Mirage Read online

  Jacob was a Berliner by birth and a homosexual by inclination. He had been twenty when Hitler was appointed Chancellor. A year later, as a serious-minded, moderately successful parachute salesman, he had given a demonstration for his company at Croydon Airport in southern England and had decided to stay. He obtained his British pilot’s licence at the Reigate Flying Club in Surrey and worked for the de Havilland Aircraft Company until his internment at the outbreak of the war in 1939. Once the Air Ministry were satisfied as to where his loyalties lay, they posted him to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough where he was employed in the translation of captured German aircraft documents. He even test flew a number of rebuilt crashed German aircraft to assess their performance. He was posted to Palestine in 1945 as a Royal Air Force civilian employee and won the admiration of David Ben Gurion by helping to form the illegal Sherut Avir.

  Despite his experience with the RAF, Jacob came to believe that the effective air defence of Israel would depend on fighters operating from individual kibbutz who would be responsible for the finance and maintenance of their own aircraft. The thrust of his argument was that Israel would never be able to afford a standing regular air force whereas it would be able to afford a kibbutzim air force. Israel had no need of the sophistication of a large air force with its dependence on hangars and large maintenance units. Such complexes were luxuries that cost money and were vulnerable to enemy attack - particularly so in a tiny country like Israel where the bases would be within easy reach of the enemy. Moreover, such an air force would be so widely dispersed - with its aircraft concealed in barns and under trees - that it would be impossible to destroy on the ground in a surprise attack.

  The democrat-socialist ethos underlying Jacob’s opinions coincided with the views of David Ben Gurion. Had not the early success of Palmachi soldiers been entirely due to the fact that they were men and women who threw down their hoes and took up rifles to defend their homesteads when the occasion demanded? Jews did not make good professional soldiers. Not for them the machinations and disciplines of a professional army and air force. Only men and women who worked the land could fight with that particular degree of bitter tenacity needed to defend it.

  Jacob yawned again. The war was over but there would be more. For the time being there was little to do but fly monotonous patrols along the coast although that was better than sitting in his office.

  He accepted the cup of warm lemonade that Billy Stannard, his observer, passed to him. Billy was sitting in the rear seat. The Seabee’s wide door had been removed to accommodate an ancient machine-gun that Sherut Avir fitters had bolted to the floor of the cabin, and the windows were missing so that crewmen could use Sten guns. The slipstream screaming through the gaping openings meant that conversational exchanges had to be shouted. During the war the Seabee’s armament had been supplemented by a box of hand grenades on the floor for lobbing out of the windows. As far as Jacob was concerned, this was the stuff of combat flying.

  Unaware of his comrade’s sexual preferences, Billy jabbed Jacob’s shoulder and pointed ahead at several virtually naked women sunbathing on a bathing raft. They waved at the lumbering amphibian as it swept over them.

  ‘Nice!’ Billy bawled appreciatively above the roar of the engine.

  Jacob said nothing. There were crowds on the beach and dotted on the sparkling blue water were sailing boats from the harbour at Tel Aviv. He considered that such leisure activities were symptoms of a humdrum mediocrity that he was certain would engulf his adopted country unless its citizens spent all their waking moments locked permanently in battle with the enemies of Zion. How could any Israeli relax while the Western Wall was in Arab hands?

  Two men inexpertly sailing a six-metre yacht on a northerly heading caught Jacob’s eye. The boat’s genoa sail bore the crest of the RAF Sailing Club at Tel Aviv. There were still a number of RAF personnel in Tel Aviv and all of them prided themselves on being correctly dressed when sailing. These two were wearing pullovers and slacks, and they were not wearing the regulation bright yellow kapok lifejackets that the club commodore insisted all members should wear.

  Jacob throttled back, allowing the aircraft to lose height. Even more curious was that the two men did not look up at the Seabee as it approached. His suspicions were confirmed when he saw a flash of blonde hair as one of the crewmen disappeared into the yacht’s cabin.

  ‘Billy!’ he yelled as he lowered the flaps. ‘Get some ammo in that thing. A week’s pay those two are the Irgun rebels!’

  While Billy struggled to feed a belt of ammunition into the machine-gun, Jacob lowered the flaps and eased back on the throttle lever until the Seabee was approaching the yacht on its quarter at a few knots above stalling speed. This time the man holding the tiller turned around and stared up at the amphibian as it roared overhead at a height of less than three hundred feet. Billy leaned out of the doorway window and made a gesture that he hoped the man would interpret as an order to heave to. The yacht maintained its seaward tack.

  ‘Some rounds through his rigging!’ Jacob bellowed, banking the Seabee to give Billy a favourable firing angle.

  Billy aimed deliberately high to allow for the spread caused by the machine-gun’s worn barrel. Most of the rounds in his two-second burst punched holes in the sails but a few stray shots sent splinters flying off the hull. The man in the cockpit moved with understandable speed to cut the sheets, causing the genoa to engulf him like a spent parachute. He fought his way from under the folds and held his hands high in an unmistakable gesture of surrender.

  Jacob grunted to himself. He studied the water and judged it calm enough for a landing.

  10

  Yitzhak Rabin looked up from the newspaper clippings that littered his desk and regarded the slightly-built man standing before him. As usual, the man was smiling.

  ‘We now know a good deal about you, Emil Kalen,’ Rabin observed, making no attempt to hide his irritation.

  Emil’s annoying grin broadened. ‘It’s taken you five days.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘If your intelligence was good, you would’ve had those cuttings four days ago.’

  Rabin was about to snap back with a suitable rejoinder but decided to let the gibe pass. He lifted Emil’s rucksack on to the desk and said mildly: ‘You think you would’ve done better in my place?’

  ‘It’s very possible.’

  The Israeli officer was inclined to believe his captive. Emil Kalen had been extremely well-prepared for his foolhardy adventure with the consequence that he and the girl had been the last to be rounded up. Also there was the information in the cuttings. No doubt the smiling Dutchman’s apparent arrogance was tempered with justified confidence.

  ‘What has happened to Leonora?’ Emil asked.

  ‘First tell me about the intelligence organization you ran during the war,’ Rabin invited.

  ‘There’s not much to tell. What there is, is in those cuttings.’

  ‘I want to hear it from you.’

  Emil shrugged dismissively. ‘I was an assistant designer at Philips. It was no problem for me to build a radio transmitter to send the allies information on what was being developed and built in the Eindhoven factories.’

  ‘Operating a radio transmitter in an occupied country was no problem?’

  ‘There were one or two exciting moments.’

  ‘There must have been several exciting moments for the Germans to have dubbed you the “Fox”,’ Rabin observed acidly.

  Emil grinned. ‘A few.’

  ‘Especially just after the war? In fact four months after the

  armistice was declared?’ Rabin watched Emil carefully for any fading of the disarming smile. There was none. If the enigmatic Dutchman had any emotions, he was adept at hiding them.

  ‘I did what had to be done,’ said Emil simply. ‘SS-Gruppenfuehrer Otto Simon had a clever attorney. It looked as if he was going to escape justice.’

  Rabin glanced through the story in the cutting from th
e Paris edition of the Herald Tribune. SS-Gruppenfuehrer Otto Simon had been arrested by the Americans in Eindhoven, who had handed him over to the Dutch authorities for trial in Amsterdam as a minor war criminal. The hearing had gone badly for the prosecution. Otto Simon had been in charge of the transportation of Dutch Jews from Eindhoven. There was plenty of circumstantial evidence linking him to the brutal treatment of the many Jews who had passed through his hands but the prosecution had homed-in on a single incident in 1941 when the SS officer had shot dead six infirm Jews who had been too weak to board an eastbound train at Eindhoven. It was the one case in which the prosecution was reasonably certain of a conviction. They reckoned without the skill of Simon’s lawyer who did an effective demolition job on the evidence of several key witnesses. On the fourth day of the trial, the police car taking Simon to the courtroom had been ambushed and Simon had been shot dead. Two of Simon’s victims had been Emil Kalen’s parents. Emil Kalen had been arrested a week after the ambush and had been charged with Simon’s murder. After two years and two retrials, Emil had been released on bail and had promptly disappeared. The story closed with the comment that Emil had much public sympathy and that the Dutch police did not appear to be over-exerting themselves in their search for him.

  Rabin pointed to Emil’s rucksack. ‘We found over nine hundred pounds Sterling behind a false lining in your rucksack,’ he said. ‘Where did it come from?’

  ‘Friends,’ said Emil enigmatically.

  Rabin knew better than to press his shrewd prisoner for more information. ‘Why didn’t you come to Israel openly? With your record, we would’ve welcomed you.’

  ‘With my record, you might have done the exact reverse,’ Emil answered. ‘Yesterday’s rebels are today’s responsible statesmen. But that’s not the real reason. I had planned to join a cargo ship sailing for Haifa from Marseilles. The reason I came with the Irgun is simple - because I foolishly allowed the blonde I was captured with to colour my judgement.’

  Rabin smiled. It was impossible not to like the stocky little

  Dutchman. ‘So what were your plans in Israel?’

  ‘To stay five - seven years. Buy a smallholding. Perhaps return to Holland after ten years.’

  Rabin took a tobacco tin from Emil’s rucksack and unscrewed the lid. The tin was crammed with large, white seeds. ‘A smallholding growing cucumbers?’

  ‘Melons.’

  ‘They look too small for melon seeds.’

  ‘They’re muskmelons. Cantaloupes. Our market garden in Eindhoven had several greenhouses. My father used to grow them.’

  Rabin noticed that his captive was no longer smiling. He returned the tobacco tin to the rucksack. ‘I would have thought that growing melons would be a humdrum existence for you after so much excitement.’

  ‘It would have suited me,’ Emil replied indifferently. ‘What will happen to me?’

  ‘The same will happen to you that will happen to all the other rebels we captured. Including the girl.’

  Emil was silent.

  ‘Do you care what will happen to her?’

  ‘I care what happens to all of them,’ Emil replied. ‘But particularly her. She’s only a kid. She didn’t know what she was doing.’

  ‘She’s not a kid and she knew exactly what she was doing. She deserves to be shot for treason.’ The Israeli officer paused to allow his words to sink in. Emil’s face remained impassive. ‘On the orders of David Ben Gurion,’ Rabin continued, ‘all the Irgun rebels are to be offered an amnesty and the chance to join the army. Our offer to you, Emil Kalen, is a commission as a major. We want you to help set up a new intelligence organization.’

  11

  July 1948

  Leonora knelt in the neglected field and crumbled a handful of soil in her fingers. The fields and vineyards of Rishon-Letsiyon, a few miles south of Tel Aviv, had been under Jewish cultivation for five hundred years. The soil was rich and dark; it clung in a ball as if bound together by the sweat of the many generations who had toiled over it. She straightened and watched Emil and Daniel. The eight- year-old was riding on Emil’s shoulders, laughingly using Emil’s ears as a substitute rudder bar - making his human aircraft roll left and right as they half-galloped and half-stumbled around the five- acre field. The boy twisted Emil’s head towards Leonora.

  ‘Go to mother!’ he yelled. ‘To mother!’

  Emil veered obediently and tripped on a furrow. The two fell into a sprawling, giggling heap whereupon Emil became a fearsome monster intent on biting Daniel’s leg off.

  ‘You’ll get him over-excited,’ said Leonora reprovingly as she disentangled her son and dusted him down. ‘And look at his clothes.’

  ‘I told you to make him wear old clothes,’ said Emil, lying back in his furrow and half-closing his eyes as the hot sun beat down. He watched Leonora fussing over her son and found it hard to believe that this was the same girl who had briskly and efficiently helped organize the abortive Atalena sailing a month previously. ‘Have you thought about my offer?’

  ‘Leave us alone for a few minutes please, Daniel,’ said Leonora.

  ‘But I want Emil to be my aeroplane again,’ the boy protested.

  Emil chucked Daniel under the chin. ‘When I’ve had a rest, young man.’

  ‘Go and clean the windows in the house,’ Leonora instructed.

  ‘What with?’

  ‘I saw some rags under the sink. Now please, Daniel.’

  The boy slunk off, muttering rebelliously under his breath. Emil sat up and watched Daniel turn into an aircraft intent on strafing the whitewashed bungalow. ‘He’s quite a boy.’

  Leonora sat beside Emil and pulled her cotton dress modestly over her knees. ‘You two get on well,’ she observed. ‘But then you worked hard to make sure you would. Win the boy over and you win me - is that your philosophy, Emil Kalen? Other men have tried and failed.’

  Emil grinned disarmingly. ‘He’s a great kid. You should be proud of him.’

  ‘I am,’ Leonora replied seriously. She gestured around at the moshav. ‘When will you know?’

  ‘The Jewish National Fund wrote to me yesterday. I sign the lease tomorrow.’ Emil felt in his pocket and produced a few of his melon seeds. He studied them pensively. ‘My father used to grow experimental bulbs for a living. But his real love was growing melons.’

  ‘In Holland?’

  ‘Cantaloupes. They grow well under glass. Every year he would save and dry the seeds from the strongest and healthiest plants for the next year’s crop. The seeds I brought with me are from the very best fruit of all which he would put to one side. His Palestine seeds, he called them. That was his dream ... that one day he would come to this land and grow fine melons.’

  Leonora was first to break the silence that followed. ‘And your dream too now?’

  Emil’s diffident smile was of one who has said too much and left himself vulnerable. ‘I’ve always worked in offices, but I want to try. This job I’ve been given won’t be for long. A year maybe. So what do you say, Leonora? The bungalow is new; there’s a good school at Rishon for Daniel, and I would leave you to run things the way you wish. Hire your own help - that sort of thing.’

  ‘Provided I grow melons?’

  ‘I wouldn’t insist on only that,’ said Emil. ‘But I would like to see at least one crop of my father’s growing here.’

  Leonora’s gaze took in the field and the lines of cypress trees that protected neighbouring vineyards from the chill winds of winter. Everywhere was green; the deep wells drilled in the area by the Rothschild Foundation provided an abundance of water, and fedayeen attacks were virtually unknown this close to Tel Aviv. Daniel had become a Lancaster bomber rear gunner at one of the bungalow’s windows and was raking the field with machine-gun fire. She returned his wave.

  ‘You will live in your apartment in Tel Aviv?’ she queried.

  ‘Yes,’ Emil replied. ‘My job will keep me busy, but I will be free at weekends.’

  ‘Very well, Emil
Kalen,’ said Leonora at length. ‘I will share the running of your moshav.’ She turned large, serious eyes on him. ‘But there is something you must understand: there is nothing else I will share with you. You must have your own room.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Emil agreed gravely. ‘You probably snore.’ With Leonora all jokes were a calculated gamble but this one was rewarded with a gratifying but involuntary giggle. Emil jumped to his feet and held out a hand. ‘Come on - up.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘It’s July already,’ said Emil as he helped Leonora to her feet. ‘We should make a start on sowing at least some of the melons. What should we call the place? We’re allowed to change its name.’

  ‘It’s your smallholding, Emil Kalen.’

  ‘I want you to choose.’

  Not seeing the trap in the subtle slip knot that Emil had prepared to tie her to the land and eventually to him, Leonora thought for a moment and said: ‘Sabra ... Israel born ... Moshav Sabra.’

  Emil smiled and tightened the first bond. ‘Sabra it is,’ he agreed.

  12

  August to December 1948

  Emil’s arrival in Israel coincided with David Ben Gurion’s winding up of the Shai - the loose-knit, free-wheeling intelligence organization of the Palmach and the Haganah - and its replacement with three new organizations: the Aman, responsible for military intelligence; and Shin Bet, responsible for internal security along the lines of the United States FBI. The third organization - the Political Department of the Foreign Ministry - was to concern itself with Israel’s overseas affairs. It was into this latter embryo department that Emil was absorbed under the direction of General Yadin - a man whose undoubted courage was in sharp contrast to his lack of imagination. Emil was given an office on Rothschild Avenue over a florist’s, a staff of three, and no clear indication of his responsibilities.

  His unorthodox response to this uncertainty was to invent responsibilities. Starting with his Jewish friends in Holland, he spent the first three months working tirelessly on building up records of Israel’s overseas sympathizers.