Exodus - Leon Uris [302]
The Israelis could not allow the arms to reach Tyre—but how to stop the ship? They had promised both the Italian officials and the captain that they would not blow her up in the harbor. Once on the high seas the Israeli Navy, consisting of three corvettes, could never find the Vesuvius.
Barak Ben Canaan was impressed by the importance of the situation and intrigued by the kind of knotty problem he had faced and solved many times before. Once again he conceived the inconceivable. By dawn he had worked out the details of another of his fantastic plots.
Two days later the Vesuvius moved out of the Naples harbor and, as it did, the Italian second officer was relieved of radio duty as an extra precaution by Fawdzi. Radio contact, however, was not necessary to the plotters. The Israelis knew the exact instant the Vesuvius left. The ship had barely cleared the harbor area when an Italian customs cutter raced for her with its bull horn blasting.
Fawdzi, who knew no Italian, rushed up to the steering room and demanded to know from the captain what it all meant.
The captain shrugged. “Who knows?”
“Hello, Vesuvius,” the loud-speaker boomed. “Stand by to be baarded!”
A Jacab’s ladder was dropped and twenty men wearing uniforms of the Italian customs service quickly boarded from the cutter.
“I demand to know the meaning of this!” Colonel Fawdzi screamed.
The leader af the boarding party, a giant of a man with a great red and white beard, who bore a remarkable resemblance to Barak Ben Canaan, stepped farward and spoke to Fawdzi in Arabic: “We have information that one of your crew set a time bomb in one af the holds,” he said.
“Impossible,” Fawdzi shouted.
“We happen to know he was bought out by the Jews,” the leader asserted sincerely. “We must clear the harbor area before the ship explodes.”
Fawdzi became confused. He had no intention of being blown up with the Vesuvius, nor did he like the idea of going out at the harbor with this strange gang of Italian “customs officials” aboard. On the other hand, he could not show cowardice by demanding to be taken off the ship.
“You will line up your crew,” the man with the big beard said. “We will find the culprit and he will tell us where he has planted the bomb.”
The Arab crew was assembled and taken into the gallery for “questioning,” and while they were being questioned the Vesuvius passed outside of the three-mile limit and the customs’ cutter returned to Naples. The disguised Aliyah Bet agents then produced pistols and locked up Fawdzi and the Arab crew. Later that day, when they had made further distance, the crew was given a compass, a map, and a rowboat and set adrift. Colonel Fawdzi was kept aboard in his cabin. The Israelis took over as crew of the ship as it raced for open sea.
Thirty-six hours later, the Vesuvius was met by two corvettes flying skull and crossbones. The corvettes tied up on either side of the motor ship, removed the cargo and crew, and sped off after smashing the radio. The Vesuvius then returned to Naples.
Colonel Fawdzi foamed with rage and demanded a full investigation of the high-seas piracy. The Italian customs service, accused by the Arabs of lending the Jews a cutter and uniforms, said it knew nothing about the matter. All cutter movement was clearly logged for anyone to see. The Arab crew followed Arab practice of never admitting failure and twelve different stories came from the twelve men. Other officials of the Italian government assumed that if there was any piracy, they certainly were not aware of