City of Secrets Read online

  “I know,” she said. “I was sick all day yesterday.”

  “I wanted to come by last night.”

  “You should have.”

  “I was being an idiot.”

  This they could agree on.

  “You’ll be careful,” she asked.

  “That’s me, Mr. Careful.”

  “Please don’t joke.” She gave him a helpless face, and he understood he couldn’t die. He reached a hand over the seat for her to squeeze.

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Why not?”

  “Gideon said it himself, I’m very brave.”

  “I’m not,” she said.

  “That’s not true.”

  As they curled through the suburbs, gathering the cell one at a time like a dire carpool, she moved to the front. Lipschitz was the last, wearing a black frock coat too heavy for the weather. Beneath it he had a Sten machine gun Fein and Yellin admired as if it were a grandchild.

  They took the Jaffa Road for the coast, passing the bus station and the reservoir, leaving the city behind. The desert outskirts were Arab territory. On both sides chalk-white villages dotted the cliffs like hawks’ nests commanding the valley and its ancient trade route. This was the land of the Canaanites, occupied by the Philistines and Babylonians and Romans before the Ottomans and the British. Now the main population, again, after the foreign invaders had retreated, was lizards and scorpions. Pincus and Scheib had warned Brand never to take a fare here at night. At first, like Eva’s stories of the riots, their advice seemed overwrought. Now he saw it as common sense. There were no call boxes out here, no law.

  “Damn it,” he said. “I forgot my bandana.”

  “So did I,” Yellin confessed.

  “They’ll have some where we’re going,” Fein said.

  “You can use my babushka,” Eva told Brand, taking it off and refolding it on her lap for him. He would be her champion.

  The road took them through Bab el-Wad, a notorious stronghold of the Arab Legion. Brand slowed as if the traffic police were laying for him. It was the Moslem holy day and the marketplace was closed, the main street deserted. Only a beggar in a soiled kaftan stopped to stare at the novelty of a cab full of Jews, and at the edge of town Brand sped up again.

  After Latrun they descended, breasting the Judean Hills before dropping into the Valley of Ayalon, the view before them endless, stretching to the coastal plain. Miles ahead on the desert floor, like smoke from a fire, another car kicked up a tail of dust. So far off, with no wind, it was impossible to tell if it was coming toward them or headed for Tel Aviv. If it was a patrol, there was no way to disguise their approach. Brand could see them being stopped and Lipschitz opening up with the Sten, the jeep or armored car raking them before they could get out of their seats. If it was an armored car, it might be better to go cross-country and try to outrun them. Against a jeep they had no chance.

  “What’s that?” Eva asked, pointing to something by the roadside.

  From a distance it looked like the frame of a tent or Quonset hut, maybe a burnt-out gas station or café. As they neared, it solidified into the hulk of a bus rusted the color of dried blood.

  “That’s been there forever,” Yellin said. “They’re dead ducks going uphill.”

  The directions Asher had given him took them off the highway and along a dry wadi running back into the foothills. There was no road, only a loose consensus of tire tracks. He craned over the wheel, the Peugeot dipping into ruts and bumping over stones like a launch in choppy water. He figured they had enough people to push if they got stuck. There were no trees for cover, just cactus and scrub, and he was relieved when they were finally out of sight of the highway.

  As they climbed into the hills, he imagined Asher had been stopped, the fake plates discovered, the mines. Without the second car they’d have to turn back. Without Asher, the cell would dissolve and Brand would be free, a coward without a home or a people. Was that what he wanted? Why did he have to fight so hard to overcome his worst instincts?

  “I see it,” Eva said, and there it was, around the bend.

  Kibbutz Ramat Avraham sat atop a knoll like a colonial outpost, ringed on all sides, like police headquarters, with barbed wire. Over the compound rose a shiny new water tower crowned with a Star of David flag. On its catwalk paced a pair of men with sniper rifles. The gate was barricaded by a truck liberated from the Italian army, still flying the tricolor on its canvas side, which looked moth-eaten, but, as they slowed, proved to be pocked with bullet holes. At a signal from the catwalk, the truck pulled up enough for Brand to sneak by, then when he was through, backed up again, sealing them in. Inside the wire, the buildings were makeshift, a canvas mess hall and barracks on raw wooden platforms spaced around a bald parade ground, and with the panic of a man held underwater too long, Brand wanted out.

  During the war he’d lived in tents like these, stifling in the summer and freezing in the winter, sharing his straw mattress with rats. He lined up for roll call morning and evening and ate off tin plates, licking the rusty metal to get the last dab of porridge. When someone died, they divvied up his Red Cross package and had a party. After the guard they called Nosey killed Koppelman, Brand let someone else have his share. He was through being a beast, a vow he’d break the next day, and the next—the rest of his life, he’d thought. He’d die before he lived like that again.

  Asher saved him, striding across the parade ground with his valise as if he’d called a cab.

  “Morning,” he said, leaning in the window, turning a smile on everyone. “No problems, I take it.”

  “None.”

  “Good. We’re actually a little early. Pull around to that shed and I’ll meet you there.”

  Brand took the drive at a crawl, their progress followed by lookouts on the catwalk. Instead of disappointed, he was grateful to no longer be in charge. Asher made the operation seem possible, as if he could do it himself. To Brand it didn’t make sense. Though he didn’t know Asher, he believed in him.

  The other car was a stake truck with an official-looking Palestine Railways logo on the doors.

  “It is,” Asher confirmed, without elaborating. In the bed were picks and shovels and a pair of wheelbarrows. He had white kaftans and keffiyehs for everyone, and makeup for their faces. The plan had changed slightly. They’d still blow the tracks, but just in one spot, and now they’d also be repairing them. The engineer would stop to see what the problem was, Asher would climb into the cab, and like that they’d have the train.

  “Why do we have to blow up the tracks?” Yellin asked. “Why can’t we just be working on them?”

  “We want to blow up the tracks,” Asher said. “Ideally we’d blow up the train if we had time, but we don’t.”

  Eva helped them with the makeup. Lipschitz made a hilarious Arab, with his moon face and glasses. Lipschitz of the desert. Fein and Yellin could have passed for falafel vendors, Asher a sheikh. Brand, with his green eyes and blond hair, looked like a burn victim. The dimple in his chin itched. Eva straightened his keffiyeh and did a last touch-up of his nose. She put a finger to her lips and pressed it to his.

  “Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  “Listen to Asher. Watch what he does.”

  It was time. She let him go, and as he settled into the driver’s seat, fixing the mirrors so he could see, he wondered how many comrades she’d told to be careful. Did it matter? He still had her babushka, even if he no longer needed it.

  Asher and Lipschitz sat in the cab, Fein and Yellin behind them in the bed with the tools. Asher balanced the valise on his knees, holding it with both hands. They waved goodbye to Eva and set off across the parade ground. There must have been an important meeting, because the kibbutzniks, invisible till now, were streaming out of the mess tent, a khaki mass of suntanned young men and women dedicated to an agrarian, egalitarian homeland. Brand couldn’t imagine living here, captive, under constant attack. Having barely survived his own brush wit
h collectivism, he didn’t share their ideals, even as he admired their resolve. They all stopped to watch the stolen truck go, waving as if wishing them luck, and he understood this was Asher’s doing. He was following protocol, for everyone’s sake. Now that they were Arabs, they could safely be seen. They waved back, the Italian truck pulled up, and they were outside the wire.

  The stake truck liked the makeshift road even less than the Peugeot had. In back, the shovels clattered as they dropped into holes, Fein and Yellin hanging on to the sides like seasick greenhorns hugging the rails. At his last work camp Brand had taken care of a fleet of diesels with the same sluggish three-speed. Afraid of getting stuck, he kept to first gear as they followed the sandy wadi, the engine protesting. Once on the highway, he shifted up, and Fein and Yellin took shelter behind the cab.

  The sun was higher, flattening shadows, bleaching the valley. Though it was cold, liquid ripples of heat played over the road. The distant smoke they’d seen on the plain was gone. Here there was nothing—a crow jabbing at something in the dust, a tin cross commemorating a pile of stones, a signpost with a pitted arrow pointing off across the desert. Asher opened his valise and unfolded a map covered with scribbles. Brand was too busy driving to read it. Between them sat Lipschitz with his machine gun under his kaftan, his glasses smudged with makeup. Where did he get the Sten, and had he used it before? Again, Brand had underestimated him.

  “You don’t have to go so fast,” Asher said, and Brand let up on the pedal.

  “Are we almost there?”

  “It should be right up here, if this is right.”

  Had he not cased the crossing? Someone must have, probably the kibbutzniks, since they knew the area.

  “There,” Asher said, and Brand slowed until he could see the lollipop marker with the railway logo. When he turned off the highway, the front end dipped and he heard Yellin swear.

  “About a mile,” Asher said.

  Before he could put the map away, they saw the tracks—or the telephone lines attending them, stretching to the horizon in both directions. At a distance, the grade was noticeable, a steady climb into the hills, though as they drew closer, bouncing over the ruts, the valley seemed absolutely flat. The tail of dust that gave the Peugeot away didn’t matter here. They were a railway crew in a railway truck, and by the time anyone suspected otherwise, it would be too late.

  The tracks sat atop a raised berm along which ran a goat path, the churned earth in the middle darker, the fringes holding hoofprints.

  “Go left,” Asher said. “In a half mile there should be a culvert that goes under the tracks.”

  It was there they stopped and got out. After traveling all morning they were stiff. Fein fell getting out of the bed, knocking off his keffiyeh.

  “Next time I’m driving,” Yellin said.

  “Leave the radio on.” Asher pointed toward the hills. “They can see us, in case anything happens.”

  Brand squinted, trying to find the water tower, but the sun was in his eyes. He waved to Eva anyway.

  Asher called them together—to go over the plan, Brand thought. Instead he had them set aside their weapons and showed them how to rig the mine. Today they were using gelignite, and as they watched him pack it into an old tobacco tin, Brand remembered the high school and decided Asher was a teacher. He gave Lipschitz the job of crimping the fuse, then, live mine in hand, led them to the culvert. The second lesson was tamping—using the materials at hand to direct the force of the explosion. By digging a hole under the tie, they’d not only blow up the tracks but collapse the culvert, which would actually take longer to repair.

  “Think damage,” Asher said, handing the shovel back to Fein.

  They had to wait, gathered by the open door of the cab for the radio to let them know the train had left the station in Ramleh. The code word was Cunningham, the British high commissioner, and there it was at the top of the news, eliciting a cheer.

  Lipschitz was given the honor. Asher held the fuse for him while the rest of them peeked from behind the truck.

  Lipschitz scampered down the berm, making them laugh. Asher came strolling after him, checking his watch. He joined them, counting out loud: “Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six …” He stopped when he got to thirty and cocked his head, listening.

  “Maybe you—” Yellin said, and was drowned out by the report.

  Once, in Naples, Brand had been standing on the docks when a crane lost its counterweight. The crane was five stories tall, the counterweight ten thousand pounds, multiplied by a pulley system. Over the years the braided wire cable holding it had corroded, unraveling strand by strand, weakening until, in an instant, it let go. Though he was a ship’s length away, he felt like he’d been punched in the chest, and for several minutes couldn’t stop shaking.

  This wasn’t a surprise, but still made him cringe. The blast seemed to go on a long time, rolling across the desert, echoing off the hills, leaving an isolated, high-pitched whining in his ears. Rocks and clods of dirt rained down around them, hopping off the hood of the truck like hail.

  “Let’s take a look,” Asher said, waving to show it was safe.

  The ends of the track were bent and blackened, the section between them gone, atomized by the release of energy. If the culvert hadn’t collapsed, as Asher had hoped, it was badly cracked. They celebrated, shaking their heads as if they never expected it to work. Brand laughed, but thought: That’s the easy part.

  “Five minutes,” Asher said, and they hurried to take their places, pushing the empty wheelbarrows up the berm and lifting them onto the tracks. They filled them with dirt, a feeble barricade, then leaned on their shovels like a real crew taking a break. Fein’s keffiyeh was cockeyed. Like a valet, Yellin straightened it. From the truck Asher brought a red flag no larger than a pillowcase. As they stood in the lucid sunlight, peering into the shimmering distance, he briefed them a final time. The plan was to walk the engineer back to the mail car, disarm the guards and blow the safe. No one gets off. Show your weapons so they know you mean business. Brand thought he was getting ahead of himself. First they had to stop the train.

  As the minutes passed and nothing happened, Brand imagined it wasn’t coming, that it had broken down or derailed or, by mad coincidence, another outfit was right now holding it up. Then he saw the smoke.

  Asher nodded. They all saw it.

  It was just a smudge—it might have been a car—that gradually resolved into a dot. How slowly it approached, without sound, a dark blot around a wavering headlamp, bright even in the sunlight. As it drew closer, the engine took shape, the black boiler and open cab and matching tender. Smoke gushed from the stack, hung suspended above the coaches in a thick plume, a crosswind thinning it, pushing a sooty cloud over the desert.

  At their feet the rails sang, faintly at first, then insistent, a steely shivering like a knife being sharpened on a wheel. Through his kaftan Brand touched the butt of his pistol to make sure it was there. Beside him Fein dug into the berm and threw another shovel of dirt into the wheelbarrow. Yellin took his cue and did the same.

  They could hear the engine drumming, gathering speed to make the grade, the rhythmic clicking of the wheels filling the air. By now the engineer would have spotted the truck and wondered why they were on the tracks, yet didn’t slow. How long did it take a train to stop?

  On it came, growing. Though Brand saw locomotives every day at the station, they were at rest, tamed. Here, at full bore, its power seemed elemental, barely controlled. The noise surrounded them, overwhelming. Brand prepared to run. When the engine derailed, it would take the rest of the train with it, the whole thing sliding sideways like a snake off a rock.

  Asher stood in the middle of the tracks, waving the flag in long arcs above his head like a signalman hailing another ship. The train kept on, bearing down on him, the pistons shuttling, until finally, as if it had received his message, the engine relented. The whistle shrieked a warning, shocking Brand’s heart, the brakes caught and t
he wheels ground against the rails, squealing, steel on steel, bowing a long, drawn-out note. The engine slowed, chuffing, coasting till it loomed close over Asher, and with a lurch, stopped, its boiler hissing.

  Asher planted the flag between the ties, walked over to the ladder and climbed into the cab.

  The other four dug, still pretending to be workers. Brand listened for gunshots. He thought Lipschitz should have gone with Asher, but it was too late now. The train idled like a sleeping beast, bleeding off steam.

  The engineer climbed down, followed by the fireman. They stood with their hands clasped behind their heads. From the ladder, Asher waved Lipschitz over. He ran, holding the Sten high across his chest. Brand, who’d pegged him for a scholar or an artist, was surprised at how fast he was, though it made sense. He was by far the youngest of them.

  Asher dropped down and waved his pistol, the signal for them to break out their weapons. He had his keffiyeh wrapped around his head like a bandit, only his eyes visible.

  Brand arranged his the same way and drew his pistol. Fein had a long-barreled revolver like his Parabellum, Yellin a nickel-plated snub-nose.

  Asher and Lipschitz took the engineer and left them the fireman, a red-haired, red-cheeked Scot with yellow rodent’s teeth. Fat, in patched overalls, he was sweating and kept taking a hand off his head to wipe his brow. “Sorry,” he said, then did it again.

  They weren’t supposed to talk. Yellin gestured with his gun for him to walk ahead of them. Brand followed, his finger on the trigger guard so there was no chance it would go off. They were supposed to fire their weapons only if absolutely necessary, a rule Brand clung to. He’d thought the gun would make him feel powerful. Instead, it magnified his weakness. If the fireman took off running, would he wait for Yellin or Fein to shoot him? Was that any better than shooting him himself?

  As Asher had said, there were only two coaches. Between the three of them they could cover all the doors. Most of the passengers had drawn their shades, but a curious few glared out at them. Yellin had the fireman lie flat on the ground, pointing his gun at his back, and Brand thought of Nosey making him and Koppelman grovel in the snow just to get them wet. It had been a game to Nosey, one Koppelman finally tired of. The little German tormented them at random, according to his whim. It could have been Brand on the floor of the machine shop that morning—a thought that crossed his mind as, with the rest of the prisoners, he watched Nosey stomping Koppelman’s head long after Koppelman had stopped moving. The idea that he was watching someone kill another person—that Koppelman had died—wasn’t a surprise. What was more important was not drawing attention to himself, though soon enough, with Koppelman gone, Brand became his favorite target, and for a long time—even now, if he was honest—he blamed Koppelman.