Leon Uris (91 page)

David’s parents had suffered enough, Avidan thought. One brother dead and another wounded and a third the leader of the Maccabees suicide squad inside the Old City walls.

David looked from one to the other frantically. “You must give me a chance!” he cried.

There was a knock on the door. Alterman took a communique and handed it to Ben Zion. The blood drained from the face of the operations chief. He handed the paper to Avidan. None of them remembered Avidan’s ever losing his composure, but now his hand trembled as he read and tears welled in his eyes.

His voice quivered. “The Old City has just surrendered.”

“No!” Alterman cried.

David sagged into a chair.

Ben Zion’s fists clenched and he gritted his teeth. “Without Jerusalem there is no Jewish nation!” he cried. He turned to David. “Go up to Jerusalem, David ... go up!”

When Moses led the tribes of Israel to the shores of the Red Sea he asked for a man with such faith in the power of God that he would be the first to jump into the sea. Nahshon was the name of the man who came forward. “Nahshon” became the code name of David Ben Ami’s venture.

At darkness David left the town of Rehovot south of Tel Aviv and drove toward Judea. At the foothills, near Latrun, David turned off the road into the wilderness, into the steep rock-filled hills and the gorges and wadis. David Ben Ami was driven by an obsession, but his passion was tempered by his appreciation of the gravity of the mission and controlled by his infinite knowledge of the land around him.

The jeep twisted and banged and rebelled against the torture which no mechanical thing was made to take. In compound low gear David drove slowly and cautiously as he came very close to Latrun. The danger of meeting a Legion patrol was great.

His eyes and instincts sharpened as he saw the fort in the distance. He inched the vehicle down a treacherous slope, in search of the Roman road buried under centuries of debris. He followed the contours of washed-down dirt and rocks, and at the junction of two wadis he stopped and dug up some rocks. Their size and texture assured him that the road was there. Once he had established the general direction of the pathway of Roman legions he was able to move along it more quickly.

David Ben Ami swept in a circle around Latrun, pushing himself and his vehicle without mercy. Many times he cut the motor and sat in frozen silence to listen for an imagined enemy sound. Many times he crawled on his belly in the darkness to feel out the route through the dry, rocky wadis. Those sixteen kilometers were the longest David had ever known. The night passed too quickly for him and with its passing the danger of an Arab patrol increased.

At dawn, Ben Zion and Avidan were drowsy from a night of waiting and filled with apprehension. They now knew the folly of David’s attempt; they felt in their hearts that they would never see him again.

The phone rang. Avidan lifted the receiver and listened.

“It is the coding room,” Avidan said. “They have just received a message from Jerusalem.”

“What is it?”

“I358.”

They dashed for the Bible. Ben Zion emitted a long sigh of relief as he read, “Isaiah: thirty-five, eight:
And an highway shall be there ... lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon ... but the redeemed shall walk there
...”

Nahshon had arrived in Jerusalem! David Ben Ami had found a bypass of Latrun. Jerusalem still had a chance.

Thousands of volunteers in Jerusalem were sworn to secrecy. They poured out of the city to claw a road through the wilderness along the route that David had found. David returned to Tel Aviv where a second corps of volunteers worked at the opposite end to link up with the Jerusalem people.

The two task forces hid by day and built by night, right under the noses of the Arab Legion at Latrun. They toiled in feverish silence, carrying away by hand each bagful of dirt. Through the wadis and ravines, along the ancient Roman road, the two forces inched toward each other. David Ben Ami asked for permanent transfer to Jerusalem and got it.

Jordana had had a case of nerves ever since she had left David in Tel Aviv. She returned to Gan Dafna where there was a tremendous amount of work to be done rebuilding the wrecked village. Most of the buildings had been hit by artillery fire. The younger children who had been evacuated were now returned. Kitty’s cottage had not been too severely damaged so Jordana moved in with her and Karen. The two women had developed a fast friendship. Jordana found herself able to confide in Kitty the things which she could not tell others for fear of showing weakness.

Kitty was fully aware of Jordana’s state when she returned from Tel Aviv, though Jordana tried to mask it with an outward show of gruffness. On an evening two weeks after she had parted from David she sat with Kitty in the dining room, having a late snack and tea. As Kitty chatted, Jordana suddenly became pale and stood up quickly and ran from the room. Kitty followed her outside and reached her just as Jordana slumped to the ground. Kitty caught her and supported her, half leading and half carrying Jordana to her office. She stretched the
sabra
on the cot and forced some brandy into her.

It was ten minutes before Jordana came fully around. She sat up in a daze. Kitty made her put her head down. When she had regained her senses Jordana shook her head with disbelief.

“What happened?” Kitty asked.

“I don’t know. Nothing like that has ever happened to me. I was listening to you and all of a sudden I couldn’t hear you or see you. It turned dark and a cold chill passed through me.”

“Go on ...”

“I ... I heard David shriek ... it was horrible.”

“Now you listen to me, young lady. You’ve been so tensed up you’re ready to explode. I want you to take a few days’ rest. Go down to Yad El with your mother ...”

Jordana sprang to her feet. “No!” she said.

“Sit down!” Kitty barked.

“It’s nonsense. I am behaving shamefully.”

“You are acting quite normally. You wouldn’t get yourself into such a state if you would let off a little steam and a few tears occasionally and not try to hold it all inside you.”

“David would be so disgusted with me if he knew I was carrying on so.”

“Oh, stop it, Jordana. Damn your
sabra
pride. I’m giving you a sedative and I want you to go right to bed.”

“No!” Jordana said and ran from the room.

Kitty gave a sigh of resignation. What did you do with a girl who felt that any show of emotion would be construed as a weakness. Years of tension and struggle had built a thick skin on the
sabras
. Their pride was fierce beyond comprehension.

Three days after the incident Kitty came into her cottage one evening after sending Karen over to Dov’s. Jordana was working on reports. Kitty sat down before the desk. Jordana looked up and smiled, then turned grave as she saw the expression on Kitty’s face. Kitty took the pen from her hand.

Neither of them spoke for several moments.

“David is dead,” Jordana said.

“Yes.”

“How did it happen?” Jordana said in an emotionless monotone.

“Ari phoned a few minutes ago. The details are not clear. It seems that he organized a band of some Palmach, some Maccabees, some Haganah. It was not authorized ... apparently David had been looking at the walls of the Old City and it was more than he could stand. They made an attack to try to win back the Old City. They conquered Mount Zion ...”

“Go on,” Jordana said.

“They didn’t have a chance. It was a suicide mission.”

Jordana did not move or even blink her eyes.

“What can I do? What can I say?” Kitty said.

The girl stood up and held her chin high. “Don’t worry about me,” she said in a clear voice.

If Jordana Ben Canaan had tears for her David, no one ever saw them. She disappeared with her grief into the ruins of Abu Yesha. She sat neither moving nor eating nor drinking for four days and four nights. She returned to Gan Dafna. As Ari had done with his sweetheart, Jordana never mentioned David’s name again.

One night, a month from the time David Ben Ami found the way to Jerusalem, the “Burma Road,” the bypass of Latrun, was completed. A convoy rushed through and the siege of Jerusalem was over for all time.

Until that moment no one had known for certain if Israel would live. In the magic instant when the workers from Jerusalem shook hands with the workers from Tel Aviv, the Jews had won their War of Liberation.

T
HERE WERE MANY MONTHS
of the bitterest and most bloody fighting ahead, but the opening of the “Burma Road” gave the Jews a spiritual lift at a time it was sorely needed. After the Jews had stopped the first invasion of the Arab armies, the Security Council of the United Nations was able to effect a temporary truce. Both sides welcomed it. The Arabs obviously had to shake up their commands and reorganize. They had lost face in the eyes of the world by failure to overrun the country. The Israelis wanted the time to get in more weapons and increase their operational strength.

The Provisional Government did not have complete control of the situation, for the co-operation of the Palmach, the ultra-Orthodox, and the Maccabees was still a matter of degrees. The Palmach, to their credit, gave up their elite corps and joined the army of Israel en masse, when faced with expulsion from the fighting fronts for failure to take orders from the central command. The Maccabees likewise made up special Maccabee battalions in the Israeli Army, but insisted on their own officers. But nothing could change the unyielding attitude of the fanatics who continued to wait for the Messiah in an absolute literal interpretation of the Bible.

Just as unification of these elements appeared a reality, a tragic event occurred to alienate the Maccabees forever. Maccabee sympathizers in America had purchased a large amount of needed arms and a cargo plane which was named the
Akiva
. Along with the arms, they had several hundred volunteers ready to join the special Maccabee battalions. Under truce conditions, neither side was supposed to rearm nor reinforce any position. Both Arabs and Jews ignored this UN dictate. Both sides secretly moved arms and men around in their build-ups of strength.

The existence of the
Akiva
became known by Israeli people in Europe. The Provisional Government demanded that the
Akiva
and its arms be turned over to it. Israel was one nation now, fighting a single war, they argued, and, after all, the Maccabee battalions were part of the army of Israel. The Maccabees objected. They wanted to keep their identification and they argued that the arms were specifically purchased for use of their members.

The government brought up the question of violation of the truce. If the Provisional Government handled the entry of the
Akiva
the chances of getting the arms in secretly were a hundred per cent better than if the Maccabees tried on their own. The Maccabees countered by claiming that they did not have to recognize the truce order for they were independent of a central command. So the bitter squabble raged, with the Provisional Government asserting that there could be but one central authority and the Maccabees claiming otherwise.

The
Akiva
took off from Europe with its first load of arms and volunteers. The government, which sorely needed both the arms and the men, was forced to order the Maccabees to make the plane return without landing. The Maccabees were enraged at this order.

As the
Akiva
reached Palestine, in defiance of the edict, the airdrome was filled with government officials, Maccabees, and United Nations observers. The government radioed the plane a final warning to return to Europe. The
Akiva
refused. The Provisional Government ordered fighter planes up and the
Akiva
was shot down.

Fighting erupted between army and Maccabee troops. In anger the Maccabees withdrew their battalions from the army. Both sides hurled names and charges and countercharges until all justice in the “
Akiva
incident” was buried under a welter of insults and accusations. The bitterness created in Maccabee ranks was permanent.

The incident did prove to be a final clearing of the air. During the years of the British mandate the Maccabees had been a factor in making the British quit by their constant goading. Once the British were gone, terror tactics lost their usefulness and the Maccabees appeared unable to accept the discipline that a field army required. Thus their value as a fighting force was seriously qualified. Their one great victory had been at Jaffa, a city of crushed morale. In other places they had failed. Their massacre at the village of Neve Sadij remained as the one great black mark against the Jews. The Maccabees were activists with great individual courage but by their very nature they rebelled against authority. After the
Akiva
incident they remained as an angry, defiant, political group whose basic tenet was that force conquered all problems.

For a month talks went on with both sides. Count Bernadotte and his American aide, Ralph Bunche, working for the United Nations, were unable to bring the sides together. They could not break down in a month what had been building for three decades. Kawukji, in central Galilee, had been constantly violating the truce. Now the Egyptians broke faith by resuming fighting before the truce deadline was up.

It was a great mistake, for it triggered a new Israeli campaign. If the world’s military experts had been amazed by the ability of the Jews to withstand the invasion, they were stunned as the army of Israel went on the offensive.

The new phase of the war opened with the Israel air force bombing Cairo, Damascus, and Amman as a warning for the Arabs to quit similar attacks on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The Arabs did not bomb Jewish cities from the air again. Israeli corvettes carried the fight to the enemy by shelling Tyre, in Lebanon, one of the key ports for the entry of arms.

At Ein Gev
kibbutz
on the Sea of Galilee, the farmers, who had been under siege for months and who had broken a Syrian attack, now struck back. In a bold night maneuver, they climbed the Sussita mountain and threw the Syrians from it.