Birnbaum said nothing. I had shocked him into silence. Scratching sounds came over the line. Birnbaum rubbing his jaw? I rummaged in my pocket for a cigarette and stuck it between my lips. A woman cleared her throat. I turned and saw the stern face of Mrs. Levinson frowning at me from behind the counter. She gave a single shake of her head. I returned the cigarette to the pack.

"Got anything for me, Shmuel?"

"Yes," he said, regaining his voice. "And I have to say my curiosity is piqued. I'm looking forward to you telling me what this is all about. Got a pencil handy?"

I took out my notebook and pencil and told him to go on.

"The only ship that fits the timeframe you gave me is the Salonika. It set sail from the port of Piraeus, Greece, on March 2, 1939. Forty maapilim were said to be on board."

Maapilim was the term used for illegal Jewish immigrants to Mandatory Palestine. Illegal in the eyes of the British authorities who had administered the Mandate of Palestine from 1920 until 1948, when Israel was reborn. Since the 1930s, when Great Britain reneged on its promise of establishing a Jewish national home in Palestine and began severely restricting the number of Jews it allowed to immigrate there, Zionist organizations started smuggling Jews in, mostly by sea. Thousands of Jews currently living in Israel were maapilim.

"You're not certain about the number?"

"No," Birnbaum said. "There is no official number nor a passenger list. But that was the number given at the time. What the papers reported at the time, anyway. But what is more interesting is what happened to the Salonika and to the people it was carrying."

He paused, as if savoring his possession of information he knew I craved. It was like a scoop, and he lived for scoops.

"Come on, Shmuel. Spit it out."

"On the morning of March 5, while it was in the process of disembarking passengers somewhere north of Netanya, the Salonika was spotted by a British patrol ship. The British opened fire. A short battle ensued. Fourteen of the passengers died, as did two crew members. Ten maapilim were captured and taken into custody."

"And the rest?"

"Taken to safe houses around the country, I imagine. Lived here ever since."

"Who was in charge of the ship?"

"The Irgun. Which explains what happened next. Those meshuganahs were always gung ho."

The Irgun had been a right-wing Jewish militant group that fought to expel the British from Palestine and so bring about the establishment of a Jewish state there. Their methods included bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations of British personnel and soldiers. In addition, they had also striven to bring in as many Jews as they could to Palestine, regardless of British immigration quotas.

"What happened?"