Herman Wouk - The Glory

by The Glory(Lit)

  She started off smoothly. As the car passed the soldier who had made the fuss, he shook a reproving finger at them. "The road's better from here on," she said, "and the scenery's truly lovely." She drove carefully through the town, and spoke again when they were on asphalt highway, bowling along at a hundred twenty. "My God, what a glorious sensation. You'll have to let Noah drive this car one day."

  "Glad to. Are you and he getting married?"

  "Elohim, no. I've got more than a year of sadir to do, and God knows whether I want to marry a naval officer, anyway. I've had the military, up to here." She put a flat hand to her throat, and threw back her head in a wild laugh. "I just like him." Traffic was light, but there were trucks and horse-drawn wagons to pass. Daphna did so with nervy skill, concentrating on her driving. The play of her shapely thighs under the tight army skirt, as she worked brake and accelerator, caught Dzecki's attention and held it.

  "I look forward to meeting Noah."

  "Oh, you will." She gave him a quick glance. "You resemble each other, you know? Same round face. Same hairline and thick hair, same brown eyes. The Berkowitz face, I guess. General Barak also has it. He's the best-looking man I've ever met, though he's going gray."

  "Like to meet him, too," mumbled Dzecki a bit thickly, watching Daphna's legs thrusting and rolling this way and that. Daphna was oblivious to this hot scrutiny of her limbs, or seemed to be, and he enjoyed the frustrating pleasure all the way to Jericho.

  Unlike Nablus, where he had felt obscurely uncomfortable, Jericho charmed him. As the Porsche descended the winding mountain road toward the little city of palms, he felt a touch of awe. Jericho... Shechem... Hebron... Jordan...the Dead Sea... Far from religion though he was, Dzecki had breathed in with the American air veneration for these Holy Land sights. The pileup of busses, the tourists led about in clusters by guides, did not bother him here. The Jericho Arabs seemed friendlier, or at least not sullen and withdrawn as in Nablus. In fact the hucksters in the market stalls, chaffering with camera-laden Americans, were all smiles and gracious gestures.

  "Tell you what," said Daphna, "we'll feed you first, then have a look around. You like humus and tehina?"

  "Love it."

  "You'll really love Abdul's. Best in Jericho."

  She deftly turned and twisted through streets that even the small Porsche could barely scrape through. "Here we are." Beside a moss-encrusted low stone building, she pulled into a grassy plot. Shouldering gun and purse, she led him into a dark small eating place. "Too late for breakfast, too early for

  lunch," she said. "Nice, no other customers. I'll order for you."

  "You're not going to eat?"

  "Not me. Had a big breakfast." She rattled in Arabic at a fat aproned man behind the counter, and almost at once he smilingly served the humus with a basket of warm pitas and a bowl of olives. "Hearty appetite," she said. "I'll go and get the tank filled. It's a long way to Hebron."

  "I've got to be with you in the car, no?"

  "Pah! We're not on the highway. There are no cops in these back alleys." Dzecki shrugged, and she left. He scooped up all the humus and tehina with the pitas, washed it down with a beer, and was beginning to feel very good and relaxed when Daphna showed up, a man in a blue police uniform following her into the shop.

  "You own the Porsche this lady was driving, Adoni?" the policeman asked him.

  "Yes, any problem?" Dzecki tried for a light tone.

  "It will be impounded. Please follow me," said the policeman, producing a notebook and going out.

  Dzecki and Daphna looked at each other for a long moment, and she said softly in English, "Sorry, Dzecki. Sorry, sorry, sorry."

  A sad laugh broke from him. "What you mean is, 'Ani mitzta'er.' "

  She looked puzzled, then her face brightened, and she ruefully laughed too. "Just so. Only feminine, Ani mitzta'eret. Me and the Mekhess, hah? Noah will kill me for this."

  "No problem," he said, "let's just hope Guli isn't in Switzerland."

  2

  The Telephone Call

  "Green rocket to starboard," called the lookout on the flying bridge of the Eilat.

  Pale in the setting sun, the rocket was arcing straight up into the sky over Port Said, beyond the horizon some thirteen miles away. The captain was dozing in his wheelhouse chair. Noah was navigating, checking bearings so as to stay well in international waters. The destroyer was slowly steaming the dogleg course in sight of the high Sinai dunes, which it had been patrolling turn by turn with the Jaffa for months. Shabbat routine, and the off-duty crew were sleeping, reading, or taking showers.

  Noah's eye was at the alidade but his mind was on Daphna Luria, as it had been since they left port. What a rotten break, their cancelled Friday date! She had demurely told him, in one of their long telephone calls, that a girlfriend in Afula was going skiing in Austria, and had given her the key to her flat, where there were marvellous rock-and-roll records. That was all, but from the heated husky note in her voice, and from picturing the rest, Noah had been in a joyous fever for days. At last, at last... of all times for the damned Jaffa to lose an engine...

  "What's this? Rocket to starboard?" The captain jumped from his chair, went out on the wing, and trained binoculars

  at a yellow light blossoming high in the sky. After a long moment he said, "Noah, what do you think?"

  Noah was reluctant to believe his eyes, yet there it was, floating like a starshell but growing bigger. "By my life, they really may have fired one, Captain."

  "It's possible. Battle stations, Noah."

  Darting into the wheelhouse, the exec seized the microphone. "Emdot krav, emdot krav." ("Battle stations, battle stations.") The siren wailed, and sailors came swarming and yelling out of hatches and passageways and up ladders, some half-dressed, some naked but for shorts, pulling on life jackets as they ran. "Azakah, azakah." ("Alarm, alarm.") This was the emergency order to fire at will. The AA guns opened up at the swelling light with a deafening rat-tat-tat and streams of red tracers.

  "Left full rudder. All engines ahead flank." The captain's voice went strident. He took the microphone from Noah. "Now all hands, this is the captain. TEEL. [MISSILE.] I say again, TEEL, TEEL, TEEL to starboard."

  Through Noah's binoculars a small black shape became discernible in the yellow glow. One count against that son of a whore, Colonel Fischer, the Egyptians could fire a missile, all right. Now, was it really bound to malfunction because it was Russian? Intelligence said that this Soviet weapon, dubbed the Styx, was subsonic and radar-directed. That was all. Nobody in Israel, or indeed in the West, had yet seen a Styx fired. This was a first, a historic revelation.

  "Look, Noah, isn't it altering course?"

  "I believe so, sir."

  The ship was heeling hard over, scoring a white curve on the crimson sunset sea, and the yellow light appeared to be turning with it. Its guidance radar was working, then. It was clear to see now in binoculars, a long delta-winged tube shooting reddish-yellow fire from its tail and trailing black smoke. The ship's guns rattled and boomed, crimson tracers combed the missile, but on it came. The evasive turn was futile, Noah realized, merely swinging the ship broadside to present a wider target. He plunged to grab his life jacket as the missile started its dive, and had it half on when a shocking CRASH! catapulted him across the deck of the wheelhouse. His head struck a projection, he saw broken lights, and all went black...

  "You okay now, Lieutenant?" The helmsman was helping him to his feet. Putting a hand to his head, Noah felt warm sticky blood. His vision was misty and his head painfully throbbed. He peered around at the steeply listing wheelhouse, a chaos of overturned instruments, shattered glass, and tumbled books and charts. The wheel was swinging free, unattended.

  "What the devil! Get back to that helm, Polski."

  "Sir, it's no use, the rudder hasn't responded since we got hit, and-"

  "Rocket to port." A soprano yell full of fright.

  Shouts rose everywhere, and staggering out on a
wing, Noah saw smoke and flame all over the ship and many arms pointing to a new light in the darkening sky. The Eilat was port beam to this second missile, and the captain stood staring at the expanding yellow eye, eerily reflected on the glassy sea.

  "Captain, can't we maneuver with engines? We're broadside to again-"

  "Ah, good, you're on your feet, but Elohim, you're a bloody mess! Maneuver? How? I have no rudder, Noah, only one engine, and I can't contact them below. God knows how many were killed. Sure you're all right? You were kaput for quite a while-"

  "I'm okay. By God, sir, that thing's going into its dive."

  "I see it. Hit the deck," shouted the captain, "nothing else to do now."

  Descending through sparse gunfire, the second missile threw up a towering splash. Noah fell prone on cold metal, an explosion made the whole ship ring like a giant gong, and he felt it as a brutal blow on his chest and arms. Stumbling back to his feet, he saw a smoky column of new red fire rising amidships. Crewmen were running about and yelling, others were picking up the wounded. The power hum that was the ship's breath of life had suddenly ceased. The Eilat was a dead listing drifting hulk.

  Getting up from the deck, the captain said to Noah in a curiously calm way over the clamor of the sailors, "We'll have to abandon ship."

  "Why? We can call for help, Captain. Helicopters can be here in fifteen minutes and-"

  The captain shook his head. "Don't you know our radio gear is out? Goldstein worked on it and we tried and tried, but we couldn't raise the army in Sinai, let alone Haifa HQ. The current is setting us toward Port Said, Noah. I've dropped the anchors, but they aren't holding-"

  "All the same, we can stay afloat for hours yet, sir, and keep the crew together until -"

  "Until what? The magazines can go anytime, and I have a lot of helpless wounded to think about. Look at those fires-"

  "Sir, I think Goldstein and I can jury-rig a radio." Improvising an emergency set had been a classroom problem at which Noah had excelled, in an electronics course for officers.

  "You can?" The captain gnawed his lips. "How long would it take you?"

  "If we find the components, maybe twenty, thirty minutes. It's our best chance, sir. Otherwise the navy won't know for hours, maybe all night, what's happened to us-"

  "Give it a try. But fast."

  Scrounging in the wrecked radio room by flashlight, he and the handy little radioman Goldstein assembled tubes, wires, and batteries into a messy tangled contraption, its range for sending and receiving a total guess. A bright moon shone on the burning ship, down hard by the stern and listing more and more, when Noah commenced calling, "IHS Eilat here. Mayday, Mayday. We are sinking. Request immediate help."

  Low crackling in the receiver, nothing more. Beaming toward Sinai, the radioman kept sweeping the crude antenna from north to south and back to north, while Noah repeated wearily, "All Zahal units in Sinai. IHS Eilat calling. Mayday, Mayday. Does anyone hear us?"

  He and Goldstein were crouched by the anchor windlass at the bow, signalling from the highest spot on the foundering Eilat. Smoke still rose from flickering fires all over the ship, though the worst blazes had burnt out. The crew was crowded on the steeply inclined forecastle, where the wounded lay groaning in rows on the deck. Everything that could float - not only rafts but spare life jackets, wooden cupboards, empty oil drums - was piled higgledy-piggledy at the lifelines, for most of the boats were smashed. Any hope short of abandoning ship now lay in the makeshift radio. Twenty minutes, and still no human voice had punctuated the weak static.

  Noah had too much time to think, in the long agonizing wait. What a horror this was, his ship sinking under him, so many dead boys in the engine room, the terrible lineup of injured, moaning, crying sailors along the forecastle deck; himself half-numb from the shock of his own still-bleeding head wound, his mind drifting in and out of the nightmare amid dreamy thoughts of Daphna...

  "IHS Eilat here. Mayday, Mayday. We are sinking-"

  Barks of laughter from the radio. Noah's heart leaped as he came alert. A harsh tumble of Arabic, then crackling silence.

  "What the devil was all that?" the captain asked.

  " 'Go ahead and drown,. Jews, and sink to hell,' " said Noah.

  The captain cursed.

  Noah said, "Sir, sir, now at least we know we're transmitting. It's a break-"

  Looking around at the jammed forecastle, his eyes puffed half-shut, the captain pointed aft, where dark waves were lapping over the canted fantail. He hoarsely exclaimed, "Noah, I've got to get my wounded off, and if we don't -"

  A deep voice, calm and friendly, in clear Hebrew: "This is army unit Aleph Dalet Three in Sinai. We receive you, Eilat. Go ahead."

  "Oh God! Captain, hear that?" cried Noah. Never in his life would anything sound as sweet or dear to him, he thought, as that response in Hebrew.

  "I heard it, I heard it, keep talking to him-"

  "Sinai, Sinai, do you receive me clearly?"

  "Hiuvi, hiuvi [Affirmative, affirmative], Eilat. Go ahead."

  "Sinai, we're northeast of Port Said, thirteen and a half miles out, clearly visible by moonlight. Hit by two missiles, on fire and sinking. Many wounded and dead. Two anchors down, drifting toward Egypt. Danger of being captured. Abandoning ship." "

  "Ruth [Roger], Eilat. All authorities will be alerted. Rescue helicopters will come. Keep in contact."

  With his battery-powered bullhorn the captain roared this news to the crew. Cheers rose on the forecastle.

  Taking the wounded off forced terrible choices on the ship's doctor, Noah, and the captain, as to who should go in the remaining boats, who on rafts, who in life jackets; quick cold-blooded decisions about the seriousness of injuries and the chances of men living through the night. At the order Abandon ship the boats full of the worst wounded were lowered, the crew threw everything floatable overboard, and then began sliding down ropes or leaping into the sea. The officers went last.

  Noah's naked legs were plunging into cool water when he heard yells in the dark around him, "Teel, teel." Over the ship's bow, now black and steep against the stars, another yellow glare showed. He remembered to turn on his back. The explosion threw up a black fountain of water that foamed white in the moonlight. The crack! all along Noah's spine was like being hit by a speeding car. Then he thought he must be delirious, because it seemed he heard singing. Pulling himself up with searing pain on a floating jerrican, he saw shadowy sailors nearby clustered on a raft, raising discordant defiant voices:

  Jerusalem of gold,

  Of bronze and of light...

  Seven time zones to the west, General Zev Barak at this moment was reviewing the navy requisitions for missile countermeasures, which had arrived at the Israeli Embassy in Washington by diplomatic pouch that morning. The military attach‚ was a prematurely gray officer in his early forties, an older heavier Noah, with lighter skin and bushier eyebrows. Noah had been beseeching his father by telephone for help. Now that the papers were in hand Zev Barak felt he could act. Procurement of such secret electronic gear would be tough at best, but he thought he might argue that countermeasures, being purely defensive gadgets, should not be embargoed as weaponry. The Pentagon was being damned obdurate on major replenishment long overdue. This might be a bone it would throw to Israel.

  He pulled a greenish pad from a drawer and began a rapid scrawl in Hebrew of a draft memorandum. Unlike so much of the humdrum paperwork in this assignment, here at least was a labor of love, a way to be of use to his son out on the firing line. Barak was not happy in this job. He had never been. During his brief visit to Jerusalem after the great victory, the Minister of Defense had told him, "What you accomplished in Washington, lev, was worth two brigades in the field." Coming from Moshe Dayan that was something, but words were easy. Barak's army contemporaries who had fought the war had leaped ahead on the maslul, the career track toward General Staff posts, sector commands, and the grand prize of Ramatkhal, Chief of Staff. Nothing Dayan said could chan
ge that. In earlier missions to Washington, Barak had earned a reputation of deftness at handling Americans, which now was proving a trap.

  Writing up the memorandum absorbed him until his intercom buzzed. "General, your lunch with the Assistant Secretary is at twelve-thirty."

  "L'Azazel, thanks, Esther." Finishing the draft would have to wait. He slipped on his army topcoat and drove to the Pentagon through the gorgeous autumn foliage along the Potomac.

  Henry Pearson, one of several Assistant Secretaries of Defense, was a gaunt bureaucrat with a chronic cigarette cough, who fancied military history and liked to chat with Barak about Thucydides, Napoleon, and Garibaldi. Not today, though. Air force colonel Bradford Halliday was unexpectedly there in the office, and he rose to shake hands with the Israeli.

  "I believe you gentlemen know each other," said Pearson.