Pursuit (30 page)

“I got one of the bastards!” a voice said with satisfaction. “Hey! The bugger's got a gun!”

“Good-o!” a second said with equal satisfaction, and dragged Grossman to his feet, locking a set of handcuffs about his wrists. He brought his gun butt up and slammed it against Grossman's head, knocking him to his knees. “A gun, eh? That ought to get the bastard the rope! Let's go, chum!”

They half-pulled and half-dragged a stunned Grossman along between them, with the larger of the two soldiers carrying both his own gun and the one he had taken from Grossman easily under one arm. They brought him to a truck, twisted him around, and slammed him against the tailgate. The officer there was looking at the second gun the soldier was carrying.

“It's his,” the soldier said.

The officer nodded and walked over and started to search the bent-over man. He took out a passport, some money, a handkerchief, made sure there was nothing else on the prisoner, and tilted his head toward the body of the truck. The two soldiers lifted Grossman as if he had been a sack of grain and tossed him into the truck. He landed with a thud and then saw that the truck was fairly full of people. They were dressed as if for a picnic and none seemed to be from the ship. They were all standing, impassive, under the steady eye of a soldier with a submachine gun. Grossman came to his feet unsteadily.

“Who speaks German?” he asked hoarsely.

“I do,” said a voice.

“What's happening?”

“What's happening is you should have gotten rid of the gun—”

“Why? I thought everyone in Palestine was armed.”

“You're from the ship, that's obvious. The things they tell people!” the voice said. “There were two British soldiers killed on the beach tonight; two at least.”

“More!” another voice said in Yiddish with a touch of pride.

“Anyway, at least two,” the first man said. “You got caught with a gun. You're in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

There was a sudden jar as the truck started up.

“Hanging trouble,” the voice said sadly, and fell silent.

Chapter 2

“They picked him up,” Wolf said quietly. “I saw him. He started to run along the beach after a couple of people who were running that way. Then he stopped and all of a sudden two soldiers came out of nowhere and knocked him down. They handcuffed him, slapped him around, and dragged him away.”

“He had a gun,” someone else added.

They were at Yakov's house, a mile from the beach, on Remez Street off of Arlozoroff. Yakov had pulled on a pair of old trousers over his swimming trunks and now wore a white shirt open at the throat. He ran his hand through his thick black curly hair in despair and then looked up at Brodsky standing over him.

“They'll hang him, you know. Several soldiers were killed tonight …”

“Eight of our people were killed,” someone else said.

“And they started it,” another voice said.

“I know they started it,” Yakov said patiently, “but they're running the country, not us. Soldiers were killed. Anyone caught with a gun—” His shrug completed his sentence more eloquently than words could.

“We can't let that happen,” Brodsky said flatly. “If he hadn't shot out that radar scanner and the spotlight, none of us would be here now. We can't let them hang him.”

“It's happened before.”

Brodsky stared at the floor, thinking. He looked up. “Where will they take him?”

“To the station on Dizengoff for fingerprinting and photographing and questioning, tonight. Then to Acre Fortress tomorrow, probably. That's where they usually hang them.”

“What about a trial?”

“He had his trial when he was picked up with a gun.” The voice was bitter. It was the same person who had said that eight of their people had died on the beach that night. “He was found guilty and sentenced, all in that one moment.”

Brodsky looked at the man who had spoken. It was Lev Mendel, Yakov Mendel's younger brother. Max hadn't seen the boy since he was fourteen; now, at nineteen, he stood almost as tall as Yakov. Max considered him a moment and then turned back to Yakov.

“You mean he won't have a trial at all?”

Lev answered before his brother could.

“Oh, he'll have the formality of coming up before a military court tomorrow afternoon at Acre,” he said disdainfully, “and he'll undoubtedly be hanged at dawn the following morning.”

“Really efficient, aren't they?” Wolf said sardonically.

“On things like that, yes.”

Brodsky's jaw hardened. “Yakov, we have to stop them.”

“Max,” Yakov said quietly, “what do you suggest we do? Get eight more people killed trying to save just one? You know as well as I do who was responsible for the people who were killed tonight. We asked the Irgun for co-operation as far as the ship and getting the passengers ashore was concerned. We wanted numbers. But we specifically asked that nobody carry arms—”

“You mean we should have sat there like ducks in a shooting gallery?” It was Lev Mendel; he turned to Brodsky. “Max, if you want to help your friend, don't waste your time with Yakov. He'll still be laying the blame for what happened tonight a week after your friend is dead and buried; in fact, in a week he'll have convinced himself it was all your friend's fault. You come with me and maybe we can help him.”

Brodsky looked at Yakov questioningly. Yakov shrugged.

“Do what you want, Max. We just can't sacrifice our people that way. This isn't Robin Hood we're playing, going into a castle to rescue the lady. You've been gone four years; things have changed. Except, unfortunately, the Irgun hasn't changed. They still react like angry children—”

“An eye for an eye is reacting like angry children?” Lev said hotly. “A tooth for a tooth—?”

Yakov disregarded him.

“Max, we're going to be a nation someday; someday soon. We have to start acting responsible—”

Lev snorted derisively.

“There's a war on, the British are killing our people, they're about to hang a man whose only crime was trying to reach Palestine, and Yakov says we should start to act responsible! Does Yakov tell the British not to come to the beach with guns? Oh, no! He saves that for Jews.” Lev looked as if he wanted to spit. “Max, make up your mind. If you want to help your friend, come with me. If not, let him hang. I certainly don't care; we lived without him until tonight. But I'm on my way.”

He walked to the door and looked back.

“Wait!” Max said, and turned to Yakov. “I didn't agree with the Irgun when I was in the Mossad before I went back to Poland, and I doubt I would agree with them today. But one thing I know—Ben Grossman is not going to hang if I can help it.”

“A very fine attitude—” Yakov started to say, but Brodsky had already followed his younger brother from the room.

Wolf sighed in disgust.

“For Grossman, of all people—!” he said to no one in particular, and hurried to catch up with Brodsky.

The cells were in a row facing the corridor; there were no outside windows through which articles might be passed. Grossman sat on his hard bunk and tried to comprehend the thing that had happened to him the night before.

The man in the truck who had spoken of hanging obviously didn't know what he was talking about. Who hung men for no reason? Even at Maidanek they had reasons; possibly not reasons that would stand up in court, looking back on it, but reasons, at least. No; that part was nonsense. Nobody was going to hang anyone. But what was not nonsense was the fact that they had impounded his passport and his money and it didn't look as if he would get them back. Certainly not the passport. At his interrogation the officer conducting the questioning had had the interpreter ask him a question in Spanish and when he could not answer the officer laughed and said something in English he did not understand. The translator had told him the officer said you would think at least they would have the intelligence to give a Venezuelan passport to someone who spoke Spanish; and then the officer had tossed the passport into a drawer. That, Grossman was afraid, was the end of that.

He looked up as an unarmed soldier came down the corridor, unlocked the cell door, and motioned him to follow. He frowned; it seemed very early in the morning, not even light, for anything to happen. It was only an hour or so since his interrogation had ended. But then a possible explanation came to him. He stood up, holding out his handcuffed wrists.

“I'm free to go?”

“I haven't the foggiest notion what you're trying to say, chum,” the soldier said in English, “but whatever it is, let me say to you may God have mercy on your soul, because the car is here to take you to Acre.”

Grossman shrugged and followed the soldier. They passed through the room where he had been interrogated and he looked about to see if possibly the translator might be around to help explain things, but the room was deserted. The soldier led him outside to a cobbled courtyard; drawn up beside the door was an armored car. There was an armed soldier seated next to the driver, and an armed soldier in back. Ben was pushed into the back seat; a second soldier instantly got in the near side of the rear seat, sandwiching their prisoner between them. The car started off, its headlights on bright, passing the gate into Dizengoff Street and accelerating. It crossed Ibn Gvirol into Kaplan with Grossman trying to read the street signs.

It was still dark and the streets were deserted. The car turned into Petah Tikvah Road with a squeal of tires and accelerated further. Grossman turned to the soldier on one side.

“Do you speak German?”

“Shut up, you bloody murderer! One of the lads who bought it last night was a pal of mine!”

“I do not speak English. Does anyone here speak German?”

“Another word out of you and we'll finish you off here and claim you tried to escape!”

The words were unintelligible, but the attitude could not be mistaken. Grossman moved back in his seat, a cold feeling beginning to clutch his stomach. Was it possible the man in the truck the night before had been speaking the truth? Could he possibly be taken out to be hanged? No, that was nonsense! Still, he was still handcuffed and there were three armed soldiers and a driver taking him someplace in an armored car; they certainly didn't treat all illegal immigrants in that fashion. But he had had no trial, and the British were sticklers for proper form. Hanged? It was ridiculous. He turned to the man on the other side of him, tapping him on the knee, pantomiming his query by pointing his handcuffed wrists to himself, then to the car, then to the road ahead, and finally raising his shoulders in a questioning gesture.

The soldier on the near side had been watching. He laughed and tapped Grossman on the shoulder. When Ben turned around, the soldier grinned and drew his hand across his throat, then jerked it upward. The implications were unmistakable. The soldier on the far side looked disgusted.

“Leave the poor sod alone,” he said somberly. “They'll be hanging him soon enough.”

“Fuck the bloody bugger,” said the second viciously, and settled back, smiling grimly.

It was true! They were taking him out to be hanged! Why?
Why
? It was all because he was here in this filthy miserable country. He looked out at the passing landscape. The dawn had broken as they passed the limits of the city and took to the open country and all he could see in every direction was sand and little clumps of brush and an occasional stand of trees. God, what a desolate place! And how had this nightmare come about? He started to go back over his troubles ever since that fateful night when he had heard on the radio of Hitler's escape from the coup, that night he had been so stupid as to go to Schlossberg for plastic surgery—then he gave it up. What difference did it really make? Much better than to dwell on the past would be to try and use the remaining minutes or hours to see if there was any solution to his problem. Was there the slightest chance of escape? He glanced at the soldier beside him and knew there was none. This one would enjoy nothing better than shooting him in the stomach and watching him suffer. What an end to a useful life! What a waste! And the money in Switzerland—it would lie there and rot, even as he would lie someplace in this horrible land and rot!

They came around a bend in the road; ahead of them a truck had stopped half in the road and half off it. Its cargo of Arab laborers, identified by their kaffiyehs, waited at the side of the highway while two of their members struggled over a tire that occupied the other half of the narrow highway. It was not an unusual sight at that early dawn hour.

“Bloody idiots!” the driver, and slowed down, blasting his horn.

“Asking to be rapped in the arse, the lot of them,” said the soldier beside him. “Suicidal beggars, them Arabs.” He raised his voice, joining it to the horn. “Get off the road, you bloody black bastards!”

The Arabs looked up at all the noise, quite as if they had been totally unaware of the presence of the armored car until that moment. The two men in the road dutifully started to drag the tire back and then left it; there was still not room enough to pass. The driver leaned on his horn again, while the soldiers waved their guns, using them to point to the tire, yelling at the men to get the unspeakable tire out of the way or have it crushed by the armored car. The Arabs crowded around the armored car, jabbering; suddenly the soldiers were each facing a revolver held in a steady hand. Lev Mendel brought a submachine gun from under his robe.

“The guns first,” he said, and picked the rifle from the hands of the nearest man. There was the briefest of pauses as if the soldiers were temporarily considering resistance, but it was impossible. The rest handed their guns over and sat silent.

“Down.”

They climbed down uncertainly, angrily, and stood together, glaring at their captors, staring around for some witness to this further disregard for British authority, but there was not a car or a truck in sight at that early hour on the deserted road. Ben Grossman, looking in amazement at the robed figures with the swarthy skin and odd headdress, suddenly recognized Wolf among them, and then Brodsky, who was trotting toward the armored car. He jumped down and went to join Wolf while Brodsky raised the hood of the armored car and reached for the rotor.