The Shield: a novel (30 page)

“
What is your name?”

“
Jacob Hirshson.”

“
Is the information on your ID card correct?” he showed the card to Jacob.

“
Yes.”

“
Who gave you this card?”

“
A clerk at the Palestinian transit camp in Brindisi.”

The questions went on for several hours. The interrogator was polite but relentless. He kept repeating the s
ame questions in different forms trying to catch Jacob in an inconsistency. Finally Jacob decided that he couldn’t stand on his feet anymore and instead of answering the next question asked the interrogator for permission to sit on the floor.

The response
came from the guard. The rifle butt hit Jacob in the stomach and he found himself on the floor gasping for breath.

“
Since you asked for it, you may stay there for a couple of minutes.” The interrogator went on with his questions.

Sometime later in the night the first interrogator was replaced by a new one and the questioning continued.

Jacob wasn’t sure what they wanted. He did exactly as he was instructed before they left Brindisi: answer all the questions truthfully, conceal nothing and don’t worry about giving the Germans new information. Everything he knew was known to them already.

When he was returned to his cell it was daylight and he had no idea how long he had spen
t in the interrogation room. He legs barely moved and he was so tired that he ignored the bowl of watery soup that was waiting for him on the floor, collapsed onto the thin mattress and was asleep within minutes.

Jacob woke up when the door to his cell opened with a clang.

“Get up you lazy Jew,” the guard yelled.

He led Jacob down the stairs and into the internal courtyard where a truck was waiting. His two colleagues from Vilna were already in the truck, which started as soon as Jacob climbed in. Twenty minutes later they arrived at the Kaunas railway station. The officer who rode next to the driver returned their possessions and IDs and told them to board the train waiting in the
station.

“
Don’t get off the train until you get to Vilna. If you do, we will bring you back here. The second time we won’t let you go so easy.”

Jacob screwed up his courage and asked: “Where is our friend Mordechai?”

The German smiled. “We released him yesterday and suggested that he wait for you, but he chose to take the cart and start on his way to Vilna. He will probably get there at about the same time as you.”

The train started not more than ten minutes after they boarded and slowly proceeded on the track to Vilna. The three relaxed in their seats. The other passengers looked at them with a mixture of respect and suspicion:
wasn’t everyday that you saw civilians being put on a train by an SS officer, never mind that one of them had a beard and was wearing a black fedora – obviously a Jew. The group was worried about Mordechai. It didn’t seem like him to leave them at the Fort. There was nothing they could do about him at the moment and discussing this in the presence of others was out of the question. Since they were left alone, the three went to sleep fairly soon and woke up only when the train stopped.

“
Where are we?” inquired Rabbi Litvin. “This doesn’t look like a station”.

They were in a fairly large clearing in the woods. Angry voices sounded from the front of the train, followed by a shot. Ten minutes later four men entered the car. They were dressed in remnants of uniforms and armed with rifles and a submachine gun.

“Papers,” demanded their leader in Lithuanian.

They perfunctorily looked at everybody’s papers and quickly zeroed in on the three Vilna Jews.

“What have we here,” the leader smiled after carefully examining their ID cards. “Jews from Palestine. Very interesting. Maybe you can be of some use to us. You are coming to our camp. Get up and go with Marek.” He pointed to a big smelly guy with a rifle. He was smiling wolfishly daring them to refuse. They obeyed and the partisan directed them, in Polish, out of the car and to a group of his comrades waiting under the trees at the fringe of the clearing. Another shot rang out from the car next to the one they just left.

“
This is what happens if somebody refuses our request,” Marek said. “Oleg is a nice guy but has no patience.”

***

The messages from Jacob’s group in Lithuania came in the first three weeks then stopped for a day. The day after that a message came in, but the code was wrong. The security people at the base decided to wait one more day - mistakes happen and the code sent was similar to the one used a week before. The next day they had a message, again with a wrong code.  Colonel Hirshson called Eichmann to find out what happened.

Eichmann denied knowledge of anything unusual having happened but promised to investigate and call back as soon as he had something.

“Colonel Eichmann, you will call with an update twice a day starting at six in the afternoon today. I hope, for your sake, that you find out where our agents are. And don’t try concealing the truth from us. We have ways of finding out what is going on. If you lie to me it will end badly for you and many others.”

Eichmann called before six. He sounded somewhat agitated.
“Colonel Rakhman, I just found out that something happened in Kaunas. Since I can’t get to the bottom of it from here, I am flying there in an hour. I will let you know tomorrow morning at the latest what I found.”

He called early the next morning. According to Eichmann the agents were on a train to Vilna
that was stopped by Lithuanian partisans, who abducted the group.

Hirshson was not sure whether or not Eichmann was lying
. The voice analyzer indicated high stress, but that could be the result of fear of the Caliph’s reprisal for the loss of any agents. After reporting to Gad Yaari, Hirshson went back to Jacob’s family. “We never leave a soldier behind enemy lines. I’m sure that Jacob and the others will be extricated.” He did not add “Whether they are alive or not.”

***

The next morning colonel Hirshson was again on the phone with Eichmann.

“
Colonel Rakhman, I have somewhat strange news. This is what I found out about your agents: Apparently the Lithuanian authorities in Kaunas got information that fake ID cards similar to the ones issued by you were used in the area. When a group of four people arrived at the ghetto and displayed their ID cards they were detained and transferred to one of our units for interrogation to make sure the cards were authentic. It took two days to verify their authenticity. Then your people were released and put on a train to Vilnius. It seems that the train was stopped by partisans and your people were taken off the train and abducted. We are still looking for them.”

Hirshson was quiet for a moment considering the information
. “Herr Eichmann, you may not know it, but the Caliph never abandons his citizens. I see two possibilities in this situation. The first is that your story is true. The second is that some overzealous official decided to make our agent and the Jews disappear and hopes to gain information from them. We are sending a team to Lithuania. You will arrange for their air transportation. If your story is true, we will know it as soon as our team arrives on the spot. Trust me on this: we have the means to know when people are lying to us. If a German is responsible, you still have time to return the missing people to us, unharmed, with only those directly responsible paying the price. This offer will expire by the end of the day today.

“
If this is indeed the doing of Lithuanians, I expect you to do all in your power to get our people back unharmed. We will not retaliate against you if our people are returned unharmed within two days. If they’re not, we will exterminate the guilty along with their families and neighbors. The Germans involved will be treated like the traitors they are. And you know what we do to traitors. If one of our people is harmed you will be held responsible. Just to remind you: the ratio is one hundred to one.”

“
Let me first update you on the general situation.” Amos Nir said. The cabinet meetings were somewhat more relaxed these days. The Prime Minister didn’t let anybody relax too much – the situation was fluid and there was much to do.

“
It is about two months since the Event, and I think we are doing well, all things considered. First the immigration situation: the Mufti and our agents in the ghettos did a great job for us. The Germans and their allies are shipping people at a rate we didn’t expect. The Mossad has to be congratulated on a well executed operation. As a result though, the repatriation facility in Brindisi is at capacity. We don’t have enough shipping to move people at the rate they are arriving, so we need to expand the facility. The difficulty is that the complex already resembles a sprawling city, and if we enlarge it even more, we will have perimeter control problems. As it is the Italians are unhappy and we have a full infantry battalion, four anti-aircraft batteries and an Air Force Kfir wing tied up there. Any ideas?”

“
We have a landing strip in the center of the Brindisi camp,” said the Transportation Minister. “Why not use some of our passenger jets to pick up immigrants? They are ready to go and if we use enough of them it will relieve the pressure. It is also a good idea to exercise some of the planes and pilots.”

“
Isn’t it dangerous?” the Infrastructure Minister asked
.
“
We will be flying in airspace controlled by the Germans. Even if they don’t harm the planes they may see them, which isn’t a good idea.”

“
Actually it is not a bad idea,” the Defense Minister said. “We ignored the airlift option, but that may have been a mistake. If the passenger planes are accompanied by fighter jets and if we use our radar carefully we can avoid detection or worse. The advantage is clear: we will finish moving our people home in less than eight months. I think it is worth the risk.”

“
I agree,” Amos said, closing the discussion of the subject.

“
The next point: the Afrika Corps is doing much better fighting the British than in our timeline. They got an infusion of two Waffen SS divisions, both of them Muslim, from Bosnia. Not the best fighters but much better than what they had in our history and more ferocious than the Italians
.
They also have more supplies. The presence of our passenger transports causes some confusion. The Brits are hesitant to shoot at German shipping whether or not they’re displaying our flag. As a result, more are getting through and Rommel is not suffering from the same shortages as in our history. There is a real danger that he will be in a position to attack Cairo much earlier than we expected. If the German attack happens before March of next year, Cairo is likely to fall. The Brits are not ready and don’t have enough forces to stop him.”

“
I suggest that we wait and see,” Nitzan Liebler responded. “The first two batches of British trainees left our new armor school in the Sinai a week ago and are already having an effect on their troops’ performance. The graduates are also training others in a facility they set up east of Alexandria. In addition, if we’re done with the Brindisi facility by February 1942 as we expect, the confusion over shipping will end and the Brits can start sinking more
German and Italian transports.”

“
That sounds reasonable. We’ll table that for the moment and go on to the next item. The Russian front worries me a bit. Our satellite images show two SS divisions and several regular infantry battalions moving east from Poland. All these troops had been busy exterminating our families in the original history but are now free to attack the Soviets. There is another complication: the German railway system is not clogged with transports of Jews to camps in Eastern Europe. This has greatly improved the supply situation of their army in the east. In our history Moscow and Leningrad barely survived. What if one of them falls now?”

“
Maybe we have no choice but to intervene directly,” the Finance Minister said.

“
That’s not so simple,” responded the Defense Minister. “The fighting is far away and we don’t have airfields in the area. This makes effective air support impossible. I don’t think we should endanger our troops.”

“
I had something different in mind,” the Finance Minister smiled. “Wars aren’t won at the front. The actual fighting is only a manifestation of industrial and economic power. What if we disrupt the Germans’ source of oil? The refineries they’re using in Ploesti, Romania, are easily within our range. We don’t have to destroy them – that may cripple the Germans too much - just damage them enough to slow them down. If that isn’t enough, we could also damage their synthetic oil production facilities in the Ruhr. As an alternative we could attack the synthetic fuel plant in Leuna, Saxony-Anhalt.”

“
That is an idea,” the Prime Minister paused, “but I see a problem. If we do the damage too late, it will not help the Russians; if we do it too early, the Germans may figure out who did it and kill some of our people still in Europe.”

“
I have an idea,” the Transport Minister looked very proud of his insight. “What if we use propeller-driven bombers dropping regular iron bombs, with a laser guided one mixed in here and there. That way they are not likely to suspect us. We can convert a couple of our old Stratocruisers for the job. After all, they were originally developed as the B-50 bomber by the U.S. in 1947. If we can disguise them as British, the only danger will be losing them to anti-aircraft fire or malfunctions.”