by Herman Wouk
“If I know these two guys,” said Kishote—and as a company commander he had had much contact with both—“we go for Suez at dawn. Right through there.” He jerked a thumb toward the defile leading into Mitla, humped black against the stars. “Arik Sharon is going to beat everyone to the Canal or kill us all on the way.”
“Has the pass been reconnoitered, Yossi?”
“By air, yes. No Egyptians there.”
At the map, Sharon was tracing a course with the knife. “It’ll be slow going through these two defiles, Raful, but in this saucer”—the knife swept around the broad central stretch of the pass—“and that’s most of the way, there’s plenty of room to maneuver.” His voice was down to a croak, his eyes were swollen almost shut in a mask of grease and sand, but his teeth showed in an uncivilized grin, and his cloth hat was set at a jaunty angle. “Once we debouch from the other end, we’re more than halfway there.”
“At your orders,” said Eitan, who knew but didn’t fathom—any more than Sharon did—the command from general headquarters forbidding any move westward into the pass.
***
For the shell-game world politics of the Anglo-French alliance had still not been disclosed to any of the field commanders. An armored brigade in the north had jumped the gun and crossed the border in a night attack, whereupon Dayan had arrived by plane, blazing mad, and had dressed down the commanders of the brigade and the northern front; deeply puzzling them both, since Dayan himself had created at Lod and Ramle a legend for ambitious officers to emulate, the tradition of disregarding orders and dashing into combat. To Arik Sharon the Mitla Pass was plainly his chance to eclipse Lod and Ramie by getting to the Canal first, and Kishote’s surmise was correct; nothing was going to stop him.
In the morning Sharon asked General Staff headquarters, via a communication aircraft, for permission to advance through the pass. Denied. He next asked approval to send “a patrol” to reconnoiter just the nearby eastern defile, with a view to occupying higher ground at the entrance. This permission was brought by a staff officer from HQ, who briefly landed in a Piper Cub with very specific and limiting orders. When the plane flew off Sharon organized and sent out “a patrol” in battalion strength, capable of capturing the entire seventeen-mile pass against any anticipated opposition. These troops set out on a beautiful desert noonday in a long column of half-tracks, trucks, tanks, and heavy mortars, heading for the shallow barren hills of the defile, while Raful’s paratroopers stayed dug in where they were.
Perched outside his foxhole, submachine gun in hand, Don Kishote watched the column grinding by, and shouted “I envy you!” to Jinji, who went past waving from a truck and grinning. Many a time Kishote had set out in such a column, rolling to the jump-off point of a reprisal raid. But this was war, and the objective was nothing less than the Suez Canal! The barren rocky scenery around him, rising sunward in ragged eroded cliffs and mountains, stirred his blood; this was the Sinai of the manna, the golden calf, and the thundering Voice, just as he had pictured it as a child. Of the larger strategic concept, of course, he knew absolutely nothing, any more than Sharon or Raful did. Nor did Kishote have any inkling that this advance in force into the pass was a violation of express orders; and he could not know, any more than Raful or Sharon did, that during the night a sizable Egyptian detachment had occupied the Mitla Pass, armed with high-powered weapons, and had ensconced itself in the caves and rock pits on the sides of the cliffs.
***
His broad shoulders wallowing, Sam Pasternak was pacing like a zoo bear. He growled at Barak, just returned from reconnoitering the entire length of the railroad to Beersheba, “Well, good, at least you’re here. What about those landing craft? Did you start the railroad demolitions?”
“How could I? I never got your authorization document.”
“I’ll strangle Yael.”
“Where is she?”
“Collecting that Colonel Simon, Ben Gurion’s liaison with the French government. We’re going to B.G.’s house—he’s still in bed with fever—as soon as Dayan gets here. That plane is long overdue.” Pasternak glanced at a wall clock, his forehead wrinkled with worry. “The Old Man has received a letter from Eisenhower that he doesn’t like.”
The telephone rang. “Yes? Right away.” He hung up and said to Barak, pointing a thumb at the war room, “Okay. Dayan’s arrived this minute, and he’s out there raising hell over Mitla.”
“Mitla? What’s happened at Mitla?”
“You haven’t heard about Sharon? You will. Come.”
Zev Barak was appalled at the way Dayan’s eye was popping with rage under the webbed helmet, the white showing in a wide rim all around the pupil. The Chief of Staff’s uniform was covered with dust, his face was dirty and perspiring. Angry questions pelted Pasternak: How had this happened? Who had given Sharon permission to advance into the Mitla Pass? Where were the despatches? What was going on right now? And what was all this insanity about Ben Gurion wanting to call off the KADESH operation?
It was Pasternak’s turn to be mild. Arik had been authorized only to send a patrol into the defile. How a whole battalion was trapped there under heavy fire, he was still trying to find out. As for Ben Gurion, the British ultimatum had expired hours ago, and they had not bombed the Egyptian airfields as agreed, so the Old Man feared they were backing out of the war. The Americans and the Russians were calling a session of the UN General Assembly, and he intended to announce before the assembly meeting began—probably by cabling Eisenhower—that Israel’s reprisal raids had accomplished their purpose and the troops were being withdrawn. He was calling in the French colonel to warn him of this intention.
“Where are those Mitla communications?” roared Dayan. A young officer with a scared face rushed up to hand him a despatch board. As he was flipping through the flimsy sheets, another officer brought Pasternak a telephone on a long cord. The conversation at his end was a grunt or two. Hanging up, he said, “Well, Yael’s got hold of that French colonel, Moshe, so you’re due at B.G.’s house.”
“Good!” Dayan dropped the despatches on the table. “Courts-martial will be busy when this is over. The lapses of discipline are intolerable. Arik’s got himself into a mess, and whatever happens, he’s to bring out every single killed or wounded soldier! Let him know that, Sam, from me!”
“Yes, Moshe.”
“Zev, meet me outside in five minutes. We’ll go to the Prime Minister in your car.”
When Dayan was gone Barak asked Pasternak, “What caused the delay with Colonel Simon?”
“He was having his lunch. For a Frenchman that can mean three hours. I knew Yael would fetch him, she says he can’t take his eyes off her shirt front. She told me he makes her chest feel funny.”
“Well, it’s covered, that’s what,” said Barak. “He’s used to the Folies-Bergère.”
In Barak’s commandeered car, an old Mercedes with an irregular cough that made it jolt forward, Dayan asked Barak, “If your brigade leaves Eilat tonight, can it get to Sharm in three days?”
“Avraham Yoffe’s commanding us, sir. He’s the one to ask.”
“I’m asking his deputy, so let’s hear.”
Barak drummed his fingers on the wheel, taking his time to answer. “We’re still mobilizing. We’re a reserve brigade, guys leaving their homes and their jobs. Transport vehicles are still below allotment. Supply problems unsolved, such as—”
“The thing is,” broke in Dayan with dry professional calm, “we may have no more than three days. I believe the UN can be stalled that long, even if the Brits and French pull out—which incidentally I don’t believe they’re doing. But our objective for KADESH has always been Sharm, and it still is. We’ve already lost a lot of boys, and Sharon is losing more.” Pause. Different, lighter tone. “So, three days? Yes, or no, Zev?”
“Remember, sir, I went on Operation YARKON.”
“Remember? I pinned a decoration on you myself.”
“So you did, sir, and I’m the
wrong man to say yes to three days.”
Dayan fell glumly silent, while buried memories of the YARKON ordeal rose in Barak’s mind. More than a year ago he had served in a patrol that had landed by rubber boat far down in the Sinai, to reconnoiter the burning wastes on foot and map a route for a surprise motorized thrust from Eilat to Sharm, in case war should come. Code-named YARKON, the patrol had been sent out after Nasser had installed at Sharm el Sheikh heavy guns which could block the Straits of Tiran. It had been as close a brush with death or captivity as Barak ever wanted to endure. In three days and nights of summertime inferno the patrol had trudged the Sinai, until a Bedouin band had chanced on their footprints and alerted an Egyptian camel patrol, which came after them. In desperation they had signalled for rescue, and were airlifted out by two-seater planes making hairbreadth landings and takeoffs on level patches of sand. For a long time afterward Barak had been deathly sick from dehydration, coming much closer to being killed by the sun than by the enemy.
After a pause Dayan spoke up brusquely. “Time factor aside—any other major difficulties?”
“There is one, sir.” Barak described the problem of transporting the landing craft.
“Is it hopeless?”
“I’m still working on it, sir.”
“Well, and if the demolitions can’t be done in time, Zev—will your brigade be able to fight on to Sharm, assuming it isn’t replenished by sea?”
“No, it won’t. It can’t possibly reach Sharm. Mankilling terrain, murder on machines, seventy miles of it uphill.”
“Then the supply problem has to be licked,” said Dayan, “because even if the Old Man calls off the rest of KADESH, Zev, at this point we must go on to Sharm el Sheikh. Now, you can tell him more about YARKON than I can.”
“Tell him what?”
“Tell him, speaking from YARKON experience, that your brigade can make it in three days, no matter what.”
“You want me to lie, sir?”
With a shrug and a shrewd one-eyed glance Dayan said, “Look, it’s an estimate. Any man can make a mistake. Once we go we’ll keep going until we take Sharm. Then he can sort out the politics. That’s his job. Even if we’re forced to withdraw, we can bargain to get the straits reopened, and free passage guaranteed by the Americans—but only if we’re holding Sharm, Zev.”
***
“Fifteen minutes, no more,” said Paula Ben Gurion. She stood outside the bedroom in her usual shapeless black dress, confronting Dayan and Barak. “That French fellow is in there now with little Yael. They just got here.”
“How is Ben Gurion?” asked Dayan.
“A hundred-and-four fever. A terrible flu. Fifteen minutes! Whatever has to be decided, you’ll have to decide in a quarter of an hour. Do you understand, Moshe?”
“A quarter of an hour, Paula.”
Ben Gurion lay back on heaped pillows in a white nightshirt, which with his disorderly white flares of hair accentuated the bright pink flush of the aged face. His eyes were closed, his arms extended on the blanket. Colonel Simon stood by the window, hands clasped behind his back, a portly gray-mustached military figure in a gorgeous gold-braided French officer’s cap, with banks of parti-colored medals and ribbons on his tailored uniform. He looked extremely uneasy. Yael was at his elbow.
“Moshe is here, Ben Gurion,” said Paula, whereupon the Prime Minister opened glittering eyes and sat up, raising his arms stiffly to get leverage.
“What is happening at Mitla?” he inquired in a weak hoarse voice.
Dayan tersely summarized the despatches. Ben Gurion turned to the French colonel, and spoke in English. “You see? We dropped those boys so near the Canal only because your governments wanted an ‘act of war.’” His tone was wearily sarcastic. “Now my boys are under heavy ground attack, and what if the Egyptian air force attacks them next? Where is the good faith of your governments? The British promised to bomb the Egyptian airfields long before this. What has happened?”
As Yael translated, Ben Gurion muttered to the Israeli officers, “Hebrew I didn’t expect him to understand. But English?”
Unexpectedly the French colonel interrupted Yael in a heavy accent. “Meestair Prime Meenistair, pardonne, for matters grave my English eet eez not entirely reliable.” He listened intently until Yael finished, and then responded at length, with sweeping Gallic gestures. Barak’s French was good, but to him the colonel seemed to be wandering, and talking to no purpose about omelettes and musketeers. He felt he must be missing something. Dayan looked baffled, too.
Paula was listening with a furrowed brow. “He keeps talking about an omelette. Is he hungry? Should I make him an omelette? Only after this meeting.” She glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside.
“Musketeer is the code name for their landing operation, I know that,” said Ben Gurion, “but what is all this about omelettes?”
Yael explained in rapid Hebrew that an operation called OMELETTE was superseding or modifying Operation MUSKETEER. It involved a complicated change of landing plans, so with one thing and another, the airfields would be bombed, but probably not till that evening.
Heavily, angrily, Ben Gurion shook his head. “Not satisfactory. I am bitterly disappointed. We are already standing condemned before the UN and all the world as an aggressor, whereas Nasser made war on us first with his blockade and his fedayeen attacks. We have smashed two fedayeen bases, and that is enough. Your governments have betrayed my trust, Colonel. I have summoned my Chief of Staff,” he gestured at Moshe Dayan, “to end the reprisal operations and withdraw my soldiers from Sinai.”
Colonel Simon’s face grew longer and sadder as Yael put this to him in clear French. Watching him, Barak did not see him glance once at her shirt front, which happened to be bulging perkily. That was Yael Luria for you, he thought. To her, world affairs revolved around her tits.
“He says,” she translated the colonel’s agitated response, “that he wants to telephone his government at once.”
“Paula, show him the phone in my office.”
“All right. So he doesn’t want an omelette? If he does he can have one.”
“No omelette,” said the Prime Minister.
“Nine minutes,” said his wife, beckoning to the Frenchman, who followed her out.
From among the papers strewn on his bed, Ben Gurion picked up a teletype sheet and handed it to Dayan. “That came from Washington an hour ago. Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver was called to the White House, and told to bring it to our embassy.” A quick glance, and Dayan passed it to Barak with a shrug. Ben Gurion said, “Dulles wrote it or dictated it, that’s his style. But Eisenhower put his name to it. It’s much worse than the last one.”
Couched in stiffly polite phrases and personally in care of the rabbi, the letter in effect threatened a total cutoff of American military and economic aid to Israel, prohibition of fund-raising, and sanctions that might include an embargo on vital imports, unless the Israeli “aggression” was at once terminated and the troops withdrawn to the armistice lines. “It is to be hoped and expected,” the writer piously continued, “that none of these grave eventualities will come to pass, due to the Israeli government’s maturer reflection on recent developments.” The letter closed with protestations of friendship for the Jewish nation.
“In London people are rioting in Trafalgar Square against Anthony Eden’s policy.” Ben Gurion’s voice was weaker. “The General Assembly will meet tonight to condemn us, and maybe to expel us. The Egyptian navy is bombarding Haifa and moving into the Gulf of Aqaba. Their air force is attacking our troops on all fronts. There’s intelligence that Iraq and Jordan may be mobilizing.” He turned his fever-flushed face at Dayan. “And you want to go on with KADESH? Why?”
“Because we’re winning everywhere, Prime Minister,” Dayan returned forcefully, “and I believe what Colonel Simon says. Once the bombing of the airfields begins the whole Egyptian front in Sinai will fall apart. We are winning a great victory and must not stop.” Ben Gurion made a ver
y Jewish skeptical grimace, humping his shoulders and inclining his head. “And at all cost we must capture Sharm el Sheikh.”
Ben Gurion tiredly turned to Barak. “How long will it take you to get to Sharm?”
“Once we start,” said Barak, “three days.”
“When can you start?”
“If we are so ordered, right away.”
Ben Gurion looked to Dayan, whose face was blank and his eye dull, then back to Barak. “Wolfgang, you are telling me a bobbeh-myseh. Why are you telling me a bobbeh-myseh?”
Paula came in, followed by Colonel Simon and Yael. In a spate of speedy French, his face alight with relief, the colonel spoke again of omelettes and musketeers, adding several obscure references to telescopes. Yael explained that the latest modification to the plan, code name TELESCOPE, advanced the landings by two days, and called for the massive bombing of the airfields without fail at dusk that very evening. The French Defense Minister was ready to confirm this to Ben Gurion by telephone, if need be. The Old Man nodded and nodded, and smiled at the colonel.
“I won’t shake hands with you,” he said, “you might catch my flu. I accept your word and I’ll take no further action until tonight. Tell that to your Defense Minister.”
Yael translated. Paula said, “The time is up. Ben Gurion, rest! Yael, ask the Frenchman if he’s sure he wouldn’t like an omelette.”
“Or a telescope,” murmured Barak to Dayan.
Ben Gurion overheard this and his eyes flashed humorously and craftily at them. “Wolfgang, no more bobbeh-mysehs. Get your brigade good and ready. That is a terrible route. Don’t push when you’re not prepared. We have had enough of that.” He let his glance rest on Dayan, then lay back. “I want to hear at once any news that comes in about the Mitla Pass. If you must, wake me up.”