Exodus - Leon Uris [96]
One man slept soundly. Ari Ben Canaan slept like a well-fed baby without a care in the world.
A ray of light fell over Mark Parker’s face. He opened his eyes and yawned. He had dropped off by the window with his feet propped on the sill. He was stiff and his mouth tasted foul from cigarettes and scotch. He glanced around and saw Kitty in a deep and quiet slumber on the bed. He pulled the window shade down and tiptoed from the room and shaved and spent several moments under an icy shower and he felt better. He dressed and returned to Kitty’s room and sat gently on the edge of her bed and stroked her hair softly. She stirred and opened her eyes slowly. She smiled when she saw Mark and stretched and purred. Then her expression changed to one of fear.
At twenty minutes to nine, Ari Ben Canaan, dressed as Captain Caleb Moore, entered the lead jeep in the convoy of twelve trucks of the 23rd Transportation Company. Each truck had a Palmachnik dressed like a British soldier as driver. They sped out of their camp and twenty minutes later halted before the administration building at Caraolos, outside the barbed-wire compounds.
Ari entered the administration building and knocked on the door of the commanding officer, whose acquaintance he had carefully made during the past three weeks.
“Good morning, sir,” Ari said.
“Good morning, Captain Moore. What brings you up here?”
“We received a special dispatch from headquarters, sir. It seems that they are getting the Larnaca camp ready faster than they expected. They want me to transfer some children today.” Ari lay the forged papers on the officer’s desk.
The CO thumbed through the sheets. “This isn’t on the schedule of transfers,” he said. “We didn’t expect to start moving the children for three days.”
“That’s the Army for you, sir,” Ari said.
The CO bit his lip and meditated and stared at Ari and looked through the transfer papers again. He reached for the phone. “Hello. Potter here. Captain Moore has orders to move three hundred children out of Compound 50. Dispatch a detail to help get them moved.”
The CO picked up his pen and initialed the papers. He signed half a dozen other sheets authorizing entrance into the compound and removal of the children. “Move them along, will you, Moore? We have another load to be transferred in an hour and the roads could be clogged.”
“Yes sir.”
“Oh, uh ... Moore. Many thanks, old man, for the whisky you sent up to the club.”
“My pleasure, sir.”
Ari gathered up the papers from the CO’s desk. The CO sighed. “Jews come and Jews go,” he said.
“Yes sir,” Ari said. “They come ... and they go.”
The breakfast table was set in front of the window in Mark’s room. He and Kitty nibbled at their food. Mark’s ash tray brimmed over. “What time is it now?” Kitty asked for the fifteenth time.
“Almost nine-thirty.”
“What would be happening?”
“If they’re running on schedule they’re loading the children aboard the trucks right now. Look,” Mark said, pointing out to sea. The salvage trawler Aphrodite/ Exodus turned and moved slowly toward the harbor entrance.
“Good Lord,” Kitty said, “is that the Exodus?”
“That’s her.”
“My God, Mark. It looks like it’s ready to fall apart.”
“It is.”
“But how on earth are they going to get three hundred children on her?”
Mark lit another cigarette. He wanted to pace the room but he did not wish to show Kitty how frightened he was.
Nine-thirty.
Nine-forty.
The Exodus passed between the lighthouse and the castle, through the narrow opening of the two arms of the sea wall, and into the Kyrenia harbor.
Nine-fifty.
“Mark, please sit down. You’re making me nervous.”
“We should be getting a call from Mandria soon. Any minute now ... any minute.”
Ten o’clock.
Five past ten.
Six past ten.
Seven past ten.
“Dammit! Where is that coffee I ordered? Kitty, phone from your room, will you. Tell them to get that coffee up here.”
A quarter past ten. The fresh pot of coffee arrived.
Seventeen past ten. Mark’s jitters abated. He knew that if he did not