A warning signal sounded from bow to stern.
‘Here we go, time for the introductory session,’ Harel said. ‘At last the great mystery will be revealed. Follow me.’
‘Where are we going?’ Andrea asked as they returned to the main deck via the gangway that the reporter had sneaked through some minutes before.
‘The whole expedition team will meet for the first time. They’ll explain the role each of us is going to play, and most important… what it is we’re actually looking for in Jordan.’
‘By the way, Doc, what is your specialty?’ Andrea asked as they entered the meeting room.
‘Combat medicine,’ Harel said casually.
14
VIENNA
February 1943
Jora Myer was sick with worry. There was an acid sensation at the back of her throat that made her nauseous. She hadn’t felt that way since she was fourteen and had escaped the 1906 pogroms in Odessa, Ukraine, with her grandfather hanging on to her arm. She had been lucky at such a young age to find work as a servant to the Cohen family, who owned a factory in Vienna. Josef was the eldest of the children. When the shadchan, the marriage broker, eventually found him a nice Jewish wife, Jora went with him to look after their children. Their firstborn, Elan, spent his early years in a pampered and privileged environment. The younger one, Yudel, was another story.
Now the child lay curled up in a ball on his makeshift bed, which consisted of two folded blankets on the floor. Until yesterday he had shared the bed with his brother. Lying there, Yudel seemed small and sad, and without his parents, the stifling space seemed huge.
Poor Yudel. Those twelve square feet had been his entire world practically since birth. The afternoon he was born, the entire family, including Jora, had been at the hospital. None of them had returned to the luxury apartment on Rienstrasse. It was 9 November 1938, the date the world would later come to know as Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. Yudel’s grandparents were the first to perish. The entire building on Rienstrasse burned to the ground, together with the synagogue next door as the firemen drank and laughed. The only things that the Cohens had taken with them were some clothes and a mysterious package that Yudel’s father used in a ceremony when the baby was born. Jora didn’t know what it was, because during the ceremony, Mr Cohen had asked everyone to leave the room, including Odile, who could barely stand up.
With scarcely any money, Josef was unable to leave the country, but like many others, he believed that the trouble would eventually die down so he sought refuge with some of his Catholic friends. He did not forget about Jora either, something that, in later life, Miss Myer would never forget. Few friendships could withstand the terrible obstacles faced in occupied Austria; there was one, however, that did. The ageing Judge Rath decided to help the Cohens at great risk to his own life. Inside his house he built a hideout in one of the rooms. With his own hands he laid a brick partition, leaving a narrow hole at the base that the family could use to get in and out. Judge Rath then placed a low bookcase in front of the opening to conceal it.
The Cohen family entered their living tomb one December night in 1938, believing that the war would last only a few weeks. There wasn’t enough room for all of them to lie down at the same time, and their only comforts were a kerosene lamp and a bucket. Food and fresh air came at one in the morning, two hours after the judge’s maid went home. At about half past midnight the old judge would slowly begin to push the bookcase away from the hole. Because of his age, it could take almost half an hour, with frequent rests, before the opening was sufficiently wide to allow the Cohens through.
Together with the Cohen family the judge was also a prisoner of that life. He knew that the maid’s husband was a member of the Nazi party, so while he was constructing the hideout, he sent her on holiday to Salzburg for a few days. When she returned he told her that they had had to replace the gas pipes. He didn’t dare find another maid because it would have made people suspicious, and he had to be careful about the amount of food he bought. With rationing it became even more difficult to feed an extra five people. Jora felt pity for him since he had sold most of his valuable possessions to buy black market meat and potatoes which he hid in the attic. At night, when Jora and the Cohens came out of their hiding place, barefoot, looking like strange whispering ghosts, the old man would bring down the food from the attic for them.
The Cohens didn’t dare stay outside their hiding place for more than a few hours. While Jora made sure that the children washed and moved around a little, Josef and Odile would talk quietly with the judge. During the day they couldn’t make the slightest noise and mostly spent their time sleeping or in a state of semi-consciousness, which to Jora was like torture until she began hearing about the concentration camps at Treblinka, Dachau, and Auschwitz. The smallest details of daily life became complicated. Basic needs, drinking or even changing the baby Yudel, were tedious procedures in such a restricted space. Jora was continually amazed by Odile Cohen’s ability to communicate. She had developed a complex system of signs that allowed her to carry out long and sometimes bitter conversations with her husband without uttering a word.
Over three years went by in silence. Yudel didn’t learn any more than four or five words. Luckily he had a calm disposition and hardly ever cried. He seemed to prefer being held by Jora rather than his mother, but this didn’t bother Odile. Odile appeared to care only for Elan, who was suffering the most from being locked up. He had been an unruly, spoiled five-year-old when the November 1938 pogroms exploded and after more than a thousand days in hiding, there was something lost, almost crazy, about his eyes. When it was time to return to the hideout he was always the last to go in. Often he refused, or would remain clinging to the entrance. When that happened, Yudel would go over and take his hand, encouraging Elan to make the sacrifice once more and return to the long hours of darkness.
But six nights ago, Elan couldn’t take it any more. He waited until everyone else had gone back into the hole, then slipped away and out of the house. The judge’s arthritic fingers only managed to brush the boy’s shirt before he disappeared. Josef tried to follow him, but by the time he was out on the street there was no trace of Elan.
The news came three days later in the Kronen Zeitung. A young mentally disabled Jewish boy, apparently without family, had been placed in the Kinderspital Am Spiegelgrund. The judge was horrified. When he explained, the words catching in his throat, what would probably happen to their son, Odile became hysterical and refused to listen to reason. Jora felt faint the moment she saw Odile go out the door, carrying that same package they had brought to their hideout, the one they had taken to the hospital years before when Yudel was born. Odile’s husband accompanied her, despite her protests, but as he left he handed Jora an envelope.
‘For Yudel,’ he said. ‘He shouldn’t open it before his bar mitzvah.’
Two terrible nights had passed since then. Jora was anxious for news, but the judge was more silent than usual. The day before, the house had been filled with strange sounds. And then, for the first time in three years, the bookcase began to move in the middle of the day and the judge’s face appeared in the entrance hole.