The Haj - Leon Uris [34]
As the rebels grew bolder a nervous eye was cast on the Valley of Ayalon and the road to Jerusalem. Haj Ibrahim had refused to contribute to the strike fund or to supply men. The expected happened.
Ghassan, the sheik of one of the smaller clans in Tabah, was kidnapped as he left the home of relatives in Ramle. Ghassan quickly broke under torture and agreed to cooperate to set up a trap for Haj Ibrahim’s personal guard.
The bait was a Swedish blonde, the girlfriend of one of Kaukji’s officers. She was of a breed of international fortune hunters who eventually lit on the gold coast around Beirut. Ghassan’s story would be that he had discovered the girl and several of her girlfriends who had become stranded on the way to Cairo and were engaging in prostitution to work their passage.
Six men, half of Haj Ibrahim’s guards, swallowed Ghassan’s wild description of a night of splendor he had spent with them. At Ghassan’s arrangement they deserted their posts in the middle of the night and slipped their way down to Ramle.
A buxom young blonde did indeed appear at the door of the designated house and bid them enter. They were discovered the next day in the Tabah village square with their throats slashed and their penises amputated and shoved into their mouths. The balance of Haj Ibrahim’s militia deserted over the next few days, fleeing back to their own villages.
The next week the muktar of one of Tabah’s neighboring villages was found decapitated in his fields. The defense of Tabah fell into the hands of a badly frightened and inept group of peasants. Although Ibrahim knew he was on the Mufti’s death list, he refused to cross the highway to seek help from the Haganah in Shemesh Kibbutz or from his friend Gideon Asch. Only Haj Ibrahim’s personal courage and all-night vigils kept the villagers from mass flight.
The next week was hellish for Tabah. Mufti raiders hid safely during the day deep in the caves of the Bab el Wad a half dozen miles up the highway. Under cover of night they came out and finessed their way around the Tegart fort at Latrun to the edges of Tabah’s fields. The Mufti’s Mojahedeen stalked their prey, picking off stray guards and howling terrifying obscenities. When villagers fled their posts they left their own fields and livestock naked for looting.
By the time a British patrol could be dispatched from Latrun, the raiders had slipped back into the wilds of the Judean hills. It was a land so fiercely rugged it had perplexed the legions of ancient Rome for years in trying to flush out Hebrew rebels. The deep ravines, impassable hills, and buried caves had given centuries of protection to hero warriors, smugglers, and thieves alike.
The British installed a token of permanent protection for Tabah, with roadblocks and frequent patrols, but they were thinly manned and could be easily bypassed. The British garrison had simply been stretched beyond effectiveness. The inevitable big raid to stampede Tabah could not be long in coming.
Gideon Asch had been assigned as the Haganah liaison with the British. His contact was Colonel Wilfred Foote, an old Middle East hand and close aide to the commanding general. Fink’s, a zany little eight-table affair of a restaurant in downtown Jewish West Jerusalem, was the favorite place for British officers and a natural listening post for the Haganah. Fink’s was one of those open secrets, a rendezvous and mart for exchanging information. David Rothschild, the proprietor, who often complained, tongue in cheek, that he was no relative of another family of the same name, nodded to Gideon Asch as he entered.
Gideon made his way up a squeaking stairs to a private room where Colonel Foote was waiting.
Rothschild delivered a tray of schnitzels and beer and closed the door behind him as he left.
The main concern today was the critical situation in Tabah. Gideon had