The Hope

by Herman Wouk

  After a scene of frantic replenishment, the remaining Pattons push on to capture the airfield. As Kishote watches them roll by he wonders at the stamina of these crews, on the go after more than twenty-four hours of combat and of travel back and forth between Rafah and Jeradi in their choking bumping bone-wearying deafening steel boxes, with no rest except in snatched moments.

  War games are no true test of soldiers, he thinks. The game-planners have to be considerate of their physical limits, or the press and the politicians will rail at the inhuman harshness of the army. But war is no respecter of limits, it is by definition harsh and inhuman, and there is no preparing for it. He is in a slump of mood from the shock of Ehud’s death, the exaltation of his charge to El Arish all quenched. He feels a hard grip on his elbow. General Tal leads him aside to his command lorry, where they drink hot coffee in mugs. “Gorodish says you feel guilty about Ehud.”

  “I do.”

  “Kishote, I’ve given some terrible orders in the past twenty-four hours, made close decisions, some of them appalling mistakes, as I now realize. If you can’t handle such things and live with what happens you should be a civilian. No more of that, do you understand?”

  “I understand, General.”

  “Now then. While Gorodish captures El Arish and then heads south to exploit the breakthrough, you’re to prepare to race on westward as far as the Canal.”

  “The Canal, sir?”

  “You heard me. We can’t be sure the UN won’t clamp on a cease-fire tomorrow or even today. We have to do as much damage and gain as much ground as we can in a big hurry. It’s against government policy—at the moment—to reach the Canal. That may change. Some higher-ups think it might panic the UN into compelling an immediate cease-fire. But other higher-ups think it’s not so terrible for us to get to the Canal. The shock can also get the Egyptians to collapse and quit, with no UN nonsense about a return to previous lines. So you should be ready to go for the Canal, after which you may be pulled back, or you may not.”

  Kishote’s spirits are reviving. “B’seder, sir. Now suppose I actually reach it by mistake? Stupid mistakes are my specialty.”

  “Well, there’s a thought, your reputation goes before you. So, flags up!” Tal slaps his shoulder. “As for your charge through the Jeradi, you remembered the objective. You reached it. Whatever you did to get here, that was no mistake. Never think otherwise. Ehud Elad was a lion. He’s gone, and we still have to win his war.”

  But Don Kishote does not get far toward the Canal that morning when, standing erect in his turret, he is struck down.

  39

  Nakhama and Emily

  Around a table map of Jerusalem in the Pit, the Ramatkhal, his General Staff, and the senior officers of Central Command gather long after midnight to discuss a momentous new challenge. The recapture of the Old City is suddenly a political possibility! For King Hussein has entered the war, despite Israel’s pledge not to move against him if he stays out. Nineteen years ago, Yitzhak Rabin watched the surrender of the Jewish Quarter from a monastery roof, in Mickey Marcus’s entourage. Then he commanded a Palmakh brigade. Now he commands the entire Israel Defense Force. If he is to act on this possibility, the time frame is an eyeblink; perhaps a day or two, perhaps only hours, before the inevitable yank on the cease-fire leash, now that the Arabs are perceived to be losing.

  An aide approaches through the thick stale smoke. “The Prime Minister is here, General.”

  “Eshkol, here in the Pit?”

  “In your office above, sir. He says he’ll come down if it’s convenient.”

  “I’ll go up, get a breath of air.” To the others he says, “The minimum objective, in short, is to seize the eastern heights, from Mount Scopus to Augusta Victoria. Then when the cease-fire does come, we’ll at least dominate the Old City. Continue your work, I’ll be back soon.”

  Wearing a dark beret and an army uniform that bulges with his fat figure, Eshkol is pacing in Rabin’s office when the Ramatkhal comes in. “Good morning, Prime Minister.”

  “Ah, Yitzhak! I couldn’t sleep, what with the bombardment and vehicle noise in Jerusalem. The sky there is all fire and smoke. So I just drove down here.” Rabin opens a window to the night, letting in warm fresh sea air. “Nu, and the blackout?” Eshkol exclaims.

  “No problem, Prime Minister. The Arabs won’t be sending any airplanes over Tel Aviv.”

  “True, true, thank God! The air victory is a miracle, a marvel. It will live forever. What’s going on now, Yitzhak? Will we recapture the Old City?”

  “The generals want to go, but Dayan disapproves.”

  “So? And what’s happening elsewhere?”

  At a huge wall map of Sinai, Rabin reviews Tal’s exploits in the north and describes Sharon’s night attack at Abu Agheila, the major strongpoint of central Sinai, which is still in progress. Eshkol listens with a shrewd look in pouched sunken eyes, as Rabin tells of helicopters landing paratroops behind the Abu Agheila fortress, and the very risky complex assault by tanks and infantry. He then describes the heavy fighting around Jerusalem. “That’s the biggest surprise of the war, Prime Minister. We thought Hussein wouldn’t move, or at most do token harassment, like the Syrians so far. But the Jordanians are actually outfighting the Egyptians, and we’re taking bad losses there.”

  “Are you saying we can’t capture the Old City? That it would be too costly?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Rabin automatically lights a cigarette, though one burns in a tray. “Prime Minister, if I can be frank…” Eshkol slowly nods his large head. “Minister of Defense Dayan has given me three don’ts, for my conduct of the war. Don’t go to the Canal. Don’t capture the Golan Heights. And don’t take the Old City. The soul of prudence, he’s become.”

  “Understandable, Yitzhak. Ultimate responsibility is sobering.”

  “Ultimate responsibility is yours, Prime Minister.”

  Eshkol makes a wry face. “Is it? I can summon a war cabinet meeting today to overrule those three Dayan don’ts. Would they?”

  Rabin turns up his hands, drags deeply on the cigarette, and says, “He’s hounding me to get to Sharm el Sheikh before a cease-fire. He calls it the prime objective of the war.”

  “That I find hard to understand.” Eshkol strokes his chin, as though at a nonexistent rabbinic beard. “In Jerusalem we have the kind of chance that comes once in a thousand years! The Jews can return to the City of David, to Zion! Nasser has given us the chance, and Hussein by a miracle has gone along with him. If we fail to take this gift of history”—he smiles, and his tone becomes ironic—“that is, of our old Jewish God, nothing like it may ever happen again. By comparison, what is Sharm el Sheikh?”

  A red telephone rings. “Yes? …Yes, I see… What? …Well, the Prime Minister, as it happens, is right here in my office…. Excellent, hurry.” Rabin’s phlegmatic countenance shows very rare excitement as he hangs up. “Sir, Sam Pasternak is coming here with a big intelligence break. He calls it the political turn of the war.”

  ***

  Striding up Massachusetts Avenue, Zev Barak spots Emily’s red Pontiac parked under a lamppost. Her window is open. “Hi, Em. Where is he?”

  She points. “Up there as agreed, waiting.”

  The June night is warm and starlit, and the benches in Dupont Circle are mostly occupied by crumpled drunks and entwined lovers. In his usual gray suit and homburg, Cunningham sits erect on a bench near some young guitar players lounging on the grass.

  “Ah, there you are, Zev. What’s this urgent word from Sam, now?”

  Barak hands him an envelope. “I had a hard time tracking you to La Rive Gauche.”

  “My birthday,” says the CIA man, opening the envelope. “Emily was treating me.”

  “Remember, Chris, this material was teleprinted in code. It’s a hurried rough translation from the Arabic.” Barak speaks softly, almost in an undertone, as Cunningham eagerly scans the typed sheets by the streetlight. “Also, the intercept was garbled b
y static. Still, you’ll get the picture. Pasternak vouches for the voices of Nasser and Hussein. He says that they’re both bound to confirm this in their morning communiqués, and your government should be forewarned, hence this urgent message. A copy of the tape is being flown here.”

  Cunningham finishes his quick reading, raps the papers with a knuckle, and jumps up. “Formidable! This is as hot a break as the Khrushchev secret speech was. Once again I salute Israeli intelligence. You tell Sam that. I’d better send Emily back to her school. Where will you be later, Zev?”

  “At the embassy until midnight, then at home. Call me anytime, sir.”

  “I will, if it’s necessary.”

  They walk together to the Pontiac. “Thanks for the birthday dinner, Em,” says her father. “Sorry to cut short the celebration.” He hails a cab and leaps in, saying, “White House. Southern entrance.”

  “Well, that was sudden,” says Emily. “You must be busy as hell, dear. Can you hint how the war’s going?”

  “So-so. I may have to go to New York tomorrow, Emily, and I’m not sure when I’ll be back, but—”

  “You may? Hot diggety dog. By the merest coincidence, Hester is having a show at some Madison Avenue gallery. I’ve been thinking of tootling up there myself.” She smiles beautifully at him.

  Barak hesitates. For weeks he has had no time for Emily, and she has been sweetly understanding about it. The farthest thing from his mind right now is a romantic rendezvous in New York. “I see. Going up for the day, are you?”

  “Well, puss, that all depends, you know… Anyway, I’ll be staying at the St. Moritz, the park view is sublime.”

  On an impulse of rueful affection for her, he says, “Okay, then suppose I call you tomorrow about this, Queenie, when I know more?”

  “Oh, scrumptious—no, wait, wait,” she says. “Tomorrow is Tuesday, isn’t it? Nakhama is bringing your girls to pet my horsies. No riding, the insurance doesn’t allow it—but I can make a two o’clock shuttle, I guess. Now see here, Old Wolf, if you don’t come to New York, or if you’re busy there, never mind me, I’ll see Hester’s show anyway. Got me?”

  “Got you.”

  “Lovely. Bye, sweetie. Call me tomorrow.” She drives off.

  He has to make his way through TV trucks, cameramen, and people lined up all the way into the embassy. In the crowded noisy foyer a tall man with iron-gray hair puts a hand on his arm. “Zev Barak!”

  “Why, hello! Professor Quint, isn’t it?”

  “Alan Quint, yes, and look, Barak, some of us at Harvard have formed an ad hoc committee, Scholars for Middle East Peace with Justice. What can we do to help the war effort? We’re not without influence, in our dry-as-dust way.” He utters a dry-as-dust chuckle. Years ago, Barak recalls, this academic came to Israel to study the effect on kibbutznik soldiers of their communal upbringing. Then he did not identify himself as Jewish at all.

  “That’s very nice. I didn’t know Harvard had many Jewish professors.”

  “To be frank, neither did I. Coming out of the woodwork, one might say. I’m the only one who’s been to Israel, so I’m the chairman.”

  Barak takes Professor Quint to the cultural attaché, one Gamaliel. “Harvard? That’s wonderful!” exclaims Gamaliel, a small shirt-sleeved Haifa man who needs a shave, and by his complexion a month in the sun. “Say, Professor, can you suggest a Middle East scholar for the Today show tomorrow morning? The Egyptians have named a Yale guy, Peterson.”

  “Of course. Kermit Peterson. A sound scholar,” says Quint. “Total Arabist, taught in Beirut for years, Syrian wife.” He ponders, and snaps his fingers. “Templeton is your man. Brooks Templeton.”

  “Templeton?” Gamaliel wrinkles his very pale nose. “You say Templeton?”

  “His grandfather was a Polish rabbi.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes. He told me that this morning in the commons over coffee. I hadn’t the faintest idea Brooks was even Jewish. He’ll wipe the studio floor with Peterson. The name is J. Brooks Templeton, professor of history, brilliant.”

  “Perfect, a big help.” Gamaliel grins at Barak. “Thanks, Zev.”

  “Thank Harvard.”

  Barak teletypes to Pasternak, OUR FRIEND DELIGHTED WITH BIRTHDAY PRESENT. He finds Abe Harman in his office sorting through heaps of paper, in great spirits despite a distended jaw. The ambassador brandishes a fistful of yellow telegrams. “Offers of support! Zev, do you realize what money is pouring into the UJA? Millions, millions! A lot from Christians!” He taps a small brown satchel on his desk. “Look at this! A little gray-headed lady came up to me after my speech.” He puts on a Yiddish accent. “‘My son is Rabbi Marcus Wax of Philadelphia, he’s a good boy, I made him bring me here. There’s all the money I have in the world, thirty-seven thousand dollars. It’s for Israel.’ Well, Zev, what could I do? I took it, and took her address. We’ll return it to her.”

  Barak closes the office door, hands him a copy of the Pasternak material, and reports his meeting with his unnamed CIA contact. The ambassador glances through the sheets, sits back in astonishment, then nods and nods as he reads them through, with the squint that shows he is thinking hard. “Amazing!” he exclaims. “Aside from being a gigantic political mistake, it seems so utterly naive! Imagine, accusing the Americans and the British of doing our air strike!”

  “Well, Abe, at least they intend to claim that carrier planes took part in the attack. That’s not quite clear from the transcript. Some of it was unintelligible.”

  “But good God, Zev, how ill-informed can they be? Look at this—” He points to a line. “Nasser speaks: Do the British have aircraft carriers?” The ambassador’s face falls into familiar worry lines. “This is just too preposterous. D’you suppose the Russians have put Nasser up to this? Just as a pretext for them to jump into the war? There’s a real evil possibility. What do you think?”

  Barak knows better. Cunningham has told him, for Pasternak’s information only, that the White House hot line teleprinter in the Russian alphabet came alive that day, the first time since it was installed, to signal that the Soviet Union did not intend to intervene in the war.

  “Abe, I think Nasser may really believe that American or British carrier planes did it, or helped. The Egyptian air force turnaround time is about two hours, we know that. Our squadrons have it down to ten minutes. Maybe he can’t conceive that we could actually have flown hundreds of sorties ourselves in one morning. Or that we’d leave our cities entirely without air defense. We had only a dozen or so planes left inside Israel, you know, during the strike.”

  The ambassador sits with a fist under his chin, Rodin’s Thinker with a swollen jaw. “No. It has to be a cover-up for the world press and his people. That’s all. Now, listen, Zev, Gideon Rafael will want to have air force facts and figures on hand at the UN, and an update on the ground fighting. There may be wild fireworks in New York. Better get a little sleep and make an early start.” He taps the document with thick fingers. “Hussein doesn’t sound too happy about going along with this accusation.”

  “Well, half his answers are muffled by static. Maybe the reception was better from Cairo. The Jordanians are certainly in this up to their necks. There’s very bloody fighting around Jerusalem.”

  ***

  R-ring, r-r-ing.

  “Am I calling too early, Emily? Did I wake you?” Nakhama sounds blithe and peppy.

  “No, no, I’ve been up forever.” Emily does her best not to groan the words. Her bedside clock in the Growlery shows 7 A.M.

  “Fine. You are expecting us? My girls have been dancing around the flat since five o’clock.”

  “Of course.” Emily went to bed hoping for rain, but sunlight is shafting through the curtains, naturally. “Aren’t you terribly tied up with the war and all? I can send a stable hand with a car to bring out your girls, you know. You’ll have trouble finding the place. It would really be much simpler. Let me do that—”

  “No, no, I’ll find it. We’ll be there
at nine o’clock.”

  “I’ll bet you will,” mutters Emily, hanging up. “On the stroke. How can I love an Israeli?”

  In the kitchen she snaps on the small table TV as she starts the coffee. There is the Secretary of State, his moon face contorted with anger, proclaiming in a choked voice to a crowded press room, “…utterly and maliciously false. Our Sixth Fleet is far outside flight range of the area, as the Arab leaders well know. The United States government denounces in the strongest terms these deliberate transparent lies, which can only serve to delay the untiring efforts of our delegation at the United Nations to obtain an immediate cease-fire…” Even talking about Ho Chi Minh, Dean Rusk has never sounded this furious.

  Over vague war pictures—tanks rolling, planes flying, artillery firing—the newscaster announces that many Arab countries are breaking relations with America and England because of their part in the air strike. He quotes Arab claims of vast successes, and notes that the Israeli army is not disclosing much. Nasser’s accusations strike Emily as a sign that he is in trouble, and that is heartening. The prospect of seeing Nakhama is not.

  At five minutes of nine she stands under the stone archway, dressed in white shirtwaist, plaid skirt, and clunky shoes, her hair in a bun, horn-rim glasses on her nose, no makeup, no jewelry; a dull sexless schoolmistress to the life, nerves jangling from far too much coffee, resolved to make this a mighty brisk visit. At nine o’clock Zev’s car rounds the turn, crosses the bridge over the creek, and comes up the tree-lined hill to the archway. Nakhama waves and the girls yell gaily through the open windows.