For the most part, he was very quiet. His eyes were searching the miles of barbed wire for some key that would help him get three hundred people out.
Many of the compounds were grouped together by nationalities. There were compounds of Poles and of French and of Czechs. There were compounds of Orthodox Jews and there were compounds of those who banded together with similar political beliefs. Most compounds, however, were merely survivals of the war, with no identity other than that they were Jews who wanted to go to Palestine. They all had a similarity in their uniform misery.
David led Ari to a wooden bridge that connected two main portions of the camp by crossing over the top of the barbed wire walls. There was a sign on the bridge that read: welcome to Bergen-Bevin. “It is rather bitter irony, Ari, this bridge. There was one exactly like it in the Lodz ghetto in Poland.”
By now David was seething. He berated the British for the subhuman conditions of the camp, for the fact that German prisoners of war on Cyprus had a greater degree of freedom, for the lack of food and medical care, and just for the general gross injustice. Ari was not listening to David’s ranting. He was too intent on studying the structure and arrangement of the place. He asked David to show him the tunnels.
Ari was led to a compound of Orthodox Jews close to the bay. There was a row of outside toilets near the barbed wire wall. On the first toilet shack was a sign that read: Bevingrad. Ari was shown that the fifth and sixth toilets in
the line of sheds were fakes. The holes under the seats led under the barbed wire and through tunnels to the bay. Ari shook his head-it was all right for a few people at a time but not suited for a mass escape.
Several hours had passed. They had nearly completed the inspection. Ari had hardly spoken a word for two hours. At last, bursting with anxiety, David asked, “Well, what do you think?”
“I think,” Ari answered, “that Bevin isn’t very popular around here. What else is there to see?”
“I saved the children’s compound for last. We have Palmach headquarters there.”
As they entered the children’s compound Ari was once again pounced upon by a Palmachnik. But this time he returned the embrace with vigor and a smile on his face, for it was an old and dear friend, Joab Yarkoni. He whirled Yarkoni around, set him down, and hugged him again. Joab Yarkoni was a dark-skinned Moroccan Jew who had emigrated to Palestine as a youngster. His black eyes sparkled and a huge brush of a mustache seemed to take up half of his face. Joab and Ari had shared many adventures together, for although Joab was still in his early twenties he was one of the crack agents in the Mossad Aliyah Bet, with an intimate knowledge of the Arab countries.
From the beginning Yarkoni had been one of the wiliest and most daring operators in Mossad. His greatest feat was one which started the Jews of Palestine in the date-palm industry. The Iraqi Arabs guarded their date palms jealously, but Yarkoni had managed to smuggle a hundred saplings into Palestine from Iraq.
David Ben Ami had given Joab Yarkoni command of the children’s compound, for it was, indeed, the most important place in the Caraolos camp.
Joab showed Ari around the compound, which was filled with orphans from infancy to seventeen years of age. Most of them had been inmates of concentration camps during the war, and many of them had never known a life outside of barbed wire. Unlike the other compounds, the children’s section had several permanent structures erected. There was a school, a dining hall, a hospital, smaller units, and a large playground. There was a great deal of activity here in contrast to the lethargy in the other areas. Nurses, doctors, teachers, and welfare people from the outside, sponsored by money from American Jews, worked in the compound.
Because of the flow of outsiders, the children’s compound was the most loosely guarded in Caraolos. David and Joab were quick to capitalize on this fact by establishing Palmach headquarters in the compound.
At night the playground was transformed into a military training camp for refugees. The classrooms were turned from standard schools into indoctrination centers in Arab psychology, Palestine geography, tactics, weapons identification, and a hundred other phases of warfare instruction.
Each refugee receiving military training by the Palmach had to stand trial by a kangaroo court. The pretense was that the refugee had got to Palestine and had been picked up by the British. The Palmach instructor would then put him through an interrogation to try to establish that the refugee was not in the country legally. The refugee had to answer a thousand questions about the geography and history of Palestine to “prove” he had been there many years.
When a “candidate” successfully completed the course, the Palmach arranged an escape, generally through the children’s compound or the tunnels, to the white house on the hill at Salamis, whence he would be smuggled into Palestine. Several hundred refugees had been sent to Palestine that way, in groups of twos and threes.
British CID was not unaware of the fact that irregular things took place inside the children’s compound. Time and again they planted spies among the outside teachers and welfare workers, but the ghetto and the concentration camps had bred a tight-lipped generation of children and the intruders were always discovered within a day or two.
Ari ended the inspection of the children’s compound in the schoolhouse. One of the schoolrooms was, in fact, Palmach headquarters. Inside the teacher’s desk was a secret radio and transmitter which maintained contact with Palestine. Under the floor boards weapons were hidden for the military training courses. In this room papers and passes were forged.
Ari looked over the forgery plant and shook his head. “This counterfeit work is terrible,” he said. “Joab, you are very sloppy.”
Yarkoni merely shrugged.
“In the next few weeks,” Ari continued, “we are going to need an expert. David, you said there is one right here.”
“That’s right. He is a Polish boy named Dov Landau, but he refuses to work.”
“We have tried for weeks,” Joab added.
“Let me speak to him.”
Ari told the two men to wait outside as he stepped into Dov Landau’s tent. He looked over at a blond boy, undersized and tense and suspicious at the sudden intrusion. Ari knew the look-the eyes filled with hate. He studied the turned-down mouth and the snarling lips of the youngster: the expression of viciousness that stamped so many of the concentration-camp people.
“Your name is Dov Landau,” Ari said, looking directly into his eyes. “You are seventeen years old and Polish. You have a concentration camp background and you are an expert forger, counterfeiter, and duplicator. My name is Ari Ben Canaan. I’m a Palestinian from Mossad Aliyah Bet.”
The boy spat on the ground.
“Look, Dov, I’m not going to plead and I’m not going to threaten. I’ve got a plain out-and-out business proposition … let’s call it a mutual assistance pact.”
Dov Landau snarled, “I want to tell you something, Mr. Ben Canaan. You guys aren’t any better than the Germans or the British. The only reason you want us over there so bad is to save your necks from the Arabs. Let me tell you-I’m getting to Palestine all right and when I do I’m joining an outfit that’s going to let me kill!”
Ari did not change expression at the outburst of venom that erupted from the boy. “Good. We understand each other perfectly. You don’t like my motives for wanting you in Palestine and I don’t like yours for wanting to get there. We do agree on one thing: you belong in Palestine and not here.”
The boy’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. This Ben Canaan was not like the others.
“Let’s take it a step further,” Ari said. “You’re not going to get to Palestine by sitting here on your arse and doing nothing. You help me and I’ll help you. What happens after you get there is your business.”