“Don’t move, don’t turn,” a voice from the shadows commanded.
Dov froze in his tracks.
“You made inquiries for Bar Israel. What do you want?”
“You know what I want.”
“What is your name?”
“Landau, Dov Landau.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Gan Dafna.”
“Who sent you?”
“Mordecai.”
“How did you get into Palestine?”
“On the Exodus.”
“Keep walking out to the street and don’t look around. You will be contacted later.”
Dov became restless after the contact was made. He rose to the point of chucking it all and returning to Gan Dafna. He missed Karen terribly. He started a half dozen letters and
tore each one up. Let’s get it over with … let’s get it over with, Dov said to himself again and again.
He lay in his room reading and began to doze. Then he roused himself and lighted fresh candles: if he fell asleep and the old nightmare came he did not want to awaken in a dark room.
There was a sharp knock on his door.
Dov sprang to his feet, picked up his pistol, and stood close to the locked door.
“It is your friends,” a voice said from the hallway. Dov recognized it as the same voice that had spoken to him from the shadows. He opened the door. He could see no one.
“Turn around and face the wall,” the voice commanded from the darkness. Dov obeyed. He felt the presence of two men behind him. A blindfold was tied over his eyes and two pairs of hands led him down the stairs to a waiting car where he was shoved on the back floor and covered and driven from the Old City.
Dov concentrated on sensing where he was being driven. The car screeched into King Solomon Street, followed the Via Dolorosa to Stephen’s Gate. It was child’s play to Dov Laudau, who knew his way through a hundred alternate routes in the blackness of the sewers under Warsaw.
The car shifted into a lower gear to make a hill. They must be driving past the Tomb of the Virgin toward the Mount of Olives, Dov calculated. The road became smooth. Now Dov knew they were driving past the Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical Center on Mount Scopus.
They drove another ten minutes and stopped.
Dov accurately pinpointed their position in the Sanhedriya section near the Tombs of the Sanhedrin, the ancient supreme court of Hebrew rabbis, almost to the precise part of the block.
He was led into a house and into a room filled with cigarette smoke where he was made to sit. He sensed at least five or six people. For two hours Dov was grilled. Questions were fired at him from around the room until he began to perspire nervously. As the questioning continued he began to piece it together. The Maccabees had learned through their infallible intelligence sources that Dov had extraordinary talent as a forger, and it was badly needed by them. He had obviously been brought before some of the highest members in the Maccabees, perhaps the commanders themselves. At last they had satisfied themselves that Dov’s qualifications and security checked.
“There is a curtain in front of you,” a voice said. “Put your hands through it.”
Dov pushed his hands through the cloth. One of his hands
was placed on a pistol and the other on a Bible. He repeated the oath of the Maccabees:
“I, Dov Landau, do give my body, my soul, my being, without reservation or qualification, to the Freedom Fighters of the Maccabees. I will obey any and all orders without question. I will subordinate myself to the authority over me. Under torture, even to death, I will never divulge the name of a fellow Maccabee or the secrets entrusted to me. I will fight the enemies of the Jewish people unto the last breath of life in my body. I will never cease in this sacred battle until realization of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River, which is the natural historical right of my people. My creed to mine enemies shall be: Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, burning for burning. All this I swear in the name of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachael and Leah and the prophets and of all the Jews who have been slaughtered and all my gallant brothers and sisters who have died in the name of freedom.”
The blindfold was taken from Dov’s eyes and the candles on the Menorah before him were blown out and the lights went up in the room. Dov looked into the eyes of six grim men and two women. They shook hands with him and introduced themselves. Old man Akiva himself was there and Ben Moshe, their field leader, who had lost a brother fighting for the British in the war and a sister with the Palmach. Nahum Ben Ami was one of seven brothers. The other six were in the Palmach. These men and women banded together because they were neither capable or desirous of the self-restraint of the Yishuv.
Old Akiva stepped up before Dov. “You will be of value to us, Dov Landau. That is why we took you without the usual training.”
“I did not join to draw pictures,” Dov snapped.
“You will do what you are told to do,” Ben Moshe answered.
“Dov, you are a Maccabee now,” Akiva said. “You are entitled to take a name of a Hebrew hero. Do you have such a name in mind?”
“Giora,” Dov said.
There was some laughter about the room. Dov gritted his teeth.
“Giora, is it?” Akiva said. “I am afraid there are others ahead of you.”
“How about Little Giora,” Nahum Ben Ami said, “until Dov can become Big Giora?”
“I will become Big Giora soon enough if you give me the chance.”
“You will set up a forgery plant,” Ben Moshe said, “and
travel with us. If you behave and do as you are told we may let you go out on a raid with us now and again.”
Major Fred Caldwell played, bridge in the main lounge of the British Officers’ Club at Goldsmith House in Jerusalem. Freddie was finding it difficult to concentrate on card playing. His mind kept wandering back to the CID Headquarters and on the captured Maccabee girl they had been interrogating for some three days. Her name was Ayala and she was in her early twenties and fetchingly pretty. She had been a music major at the university. At least she was pretty before the questioning started. Ayala had been another tough Jewess and she had spit defiance at the CID. Like most of the captured Maccabees she spent her time quoting biblical passages, predicting their eternal damnation, or proclaiming the righteousness of her cause.
This morning their patience had run out and Ayala began to get the third degree.
“Your play, Freddie,” his partner said across the table.
Fred Caldwell looked at’ his cards quickly. “Forgive me,” he said, and played a bad card. His mind was on the inspector standing over Ayala and flailing her with a rubber hose. He heard it thud into the girl’s face time and again until her nose was broken and her eyes blacked and swollen almost shut and her lips puffed and distorted. But Ayala would not break.
Freddie considered that he didn’t give a damn if Ayala never broke: the thought of the smashing of her Jewish face delighted him.
An orderly walked up alongside the table.
“I beg your pardon, Major Caldwell. There is a telephone call for you, sir.”
“Excuse me, chaps,” Freddie said throwing his cards face down and walking off to the phone on the other side of the lounge. He picked up the receiver. “Caldwell here.”
“Hello, Major. This is the sergeant of the guard at CID, sir. Inspector Parkington asked me to phone you right away, sir. He says the Maccabee girl is ready to talk and thought you’d best come over to headquarters right away.”
“Righto,” Freddie said.
“Inspector Parkington has already sent a car for you, sir. It will be there in a few minutes.”
Caldwell returned to the card players. “Sorry, chaps. Have to leave. Duty calls.”