by Shlomi Tal
Monsieur Du Pont enjoys smoking a cigarette in his spacious office. He relaxes, leaning back in his seat at a massive, well-appointed desk. The few papers on it are collected in three trays that are lined up. There are two ashtrays on the table, one full and the other empty. I presume that the empty one is meant for a guest, who would sit facing Monsieur Du Pont. I sit down and try to put on a calm face despite the storm raging inside me. This office is at least four hundred square feet. It’s a huge rectangular room, almost square, with a bare floor that gives a chilling feeling. A sweet smell of burning tobacco fills the air. Along one wall, there is a double iron cabinet, locked with a hanging bolt. Behind Monsieur Du Pont, there is a portrait of the French president, Pompidou, on the wall. Other than that, there are no decorations on the walls. The room has no windows. In the far corner is a seating area with a low-slung coffee table and three modest armchairs. The entrance is in the middle of the southern wall of the room, and I try and dispel a chilling thought that goes through my mind: Exactly in the direction of Mecca. Monsieur Du Pont has plenty of time. I don’t. I have finished drinking the coffee his secretary served us quite a while ago. I have to get back to Afflalo and find out whether the Mirage parts will come today. If it works out, there is no need to report; in Israel, they take it for granted that we can do anything. Our motto here is, “We do the impossible every day. We only do miracles on the weekends.”
I also have to get back to the embassy to arrange today’s shipment on the El Al flight that is supposed to take off at 8:30 p.m. Instead, I am sitting opposite Monsieur Du Pont, leisurely, as it were, sipping coffee and trying not to show how much I am suffering from his cigarettes. How can he smoke that rubbish? Unfiltered Gauloise. We call them “mattress straw,” and smoke only American cigarettes: mostly Kent and Marlboro. As I mentioned, I stopped smoking about three months ago, but the pressure of this war tickles my throat all the time: “Light up a cigarette and calm down.” Until now I have resisted the temptation. I just hope I will stand firm and not start smoking again.
Now Monsieur Du Pont is waiting for the control tower to give final confirmation of the time of touchdown and finding out whether our aircraft will have to wait before landing. Midday airline traffic is usually not especially heavy. The busy hours at Orly are in the morning or at the end of the day. Is he setting a trap for me? I wonder, in the light of the haughty, self-satisfied expression on Monsieur Du Pont’s face. I feel my hands starting to tremble. I grab my left hand in my right hand and clutch it till it hurts. I discover that the trembling isn’t real, only imaginary. Can Du Pont sense that I am tense and apprehensive? Is he playing cat-and-mouse games with me?
Du Pont breaks the thundering silence. “Monsieur Cohen, you seem concerned. You have nothing to worry about. I am aware of what you transfer every day under the guise of cargo and diplomatic mail. By the way, I want you to know that we call diplomatic mail “ambassadors’ whiskey.” This doesn’t apply only to you, but to all the embassies. I know that if I check out your aircraft—the one that is arriving today or any El Al flight departing from Orly any night—I will be obliged to delay it here with its cargo, and that will certainly cause an international scandal.” I tense up. Again, it seems to me that my hands are trembling. What does he want to tell me here? Is he seeking a bribe? “You know, Monsieur Cohen, we have a serious immigration problem here in France, especially with illegal immigrants who arrive here from the countries of the Maghreb and all over Africa. The majority of them come from countries that were former colonies of France. They cause problems in French society, and I am angry with our government for allowing them to enter. Also for giving them unlimited sums of money, housing subsidies, and work—all of it at our expense, the taxpayers’—instead of sending them to hell. In Israel, you know how to handle these parasites. Although you don’t kill off enough them for my liking! But I am happy and thank God every day for enabling me to help those willing to kill as many Arabs as possible.”
What a relief! I can breathe more easily. That Du Pont is a real racist, and boasts about it in front of a stranger! His help is not given out of love for Mordecai, but for the hatred of Haman! And what a deep hatred. What do I care, the main thing is that, right now, that hatred is beneficial to us.
The phone rings. Du Pont allows it to ring three times before he picks up the call. “Du Pont.” I don’t hear what is said to him, but Du Pont nods to himself several times. Finally, he says “Good,” and hangs up. He writes something on a form and hands it to me. “Landing is approved for 12:15 p.m. It may be a few minutes early or delayed a few minutes because of heavy traffic. I wrote everything here, on the form. El Al will know what to do. Take it to them. There is not a lot of time left, and they have a lot to prepare for this landing. There will also be people who will be surprised that you received this confirmation before anyone of lower rank than myself knew about it, but let me deal with that.”
I thank Monsieur Du Pont and run to El Al. The station manager is out, so I go straight to the operations department. The operations manager looks through the documents and nods to himself. “Itzchaki,” I turn to him, “I want—” “Wait a minute,” he interrupts me and calls somewhere. The moment someone picks up, he carries on speaking as if he had been in the middle of a conversation. “…It lands at 12:15. Takeoff time is 13:25. I got the information just now from the control tower. They are permitting us to add cargo, so prepare ten tons of jumbo platforms. Go on! Move it and get to work.” Itzchaki turns to me and says, “I don’t know what you pulled off upstairs, Yiftach, but they approved adding cargo as well as refueling. There is no sign of the distressed cargo plane that you asked us to register. An aircraft in trouble never gets permission to add freight, especially if we didn’t request it—and you know we didn’t. We have an opportunity to send equipment to Israel and reduce our cargo pressure a little.” Now I feel quite relieved. Bob, the station manager, had told me about an hour earlier that the operations personnel were not in the picture, yet Itzchaki is speaking openly about this plane, and he certainly must know what is in the cargo. Monsieur Du Pont has confirmed that we can add freight, without my even asking! My esteem and gratitude toward Monsieur Du Pont increase all the time.
“Listen here, Itzchaki, I have to get this plane out of here as quickly as possible. I don’t want to try our luck. How long will it take to make that happen?”
“I agree, Yiftach, I don’t want it to stay here a minute more than it has to either. We can’t rely on anyone but ourselves. Let’s understand the procedure: the approved touchdown time on the documents you brought is 12:15 p.m. Let’s assume that everything will go according to schedule (you know that is never the case). If it does touch down at 12:15, add ten to fifteen minutes for taxiing. A parking spot has not yet been decided on—I have to deal with that immediately, in coordination with the control tower. The skies are overcast but I don’t expect weather delays. The net time for refueling is fifty minutes; loading freight should take thirty-five minutes and can be done during refueling. Moving the aircraft to its point of takeoff will take ten to fifteen minutes. We have a slot at 1:25 p.m.—that’s what is written in the confirmation you brought. We will have to work hard. I hope there won’t be any disturbances, but I can list fifty kinds of unexpected disruptions that I am familiar with from past experience. All I can promise is that from the moment the plane door opens in the parking spot after the engines are doused until it closes again before takeoff, no more than fifty-five minutes will go by. If we push it, we can reduce that by five to ten minutes. That is the approximate time frame. The unknown factor is how long the plane will have to wait before taking off. This depends on the number of departures at the time, and there is always an unknown factor for landing—it may also be delayed in reaching its parking place because of busy traffic on the tarmac. Besides all that, the pilot on that jumbo is an American—not an El Al man, but someone on loan to us. He has never landed at Orly and isn’t familiar with the airfield. Let’s hope he wo
n’t make a mistake on one of the turns.”
I rush back to the security officer’s office at lightning speed and call Afflalo.
“You won’t believe this, Yiftach. The ‘frantic’ list has been supplied in full for today. Monsieur Castagne has outdone himself—he called the French Air Force, as you asked. Castagne told me that the man he spoke to is a colonel, who has visited Israel and knows several senior officers in our air force. According to Castagne, the colonel went out of his way to help us. He understood exactly what we wanted and why. We can check him out after the war if we wish. They are now returning a crate the size of a small table that weighs almost one hundred and fifty kilos. It will arrive on a French Air Force helicopter that is luckily flying to their Paris headquarters this evening. Tell the El Al cargo department to be prepared. The problem is that I will receive it immediately from the man at Dassault between seven o’clock and seven thirty this evening at the French Air Force office near Porte Saint-Cloud. From there to Orly is almost a one hour ride because of the traffic on the Boulevard Périphérique at the end of the workday.” Afflalo, contravening all the airport security precautions, is speaking freely. Yes, we are speaking Hebrew, but if the line is tapped, they certainly have translators who will tell everything to whoever they report to, and we have been instructed to behave as if all conversations at El Al and at the embassy are being monitored.
“Afflalo! You’re the best of the best! Let’s talk about it later. Follow up on this story, and we will find a way to fly it out tonight. I also have a lot to get done right now—we’ll talk and plan it all at three o’clock at the embassy. I’ll get there at two thirty. Come there.” I add to myself, if they don’t detain me and that plane full of military gear before then.
“Wait, Yiftach! We are receiving a brown crate that weighs one hundred and fifty kilos that is clearly marked ‘French Air Force.’ You have to think carefully about what we’re doing!”
“It’s fine, it’ll be okay. We’ll manage. Let’s talk at three o’clock.” I hang up the phone before Afflalo can say anything more. I am still astounded at Afflalo’s open talk on the telephone about what is a serious crime, by French standards: We are planning to smuggle French Air Force military equipment to a country on which an embargo has been placed. How many years in prison does one get for something like that? I don’t want to think about it right now.
Emi is already waiting for me. It is a little after eleven o’clock. There is no time to drive to the embassy. I catch up with him about the Regev family and update him on the story of the plane and the shipment on the “frantic” list. Only when I explain the matter of the crate, which contains one hundred and fifty kilos of equipment that actually belongs to the French Air Force and which we are planning to take out of France today, do I begin to absorb the severity of the matter. The Algerian diplomat’s revolver pales in comparison to hijacking French Air Force equipment.
“In my opinion, we have a serious problem. Emi, you know I always see the dark side of things. Imagine that we turn up to collect the crate and walk straight into a cunning trap—we might find the police and all the media waiting for us instead. The newspaper, radio, and television would have a field day. I haven’t told this story to anyone because I don’t want to talk about it on the telephone, but Afflalo talks on the phone as if he is discussing a container of women’s clothing! And we are in another, similar situation: shortly, a loaded jumbo airliner will land here, and somehow, I don’t have a good gut feeling about it. We won’t approach this plane, and we will not tell anyone where we will be, except for Itzchaki from the operations department. Instead, we’ll climb up to the observation deck on the fourth floor and look at the plane like innocent bystanders. If something goes wrong, we will flee to the embassy. I have no desire to land in prison right now. I just hope I won’t have a heart attack before this messy business is over.”
“Calm down, Yiftach. This is all about a war that is raging three thousand kilometers from here. No one in France really gives a hoot about us. Stop getting silly ideas in your head. As to the cargo for the IAF, I suggest that Afflalo should go and collects it. Anyway, the official buyer of the equipment is the IAI. If the French are setting a trap for us, they will arrest Afflalo and then we will see what to do about it. Come, let’s assume that nothing will happen and stop expecting the worst. If something goes wrong, we’ll deal with it. It’s a pity to waste energy on all kinds of wild guesses that may or may not come true. As to the crate, we can’t load it on the plane with ‘French Air Force’ marked on its labels and tags. Since we don’t have time to find new packaging and repack the equipment, we will have to wrap it in brown paper sometime between receiving it and its arrival at the airfield. We can’t send it as freight, only as DIP. Because of its weight, we have to arrange for four or five men to load it on the vehicle and then on the plane. The loading has to be done quickly, because there will certainly be observers watching everything we put on this aircraft. Besides that, we must find a quiet secluded spot, far from inquisitive eyes, where we can transfer the crate from Afflalo’s vehicle to our new El Al one that we received from Damian. We’ll have to check that Afflalo is permitted to drive the El Al vehicle, which is authorized to enter the airfield. That will save us having to move the heavy crate from one vehicle to another. Everything has to be carried out at maximum speed, as takeoff cannot be delayed. Have I forgotten anything?”
“No, you haven’t forgotten anything. But there are some other problems. The crate may weigh a hundred and fifty kilos, but what are its dimensions? Can it even be loaded on a 707? Perhaps we can delay the flight for thirty minutes to an hour to have enough time to load it. Or it might be worth asking Afflalo to check with the air force in Israel to see if the dispatch can be left for tomorrow. Then we could manage to repack the crate so that it doesn’t have ‘French Air Force’ written all over it. These are issues we won’t be able to discuss on the phone. As soon as we finish here, once the jumbo takes off for Israel without any hitches and without us being arrested, we’ll go back to the embassy and check all of this out. Let’s find out now from the operations department at El Al when our jumbo is due to land and then go upstairs to the observation deck and grab something to eat. There is nothing for us to do here except watch and pray that everything goes well. It’s too late to change anything—the snowball is already rolling down the slope and gathering speed.”
At this moment, I remember that I didn’t ask the operations department for the flight number of the jumbo. We use the flight number when we call to find out time of arrival for a particular plane. Without the flight number, I can’t call and ask what is happening to our jumbo, so we have to go there and see for ourselves.
A few minutes later, we are there. We are told that everything is in order. The plane is arriving a little early, but landing has been permitted at 12:06 p.m., and it will park at Delta (the symbol for the letter D) 13. Thirteen? I’m not superstitious, but today… Why thirteen? Itzchaki, who is pleased with himself, tells us that everything is ready for the touchdown. They will be loading an additional twenty-two tons of cargo over and above what the plane is carrying now. “You will have less to fight about today—we will send cargo for a full 707 load! We will save a lot of space! Isn’t that lovely?” Itzchaki rejoiced.
“How come there is so much free space on the aircraft? Didn’t we load it to full capacity in the United States?” I inquire. I add, “Also, look at the map of the airfield for Delta 13 so that we can position ourselves correctly on the deck to observe our plane.”
Itzchaki points to the Delta 13 point on the map as he explains. “If they had loaded the aircraft to full capacity, it would have been forced to refuel on the way; that, as you know, wasn’t possible because there wasn’t anywhere to do that. It is only four hours flying time from here to Israel, and that will require a lot less fuel than the flight from the United States. That’s why we can add cargo. I already have all the details of the cargo that was loaded on the plane
in the United States. We will add exactly six pallets, which will take less than fifteen minutes. Don’t even ask! At first they thought of delaying the aircraft here so that it would reach Israel at night—that would help it avoid possible Egyptian and Syrian attempts to bomb it at the Tel Aviv airport or shoot it down on the way. But we didn’t agree to hold the plane here for longer than necessary. Its destination is Tel Aviv airport, but I can tell you that it will actually touch down at the Ramat David air base. They have needed this urgent cargo there since, like, the day before yesterday. Two Mirages will escort the plane from Cypress until it lands.” That scoundrel Itzchaki knows everything! He looks happy and excited. If we didn’t restrain him, he would continue telling us stories. Where does he get his happy-go-lucky attitude? I’m about to have a heart attack from anxiety and apprehension, and Itzchaki couldn’t be happier.
Touchdown is coming closer, so Emi and I go up to the observation deck. We won’t be able to talk about any classified information there—who knows who may hear us. We have to whisper, hoping that no one is listening to us or can guess that we are speaking Hebrew. We can get away with this because of the terrible noise of airplanes taxiing in the area below the observation roof.
As soon as we enter the roof verandah, we see Monsieur X. That’s what we call this man who appears there every morning, approximately half an hour after an El Al plane lands. He sits alone on the roof at a table, watching the planes arriving from Israel, occasionally glancing at his copy of Le Figaro lying in front of him on the table. Monsieur X departs immediately after the flight takes off to return to Israel, at around eight o’clock in the evening. In other words, he spends the whole day here, from the time it opens at six thirty in the morning till eight o’clock in the evening. Monsieur X certainly isn’t just some innocent observer who comes to watch takeoffs and landings. Of course, we had reported this man and had tried to guess what he was doing here. Does he represent some espionage organization from a country that wants to know what happens with El Al planes in wartime? Perhaps Monsieur X comes to observe what we are loading on the aircraft, or even who is flying to Israel at such a time. And he is so obvious—is that meant to deceive us? Do they want us to recognize the man and follow him, allowing someone else—someone we haven’t noticed—to do the secret undercover work?