seen the first refugees start their run towards the wire. The sentry fired one quick burst from the Vickers, the tracers angled very low, urging them back.

Hurry up, Rebecca.

More shots from inside the compound. The searchlights continued to probe the rows of tents but from where Asher lay it was impossible to see clearly what was happening.

Twenty-two o-three. They must be inside the wire by now, running towards the arsenal, taking out the guards. They would try to get inside if they could and carry away any automatic weapons and ammunition. Then use their grenades. Perhaps another five minutes to wait, less than three if Netanel and Rebecca ran into trouble.

Asher dared not get closer to the wire.

He smelt death on the wind. Whose turn would it be tonight?

The fire was almost out, and the sounds of rioting had died down. The searchlight swung restlessly over the compound, then began to work inexorably back to the wire. Asher crawled closer to the perimeter, fifty yards from the base of the tower. He could see the holes where Netanel and Rebecca and their
Palmachniks
had gone through. He knew in a few moments the guards would see it too.

He heard the staccato of automatic weapons, this time from further away, near the army barracks. The searchlight swung away again. The sentries shouted the alarm a second time.

He waited.