Herman Wouk - The Glory

by The Glory(Lit)

  "We're acquainted," said Halliday, cool and unsmiling.

  "Nice to see you again," said Barak. In their awkward previous encounter, Halliday had been in civilian clothes. He looked taller, leaner, and more formidable in a blue uniform with combat decorations. It would have taken a sharper observer than Henry Pearson to discern that these two men were in love with the same woman, and had run into each other only once by chance on her premises, much to her embarrassment and theirs.

  They lunched on curried shrimp at a window facing acres of parked cars, for Pearson did not rate an office with a river view. The topic of the lunch was forty-eight Skyhawk light attack bombers, contracted for by Israel some time ago and still not delivered. Pearson explained, coughing a lot, that since the United States was now embargoing all weapons shipments to the Middle East, and urging the Soviets to do the same, delivery of the Skyhawks at present was not feasible. Barak protested with heat that this was highly unsatisfactory, because the Russians, while pondering the embargo proposal, were continuing to rearm Egypt and Syria at an alarming rate. Halliday was at the meeting, it soon emerged, to help the easygoing Pearson stall off Barak. This the airman did with dry authority.

  "General, Israel has wiped out all hostile air forces in your region," he said. "Your air superiority is absolute. You can't deny that. The urgency of our delivering the Skyhawks just now therefore escapes me."

  "The urgency, Colonel, as I've just pointed out to the Assistant Secretary, is Russian resupply to our enemies. Clearly that compels us to start to resupply ourselves. Air superiority isn't a static thing. When Arab aircraft outnumber our squadrons three or four to one - we project a period of eighteen months from now at the present rate, with newer MiGs, by the way - our position could become awkward."

  "Airplanes don't fly themselves," retorted Halliday, forking up curry. "Your air victory decimated their pilot pool, and it'll be a long time regenerating."

  "With Russian instructors? Why?" Barak disliked shrimp, so he was picking at the bread and butter. "Arab manpower is infinite, compared to ours. Training a quality pilot takes a year."

  "Zev, Russian instructors can't instill the motivation your pilots have," Pearson put in.

  "True, because we fight for national survival, and the Arabs don't. Is that a reason to withhold from us the wherewithal to fight?"

  Pearson coughed hard, and glanced at the impassive air force colonel. "Zev's a good arguer, isn't he?"

  Halliday merely nodded. He had spoken his piece, nailing down the undeclared and unpalatable fact that President Johnson and the State Department were mending fences with the Arabs, and that Pearson, though friendly, was helpless. Barak wasted no more words on the Skyhawks, and the meeting ended with sparring about ammunition replenishment and parts for Patton tanks, during which Halliday was silent and Pearson vague.

  Barak and Halliday left the office together. In the corridor Barak was ready for a cool curt goodbye, but Halliday surprised him. "General, where's your car?"

  "Parking lot E."

  "So's mine. May we talk a bit?"

  "By all means."

  Halliday told him as they traversed the tortuous Pentagon rings and stairwells that the superintendent of the Air Force Academy, his old wingmate, was eager to invite an Israeli squadron leader to lecture on the great air victory. "He has in mind Colonel Benny Luria. You must know him."

  "Very well."

  "Would you approach Luria? The superintendent wants him for sometime in November."

  "I'm sure Benny would be honored, if he can do it. I'll have to go through air force channels, of course. Otherwise there's Avihu Bin Nun, another great squadron leader, also Ron Pecker-"

  "The word is that Luria's an able speaker."

  "That's the truth. I'll get on this at once."

  "I'll be greatly obliged."

  They came outside in a chilly mist, and Halliday surprised him even more. "Have you heard from Emily?"

  Barak mustered all his calm to reply, "Not since she left New Delhi."

  Emily Cunningham had in fact written him only once on her round-the-world trip, mentioning that her correspondence with Bud Halliday was getting hot and heavy since his sidetracking from Vietnam to the Pentagon. Whether that had been a prod to elicit jealous regret, or just more of Emily's rattling candor, it had hurt.

  "She writes genuinely amusing letters," said Halliday. "Of course you know that."

  "Yes, we've corresponded off and on for many years. She's an original, Emily. Is she holding to her itinerary?"

  "Apparently. Due back from Paris in two weeks. Here's my car." Halliday held out his hand. "See here, General, about those Skyhawks, entirely off the record" - Halliday paused, his face a trifle less forbidding than in Pearson's office - "holding them up is a temporary diplomatic blip. Denying them to you altogether would be bad faith. That won't happen. We're not the French, and the President isn't De Gaulle. Israel will get the aircraft. Meantime fussing by your government doesn't help. Save your energy - and the considerable political capital that you've gained with your victory - for other matters."

  Barak seized the moment to ask Halliday about Noah's missile countermeasures. The airman listened with a knitted brow. "Well, you can get that so-called chaff on the open market. Window, we term it. It's a question of seaborne chaff launchers, which I wouldn't know about. As for the electronic stuff, that's my bailiwick, more or less, and in the air force it's highly classified." He shrugged, shaking his head. "About the navy, I can't say. Send me a personal letter, not through channels, and I'll bump it to a good navy contact."

  "That will be very helpful."

  The cold drizzle fogging Barak's windshield seemed to be drizzling into his spirit as he drove back to the embassy, angered by the turndown on the Skyhawks - though he had more or less anticipated it - and still hungry, for he had eaten nothing all day but that spongy Pentagon bread. Halliday's few words about Emily Cunningham had raked open a healing scar, bringing all too frustratingly to mind that strange winsome daughter of a decidedly strange CIA official, cut off from him by her own decision; the slender yielding body, the enormous clever bespectacled eyes, the disorderly halo of brown hair, the antic wit of her talk and her letters, the whole snaring presence which she had had even as a girl of twelve. Now she was reaching for a life beyond that of a girls school headmistress, and he could only welcome that, but he was discovering that loving two women - and he loved his wife as much as ever - did not halve the pain of losing one of them.

  He had first caught sight of Emily Cunningham as a gamine with a tennis racket, scampering onto her father's patio, and later presiding gravely at the dinner table in her mother's absence; then showing him the fireflies on their lawn overlooking the Potomac, and prattling precocious romantic nonsense. Long afterward, in their rare encounters in Paris and in Jerusalem while she was studying at the Sorbonne, she had declared and insisted that she had an unshakeable crush on him. For long he had tried to laugh it off. But her beguiling and hilarious "pen pal" letters over the years had brightened his dogged army career and the constricted life in Israel. Then had come his missions to Washington, and the start of the affair. The unlucky assignment as military attach‚ had led to his getting in deep with her and - who could say? - perhaps even missing the war on that account...

  Never mind, never mind, stay off that quicksand...

  He could more or less forget his breakup with that haunting woman in the drudging workload at the embassy, where the optimistic turmoil of victory still yeasted and bubbled. And why not? The Zionist organizations were happily swelling with members and funds, and clamoring for war-hero speakers like Dayan and Rabin; and these were not readily available, so the military attach‚ and the ambassador were winging all over the country as tolerable substitutes. That night Barak had to fly to Chicago to address a Zionist luncheon next day, and as he drove he was trying to work up some fresh angle for the talk, and to keep his thoughts from circling back to Emily Cunningham.

 
What could he say in Chicago that was really new? By now he had a memorized act. Quick review of the victory, to smiles and applause; cautionary words about enemy infractions of the cease-fire, about soldiers manning the Suez Canal line getting killed, about terrorists infiltrating from Jordan to mine and booby-trap the kibbutz fields - not what American Jews wanted to hear, so make that part short; then the exciting windup picturing Jerusalem and the West Bank after Moshe Dayan opened the borders, Arabs pouring peacefully into Zion Square to gaze with wonder at the shop windows, Israelis thronging through the Old City bazaars to haggle for bargains and taste exotic foods, or joyriding in hordes to Jericho and Hebron, singing "Jerusalem of Gold"; all leading up to his personal anecdote of the graybeard Jew in a fur hat and ear curls, walking beside him through the Old City in a stream of Israelis on the way to the Western Wall, joyously exclaiming, "moshiakh's tzeiten!" ("messianic times!") He would certainly use that surefire finish again, however far he was from believing it.

  He found on his desk a garbled telephone message from one Leon Barkowe, something about a son in Israel whose car had been confiscated. It took Barak a moment to recollect those distant Berkowitz relatives in Long Island whom he had not seen or spoken to in years. Another major task for the military attach‚! But family was family, and even if the name was now Barkowe, a Berkowitz was a Berkowitz. He was about to return the call when a buzz on his intercom summoned him to the ambassador.

  Abe Harman, a paunchy deathly pale man who sat in a perpetual slouch, and whose sleepy manner belied a razor-sharp alertness to every nuance of America-Israel relations, greeted him with a groan. "Always something. My wife's down with a stomach flu, and she's supposed to address a WIZO tea at the Mayflower this afternoon. She called me and said Nakhama should do it -''

  "Nakhama? Abe, Nakhama's never made a speech here, her English isn't that good. Anyway, she's no speaker, forget it!"

  "Zev, I've already talked to Nakhama, and she jumped at it. Sorry, but at three hours' notice I had little choice." With a foxy side-glance Harman added, "Will the world go under if she isn't a big hit? What did you accomplish at the Pentagon?"

  "In one word, bopkess [goat shit]."

  "Ah, so the goats are still grazing there." Harman heavily nodded. "Expected. Still, you lodged our protest against the breach of contract. Americans believe in contracts, live by them. They'll feel the pressure. So, you're off to Chicago tonight? I've got a major misery here at the Shoreham. Speech to a thousand Conservative rabbis. You're sure you don't mind about Nakhama?"

  "Of course not. I'm surprised she's doing it, that's all."

  "Zev, just when you think you have them figured out, they cross you up."

  "Wisdom of Solomon, Ambassador," said Barak, and he went back to his office, where he began a letter to Colonel Halliday about missile countermeasures. He had not gotten far when a coding clerk phoned him. "Sir, General Pasternak is calling on the scrambler." It was like a red light flashing on an engine dial. Sam Pasternak, high in the Mossad and perhaps its secret head by now, had not used the secure telephone since the end of the war. Hurrying to the coding room, Barak shut himself into the soundproof booth, and Pasternak came through clearly.

  "Zev? We have a serious development here." Deep solemn Pasternak tones, no trace of his usual irony. "I'm sorry to be breaking this news to you. The Egyptians have sunk the Eilat with a missile attack." Barak caught his breath, and Pasternak went on briskly, "Don't be too alarmed. Helicopters are out there right now picking up survivors, lots of them. Patrol boats are speeding to the scene. Chances are very good that your son is okay."

  "Where and when did this happen, Sam?"

  "Off Port Said around sunset. The missiles came from the boats in the harbor, no question. Abe Harman and Gideon Rafael have to be told right away." Rafael was Israel's ambassador to the United Nations. "The whole picture has changed, Zev. The balance of forces has shifted, and we're in a new situation. A new era."

  Words from the Book of Job flashed into Barak's mind. "The thing that I greatly feared has come upon me." He had on file the intelligence about the missile boats in Port Said, and the navy chart which showed where the destroyers were patrolling off Egypt and Sinai. It had seemed to him a risky and provocative showing of the flag, and he had been concerned about Noah in that spot, but sea strategy was not his business.

  "Have you been monitoring the Egyptians?"

  "Yes. They've picked up the distress and rescue signals, and they'll call for a UN Security Council meeting tomorrow to claim the ship was in their territorial waters. Which it wasn't. They're bubbling with joy."

  "Not for long," Barak said.

  "Well, that's the big question now, how we respond. The Prime Minister is meeting now with Dayan and Foreign Minister Eban." The brisk dry tones of the intelligence man slowed and warmed. "I'll stay in close touch, Zev. I'll track the survivor list and let you know any news of Noah, the minute I hear."

  "Thanks, Sam."

  That was like Pasternak. Their friendship went far back to

  service together in a paramilitary youth group. Sam was a Czech by birth, the toughest of the tough, yet in his way a good Jewish boy, devoted to his mother and sisters, if not to an estranged wife. They had come a long way together in the army, before Sam had detoured into the Mossad.

  Ambassador Harman's pouched eyes reddened and his pallid face turned a shade grayer when Barak told him the news. He said with a thick sigh, "So they haven't learned their lesson yet? Well, they will, believe me. I hope your son is all right. Ah, Zev, what a sad, sad business." He gestured at a typescript on his desk. "My speech is out the window. My title was "The Coming Peace.' I meant every word, too." Narrowing his eyes, the ambassador went on slowly, half to himself, "I may be hearing from the State Department any minute. From senators, from Jewish leaders. Maybe I should call Dean Rusk myself. I'll think about that. Let me have a quick military analysis, Zev, the complications, the reprisal options. Something I can have in hand-"

  "At once, Ambassador."

  First Barak called Gideon Rafael in New York. Taking the news in stride, the UN ambassador asked businesslike questions about the attack, and said he would summon his staff that evening to plan Security Council tactics. On Barak's desk lay the start of his letter to Halliday. Too late, too late! He had an impulse to tear it up, but at that moment Nakhama came in. She wore a dark gray suit, and a feathered red hat was perched on her thick glossy black hair. "Like my hat? Zena Harman said the women at these things all wear hats. I just bought it at Garfinkel's. It was on sale. It isn't too much? Too red? Is the feather too silly?"

  Should he tell her of the sinking? She was made up as for a party, and her eyes snapped with excitement. The idea of substituting for the brilliant Zena Harman had put her in high spirits. "It's a nice hat. What will you talk about?"

  "About Noah. You know, how it feels to be a mother of a son fighting for Israel. About how we reacted when he first showed up in uniform. How we worried during the war, and were so glad when it was over. And for a laugh, about his capturing a fortress with nobody in it. How does that sound? Too personal?"

  Rapid estimate before answering her: the tea should be over by five, the hatted ladies heading home for dinner. Even if the Egyptians claimed the sinking in the next hour or two, it would not make the network news right away. "Well, the question is, are you nervous?"

  Nakhama threw back her head and laughed, and the hat fell off. "L'Azazel, how I hate hats!" she said, retrieving it. "Nervous? Why? It'll be fun. What have I got to lose? Don't worry, I won't disgrace you. Where is there a mirror?" She plopped the hat on her head, tilted it, and it looked very chic. "How's that?"

  For answer, impelled by a pulse of love for her, he came and kissed his wife. Why panic her? Noah might well be in a helicopter right now, soaking wet but safe. That she was prettier than Emily Cunningham was an old story, but she was rarely this animated nowadays. Twenty-three years ago the sort of sweet faintly mischievous charm with which she
now glowed had bewitched him into marrying a Moroccan waitress after knowing her for a week, over his parents' anguished objections. "Well, it sounds like a first-class speech. Good luck."

  "Thanks. Poor Zev, off to Chicago tonight, aren't you? Will you have time to eat at home first? Galia and Ruti volunteered to cook dinner."

  "That's a novelty I won't miss."

  When she left it lacked a few minutes of three. He turned on his desk radio, and listened tensely to the bulletins. Not a word about the Middle East. Fine. The letter regarding the countermeasures still lay before him, and tearing it up, he realized, would be foolish. The Jaffa still sailed, and missiles could hit torpedo boats and patrol craft as well.

  Awareness bore in on Barak that not only had the war with the Arabs entered a new phase; so had warfare at sea. No vessel had ever been sunk by a ship-to-ship missile until now, nor had any western country even tested such a weapon. Russia, the arsenal of the Arabs, had leaped at a stroke into the world lead in waterborne missile combat. Hard times ahead for Noah's navy, and a major shock on the global scene. The Soviet Union's massive edge in land armies was balanced off by superior American air and sea forces; but the Styx was suddenly a proven threat to the Sixth Fleet, and for that matter to all of NATO's surface warships.