London: The Odyssey Begins
23
their ranks and rejoining the crowd, hoping to lose myself in
it. But I was being surrounded. In whatever direction I moved,
a wall of three or four thugs immediately blocked my way.
The circles grew smaller, the avenue of escape smaller.
Any display of panic would have proved my undoing. In
front of me a powerfully built man who looked like a stevedore turned his head slightly and nodded, at the same time
backing a step toward me. Behind me, I sensed two others
move closer. The man in front suddenly wheeled his bulky
body around and lurched against me, trying to jab his elbow
into my stomach. An instinctive reaction would have been to
step backward, but from the corner of my eye I had seen one
of the men behind me doubled over. I would have fallen over
him and, while on the ground, been kicked in the groin. It
was an old Bundist trick. Chances of being heard above the
roaring mob were practically nil. As I saw the elbow lunge
viciously, I twisted my body at the waist and pivoted. The elbow mis sed. Frustrated, my assailant turned around.
"What you got there?" he growled, and grabbed my camera.
Someone behind seized my arm. I tried to pull away. Dimly
I heard: "Throw him out! Give it to him! lie's a Jew!" Cries
rose all around me.
Then, somehow, in the swimming faces of the closing
crowd, I saw Burgess.
"Burgess! Tell them I'm okay!" I yelled desperately.
I heard Burgess say: "I know him. Let 'im go."
The men fell back. The burly man returned my camera,
then one by one they came up and apologized sheepishly.
"We were moving in on you," one said.
"We had you wrong, friend. We thought you were a bloody
Jew."
"I can tell he was no Jew. He didn't make a run for it,"
someone else said.
Still breathing hard, but now surrounded by a loyal bodyguard, I listened to Jeffrey Hamm. He was tall and stocky,
with a square face and blond hair. A ferocious and devastating