“Bad luck, Freddie.”
Bad luck, hell, Freddie thought. He was looking forward to it. He walked outside Goldsmith House. The guards saluted. A
car pulled up to a stop and a soldier jumped from behind the wheel, walked to Caldwell and saluted.
“Major Caldwell?”
“Here, boy.”
“Your car from CID, sir.”
The soldier held the rear door open. Freddie got into the back seat and the soldier ran around, got behind the wheel and they drove off. Two blocks beyond Goldsmith House he pulled the car over to a curb at an intersection. In a second the doors were flung open and three men jumped into the car, slammed the doors, and the car picked up speed again.
Caldwell’s throat closed with fear. He shrieked and tried to leap across Ben Moshe. The Maccabee in the front seat turned around and slapped him with a pistol barrel and Ben Moshe snatched his collar and jerked him back into his seat. The Maccabee driver took off the military cap and looked up in the mirror.
Caldwell’s eyes bugged in terror.
“I demand to know what this is all aboutl”
“You seem upset, Major Caldwell,” Ben Moshe said coldly.
“Stop this car and let me out immediately, do you hear?”
“Shall we let you out the same way you threw out a fourteen-year-old boy named Ben Solomon in an Arab village? You see, Major Caldwell, Ben Solomon’s ghost called out to us from his grave and asked us to make retribution against the guilty.”
The sweat poured into Caldwell’s eyes. “It’s all a lie … a lie… a lie…”
Ben Moshe flipped something on Caldwell’s lap and shined his flashlight on it. It was a photograph of the decapitated boy, Ben Solomon.
Caldwell began to sob for mercy. He doubled over and vomited in fear.
“It appears that Major Caldwell is in a mood to talk. We had better take him to headquarters and let him give out with his information before settling Ben Solomon’s account.”
Caldwell blurted out all he knew about the British army plans and CID’s operations and afterwards signed a confession of the murder of the boy.
Three days after his abduction Major Fred Caldwell’s body was found on Mount Zion at the Dung Gate of the Old City. Pinned to his body was a picture of Ben Solomon and a photostat of Caldwell’s confession and across it were scribbled the words: An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
Major Fred Caldwell received the same fate that Sisera, the Canaanite, met at the hands of Jael when he fled from the scene of his battle with Deborah and Barak.
CHAPTER TWELVE: The revenge murder of Major Fred Caldwell had a shattering effect. No one seemed to question its justification, but the Maccabee method was more than many could condone.
In England people had become disgusted with the entire situation and were bringing pressure on the Labour government to give up the mandate. Inside Palestine the British garrison was at once enraged and worried.
Two days after Caldwell was found by the Dung Gate, a Maccabee prisoner, the girl named Ayala, died of internal hemorrhages from the beatings she had received during questioning. When the Maccabees learned of Ayala’s death, there were fourteen days of wrathful retribution. Jerusalem reeled under the impact of terrorist raids. On the last days the raids were climaxed by an audacious daylight attack on Criminal Investigation Division headquarters.
During “Hell’s Fortnight,” as the Maccabee’s wrath came to be designated, Dov Landau had displayed a reckless courage that awed even the toughest of the terrorists. Dov went out four times on raids, the last time as one of the leaders of the final assault against the CID. During Hell’s Fortnight a legend of “Little Giora” was born, in which his name became synonymous with wild fearlessness.
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 Avid-an 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.