"New camel. Bad camel," the leader of the trackers, a master sergeant with an iron-gray mustache, observed to Kishote. These Bedouins, loyal to Israel, were invaluable for some army tasks.
Far down the ruler-straight tarred road that bisected the arid flat Arava to a shimmering horizon, a dust cloud was drawing near. It ground noisily to a halt and a bulky figure, tousle-headed and dust-covered, heaved out of a jeep. General Ariel Sharon, the new southern front commander, had recruited this
camel corps and installed the hundred-mile barrier of minefields, barbed wire, and raked sand from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea. On his orders terrorists were now being tracked far inside Jordan, and killed in their mountain retreats.
"So, Kishote, what's the delay?"
The recalcitrant camel was bellowing and biting the air, as his bloodied rider tried to seize his bridle.
"Camel insubordination, General."
"L'Azazel, are you serious?" Sharon climbed up on the platform behind the plunging beast, and bellowing a foul Arabic curse he shoved it stumbling off the platform. The Bedouins yelled appreciation. "Get these trackers going," he said to Don Kishote, jumping down, "before the trail is stone cold."
"Sir, suppose I go along with them and see how they operate?"
"You?" Amusement sparkled in Sharon's eye. "Can you ride a camel?"
"How different is it from a horse?"
"Shh!" Scanning the sky with binoculars, Sharon held up a hand. Overhead sound of many jet engines, a throbbing rumble, the noise seeming to come from far behind the planes.
"Phantoms," said Kishote. "Lots of them. Returning home."
"Yes, but also Mirages. Something big went on over there."
Kishote shouted at the master sergeant, "Well, yallah!" The camels went striding through the wire and the minefield in single file, the yellow kaffiyehs of the drivers fluttering.
"Phantoms and camels," remarked Sharon. "Some war. Now listen, Kishote, you're an armor brigade commander, not a baby-faced paratrooper. No adventures on camels. Report to my headquarters at 2000, for some serious business, and by the way, I'm coming to your son's bar mitzvah."
"Marvellous, sir."
In the Hilton's lower lobby, under a wooden arch lettered in gilt new york deli, Yael Nitzan and Lee Bloom walked in through the double doors. "Well! At least it's air-conditioned," said Lee. "I'm sweating buckets, and this is a tropical suit!"
Growl of a familiar voice. "Hello, there, Yael." Sam Pasternak sat in a booth with Eva Sonshine, who twiddled fingers at Yael with a bright smile. Obviously Sam had picked her up at her desk as she was: open-necked white shirtwaist, blue jacket with Hilton insignia, no makeup on that perfect pale skin of the professional beauty. Yael despised Eva for a lightweight, content to be her brother's longtime doxy. What was that confounded Pasternak doing with her? He said, "Say, isn't this Kishote's plutocrat brother from Los Angeles?" The men exchanged tart grins. "What brings you to Israel, Mr. Lee Bloom?"
"Actually, General, Aryeh's bar mitzvah."
"I see. Yael, did you get my message? I'm coming."
"Oh, you are! Lovely."
"D'you mind if I bring Eva along?"
Yael said to Eva, with shaded grace, "Well, how nice. By all means, you're invited."
"I'll have to change plans," said Eva. "But I'll try to come."
"Do. Eva, this is my brother-in-law."
"Oh, who doesn't know about Lee Bloom," smiled Eva, "and Sheva Leavis, the California real estate geniuses?"
Lee gave her an admiring grin, which irked Yael. Men were such idiots. The headwaiter greeted Yael by name, and scraped and bowed them through the clatter and spicy smells of the crowded deli to a rear booth. "A knockout, that receptionist," said Lee Bloom, with a humorous leer. "Think she'd like to work in Las Vegas? We could use her."
"You'd have to check with my brother Benny. She's his friend."
"No kidding, she is? Lucky him. I'm not starting up with the air force."
"Lee, you're sweet to have come so far for the bar mitzvah."
"Well, to be frank, Yael, I'm not here just for that. Sheva's been offered the President Hotel in Eilat. It's gone bankrupt, you know, and we have an idea about it." He waved for a waiter. "Let's order first. Will Joe find us back here?" Lee Bloom, and nobody else, called Yossi Nitzan "Joe."
"He'll find us."
Delicatessen smells made Yael ravenous, but after glimps-
ing Eva Sonshine she ordered cold sliced turkey breast, no mayonnaise. Bloom, who was getting plumper and balder by the year, asked for a hot pastrami sandwich with double pastrami. "Now about that hotel." Bloom became all business. "You know how well Sheva and I have done in Las Vegas. A hotel with a casino is a money machine, Yael. Your best guess - chances of putting a casino in Eilat?" "Gambling? Here?"
"Why not? It would bring in tons of foreign exchange." "Dear, neon signs and naked showgirls in Israeli Unthinkable. The government would fall."
"Who says we do the glitz? Ever been to a Swiss casino? You could be in a Reform temple. Posh, mannerly, quiet, tasteful, the croupiers are like ushers or undertakers. Look, the country's swamped with tourists, and what's there to do here, once you've rushed around seeing all the holy places? Unless there's a fun reason to come again, Israel is a one-shot. The Swiss know that. When you've seen one Alp you've seen them all, and sooner or later all skiers just break their legs. Casinos, Yael! I tell you, Israel would never have to grow another orange." She burst out laughing. "Look, I'm serious. Now, Moshe Dayan runs the country, and you've known the guy forever -''
A hard hand gripped Lee Bloom's shoulder. "Leo, ma nishma [what's new]?"
"Joe!" He jumped up, and they embraced. "My God, how long has it been? Years and years."
There the brothers stood, arms around each other, the Israeli colonel and the Los Angeles real estate man, and Yael wondered that she had ever seen a resemblance between the sand-brown lean Kishote and the pale pudgy Lee. She said, "So, you wouldn't talk over the phone, but what's doing? Why have you left the Sinai?"
Slipping into the booth, Kishote ordered a beer from a hovering waiter. "Sharon has just made me his chief of staff for Southern Command, and-" "Oo-wah!"
"Big promotion, eh?" said Lee. "Congratulations, Joe."
"It's not a promotion, Leo. I'll miss my brigade, I love
those men. It's just more responsibility." He turned to Yael.
"And we're meeting with the General Staff in an hour, about
an outrageous violation of the cease-fire. That's why I'm here. We may have to go on to Jerusalem."
"What cease-fire?" Lee inquired. "Always something going on here, isn't there?"
Kishote did not know, for very few outside the air force did, about the victory of Luria's squadron. But a much improved American cease-fire plan had gone into effect right after the rout of the Soviet pilots, backed by a Russian guarantee of Egyptian compliance. He described how, in the sunrise that followed the agreed midnight cease-fire deadline, soldiers had come crawling out of the rampart bunkers on both sides of the Canal, waving at each other. This war was all news to him, Lee Bloom confessed, mixed up in his mind with the usual terrorist raids.
So with no trace of irony or impatience, Don Kishote sketched Nasser's War of Attrition for his brother in a few words. "We've licked him," he concluded. "After eighteen months, he's accepted a three-month standstill that restores the status quo ante. He lost half his air force and thousands of dead civilians and soldiers. Mortgaged his country to the Russians, and still he accomplished nothing. We gave up not one inch of the Sinai, and we never will except for a peace treaty. Maybe now he's got the idea -" He broke off. General Sharon was approaching. He wore a dark suit and blue tie, but there was no mistaking his massive swinging stride.
"Hello, Yael." A smile dissolved Sharon's formidable air to charming warmth. "I hate to disturb your lunch, but by your leave, I want a word with your Don Kishote."
"Of course."
Heads turned as Sharon an
d his new chief of staff started walking out. "By God there's Pasternak too," said Sharon. "Just our man." With the same warm smile he had shone on Yael, he borrowed Pasternak from Eva Sonshine. The three men sat down in a gloomy far corner of the lower lobby, on stiff brown leather furniture.
"Sam, is the intelligence conclusive on the missile batteries?" Sharon's inquiry was low and sharp.
"Oh, absolutely." A resigned shrug. "Right after the Egyptians signed the cease-fire, they and the Russians started moving them up to the Canal, working at night."
Sharon growled, "The terms of the cease-fire prohibited such an advance, no?"
"Why, that was the crux of the deal, Arik. The Americans accepted the Russian guarantee, so we had to, but Egypt and the Soviets have acted in total bad faith. The batteries are now lined up all along the waterline, and they're openly hardening up the sites by day."
"Sam Pasternak, are you saying," Sharon's voice dropped to an ominous rumble, "that we fight and win a long bloody war, and Nasser completely reverses the outcome with a sneaky ruse? Agrees to a standstill, then strikes a foul blow? And our government will stand for that?"
"What's there to do?"
"Cross the Canal in brigade force, that's what there is to do. Destroy as many of these moved-up batteries as we can, and hold the bridgehead till the rest are pulled back to the agreed-on fifty-kilometer line-"
"Reopen the war, you mean."
"Maybe, maybe not. That's up to the enemy. I mean a blow for a blow!"
"Look, Arik, the shooting has stopped." Pasternak sounded terribly weary. "The borders are unchanged. We stand on the Canal. The other Arabs are calling Nasser a betrayer and a coward for accepting the cease-fire. Our people are tired of war, those who've paid attention to it. Tired of lists of the dead. The government calls it a victory, and Nasser's moving up the missiles won't change that."
"Victory? Victory of an ostrich. Lost victory, unless we do something." Sharon stood up. "Kishote, you'll go straight to plans and operations section from here, to discuss the logistics for a brigade crossing at Kantara."
"Yes, General."
Pasternak said, "Arik, there's no heavy bridging equipment for such an assault -"
"We'll find bridging equipment," Sharon said, "or we'll cross in rubber boats, or we'll swim across, but by God, we'll cross. The surprise will shatter the Egyptians. They can't deal with the unforeseen. Before they recover we'll get the job done at Kantara. Then the Americans will have to come and verify the illicit advance of the missiles, and
force their withdrawal. It will happen, and it will work. I'm off to meet with the General Staff." He lumbered away and up the staircase.
Pasternak and Yossi glanced wryly at each other. "Like your new job?" Pasternak inquired.
"You're right, bridging's the problem," said Kishote, half to himself. "And it's not the equipment, we could make do with what we've got. It's putting the bridges into place. Laying bridges with sharpshooters and machine gunners lining the ramparts on the other side at point-blank range, backed by heavy artillery, will call for a suicide squad of engineers. Lots of them, because they won't last long. Nor will the bridges."
"Put your mind at rest. Golda can read Nixon like a book. She never forgets the end of the Suez War, Soviets and Americans combining against us. The Americans are still up to their necks in Vietnam, Nixon's in a touchy mood, and he's claiming this cease-fire as his great achievement for peace and detente. A cross-canal attack would infuriate him, and it won't happen. Arik's butting a stone wall."
"Well, that's his career."
With a twisted grin Pasternak said, "And yours now, Don Kishote." He stood up. "See you at Aryeh's party."
1 he bar mitzvah reception on a lawn in Zahala was a buzzing social success despite the August sultriness. Army people, kibbutzniks, and Yael's political and business friends came. Presents for Aryeh piled up. Moshe Dayan appeared, a big triumph for the family. General Sharon showed up, too, a thundercloud in uniform. People hesitated to talk to him. "Kishote, our politicians are grasshoppers," he snarled, when Yossi offered him a drink. "That fine boy of yours will have to fight one day in a big new war, mark my words, and we may lose all we won in 1967, if in fact we survive."
"If Aryeh has to fight, he will."
Kishote glimpsed Shayna Matisdorf drifting here and there, with the bar mitzvah boy hanging close to her. She looked wan. He had no chance to talk to her. Yael was the queen of the day, magnificent in one of her original cocktail dresses, smiling and laughing with everybody, except when Shayna or Eva Sonshine crossed her line of vision.
Massive headlines broke out in September all over the world. On Christian Cunningham's hospital bed the New York Times and Washington Post shouted the news:
NASSER DIES OF HEART ATTACK-BLOW TO PEACE EFFORTS SEEN; NIXON CANCELS FLEET EXERCISE
PRESIDENT NASSER DIES, DEATH ATTRIBUTED TO HEART ATTACK
Cunningham lay propped on pillows in a white gown, his face more gaunt and livid than ever. "I'm getting better," he said to Zev Barak in a weak voice. "At least I made it, and that poor fellow didn't." He gestured at the newspapers with a skeletal hand. "You'll miss him."
"Miss Nasser?" Barak sat in a folding chair by the bed. "Why? What do you know about this Anwar Sadat? Is he that much worse?"
"Hard to say yet. Dark-skinned mustached fellow, smokes a pipe. Minor nationalist hothead. Terrorist against the British in World War II, worked with the Germans. A Nasser shadow."
"More likely to renew the war, or less?"
"That's a tough one." The CIA man shook his head, wryly wrinkling his mouth. "Nasser sure snookered you on the cease-fire, didn't he, putting those SAM-3s along the Canal! Egypt's now got an air umbrella extending far into the Sinai, heck of an edge. Big temptation for the new fellow to go to bat and make himself a hero fast."
"Well, so you already have a visitor!" Emily entered flourishing a green bottle, followed by General Halliday in uniform. "Well, hi there, Zev. Chris, what do you think? Old Dr. Stein says a little creme de menthe might do you good."
Cunningham's sunken eyes lit up. "There are glasses in the bathroom."
"Not for me, thank you," said Barak. "I'm just going."
"Don't," Halliday said. "Like to talk to you."
"Sit down, Zev," said Cunningham.
As they chatted about his heart attack and convalescence,
Emily sat holding her father's hand, glancing brightly at Barak. After a while Halliday extended a long leg to kick shut the door to the room. "Barak, you Israelis pull off one coup after another, don't you? Bagging five Russian pilots!"
"What? What's all this? Russians? An air battle?" Cunningham quavered, the glass of creme de menthe trembling in his hand. "How? When?"
"Right after you took sick, end of July," said Halliday, "and the day after the fracas the Soviet air chief of staff came roaring down to Cairo, and Nasser quit and accepted a standstill. The Russians must have twisted his arm real hard. Right, Barak?"
With a dull stare Barak said, "General, I have no idea what you're talking about."
Halliday grimly smiled. "Both sides are blacking out the story, Chris, for obvious reasons."
Straightening up in his droopy gown, which showed gray tufts on his chest, Cunningham said, "Then how do you know, Bud?"
"Never mind. I do. There was an Egyptian air officer right there in fighter control, filling in the Russian director about Israeli air tactics. When he saw how it was going, he advised the Russki to pull his MiGs out of the battle. The fellow said, 'We Russians don't run away.' Direct quote. So five MiGs went down before they ran away." Halliday uttered a short cold laugh. "Happiest day for the Egyptian air force in years. Those Russian fighter controllers and airmen have been treating the Egyptians like dirt, like flies."
Barak realized that Halliday could only have gotten all this from the Egyptian air attache, with whom he was too close for Israeli comfort.
Cunningham looked at Barak. "Come on, Zev. Talk."
Barak turned both palms upward.
"Proper response, Barak," said Halliday, "but please tell General Pasternak that we're urgently interested in that combat, and will keep top secret whatever intelligence we receive."
"At your service, of course."
"Thanks. It's interesting," said Halliday as he got up, "that the Russians blame the poor quality of the Egyptian pilots for their defeats. The Egyptians blame inferior Russian
planes. They both ignore one other possibility. Namely, that your fighter pilots may be pretty damn good. Nice seeing you. Coming, Em?"
Herman Wouk - The Glory Page 20