"Paul-Loup Sulitzer - The Green King" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sulitzer Paul Loup)

Reb Klimrod had reached his side, carrying two heavy satchels. Silence fell suddenly, after one final shot. And in the silence they all heard the rumbling of an arriving tank, followed by several trucks filled with perfectly authentic paratroopers. These reinforcements deployed themselves, encircling the building. Lazarus glanced at them and nodded, looking more satisfied than ever.
"Not a chance," he repeated in English, then in Hebrew. "I'm coming in."
And he went in-they went in, he and Klimrod. Harmond, dumbfounded at the wheel of his Jeep, saw them disappear inside the station, and experienced "rather serious concern," as
he put it, feeling the tight line of paratroopers closing in around him.
Inside, one Englishman had been killed, three others wounded, while the losses on the side of the Assault Force were two dead and three wounded, one in the stomach.
Later on, Harmond learned that the commando had lost time for the idiotic reason that no one could locate the key to the arms store.
One or two minutes went by, in eerie silence. And then Lazarus spoke again.
"Parnell? You can come down. They give up. And tell those valiant reinforcements who came to rescue us that the battle is over."
Behind Harmond, the line of helmeted soldiers opened. A captain and two civilians, all from the dreaded C.I.D., moved forward. They walked by Harmond and into the station.
Lazarus smiled at the newcomers, and at that moment must have realized that at least one of them had recognized him, or was going to any second. He took Parnell by the arm and went toward them. Without turning around, he said: "Show them, kid."
Klimrod, with his left hand, opened the two satchels revealing the packages wrapped in oiled black paper, with wires hanging from them.
"Thirty-four pounds of TNT in each bag," explained Lazarus. "And the thing the kid is holding under his arm is an electric pressure-sensitive detonator. You'll notice that he keeps his right arm pressed very close to his body. Should he move his arm away from his body, even to sneeze, bam, We would all go up in smoke. I can guarantee you the total destruction of your Station . .
Klimrod said, in his impersonal voice, his eyes drifting: "We are in an enclosed space. The power of the deflagration would be further strengthened
"Exactly," approved Lazarus, beaming like a teacher whose favorite student has just given the correct answer. Through his rimless glasses, his pale-blue eyes shone mercilessly, leaving no doubt about the incredible violence in him. He went on. "In short, it would not be unreasonable to count on forty or fifty
dead. Go stand close to that guy with the blue shirt, kid. He's from the C.I.D. and I think he has recognized me
Only then did he reveal his immediate plans.

The same truck that had brought the commandos took them back. They left behind only their two dead, after checking to see that no paper or personal effect that could permit rapid identification had been left on them. They took the road to Haifa, and, as planned initially, met, three miles farther to the northeast, with three men whose task it was to cover their withdrawal, and who were ready with cans of gasoline they would have used to water down the road and build a wall of flames in case of a pursuit.
This did not occur.

As for Harmond, he took advantage of the circumstances, a few minutes after the C.I.D. men arrived, to slip quietly away. He rapidly lost himself in the streets of Yagur, exchanged his uniform for civilian clothes, and still remembers, with a wince, the exhausting bicycle trip back to Nazareth, where, officially, he was on leave with his family. Later, he rejoined his unit, on time, in Port Said. For a long while, he did not know how the incident ended, and learned it only much later.
James Parnell had seen the line of paratroopers open up to let through the truck that had carried the commandos. Before their departure, the terrorists-in his eyes, they were terrorists
-had been careful to burn all the documents found in the offices of the police station. But, according to the terms of the transaction, they hadn't touched any of the arms he had there. This was his only source of satisfaction. None of the other events did anything to boost his spirits. He found himself designated, along with the two C.I.D. representatives and five other men, all policemen, no soldiers, as hostage for so-called Major Connors and his young companion.
At no time did Parnell question the authenticity of the explosives (the doubts came after, and the answer much later). Toward the older one, whose Irish brogue was so perfect, he immediately felt a violent antipathy, and fear. But the other one, the tall young boy with the amazing eyes, in a certain way scared him even more; that bottomless gaze frightened him.
Parnell, who eventually became a journalist and returned many times to Israel, was forced to climb into the back of the truck and lie down, hands crossed behind his head, just like the other hostages. The terrorist with the glasses sat next to the driver, Gammon grenade in one hand, Smith & Wesson in the other. With a disquieting psychological ability, he had chosen the driver himself: a civilian policeman in his fifties, the last man capable of conceiving and carrying out a desperate action.
His young accomplice climbed into the back, impassive and silent, one arm pressed against his body, a sten machine-pistol in his other hand.
The paratroopers once again let them pass. The truck pulled away rather slowly. They want to make sure they're not being followed, thought Parnell, who couldn't see a thing. They started toward Nazareth. Parnell was hopeful: there was an army barricade a few miles farther south. But after three or four minutes, the vehicle changed direction, going along a dirt path for half an hour. Then it stopped. He heard the voice of the man with the glasses.
"Everybody out. Except for the two aces from the C.I.D. and my favorite Irishman."
They drove on, leaving the freed men in the middle of the desert, with Parnell at the wheel this time and the two C.I.D. men lying in the back with their wrists in handcuffs and their ankles in shackles. They rode for an hour, on a practically impassable road.
Again they stopped. Parnell was tied to the front fender. He knew some Hebrew, enough to follow the discussion-the argument-that then took place between the two terrorists. The older one wanted, at all costs, to kill the two men from the C.I.D. on the spot. After which, he'll kill me, too, he thought. Oh, my God, why am I Irish?
A rainy dawn began to appear over Galilee. Parnell expected to hear shots at any moment. But the tall, thin boy came around to him, leaned over to unfasten him, and said, in a surprisingly soft and calm voice: "Don't try anything, all right? Otherwise, I won't be answerable for your life."
"All right," said Parnell, sincerely and extraordinarily relieved. "And thank you. Thank you so much."
The gray eyes passed over him, unfathomable.
They arrived in Saint John of Acre at six-thirty in the morning. Parnell was alone in the cab of the truck. Twenty minutes earlier, his two adversaries had moved to the back, right behind him, the younger one warning him not to turn around and breaking the rear-view mirror so that he could not see what was happening behind his back.
When he reached the square of Han-el-Amdam, near the Inn of the Columns-his assigned destination-he slowed to a stop, reassured by the continued silence.
And, of course, the truck behind him was empty, except for the two C.I.D. men, enraged, but alive.

3

Reb Michael Klimrod arrived in Cairo during the last days of March 1946. He and Lazarus traveled separately, but they met in the Egyptian capital.
According to Yoel Bainish, who is the most precise and constant witness of that period of the King's life, Klimrod and, especially, Lazarus were among the terrorists most wanted by the British in Palestine. The Yagur incident had a great deal to do with this. The C.I.D. men had had a good chance to study their faces, and Klimrod's height would make him easy to spot.
The attack on the Yagur station had been only one episode in a much larger offensive carried out by both Irgun and Stern. A general attack had been ordered on March 1, and Lazarus's mission was only one part of it. There had been attacks on barracks in Haifa, Rehovot, Pardess-Hana, and on main arteries in the districts of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Petah-Tikva. Even the area under the Sixth Airborne Division in Jerusalem had seen fire.
As for the reasons that led to Klimrod's and Lazarus's departure for Cairo, and eventually for Europe, Bainish is certain concerning Lazarus. An organization like the Irgun, which wanted to be only clandestinely military, had some misgivings about this former member of the I.R.A. and friend of North American gangsters; they frowned on his almost gratuitous violence, which sometimes went against their political purposes.
As for Klimrod then, Bainish knew nothing of his motivations. One thing was certain: it was at his own request that he left Palestine. "At one time, I even thought he had received new orders, perhaps from Mossad in Europe. It was only in August or September that I learned that that was not the case, that he had left on his own. I was disappointed, and even wor
ned. Just the fact that he had teamed up with Dov didn't predict anything good. I was only half wrong

In Cairo, Nadja Hakim lived in a villa on the island of
Gezireh, a residential neighborhood. A former member of the
British Army's ATS, she had married one of the sons of the
Hakim Banking family. Her change in status had in no way