A Woman of Valor Read online

  A Woman of Valor

  A Novel

  by

  Allan Topol

  National Bestselling Author

  Without limiting the rights under copyright(s) reserved above and below, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  Please Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distributing of this book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

  Copyright © 1980, 2011 by Allan J. Topol. All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Victor Mingovits

  eBook design by eBook Prep www.ebookprep.com

  Thank You.

  "John Grisham and Richard North Patterson may have a new successor in Topol...As entertaining as it is complex, this energetic narrative is loaded with close calls and compelling relationships." ~Publishers Weekly

  "Plotwise, Topol is up there with such masters of the labyrinthine, as Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy." ~Washington Post

  By Allan Topol

  Fiction

  The Fourth of July War

  A Woman of Valor

  Spy Dance

  Dark Ambition

  Conspiracy

  Enemy of My Enemy

  ~

  Non Fiction

  Co-Author of Superfund Law and Procedure

  Dedication

  I dedicate this book to Barbara, who makes all things possible, and to our children, David, Rebecca, Deborah, and Daniella.

  A woman of valor who can find?

  For her price is far above rubies.

  —Proverbs

  Chapter 1

  Alexandria, Egypt, 1948

  The happiest moments of Leora's childhood came when she reached the age of nine. At the end of the day her mother permitted her to race six blocks across the tree-lined streets of Alexandria from the family's spacious villa to the large brown stone structure that housed the Alexandria Trading Company, the largest export-import firm in Alexandria and a business that her father, Moshe Baruch, had inherited from his own father.

  "Go fetch Abba," her mother would say. "Your father never knows when to come home."

  Leora treasured that as one of many commands honoring the oldest child.

  Off she went, mostly skipping rather than walking, a long-legged gawky girl with long black hair that bounced up and down on her shoulders.

  She pushed past receptionists and secretaries, climbing the three flights of stairs to the "Office of the President."

  "Only a minute," Baruch called with a smile on his face when he saw his daughter approach.

  She made herself comfortable at a desk, leafing through brightly colored catalogs of shipping lines.

  Usually they went straight home when they left the office, the giant of a man leaning over to hold the little girl's hand. But sometimes there were those special days when they stopped in a coffeehouse. He ordered her a large dish of ice cream, admonishing her, "It's almost dinnertime, don't you dare tell your mother."

  While she enjoyed the ice cream, Abba sipped Turkish coffee and read the afternoon paper. Then they strolled home together.

  One day in the spring of 1948, Leora sensed that something was different when she arrived to pick up her father. Clerks who usually joked with her were somber and quiet. This time there was no waiting for Abba. He was ready when she arrived.

  "We will stop on the way home," Abba said.

  Thinking about that dish of chocolate ice cream she would have, she clasped his hand tightly as they walked down the stairs.

  In the street they could hear a newsboy shout, "Egypt joins the invasion!" as he hawked his papers. "Farouk vows to capture Palestine!"

  She watched Abba hand the boy a couple of coins for a newspaper, telling him to keep the change. Then she watched as intellectuals and merchants gobbled up all of the boy's papers within a few short minutes.

  As Leora walked through the streets, holding her father's hand tightly, the sun began setting over the city, its rays glistening on the gently rolling waters of the Mediterranean. The coffeehouses along the beach began filling up.

  * * *

  It was Alexandria.

  Founded by Alexander the Great, the city had once been an important center of Greek learning and culture. Physicians prospered and made major developments in its medical center.

  It was the city of Euclid, the great Greek mathematician.

  During the Greek period it was also the home of Jewish scholars, the greatest center of Jewish intellectual thought outside of the land of Israel.

  Everything prospered in Alexandria.

  After the Greeks came the Romans. Antony followed in the steps of Julius Caesar.

  For centuries it was unrivaled as the commercial center for European trade with Africa and the Far East.

  The Moslems followed the Christians as occupiers. Even Napoleon enjoyed its fruits. Then the British after him. Finally in 1947, the British relinquished their naval base in Alexandria, turning it back to King Farouk and the Egyptian people.

  It was this man, King Farouk, who was the center of intense discussion being waged in the coffeehouses that evening early in 1948. For weeks Farouk had listened to the argument raging among his advisers. Should Egypt jump in or stay out? Did the country's ragtag army have enough firepower to join the great Arab struggle?

  Finally Farouk decided. Egypt would join. The young colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser was delighted with Farouk's decision.

  When Baruch entered the coffeehouse with Leora, they sat down at a table occupied by two men dressed in conservative Western clothes, sitting in silence, each one reading a copy of the late-afternoon newspaper.

  Leora recognized them both as good friends of her father. One was a banker, Mohammed Hekel; the other a lawyer, Abdel Rasef.

  Baruch greeted the two men, then ordered Leora a dish of chocolate ice cream and a cup of Turkish coffee for himself.

  When the ice cream arrived, he told her to be very quiet as he opened the newspaper. She was only halfway through the large dish when Baruch folded his paper carefully, stirred the thick Turkish coffee, then sipped it slowly.

  "A very bad decision," he said thoughtfully.

  The banker stopped reading and placed down his own newspaper. He stared at Baruch, ready to accept the challenge, his eyes were sparkling.

  "Bad. Bad for whom?"

  "Bad for business. Bad for the whole country. Just now we have started to achieve some prosperity. And a war will end it all."

  The banker was unconcerned.

  "National pride. That's what we need. That's what we fight for."

  "Ah, poppycock," Baruch replied, using the word he had learned from a roommate at school in London twenty years earlier. "You can't feed people with national pride."

  Baruch glanced at Rasef, looking for support. The lawyer was still reading. If he had formed any opinion, it wasn't clear from his face.

  "We are friends a long time," Mohammed continued to Baruch. "But you are a Jew. You cannot understand the national pride that I talk about."

  Baruch's face flushed with anger.

  "My family has lived i
n Alexandria for twenty-two hundred years, since the Greek period. I am as fit as you—"

  The lawyer interrupted.

  "Gentlemen. Gentlemen. We are all friends. There is no need to reduce the discussion to such a personal level. The real question is whether our army is fit for battle or not."

  But Baruch refused to permit Rasef to change the subject so easily.

  "That is another question," he said, raising his voice. "First we deal with the other one. Does this nouveau riche banker, one generation removed from a family of peasants, have any right to deny me my opinion of what is good for Egypt?"

  There was a certain haughtiness in Baruch's tone that surprised Rasef. Still he tried to make peace. But Baruch resisted.

  "An apology is what I demand."

  "An apology for what?" Mohammed replied.

  Baruch was silent. His views about the war would have been the same if the Egyptians were joining an invasion of Britain or Turkey.

  "I see no further point in continuing this discussion," Baruch said, rising sharply.

  Leora was startled by her father's tone of voice. She rose and stood next to him.

  He placed a couple of coins on the table, making clear his intention to leave. Then he paused for a moment, giving Rasef an opportunity to rise and leave with him. When it was clear that the lawyer was remaining with Mohammed, Baruch grasped Leora's hand, turned sharply, and left the coffeehouse. Behind a great stone face he hid the righteous indignation that had spread to every part of his body.

  * * *

  Three weeks later, Moshe Baruch stood for a long time at one of the third-floor windows in his spacious villa, watching the activity in the streets below.

  Everywhere there were soldiers on the move, passing through Alexandria on the way to the Sinai desert. They moved by land and by water as Brigadier Neguib began assembling the Egyptian strike force of ten thousand soldiers, armed with rifles and accompanied by tanks which were to gather in the Sinai at El Arish.

  Baruch watched the soldiers milling around with incredulity. They all looked so undisciplined, ill trained, and disorganized. Like so many sheep being led to a slaughter, he thought. Unless, of course, the Zionists were equally disorganized.

  Here and there Baruch could hear the shouts of "Holy war! Death to the Jews!" from the masses who crowded the streets watching the soldiers.

  Sending the troops through Alexandria had already had a disruptive effect on the city. Baruch's eyes passed over to the commercial port area. Ships that should have been unloaded, loaded, and gone were still sitting idly while a general carnival atmosphere prevailed in the city.

  His eyes moved back to the green park below where a speaker was addressing a crowd. If he looked hard enough, he could probably find Hussini, that mediocre clerk, that speck of a man, who had worked for him until two o'clock this afternoon. That clerk had the nerve, the unbridled gall, to say to him, Moshe Baruch, who had physical evidence to trace his background in the city twenty-two hundred years back, "I imagine you'll be going off to Palestine with your people."

  He had fired the man on the spot.

  Baruch closed the shutters on the window and walked downstairs to the sitting room. Everything was in disarray. Books and papers were scattered on the furniture. Dirty dishes were visible in the dining room. In one of the first-floor rooms a baby was crying.

  "It's not possible to clean up this mess, Hannah?" Baruch shouted in Arabic to his wife, sitting on a couch staring straight ahead.

  "I've told you that the woman quit. She quit today. I haven't been able to get someone else on short notice."

  Leora hid behind the curtains in the sitting room, trying hard to hear every word that her parents said.

  "You're still upset over what the woman told you?" Baruch asked.

  She nodded weakly.

  "So she told you that she didn't want to work for Jews. So what? She's ignorant, illiterate. What does it matter?"

  His wife was unconvinced. "You're not realistic. Eighty percent are illiterate. They believe what the government tells them."

  The baby started crying louder.

  "Feed him, Hannah," Baruch replied in exasperation. "There's no point worrying about this. It will pass. I am convinced it will pass."

  Hannah sat motionless on the couch.

  "Again I say you are being unrealistic. We sit here with four small children like fools. The Arabs will kill us. This is how they sat in Germany. We are no wiser. We sit like fools." Baruch dismissed her with a wave of his hand. Then he rose to his feet.

  "Enough. I said. Go feed Uri. We will manage."

  Then Moshe stormed out of the house into the hot sticky evening air of his garden. He sat pensively on a lounge chair in the center of a cluster of palm trees, enjoying the respite from Hannah's harping.

  After he sat in silence for a few minutes, his ears detected a slight noise, a rustling in the bushes. He leaned forward, alert, attentive.

  "Who's there?" he called sharply.

  "Abba, it's only me," Leora replied.

  He saw a frightened look on her face.

  "What is it, my child? What is it?"

  "I do not understand, Abba. I do not understand."

  "You are too young. It's not your place."

  "No, I am not too young. I must know."

  "There is very little to know, Leora." Then Baruch began repeating the story exactly the way his father had told it to him.

  "We are Egyptians, and we are Jews. We have lived here for more than two thousand years. Do you know how long that is?"

  The child nodded weakly.

  "But I heard Mama say that many Jews are moving to Israel."

  "Your mother talks too much," he said harshly.

  "But why are they leaving?"

  The child was persistent. He could dismiss Hannah, but not Leora.

  "Those who are leaving are not strong. They are weak. They have achieved little in Egypt. They have not become a part of the culture. Now they leave to seek greener pastures. People like us, the strong and powerful, will remain here always. This is our home."

  The child walked over and sat on Baruch's lap. He stroked her long hair gently.

  "But Abba, once you said I would go to England."

  "Yes, you will go to England to attend the university just as I did, and so will your brother and sisters. That is where all of the Egyptian intellectuals go. Then we bring back knowledge to enhance our country. And so it will be with you."

  She was quiet. He realized that he hadn't satisfied her fears, only made her forget them for a time. Still, what else could he hope to do the way Hannah had been ranting and raving?

  "There are momentous events going on in the world, Leora."

  "But what does this have to do with us, Abba? I do not understand."

  Her father was silent.

  Chapter 2

  London, 1955

  What Leora remembered most about the University of London was her enthusiasm for acting that was kindled by the university Drama Society. She joined the society out of a determination to do something to relieve the terrible loneliness that plagued her six weeks into the first term.

  Her arrival in London had been filled with anxiety and excitement. After all, she had never before been separated from her family. She was being transported to one of the great capitals of the world. She wasn't even certain whether she had wanted to go. She was going because Abba expected it.

  There were two other Egyptian students in the first-year class at the university, both boys from Cairo, children of high-level government officials whose education was being provided by the government. During the first week, they were friendly with Leora, which helped her feel less strange. Then they joined the Arab Students Association. After that, the budding friendship died. They had nothing more to do with her.

  Leora experienced weeks of unhappiness. She had always been a bit of a loner, and it was difficult for her to make friends. That was when she saw the notice: "University Drama Societ
y—Organizational Meeting—New Students Welcome."

  Leora found that she had talent as an actress. The society decided parts after volunteers tried out. She made up her mind that she would succeed in this competitive system.

  Her appearance was an advantage. She was tall, and her features were strong and dark—a contrast from the other girls in the society, who were for the most part smaller and fair. It stood to reason, Leora decided, that she would have the edge for some parts just on looks alone.

  Fortunately, early in the second term of her first year, Philip Marks, who was one of the society's directors, decided to do Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. Later, Leora guessed that Philip had picked the play because he wanted to work with her. But she didn't think of that at the time. All she knew was that if she really put herself to it, she could land the role of Cleopatra. "I'm a natural Cleopatra," Leora said to herself. The trouble was that Joan Whitney, a third-year actress with considerable experience, had the same idea. They competed for the part, and after a great deal of discussion and handwringing, Philip finally said, "Leora, the part's yours. You'd better not let me down."

  Philip tried to act like a demanding director, but Leora quickly perceived that he was only playing a role himself. She began to like him.

  Antony and Cleopatra played to enthusiastic standing-room-only audiences both scheduled performances as well as an extra one that was hastily arranged. When it was over, Leora started dating Philip, casually at first, more seriously later. When he wasn't playing the role of the director, she found him to be the most sensitive and gentle man she had ever known—except for Abba.

  They began sleeping together later that spring. At first Leora felt guilty because she knew that Abba would never approve. But soon the pleasure that she derived from Philip pushed those feelings of guilt from her mind.