Leon Uris: A God In Ruins

“She’s in and out of lucidity. We just don’t know how long.”

Mal and Quinn had been able to keep up civil contact, a new bend in their years together. The pressure was taken off when Mal phoned first.

“I’ve been visiting with your mother,” Mal said. “She is in a bad wayr Quinn. If you can get back, you and Rita still have your wing at my place. I can book enough rooms in Grand Junction to fairly well cover the entourage.”

“It’s your dad,” Quinn said to Rita. “I need to go back.”

“Siobhan?”

“Yes.”

“We’ve got your mother in a quiet place, adjoining the south veranda. Beside Duncan and Lisa, and Rae, there should be other rooms open at the ranch house.”

“Rita and I will fly directly into Troublesome. We should be there after midnight or so. Mal .. . Mal .. .”

“Don’t say anything, Quinn. Get it straight that I am not sorry I told Darnell Jefferson what the President’s wife was up to. If I hadn’t, Tomtree would have attacked my daughter and your wife. No job in the world is worth how they can ravage and savage. But, asshole that thou art, you are my son-in-law. Now, where do you want me to put Greer?”

“Greer, Greer. She stayed in New York to see her husband and clear up some business. Will you have room at your place?”

Mal laughed. “The room where Rita kept her stuffed animals. I’ll have Juan and a couple of the hands get it cleaned out. I’ll install what electronic and computer shit there is around to keep the wires buzzing.”

“Mal, thank you, man.”

“You’re a stupido bastardo, but I love you.”

Rita was on another phone. She canceled Quinn in the Northwest, then directed a press aide to put out a simple bulletin to the effect that it was family business.

Rita kicked off her shoes and stretched on the chaise longue. Quinn sat on the ottoman and massaged her feet.

“How are you doing, honey?” she asked.

“Media y media. Dan, Siobhan, and Father Sean are the only family I’ve ever known. I feel detached and floaty.”

“You’re very close to completing an American wonder work. You’ve restored a lot of faith, and you’ve come through intact.”

“Am I, Rita? All that clean? I knew when I sent Greer and Mal to Chicago to negotiate the debate with Darnell Jefferson that one of them was going to threaten him with Pucky’s dirty laundry. I warned them not to and I fired Mal, but I was not all that unhappy with what he did.” “From the moment you shared your darkest and most dangerous secrets with me, I realized you were the only whole man I ever knew or was apt to meet. Hey, you haven’t presented yourself to the voters as all silver-plated and shiny. You’ve told people a lot of things they didn’t want to hear. They get it. You don’t hide behind the Constitution, you stand in front of it. Your failings, your unbelievable courage in admitting to them—that is what they want.”

Quinn established a mini-office near his mother’s bedside. Even in those times when she was alone with her terrible pain, she seemed to know of his nearness.

Duncan and Rae alternated in bringing him messages.

“I need Greer,” Quinn said.

“Headquarters has made contact with her charter. She’ll be on your cell phone,” Rae said.

Quinn jotted notes on the communications, handed a couple for Rita to take care of. He looked from his mother to his son to his very pregnant daughter-in-law to his daughter ... to his wife. God help me, he thought, it’s mad, but Rita looks so sexy!

From the whine over the phone, Quinn knew the caller was in an aircraft.

“Quinn,” he said.

“It’s Greer. How is Siobhan?”

“She’s hanging in. She asked for you, Greer.”

“Look, I’m going to fly directly into Grand Junction. I’ll be there by noon. Have a car meet me. Something extremely important has come up.”

“Can you say what it is?”

“No. We should have a secure room to talk in.”

“I’m at Mal’s. His studio will be safe.”

From the studio porch of Maldonado’s villa, Rita could see to the cutoff road from Troublesome. A motorcycle escort led a car up their hillside.

Greer emerged with a stranger. Quinn and the man stared at one another.

“Come in, Mal, you’re a part of this,” Greer said, closing them all in a place flooded with sketches and wire statuettes and a work that had been in progress until the campaign began.

“I want you to meet Mr. Horowitz,” Greer said.

“Sir,” Quinn said, extending his hand.

“Governor O’Connell?” the man asked.

i(\r >J

Yes. “I am your brother, Ben.”

THE SOVIET-POLISH BORDER, 1945THE

END OF WORLD WAR II

In the mid-twenties after Lenin died, Stalin took power. The Communists set out to destroy Jewish communal life. Religious life, educational institutions, the theatej-, the press, were forbidden. Jews were reduced to second-class citizens.

The Soviet borders were sealed, and tragic isolation ensued. Would there be an identifiable Jewish community at the end of World War II?

Small groups of Zionists in Russia kept a thin thread alive to the outside world. Zionism was a cardinal crime, akin to treason. The Zionists, the only Jews to survive intact, were mostly in partisan units in the forests.

Yuri Sokolov was a teenager when he escaped the Warsaw Ghetto and found his way to Jewish partisans operating in White Russia, east of Warsaw. At the time the war ended, he was twenty-two and in command of four companies, and a whispered legend.

Yuri knew about the liquidation of the ghettos, the massive slave-labor camps, and, later, of the genocide. As a surviving Zionist, his mission changed to finding remnants of his group and starting them on the perilous journey across Europe, then running the British blockade into Palestine.

Marina Geller was not yet twenty when she met the fabled Yuri. She had survived the war more easily. She had been taken in by an aunt in Minsk who had married a Christian and converted.

Marina had also come from Zionist stock. At the instant of peace, she set off to find her parents and brothers and sister. After a futile search, she realized her family was just another tiny blip among the millions of murdered Jews.

Marina threw herself into working with the small Zionist units who were now desperately engaged in getting the survivors out of the graveyards of Russia and Poland.

She established a safe house near the Polish border, at Bialystok. They came in twos and threes at first, mostly Zionists who had fought the Germans as partisans.

Now and again the trickle included an orphaned child or one too ill to continue the hellish journey. She turned part of the house into an orphanage, giving a cover to the emigrant running operation. Marina was able to cull food and medicine as a “legal” orphanage. Soon she had twenty children.

Yuri and Marina were married in a partisan wedding, and even before their passion was spent, they went back to their bitter work.

They vowed, as couples vow, that if Yuri was ever captured by the Soviets, she would make a run to Palestine and wait for him.

It happened in quick order, by the hatred of an informer. Yuri was captured, taken to Moscow, and charged with Zionism. It was a good day for the Soviets, for Yuri Sokolov’s name was known far and wide. He would serve as an example to the Jews that they had to conform with the regime and not attempt to establish Jewish contact on the outside.