Chapter 10 Candelabra in Bogota - 1

Reber held the dagger in his hand and pressed his thumb firmly to ensure that the weapon was aimed at the target.He jumped from a distance of nearly two meters, put his right foot against the opponent's popliteal socket, and hit his left hand at eye level, while the other hand holding the weapon slammed down on the opponent from top to bottom at the same time.When he felt the blade stabbing the guard reach his upper abdomen, his wrist made an arc.This is called throat slaughter.He completed a series of movements cleanly and with unimaginable speed. Then he took two steps back, letting his arms hang by his sides.He had beheaded the dummy.

"Not bad," Dolph Lazarus said in his hoarse voice. "Not too bad. Provided that the sentinel must be deaf and drunk. If you add that he is sleeping soundly, even better. All these conditions put together, you have a chance, when his shouting His throat was slit before all the British troops in a radius of 400 kilometers were alarmed. I'm talking about one chance, and there will never be a second chance." That day he was sporting a short moustache, and when he smiled, his white broad teeth gleamed under the moustache.The beard seemed to have grown overnight, and he didn't have it the day before.Dolph Lazarus is nearly fifty years old, weighs eighty-five kilograms, but is only 1.70 meters tall.He was born in Petah Tikva ("Gate of Hope"), the first Jewish colony in Palestine, shortly before the turn of the century.The colony was established on the banks of the Yarkon River by Jewish intellectuals fleeing persecution in Russia.His parents, members of the Zionist group "Friends of Zion," arrived here in 1882 wearing Russian shirts and boots.When Dove is not wearing makeup, his complexion is extremely dull, and his hair is yellow and red.His stocky figure, his friendly smile, and his delightfully short-sighted gaze behind rimless spectacles made for an exterior that evoked a great deal of delusion.In fact, he was a man who believed in violence and nothing else, and his whole life was governed by an ominous desire for exclusiveness.Joel Bernisch believes that Dolph Lazarus lived for a time in Ireland and fought in Collins' IRA, spent a few years in the United States, traveled to South America, and even traveled to the Far East.According to Bernice, the origin of several episodes of Reb Klimrod's life can be traced back to the various connections Lazarus made in New York and Chicago between 1925 and 1930.

The direction of Lazarus' life changed after he met David Ben-Gurion for the second time in 1933.He saw Ben-Gurion for the first time in Jaffa in 1906, when the future leader of the Zionist movement had just arrived from Poland and was himself a mere child.The two met in France in 1933, when Ben-Gurion was touring Europe to campaign in the heartland of European Jewry.Lazarus, whom Ben-Gurion called a "walking time bomb," finally found his place and began working for worthy causes.Lazarus idolizes Ben-Gurion. Now, he said to Joel Banich: "It's your turn. Do as well as you can. Put the dummy's head back in its place. Remember, this is the man whose throat you're going to slit. "

According to Barazini's request, Lazarus was personally responsible for these new immigrants from Austria.His main mission within Irgon is to train newcomers as shadow warriors.Irgon as a non-terrorist movement began in 1937; by the autumn of 1945, its leader was a man born in Brest-Litovsk who came to Palestine in 1942 A man named Menassim Wolfovich Begin. "Pathetic," said Lazarus, "unbelievably pathetic. Your only hope is that the English sentinel has a great sense of humour. In that case a fit of laughter would surely have given it away." His life." He stood up, walked like a shadow, and stood beside the dummy. "Try me as a target, Joel. You figure out a way to slit my throat. You can do it anytime. Take your shoes off. You've got to kill me for real."

Bai Nishi took off his shoes and hesitated for a while.The dagger in his hand was as sharp as a razor, with a blade twenty-four centimeters long. "I'll give you a minute to kill me," Lazarus said, turning his back on Benish and facing the whitewashed walls of a house on a narrow road between Jerusalem's Jewish and Armenian quarters. Down the street, near the Tower of David.Joel glanced at Reb, who nodded. Bai Nishi jumped up with a stride... ... In just three or four seconds, the dagger had been turned upside down and pointed on his own neck, rubbing the skin under his throat very lightly, and he felt a sharp pain in his left arm and shoulder.

silence. "Can I try?" Klimrod asked. Their eyes met.Bernie remembered, and kept silent.Doda Lazarus smiled and said: "No." On September 28, 1945, the two young men from Mauthausen took part in real action for the first time.They learned many things, including the manufacture of nitroglycerin, that is, drop by drop of glycerin-without shaking the hands-into equal parts of nitric acid and sulfuric acid (concentration above seventy Baume); from the walls of cowsheds and stables On, and sometimes even from, burials, nitrate earth was dug up to make traditional black gunpowder.They also learned to handle military explosives, such as trinitrotoluene (TNT), C-4 explosives, etc., which were usually seized during commando raids on British military garrisons.

From the outset, Joel Bernisch showed himself to be a masterful formulator of dynamite, and his specialty undoubtedly lay in the preparation of an incendiary charge, prepared by adding to three parts potassium chlorate an equal part of rosin and 1 part powdered sugar.This last ingredient excited him and reminded him of the cookbook. This is the initial situation.When the time came for the real action, he handed it over to Reb Klimrod.Reber's absolute fearlessness in any situation was evident from the moment he arrived.Every team trained by Dov Lazarus, whether for Irgun or for Stern, never lacked courage, and sometimes it was simply rampage.Reber was different.It's not just that he's indifferent to danger.Many of Begin's commandos were concentration camp survivors, often the only members of their respective families who survived.They accept death as home, and sometimes this kind of fighting is the only way to keep them from insanity, because they learn why they should live.In that sense, Reber is just like them.But there was something else: he never took part in discussions about establishing a Jewish state.In this he was like Dolph Lazarus.For Lazarus, politics is an abstraction, and he lives to act.Things were different in Reber's case, of course, but from the start there was a rivalry and synergy between the two, which may seem surprising, but it is true.

The mission on September 28, 1945, was to ambush a small British convoy on the road twelve kilometers northeast of Ashkelon.Fifteen men took part in the operation, commanded by a man Bernis knew only as Iliajo.The order called for the destruction of the enemy's equipment to be the first priority, followed by the destruction of the British soldiers, and the immediate withdrawal at the first signal.This is essentially a harassment operation, according to Begin, the purpose is to make the British feel that they are "sitting on the scorpion's nest". Five trucks arrived, led by a jeep.As planned, Iliajo's machine gun fired first, strafing the right side of the convoy.The chlorate molotov cocktails that were supposed to blow up the jeep just bounced on the hood, to no avail.It was nothing more than filling an empty whiskey bottle with chlorate, powdered sugar, and rosin, sealing it with a round piece of felt, and finally adding a thin glass vial of sulfuric acid.Before throwing this kind of Molotov cocktail, the vial must be broken to allow the sulfuric acid to seep into the bottle through the felt.And, best of all, don't waste time at all.

Joel saw Leiber standing up about ten meters to his right.Joel never saw him busy, and Leiber's actions were all completed in a state of indifference that seemed nothing had happened.I saw him take four steps and arrived at the side of the road.He jumped over the low sloping ridge and walked straight towards the front of the convoy facing the jeep.At this time the machine gun was still firing, and the ballistic must have passed very close to him.In his big left hand he held the necks of four or five Molotov cocktails, like a waitress at the Grinzinger Garden Hotel offering new wine to guests.When he was within a few meters of the Jeep, he smashed a small bottle of sulfuric acid, counted patiently to three, and threw a Molotov cocktail at the grill between the Jeep's two headlights.The jeep caught fire in no time.Reber was out of the way.He followed suit with the first truck, blowing it up in the same manner.And then in turn, all the while all the machine guns were firing incessantly.

He didn't scratch a single skin.The operation was short-lived.It took only two minutes from the firing of the machine gun to Iliajo's signal to evacuate.The assault group retreated as planned, regrouped about 400 meters away from the road and burning vehicles, and then disbanded, while the British were still shooting there, but in fact there were very few targets.Bernice and Klimrod dropped their precious weapons. Now it was just the two of them—or rather, three of them—walking step by step across a field of red sand.The third person was Iliajo, who would not have traveled with them under normal circumstances.They walked together for two hours until they came into sight of Tell Ashod.Elijah stopped.

"We'll part here," he said. "You'll have to be told where and how to go." Elijah is hesitating.He was much smaller than Klimrod, even shorter than Bernice.In the darkness, he was staring at Klimrod's face.At the end, he shook his head and said: "My machine gun could kill you ten times less." "You didn't reimburse me," Reber continued. "Two steps to the right or two to the left, or a little forward to my line of fire. You know that?" "Know." Elijah shook his head again. "I'm sure you know; that's what surprised me so much. How old are you?" "Probably a hundred years old," Reber said, "only a few weeks in and out." "Who taught you to use Molotov cocktails like this? Was it Dolf Lazarus?" The gray eyes, bright in the dark, drooped down. "I don't know anyone with that name." Eliary smiled. "Good answer." He walked away, but stopped before walking far, turned around and said: "Be careful not to be killed all at once." "Will be careful," Reber said, "I promise you." Leiber and Joel go together.A Jewish cooperative farm truck was scheduled to pick them up at four in the morning and take them north of Ashod.The car passed through several checkpoints without any trouble. Along the way, they ate the fruits picked at night and arrived in Tel Aviv before the sun rose. That same year, October and November 1945, they took part in more than a dozen operations, one of which took them into the desert and lasted six days.The goal is to blow up a joint British-Iranian oil pipeline in as many places as possible. Outside of these missions, they lived in Tel Aviv, where the Irgon organization found them a home and open employment as a cover.Joel Bernie became a small boss, setting up a stall on the Allenby Highway to sell all kinds of knick-knacks.Reb Klimrod worked as a waiter in a café on Ben Yehouda Street.Most of the shop's regular customers are lawyers.Joel was also amazed by the impressive progress Leiber had made in English, although Joel himself was quite gifted at learning languages.In addition to Yiddish and Hebrew, Joel is fluent in Polish, German and Russian, and will soon be speaking English as well.At that time, Leiber went to the movie theater whenever he could, and there were often showings of American original films.Bernie recalled that this tall Viennese would watch a certain film more than a dozen times in a row, such as "Citizen Keith", "Bataan Patrol", "Target Burma", "My Dear Clement Ting" and "Go West" by the Marx Brothers.He can vividly imitate Humphrey Bogart in "The Philadelphia Story" and the "gentle" Cary Grant in "The Philadelphia Story".Even Groucho Marx's indescribably nasal voice was perfectly mastered.He still reads voraciously, but now mostly in English. Between this "liberia" and the changes that took place at the end of November, there is a certain inconsistency between Leiber's access to the unusual library, which he obtained through the lawyers he hosts every day in the coffee shop. Deniable connection.Klimrod and Bernie were separated, and they had both become outstanding blasting experts. It seemed too much power for them to continue to work together.At that time, Irgon was further improving his organization following the example of the French Resistance Movement, and Begin's commandos also began to step up their activities.Propaganda from the period referred to the British as "occupiers" and said that members of Irgon were no more terrorists than members of the French Resistance. "The situation is like that which existed between the French partisans and the German invaders." At the end of November, Reb Klimrod accepted a new mission.First he completely changed who he was and what he did.According to his papers, he is now Pierre Ubrech, born in Paris in 1926.He has used the pseudonym at least twice since then.The curriculum vitae designed for him indicated that his mother was Jewish, who disappeared in Paris in 1942, and that his father, a career military officer who had chosen to fight on the side of Free France, was killed in Syria.Pierre came to Syria by way of Spain.Although all these details of birth are convincing, they have little to do with Reb Klimrod himself, but explain his knowledge of French and his rough knowledge of Arabic. As for his new job, the pass gave him access to a bank in Tel Aviv's commercial center, Hakim and Senechal Bank, which has its headquarters in Beirut.At first Reber was there just to run errands and deliver letters.One of the Hakim brothers was an unseen patron of Irgon, but that wasn't the only reason Reber was promoted so quickly, but because it was a pity to have him run errands.About mid-December he became a broker for short-term loans.He was seventeen at the time, although his passport indicated he was twenty. Another change marked his breakup with Bernice.The latter left Tel Aviv for Jerusalem, where he now specializes in sabotaging railways and Iraqi oil company pipelines. On the other hand, Leib's appearance--light coffee hair, light gray eyes, pale skin--plus his employment at the Hakim and Senechal Bank, justified his frequent travels. Without arousing suspicion, Irgon has increasingly used him to break into British circles and carry out urban terror on a military scale. Since then, too, he has been partnered almost constantly with Dolph Lazarus.