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Summary
Chapter Sixteen
The British learn about the movements of the latest Mossad boat and try to bribe French officials to stop it, but the French stay true to their word to help the refugees. Karen will leave France on this boat, named Star of David. She is in charge of one hundred children from the camp. The ship is full to capacity, and Karen skillfully comforts her young charges. When the Star of David is nearing Palestine, two British bombers flank the ship. If they can overtake the ship, the refugees will be brought to another camp in Palestine. The ship’s American captain, Bill Fry, decides that at dawn, he will beach the ship at Caesarea, Palestine, and everyone on board will make a run for freedom.
Chapter Seventeen
Members of the Palmach are waiting in Caesarea for the arrival of the Star of David. Once the ship is beached, Karen hands each of her children over the edge of the deck to Palmachniks who get them to the shore. Then Karen rushes for the shore and is caught by British soldiers. She wakes up in another refugee camp. About half of the people on board Star of David have gotten away and half have been detained. This significant run of fifteen hundred refugees onto Palestinian soil make the British rethink immigration, and the camps in Cyprus are a direct result of this mission. Karen has now been in Cyprus for six months, and Kitty agrees to work there if Ari promises that Karen does not go to Palestine.
Chapter Eighteen
With Dov’s excellent forgeries, Ari, Joab, Zev, and David are able to gain entry to a British weapons depot at Famagusta. They take the stolen weapons to an abandoned British camp that the Palmach have refitted to appear as an operational base. The crew repurposes the Exodus in preparation for its mission, adding shelves for bunks, extra toilets, and an air conditioning system. Soon, the group is ready to depart. Ari decides that the mission will begin when word comes from the British that the new refugee camps at Larnaca are open.
Chapter Nineteen
Caldwell and Major Allan Alistair, the intelligence chief in Cyprus, meet in Sutherland’s office. Alistair tells Sutherland what he already knows—there are schools in the Caraolos camp. He also thinks something bigger is going on. Caldwell suggests intimidating the refugees with force, making Alistair bristle. He knows what these refugees have faced in the concentration camps and that they fear nothing. Sutherland rejects Alistair’s suggestion that Kitty is helping Mark write an exposé about the camps. Unsettled after the meeting, Alistair goes over Sutherland’s head and writes to Trevor-Browne to warn him about a coming refugee uprising.
Chapter Twenty
Mark files his story about Operation Gideon with a friend in the London Bureau with directions to publish it based on a cable that he will send the day of the mission. He visits Kitty, and both of them are on edge about the impending refugee escape. Mark tells Kitty that he’s worried she is trying to bring her own daughter back by becoming so attached to Karen. Kitty becomes defensive and admits she was wrong to bar Karen from going to Palestine as a condition for working at the camp. Meanwhile, at Caraolos, Dov refuses to complete his forgeries for the Exodus refugees.
Chapter Twenty-One
Karen hears that Dov has stopped his forgeries and goes to speak to him. She is only person that Dov listens to, but now she is angry. Dov tells Karen that their names are not on the list for the Exodus mission, and he wants to go to Palestine. He’s bitter and believes that the Palmach only needs the Jewish refugees to fight the Arab people. There is nothing noble in the mission. When Dov speaks to Ari, he demands to go on the Exodus, and Ari agrees.
Analysis
Bill Fry proves himself to be the first true American friend of the Jewish people featured in the novel. There are many benevolent American Zionists in the states that make the Mossad work possible, and Mark and Kitty are ultimately friends to the Jewish people, but Bill is the one risking his life on the ships. Mark seems to be involved for journalistic reasons, and Kitty is only intrigued by Ari and Karen. Bill on the other hand, is drawn to this work for reasons he can’t explain. Even in America, he feels a sense of otherness as a Jewish person. He cannot parse out whether it is Jewish people making themselves different or if other people make Jewish people different by treating them as outsiders. But he knows he is inspired by the bravery of what he sees accomplished by the Palmach. Bill cannot personally relate to their actions, but he respects and is proud of the Jewish people for the way they relentlessly fight for their freedom. Ultimately, Bill’s involvement is crucial to the Jewish people's struggle. His runs on the British blockade puts pressure on the British government to change immigration policies and changes the course of the oppressive British occupation in Palestine.
Chapter Nineteen develops the characters of Sutherland and Caldwell in particular. These two men meet with Alistair, and it becomes clear that the three men hold three different opinions about what should be done at the camps. Alistair, in a show of defending the British name and his fellow soldiers, is uncomfortable with speculative information that has been gathered from the camp. He expects Sutherland to do something to discourage the impudent detainees and maintain order. Meanwhile, it is likely that Sutherland knows that there is something about to happen at the camp but is unwilling to stop it. Caldwell begins to show his cruel and violent nature. All three men dehumanize the Jewish people to some degree and speak of them as a problem that needs to be managed. Caldwell and Alistair do not seem to be acting in good faith, as they are proposing violence against people who have been the target of a genocide. The chapter raises the question of whether Caldwell and Alistair are using the situation at the camp to get rid of Sutherland and his sympathies.
When Karen approaches Dov about his unwillingness to continue his forgery work, it is if she is an angry mother speaking to an insolent toddler. Karen’s background is known at this point in the story. She has been through a great deal and is not one to unnecessarily dramatize a situation. Little is known, however, about Dov, except that his soft, sweet appearance does not match the anger that he expresses. Dov’s anger is almost animal-like, as though he feels caged up, cornered, and betrayed. Indeed, the source of Dov’s anger in this moment is a reaction to his and Karen’s names not being included on the list of people who will board the Exodus. Dov interprets this as Ari breaking his promise to Dov that Dov would go to Palestine, and he craves the freedom that he has been promised. The idea of broken promises is a thematically important one in this chapter, which twice references another broken promise: The Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration was an official declaration by the British in 1917 stating Great Britain would help the Jewish people establish a home in Israel. But it has been nearly 30 years, and the British have not come through. The chalkboard in the classroom where Karen teaches has a lesson on the Balfour Declaration on it, which shows that the Jewish children detained in the refugee camp are taught about their collective history of broken promises. Dov is one of these children. The Jewish people's sense of aggrievement over broken promises historically lives inside of Dov and his anger at Ari is in part a result of this. At this point in the story, Dov is driven by spite and anger to change his life’s current trajectory and the trajectory of his people’s future.
