Promised Land

by Martin Fletcher

  He leafed through his notes. Although Mossad’s brief was to operate against Israel’s enemies outside its borders, that blurred when those external enemies operated inside Israel. Some of the Palestinian infiltrators were disguised Syrian regular soldiers; worse, Moscow was pushing Syria to be more belligerent. Mossad believed Moscow was playing the long game. The more Syria confronted Israel, the more Syria would need the support of Russia. And what Russia most wanted was a dependent state in the Middle East, an Arab pawn in the Cold War.

  When Israel’s French-made Dassault warplanes shot down the six Soviet MIGs flown by Syrian pilots it was a slap in the face of the communists. A victory of West over East. Moscow warned Jerusalem about “possible consequences” of more confrontations with Syria.

  Which made it clearer than ever that if war erupted, Israel needed to strike first, or the Soviet-backed armies of Syria, Egypt, and possibly Jordan could overwhelm tiny Israel, which had only reluctant American support.

  Israel’s dilemma was that America insisted it have a good reason, some Arab provocation, to strike first. That was what Peter needed to discuss with agents in the north, before a defense ministry briefing he was to give the next day in Tel Aviv with the head of Mossad, Meir Amit.

  Amit wanted ammunition to prove that Israel could not afford to wait. So far, Peter didn’t have it. Nor did he understand why Amit wanted it: Did Israel want war, or did Israel want to avoid war?

  If that was a tricky question, it was just a tease for his next mission that would require a much more delicate touch: to persuade a love-struck seventeen-year-old girl to go home, or at least to come back with him to Tel Aviv. For now he was more convinced than ever that Alice Wilson was in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the afternoon meetings guards had brought him a shackled Palestinian fighter. He had been captured inside Israel in an army ambush weeks earlier, and told interrogators that his final instructions before crossing into Israel had been given by a Syrian army officer and a Russian adviser.

  The fuse was burning. Israel had to act.

  He had to act quickly with Alice too. Half the terrorist attacks came through Jordan, the border of which was a few hundred yards from the fields of her kibbutz. His American ward was most definitely in harm’s way.

  The only problem was she was in love, and she wasn’t too shy to say so. He discovered that when he tracked her down to her bare room in the volunteers’ quarters. There was little more than a table, the wooden chair he sat on, and the single bed where she lay studying Hebrew. She was delighted to see him but quickly added that Ido could come at any moment and if he did, she asked with a blush, would Peter mind leaving them alone for a while?

  Yes, he would mind, definitely, but he was so taken aback by the girl’s brazenness that he could only say, “How often does Ido come here? After all, he’s in the army.” Maybe he should have a word with Ido’s commanding officer, get him confined to base.

  “Not often, he can’t get away from his base. He said maybe he could come today.”

  “You had a good drive up with him?”

  “Yes. We took the bus.”

  “How was that?”

  “We held hands.” She giggled. Anything else? he wondered.

  “I’m trying to learn the Hebrew alphabet, but it’s so hard. These letters are crazy, all squiggles and dots.” Alice rolled her eyes as she held up her exercise book. “I’m on letter daled. After a week I’m four letters into the alphabet. Pathetic! But I like working in the bananas. Look,” she said, flexing her biceps, “I’m a farmer now.”

  He wondered how best to phrase his demand, though he knew it was doomed. “Alice, I know you like it here, but there have been so many terrorist attacks around here lately, and shells from Syria, there’s a buildup of military just in the last week, anything could happen, so I think, Alice, it would be better if you left here for a while and came back with me to Tel Aviv. Just for a bit, Alice. You can come back as soon as it’s quiet again.” His sad smile showed he felt for her, but regretfully there was no choice.

  Her body drooped, her eyes reddened, her lips quivered. “I thought you just came to say hello.”

  “I did. That too. But, also to bring you back to town. Just until it’s safe. I’m responsible for you, Alice, I promised your parents.” Such a pity, such a lovely, spirited girl. She looked so disappointed, but it was for her own good. She would understand.

  “Well, I’m not coming, forget it. No way. Not a chance. I don’t care what you say. I love it here. And I love Ido. I won’t leave him. If all these families can stay here with their little children, I can stay here too. If it’s safe for them, it’s safe for me. I’m not coming. I’ll tell my parents myself.”

  For an instant Peter felt like grabbing her by the arm and dragging her to the car. But with her set jaw, her wild eyes, and shaking her little fists, he suddenly saw who Alice reminded him of: Diana, at her most stubborn. That’s exactly what his wife would have said. He was facing a teenage Diana with an American accent. He wished he had known Diana when she was seventeen. He wished she hadn’t died so young, just thirty-four. Twice this girl’s age. He stared at Alice.

  “What?” she said.

  “I was just wondering what I’ll say to your mother.”

  “Don’t say anything. Nothing has happened, don’t make an issue of something that may never happen.”

  Wise words, he thought. Seventeen, going on thirty. Lucky Ido.

  On cue, there was a light tap on the door, and in he walked, in olive fatigues. Ido’s face lit up in surprise. “Peter. Fantastic. What are you doing here?” He crossed the room in two steps and fell onto the bed next to Alice, went to take her hand but thought better of it.

  Peter smiled. He didn’t miss a thing. “How’s the army?” he said.

  Ido glanced briefly at Alice. “Fine. Quiet.”

  Peter nodded. Good for Ido, no need to boast. At the briefing he had been told the name of the squad leader who had caught the terrorist and protected a wounded prisoner. It had filled him with pride in the new generation, though he hadn’t revealed that Ido was his nephew. Now he thought, Ido deserves this sweet girl. He’s a soldier, anything could happen, at any time. And frankly, she deserves him. He contemplated them for a moment. “I’m going to find a room,” Peter said, “I’ll stay over for the night. I leave early for Tel Aviv. Will you still be here in, say, an hour?” He’d give them that.

  “No, I have to get right back. I just dropped by to see if Alice needed anything. Hebrew lessons, you know?”

  “Yes, I know. Alice, what’s the fifth letter of the alphabet, what comes after daled?”

  “Hey, I don’t know. I guess I’m about to find out.” She took Ido’s hand and winked at Peter.

  He winked back, and wished he hadn’t. “I’ll be back in an hour,” he said, closing the door.

  * * *

  A lot can happen in an hour, but it didn’t. As they kissed, sitting back against the wall, Ido applied gentle pressure on Alice’s shoulders, until they were lying on the bed. He managed to open Alice’s shirt, his hands found her bra clasp, but she wriggled away. “Please don’t,” she whispered. He kissed her throat with open lips and darting tongue, making her shiver. “Just this,” he murmured, slipping his hand beneath her bra, cupping her firm warm breast and hard little nipple. “Don’t worry, just this,” he repeated as she settled against him, returning his kisses.

  “I could stay like this forever,” Ido sighed in Alice’s ear, his warm breath tickling her so that she giggled and pulled away. “Me too,” she said, “but you’re tickling me. Look, feel this.” She raised her head and blew gently into his ear. “Mmm, good,” he said, sliding his fingers into the waistband of her jeans, excited by the firmness of her curves. She pulled his hand away. He probed for minutes, now at her side, now at the base of her spine, gaining an inch here, half an inch there, pressing against her on the lumpy single bed. “There’s something sticking into me,” she said, moving away.

/>   “It isn’t me!” Ido shouted with a laugh.

  “No, feel this, it’s a lump in the mattress, at night I have to arrange myself around it.”

  “Let me,” Ido said, and punched and poked until the lump had gone, the clump of fiber now evenly distributed. “That’s better,” Alice laughed, spreading herself across the bed. “My hero, come here.”

  “Oh, no,” he said sharply, looking at his watch. “I have to get back to base.” He adjusted his pants and tucked in his shirt. “I’m not really supposed to be away.”

  “To be continued.”

  “I can’t wait. I’ll come back soon.” Clasping her buttocks, he kissed her until they could barely breathe, and left.

  But Ido did not see Alice again soon. That same night his brigade was ordered south, where army intelligence showed Egypt was building up its forces in the Sinai Peninsula.

  PETER and ARIE

  TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

  May 17, 1967

  The reason nobody understood what Egypt’s president was planning was because Nasser himself had no idea; he was swept along by events, and so was Israel.

  Incited by Soviet claims that Israel was amassing troops on Syria’s border, and the Syrian president’s panicked reaction to the shooting down of his six MIGs, Nasser made a historic miscalculation: he expelled the three and a half thousand peacekeepers of the United Nations Emergency Force who since the 1956 war had acted as a buffer between Egypt and Israel. Worse, to relieve supposed Israeli pressure on Syria’s border, and hoping to satisfy his Soviet mentors, Nasser ordered troops and tanks into Sinai to distract Israel’s attention from Syria.

  In days, six hundred Egyptian tanks and fifty thousand men were massed in the sweltering desert dunes within miles of Israel’s almost open border. Arab radio broadcasts rejoiced in the imminent slaughter of the Jews.

  The boys had just gone to bed when Peter got the call to return to Mossad headquarters ASAP. He didn’t get back home for four all-but-sleepless-nights.

  That first night at the Office Meir Amit outlined to his section heads their urgent challenge. “Until now,” Amit said, “we thought Nasser was bluffing. But now it looks like the lunatic really thinks he is the leader of the Arab world, and he may attack us. We know his military capability is limited, and he has overreached himself. Our military has a plan which will work. Our challenge now is diplomatic and tactical, and in some sense it is contradictory. We need to advise the government on the optimal moment to attack Egypt, while considering another key question, how to keep America on our side. That is what the prime minister needs from us.”

  Peter broke the momentary silence. “The army wants to attack now, the sooner the better. The prime minister wants to wait until we have American approval, however long it takes. We need to find the balance. Correct?”

  “Exactly,” Amit said. “It puts us in great danger. We know that the Egyptian army has attack plans of their own. We need to let the enemy build up on our border until the world understands we have no choice, but we also have to attack first. It’s extremely delicate and complex. We call this an anticipatory counteroffensive. It’s all about the timing. The generals only care about annihilating the Egyptian army. But Eshkol also cares about who will support us the day after. Nobody wants another Suez, where we won the battle and lost the war.”

  But as Peter’s team mined their agents and sources, it seemed that armed conflict may not be inevitable. As politicians bickered and the military blustered, the intelligence agencies struggled to come up with proof that Nasser really wanted war.

  By the next afternoon, a secret source in the Egyptian operations room had delivered his army’s battle orders showing the Egyptian divisions in Sinai were drawing up for defense, not offense. Radio communications monitored by Israeli signals intelligence confirmed this, as did reports from elite reconnaissance units of the Israeli army on the ground in Egypt’s Sinai desert, among them, Captain Ido Nesher.

  The recommendation of Peter’s section then was not to rush to judgment, there was still an opportunity to avoid armed conflict. But the next evening they were overtaken by events.

  Damascus had mobilized fifty battalions, Iraq sent army brigades closer to Jordan’s border: next stop could be Israel. The governments of Kuwait, Yemen, and Algeria announced they were ready to send planes and men to help Egypt and Syria. Egypt was still pouring men across the Suez Canal into Sinai, and Syria continued to pour cannon fire into Israel’s northern settlements.

  If Nasser was bluffing, it was one hell of a bluff. Under furious pressure from the army, the Israeli government decided it could not risk a surprise attack by the Arabs and took a decisive step: a general mobilization of reserves. Every half hour radio announcers read out code names of units being called up: Silver Lining, Wedding March, Gates of Salvation, Peace and Greetings, and more. Electricians downed their tools, grocers closed their stores, teachers walked out of class as the citizen army of Israel rushed home to swap slacks and shirts for army fatigues, kiss their spouses and children good-bye, grab their guns, and gather at their preplanned collection points.

  Once mobilized, little Israel could not afford to stay mobilized for long. It had to attack or stand down before the economy came to a standstill. The pressure was on.

  Then it got worse.

  Declaring that “No Israeli ship will ever navigate it again,” President Nasser closed the waters of the Straits of Tiran, Israel’s southern lifeline, its gateway to Asia and Africa. Jerusalem had long considered any move to block the Red Sea a causus belli.

  The public was frightened, the borders seemed to be closing in, there was a sense of suffocation. Israel could not let it stand, but its leaders were riven by doubt.

  The word was that Ben-Gurion, in his desert refuge, believed Israel could not win. General Harkabi at the Defense Ministry feared even if Israel won, ten thousand could die. America was more optimistic. The CIA station chief in Tel Aviv assessed Israel could defeat any combination of Arab armies in six to ten days. But Washington let it be known that if Israel attacked first, and without good reason, America could support Egypt.

  With the public losing confidence in their prime minister, Eshkol’s military adviser besieged Mossad with calls. The prime minister was under pressure to resign and had to know: Should the general mobilization become total mobilization for war, or the opposite, should the reserves stand down and go home? War or peace? He needed information on Arab intentions, now.

  With the country on the edge of total war, the government in chaos, and still no clear conclusion after four straight days of frenzy in the Office, Peter took a break and walked home, sucking in fresh air, giddy from fatigue. He hadn’t seen Tamara in a week, and he missed her. He hadn’t even been able to take her calls, the pressure was unprecedented. He had never felt such a weight of responsibility for the lives of his family and his countrymen. The gloom in the city further weighed on him. In cafés people argued and cursed, pausing only to listen to the hourly radio news. Newspapers reported there were two kinds of craven types: those hoarding food and those fleeing the country. Passing a group of elderly men around two tables, he overheard snippets: “Isn’t it hard enough here already, I can’t afford sugar in the coffee, for this I survived.” A different voice said, “And now there’s another war. Like a hole in the head I need this crazy place.”

  Peter would have paused to listen more if he had the energy, but all he wanted was to hurry home and sleep. He needed six hours, and then he’d go back to work. At seven o’clock in the morning he needed to give a report to Amit on the plans of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, who were manning positions abandoned by the UNEF troops; he had three agents among them. Peter’s Palestinian report was a small contribution to the bigger issue: If there was war, would it be just with Egypt or Syria? Or both? With or without Jordan, the Palestinians, Lebanon, Iraq? Amit would present Mossad’s analysis to the prime minister in Jerusalem at ten o’clock.

  Meanwhile rumors were lea
king from the defense ministry in Tel Aviv that something was up with the chief of staff. Was Yitzhak Rabin really having a nervous breakdown, was the stress too great for him? If this warrior couldn’t take it, how could the country? It seemed inconceivable, but could Israel lose?

  Could Israel face annihilation? Could the whole glorious adventure be doomed, after only nineteen years? Arab armies mobbing the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Ashdod? Cutting the throats of his children? Raping the women? As he approached his apartment building in the early evening Peter shook his head. Get a grip. Get some sleep. It’ll all look different at dawn. Or rather, when he had to get up, at two o’clock at night.

  Diana was at Rachel’s, and Noah and Ezra were at the youth movement clubhouse where they spent hours every day with their friends. He wrote a note telling them not to wake him up, stuck it onto the fridge, always the twins’ first port of call, set his alarm and had a long cold shower. That freshened him enough to put on shorts and a T-shirt and sit on the narrow balcony to enjoy the air and listen to the radio. He’d hear the news and then go to bed.

  Within a minute a familiar bulky figure came striding through the trees, looking up to his apartment. Peter waved. “Arie,” he called out, “what brings you here, you’re lucky I’m home. Come up.” He was glad to see him, he hadn’t seen his brother in weeks. He poured some juice from the fridge, scanning the small apartment for signs of Tamara. Arie’s heavy footsteps took the stairs two at a time. “What’s up with him,” Peter wondered, and quickly found out.

  Arie was shouting even as he entered the room, drowning out the radio. He went straight to Peter and pushed him with two hands, so that Peter stumbled against the table. “You ben zonah! You son of a whore!” he yelled, waving his fist into Peter’s face, “you’re screwing my wife!”