Exodus - Leon Uris [58]
At night Zev would take them all to the playground and build a bonfire, and he and some of the Palmachniks would spin stories and tell the children how wonderful it would be for them in Palestine and how they would never live behind barbed wire again.
There was a hitch in Operation Gideon, but it developed among Ari’s closest lieutenants: David, Zev, and Joab.
Although David was a sensitive boy and a scholar he feared no man when aroused. He was aroused now. The first expedition into the British depot had gone so well that he, Zev, and Joab felt it was sacrilegious to leave as much as a shoestring in it. He wanted to run 23rd Transportation Company trucks into the depot around the clock and take anything not nailed down. Zev envisioned even taking cannons. They had gone so long on so little that this windfall was too great a temptation.
Ari argued that greed could ruin the whole plan. The British were sleeping but not dead. Twenty-third Transportation Company trucks should appear from time to time for the sake of naturalness, but to attempt to drain the depot would be to hang them all.
None the less he could not hold them down. Their schemes began to sound wilder and wilder. Joab had got so cocky that he even went so far as to invite some British officers to the 23rd Transportation Company for lunch. Ari’s patience ran out and he had to threaten to send them all back to Palestine in order to get them into line.
In a little over two weeks after the beginning of Operation Gideon everything was ready to go. The final phases of the plan—Mark Parker’s story plus getting the three hundred children to Kyrenia—awaited word from the British themselves. The final move would be made when the British opened the new refugee camps on the Larnaca road and began transferring inmates from Caraolos.
Chapter Nineteen
CALDWELL, SUTHERLAND’S AIDE, went into the office of Major Allan Alistair, who was the Intelligence Chief on Cyprus. Alistair, a soft-spoken and shy-appearing man in his forties, gathered a batch of papers from his desk and followed Caldwell down the hall to Sutherland’s office.
The brigadier asked Caldwell and Alistair to be seated and nodded to the intelligence man to begin. Alistair scratched the end of his nose and looked over his papers. “There has been a tremendous step-up of Jewish activity at Caraolos in the children’s compound,” he said in a half whisper. “We analyze it as a possible riot or breakout.”
Sutherland drummed his fingers on the desk top impatiently. Alistair always made him nervous with his quiet, hush-hush ways and now he droned on through several more pages of information.
“Dear Major Alistair,” Sutherland said when he had finished, “you have been reading to me for fifteen minutes and the theme of your story is that you suspect that some dire plot is being hatched by the Jews. During the past two weeks you have attempted to plant three men inside the children’s compound and five men elsewhere inside Caraolos. Each one of your master spies has been detected within an hour and thrown out by the Jews. You have read to me two pages of messages which you have intercepted and which you cannot decode and you allege they are being sent from a transmitter you cannot locate.”
Alistair and Caldwell glanced at each other quickly as if to say, “The old man is going to be difficult again.”
“Begging the brigadier’s pardon,” Alistair said, leaning forward, “much of our information is always speculative. However, there has been concrete data handed down which has not been acted upon. We know positively that Caraolos is riddled with Palestinian Palmach people who are giving military training on the playground. We also know positively that the Palestinians smuggle their people into Cyprus at a place near the ruins of Salamis. We have every reason to suspect that the Greek chap, Mandria, is working with them.”
“Blast it! I know all that,” Sutherland said. “You men forget