Thicker Than Water

Snow was falling on Jerusalem for the first time in six years. It was a freak storm that began quietly over the Balkan Mountains, collected moisture and increased speed over the Black Sea, then barreled across southern Turkey into Syria. A low-pressure trough over the eastern Mediterranean then sucked the storm southwesterly over the soon-to-be independent State of Israel. In the end, the storm will have dumped twelve inches of snow on Jerusalem, almost two feet in the high country near Rosh Pinna, and nine inches of rain on the coastal cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa.

Tuvia Zafrir stared out the window trying to put out of his mind the thought of the traffic jam that would follow the storm. He had more important things on his mind. It was the first time he’d made an in-depth review of Mikhail Ayalon’s report since the winter of 1940, and his own plan of implementation had been his passion and source of intellectual stimulation for more than seven years.

Only a Jew, he thought, in a country about to be tossed into endless turmoil, could ever conceive of such an outrageous scheme. He was proud of his plan just the same. He only hoped he would live long enough to witness its final success.

Tuvia was to be the Chief of the Israeli Strategic Applications Division (ISAD) of the new Ministry of Paramilitary Planning. ISAD would be the troubleshooting division of the Ministry. With his heritage, training, and experience in taming the desert, this logistical genius was the ideal choice to mastermind this undertaking.

He recalled that late summer day almost nine years before when he received the urgent telegram from his friend Lazarus Abrahamson. When they met at the small airstrip near Rehovot, just south of Tel Aviv, Tuvia could see the excitement in Laz’s eyes even before they were close enough to embrace. Their meeting lasted two and a half hours, then Laz boarded the plane and flew back to Greece.

Tuvia had been astounded by the magnitude of the potential uranium discovery as outlined in the report Laz had left with him, and by its potential impact on a part of the world moving ever closer to war. He was aghast by the stories Laz related concerning the death camps in Eastern Europe, and he could not believe the theoretical destructive force behind the atomic bomb the Germans were trying to develop.

The report was concise. And, while most of the geological jargon was foreign to him, he was intelligent enough to realize the strategic importance of the uranium, and pragmatic enough to know it would take one hell of a plan to secure this treasure from the Syrians.