City of Secrets (7 page)

In a small meeting room with a chalkboard on wheels sat
Asher, Victor and, in a rumpled seersucker suit, his Star of David and lion tattoo hidden beneath an Oxford shirt, the Sabra.

In the suit he looked more than ever an Arab, the hawk nose and dark skin making the yod-shaped scar above his eye seem even stranger, the mark of fate. He had a boxer's build, a scrappy bantamweight like John Garfield, and Garfield's carelessly tousled hair. He looked like a gangster dressed for a trial. It was hard to believe he'd nearly died just a month ago. Brand realized he was staring and recovered.

“Glad to see you're feeling better.”

The man nodded in acknowledgment. To Eva, he nodded significantly, as if in gratitude. Brand recalled him moaning wordlessly in the backseat and wondered if he was a mute. After a minute, Brand realized no one was speaking—not Asher or Victor. Protocol. There would be no introductions.

They all sat around the table waiting for Fein and Yellin. The chalkboard was sponged clean. Lipschitz took out a pad and began writing. The Sabra waved a hand and he put it away.

From the hall came footfalls, the clash of a door. Fein was alone, and though Brand wanted to ask after Yellin, he waited for someone else to break the silence.

“Close the door,” Asher said.

Apparently Yellin wasn't coming, another development Brand didn't like on principle.

The Sabra stood and buttoned his jacket, smoothing his front as if he were going to make a speech. “First, I want to thank you. My friend here tells me how instrumental you were in helping me the other night. I'm indebted to you, and will do my utmost
to repay your kindness.” He spoke stiffly, as if addressing a crowd. Brand, who had practice, couldn't place the accent—part Spanish, part something else. Maybe French, with its buzzing sibilants. It was possible the Sabra wasn't a Sabra at all.

“I would especially like to thank Miss Eva for the use of her apartment. You're very brave.”

Miss Eva
. She beamed, a star accepting an award.

“I want to thank Jossi for the use of his car. You're very brave as well.”

Brand nodded, thinking Asher shouldn't have told him their names. Protocol worked both ways. And what about his sweater?

“You risked your lives to save mine. Don't think I'll forget. Long Live Eretz Israel.”

“Long Live Eretz Israel,” they echoed.

With that, he sat down and Victor stood up. They made an odd pair, the dark, clean-shaven bantamweight and the ruddy, ginger-bearded giant. How had they met? Brand wondered. Who else was in their cell?

Victor flipped the chalkboard, revealing a diagram—a crude map with train tracks and two parallel roads marked with arrows. As in a geometry problem, the tracks crossed both roads at an angle. Between them, in the center of the tracks, sat a pirate's X for treasure.

“Every Friday the British payroll arrives by the same train.”

The plan was ridiculously simple. They were going to blow up the tracks and stick up the train. To Brand the idea seemed like something out of the Wild West, sure to end in a bloody shootout, but no one protested.

Once the train passed the first crossing, they'd blow the tracks behind and ahead of it with mines. With the train trapped, two of them would use the crew as hostages while the others disarmed the guards and blew the safe. They'd use a stolen car, one they could ditch after they'd gotten away, then Jossi would drive them back to the city, the loot safe in the hidden compartment. The payroll was over thirty thousand pounds.

“That's a lot of weapons,” Asher said, as if they needed an incentive.

After the substation, Brand expected he'd be part of the assault team, along with Asher, Victor and the Sabra. The Peugeot could hold five. Maybe Fein? Eva and Yellin would handle communications.

They had one week.

“I know that's not a lot of time,” Victor said, “but Gideon and I both think you're ready.”

“Thank you,” Asher said, and as Brand held on to the assumed name, he understood that Gideon and Victor weren't coming with them. They'd be going it alone.

To avoid suspicion, after the meeting was done, they left in shifts. Asher stayed behind with Gideon and Victor to work out the necessary materials. Lipschitz had business in Mahane Yehuda, so he could walk. Fein said he could use a ride.

In the car they were somber, as if right now they were heading out on the mission. They passed the Schneller Barracks and the fields of the orphanage. Brand glanced at the barns and the spindly tower rising in the distance. A moving train was a completely
different proposition. Hostages, and guards. Not to mention the safe.

After a mile-long silence, Eva finally spoke. “So, what happened to your buddy Yellin?”

“Nothing,” Fein said. “He had a dentist appointment.”

G
ideon was Sephardic, a Moroccan whose missionary parents ran a yeshiva in Tangiers. Eva had known all along.

“I couldn't tell you. Believe me, I wanted to. Asher said it was for your own good. We have to be safe.”

“You already knew Victor.”

“I never said I didn't.”

He questioned her like a deceived husband. How well did she know them? How long? She was evasive and outraged, the faithful wife, citing protocol. As he had that first night, he sensed it wasn't the first time Gideon had visited her bed, or Asher. Why was he surprised she was a whore? He was used to Katya, whose past, like his own, was clear as water. He was just a dumb mechanic, he wasn't meant to connive with spies.

“What about the blonde?”

“She's new. Honestly, I have no idea who she is.”

“‘Honestly.'”

Her face changed. She pointed to the door. “Get out. Now.”

All weekend he stayed away from her place, working late and eating at the Alaska. In Riga the trials had wrapped, the five men responsible for the massacre hanged, the rest of the city tacitly exonerated—just as he expected, meager consolation. His old life was over, his new one a shambles and a sham. To celebrate, he paced his flat with a glass of Johnnie Walker, bumping his nose against the cold window, leaving a greasy smudge. The humming, stumbling melancholy of solitary drunks. Why was Katya dead and Eva alive? She probably didn't even miss him. She'd probably already hired another driver. The station was so close, he heard the last train from Jaffa laboring up the final grade of Mount Zion, and then his fellow cabbies shuttling passengers into the city, making money. In the crypt his pistols waited, newly oiled. Child of the Great War, survivor of the last, his entire life he'd never pointed a gun at another man, only had them pointed at him. Innocent Brand, the pigeon of history. It was a miracle he'd lived this long.

“Goddamn, yes,” he said to his reflection, and was surprised to find his glass empty.

He woke in his clothes, sour-mouthed. At the garage Pincus brought him coffee, hovering like a mother. Greta set him up with an older American couple going to Bethlehem for their anniversary. With everyone on his side, how could he fail?

He wasn't so much afraid as annoyed at the prospect of the mission, as if it were a checkpoint blocking the route to his new
life. He could see the reasons for it, and generally agreed with them, but as the workweek kicked in, he began hoping it would rain on Friday, making the desert impassable for anything but a jeep. Even that would only postpone it.

Tuesday Asher called a meeting for the following evening at the high school. If stopped, they were an amateur drama club working with Eva. Brand thought the idea would please her. Out of habit he swung by to give her a ride, taking the shortcut through the flower market to her gate. The lamp wasn't lit, but when he knocked, there was no answer.

She'd taken the bus. She wanted him to be shocked, and while he was, mildly, he was also flattered that as she schemed, she was thinking of him. Yellin apologized for missing the last meeting but didn't mention the dentist. On a chalkboard Asher ran through the plan, which seemed to Brand both overly complicated and too simple. Asher would meet them with the second car at a kibbutz a few miles from the chosen spot. Brand, Fein and Yellin would watch the hostages while Asher and Lipschitz blew the safe. The car could hold only five of them, so Eva would monitor the escape route from the kibbutz and handle communications. The whole operation was wishful, based on the guards trading the payroll for the hostages. If they refused, would Asher really kill them? From experience Brand was leery of anything with too many moving parts. At least Eva would be safe.

Afterward, she refused a ride home, then, in the parking lot, when it began to rain, changed her mind. She sat in back and spoke only to Fein and Lipschitz, letting Brand know it wasn't a victory. Brand, used to losing, knew it was.

He expected they would make up before the operation. Eventually she'd forgive him, he'd apologize, and they'd go on in their normal, tortured way—or that was how it had worked with Katya. He believed this until two o'clock Thursday afternoon, sitting at the Lions' Gate. Mad as it sounded, in twenty-four hours, inevitable as the sun rising, he would be in the Valley of Ayalon, aiming a gun at a train. Rather than spur him to go see her, the idea made him colder. At this moment, if that was all she cared for him, the hell with her. She should have told him about Gideon in the first place. And yet that night, listening for Mrs. Ohanesian's phone to ring, he debated getting dressed and going down to the Peugeot. Their first night together, when she was just The Widow, he'd felt her husband and Katya in the room with them, their presence both mournful and a comfort, as if this was what was left to them. Only a fool would sacrifice that last consolation to pride, yet here he was.

In the morning a guilty vestige of the feeling remained, like a faintly remembered dream, but it was too late. He unlocked the Peugeot and slipped into the cemetery for his pistols, the old and the new both wrapped in oilcloth. Popping the trunk, he pictured Mrs. Ohanesian watching him from her window. With all the rain, the hidden compartment smelled of mildew. He set the bundle down as if it might explode.

Eva was the first one he picked up, giving them some time alone. She wasn't used to being up so early and looked tired around the eyes. As always, she'd thrown herself into the role, wearing a powder-blue headscarf, a white blouse and khaki pants
like a Youth League kibbutznik, as if, with her soft hands and mascara, she might fit in. Before the checkpoint, he apologized.

“I know,” she said. “I was sick all day yesterday.”

“I wanted to come by last night.”

“You should have.”

“I was being an idiot.”

This they could agree on.

“You'll be careful,” she asked.

“That's me, Mr. Careful.”

“Please don't joke.” She gave him a helpless face, and he understood he couldn't die. He reached a hand over the seat for her to squeeze.

“Don't worry.”

“Why not?”

“Gideon said it himself, I'm very brave.”

“I'm not,” she said.

“That's not true.”

As they curled through the suburbs, gathering the cell one at a time like a dire carpool, she moved to the front. Lipschitz was the last, wearing a black frock coat too heavy for the weather. Beneath it he had a Sten machine gun Fein and Yellin admired as if it were a grandchild.

They took the Jaffa Road for the coast, passing the bus station and the reservoir, leaving the city behind. The desert outskirts were Arab territory. On both sides chalk-white villages dotted the cliffs like hawks' nests commanding the valley and its ancient trade route. This was the land of the Canaanites, occupied by the Philistines and Babylonians and Romans before
the Ottomans and the British. Now the main population, again, after the foreign invaders had retreated, was lizards and scorpions. Pincus and Scheib had warned Brand never to take a fare here at night. At first, like Eva's stories of the riots, their advice seemed overwrought. Now he saw it as common sense. There were no call boxes out here, no law.

“Damn it,” he said. “I forgot my bandana.”

“So did I,” Yellin confessed.

“They'll have some where we're going,” Fein said.

“You can use my babushka,” Eva told Brand, taking it off and refolding it on her lap for him. He would be her champion.

The road took them through Bab el-Wad, a notorious stronghold of the Arab Legion. Brand slowed as if the traffic police were laying for him. It was the Moslem holy day and the marketplace was closed, the main street deserted. Only a beggar in a soiled kaftan stopped to stare at the novelty of a cab full of Jews, and at the edge of town Brand sped up again.

After Latrun they descended, breasting the Judean Hills before dropping into the Valley of Ayalon, the view before them endless, stretching to the coastal plain. Miles ahead on the desert floor, like smoke from a fire, another car kicked up a tail of dust. So far off, with no wind, it was impossible to tell if it was coming toward them or headed for Tel Aviv. If it was a patrol, there was no way to disguise their approach. Brand could see them being stopped and Lipschitz opening up with the Sten, the jeep or armored car raking them before they could get out of their seats. If it was an armored car, it might be better to go cross-country and try to outrun them. Against a jeep they had no chance.

“What's that?” Eva asked, pointing to something by the roadside.

From a distance it looked like the frame of a tent or Quonset hut, maybe a burnt-out gas station or café. As they neared, it solidified into the hulk of a bus rusted the color of dried blood.

“That's been there forever,” Yellin said. “They're dead ducks going uphill.”

The directions Asher had given him took them off the highway and along a dry wadi running back into the foothills. There was no road, only a loose consensus of tire tracks. He craned over the wheel, the Peugeot dipping into ruts and bumping over stones like a launch in choppy water. He figured they had enough people to push if they got stuck. There were no trees for cover, just cactus and scrub, and he was relieved when they were finally out of sight of the highway.

As they climbed into the hills, he imagined Asher had been stopped, the fake plates discovered, the mines. Without the second car they'd have to turn back. Without Asher, the cell would dissolve and Brand would be free, a coward without a home or a people. Was that what he wanted? Why did he have to fight so hard to overcome his worst instincts?

“I see it,” Eva said, and there it was, around the bend.

Kibbutz Ramat Avraham sat atop a knoll like a colonial outpost, ringed on all sides, like police headquarters, with barbed wire. Over the compound rose a shiny new water tower crowned with a Star of David flag. On its catwalk paced a pair of men with sniper rifles. The gate was barricaded by a truck liberated from the Italian army, still flying the tricolor on its canvas side,
which looked moth-eaten, but, as they slowed, proved to be pocked with bullet holes. At a signal from the catwalk, the truck pulled up enough for Brand to sneak by, then when he was through, backed up again, sealing them in. Inside the wire, the buildings were makeshift, a canvas mess hall and barracks on raw wooden platforms spaced around a bald parade ground, and with the panic of a man held underwater too long, Brand wanted out.

During the war he'd lived in tents like these, stifling in the summer and freezing in the winter, sharing his straw mattress with rats. He lined up for roll call morning and evening and ate off tin plates, licking the rusty metal to get the last dab of porridge. When someone died, they divvied up his Red Cross package and had a party. After the guard they called Nosey killed Koppelman, Brand let someone else have his share. He was through being a beast, a vow he'd break the next day, and the next—the rest of his life, he'd thought. He'd die before he lived like that again.

Asher saved him, striding across the parade ground with his valise as if he'd called a cab.

“Morning,” he said, leaning in the window, turning a smile on everyone. “No problems, I take it.”

“None.”

“Good. We're actually a little early. Pull around to that shed and I'll meet you there.”

Brand took the drive at a crawl, their progress followed by lookouts on the catwalk. Instead of disappointed, he was grateful to no longer be in charge. Asher made the operation seem
possible, as if he could do it himself. To Brand it didn't make sense. Though he didn't know Asher, he believed in him.

The other car was a stake truck with an official-looking Palestine Railways logo on the doors.

“It is,” Asher confirmed, without elaborating. In the bed were picks and shovels and a pair of wheelbarrows. He had white kaftans and keffiyehs for everyone, and makeup for their faces. The plan had changed slightly. They'd still blow the tracks, but just in one spot, and now they'd also be repairing them. The engineer would stop to see what the problem was, Asher would climb into the cab, and like that they'd have the train.

“Why do we have to blow up the tracks?” Yellin asked. “Why can't we just be working on them?”

“We
want
to blow up the tracks,” Asher said. “Ideally we'd blow up the train if we had time, but we don't.”

Eva helped them with the makeup. Lipschitz made a hilarious Arab, with his moon face and glasses. Lipschitz of the desert. Fein and Yellin could have passed for falafel vendors, Asher a sheikh. Brand, with his green eyes and blond hair, looked like a burn victim. The dimple in his chin itched. Eva straightened his keffiyeh and did a last touch-up of his nose. She put a finger to her lips and pressed it to his.

“Be careful.”

“I will.”

“Listen to Asher. Watch what he does.”

It was time. She let him go, and as he settled into the driver's seat, fixing the mirrors so he could see, he wondered how
many comrades she'd told to be careful. Did it matter? He still had her babushka, even if he no longer needed it.

Asher and Lipschitz sat in the cab, Fein and Yellin behind them in the bed with the tools. Asher balanced the valise on his knees, holding it with both hands. They waved goodbye to Eva and set off across the parade ground. There must have been an important meeting, because the kibbutzniks, invisible till now, were streaming out of the mess tent, a khaki mass of suntanned young men and women dedicated to an agrarian, egalitarian homeland. Brand couldn't imagine living here, captive, under constant attack. Having barely survived his own brush with collectivism, he didn't share their ideals, even as he admired their resolve. They all stopped to watch the stolen truck go, waving as if wishing them luck, and he understood this was Asher's doing. He was following protocol, for everyone's sake. Now that they were Arabs, they could safely be seen. They waved back, the Italian truck pulled up, and they were outside the wire.