Exodus - Leon Uris [49]
Soon places like La Ciotat were bulging. The Mossad answered with illegal immigration. Every seaport of Europe was covered by Mossad agents who used the money sent them by American Jews to purchase and refit boats to run the British blockade into Palestine. The British not only used their navy but their embassies and consulates as counter-spying centers against the Mossad.
Leaky little boats of the Mossad Aliyah Bet, overloaded with desperate people, set out for Palestine, only to be caught by the British as soon as they entered the three-mile zone. The refugees would be interned in yet another camp, this one in Atlit in Palestine.
After Karen learned her father was alive she, too, became swept up in the desire to get to Palestine. It seemed natural to her that her father would come to Palestine also.
Although she was only fifteen she was drawn into the Palmach group, whose members held nightly campfires and told wonderful stories of the Land of Milk and Honey and sang wonderful oriental songs right out of the Bible. They joked and spun tall yarns all night long and they would call, “Dance, Karen, dance!”
She was made a section chief to take care of a hundred children and prepare them for the moment a Mossad boat would take them to run the blockade into Palestine.
The British quota for Palestine was only fifteen hundred a month, and they always took old people or those too young to fight. Men grew beards and grayed their hair to look old, but such ruses usually didn’t work.
In April of 1946, nine months after Karen had left Denmark, Galil gave her the great news one day. “An Aliyah Bet ship is coming in in a few days and you and your section are going on it.”
Karen’s heart nearly tore through her dress.
“What is the name of it?”
“The Star of David,” Galil answered.
Chapter Sixteen
BRITISH CID HAD A RUNNING acquaintance with the Aegean tramp steamer, Karpathos. They knew the instant the Karpathos was purchased in Salonika by the Mossad Aliyah Bet. They followed the movements of the eight-hundred-ton, forty-five-year-old tramp to Piraeus, the port of Athens where an American Aliyah Bet crew boarded her and sailed her to Genoa, Italy. They observed as the Karpathos was refitted into an immigrant runner and they knew the exact instant she left and sailed toward the Gulf of Lions.
The entire southern coast of France was alive with CID men. A twenty-four-hour watch was thrown around La Ciotat for signs of a large-scale movement. A dozen major and minor French officials were bribed. Pressure came from Whitehall to Paris to prevent the Karpathos from getting inside French territorial waters. But British pressure and bribes had no effect. French co-operation with Aliyah Bet remained solid. The Karpathos moved inside the three-mile zone.
The next stage of the game was set. A half-dozen trial runs were made from La Ciotat to trick and divert the British. Trucks were donated by the French teamsters and driven by French drivers. When the British were thoroughly confused, the real break was made. Sixteen hundred refugees, Karen’s section included, were sped out from La Ciotat to a secret rendezvous point along the coast. The entire area was blocked off from outside traffic by the French Army. The trucks unloaded the refugees on a quiet beach and they were transferred by rubber boats to the ancient Karpathos, which waited offshore.
The line of rubber boats moved back and forth all night. The strong hands of the American crew lifted the anxious escapees aboard. Palmach teams on board quickly moved each boatload to a predesignated section. A knapsack, a bottle of water, and an obsession to leave Europe was all the refugees had.
Karen’s children, the youngest, were boarded first and given a special position in the hold. They were placed below deck near the ladder which ran to the deck. She worked quickly to calm them down. Fortunately most of them were too numbed with excitement and exhaustion and