The Prisoner of Acre

CHAPTER ONE

A haze of cigar smoke swirled around the dark wood-panelled walls like a living thing. The two men often met here, the elite members’ club an intimate cocoon from the outside world. Illumination came from the dim glow of antique lamps on each linen-draped table. Heavy drapes of dark green velvet blocked the tall windows, keeping out the bright Jerusalem sunlight. They also muffled the indistinct murmur of conversation.

The man contributing most to the smoke leaned back in his leather chair, puffing contentedly on a fine Cuban cigar. He was tall and broad-shouldered although the last few years of fine living had layered his frame with a generous padding of fat. He moved with a deceptive grace, a lightness that belied his sheer mass. People said he gave the impression of a bear dancing on its hind legs. Although he didn’t like that analogy.

Across from him sat a thin unassuming figure though his piercing slate-gray eyes betrayed a formidable intellect. The smoker knew there was power coiled beneath the man’s expensive black suit and bland façade.

The thin man was the genius behind the organization. He could have passed for a teacher or an accountant. An average man in his forties with a receding hairline. Only his lined face spoke of a hard early life. In his youth, he’d survived through brute force and ruthlessness. Now he possessed the easy confidence of a man accustomed to comfort and wealth. The unassuming man had reinvented both himself and the organization he’d created.

Within these shrouded walls, the true power brokers of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv rubbed shoulders, subtly shaping affairs through whispers in trusted ears. The cigar smoker drew luxuriant smoke into his mouth, savouring his proximity to the hidden levers moving the world outside. And their ignorance.

The thin man swirled the brandy in his glass. “Now the other matter.” He spoke softly, without obvious affectation. Yet when he unleashed the force of his personality, he could make his voice hit men like a crashing wave.

The smoker said, “You’ve been teasing me.”

The thin man smiled.

“You have a date?”

The other man glanced around although no one could hear, let alone understand.

“A week on Saturday,” the thin man said. His fingers on one hand splayed out. Five days. Then he repeated it, followed by two. In twelve days. After such a long wait, it was finally happening.

“We’ll be ready.” Cigar-man said, his rumbling voice muffled by the plush furnishings. “Everything is in place for the next phase.”

“What about our friend?” His slate eyes glinted as he swirled the brandy again.

The smoker huffed a quiet laugh. “Ever the doubter. Don’t worry, he’ll play his part. We have ample leverage.” Cigars and rich food were the smoker’s obvious vices. He collected secrets and weaknesses, exploiting them meticulously to support the organization.

“And the man in Tel Aviv?” the thin man said through the curling blue smoke.

The cigar smoker nodded. “He’s prepared. A true zealot. Fanatically and financially loyal. He’s got a big future with us, I think.”

The thin man nodded, seemingly satisfied. He swirled the brandy some more, contemplating it. “The Armistice is imminent. A new dawn is breaking across this land. The time has come for our order to emerge from the shadows.”

“You sound like a politician!” The cigar smoker chuckled deep in his chest. “So, the war is over?”

“The war will never be over, my friend.”

It was undoubtedly the truth and they could profit from it. War and the greed of men. Thousands of years of history. Things had never and would never change.

The smoker flicked ash into the crystal tray and raised his glass.

The thin man stopped swirling his brandy. “To new beginnings.”

“Let the games commence,” the smoker answered as their glasses rang together. “Let the games commence.”

CHAPTER TWO

It was unclear which type of AWOL Sergeant Alfred Duffy was, and I’d never known a case like it.

Most AWOL soldiers disappear for a few extra days without permission. Dealing with a personal matter, they need more time than permitted. Occasionally, that personal issue leads to problems such as drunkenness. Their priorities change and they need to be reminded by the army of their duty.

That’s the first type.

The second type is the deserter. Officially, the term only applies in time of war, or when warned to go on operations. Otherwise, it’s recorded as Long-term AWOL. But it’s effectively the same thing. The individual no longer wants to serve and deliberately walks away.

Duffy had been a Buff—the nickname for men in the Royal East Kent Regiment. He’d been temporarily assigned to Provost Company 225 based in Cyprus. Armed with a two-day pass, he walked out of Dhekelia Garrison without a word of where he was going.

He’d been gone for a week and not been traced. Opinion was that he was hiding out somewhere in Cyprus. But he wasn’t. A phone call to the provost marshal’s office told us otherwise. Duffy had made his way to Israel and then walked into Acre Prison where he’d handed himself in.

Which was why I was involved. Ordinarily, an SIB officer wouldn’t be engaged in a straightforward arrest. But this was far from straightforward.

The British mandate for Palestine ended on the fifteenth of May 1948. We’d left the newly formed state of Israel surrounded by invading Arab nations. On the whole, the Jews hated us, and the Arabs despised their once allies. We’d walked away and left the country at war. Thousands had died. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs had been displaced.

Since then, I’d been back to Israel on a sanctioned mission. It didn’t mean they liked me, but I had status and approval.

And that was why I was involved. A simple job: travel to Acre and return with Duffy.

Three of us arrived in Haifa on Sunday the third of April 1949 and were met by the police. We were plain-clothed and allegedly unarmed. As usual, I carried a Beretta hidden in an ankle holster.

Because of the tensions, we would only identify ourselves as military if absolutely necessary. Which suited me. Turning up in a British Military Police Land Rover would have made us a target without a doubt.

We were given an old Austin 6 and told to go directly to Acre. We were not to deviate. Our boat home was in the evening, and we were told to be on it. Come hell or high water.

My colleagues were Roscoe and King. They were young but had also served in Mandatory Palestine so knew what to expect. And they both knew Duffy.

We walked to the car-pound and found the Austin sitting in the sun. Black leather seats were tacky with the heat. It smelled of horses, which I figured came from the hair in the seat padding. We wound the windows down to let out the hot thick air.

King drove. Roscoe sat behind me in the back.

The car rode hard, like it had no suspension. And probably didn’t.

“The buggers have fixed it,” King said, referring to the car’s handling.

“Better than walking,” I said.

“And the alignment’s off.”

“Just drive carefully.”

We went through the first checkpoint on the edge of the town and my colleagues tensed. But it was fine. One glance at our official papers and we were on our way again. The IDF soldiers didn’t even search the car.

“Things are getting better,” I said because last time I’d been here, I’d been stopped and searched frequently. “We’ll be fine.”

We went north, the road shimmering in the late morning sun. The air blew fresh off the coast and the car’s interior cooled. My skin stopped sticking to the leather.

We thumped over potholes, and metal ground against metal. King grunted as he fought the steering, but there was otherwise no talking once we were motoring. We’d done all the talking on the boat.

I’d asked them about Duffy. Neither knew him well.

“Keeps himself to himself,” Roscoe said.

King shrugged. “He’s all right. Never a problem.”

“Anything personal?” I probed.

“I found out he’s a Fulham supporter,” Roscoe said. “Not a heavy drinker. Rubbish at cards and darts.”

They provided some other useless information before I asked the burning question.

“Why did he go AWOL?”

They had no idea.

“Did he tell anyone he was going to Israel?”

“No,” King said. It’s the answer I expected because the investigation to date had assumed he hadn’t left the island.

Roscoe said, “Do you think he meant to join an Arab militia?”

There had been over eighty deserters in the final months of British rule. Most were pro-Arab and had joined the Arab Legion, the Transjordanian Army, or the Arab Liberation Army. A few foolhardy men had joined smaller, more radical militia such as the Army of the Holy War.

No one had left to join any of these groups for almost a year.

“Perhaps none of them wanted him,” chuckled King. “Too boring for them.”

“That would explain why he handed himself in,” Roscoe added.

I guessed it would. The ALA were in the north. If Duffy had hoped to join them but had been rejected, then it would make sense. He’d have had nowhere to go, so he’d handed himself in. Ordinarily he might have just returned to base, but he’d been in an enemy country. Finding his way back to Cyprus would have been problematic. The Israeli Army were patrolling ports and any stranger without papers would be treated with suspicion. Maybe even shot.

Handing himself into authorities was probably his safest option.

I said, “After Palestine, was he assigned or did he volunteer for the provost?”

King swivelled and stared at me. “Damn. It’s relevant isn’t it?”

I nodded.

Roscoe said, “Did he volunteer?”

King said, “No one volunteers in the army.”

“He volunteered,” I said. “He wanted to be in Cyprus. Which means, he probably wanted to be close to Israel.”

“Maybe he planned this way back then,” said King.

Roscoe whistled. “Someone should have asked.”

“I did,” I said.

“Does it matter?”

“Not now,” I said. “Now he’s in custody. It’ll be interesting to find out why he did it.”

“And what went wrong,” King added.

The six miles along the coast followed the railroad for most of the way, and I found myself wondering if thumping along the rail tracks would have been any less uncomfortable.

There wasn’t much traffic, maybe more than last time I’d been here. There were fewer armoured vehicles and only occasional private cars. Taxis and buses on the other hand, were doing a good trade and trucks were coming out of Haifa laden with food and goods. Despite the war, Israel was thriving, it seemed.

Finally, we crossed the rail tracks and followed the curve of the land to the ancient city of Acre.

The old city of Jerusalem is majestic and astonishing. However, my first reaction to Acre, through the haze of hot air, was one of awe. A giant walled city dating back to the Ottoman Empire, holding a violent sea at bay. White foam waves crashed up the sides of worn stone walls. They’d withstood the battering for thousands of years. And within those embattlements I could see towers and more fortified structures.

King stared with his mouth open.

His attitude changed as quickly as a lightning bolt. There was a checkpoint at the city gate and these soldiers looked anxious.

Guns pointed at our heads, and we were told to get out. I’d warned the men to stay calm, and they tried to look passive as we were frisked.

“Don’t look them in the eye,” I’d said. “And let me do any talking.”

I showed our papers and waited as the junior IDF men debated their veracity. They made us wait. A queue of trucks formed behind us, and a horn blared.

One of the soldiers stormed off to deal with the offending driver while another soldier told us to hurry up and get back in the car.

“Jesus!” Roscoe said, panting from the excitement.

“They’re just nervous,” I said.

Acre was only ten miles from the official border with Lebanon. Since the war, the front had moved much closer and had totally subsumed the Jewish settlement of Hahariya which was just a few miles north of us. The Arabs had been pushed back but Acre was still within ALA bombing range and had seen heavy fighting during the war. The soldiers had every right to be nervous.

King fired up the engine once more and we rolled away and toward one of the city gates.

From far off, we’d seen a castle within the castle—a citadel. It had been the home of the Crusaders for a hundred years as their bridgehead to recapture Jerusalem. Despite its Ottoman heritage and Jewish control, I could imagine Richard the Lionheart on the ramparts, watching us approach. He’d undoubtedly disapprove of the way we’d scuttled away from the country in ‘48.

We didn’t go into the citadel itself but followed a sign to an adjacent entrance.

King drove up to the gates where a police officer flagged us to a halt. I got my first glimpse of Acre Prison, box-like with newer walls than the fortress behind it.

The cursory check of our papers told me he’d been briefed about our impending arrival, but there was something else in his eyes. He wasn’t uneasy like the IDF checkpoint guards. This policeman looked embarrassed, I thought.

The gates were opened, and we drove under an arch into a broad courtyard. I saw men hurrying. We got out, and I walked into a room marked Head Officer. Roscoe and King shuffled their feet, and I asked them to wait outside.

Behind a desk, a small man with round spectacles and an awkward smile, looked up. Above his head on the wall was the Israeli flag and a photograph of David Ben-Gurion. The name on the desk read: Captain A Gruner.

“Ah. Captain Carter,” he said, offering me a bony hand to shake.

“Here to collect Sergeant Duffy,” I said unnecessarily.

“Please sit,” said Gruner, and I took the chair opposite his desk.

“Were you here before?” he asked, referring to the British rule.

“In Mandatory Palestine for a while.”

“And here, at Acre?” The British Army had run the prison back then.

“No,” I said, “Never in Acre. Not even as a tourist.”

He gave me his awkward smile again. Maybe it was sympathy. “It’s not the army here anymore. The police run the prison now,” he said. I could see that. My guess was that the army were too busy fighting the Arabs. There was no prison service in Israel yet per se. Before the new state, the Jewish Agency had a military force, the Haganah. But they had no need for prison guards since the prisons were run by the British. On the other hand, Jewish policemen worked within the British forces which included assisting with the prisons. So it made sense that the police were running Acre Prison.

I suspected the best of the police were being deployed elsewhere in the key cities of Jerusalem, Haifa, and Tel Aviv. Gruner and his team were probably the underperformers, the men who would have been let go if there hadn’t been a shortage of expertise.

Gruner said, “Numbers of prisoners here halved once you left. Of course, the British had incarcerated our patriots along with the criminals.”

He chuckled.

Outside, the shuffling sounds grew louder. I turned expecting to berate my men. However, a junior Israeli policeman was standing in the office doorway, breathless and worried.

Gruner glared then after a pause said, “Any news?”

I saw the young man make hand gestures that I couldn’t interpret.

“One minute, please Captain,” Gruner said, irritated. He got up and left the room. I could hear whispers before Gruner barked in Hebrew.

He returned with a red face. Moisture prickled on his upper lip.

“What is it?” I asked, standing.

Gruner breathed and cleared his throat. “We just went to get him—your man. And well, you see—”

“Spit it out!” I said, starting to lose patience.

“He’s gone. Your Sergeant Duffy is missing.”