Love and Treasure (18 page)

“No?”

“I’m not giving you the truck.”

“Then why are you here?”

He had come on his own to see Yuval. Though Ilona knew of his decision, he had not wanted her to accompany him. “I will drive the truck.”

“You will drive the truck.”

“Right.”

“To the Italian border.”

Despite Rudolph Zweig’s admiration of the man, Jack did not trust Yuval. He didn’t trust him to protect USAF property, and, more important, he did not trust the man to protect the truck’s cargo. Whatever the pugnacious Jew’s assurances, Jack could not be sure that that cargo was as precious to Yuval as it was to Jack himself. There was, as ever, only one person Jack trusted. Himself.

“I don’t care if you’re taking those Jews to Tierra del Fuego,” Jack said. “You want my truck, I’m driving it.”

“Ridiculous,” Yuval said.

“And yet fact.”

“First of all, if you are caught, you will be court-martialed.”

“That’s my business.”

“It will be my business if your arrest causes an international incident.
You think the U.S. Army will continue to turn a blind eye to our operations if they find out we’re using GIs as drivers?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. You want my truck, well then, I’m going to drive it.”

Yuval muttered darkly, harsh words in Hebrew, something about Jack being the son of a something. A whore, perhaps. Because he didn’t trust Yuval, Jack had kept his familiarity with the language a secret, and so he did not ask. Though he didn’t understand it all, he was surprised to find how similar the language the Jews from British Mandated Palestine spoke was to the biblical Hebrew he had studied in the Columbia University Classics Department. Yuval’s accent was more glottal and rougher edged than that of Jack’s Hebrew teacher at the university, an effete Englishman named Peters who seemed, if anything, to be an anti-Semite and who made no effort to pronounce Hebrew words any differently from English ones; but with practice and exposure Jack was finding Yuval and the other Palestinian Jews in the DP camp easy enough to understand.

Jack said, “And second of all?”

“And second of all what?”

“First of all, I’ll be court-martialed. And second of all?”

“Second of all, how do I know what kind of driver you are?”

A doorway opened, and a woman stepped out and hurled a bucket of water directly in their path. Jack leaped aside, but Yuval was too slow. The sudsy water drenched his trouser legs and his boots.

“Oh, my God!” the woman cried in Yiddish. She switched to Hebrew. “I’m so sorry, Aba. What a terrible mess. Please, come in the laundry, and I will find you some dry pants.”

Yuval gave her a reassuring smile. “It’s no problem, madam. I needed a bath.”

She giggled and went back inside.

Yuval turned to Jack. “Well. You’ve got good reflexes. I’ll give you that.”

Jack was supposed to drive the refugees to a spot a few kilometers from the Italian border, where they were to be met by guides who would lead them across the border and over the Reschen Pass, where another truck waited to take them south. The night before the trip, when Jack arrived in Yuval’s room to discuss the plan, he had been surprised and happy to
find Ilona there. She had been so busy with work and classes that they hadn’t seen each other for a few days.

“I have wonderful news,” she said. “Reuven is finally strong enough to make the journey. He, Zvi, and Yossi will be going with you tomorrow.”

Yuval said, “This is a complicated transport. There will be almost a dozen children among the refugees.”

Jack objected. The journey was too arduous, he told Yuval. Children wouldn’t be able to tolerate hours stuck in the airless cold in the back of the truck, and they couldn’t be expected to walk four or five kilometers through the snow over the border to the truck waiting on the other side. Yuval scoffed, reminding Jack that these children had survived far worse than a ride in an unheated truck and a short alpine hike. Moreover, if they waited until spring when the snow cleared from the passes, they’d be expected to walk the whole way, not cut the journey short in a truck.

“The truck is a magic carpet compared to the spring hike,” Yuval said. “They will have only to manage the short walk across the border.”

“And if they can’t make it to the border?”

“They’ll make it.”

“And if they get caught?”

“If they get caught, the Italians will send them back, and we’ll try again. And again. And again, until we get them through.”

Jack might have continued to object had not Ilona taken up the cause. “They have been training for months,” she told him. “All of them. Even the children.”

“It’s just too hard,” he said.

“Please, Jack. If they wait and the border closes, it will break their hearts.”

Eventually, he agreed, but only on condition that he be allowed to drive the group all the way across the border to Italy where the second truck waited, so that they would not have to hike at all. “There’s a tuberculosis sanatorium in Meran, in the South Tirol,” he told Yuval. “We’ll disguise the refugees as TB patients on their way to take the cure.”

“And if we get stopped? How will we explain the presence of an American officer?”

“I’m the official medical escort.”

“And I will be the Red Cross nurse!” Ilona said. Before Jack could protest, she said, “There is no way the Red Cross would send TB patients without a nurse in attendance.”

Jack had to acknowledge that she was right, and Yuval, impressed perhaps by their mutual strength of purpose, did not bother to muster arguments in opposition to either Jack’s plan or Ilona’s refinement.

The road through the mountains was rutted and buckled, and a skin of ice had formed over the puddles in the deeper potholes. Had the choice been his, Jack would have driven much more slowly to avoid sending the passengers hurtling around the rear of the truck, but every time his foot touched the brake, Yuval growled at him to “move it.” With every bump, Jack imagined the people in the back tumbling over one another, the children jerked from side to side, banged together like a load of empty milk bottles.

The road smoothed out, and Jack shifted up a gear. Yuval propped his M1 between his knees and fished a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. Both the weapon and the cigarettes were American made. Had these also come from the Jewish Agency, Jack wondered. Or was General Collins so eager to rid himself and the American Zone of the ever-increasing burden of DPs that he was supplying the Jews with weapons to guard their escape through the Alps to Italy and their run on the British blockade of Palestine?

Yuval lit his cigarette. Jack rolled down his window against the acrid smoke, glancing in his side mirror. The clouds were heavy, and there was only a faint sliver of moon. They had timed the trip for this day, when there would be just enough light to see the road without the aid of headlamps but not so much as to risk being noticed. But their plans had been complicated by the threat of a storm, and for most of the drive the toenail moon that was all Jack had to light his way had been lost behind streaky gray clouds. It was only because his eyes were sharpened by hours of peering into the gloom that Jack noticed the shadow on the road behind them.

The cold night air was like a slap across his cheek as he stuck his head out the window and looked back. There was no mistaking it. They were being followed.

“What is it?” Yuval said.

“There’s something coming up behind us.”

“A truck?”

“Smaller than that.”

“Step on the gas!” Yuval said.

Jack looked back again, gauging the distance between himself and the approaching vehicle. Gently, he pressed his foot down. The truck rattled beneath him, picking up, but slowly, too slowly. The road was poor, the load was heavy, and the deuce-and-a-half wasn’t made for speed. He looked out the window again. The vehicle behind him was still far enough back that it appeared little more than a smudge or shadow in the road, but it was growing closer.

“Move it!” Yuval said.

Instead Jack lifted his foot off the gas and shifted down.

“Faster!” Yuval said.

Jack slowed still further. He snapped his headlights on.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Yuval shouted.

“We can’t outrun them,” Jack said.

“The border is no more than ten kilometers away! Just go, go!”

“The border is eight kilometers,” Jack said. “But they’ll catch us long before that.” He glanced back again. He could make out the silhouette of the vehicle behind them. It was a Willys jeep, American. By now both vehicles were traveling at a sedate thirty miles per hour, and Jack used the excuse of a huge pothole in the road to slow down still further.

“You’d better tuck that rifle under the seat,” he said.

Yuval jammed his gun beneath his seat and covered the protruding butt with his haversack.

The jeep was right on their tail.

“Roll down your window,” Jack said. “Stick your arm out and wave them by.”

After a moment’s thought, Yuval did as Jack told him.

The jeep pulled up next to them. Jack obligingly slowed. He glanced over but could not make out the jeep’s occupants. They rolled along side by side for a moment, before the jeep pulled out ahead of them, slowed, and stopped.

Cursing, Jack ground the gear into first and brought the truck to a shuddering halt.

“Stay here,” he said to Yuval.

He yanked open his door and hopped down.

“What’s up, fellas,” he called out, with a joviality that no one who knew him would ever have recognized.

A pair of GIs leaped from the jeep as he approached, their rifles cocked and ready.

“At ease!” Jack called.

When he was close enough for them to make out his double silver bars, the soldiers snapped to attention and saluted.

Casually, Jack returned the salute. “What can I do for you boys?” he asked.

“We’ve got orders to patrol the roads, sir,” said one of the men, a sergeant. He was young, about Jack’s age, his stripes newly minted. Still, he gave off an air of competence and military precision that under other circumstances Jack would have admired.

“For what?” Jack asked. “Smugglers?”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said. “But mostly for refugees.”

“Refugees?”

“We’re supposed to keep them from crossing the border, sir.”

Jack shrugged. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He tapped out three, gave the men each one, and lit his own. Then he held out his lighter. The unfamiliar smoke was harsh in his throat, and he stifled the urge to cough.

“Well then,” he said. “I will surely keep my eyes open for refugees.”

“Thank you, sir,” the sergeant said, handing back the lighter and taking a long drag on the cigarette. “Only, hope you understand, I hafta ask. What have you got in the truck, sir?”

“Refugees,” Jack said.

The two GIs glanced at each other.

“Kidding,” Jack said. “TB patients. Taking them to a hospital in the South Tirol.” He stuck the cigarette in his mouth, one eye closed against the smoke, and fished around in his pocket. He pulled out a scrap of paper and pretended to read it. “The Meran Sanatorium.”

“You’re escorting them yourself, sir?”

“You bet your ass I am, soldier,” Jack said.

“Uh-huh. Only, I don’t know. Seems like an unusual job for a captain. If you don’t mind my saying so.”

Jack eyed the sergeant. The man was tall, with a face that was saved from being pretty by a mass of acne pits and scars decorating his cheeks. He gazed blandly at Jack, and Jack smiled back.

“Well, you’re right, Sergeant,” Jack said. “But the bunch of candy-ass drivers that the army in its wisdom has seen fit to saddle me with? Not one of them was willing to drive a truck full of raging tuberculars. Go figure. Bunch of chickenshit motherfuckers.”

“They refused an order, sir?” the young private said. At the sergeant’s baleful look, he cast his eyes to his boots.

Jack said, “I could give every one of the bastards a yellow ticket, but do I need the paperwork? No, Private, I do not. So I decided to ‘lead by example,’ if you know what I mean.”

“Mind if we take a look, sir?”

“Sure, Sergeant,” Jack said. “Go ’head. But it’s your funeral. Literally.”

The sergeant strode over to the truck, the private lagging behind. As they approached the cab, Yuval leaned his head out.

“Nothing to worry about, Doc!” Jack said cheerfully. “Sergeant here just wants to make sure we’re not smuggling refugees over the border.” He turned to the sergeant. “That’s the doc. He’s responsible for the patients.”

Yuval opened the door and jumped down. He extended his hand to the sergeant. “Dr. Lehrman. Franz.” He was laying his German accent on a little thick, Jack thought.

The sergeant shifted his weapon and grudgingly shook Yuval’s hand.

“How’d you get yourself a military escort?” he asked Yuval.

“Are you kidding?” Jack said. “Hollywood Harry wants these SOBs the hell out of Land Salzburg, that’s how. Excuse the French, Doc.”

“Not at all,” Yuval said.

“All right,” Jack said. “Let me introduce you to my cargo.”

“I’d prefer you didn’t,” Yuval said. “The air is too cold for them.”

“If you’re worried about the cold, why are you traveling at night?” the sergeant asked.

“You are an inquisitive motherfucker, aren’t you, Sergeant?”

“It’s definitely in my nature, sir.”

“We’re traveling at night because that’s when I want to travel, son,” Jack said, doing his best impression of a superior officer growing impatient with a recalcitrant subordinate. “And I’d like to get on my way, so if you’ll follow me …”

He led the way around to the back of the truck. He felt a familiar ache in the pit of his stomach, the anxious flutter he’d felt immediately before leading his soldiers into battle, the same flutter he’d felt when he’d asked Ilona out for the first time. He whipped the canvas curtains open, revealing the crowd huddled in the back of the truck. Rudolph was sitting on the bench closest to the rear opening, and when Jack opened the curtain he lifted his hand to shade his eyes from the glare of the sergeant’s flashlight. Ilona, wearing a Red Cross smock, a jaunty nurse’s cap, and a navy cape lined with red, sprang down from the truck.