Exodus - Leon Uris [210]
“Ben Solomon? Ben Solomon? I don’t remember seeing his name.”
“Just got him last night. Raid on the Safed police station. They were trying to steal arms. He killed two policemen with a grenade. Yes, indeed, you’re a mean little sheeny, aren’t you?”
Ben Solomon stood calm with his eyes blazing contempt at the inspector.
“Don’t take his gag off, Major Caldwell, or he’ll start singing Psalms for you. He’s a fanatic little bastard.”
The inspector became annoyed at the boy’s steady withering glare. He took a step toward Ben Solomon and smashed him in the mouth, sending him crashing to the floor, bloody and tangled in his chains.
“Get him out of here,” the inspector snapped in a nervous voice.
The boy was shoved on the floor in the back of the car. One armed soldier sat in back with him and Caldwell sat in front next to the driver. They drove out of the Taggart fort.
“Dirty little bastard,” the driver mumbled. “Ask me, Major Caldwell, they ought to turn us loose on these Jews ’ere a few weeks. That’s what we should do, by rights.”
“Cobber of mine got it last week,” the guard in the back said, “and a fine bloke he was, too. ’Ad a wife and a new baby. Them Maccabees give it to him right through the ’ead, they did.”
As they drove into the Beth Shean Valley the three men relaxed; they were now in all-Arab territory and the danger of attack was gone until they reached the Jerusalem area.
Caldwell turned around and looked at the prisoner on the floor. The juices of hatred churned in his stomach. He detested Bruce Sutherland. He knew in his heart that Sutherland was helping the Haganah. Sutherland was a Jew lover. Sutherland had intentionally let the catastrophe on Cyprus occur.
Caldwell remembered standing near the barbed wire at the Caraolos camp and a fat Jewish woman spitting out on him.
He looked back at the boy on the floor. The guard sat in the middle of the seat. One heavy boot was planted on Ben Solomon’s head and he snickered with amusement.
“Dirty Jew!” Caldwell mumbled under his breath.
He could see a parade of them. The bearded characters in London’s Whitechapel and he could smell the smell of pickles. The line of pawn shops—they sat hunched over their benches mumbling prayers. Caldwell could see the little boys on their way to Jew school with the black caps on their heads.
They drove toward the all-Arab city of Nablus.
Caldwell smiled as he remembered the officers’ club and the sheeny jokes. He could see his mother leading him into the office of an arrogant Jew doctor.
And they think Hitler was wrong, Caldwell thought. Hitler knew what the score was. It was bloody well too bad that the war ended before he could do them all in. Caldwell remembered entering Bergen-Belsen with Sutherland. Sutherland was sick at what he saw. Well, Caldwell wasn’t sick. The more Jews dead, the better.
They passed into an Arab village with a record of known hostility toward the Yishuv. It was an Husseini strong point.
“Stop the car,” Caldwell ordered. “Now you two men listen to me. We are throwing this kike out.”
“But, Major, they’ll murder him,” the guard said.
“I admits I’m put out at the Jews, sir,” the driver said, “but we got a responsibility to deliver our prisoner, we has.”
“Shut up!” Caldwell barked, half hysterically. “I said we are throwing him out. Both of you are to swear he was taken by Maccabees who roadblocked us. If you open your mouth otherwise you’ll end up in ditches. Am I clear?”
The two soldiers merely nodded as they saw the mad look in Caldwell’s eyes.
Ben Solomon was unchained from the floor. The car slowed near the coffeehouse. The boy was hurled into the street and they sped away for Jerusalem.
It worked just as Caldwell knew it would. Within an hour Ben Solomon had been killed and mutilated. He was decapitated. The bodyless head was held up by the hair and photographed with twenty laughing Arabs around it. The picture was sent out as a warning