The Hope

by Herman Wouk

  “What does Eshkol think of Nasser’s resignation?”

  “Haven’t you watched TV? The street mobs in Cairo are yelling for him to retract. ‘Nas-ser! Nas-ser!’ Smartest thing he could do. No question, he’ll stay on top. Now, have you got your map handy? Note down these positions.”

  When Barak returned to the chamber the council president, an amiable but harried Dane, was rapping his gavel. “The chair recognizes the representative of Israel.”

  “I have just been authorized by my government to declare,” said Rafael, reading with slow solemnity from a telex sheet, “that Israel accepts a renewed cease-fire” (sensation in the gallery, surprise and murmurs among delegates and staff) “and requests that the UN representative on the spot, General Odd Bull, immediately contact both combatant sides to arrange for strict and mutual observance of the cease-fire.”

  Spotty applause broke out in the gallery. Several representatives demanded to respond. Speaking first, Federenko denounced it as a transparent delaying tactic. The British delegate said he would have to consult his government. The French delegate spoke for twenty minutes with fluent eloquence, and Barak understood every word, but when the man finished he had not the slightest idea of the French position. The American, a Jewish former Supreme Court justice, hailed the move as a serious step to end the fighting.

  But the council as a whole was far from satisfied. The talk continued well beyond midnight, until the exhausted Danish president called for an adjournment for a few hours. Even Federenko was too played out to argue against it. By then it was broad day on the Golan, seven time zones to the east, and Barak’s last note to Rafael said Dado’s forces were again on the move. Rafael acknowledged it with a faint weary grin, and invited Barak to rest in his flat.

  ***

  “I’m just leaving Washington. I’ll be there in half an hour.” At nine in the morning the session was on again. Cunningham’s voice was muffled, and there was a peculiar roar on the line. Barak had to strain to hear him.

  “How can you possibly get here so soon?”

  “I’m in a military aircraft. Can you meet me at the airport?”

  “Sorry. I have to stay at Gideon Rafael’s elbow. Things are getting red-hot here.”

  “You’re telling me!” The staccato noise the CIA man made might have been a laugh. “All right. Meet me in the lounge of the American delegation at nine forty-five.”

  The atmosphere in the council this morning was different. Federenko was silent, his face a flat Slav mask. At the moment the Bulgarian delegate, a Soviet mouthpiece, was holding forth. The Syrian delegate kept interjecting stridently, as his staff members rushed in and out again with papers and whispered messages. Now Barak was becoming seriously concerned about the Russians. The Security Council was a place of perhaps ninety-five percent boring maneuver, duplicity, and bluff, and five percent dangerous substance. This morning danger hung in the stale air, like a cloud with interior flickers of lightning. Even the Soviet puppets were moderating their vituperation to express real fear. The spokesmen were pale and their voices shook, like this pop-eyed whiskered Bulgarian’s.

  “To conclude,” the simultaneous translation droned in Barak’s earphones, “I ask the council president to compel Israel’s ambassador to disclose all he knows of the battlefield situation, so that the council can act in the light of available facts. The criminal attackers are the best source of such facts, and must reveal them.”

  “There is no precedent,” said the Dane with tired politeness to the Bulgarian, “and I know of nothing in the charter, that enables me to compel the Israeli ambassador to make a statement of any nature.”

  A tap on Barak’s shoulder; a fresh-faced American with a blond crew cut was beckoning. Barak picked up his map and followed him into the hall and up the broad stairway. He did not recognize Cunningham at first, standing at a window in the American lounge, looking out at the uptown skyscrapers in the rain, in a gray slouch hat and a dark poplin raincoat, wearing no glasses. The young man left them. There was no one else in the lounge.

  “How much more time do you people need?” Cunningham abruptly greeted him. “It had better not be much.”

  Still unused to spilling secrets to this eccentric gentile, though Pasternak had pushed him into the spot, Barak temporized. “It isn’t much. By the time all this talk is over, it may be that—”

  “General, how much? Another hour? Two hours?” Cunningham’s razor tone was something new. “If you don’t know, say so. If you have to talk to Pasternak, do it. Kosygin called the President to the hot line at nine o’clock this morning. Some of his words were, ‘The situation approaches a catastrophe,’ and ‘Military action is imminent.’” Cunningham squinted at Barak. “I’m here to find out the state of play in the battlefield, Zev, and no fooling. The Syrians claim you’re threatening Damascus. Are you?”

  “Ridiculous. The key to the plateau is Kuneitra.” Barak unfolded the map, and pointed. “You know the Golan Heights topography?”

  “I’m beginning to.”

  “Our brigades have made a three-pronged attack to clear the plateau of the Syrian army. They’re closing in on Kuneitra, and by now they may have taken it.”

  “Then why not stop advancing and firing?”

  “The fog of war is thick up there, Chris. The Syrians may be stalling General Bull on a cease-fire, hoping the Russians will push through a withdrawal resolution. Meantime they’re still firing.”

  Cunningham nodded, gnawing his thin lips. “Very well. Now, this is for your ears. Not for Rafael. Not for Pasternak. I want you to grasp the gravity of what’s happening, Barak. The President has responded to that hot-line message with soft words. He’s also ordered the Sixth Fleet to alter its cruising pattern so as to steam twice as close to the war zone as heretofore. That’s his real answer. Soviet ships monitor every course change the Sixth makes. Kosygin will get that message. What the Russians will do next is the unknown element. I’ll be here till this crisis is resolved. I need from you the straight facts the minute you learn them.”

  “Understood.”

  He went back to his seat. By a vagary of UN protocol the Syrian and Israeli ambassadors sat side by side, their staffs elbow to elbow behind them. A Syrian adviser fell into the seat right beside Barak, breathing hard, and asked an aide in Arabic for a map. “No, no!” He pushed aside one offered to him of all Syria, seventy thousand square miles. “Just the Golan Heights. Don’t we have a map of the accursed Golan Heights?” Another was spread before him, an army chart of Mount Hermon, the Golan plateau and the cliffs, with the old armistice lines hatched in red. “All right. Now where the hell is this place called Kuneitra?”

  Nobody answered at once, so Barak leaned over, put a finger on the map, and said in his rudimentary Arabic, “There you are, sir.”

  Arabic: “Ah, there, eh? Thank you.”

  Arabic: “Not at all, sir.”

  Only then did the Syrian blink and stare at Barak, then turn his back.

  Federenko now walked out of the chamber, puffing Stalin-like at a curved pipe, with a chilling backward glance at Rafael. Zev Barak did not believe that World War III threatened over this tiny crag called the Golan Heights, of no earthly use to Syria except for bombarding the Israeli valley below. But as a boy he had heard the grown-ups say that World War II would surely not break out over Danzig. His nerves tightened.

  A commotion was starting up in the Syrian staff, with much whispering and passing of notes. The French delegate had the floor, and was pushing General de Gaulle’s view that the four superpowers should act to solve the crisis. (Barak had heard of Johnson’s comment on that: “Who the hell are the other two?”) The Syrian ambassador sent a note to the council president, who nodded and called on him, with the Frenchman’s consent, to announce grave news.

  “Kuneitra has fallen.” The Syrian, hoarse with emotion, spoke in thickly accented English. “The road to Damascus lies open to the Israeli aggressors, since our armed forces in good faith have laid dow
n their arms. My government demands immediate action to halt, drive back, and punish the criminal aggressors.”

  The American ambassador hastily left, amid murmurs in the gallery and the staffs. The Frenchman resumed explaining how the four superpowers could arrange peace. Rafael passed to Barak a rapid scrawl in Hebrew, and the paper went back and forth between them.

  Can this be true?

  Yes, easily.

  What’s our last position, again?

  A few kilometers away. Our scouts reported Kuneitra abandoned hours ago. It was even announced on Syrian radio, then contradicted. Balagan knows no boundaries.

  Then this could be a piece of Syrian theater to prod the Russians to act.

  I think it is.

  Now Rafael showed Barak a handwritten note that had just come.

  Gideon:

  Imperative we meet at once.

  Arthur Goldberg

  Goldberg was the white-haired Jew who, at President Johnson’s urging, had stepped down from the Supreme Court to head the UN delegation. He was friendly but tough, and strictly out for the American interest. “Zev, call Jerusalem,” Rafael whispered as he got up, “and by your life, find out what’s happening!” Barak left the chamber, and in the delegates’ lounge he encountered the blond crew cut, who silently beckoned. Down one corridor and another he led Barak. Cunningham waited in a shadowy dead end by some red-painted fire-fighting equipment.

  “Listen carefully, General.” The CIA man put a skinny hand on Barak’s arm. “The word from the President is stop. Stop right now. Stop where you are. Announce in the council now that your army has stopped. Or it will be the worse for your country’s present safety, and its future relations with America.”

  “Rafael is meeting with Goldberg right this minute, Chris.”

  “Very well. Now it’s not Russian military intervention that concerns the President—yet. Our surveillance is pretty good. The Russians are not yet organized to intervene. What Kosygin is up to is a replay of Suez. A saber-rattling ultimatum. The Bear growls. International bombshell! The war stops, Soviet client saved! Political masterstroke out of military disaster! Understand?”

  “Very clear.”

  “Okay. Federenko as we talk is probably getting the text of the ultimatum by teleprinter, and scribbling up a speech to go with it. Just grasp this, General, the war must NOT be ended, like the Suez war, by a Russian ultimatum! Your ambassador has to go in there now, before Federenko returns to the council, and announce that the Israeli army has stopped its advance and ceased firing. Now!”

  “Understood.”

  Cunningham’s manner and voice relaxed. “Have you taken Kuneitra?”

  “The Syrians evacuated Kuneitra this morning. Probably by now our tanks have reached it.”

  “Then defuse this bombshell, General, and you’ve won yourself a war against Red Russia and its clients. And certain ruling circles”—his quote of the Soviet cliché dripped with sarcasm—“will not be deeply displeased with you.”

  Barak hurried to Rafael’s office, where he called the Foreign Ministry on the open line to Jerusalem. “Is that you, Gideon?” Abba Eban’s rich Oxonian-accented Hebrew. “I’ve already heard from Washington, and I’ve talked to Dayan here—”

  “It’s Zev Barak, Minister.”

  “Ah, Zev! The very man. Let me read you what I’ve drafted so far.”

  With his usual skill, the minister was putting into dignified words a pious knuckling under to the American pressure. In substance, Dayan had already agreed with General Odd Bull to an unconditional cease-fire by Israeli forces on the Golan, at any hour and subject to any supervisory arrangement set by the UN commander. The rest was up to Bull. On Israel’s side, the war was over.

  “Perfect, sir,” said Barak, pulling out a notebook and pen. “Let me copy that and give it to Gideon, word for word—”

  “No, no, it needs a touch here and there.”

  “Minister, time presses. Federenko—”

  “I have the picture. Tell Gideon the statement is coming.”

  Passing through the diplomats’ lounge, Barak saw the pipe-smoking Federenko huddling with Arab and communist ambassadors and making notes. He hastened into the chamber, where the British representative was holding forth, sounding much like Abba Eban. Barak pulled a chair beside Rafael and told him about Eban’s draft statement.

  “Good, great,” said Rafael. “But where is it? Goldberg gave me a hell of a stern warning, straight from Johnson.”

  “It’s coming. Eban’s still polishing it. Listen, Gideon, ask to be recognized!”

  “For what? Till it comes, I have nothing to say.”

  The British ambassador was yielding to the Frenchman, who expressed admiration for his colleague’s views, but wanted to urge collective action by the four superpowers.

  “Well, then say it’s coming! Summarize it. Say it’s being translated. If Federenko comes in here—and I just saw him in the lounge talking with his gang—he’ll ask for the floor and get it.”

  “And if I’m challenged to produce my government’s instruction, and I don’t have it, then what? Do I recite psalms till it comes?”

  “Better that, Gideon, than Federenko’s ultimatum.”

  Rafael raised his hand, and requested that the representative of France yield for a crucial message from the Israeli government. “Monsieur le President,” the Frenchman said, “since Israel fired the first shot and caused this war, its messages are unfortunately suspect. Nevertheless, out of courtesy to my colleague I will finish my thought and then yield.”

  His thought was that this catastrophe could yet be turned into opportunity by timely action of the four superpowers. He was developing the point when Federenko came in, took his seat, and brusquely requested to be recognized.

  “I yield to the representative of the Soviet Union,” said the Frenchman promptly, sitting back in his chair.

  The Danish president said, “As the Israeli ambassador has previously requested recognition, the chair will first call on him.”

  “My government has accepted all conditions laid down by General Bull,” Rafael rapped out at once, jumping up before either Federenko or the Frenchman could argue. This raised a general buzz, and he went on. “There is complete agreement between General Odd Bull and General Dayan that General Bull will fix the hour and supervisory arrangements for the cease-fire, as soon as he has communicated with the other side. On the Israeli side, therefore, the armed conflict is at an end, in compliance with the council’s resolution 211. The council can turn its efforts to securing a durable peace, which is all Israel has ever sought.”

  Reporters were dashing from the press section as Federenko spoke harshly over the applause in the gallery. “What is all this vague talk? Is Mr. Rafael speaking for himself? Does he have authority from his government to announce this overdue capitulation to world condemnation? If so, why doesn’t he produce his instruction? Is this another clumsy delaying tactic?”

  “It’s hardly capitulation, considering existing facts,” snapped Rafael. “And here is my government’s instruction,” he added, brandishing a paper that Barak had just slipped into his hand, delivered from the office. “I ask the council’s forbearance while I translate at sight. The official text in English will be available shortly.”

  As Rafael slowly read out Eban’s precisely worded declaration, Zev could sense the tension dissipate in the council chamber, and the cloud of fear dissolve. This was without doubt the end of the war. The ambassadors at the round table were sitting back in their seats, relaxing, glancing at each other, even smiling. The Syrian staff were exchanging relieved glances and nods; they really seemed to have feared the Israeli army was marching on Damascus. Federenko was scowling as he slashed a pencil at papers before him and scribbled insertions.

  Arthur Goldberg rose to compliment the Israeli government on its unilateral termination of hostilities, and pledged the support of the United States to obtain a just and lasting peace. Federenko was still revising
, so the British ambassador echoed what Goldberg said. The Frenchman then pointed out that Israel had undoubtedly made this wise move so as to appear to advantage at the peace conference headed by the four superpowers, and his government would be willing—but Federenko raised his hand, and he yielded in midsentence.

  As Federenko poured bitter scorn on this futile last-ditch effort by the aggressor to escape just punishment for its crimes, Zev Barak was relaxing too, from a degree of anxiety that he only now recognized. The larger vision had been haunting him of the majestic gray carriers and cruisers of the United States Sixth Fleet changing course toward the east, the Soviet ships flashing messages to Moscow, the dour Kremlin autocrats in their slovenly clothes debating the next move; in short the old Great Game, this time a facedown between America and Russia, while on the Golan Heights the lesser game that meant life or death to Israeli and Syrian soldiers was being played out in a battlefield of a few square miles.

  Rafael was responding to Federenko: “It grieves me to observe, Mr. President, that the representative of the Soviet Union does not seem too happy that the fighting has now finally come to an end.” The Russian turned his head to give Rafael a contemptuous smile which came out a snarl.

  A tap on Barak’s shoulder; the crew cut again, with a note in Cunningham’s neat up-and-down hand.

  Returning to Washington. Very well done. Bit of a close call. Hope to see you soon. Why not stop by the house to say goodbye to Emily, before she takes off on her trip around the world?

  45

  Encounter in the Growlery

  It was a true Washington June day, dank and hot. Barak’s uniform enabled him to cleave through the surprisingly big crowd in the sunshine outside the ballroom entrance of the hotel, waiting cheerily and patiently to get in. Zionist rallies as a rule were straggly affairs in half-full halls. Not today! The cynics on Rafael’s staff had it right. Americans liked winners.