Her face darkened with the memory. She had strong features—high forehead, pronounced cheekbones, ruler-straight nose, full eyebrows, wide mouth with thin, almost severe lips, and a well-defined jawline. Her hair seemed to be the only part of her appearance that she actively cultivated; it fell in vibrant tresses to her trim shoulders. She wore no jewelry or makeup. The lack of added color just placed more emphasis on her eyes. They bounced back whatever light hit them. Her face was too linear to be beautiful, but there was something about it that arrested the eye.

She was five foot eight and athletic. Long limbs, narrow waist and shoulders. Small high breasts. A body made for running and jumping. A tomboyish figure, but attractive nonetheless, and it seemed to fit her character like a glove. She had on a pair of black shoes with a negligible heel and a pearl-colored shirt, which was tucked into the waistline of a blue skirt that showed her knees and calves. I found myself staring at her exposed legs.

"Unlike what the papers said at the time," Mira continued, "there was no battle. Neither I, nor any other Irgun member, was on board at the time. We were all on the beach, getting the maapilim already ashore into waiting cars and trucks. The British simply began firing as soon as they had the Salonika in range. Some of the passengers who were still on the ship died then and there; the rest—ten of them—were taken into custody. Esther and Willie were among them."

She began pacing the room. It was clear by the set of her jaw how upset reliving that day made her. No wonder the Irgun proved to be such a thorn in the side of the British. They had ample stores of motivation to draw from.

"The British took the prisoners to a makeshift prison camp near Haifa. It was nothing much. A few shacks, some fences, a guard post. A decision was made in the Irgun: we were going to storm the place and get the prisoners out."

"Shmuel Birnbaum told me the raid was a fiasco," I said.

She snorted without humor. "That's mild compared to how it was portrayed by the Hebrew press at the time. We were called terrorists, insane, a danger to Zionism. We were to be shunned. That's why I didn't want to talk about all this at the hair salon. My boss and clients, none of them know I had anything to do with that raid. I wonder how Shmuel Birnbaum knows about it."

"He has good contacts. What went wrong?"