Bruce kissed her on the cheek softly and knelt beside her. “Is something wrong, Mother?”
She turned slowly and whispered, “Today is Yom Kippur -the Day of Atonement.”
Her words chilled Bruce to the bone.
Bruce talked it over with Neddie and his sister, Mary. They decided that since Father had died she had been alone too much. Furthermore, Sutherland Heights was too big for her. She should move into an apartment in London where she could be closer to Mary. Then, too, Deborah was getting old. It was hard for them to realize, because she seemed to them as beautiful as when they were children.
Bruce and Neddie went off for his tour of service in the Middle East. Mary wrote happy letters that Mother was getting along fine, and the letters from Deborah told of her happiness to be in London near Mary’s family.
But when Bruce returned to England it was a different story. Mary was beside herself. Mother was seventy years old now and acting more and more strangely. A creeping on of senility. She could not remember something that had happened a day ago, but she would utter disconnected things about events that took place fifty years ago. It was frightening to Mary because Deborah had never spoken of her past to her children. Mary was most alarmed of her mother’s strange disappearances.
Mary was glad that Bruce had returned. He was the oldest and Mother’s favorite and he was so steady. Bruce followed his mother one day on one of her mysterious walks. It led to a synagogue in Whitechapel.
He thought it all over carefully and decided to leave her alone. She was old; he did not feel it proper to confront her with things that had happened over fifty years before. It was best to let it pass quietly.
At the age of seventy-five Deborah Sutherland lay on her deathbed. Bruce got back to England just in time.
The old woman smiled as she saw her son sitting on the edge of the bed. “You are a Lieutenant Colonel now … you look fine … Bruce, my son … I haven’t too many hours left…”
“Hush now, Mother. You’ll be up and about in no time.”
“No, I must tell you something. I wanted to be your father’s wife so badly. I wanted so much … so very very much to be the mistress of Sutherland Heights. I did a terrible thing Bruce. I denied my people. I denied them in life. I want to be with them now. Bruce … Bruce, promise that I shall be buried near my father and my mother …”
“I promise, Mother.”
“My father … your grandfather … you never knew him. When … when I was a little girl he would hold me on his lap and he would say to me … ‘awake, awake, Deborah; awake, awake …’”
Those were the last words Deborah Sutherland spoke. Bruce Sutherland sat in numb grief for a long hour beside the lifeless body of his mother. Then the numbness began to thaw under the nagging burn of a doubt that would not be kept out of his mind. Must he be bound by a promise he had made a dying woman? A promise he was forced to make? Would it be breaking the code of honor by which he had always lived? Wasn’t it true that Deborah Sutherland’s mind had been going on her bit by bit over the past years? She had never been a Jewess in life, why should she be one in death? Deborah had been a Sutherland and nothing else.
What a terrible scandal would be created if he were to bury her in a shabby rundown Jewish cemetery on the poverty side of London. Mother was dead. The living-Neddie, Albert and Martha and Mary’s family and Adam would be hurt deeply. The living had to be served.
As he kissed his mother farewell and walked from her room he had made his decision.
Deborah was put to rest in the family vault at Sutherland Heights.
The sirens!
The sirens from the convoy of refugees!
The sirens shrieked louder and louder and louder until they tore through his eardrums. Bergen-Belsen … Marina … Neddie … caged trucks … the camps at Caraolos … 1 promise, Mother … 1 promise, Mother …
A burst of thunder rocked the house to its very foundation, and the sea outside became wild and waves smashed up the shore and raced nearly to the house. Sutherland threw off the covers and staggered about the room as though drunk. He froze at the window. Lightning! Thunder! The raging water grew higher and higher!
“God … God … God … God … !”
“Brigadier Sutherland! Brigadier Sutherland! Wake up, sir! Wake up, sir!”
The Greek houseboy shook him hard.
Sutherland’s eyes opened and he looked about wildly. The sweat poured from his body and his heart pounded painfully. He gasped for breath. The houseboy quickly brought him a brandy.
He looked outside to the sea. The night was calm and the water was as smooth as glass and lapped gently against the shore.
“I’ll be all right,” he said. “I’ll be all right… .”
“Are you sure, sir?”
“Yes.”
The door closed.
Bruce Sutherland slumped into a chair and buried his face in his hands and wept and whispered over and over, “… my mother in heaven … my mother in heaven …”
CHAPTER EIGHT: Brigadier Bruce Sutherland slept the sleep of the tormented and the damned.
Mandria, the Cypriot, twisted and turned in a nervous but exhilarated sleep.
Mark Parker slept the sleep of a man who had accomplished a mission.
Kitty Fremont slept with a peace of mind she had not known in years.
David Ben Ami slept only after reading Jordana’s letter so many times he knew it by memory.
Ari Ben Canaan did not sleep. There would be other times for that luxury, but not now. There was much to learn and little time to learn it in. All during the night he pored over maps and documents and papers, absorbing every fact about Cyprus, the British operation, and his own people there. He waded through the stacks of data with a cigarette or a coffee cup continuously at hand. There was a calm ease, a sureness about him.
The British had said many times that the Palestinian Jews were a match for anyone on matters of intelligence. The Jews had the advantage that every Jew in every country in the world was a potential source of information and protection for a Mossad Aliyah Bet agent.
At daybreak Ari awakened David, and after a quick breakfast they rode in one of Mandria’s taxis out to the detention camp at Caraolos.
The compounds themselves stretched for many miles in an area that hugged the bay, midway between Famagusta and the ruins of Salamis. The garbage dumps were a contact point between the refugees and the Cypriots. The British guarded them loosely because the garbage detail was made up of “trusties.” The garbage dumps became trading centers where leather goods and art work made in the camp were exchanged for bread and clothing. David led Ari through the dumps where the early morning bartering between Greeks and Jews was already going on. From here they entered their first compound.
Ari stood and looked at the mile after mile of barbed wire. Although it was November it was chokingly hot under a constant swirl of blowing dust. Compound after compound of tents were stretched along the bay, all set in an area of low—
hanging acacia trees. Each compound was closed in by ten-to twelve-foot walls of barbed wire. On the corners there were searchlight towers manned by British guards armed with machine guns. A skinny dog began following them. The word “BEVIN” was painted on the dog’s sides-a bow to the British Foreign Minister.
It was the same scene in each compound they visited: packed with miserable and angry people. Almost everyone was dressed in crudely sewn purple shorts and shirts made from cloth that had been torn from the inner linings of the tents. Ari studied the faces filled with suspicion, hatred, defeat.
In each new compound Ari would suddenly be embraced by a boy or girl in the late teens or early twenties who had been smuggled in by the Palestine Palmach to work with the refugees. They would throw their arms about him and begin to ask questions about home. Each time Ari begged off, promising to hold a Palmach meeting for the whole group in a few days. Each Palmach head showed Ari around the particular compound he or she was in charge of, and occasionally Ari would ask a question.