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"Just which one is it this time?"
"That book. The Jew, The Gypsy, and El Islam. How could you have written it? A hate document full of bloody-minded nonsense, folk tales, and superstitions! Ritual murders, indeed!"
"I was still angry because of the injustices I had suffered at Damascus. To be expelled from the consulate because of the lies of my enemies, among whom…"
"That doesn’t excuse your writing lies about a whole group," Frigate said.
"Lies! I wrote the truth!"
"You may have thought they were truths. But I come from an age which definitely knows that they were not. In fact, no one in his right mind in your time would have believed that crap!"
"The facts are," Burton said, "that the Jewish moneylenders in Damascus were charging the poor a thousand percent interest on their loans. The facts are that they were inflicting this monstrous usury not only on the Moslem and Christian populace but also on their own people. The facts are, that when my enemies in England accused me of anti-Semitism, many Jews in Damascus came to my defense. It is a fact that I protested to the Turks when they sold the synagogue of the Damascan Jews to the Greek Orthodox bishop so he could turn it into a church It is a fact that I went out and drummed up eighteen Moslems to testify in behalf of the Jews. It is a fact that I protected the Christian missionaries from the Druzes. It is a fact that I warned the Druzes that that fat and oily Turkish swine, Rashid Pasha, was trying to incite them to revolt so he could massacre them. It is a fact that when I was recalled from my consular post, because of the lies of the Christian missionaries and priests, of Rashid Pasha, and of the Jewish usurers, thousands of Christians, Moslems, and Jews rallied to my aid, though it was too late then.
"It is also a fact that I don’t have to answer to you or to any man for my actions!"
How like Frigate to bring up such an irrelevant subject at such an inappropriate time. Perhaps he was trying to keep from blaming himself by turning his fear and anger on Burton. Or perhaps he really felt that his hero had failed him.
Lev Ruach had been sitting with his head between his hands.
He raised his head and said, hollowly, "Welcome to the concentration camp, Burton! This is your first taste of it. It’s an old tale to me, one I was tired of hearing from the begi
"So, now, perhaps I can escape again. But to what? To another camp? There seems to be no end to them. Man is forever building them and putting the pere
"Shut your mouth," a man near Ruach said. He had red hair so curly it was almost kinky, blue eyes, and a face that might have been handsome if it had not been for his broken nose. He was six feet tall and had a wrestler’s body.
"Dov Targoff here," he said in a crisp Oxford accent. "Late commander in the Israeli Navy. Pay no attention to this man. He’s one of the old-time Jews, a pessimist, and a whiner. He’d rather wail against the wall than stand up and fight like a man."
Ruach choked, then said, "You arrogant Sabra! I fought; I killed! And I am not a whiner! What are you doing now, you brave warrior? Aren’t you a slave as much as the rest of us?"
"It’s the old story," a woman said. She was tall and dark-haired and probably would have been a beauty if she had not been so gaunt. "The old story. We fight among ourselves while our enemies conquer. Just as we fought when Titus besieged Jerusalem and we killed more of our own people than we did the Romans. Just as…" The two men turned against her, and all three argued loudly until a guard began beating them with a stick.
Later, through swollen lips, Targoff said, "I can’t take much of this, much longer. Soon … well, that guard is mine to kill."
"You have a plan?" Frigate said, eagerly, but Targoff would not answer.
Shortly before dawn, the slaves were awakened and marched to the grailrock. Again, they were given a modicum of food. After eating, they were split up into groups and marched off to their differing assignments. Burton and Frigate were taken to the northern border. They were put to work with a thousand other slaves, and they toiled naked all day in the sun. Their only rest was when they took their grails to the rock at noon and were fed.
Göring meant to build a wall between the mountain and The River; he also intended to erect a second wall, which would run for the full ten-mile length of the lakeshore and a third wall at the southern end.
Burton and the others had to dig a deep trench and then pile the dirt taken from the hole into a wall. This was hard work, for they had only stone hoes with which to hack at the ground. Since the roots of the grass formed a thickly tangled complex of very tough material, they could be cut only with repeated blows. The dirt and roots were scraped up on wooden shovels and tossed onto large bamboo sleds. These were dragged by teams onto the top of the wall, where the dirt was shoveled off to make the wall even higher and thicker.
At night, the slaves were herded back into the stockade. Here, most of them fell asleep almost at once. But Targoff, the redheaded Israeli, squatted by Burton.
"The grapevine gives a little juice now and then," he said. "I heard about the fight you and your crew made. I also heard about your refusal to join Göring and his swine."
"What do you hear about my infamous book?" Burton said.
Targoff smiled and said, "I never heard of it until Ruach brought it to my attention. Your actions speak for themselves. Besides, Ruach is very sensitive about such things. Not that you can really blame him after what he went through. But I do not think that you would behave as you did if you were what he said you are. I think you’re a good man, the type we need. So…"
Days and nights of hard work and short rations followed. Burton learned through the grapevine about the women. Wilfreda and Fatima were in Campbell’s apartment. Loghu was with Tullius. Alice had been kept by Göring for a week, then had been turned over to a lieutenant, a Manfred Von Kreyscharft. Rumor was that Göring had complained of her coldness and had wanted to give her to his bodyguards to do with as they pleased. But Von Kreyscharft had asked for her.
Burton was in agony. He could not endure the mental images of her with Göring and Von Kreyscharft. He had to stop these beasts or at least die trying. Late that night, he crawled from the big hut he occupied with twenty-five men into Targoff’s hut and woke him up.
"You said you knew that I must be on your side," he whispered. "When are you going to take me into your confidence? I might as well warn you now that, if you don’t do so at once, I intend to foment a break among my own group and anybody else who will join us."
"Roach has told me more about you," Targoff said. "I didn’t understand, really, what he was talking about. Could a Jew trust anyone who wrote such a book? Or could such a man be trusted not to turn on them after the common enemy has been defeated?"
Burton opened his mouth to speak angrily, then closed it. For a moment, he was silent. When he spoke, he did so calmly. "In the first place, my actions on Earth speak louder than any of my printed words. I was the friend and protector of many Jews; I had many Jewish friends."
"That last statement is always a preface to an attack on the Jews," Targoff said.
"Perhaps. However, even if what Roach claims were true, the Richard Burton you see before you in this valley is not the Burton who lived on Earth. I think every man has been changed somewhat by his experience here. If he hasn’t, he is incapable of change. He would be better off dead.