Exodus - Leon Uris [256]
She spun around and opened the door.
“Kitty, this great vision of man you have ... what do you want?”
“I want a man who knows what it is to cry. I feel sorry for you, Ari Ben Canaan.”
Kitty left Daliyat el Karmil the same morning.
Chapter Nineteen
BRUCE SUTHERLAND had been waiting for Kitty at the Zion Hotel in Haifa for two days. It seemed to her that she had never been happier to see anyone. After dinner Sutherland drove up to Har Hacarmel, the Jewish sector of the city which was spread on the slopes of Mount Carmel.
They went into a night club which was built with a view of Panorama Road, where the city below, the harbor, and the sweep of the bay could be seen to Acre and beyond it, to the hills of Lebanon.
“How’s the girl?”
“Much better, thank you, Bruce. I do appreciate your coming.” She looked at the view. “I came up here to Har Hacarmel the first night I was in Palestine. Ari brought me up. I think our conversation had something to do with living with tension.”
“The Jews here have learned to live under the gun the way you Americans live with baseball. It’s made them a hard lot.”
“This place has got me so I can’t think straight any more. The more I try to reason, the more I am trapped by sentiment and unexplainable forces. I’ve got to get out of here before it swallows me up.”
“Kitty, we know that Dov Landau is safe. He is hiding up at Mishmar. I haven’t told Karen yet.”
“I guess she’s got to know. Bruce, what’s going to happen here?”
“Who knows?”
“You think the UN will give in to the Arabs?”
“There will be a war.”
There was a fanfare at the bandstand. A master of ceremonies came out and told a few stories in Hebrew and then introduced a tall, handsome sabra youth. The young man wore the traditional white shirt opened at the throat and he had a black mustache and a small chain was around his neck with a Star of David pendant. He strummed a guitar and sang a song of passionate patriotism about the Jews coming back to their Promised Land.
“I must know what is going to happen at Gan Dafna.”
“The Arabs can raise an army of fifty thousand Palestinians and perhaps twenty thousand irregulars from over the border. There was a chap named Kawukji who led irregulars in the ’36–’39 riots. He’s already busy getting another gang of cutthroats together. It is easier to get arms to the Arabs than to the Jews ... they have friendly territory all around them.”
“And the rest of it, Bruce?” Kitty demanded.
“The rest of it? Egypt and Iraq both have armies of around fifty thousand men. There will be some Saudi Arabian troops in the Egyptian Army. Syria and Lebanon will put another twenty thousand men on the field. Trans-Jordan has the Arab Legion ... crack soldiers with the latest arms. According to present-day definitions the Arabs do not have first-class armies; none the less they have many modern units with artillery, armament, and aircraft.”
“You advised the Haganah, Bruce. What did you tell them?”
“I told them to form a defense line between Tel Aviv and Haifa and try to hold that strip of territory. Kitty, the other side of the picture is not pretty. The Jews have four or five thousand Palmach troops and a paper army of fifty thousand in the Haganah, but they only have ten thousand rifles. The Maccabees can put a thousand men out, no more, with light arms. They have no artillery, their air force is three Piper Cubs, and their navy is those illegal-immigrant runners tied up at Haifa. The Jews are outnumbered in soldiers forty to one, in population a hundred to one, in equipment a thousand to one, and in area five thousand to one. The Haganah has turned down my advice and the advice of every military man who has told them to pull in to a tight defense line. They are going to fight it out at every moshav, every kibbutz, every village. That means Gan Dafna, too. Do you want to hear any more?”
Kitty’s voice was shaky. “No ... I’ve heard enough. Isn’t it strange, Bruce? One night when I was up on Mount Tabor with