City of Secrets (5 page)

“Where did you learn all this?”

“In the old days we had actual training. Now everything's rush-rush. Here, make yourself useful and wind this up.”

He showed Brand how to rig a timer and how to booby-trap a door, how to poke a knot down the neck of a Molotov cocktail so the rag wouldn't come out when you threw it. The nuts and bolts were shrapnel for homemade grenades. Again and again
they went back to the blasting cap and crimping the fuse, fitting it into the TNT, until Brand was convinced this was how they were doing the substation. Asher kept checking his watch, and after a last demonstration on pressure mines, began packing everything into the valise.

“Any questions?”

“So, what's the difference between dynamite and TNT?”

“Ah, you
were
listening. TNT is more stable, more powerful and works when it's wet. Which is why it's always preferable over dynamite, and why it costs more.”

“Is that what we're using?”

“We don't know yet. It would be nice.”

Asher pulled on his jacket and locked the door behind them. Teacher or doctor, businessman or electrician, he had a heartening confidence. His accent was Slavic, maybe Czech, yet he showed no sign of having been in the camps. Now that Brand had him alone, he wanted to ask him what he'd done during the war. Instead, he thanked him for the lesson.

“It's good,” Asher said. “Everyone should know these things.”

Brand thought Asher was downplaying both his generosity and the singularity of the subject matter until Eva asked if they'd gone to the high school.

“Did he tell you about the miners?” She bit down on an imaginary blasting cap. “He loves to scare people with that old wives' tale.”

Before this, Brand had taken his going along as Asher's backup as confirmation that he was second in command. Now he realized that—as always—it was because he had the car.
Eva, Fein and Yellin, possibly even Lipschitz knew how to set off a bomb. Why was he always surprised to discover he was wrong? By now he thought he should be used to it.

As Eva had forecast, the snow came, falling overnight, softening the graves beneath his window, topping the city walls like frosting. The tourists were thrilled, snapping away at the domes and the olive groves, and all day he was busy. The Peugeot's wheels spun in the slush. It reminded him of Riga and his grandmother's warm kitchen, the tiled niche beside her oven where he drank hot cocoa after playing outside, the feeling returning to his cheeks. Back in his flat he kept his sweater on and turned up his Primus stove as high as it would go, nipping at his Johnnie Walker, and still he was freezing. Below, Mrs. Ohanesian picked at the
Moonlight Sonata,
trying the opening bars over and over, her budgerigar chittering like a critic, until, mercifully, she conceded defeat.

He thought the snow would be gone the next morning, but it lingered, further postponing the operation. The longer they waited, Brand reasoned, the more dangerous it would be, with so many people knowing at least a piece of the plan. He'd begun to hope it would be canceled altogether when, late that night as he was listening to Trieste under the covers, the phone rang downstairs and Mrs. Ohanesian hollered for him.

“The Edison Cinema,” Asher said. “Eight o'clock tomorrow.”

“That's fine, thanks,” Brand said, because behind her door Mrs. Ohanesian would be listening. While he was let down, he wished he could pull on his jacket and go right now, if only so he didn't have to wait another day.

Standing there, he weighed calling Eva, though she had to know, and decided not to. If the British were listening, he didn't want to make it easier for them.

When he woke, it was snowing, the Dome of the Rock just a shadow behind the swirling curtain. Had no one checked the weather?

The schools were closed, and the souks, the city wisely staying inside. All day Brand sloshed through the empty streets, feeling eyes on him as he passed the armored cars guarding the central prison. The underground had more fighters than guns. The police training school, the various barracks. Any armory, he supposed. How many weapons would a pillbox have? Even they were fortified. In comparison, the substation was easy pickings.

As the day faded, the wind shifted. The snow turned to freezing rain, and the fares disappeared, the tourists retreating to their hotels. Greta had nothing for him and he sat in the queue at the Jaffa Gate, reading the
Post
and listening to the Voice of Fighting Zion, waiting for his shift to end. Sleet ticked against the roof, crystals melted on the hood. The hillside would be impossible in this. They'd have just the one way in and out, cross-country. If they got stuck, they'd have to leave the car. Absurdly, he was worried about it as if it were his.

Back at the garage, Pincus asked him if he could take a look at his water pump, and though Brand just wanted to go home and get ready, he hefted his toolbox from his trunk. Pincus had a tiny Fiat that could fit down the tightest alley. During the war, parts were impossible to find, and the engine was a Frankenstein. Brand hung a utility light from the hood latch and
poked his head in close over the hot block, weaving to stay out of his own shadow.

“Hoses look fine.”

“I could tell you that,” Pincus said, leaning in beside him.

“What's it been doing?”

“Nothing. You fixed it, boychik. Thank you. You can put your fancy tools away now.”

Brand didn't understand. Pincus had to place his hand on the open lid and shoot him a double take before Brand recognized, among his pliers and wrenches, a black, snub-nosed pistol.

Pincus shut the lid. “I'm thinking maybe you can use it better than I can.”

“Thank you,” Brand said, more alarmed than grateful. Was there anyone in the city who didn't know? So often he felt like the last person in on the joke.

The gun was loaded, a death sentence if he were stopped. He left it in the trunk on the way home, though to the Mandate it didn't matter if it was locked up or in his hand.

The protocol for a direct action was empty pockets. He could bring the gun, but nothing that connected him to anyone. The movement had gone to some trouble to make sure the Peugeot was a dead end. Brand thought he wouldn't mind dying nameless. Katya had, and the rest of his family. He'd never liked Jossi anyway.

He took only his car keys, leaving his flat open. Most likely he'd be back, but as he descended the stairs for what might be the last time, his thoughts veered to the dramatic. Mrs. Ohanesian would take his radio and the wad of pounds in the cigar
box. Below his window, the old Parabellum would rust shut in its grave.

The telephone in the hall made him want to call Eva. He should have had a last night with her, like a soldier shipping off to the front.

Stupid. He was only going to Ge'ula. With a tip, the fare was barely six shillings.

It was raining harder now, a spattering like frying fat surrounding him, muffling all other sounds. In the darkness he took the gun from the trunk and stuck it in his pocket, then, once the ceiling light went off, slipped it under his seat.

There was no one on the roads, and no crowd outside the Edison, only the marquee reflected in the wet pavement:
Spellbound,
with Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman. He was early, and circled the block, finding a spot across the street where he could see the doors. He wasn't sure why Asher chose so public a location, unless it was part of an alibi. What was wrong with the house in Rehavia? Again Brand felt helpless, as if the conspiracy were against him.

Right at eight, as the carillon of the YMCA struck the hour, Asher emerged from the cinema in a trench coat, as if he'd stepped out of the film. He raised a hand, and Brand swung the cab to the curb.

“Where to?”

“Turn on the radio. If they say ‘Churchill' three times, it's off.”

“Got it.”

With the weather, the signal phased in and out, and Brand had to strain to hear the announcer, going on about the Ten
Lost Tribes. Long before Lord Balfour, the Lord God promised His people both banks of the Jordan. Kol Hamagen was an arm of the Haganah, which was an arm of the Workers' Party, and while, after the camps, Brand considered himself apolitical, it bothered him when socialists based their arguments on scripture.

In the backseat Asher was unwrapping a package. “All they had was dynamite.” He sounded unhappy about it, which made Brand unhappy.

“It's dry, right?”

“I'm sure it's fine, I'd just rather not take any chances.”

It was too late for that, Brand thought, checking his mirror to see if they were being followed. No, they were the only ones foolish enough to be out in the monsoon.

As they splashed along Mea Shearim Street, skirting the Hasidic neighborhood, the streetlights showing them the road flickered and dimmed. The whole line flared once, twice, then died. Simultaneously, the radio cut out as if the transmitter had been hit, leaving only the shuttling of the wipers. Beyond his headlights, the night was as black as the middle of the ocean.

Brand's first thought was that the Irgun had knocked out the main power station, relieving them of their mission. More likely it was a blackout brought on by the storm, annoying but temporary. He focused on the road, expecting the lights to snap on at any second, revealing a hidden jeep or police car lying in wait, except as they burrowed deeper into the suburbs, there was nothing. He could get Amman and Damascus on the radio but not the government station, and he thought, with the
hard pragmatism of a partisan, that it would be a good night to blow the antenna.

“You brought a torch?” Asher asked.

“I brought everything you told me to.” Meaning the bolt cutters and tin snips and rubber gloves. They were ready for any contingency, though he no longer felt like doing it at all. On a night like tonight, he should be at Eva's, keeping warm.

A gust pushed the car and he pulled it back into the lane.

“How's the wind?” Asher asked.

“Bad.”

They were into Zikhron Moshe now, cruising past the skimpy business district, the unfinished streets of Ge'ula somewhere off to their right. In the hills beyond, the Arab villages were dark year-round, their houses lit by cooking fires and candles and the rare kerosene lamp, as in the last century. The wadis would be running high and muddy, the ravine flooded. Churchill, Churchill, Churchill, Brand wished, but they kept on. In back Asher flicked a lighter, the flash startling Brand like a shot.

“I think we'll be all right,” Asher said.

The Zion Blumenfeld Orphanage was just past Zikhron Moshe, a sprawling farm complex dedicated to raising the displaced children of the war in a pastoral utopia. Here, packed into dormitories like laagers ringing a rustic stone temple, refugees from the bloody capitals of Warsaw and Prague and Vienna learned how to nurse calves and pluck chickens. Brand slowed well before the main entrance of the campus and turned down an unpaved road owned by the power company. The road ran along a fence line behind a row of barns. Trucks had dug deep
ruts, leaving a hump in the middle Brand had to keep one wheel on so the Peugeot didn't get hung up. Its rear slipped in the mud, and they slid sideways, their headlights sweeping the sky. He tried to go slowly, but rocks still knocked against the undercarriage. He could imagine one cracking his oil pan, stranding them. They'd have to use the bomb on the car and walk home.

They left the protection of the barns and set out across open space. He imagined how they must look from the road, the only lights for miles. The patrols would have to know they didn't belong there. If it wasn't raining, he could have turned his lights off and navigated by the stars. Instead, he kept a wheel on the hump and aimed straight ahead.

“We should be seeing it in a minute,” Asher said.

He was trying to be calm, Brand thought, talking just to talk. Where else would it be?

Once, in the harbor at Marseilles, a launch he was on lost its engine in heavy swells. It was June, and the sea was too cold to survive for more than a few minutes. Each time the launch dropped into a trough, it took on more water. The first mate had the cowling of the engine off, frantically yanking the cord. Brand could see the shore, maybe a kilometer away. In perfect weather, with a friendly current, he might swim for it, but that day he knew he'd never make it. After living through the camps, he was about to be killed by a fouled spark plug, and sitting there soaked and shivering, he reviewed his life and accepted his fate. The same strange peace overcame him now. He was glad he loved Eva, and he was proud to fight for Eretz Israel. If he should die tonight, he regretted nothing.

“There's a pylon,” Asher said.

When Brand had cased the substation with Lipschitz, they'd been too far away to gauge the tower's real size. Close up, it rose like an oil derrick. At the top, giant insulators jutted from its frame like raised arms. The concrete pad at the base was several meters thick. A stick of dynamite would do nothing.

The substation was more approachable, the spindly array reminding him of Ge'ula's skeletal houses. He killed the lights and turned the car around, kept it running.

Now that they were here, they had to act fast. There was no talk. They knew what they had to do.

Only the wires around the top of the fence were electrified. While Brand hunched in the rain, chopping at the lock with the bolt cutters, Asher sat in the dry backseat, fitting the fuse into the blasting cap by the light of the torch. If he made a mistake now, Brand would hear it.

He was done first, and hopped back in the driver's seat.

Asher cracked the door an inch, thumbed the wheel of his lighter and set the flame to the fuse. It sizzled, and he pushed through the door into the rain.

Brand put the car in gear and waited with the door open. He wasn't sure if Asher had purposely left the torch on. The beam picked out the seams of the backseat, making him recall the Sabra.