“Sergeant, all the lights on the other side of the fence went out. I think I can see something on the horizon, but I’m not sure.” The soldier was quiet, waiting for Uri’s response.
“You should always identify yourself.” Uri responded automatically. He knew the caller for at least ten years of reserve service, but protocol and discipline were important. “Are you sure ALL the lights are out? Can you see any movement?”
“No movement on instruments or plain optics. It is possible that the instruments are on the blink, but we don’t see any buildings there either.”
“Ok, keep looking. Call me if anything changes.”
His phone was chirping again: “Uri here.”
“Sarge, this is tower three. All the lights on the other side went out about two minutes ago.”
“I know. We are working on it now,” said Uri. This is how he kept up the myth of an all-seeing and all-knowing platoon sergeant.
He shook awake the soldier on the bunk next to him: “Call tower one and verify that the lights on the other side went out. Also tell them I am mad that they didn’t call me about it. I am going to wake the Chief. Oh, if they say the lights are on, come in and tell me. And please get the coffee going.”
Uri pushed aside the curtain that separated Lieutenant Noam Shaviv’s closet-sized office from the rest of the bunker. The lieutenant was sitting on his bed, pulling on his boots. He paused for a moment and faced Uri: “What exactly are the reports?”
Uri repeated the reports.
“OK, I’m going to tower one to take a look. Get a couple of guys to come with me. Start a quiet alert. Body armor and combat positions. Alert the company HQ, tell them about my alert orders. Also tell them that I will call from the tower.”
Uri nodded and went to carry out the order. He always marveled at Noam’s ability to wake up when something was going on. He was not surprised to find his commanding officer seemingly wide awake. He had heard him snore only a couple of minutes earlier, but after eleven years together there were few surprises. Uri also trusted his commander’s instincts - they had saved lives in the past. If Noam thought that a full quiet alert was warranted, Uri was sure that it was necessary even though some of the platoon’s soldiers went to sleep less then an hour ago.
***
The Hatzerim airbase near Beersheba, Israel, was busy. For the first time in many years F4 Phantom jets, bought from the U.S. in the late 1960s, were taken out of mothballs and prepped for combat. These were expected to be ready in a couple of days. In the meantime, Kfirs, Israeli-made jets from the seventies that were used for training, were being equipped with weapons and under-the-wing fuel tanks. Other mothballed jets were being prepped along with the old Phantoms. The decision to use old jets had been taken only a couple of hours earlier, at seven in the morning. At that time the Shield had been re-activated, placing Israel back in the real world. The situation was baffling and complex and caution was to be exercised in everything. So said the Prime Minister, and he was not to be trifled with.
It was still June 20, but it was Friday, June 20, 1941. Or so the radio stations coming from outside Israel claimed. Astronomical observation confirmed the displacement. Scientists were still puzzling over how it happened. Arye Kidron had some ideas, which Professor Wisotzky predictably rejected, but there was nothing to be done about it, at least for now.
An announcement to the public had been made through media that could not be readily intercepted by current technology outside of Israel: low power FM radio, TV, Cell phones and the Internet. The announcement was bland and only stated the bare fact of time displacement and the current date.
Amos Nir expected to have to answer questions both in the full cabinet meeting he had called for later in the day and before the legislature at the special session scheduled in the evening and called just for the purpose of questioning him. He had already initiated contacts with opposition leaders in order to set up a national unity government and had charged the Finance and Infrastructure ministers with developing a plan to extend as long as possible the existing fuel and food supplies.
At a Defense Cabinet meeting earlier, Nir decided to take several immediate steps without waiting for the full government to assemble. The scientists didn’t know if or when they would have an explanation for what happened and could not promise a reversal of the time travel incident. For now, the Defense Cabinet had to base its decisions on the assumption that the country was permanently stuck in the past. It was up to the General Staff to execute most of the Cabinet’s immediate orders, with the Security Services and the Police responsible for some.
***
It was three in the afternoon and Gad Yaari was asleep. His secretary had persuaded him that if he did not catch a couple of hours of sleep he would be too tired to make rational decisions.
“You don’t want to end up like Rabin in ‘67 - collapsing from exhaustion and needing to be hospitalized, do you?” Liat asked.
“No, and I will not collapse. Don’t worry.”
“I am not worried, but I can see that you’ll be out soon anyway. So go sleep for a while. I can take care of simple stuff and will wake you up if necessary.”
In his heart he knew she was right and did not argue any more. In less than five minutes he was asleep on the bed in his office. This was a long day and it was not over yet, but at the moment the Chief of General Staff could rest. Orders had been given and other people were busy executing them.
One of the first orders got several jets in the air over Syria to see if they could assist the Australian, Free French and Palmach (elite units of one of the pre-state Israeli armed forces that included Moshe Dayan) who were fighting Vichy French for control of Lebanon and Syria.
The Israelis knew that the French High Commissioner had allowed Luftwaffe planes to land and refuel in his territories on their way to attack the British Occupation Forces in Iraq earlier in 1941. The British feared that the Germans would land in Syria and, using it as a base, take Iraq. This fear was reasonable given the Brit’s limited resources in the area. Their operation Battleaxe in North Africa wasn’t going well and they were under attack and retreating there. Iraq just finished an unsuccessful and barely suppressed pro-Nazi revolt. Losing Iraq would mean losing an important source of oil and giving the Germans control of an important part of the Middle East. It would also raise the specter of a new Arab revolt. The Jerusalem Mufti fomented and supported the pro-Nazi uprising in Iraq, and now, after it was suppressed, was in Germany still stirring up trouble for the British. With the Germans controlling Iraq and Syria, the Arabs would be even stronger and more bothersome.
It was Yaari’s decision to revive and use old planes. They could be supplied with locally manufactured parts – turbine blades being the most important. He decided to save the most advanced planes, the F16s and F15s, for more demanding operations. The replacement of wear parts for these planes was possible but more time and labor consuming. In 1941, a Kfir or an antique Phantom could perform miracles against the opposition. This was being proven now in Syria.
Chapter 3
On June 20, 1941, General Henry Maitland Wilson, Commanding General of the combined forces attacking the Vichy government in Syria and Lebanon, was at his temporary headquarters just south of Beirut, studying the map of the area east of the city. His forces were organizing for a push toward Damascus. The fighting up to this point had been difficult and without surprises. The French resisted and counterattacked but not very effectively. Still, it would take two, maybe three, weeks to defeat them. Allied forces were being re-supplied, and Wilson hoped to continue his advance in a couple of days, after a rest and reorganization. He was worried about Luftwaffe fighters stationed somewhere in Syria. They attacked his artillery, causing damage, and delayed or destroyed several supply columns. He knew that the deeper he got into Syria, the more dangerous those fighters would become: They would be closer to their airstrips and he would be farther from his RAF support. The Vichy planes were also potentially dangero
us.
“Sir, we received a strange radio message.” Wilson’s adjutant saluted and put a slip of paper on the map in front of the general.
“Thank you, Major.” Wilson picked up the paper and carefully, like he always did, read the message. It said:
To: Sir Maitland Wilson General Commanding British forces in Lebanon and Syria
From: Lieutenant General Gad Yaari, Chief of General Staff, Israel Defense Forces, Tel Aviv
Due to an incident beyond our control, the State of Israel from many years in your future has been transported into the here and now. We occupy roughly the territory known to you as Palestine. As a result of this temporal displacement the Palestine as known to you does not exist in this time and space. This means that all of your logistical resources and reserves in Palestine have disappeared.
I realize that this will make your current campaign that much more difficult. We are ready and able to assist you. I assure you that with our help you will be able to finalize this campaign within a week.
To allow us to help you, please contact me on this same frequency using the same code.
Please do not send any reconnaissance missions into our territory. This includes aircraft, ground troops or naval vessels. Any and all such units will be destroyed.
Please give my best regards to Moshe Dayan of the Palmach.
General Wilson looked up at his adjutant: “Is this some kind of joke?”
“Sir, it’s certainly not our joke. The message came in on the HQ command frequency in the code our Jerusalem HQ is using.”
“Major, please take down my orders.”
“Sir!”
“One. Immediately switch to a different code in all our radio communications.
“Two. Send a message to HQ Jerusalem in the emergency code on our alternative frequency. Ask for an explanation of this message.
“I am afraid that we either have a madman or a traitor in Jerusalem or else the Germans have broken our codes.”
After the adjutant left Wilson returned to the map. What a ridiculous notion – finish the campaign in a week, especially with the Luftwaffe and the French fighter planes getting more active and dangerous. Time travel! Definitely a madman. He hoped that this person would be found soon so communications with HQ could get back to normal.
***
“Sir.” It was the major again.
“Yes. What’s new from Jerusalem?”
“We received this message in response to our transmission. As ordered, we transmitted on the secondary frequency and used code Z.” Code Z was high security and considered unbreakable – also a nuisance since it took so long to encode and decode messages.
Wilson took the slip of paper and read the message.
To: General Maitland Wilson
From: General Gad Yaari
I am not surprised that you did not believe my first message. I would not have believed it either. I suggest that we meet. This will remove any doubts you may have and will open the way for cooperation between us. If you will come to the village of Alma ash Shab, my adjutant will meet and escort you to a vantage point that will convince you of my truthfulness.
Please respond on this or any other frequency and feel free to use any code you wish.
General Wilson looked at his adjutant: “Major, what do you make of this?”
“Sir, I am not certain, but there may be something to this message.” The adjutant looked uncomfortable. “I tried to contact the RAF in Jerusalem, but got no response. As a matter of fact, there is no radio traffic from any of our forces in Palestine. Just before I came here we got a report from an Australian patrol on the Palestinian/Lebanese border in the area of Naqoura. They claim to have observed movement of troops in strange looking tanks. As you know, we have no tanks in this area.”
“Very well, major. I need intelligence. Try again contacting the RAF in Palestine. Contact the RAF in Gaza and in Transjordan. Ask them to fly over Palestine - preferably over Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv - and report back as soon as possible. Also send a patrol into Palestine along the Mediterranean coast, from ” - he looked at the map - “ Naqoura. Report as soon as you have anything”.
In the next hour the RAF lost four planes trying to fly over Palestine. Two were lost soon after takeoff from the Gaza aerodrome, and two were shot down when they approached the Jordan River from the direction of Amman. The patrol that left Naqoura was stopped at a checkpoint by strange soldiers and told to turn back. The Australians did not argue – the four menacing tanks, two on each side of the road, the fortifications and the decisive and aggressive, though polite, behavior of the soldiers was very convincing.
***
“Sir, we have information from our patrols.”
“Go ahead major,” Wilson said impatiently.
“The RAF reports that it lost four planes in an attempt to fly over Palestine. Their Group Captain in Amman is not happy, though he lost no pilots. He has a story of one strange fighter intercepting our planes and shooting them down carefully and deliberately. It seems that the same fighter, or an identical one, took down all the Gaza planes as soon as they were airborne. They seem to have had no chance against him. He came out of nowhere at a crazy speed, flew a couple of circles around them and then, when they did not change course, shot them down.
“The motorized patrol was stopped a couple of miles south of Naqoura. They saw strange heavy tanks as well as fortifications. The patrol was turned back by forces in uniforms close to ours in color but of a different cut. They also carried unknown weapons.”
General Wilson did not cherish the idea of asking Cairo for instructions. After all, he was the commander there only a short time ago, but there was no choice. He was stumped by this unusual situation, and Cairo might have additional information.
“Major, please send our exchange with this General Yaari and the intelligence we gathered to General Sir Archibald Wavell in Cairo. Ask him if he has more intelligence on this matter.” Wilson was not going to ask General Wavell for orders directly.
The answer he received was short: “At this time we cannot verify your story and have no intelligence to share. Act as you find necessary. Do not forget your main objective.”
Cairo was obviously preoccupied with Rommel, in no mood to solve mysteries. Wilson decided to send a message directly to this General Yaari character and see what happened. If things were clarified later, he would think again about the invitation to meet.
From: General Wilson
To: General Yaari
As a show of good will I would appreciate if you would destroy the battery of 75mm cannon that have been pounding my forces for the last two hours. Their coordinates follow.
***
Liat woke up Gad Yaari. It was just after six in the afternoon and he felt rested. Several hours of sleep refreshed him enough to feel human again.
“What’s up?” he asked, “and what time is it?”
“It’s 18:14. We finally have a request from Wilson. I transferred a copy to the Air force commander and he is waiting for instructions.”
“Show me the exchange. I also want a report of what’s been happening.”
Major Cohen presented Gad with a couple of pages containing the radio exchange with Wilson and Wilson’s exchange with Cairo HQ as well as a summary of events up to the moment.
“I must say our historians seem to know a lot and the cryptographers are not bad either.”
“Sir, the universities have extensive archives pertaining to WWII, particularly in this region. They knew the military frequencies and some of the codes. The other codes are not very difficult to break if you have powerful computers, or so my husband tells me.” Liat’s husband was a professor of applied mathematics at Tel-Aviv University and supposedly knew what he was talking about.
“I see that the Air Force has the two Kfir jets above Syria as I requested. Please tell them to do as Wilson asked. Remind them that they are not to be seen. They may be heard though.” Gad Yaari smiled.
***
“Sir, we have a report from the Free French.”
“Go ahead, Major.”
“They report that the 75mm battery is gone. It just went up in flames. No friendly planes were in the area. We received another message from General Yaari. He says that if we let his forces know what we need, they’ll take care of it as quickly and efficiently as they did with the artillery battery. He gave us a number of frequencies to use so that field units can request support directly.” Wilson nodded in resignation. “Do as he instructed. Give the information to the Free French as well as to the Australians.”
***
Thomas Harvey, the U.K. ambassador to Israel, was unhappy. His embassy had lost contact with London in the early morning, and contact could not be restored. Now it was noon, and he was to meet with the Israeli Foreign Minister. Harvey suspected that the time travel story as reported on the radio and in the official ministry communiqué was some kind of an elaborate hoax, but he could not figure out why the Israelis would tell such a tall tale. In any case, the Foreign Minister had a lot of questions to answer! Harvey had served in Israel for three years now and was still not sure whether this was a promotion or if there was someone in the Foreign Office who really did not like him. He wasn’t an anti-Semite, he told himself; some of his best friends were Jews. On the other hand, he never really liked Jews either. Objectivity and neutrality were his line.
“Good day, Ambassador,” the Foreign Minister said. His tone of voice was cool. Thomas Harvey thought that the minister did not particularly like him.
“Good day, Minister,” he responded. “I have a number of questions. The first is why are you jamming our radio and telephone to London?” He let his voice show a trace of indignation. The U.K. was not a superpower but it was not third class either and a small country like Israel should show respect.
“Thomas,” the Minister said, “please understand that we are in a state of emergency and I can’t answer questions or, as a matter of fact, give you any information whatsoever. You will use your own sources - which I know you have - to verify the situation. The only thing I can say, emphatically, is that the public announcement about our unfortunate time travel incident described the true state of affairs. Tomorrow we will present the information we have to all the ambassadors. I am sure that the invitation is waiting for you at the embassy. I will be glad to see you tomorrow.” Then he left.
The Shield: a novel Page 2