"More than a katzenjammer. The superpowers are pushing hard for a deal now, Benny. The Russians don't want the Arabs to take another trouncing, and the Americans have their hands full in Vietnam, and desire no more trouble in the Middle East. So they're negotiating a quick wrap-up resolution between themselves, behind the scenes, and we don't know what the devil they're cooking up. Gideon Rafael's very concerned."
"He should be."
"Well, meantime on the good side, the Americans are releasing those forty-eight Skyhawks, but-"
"Fantastic." Luria sat up. "They are? Two more squadrons!"
"-But, I say, also pledging fighter aircraft to five Arab countries."
"Ah. Even-handedness."
"Exactly. Not to Nasser or Syria, since Russia's already supplying them in a flood, but to others."
"Pity the Russians aren't evenhanded too, I'd love to test-fly that new MiG of theirs." Luria took pistachio nuts from the bowl Barak offered. "You know, my Daphna's been visiting Noah."
Barak gestured at Noah's letter on his desk. "He writes me about Daphna. He likes her."
"Do you know she's acquired an American chauffeur with a Porsche, some relative of yours?"
"Yes, Jack Barkowe. What's he like? You've met him?"
"Yes. A youngster, maybe twenty-two or -three. Looks like Noah. Smart, but awfully immature. Says he's making aliya, and wants to be called Yaakov, like a real Israeli."
The telephone had been ringing and ringing in the foyer. Nakhama called, "It's Gideon Rafael, Zev."
The UN representative sounded hoarse and weary. "Zev, things are very bad here. How about that CIA contact you've dealt with, you and Sam Pasternak? Are you still in touch with him?" Barak had not disclosed Christian Cunningham's name to him, and Rafael had not asked.
"Not since the war ended. Why?"
"Because we've got a crisis on our hands, no mistake, and tomorrow comes the crunch. Maybe you can help -"
"Gideon, tomorrow Benny Luria lectures at the Air Force Academy, and I'm flying out there with him."
A pause. Voices off, in rapid Hebrew. Then Rafael: "All right. A courier will come to Washington on the next shuttle to bring you some papers. Meantime for God's sake, talk to your CIA guy."
"But about what, Gideon?"
"Just open the lines for fast action. Zev, a scratch of a pen at this stage, here in New York, can cost us our victory in the war." Rafael's voice shook. "Understand? The Russians are sticking on words fatal to us, they're being tougher than the Arabs, and the Americans are wobbling. After you read those papers, call me."
4
Two Little Words
Now that he had a reason to telephone the Cunninghams, Barak felt awkward. He tried the CIA man's office first. Not in, so he dialled the home in McLean.
"Hello?" Her voice, brisk and cool.
"Emily, it's Zev. Is your father there?"
"Zev! Oh, Zev, you!" She burst into warm jubilant laughter. "Golly, no, but he'll be here for dinner. My God, how are you? Where are you? Still in Washington?"
"Still here. I'm fine. Ask Chris to call me at home when he gets in, will you?"
"Sure thing. Say, know what? Bud and I are winging off tomorrow to Colorado Springs to hear your Colonel Luria lecture. They say it'll be standing room only at the academy. We'll be the guests of the superintendent."
"Luria's here in my flat. I'm coming with him."
"Honestly? Well then we'll see each other, won't we? High time! Bud told me you met at the Pentagon. My God, it's bodacious to talk to you."
The word was unknown to Barak, but hearing Emily's quick breathless voice was decidedly "bodacious," whatever that might mean. As a yeshiva boy he had joked with the others about a cautionary rabbinic saying, "Woman's voice is naked sex:" Nothing truer, at least for him when the woman was Emily Cunningham. She went on in a more sober tone. "Zev, you told me your son's a destroyer officer. It wasn't his ship that was sunk?"
"It was, but he's all right. In the hospital, soon to be discharged. He was fortunate."
"Praise God. I had my hand on the phone ten times to call you. Then I didn't." Another pause. "Well, I'll tell Chris to ring you."
"Emily, maybe we'll have a moment to talk out there."
"Why, we'll make a moment. More than a moment. I've heaps and heaps to tell you, old Wolf Lightning." This was Zev Barak in English, her nickname for him. "Bye, dear."
The girls were setting the table and chattering with Danny. Nakhama brought out a soup tureen. "Dinner's about ready, Abba. Get Benny. Anything serious with Gideon?"
"I'll know more later."
With an odd look she went back to the kitchen, and he felt Nakhama knew he had been talking to Emily Cunningham. She had perfect pitch for variations in his telephone voice. But she didn't say anything, and neither did he.
At dinner Galia and Ruti plied Colonel Luria with questions about the air victory, and he responded in vivid detail while his son sat silent, a picture of filial worship. Zev thought Benny was testing his lecture on them. The battle incidents were especially exciting, and he would make a hit in Colorado, if only he could tone down his warrior pride. These were not Homeric times.
Zev? Chris Cunningham. You called?"
Barak was still studying the papers Gideon Rafael's courier had delivered. "Yes. Chris, can I drop over and talk to you now?"
"Why not? I'm just watching a great Hopalong Cassidy. I guess I've seen it seventeen times. Come along. Em's still here."
"I'm on my way."
The autumn leaves glowed yellow and red in the highway lights, and an autumn chill was in Barak's blood as he drove along the Potomac. Would it never end, this Sisyphean task of rolling the stone uphill to military victory, only to have it roll back down the slope of superpower politics to diplomatic
defeat? Gideon Rafael was dead right, the papers showed the crisis was at hand. At the UN the battle over the words in peace resolutions had been going on draggily since the end of the war, but now the pace had turned feverish, with the Americans anxious for a deal and the Russians unyielding. A hairy time for Israel.
He was in turmoil, too, at the sudden prospect of confronting Emily again. He yearned for it, he dreaded it, and he was baffled by their brief phone talk. The vibrant voice had been as loving as before, quite as though their breakup had never occurred. And yet, "Bud and I are flying to Colorado Springs," so that relationship apparently was very far along, if not settled. What was going on?
She opened the door to his ring, a cloth coat over her arm. "Hi there. Chris is in the library with Hopalong Cassidy." Same naked voice, same twining of her fingers in his, same press of his hand against her soft side. Same affectionate look in those big nearsighted eyes, too, same careless cloud of brown hair. The purple jersey dress clinging to her slender figure showed no ounce gained in her globe-trotting. "Let me look at you, old Wolf. Well! God's gift to womankind, yummy as ever. How are you, dear, truly? And Nakhama and the girls?"
"All well. You're leaving now?"
"Got to, dammit." He helped her pull on the coat. "Thanks, sweetie. Twenty-odd French exams piled up in the Growlery, to correct and hand out in a nine o'clock class."
"The Growlery," he said, with a note of rue. This was the gatehouse of the Foxdale School, where she lived and where at snatched times they had made fierce hopeless love.
"Ah me, yes," she said. "The Growlery. 'Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan,' hey, old Wolf? The world wags on. Bud doesn't like the Growlery. Before Marilyn died they had a place like it on the Blue Ridge for years, so it brings back sad memories." She buttoned up her coat. "Well, then we meet again tomorrow in Colorado Springs! Is your air hero all set with his lecture? They'll eat it up, I'm sure, the Israeli air force is aces now in our military. In fact, Israel is."
"Benny usually does all right."
In a sudden movement she put her cheek to his and hugged him. "Ah, Wolf Lightning, seeing you is heaven, that doesn't change. Bye."
Glass in hand, Christian
Cunningham was turning off the TV as Barak came into the library. "Hi, class-A fight at the end of that Hopalong. How about some bourbon?"
"Sure, Chris, thanks." Usually Barak declined, but this was an occasion when conviviality might help. "Emily looks grand."
"A little silly, Emily, like most of her sex, but good-hearted." The maroon wool dressing gown hung loose on the gaunt figure stooped over the bar. "Splash of water, you take, right? They're giving you a hard time at the UN, I gather. Cheers."
"Cheers. That's what I came to talk about, Chris."
"I'm listening." They sat down on a brown leather couch. Cunningham's wrinkled wise eyes, set deep in skull-like sockets and peering through thick horn-rimmed glasses, never left the military attach‚'s face as he summarized Gideon Rafael's handwritten memo which had come with the courier's pages.
"Your Mr. Rafael sounds a mite shook up," observed Cunningham. "All that checks out with what we know. The Arabs are on a roll, Zev, about to get an American-Soviet resolution calling for your withdrawal behind the previous lines."
"In return for what?"
"Some general language about all parties committing themselves to peace in the region, sometime in the future -"
"Okay, that's the Goldberg-Gromyko compromise," Barak struck in, "but the Arabs turned that down back in July."
"Well, this is November," said Cunningham. "The Arabs have thought it over, and now they'll take Goldberg-Gromyko."
"Israel can't go along, Chris."
"No? If the United States cosponsors it in the Security Council, what option have you?"
"The United States mustn't cosponsor it. Possibly you can help-"
"Hold it right there!" Christian Cunningham held up both hands and shoved them palms out toward Barak. "Diplomatic semantics are not my turf, Zev."
"Intelligence is your turf. What's the CIA's personality profile of our Prime Minister?"
"Eshkol?" Cunningham drank off his bourbon, and somewhat unsteadily went to the bar and poured more. "Shadowy weak successor to Ben Gurion."
"Utterly wrong, like some other CIA estimates. A mild-mannered compromiser, yes. But at any threat to Israel's survival he'll be tougher than B.G. ever was. Chris, he'll defy Lyndon Johnson over this. Does your President want that kind of trouble with Congress? Or with the American Jews?"
Cunningham refilled Barak's glass, handed it to him and sat down. "What's in that envelope, Zev?"
"Documents Gideon Rafael sent me. Abba Eban's clear and copious handwritten comments show why Israel will have to say no."
"Zev, what's the nub of all this? Where does your government draw the line?"
"You'll smile. At two little words."
"I'm not smiling. Go ahead."
"Goldberg-Gromyko calls for 'the withdrawal of parties from all the territories occupied during the war.' Since the Arabs occupied no territory but ran away in all directions, that means only the Israelis."
"It sure does."
"Okay. Way back in June we offered withdrawal linked to peace treaties. The Russians and Arabs pounced on withdrawal and ignored peace treaties. That's been their game ever since. But that principle - withdrawal linked to peace treaties, not otherwise - is where Israel draws the line."
His eyes screwed almost shut, Cunningham slouched far down on the couch, and drank. "And the two little fighting words?"
" 'All... the... ' If we pull out altogether from the territories without treaties, what room for negotiating a real peace will we ever have?"
"All... the..." Slowly Cunningham nodded, rolling the words on his tongue. "True enough. If that wording stands, you've lost the war."
"You've got it," said Barak.
"Tough," said Cunningham with a bony helpless shrug. "A balk by Israel will go right up to LBJ. He's well aware of the Soviet threat in the Middle East, and maybe he sees Israel as an asset, but he's got Vietnam on his hands, riots in the universities, an election year coming up, and Bobby Kennedy snapping at his heels. He's not in a mood to be defied, and for better or worse, you're a client state."
"Can't you at least correct the CIA's estimate of Levi Eshkol? It's dangerously misleading."
Cunningham again held up flat palms. "I haven't been asked. Sorry."
"Well, thanks for the bourbon." Barak stood up, hiding his disappointment and not too surprised. "And thanks for hearing me out."
"My pleasure. Incidentally, can you leave those papers with me? At least the one with Eban's copious comments?"
On the instant Barak handed him the envelope. "Take them all."
"Why, thank you. Just curious. I'm a Middle East history buff, as you know. You can have them back tomorrow."
"Tomorrow I'll be in Colorado Springs."
"Right, for that air colonel's lecture. Well, when you return, then." The CIA man flourished the envelope. "Next best thing to Hopalong Cassidy, the Middle East nowadays."
Rows on rows of blue-clad air cadets rose to attention with a great clatter of seats when the slender tall superintendent, a gray-blond man with a big splash of combat ribbons on his uniform, entered the auditorium. Halliday, Emily Cunningham, Zev Barak, and Danny followed him. Benny Luria already sat alone on the stage. At dinner in his quarters the superintendent had been jocular with Halliday, his old wing-mate, they had called each other "Bud" and "Sparky," but now he was all stern dignity, escorting the guests to reserved seats, then mounting to the podium beside a tall white screen. "As you were, cadets." They slammed down into then-seats, backs straight, eyes front. Looking around at these hundreds of intent bristle-headed youths, it struck Barak that the entire Israeli pilot force, cadets and all, would fit into the three rows in front of him. Sitting beside Emily, smelling the faint wildflower scent she favored, was a poignant distraction.
So they had sat through the Mahler cycle and many a play and opera at the Kennedy Center, before Nakhama had come to Washington with the girls. But now there was Halliday on Emily's other side.
"Politics stops at the gateway of the academy, gentlemen," the superintendent began. "Not long ago the academy hosted the air chief of Saudi Arabia. Today we welcome Colonel Benny Luria of Israel, commander of Fighter-Bomber Squadron Twelve. Air combat is the cutting edge of the military calling in our time, cadets, something like a world brotherhood. The recent victory of Israel's air force is worthy of serious professional study by all modern nations. We don't expect Colonel Luria to disclose military secrets or plead his country's cause. He is here as a man of arms like yourselves, a squadron leader whose record betokens an integrity of purpose and a striving for excellence, which the fledgling eagles of the academy can well aspire to emulate."
The superintendent turned to Luria, and his severe mien relaxed. "Okay, Colonel Luria, now tell us how you guys did it."
The cadets rose, courteously applauding. The superintendent joined in. Walking to the podium, Benny smiled down at Danny, standing beside Zev Barak. Looking very mature in a dark suit and tie, Danny clapped hard and winked at his father, but Barak knew how nervous the boy was. Taking Danny's hand as they crossed the grounds, he had felt a very damp palm.
Benny thanked the superintendent, and all rustling ceased in a dead hush.
"At 0745 hours on Monday, June fifth," he began, "our air force struck simultaneously at nine enemy airfields. I led my squadron in a dive on the Inchas air base, through heavy AA fire." He looked around at the array of serious young faces filling the big bleak hall. "And let me tell you, it was scary, but I was less scared than I am right this minute." The cadets were surprised into hearty laughter, glancing at each other. Great start, thought Barak. Benny was b'seder, as usual. Danny's eyes shone. "Don't laugh, gentlemen, I mean every word of it. When I was a student pilot, I never dreamed that I would one day address the United States Air Force cadet corps. My dreams were as modest as our air force was then.
Fourteen planes in all, gentlemen, twelve of them operational."
He paused to let that sink in.
"Well, times have changed
. There have been strange stories and rumors to account for our recent victory - electronic wizardry, secret weapons, even the ultimate secret weapon, American pilots." (Side-glances and chuckles in the audience.) "But in fact there was no mystery or miracle in it. Three unchanging requirements of successful warmaking were crucial to the way we won: planning, rehearsal, intelligence."
For the next half hour, sometimes using slides and a pointer at the screen, Benny Luria talked with calm candor about Operation mokade as a preemptive strike worked up for years. It was not much like Abba Eban's version of the attack at the UN, but Barak was unconcerned. This was a place for reality; the UN was a place for smoke screens. He could sense the absorption of the cadets around and behind him. Some of what Luria said was new to him; not so much the colorful business of waking pilots in the night to recite time of departure, distance to target, bomb loads, and so on - all that he had heard before - but rather the dry hour-by-hour, and sometimes minute-by-minute, narrative of Benny's own first day of combat. He had flown four sorties, the last late in the afternoon, to the most distant airfield in Egypt, where his four Mirages with fagged-out pilots had been jumped by MiGs on fresh full alert. In his picture of the dogfight that ensued there was no Homeric vaunting. Now he was Colonel Luria, an instructor among student pilots, dropping into a professional clipped monotone. Good for Benny, he knew what to say to UJA banquets, to children at a dinner table, and to the United States Air Force Academy.
Herman Wouk - The Glory Page 7