Dov Landau blinked with surprise.
“Here’s the point,” Ari said. “I need forged papers. I need piles of them in the next few weeks and these boys here can’t forge their own names. I want you to work for me.”
The boy had been thrown completely off guard by Ari’s rapid and direct tactics. He wanted time to look for a hidden trick. “I’ll think it over,” he said.
“Sure, think it over. You’ve got thirty seconds.”
“And what will you do if I refuse? You going to try to beat it out of me?”
“Dov, I said we need each other. Let me make myself clear. If you don’t go along with this I’m going to personally see to it that you’re the last person out of the Caraolos detention camp. With thirty-five thousand people ahead of you, you’ll be too old and feeble to lift one of those bombs by the time you get to Palestine. Your thirty seconds are up.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“Because I said you could.”
A faint smile crossed the boy’s face, and he nodded that he would go to work.
“All right. You get your orders from either David Ben Ami or Joab Yarkoni. I don’t want you giving anyone a bad time. If you have any problems, you ask for me. I want you to report to Palmach headquarters in a half hour and look over their plant and let David know what special materials you’ll need.”
Ari turned and walked out of the tent to where David and Joab waited. “He’ll report to work in a half hour,” Ari said.
David gaped and Joab’s mouth fell open in awe.
“How did you do it?”
“Child psychology. I’m going back to Famagusta,” Ari said. “I want to see you two boys at Mandria’s house tonight. Bring Zev Gilboa with you. Don’t bother to show me out. I know the way.” .
David and Joab stared in fascination as their friend, the remarkable Ari Ben Canaan, crossed the playground in the direction of the garbage dumps.
That night in his living room Mandria, the Cypriot, waited, along with David, Joab, and a newcomer, Zev Gilboa, for the appearance of Ari Ben Canaan.
Zev Gilboa, also a Palestinian Palmachnik, was a broad-backed farmer from the Galilee. Like Yarkoni, he, too, wore a large brushlike mustache and was in his early twenties. Zev Gilboa was the best of the soldiers among the Palmach Palestinians working inside Caraolos. David had given Zev the task of heading military training for the refugees. With zest, with improvised weapons, and by using the children’s playground at night he had taught his trainees nearly everything that could be taught without actual arms. Broomsticks were rifles, rocks were grenades, bedsprings were bayonets. He set up courses in hand-to-hand fighting and stick fighting. Mostly he instilled tremendous spirit into the spiritless refugees.
The hour grew very late. Mandria began pacing nervously. “All I know,” he said, “I gave him a taxi and a driver this afternoon.”
“Relax, Mr. Mandria,” David said. “Ari may not be back for three days. He has strange ways of working. We are used to it.”
Midnight passed and the four men began to sprawl out and make themselves comfortable. In a half hour they began to doze, and in an hour they were all asleep.
At five o’clock in the morning Ari Ben Canaan entered the room. His eyes were bleary from a night of traveling around the island. He had slept only in brief naps since he had landed on Cyprus. He and Zev Gilboa hugged each other in the traditional Palmach manner, then he set right to work without offering excuse or apology for being eight hours late.
“Mr. Mandria. Have you got us our boat yet?”
Mandria was aghast. He slapped his forehead in amazement. “Mr. Ben Canaan! You landed on Cyprus less than thirty h6urs ago and asked me for a boat. I am not a shipbuilder, sir. My company, Cyprus-Mediterranean Shipping, has offices in Famagusta, Larnaca, Kyrenia, Limassol, and Paphos. There are no other ports in Cyprus. All my offices are looking for a boat for you. If there is a boat on Cyprus you will know it, sir.”
Ari ignored Mandria’s sarcasm and turned to the others.
“Zev, I suppose David has told you what we’re going to do.”
The Galilee farmer nodded.
“From now on you three boys are working for me. Find replacements for your jobs at Caraolos. Joab, how many healthy children are there in that compound between the ages of ten and seventeen?”
“Oh … probably around six or seven hundred.”
“Zev. Pick out three hundred of the strongest. Get them in the peak of physical condition.”
Zev nodded.
Ari arose. “It will be light in another half hour. I’ll need a taxi to start out again, Mr. Mandria. I think that man I had yesterday is a little tired.”
“I will drive you around, myself,” Mandria said.
“Good. We’ll leave just as soon as it turns light. Excuse me. I want to look over some papers in my room.”
He left as suddenly as he had entered. Everyone began talking at once.
“Then the escape is going to be made by three hundred children,” Zev said.
“It certainly appears so,” Mandria said. “He is such a strange man. He expects miracles … he doesn’t tell anything.”
“On the contrary,” David said, “he does not believe in miracles. That is why he works so hard. It seems to me that there is more to this than Ari is telling us. I have a feeling that the escape of three hundred children is only part of what is in his mind.”
Joab Yarkoni smiled. “We all have known Ari Ben Canaan long enough not to try to second guess him. We also have known him long enough to know that he knows his business. We will learn, in due time, just what Ari is up to.”
The next day Mandria drove Ari around Cyprus in what seemed to be an aimless chase. They drove from the sweeping Eastern Bay past Salamis and Famagusta clear to Cape Greco. In Famagusta he walked along the old wall and studied the harbor area, Ari barely spoke to Mandria the entire day, except to ask a pertinent question now and then. It seemed to the Cypriot that the big Palestinian was the coldest human being he had ever met. He felt a certain hostility, but he could not help admiring Ari for his absolute concentration and seemingly superhuman stamina. He must, Mandria thought, be a tremendously dedicated man-but that was puzzling because Ben Canaan seemed to show no traces of human emotion.
From Cape Greco they drove along the Southern Bay on the underbelly of Cyprus and then into the high jagged mountains where the resorts prepared for the winter season of skiing and ice sports. If Ben Canaan had found anything of interest he certainly was not showing it. Mandria was exhausted when they arrived back in Famagusta after midnight, but there was another meeting held with Zev, David, and Joab. Then Ari went into another all-night session of study.
On the morning of the fourth day after Ari Ben Canaan had swum ashore onto Cyprus, Mandria received a call from his Larnaca office to the effect that a ship had just come in from Turkey that fitted his specifications and could be purchased. Mandria drove Ari to Caraolos to pick up David and Joab, and the four of them drove off for Larnaca.
Zev Gilboa was left behind, as he was already at work selecting the three hundred children and setting up special training courses for them.
Mandria was feeling quite proud of himself as they drove along the Famagusta-Larnaca road. At a halfway point Ari was suddenly attracted by some activity taking place in a large field off to the left of the road. He asked Mandria to stop the car and stepped outside for a look. There was feverish building going on in what appeared to be a military barracks.
“The British are building new detention compounds,” David said; “they’ve reached the saturation point at Caraolos.”
“Why wasn’t I told about this?” Ari snapped.
“You didn’t ask,” Joab Yarkoni answered.
“The best we can figure,” David said, “is that they’ll begin transferring the overload from Caraolos in two or three weeks.”