In an instant they were past the airfield and climbing. Back to their base to refuel and then out over the Mediterranean where they would provide the combat air patrol high above the turning point, just in case the Egyptians woke up to the Israeli navigation plan.
That didn’t seem likely, Michael thought, grinning behind his visor as he watched the Mirages behind him streak in to strafe the Egyptian planes lined up like ducks in a shooting gallery.
Lieutenant Michael Kaufmann couldn’t have been more wrong.
Two more flashes from the Mount of Olives and seconds later the road in front of Lieutenant David Kaufmann erupted with a deafening roar. Red hot pieces of flying metal tore great chunks of stone from the ancient walls of the Old City while David and his platoon hugged the ground. When the shrapnel had shrieked past, David held his hand up, thumb towards his ear and little finger towards his mouth, the sign to summon his radio operator from further down the alley. Ignoring the blood streaming from the wound to his cheek, David focused his binoculars on the general area of the flashes. Slowly and deliberately he scanned the foothills of the Mount of Olives on the other side of the Valley of Kidron. Desert camouflage did not blend well with the greenery in an olive grove and it was not long before he picked out the first of the Jordanian tanks. Tanks usually operated in troops of three and David scoured the hillside until he had found the other two. Sliding his compass from the side pocket of his trousers he took a bearing and did a quick mental calculation to convert the magnetic bearing to a grid bearing on the map.
‘Two this is two two, over.’
‘Two, over.’
‘Two two, fire mission battery. Grid 950619, direction 285, three tanks dug in, over.’
‘Two, roger. Wait, out.’
Thank God there were no restrictions against artillery targets on the Mount of Olives, David thought, not fancying his chances of getting into the museum with the cross-hairs of three 105mm guns watching him from a little more than 1300 metres away. More importantly, his superiors would not be too pleased if the priceless scrolls were blown into any more fragments than they were already in.
‘Shot, over.’
‘Shot, out.’
The Israeli guns supporting David’s brigade were about 6 kilometres back in the Rose Park, not far from the Knesset. A muffled and distant crump was followed by the hollow roar of an express train as the 105mm armour-piercing round whistled overhead, but it missed its target, exploding further up the hill from the tanks and to the right. David remained unperturbed. Close he thought, but not close enough. In any case it was rare to score a direct hit with the first round.
‘Left 100, drop 100, fire for effect, over.’
‘Left 100, drop 100, fire for effect, out.’
David watched the Mount of Olives explode in brilliant flashes of orange. A bigger explosion and the unmistakable shape of a tank barrel rose briefly through the smoke. One down, two to go, but then first one and then the other tank broke cover, throwing large clumps of dirt and broken olive trees behind their tracks as they withdrew at high speed towards the safety of the next hill.
David turned his attention to his own target. He positioned a machine gun so that it had a good view of the foyer of the museum and he broke cover.
‘Let’s go!’
The first section followed their young leader towards the entrance. With just 45 metres to go a burst of fire from the gardens around the museum tore into his signaller running beside him. Once again, a grenade arced towards the Arab position and the score was settled.
‘Grab the radio!’ David yelled. He checked for a pulse. There was nothing that could be done other than to press on with the attack. His signaller had been married a week. Angry, David doubled forward to the wall beside the museum entrance where he paused. He then leapt into the foyer and sprayed the courtyard with a sustained burst of fire. Two goldfish in the pool were added to the casualty list. The Arabs had fled.
Wall by wall, corridor by corridor, room by room, Lieutenant Kaufmann and his men cleared the museum. When David was satisfied that no Palestinian or Jordanian forces remained, he posted sentries on the roof, then headed unerringly towards the vaults in the basement, taking three men and Joseph Silberman with him.
If Private Silberman had been shaken by being in the thick of a fire-fight with only a few days military training behind him, there was no sign.
‘This is it. Think you can crack it?’
Silberman smiled. ‘It’s 1930s technology. Fifteen minutes. Twenty at the outside.’
David watched, fascinated, as Joseph took a stethoscope from the little black bag he had over his shoulder, plugged in the earpieces and placed the diaphragm against the combination dial. First, he spun the big dial to the left to clear the tumblers and then he turned it one revolution to the right.
‘Twenty-five,’ he announced as his stethoscope picked up the distinct click of the cam and lever mechanism engaging. ‘Last number.’
David wrote it down in his notebook. In the short time Joseph Silberman had been part of his platoon he had actually come to like the little Israeli from ‘the other side of the tracks’. Silberman had offered to show David how to break into a safe and pick a lock with the special tools he kept for just that purpose. Out of curiosity, David had found time to understand and practise Joseph Silberman’s illegal craft on a wall safe and a padlock. Now he was watching the master in action.
Silberman continued to turn the big silver dial with its hundred black gradations. When he was satisfied that the old vault had only three tumblers, Silberman started to rock the dial back and forth, advancing one or two gradations each time. Suddenly he stopped.
‘Eighteen,’ he said as the soft ‘nikt’ of another tumbler slot being lined up sounded in his stethoscope. Silberman was better than his word. Ten minutes later he turned the big wheel on the vault door and the huge retaining bolts slid noiselessly from their recesses.
‘After you, Lieutenant,’ he said, stepping back with a satisfied grin on his face. The challenge of breaking in. Nothing gave Joseph Silberman greater pleasure.
‘I’m glad you’re on our side,’ David said as he stepped past Silberman and into the vault. The Mossad agent had not been mistaken. Rows of small black trunks were coded and stacked in racks that reached to the ceiling. Two were stored separately from the others and David opened one of them and stepped back in awe.
The Isaiah Scroll. Up until now, the oldest known text of the complete Book of Isaiah had been the Ben Asher codex from Cairo which had been dated to 895 AD. David knew he was looking at leather from Qumran that had been inscribed at least a thousand years earlier. Had he had time to open the trunk next to it the world might have been a different place. The Omega Scroll held the clues for civilisation to avert the final countdown. David was jolted from his thoughts by the sound of running footsteps. One of his section commanders burst into the vault.
‘David! They have reached the Wall!’
For twenty years the Old City of Jerusalem had been part of the border between the Arabs and the Jews. No Jew had lived in the city’s Jewish Quarter since the Israelis, mostly elderly rabbis and their students, had been forced out when the Arab Legion stormed through the narrow streets in May of 1948. The most holy of Jewish cities had been turned into a tangle of blocked alleyways and barbed wire. Today the concrete barricades, twisted wire and rusted tin had been stormed by a different legion. The 9th Airborne Brigade could now add ‘street fighting’ to their list of skills. House by house, alley by alley down the Via Dolorosa where Christ had laboured with his cross on the way to Calvary, past the Mosque of Omar where Muhammad had ascended to heaven. With grenade after grenade, sniper bullet after sniper bullet, the Israeli paratroopers had fought their way to the Wall. As the sun rose above the Old City, battle-hardened veterans leaned against the ancient stones erected by King Solomon and wept. The chaplain to the Israeli Defense Forces, Rabbi Shlomo Goren, raised the shofar to his lips and the discordant blare of the ram’s horn rose above the intermittent sniper fire and the heavier sound of distant artillery. Rabbi Goren opened his old Torah.