Mirage Page 5

  Leonora resumed cursing Emil as their heads broke the surface. A wave threw them both against the Atalena's hull. Emil kept his arm around her waist and fended the rusting plates away with his feet.

  ‘We swim!’

  ‘I can’t,’ Leonora spluttered, clutching Emil around the neck. ‘We must fight!’

  ‘First we swim,’ Emil gasped, disengaging her arm. ‘Then we think about fighting.’

  With Leonora clinging leech-like to his rucksack, it took Emil thirty minutes to reach the seaward end of the groyne. Luckily the water was warm otherwise the drag of girl and the dead weight of his rucksack would have tired him sooner. His fingers found a purchase on the slimy concrete blocks which enabled him to haul himself and Leonora out of the water. For several moments they lay shivering and exhausted, ignoring the sounds of the distant battle. Another flare arched gracefully into the sky. Emil eased his shoulders free of his rucksack’s straps and cautiously raised his head above the low parapet that crowned the groyne. The scene was a soldier’s nightmare - to be pinned down on a beach by an enemy who had the advantages of height and superior firepower. The Irgun rebel army was in total disarray: men were splashing through the surf to escape the deadly machine-gun fire; some were forlornly clinging to the Atalena's exposed steering gear while others were standing waist deep in the sea holding their arms straight up in a desperate exaggerated gesture of surrender. No one was returning the Palmachi fire. Emil realized that the Palmachi were not shooting at the invaders but at the Irgun flag that was hanging in shreds from the Atalena's masthead. Vehicles were racing along the seafront road, screeching to a standstill, and disgorging scruffy hordes of reinforcements over their tailgates. Onlookers were gathering along the railings and there was even an enterprising ice cream vendor pedalling through the crowd. The shooting stopped abruptly and a voice over a loudhailer addressed Begin by name, demanding his immediate and unconditional surrender. Emil surmised that only a fool or a fanatic would continue fighting under such conditions. A few seconds later he saw a figure on the Atalena's foredeck frantically waving a white shirt. The silence that followed was broken by the soft plop of another flare exploding in the sky, turning night into day.

  ‘It’s all over,’ he muttered to Leonora, helping her into a sitting position.

  ‘It never even started,’ she said bitterly. She tried to struggle to her feet but Emil pulled her down roughly. She suddenly threw herself on him, clawing at his face with animal ferocity.

  ‘I’m going to fight even if you’re scared to!’ she snarled, yanking a Luger from inside her sodden flying jacket.

  Emil grabbed her wrist as she raised the gun and drove a fist into her solar plexus. She gave a gasping whimper and doubled up in pain. The Luger clattered into the darkness and plopped into the sea.

  ‘Now listen,’ Emil panted. ‘They’ve all surrendered. If we fight they’ll kill us.’

  It was some seconds before Leonora could speak. Emil gently lifted her chin. The raw hatred blazing in her eyes enhanced rather than diminished her striking beauty. ‘They’ll kill us anyway. If I’m to die, I die fighting - not like you, like a coward in front of a firing squad.’

  ‘Please listen to me, Leonora—’

  ‘I don’t listen to cowards. It was stupid of me to let you come. I should’ve known.’

  ‘I know enough about fighting to know that in a guerrilla war the survivors are the ones that fire the first shots.’

  ‘All you know about fighting is how to run away.’ She spat. There was still venom in her voice but she seemed to have given up the idea of fighting him.

  Emil was about to smile but he realized that he might infuriate her further. Instead he nodded and said: ‘Knowing when to run away from a lost battle is knowing how to win the war.’ He opened his sodden rucksack and pulled out a tightly-wrapped sailcloth bundle. He grunted in satisfaction when he found that the contents of the bundle had remained dry. He held out a pair of dark trousers and a shabby jumper. ‘Lucky I brought two changes of clothing. Here - put these on. And wipe that grease off your face.’

  Leonora scowled.

  ‘You must change,’ Emil insisted. ‘It is important to be dry. Cold impairs judgement ... .If you do not put them on, I will strip you by force. I may be small, but I am strong. Stronger than you.’

  For a moment it looked as though she was about to renew the struggle. But she thought better of it and snatched the garments from his hand. Neither spoke for several minutes as they changed. Emil chanced a quick glance over the parapet. The Palmach soldiers had formed their captives into shambling columns and were shepherding them across the road to their headquarters building. Each prisoner had his hands on his head. A group of soldiers were guarding the Atalena - discouraging curious onlookers from getting too close to the beached ship.

  ‘We must show ourselves now,’ Emil decided, ‘while there’re still plenty of people about.’

  Leonora raised her head and risked a brief glimpse at the beach. ‘Shouldn’t we wait until it’s quieter?’

  ‘We’d be that much more conspicuous. First we sit on the parapet for ten minutes - watching the ship. Then we stand and watch it for another ten minutes. Then we walk slowly along the groyne and up the beach with our arms around each other’s waist.’ Emil grinned mischievously. ‘Just like lovers. Then we find somewhere in the town to sleep until daylight.’

  ‘We do not sleep like lovers.’

  ‘Perhaps not like lovers,’ Emil agreed gravely. He added mischievously, ‘Unless you insist.’

  7

  TEL AVIV

  Palmach Commander Yitzhak Rabin positioned his desk light to hasten the drying of the papers spread on his desk and turned his attention to the man standing before him. Menachem Begin stared at the wall behind Rabin, refusing to acknowledge by word or gesture that the Palmach officer existed.

  ‘I’ll ask you again,’ said Rabin tiredly. ‘Is this the complete list?’ Begin made no reply.

  Rabin stood and came from behind his desk. The two men were eye to eye; Begin did not blink. ‘Eight hundred and ten men,’ said Rabin mildly. ‘Twelve dead as a result of this crazy coup you tried to pull. We’ve captured seven hundred and ninety-six. So - we have two missing - or should there be more?’

  Silence.

  Rabin pressed his lips into a tight line. ‘We will organize a roll call at first light so that we will know their names. What I want to know now is, are there more?’

  Silence.

  Rabin began to lose patience with his arrogant prisoner. ‘Don’t you care what happens to them? Don’t you care what happens to any of them?’

  Begin spoke for the first time: ‘We demand to be treated as prisoners of war.’

  ‘You surrendered unconditionally, Begin. You’re in no position to demand anything.’

  ‘I’m trying to make it easy for you, Rabin,’ said Begin coldly. ‘If you don’t treat us as prisoners of war, we will have to be charged with treason. Are you prepared to risk Ben Gurion’s wrath by putting him in a position where he has to contemplate shooting eight hundred Jews?’

  ‘Try me,’ Rabin rasped back. ‘Just try me.’

  The tiny two-storey house off Nordau Street was obviously unoccupied. It had a wild, overgrown front garden but best of all was its deep porch that enabled Emil to tackle the front door unseen from the street.

  Leonora held a penlight torch steady and watched, fascinated, as Emil selected a smaller pair of pliers from his tool roll and made some final adjustments to the length of steel wire before he inserted the makeshift pick in the mortise lock. It was his tenth attempt to persuade the lock to turn and this time it worked. He pushed the door open and, with an elaborate - if mocking - deep bow and a sweeping wave of his hand, bade Leonora enter. She accepted the invitation with an involuntary giggle.

  A brief survey with the penlight beam was enough to establish that the downstairs had been cleared of all furniture. Emil moved quickly and silently up the stairs. ‘We’ll sl
eep up here on the upstairs landing,’ he called down after a brief inspection.

  Leonora joined him on the landing. ‘Why not in one of the rooms?’

  ‘Because there’re no windows here. I want to light a candle.’

  ‘A candle? You have candles as well?’

  Emil chuckled and sat down in the middle of the narrow passageway. He propped his back against the wall and rummaged in his rucksack. ‘Oh yes. I want to look at you.’

  Leonora sat opposite him, and watched as he opened yet another of his inexhaustible supply of screw-top tobacco tins and used the lid as a base for a cluster of birthday cake candles. A warm light filled the landing. She noticed that his matches had been waterproofed by the simple but effective method of dipping the heads in candle wax.

  ‘Do you always travel so well prepared?’

  Emil gave her another of his grins that she was beginning to find so infuriating. ‘I’m a hardened camper,’ he explained. ‘I always travel with plenty of contingencies. One never knows when they will come in useful. That reminds me -I have some more contingencies here ... .’ He rummaged in the rucksack and produced a bar of chocolate which he broke in two and offered half to Leonora. ‘And afterwards we will eat some barley sugars,’ he added. ‘I also have a brush and comb. You will feel better with some sugar in your blood and with your hair properly brushed.’

  Leonora transferred her puzzled stare from the chocolate to Emil. In the flickering candlelight she saw through the smiling face to the steel beneath. ‘ Who are you, Emil Kalen?’

  ‘A fool,’ Emil replied. ‘A stupid fool.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To have let a beautiful face lure me into such a lunatic scheme. But I’ve no regrets. Not now. Take the chocolate. You must eat.’ She hesitated as if her acceptance of the offering might give Emil a hold over her. Hunger wrestled briefly with suspicion and won. She seized the chocolate and crunched it greedily, not taking her eyes off Emil for an instant. ‘So what do we do next?’ she asked, talking with her mouth full.

  ‘We sleep.’

  Leonora gratefully took the offered hairbrush from Emil and began tugging it through her matted hair. ‘And tomorrow?’

  ‘We sail to Lebanon. And from Beirut we fly to Paris.’

  ‘I was right,’ said Leonora, leaning forward so that her hair hid her face as she unpicked a knot. ‘You’re right, Emil Kalen. You are very stupid. I suppose you’ve also got a boat in that bag?’

  ‘No,’ said Emil, grinning as usual. ‘Something much better.’

  ‘It would be better if we went north. There’s the Afikim Kibbutz which I know well. They will look after us.’

  ‘No,’ said Emil with unexpected firmness. ‘I’ve had four years of putting people in danger because they’ve sheltered me.’

  ‘But you don’t understand. I want to go there. I have to.’

  Emil looked sharply at Leonora. Her air of arrogant self- confidence was no more. The yellow glow from the flickering candles illuminated a pleading expression.

  ‘Is that where your son is?’

  She looked surprised at his knowledge. For a moment it seemed as if she was about to adopt a defensive stance and tell Emil that it was none of his business but instead she nodded.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Daniel.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Eight. They will look after him well on the kibbutz - I’m not worried about that - but I’ve been away from him for nearly a month.’

  ‘Tell me about him,’ Emil invited. ‘Tell me about yourself.’

  For some moments Leonora was undecided. She was by nature a

  secretive person who rarely confided in or trusted anyone - especially men. But, in a way that she could not as yet define, this strange, resourceful Dutchman was very different from other men. She stumbled nervously over her words at first and quickly gained confidence when she realized that Emil was not going to use the intimacy of the moment as an excuse to move nearer her or touch her in any way.

  Leonora’s parents were of Armenian origin who had fled Soviet rule and settled in Palestine in 1919. Her father’s watch repair business in the new Jewish-built city of Tel Aviv flourished. Leonora was born two years later in 1921 when Tel Aviv received full recognition with the granting of its charter. She was an only child. After the best secondary education that Palestine could offer at Herzilia College, she got a job at the age of fifteen as a clerk with a Tel Aviv architect. It was a job that brought her into contact with her employer’s clients, some of whom were British army officers. By the time she was eighteen, she was sufficiently proficient to be allowed to deal directly with all her employer’s clients: listening to their requirements; visiting sites; even making preliminary sketches. At this point in her story she stopped talking and stared at the opposite wall.

  ‘A British officer was Daniel’s father?’ Emil prompted gently.

  ‘I’ve never told anyone who his father was,’ Leonora said dispassionately. ‘You must promise me never to ask that question again.’

  ‘I promise,’ said Emil quietly.

  She studied him for a moment and realized that this was a man that she could trust. ‘I was three months pregnant when I finally got up the courage to tell my parents ... .’

  ‘What happened?’

  There was no bitterness in Leonora’s voice when she resumed her story. ‘You have to see it from their point of view. You have to realize the shame that a daughter having an illegitimate child can bring on an Orthodox family. There was a terrible row. Maybe if I hadn’t said the things I did they would’ve stood by me. As it was, they threw me out. A friend arranged for me to go to the kibbutz at Afikim. They looked after me. But I had to work and I learned to use a rifle. A week after Daniel was born I was working in the accounts office. And after three weeks I was back in the fields working ten hours a day. But at least I had a home and some free time because there’s a nursery. Six months ago there was a fedayeen attack on a nearby kibbutz. We got there thirty minutes later. There was no one left alive. Even the children had all been shot. There was a boy who looked like Daniel. The same age .... He was even clutching the same toy boat... except that he was lying very still in a pool of blood

  Her voice trailed into silence at the pain of the memory. Emil decided to let her resume speaking in her own time.

  ‘That’s when I joined the Irgun,’ Leonora continued. ‘In the evenings I would go to their meetings - listen to their speakers. So long as I was a Sabra - an Israeli born - they didn’t care about my past. It seemed to me that if I was to protect my son, it was no use waiting for the Arabs to come to us. Our only defence was to go to them and strike first. But first it was necessary to get rid of Ben Gurion and his weaklings.’

  Emil settled his head on his rucksack and stretched his legs across the narrow passageway. Being short did have its compensations. ‘How can you protect your son now? Ben Gurion and his weaklings, as you call them, will have you shot if they catch you. That’s why you can’t go back to the kibbutz.’

  ‘It’s a chance I have to take.’

  ‘The Palmach will be waiting for you, Leonora. Tomorrow we’ll buy a boat or bribe a fisherman, and go to Beirut. You’ll be able to send for Daniel. After a year or two you will be able to return home.’ ‘Emil Kalen - you really are crazy. How can we hope to get to Lebanon without money? And don’t tell me you’ve got money in that bag as well.’

  Emil gave her one of his enigmatic smiles. ‘I think I might have enough to charter a boat but I’d rather save it by stealing one.’

  9

  Jacob Wyel yawned and levelled out the Seabee amphibian at five hundred feet above the coast.

  Jacob was bored: bored with the uneasy peace and the ending of the heady days of the previous month when he and his fellow mahals

  - Jewish volunteer airmen from all over the world - had flown six, sometimes as many as ten sorties a day against the air forces of Jordan, Egypt and Syria. That Israel’s tin
y, ramshackle air force had acquitted itself so well against the superior Spitfire-equipped air forces of its enemies was one of those miracles of modern warfare that not even the participants could fully account for.

  Jacob was a large, florid-complexioned man with enough disinterest in women and interest in good living to allow himself to become overweight. At thirty-five he hardly fulfilled the picture of the archetypal fighter pilot. It was his streak of stubborn puritanism which made him insist on flying an Avia - the god-awful Czech version of the Messerschmitt-109 that had been as big a danger to its pilots as it had been to the enemy. Jacob’s cynical realism which pervaded his Sherut Avir was that it was sensible to give older pilots the worst aircraft. Despite the self-imposed handicap, Jacob had acquitted himself remarkably well: he had destroyed ten Egyptian tanks with his Avia and had shot down a Syrian DC-3 that had bombed Tel Aviv. He had also chased and shot down the DC-3’s Spitfire escort. During the closing days of the war he had ground- looped the Avia on landing - the traditional way for the notorious Czech warplanes to end their operational lives. Despite cracked ribs, Jacob was flying combat duties the next day. His iron will and indomitable spirit were an inspiration to the younger, inexperienced pilots of the fledgling air force although his appearance was a disappointment to the press photographers covering the war.