Leon Uris (68 page)

Palestine held its breath waiting for the next blow to fall. General Arnold Haven-Hurst was stunned at first but retaliated against the Yishuv with martial law, cordons, searches, raids, and even executions in a campaign that slowed normal industry and commerce to a crawl. His all-encompassing Operation Squid encircled Palestine.

Caldwell’s murder, Hell’s Fortnight, and the final raid on CID were obvious mockeries of British authority. As the Maccabees erupted, the Aliyah Bet brought three more illegal ships into Palestine waters. While the illegal immigration runs were not so spectacular they were just as damaging as the activities of the terrorists. British troops patrolled the streets of Jewish cities and the highways with the taut expectancy of ambush any moment.

The United Nations delegation was arriving shortly. Haven-Hurst determined to cripple the Yishuv before they came. The general obtained a list of officers and men who were known for overt anti-Jewish actions. He screened the list personally and selected six of the most vicious: two officers and four enlisted men. The six were brought to his quarters in the Schneller Barracks and sworn in on an ultrasecret mission. For five days the affair was plotted. On the sixth day, Haven-Hurst launched his last-ditch effort.

The six men were disguised as Arabs. A pair of them drove along King George Avenue in a truck loaded with two tons of dynamite. The truck made for the Zion Settlement Building. It stopped catercorner from the building, headed at the long driveway that led into the main entrance. The driver in Arab costume locked the steering wheel, put the truck in gear, and opened the throttle; the two men jumped clear and disappeared.

The truck tore over the street, through the open gate and down the driveway. It swerved for an instant, then careened off the curbing and hit just off the main entrance. A thunderous explosion occurred. The building was demolished.

At the same moment another pair of men in another truck filled with dynamite tried the same maneuver at the Yishuv Central building just two blocks away. A meeting was in session and the building held almost the entire Yishuv leadership.

The truck bore down on the second building. At the last instant it had to jump a curb. In hitting the curb the truck was thrown far enough off course to miss the building and blow up an adjoining apartment house.

The four soldiers were scooped up in two escape cars driven by the last two of the picked team. The cars fled toward the sanctuary of British-controlled Trans-Jordan.

General Arnold Haven-Hurst had attempted in one blow to wipe out the Yishuv leadership and representation. One hundred people died at the Zion Settlement Society. None was killed at Yishuv Central. Among the dead was Harriet Saltzman, the eighty-year-old leader of Youth Aliyah.

Within moments after the explosions, Haganah and Maccabee Intelligence went into action to comb Palestine for the culprits. By the end of the day both of the organizations had identified the six “Arabs” as British soldiers. They were further able to trace the action directly to Arnold Haven-Hurst, although with no usable proof. Instead of destroying Yishuv leadership, Haven-Hurst’s desperate gamble had a reverse effect. It united the Jews of Palestine in a way they had never before been united and it drove together the two armed forces, the Haganah and Maccabees. The Haganah had obtained a copy of the “Haven-Hurst Report.” With the evidence behind the bombings they knew the general was out to destroy them if they had not known it before. Avidan dispatched Zev Gilboa to Jerusalem to seek out Bar Israel to arrange a meeting between himself and the Maccabee commanders. The procedure was almost unique: the only precedent had been at the beginning of World War II when Avidan asked Akiva to abstain from terror for the duration.

The meeting was held at one o’clock in the morning in an open field on the road from Jerusalem on the site of what was once the Tenth Roman Legion camp. There were four men present: Akiva and Ben Moshe for the Maccabees, Avidan for the Haganah, with Zev Gilboa representing the Haganah’s striking arm, the Palmach. There were no handshakes or amenities between the two organizations’ representatives. They stood facing each other in the darkness, filled with mutual distrust. The late-night air was cold despite the coming of summer.

“I have asked this meeting with you to see if there is some basis for closer co-operation between our forces,” Avidan said.

“You mean you want us to come under your jurisdiction?” Ben Moshe asked suspiciously.

“I have long given up the idea of trying to control your group,” Avidan said. “I merely think the times call for a maximum effort. You have strength inside the three cities and are able to operate with a greater degree of freedom than we can.”

“So that’s it,” Akiva snapped. “You want us to do your dirty work.”

“Hear him out, Akiva,” his field commander said.

“I don’t like the whole idea. I didn’t approve of this meeting, Ben Moshe. These people have betrayed us in the past and they’ll do it again.”

Avidan’s bald head turned crimson under the old man’s words. “I choose to listen to your insults tonight, Akiva, because there is too much at stake. I count on the fact that despite our differences you are a Jew and you love Eretz Israel.” He handed a copy of the “Haven-Hurst Report” to Akiva.

The old man gave it to Ben Moshe, who turned his flashlight on the paper.

“Fourteen years ago I said the British were our enemy. You didn’t believe me then,” Akiva whispered.

“I won’t argue politics with you. Will you or won’t you work with us?” Avidan demanded.

“We will try it out,” Ben Moshe said.

After the meeting liaison groups went to work to plot out a joint Haganah-Maccabee action. Two weeks after the explosions the British received their answer for the destruction of the Zion Settlement Society building and the attempted destruction of the Yishuv Central.

In one night the Haganah completely wrecked the railroad system, stopping all rail traffic to and from Palestine.

The next night the Maccabees broke into six British embassies and consulates in Mediterranean countries and destroyed records used in the fight against Aliyah Bet.

The Palmach branch of the Haganah wrecked the Mosul oil pipelines in fifteen places.

With this done, the final measure was plotted by the Maccabees—the elimination of General Sir Arnold Haven-Hurst. Maccabees observed the Schneller compound twenty-four hours a day. They charted all movement in and out, logged each car and truck, and diagramed the entire compound.

After four days it began to look like an impossible task. Haven-Hurst was locked in the center of a fortress surrounded by thousands of troops. No one but British personnel was allowed anywhere near his quarters. When Haven-Hurst did move out of the compound it was in secrecy and he was guarded by convoys so heavy the Maccabees would lose a hundred men by attacking it.

Then the first flaw was spotted.

A civilian automobile was logged as leaving the Schneller compound area between midnight and one o’clock in the morning about three times each week, returning to the compound just before daylight. There was only a driver in the car and he was dressed as a civilian. The regularity of the movement of this automobile during such unusual hours made it automatically suspect.

The Maccabee team went to work to find the registry of the owner, who turned out to be a wealthy Arab family. Thereupon the Maccabees decided that the car must belong to someone working with the British on the Arab side and gave it up as a possible device for getting to Haven-Hurst.

Meanwhile reports on Arnold Haven-Hurst’s personal background, conduct, and habits were compiled and studied. The Maccabees knew he was an ambitious man who had made an important marriage. The marriage gave him station as well as money and he had never endangered it. Haven-Hurst was considered the epitome of a proper gentleman in his social life; he was considered, in fact, a rather dull bore.

Probing beneath this apparent circumspect surface, the Maccabees discovered that Haven-Hurst had had not one, but several, extramarital affairs. In the Maccabees were people who had served in the British Army under Haven-Hurst years before. Camp rumors always had him with a mistress.

A theory developed that Haven-Hurst could well have been very lonely locked in the compound. Because of his marriage and position he would not dare to bring a woman into the camp. He could possibly be going out to a mistress. The idea was put forward that Haven-Hurst was an unseen passenger in the mystery car and was regularly traveling between the compound and a woman.

It seemed preposterous even to the Maccabees, yet until the mystery car was properly identified it could not be cast away. Who could the mistress of Arnold Haven-Hurst be? There were no rumors to be checked upon. If he had a love nest he had concealed it with great skill. No Jewess would risk living with him, and there were no English women available. This left only an Arab woman.

To attempt to follow the car would have risked detection and alerting of the quarry. It would have been possible for the Maccabees to waylay the single car traveling late at night, but the command decided that if there were the least chance that Haven-Hurst was a passenger it would be better to discover his destination and catch him at an indiscretion.

They worked from the other direction, the owner of the car. In this family of Arab effendis was a young woman who in beauty, education, and background could qualify as an attraction for a man like Haven-Hurst. The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fit together.

The Maccabees watched the Arab family house and constantly trailed the girl. On the second night, their persistence paid off. The girl left her home at midnight and made for a house in the rich Arab El Baq’a section of Jerusalem near the Hebron-Bethlehem Road. A half hour after she arrived the mystery automobile pulled up and the Maccabees were able to catch a fleeting glimpse of General Arnold Haven-Hurst rushing from the back of the car to keep his rendezvous.

At three o’clock that same morning Haven-Hurst was awakened by a voice in the darkness which shouted out a bloodcurdling quotation, “
Praise ye the Lord for the avenging of Israel!
”

He leaped from the bed. The Arab woman shrieked as Maccabee bullets raked the room.

Later that morning British headquarters received a phone call from the Maccabees. The British were advised where they could find their late commander. They were further advised that the demise of Arnold Haven-Hurst had been well photographed. If the British brought undue retribution against the Yishuv, the Maccabees would publish the pictures.

Headquarters speculated on the effect of the scandal of one of their generals being murdered in the bed of his Arab mistress. They decided to cover up the entire affair with public announcements that he had died in an automobile accident.

The Maccabees agreed that Haven-Hurst indeed was the victim of an automobile accident.

With the general gone from the scene the terrorist activity dwindled. The pending arrival of the United Nations committee lay an uneasy calm over the land.

In late June of 1947, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, known as UNSCOP, arrived in Haifa. The neutrals represented Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Guatemala, Uruguay, Peru, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Iran, and India.

The odds were long against the Jews. Iran was a Moslem country. India was partly Moslem and its delegate was a Moslem as well as representing a British Commonwealth nation. Canada and Australia were also of the British Commonwealth. Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, in the Soviet bloc, had a traditional history of anti-Zionism. The South American representatives, Uruguay, Peru, and Guatemala, were Catholic in predomination and could possibly be influenced by the Vatican’s lukewarm feeling toward Zionism. Only Sweden and the Netherlands could be considered fully nonpartisan.

None the less, the Yishuv welcomed UNSCOP.

The Arabs opposed the presence of the United Nations. Inside Palestine a general strike of the Arabs was called, demonstrations were held, and the air was filled with oaths and threats. Outside of Palestine the Arab countries began riots and blood pogroms against their Jews.

Barak Ben Canaan, the old warrior and negotiator, was once again pressed into service by the Yishuv. He joined Ben Gurion and Dr. Weizmann on the advisory committee to UNSCOP.

K
ITTY AND
K
AREN RETURNED
to Gan Dafna. Kitty waited for the right moment to have it out with Karen. When the letter from Dov Landau arrived, she decided to delay it no longer.

Kitty poured a lemon rinse over Karen’s head and wrung out her long, thick brown hair and rubbed the girl’s head briskly with a big towel.

“Phew,” Karen said, taking a comer of the towel to wipe the soap from her eyes.

The water boiled in the teakettle. Karen got up and tied the towel around her head and brewed a pot of tea. Kitty sat at the kitchen table filing her fingernails. She began to paint them carefully with polish.

“What’s bothering you?” Karen said disarmingly.

“Good Lord, I’m not even allowed the privacy of my own thoughts.”

“Something is wrong. Something’s been wrong since you carne back from your trip to the Sea of Galilee. Did something happen between you and Ari?”

“Plenty happened between me and Ari but that’s not what is disturbing me. Karen, we have to have a talk about us, and our futures. I guess we’d better do it right now.”

“I don’t understand.”

Kitty waved her hands to dry her fingernails. She stood up and lit a cigarette awkwardly. “You know how much you mean to me and how much I love you?”

“I think so,” the girl whispered.

“Since that first day at Caraolos I’ve wanted you to be my girl.”

“I’ve wanted it that way too, Kitty.”

“Then you’ll believe that I have thought this all out carefully and what I want to do is for your own good. You must have faith in me.”

“I do ... you know that.”

“What I am about to say will be hard for you to appreciate fully. It is hard for me to come to this, too, for I am very fond of many children here and I have grown quite attached to Gan Dafna. Karen, I want to take you home to America with me.”