"You're the beauty now," said Dov. "My sister's a crone."
At this compliment from a Phantom pilot, Galia colored up. Shorter than his father, heavy-boned, with a flat Slavic face traceable to shtetl genes, Dov did not need good looks to fascinate a seventeen-year-old. Dov was now aiming for flight leader, with little spare energy for girls, but still he thought this black-eyed Galia Barak wasn't bad at all. He had last seen her years ago at some army gathering, a sullen plump kid with bad skin. Quite a change! And quite a family, these Baraks. Worth bearing in mind.
Aryeh had sat himself next to Dov. He was already the taller of the two and better-looking, with abundant blond curls and his mother's peachy skin. "Say, Dov, what does the air force think about Sadat kicking out the Russians?"
"I know what I think. A few will leave by air in front of the cameras, and sneak back by sea. It's a TV stunt to start another phony peace offensive."
"Well, I don't agree. I say the Russians wouldn't let Sadat plan to attack Israel, because that might drag them into nuclear war with America. He's getting rid of them to free his hands." Seeking attention from the pilot, Aryeh was citing the one reason his father had given that he clearly understood.
Noah, Dov, and Dzecki glanced at each other. Pretty good for fifteen! Over the noisy talk in the room, Don Kishote called, "Dzecki!" and beckoned him to a corner, where he
spoke low. "Didn't I see you working on the roller bridge prototype, when I visited the Jeptha yards?"
"Yes, sir. I'm in Amos Pasternak's battalion."
"And you've made first sergeant, eh?" He tapped the insignia on Dzecki's uniform. "Isn't your draft service almost over?"
"I may sign up for another year. The bridge is a challenge, sir."
"Tell me about the bridge."
"Well, sir, there's not too much to tell yet. So far we've assembled only two sections. They say there will be eighty."
"Do the sections roll?"
"Like a dream. Linking them up is what's tricky. They tend to come apart."
"What's the problem, exactly?"
Dzecki started to talk jargon about joints and bearings, rigid and flexible elements. Kishote interrupted. "Did you go to engineering school in the States?"
"I graduated from law school, sir. But I like machinery."
When Shayna and her husband emerged from the bedroom the guests were in a jollier mood, having eaten and drunk. They all stood, clapped hands and sang. Her veil discarded, Shayna looked rosy and serene. From the round low table where the small children sat she plucked up Reuven, who wore a brace on a leg. Waving a camera, Nakhama Barak, who had been drinking a lot, pushed her closer to the limping Berkowitz. "A picture! A picture! Everybody stand back! Smile, bride and groom! Shayna, get Reuven to smile!"
She kissed the boy and said softly, "Well, Reuven? Aren't you happy?"
Reuven put both hands to her cheeks and smiled. "Perfect!" Flash. "One more!" Flash.
Dzecki Barkowe thought he must be mistaken, seeing a small tear roll down Colonel Nitzan's brown cheek. Only women cried at weddings.
Daphna's visit to Shimon Shimon's studio started tamely with talk about the Sadat news. He showed her a mizrakh he was making for an Orthodox Belgian diamond dealer, a colorful ceramic of sunrise over the Temple Mount to be hung on an eastern wall; explaining like a university lecturer details
of clays, glazes, and firing techniques, too fast for her to follow. Next he handed her a lump of raw red clay from a cluttered work stand. "Make something, motek." One of his cats, a big gray torn, was asleep on the stand, so she set about fashioning a slumbering cat. He watched with amusement for a while, then read Yoram Sarak's weekly, glancing now and then at her work as she intently molded and remolded the clay. "You're facile," he said, as the cat took form. "You have hands. That's something."
"All right, there it is," she said at last. "A cat."
She gave it to him, rather proud of it. He turned it here and there. "Hm. Proportions not too bad. Tail has a nice curve. Listen, it's not a dog or a monkey, it's a cat. Fine." He was setting out bread, cheese, and wine on a bare wooden table. "Let's have something to eat."
As they ate and drank he talked eloquently about the art and the marketing of ceramics. Once he jumped up to take a ball of clay and form it into a convincing turtle, giving her pointers on how to work the stuff. It was all fascinating, and when he sat down on the bench close beside her and clinked glasses to toast a budding artist, she saw nothing wrong with that. But on the refill he put an arm around her, and with the next glass he attempted a kiss, and Daphna was off and running.
The celebrated ceramicist came lumbering after her, exclaiming about her beauty, until he fell over another cat, a yellow-striped beast that let out a hair-raising yowl as Shimon Shimon thudded to the floor. Daphna halted, guffawing. The ceramicist weaVed to his feet. "Laugh, will you, you little devil?" He lurched for her, and again she fled, not especially surprised or outraged, giggling as she kept her distance, and with it her virtue, such as it was. The wine slightly dizzied her, and made it all seem funny. But Shimon Shimon expertly closed in on her until he had her backed up to the worktable, where she seized the first thing that came to hand, a heavy red clay figure. "Please stop this foolishness, Shimon. By your life, I'm not interested."
"Girl, put that down," he panted. "That's a Moses, and I've sold it."
She glanced at it; Moses, all right, Ten Commandments, horns, and all, looking furious and raising the tablets high. "I wouldn't care if it was Jesus, just let me alone."
The ceramicist frowned, looking very offended. "I don't make Jesuses, girl," he panted. "I've never made a single Jesus, and there's money in them, too."
"Shimon, I'm engaged. All right?"
Reverberating knocks at the metal door.
"Who is it?" Shimon yelled.
"Is my sister in there? I'm Dov Luria."
He turned to her. "You have a brother?"
"I have two. This one's a Phantom pilot, and strong as a lion."
"She's coming," called the ceramicist, and he hissed at her, "You've still got my Moses, you idiot! Put it down. I'll let him in... Hello, there," he panted. "Yes, she's here."
Daphna, her chest heaving, was fooling with a red thing on a stand littered with tools and statuary. "What's that," said Dov, "a cat?"
"Not so bad for a first try, eh?"
"Is it such hard work?"
"Hard, no, why do you ask?"
"You're winded as if you'd just run a mile."
"Nonsense. How was the wedding?"
"Well, they got married. Noah wanted to know where the devil you were. That Dzecki was there, too." Dov was noting the broken bread and cheese on a small table, the bottle, and the two glasses, one empty and the other knocked over in a puddle of wine. "Come on, I'll drive you to your flat."
"I can get a bus. I'm in the middle of something."
"I gather that. Let's go."
Daphna put down the cat, quailing a bit under his eye. "Dov, I think I've got a career."
"So do I," said Shimon. "She has hands."
Dov said, "Whatever happened to the ballet?"
"I'm too zaftig."
The ceramic artist burst out in roars. They could hear him laughing as they went down the stairs.
"What's he laughing at?" said Dov. "That guy, talk about zaftig! Did he get fresh?"
"Him? He's as harmless as one of his cats."
"Don't be so sure. If he tries anything, Daphna, I'll zaftig him and his whole studio."
The Ezrakh slept all the way to Jerusalem, sitting beside Benny Luria's driver. In the back seat, Benny worried about Daphna's not showing up (that girl was going to lose Noah Barak, and serve her right); about his sister Yael's tense demeanor (that marriage seemed to be going down the drain); about the spectacle his wife and Nakhama Barak had made of themselves, passing a bottle of Carmel brandy back and forth and getting drunk; he knew Irit's problems, but what was bothering Nakhama? Most of all, he was worrying about S
adat.
The talk at the wedding had been a babble of guesswork. Benny had kept silent, for the air force intelligence was not reassuring. Sadat's missile wall at the Canal now included not only SAM-2s and SAM-3s, blocking the sky up to forty thousand feet, but the dreaded mysterious new SAM-6. It was mobile, therefore a difficult target, and it could pick up aircraft that skimmed the ground. So much was known. The sardonic word in the air force was that the SAM-6 could also make espresso and play "Hatikvah." It was, in any case, very bad news. Egyptians could not handle such world-class weaponry, and even if they could, the Russians would not trust them at the firing buttons, so the expulsion had to be at least in part a fake.
When Benny's driver stopped the car at the Ezrakh's cellar in an old stone Jerusalem house, the aged scholar opened his eyes. "Thank you. A mitzvah, it was," he said, "gladdening the bride and groom, blessed be the Name."
"Rabbi, what do you make of what the Egyptian man has done?"
With a gentle gesture of a frail white hand, the Ezrakh said, "What happens behind the high windows, I don't understand."
"Is it good or bad?"
The Ezrakh looked at him with heavily pouched blue eyes sunk in deep sockets. "That young man at the wedding, in an air force uniform, was your son?"
"Yes."
"Is he a pilot like his father?"
"Yes. My other son is only sixteen, and talking about flying school."
Taking Benny's hand in his dry cool paw, the Ezrakh raised
it to his lips and kissed it. This made Benny Luria very uncomfortable. "Let's part with a word of learning," the Ezrakh said in his feeble hoarse voice. "In Genesis, at the end of the sixth day it says, God saw everything that he had done, 'and behold, it was very good.' You remember that?"
"Well, even in the moshav we learned Bible. Of course I remember it."
The Ezrakh nodded. "Rabbi Akiva commented, 'Good is life. Very good is death.' He didn't explain. You ask about what the Egyptian man has done? It will be very bad and very good."
Like Akiva, he did not explain. He got out of the car and slowly trudged down into his dark dwelling.
14
The Raid
In the captain's cabin of the missile boat Gaash, tied up in Haifa, the second hand of the clock clicked to 5 P.M., whereupon Noah Barak spun the combination lock of his safe and took out a coarse brown envelope, rubber-stamped in red top secret. Opening the sealed inner envelope, he avidly read the blurry cover page of a mimeographed op order.
CHIEF OF GENERAL STAFF
April 2, 1973 TOP SECRET OPERATION "SPRINGTIME OF YOUTH"
Sayeret Matkhal will conduct a seaborne raid into Beirut on the night of 9/10 April 1973, in a combined action with paratroopers, sea commandos, naval units, and air force rescue helicopters. The task group will execute the terrorists' leaders and demolish their headquarters, armament dumps, and weapons workshops. The task group will penetrate Beirut, carry out the mission, and withdraw by sea before the Lebanon police and army are alerted, so as to keep political repercussions to a minimum.
Sayeret Matkhal, General Staff Reconnaissance Force, was Amos Pasternak's elite group. Noah flipped the next two pages listing assignments of various units, and there it was: Unit Amos embark in Gaash. Target Rue de Verdun apartment. A list followed of the fighters and the details of their task, the killing of the terrorist chiefs.
Early that morning Amos Pasternak had already brought aboard his paratroopers and frogmen, with their clutter of weapons, walkie-talkies, signal gear, and rubber boats. This afternoon they were all down on the wharf, listening to the Ramatkhal, who had driven up from Tel Aviv to talk to the raiders. Noah yearned to go down to the dock and hear him, but he was too new a missile boat captain to allow himself that freedom. By chance, he commanded the same boat he had sailed in from Cherbourg, much upgraded in firepower and engine performance. He climbed to the bridge for a last-minute check on preparations for sea, and saw General Elazar ascend the gangplank, then come leaping up the bridge ladder like a boy. "You're Zev Barak's son, eh?" he said, returning Noah's salute. "Your father and I are old comrades in arms. Are you prepared in all respects for this mission?"
"Yes, sir."
"Any comments?"
"I wish I could go with them into Beirut."
Dado peered at him. "So do I, Captain, but we both must stick to our dull support jobs. I'll have a look around your boat."
"I'll come with you."
"Stay on your bridge."
The stocky Ramatkhal strode up and down the deck, dark curly hair stirring in the harbor breeze, talking to the raiders and to sailors at sea details, then he descended to the CIC and the engine rooms. Noah did not warn the watch below that Dado was coming. Surprise inspection, for good or ill, was salutary. Returning from below, Dado remarked, to Noah's considerable relief, "A smart boat. You'll do well."
As the Ramatkhal's car drove off the wharf, it passed two women approaching the Gaash in slovenly jeans. What the devil? Noah thought, who are these civilians, and what are they doing here? He hurried to the gangplank, where sailors
were gaping at them as they came aboard. The blonde was a stranger, but he recognized the beefy woman with the bouffant brunette hairdo at once. It was Amos Pasternak.
This raid had been a long time coming. Arab terrorism had been expanding into a fourth front against Israel, with the hijacking and blowing up of airliners, taking and killing of hostages, letter bombings, car bombings, and machine-gun and grenade attacks on airport terminals, synagogues, Israeli consulates and embassies, all planned, armed, and funded by PLO headquarters in Beirut. The seizure of Israeli athletes as hostages at the Olympic Games in Munich had achieved a peak of world attention. A bungled attempt at rescue by the German special services had resulted in the bound and helpless athletes being machine-gunned to death. Great were the media cries of outrage. Talk of actually calling off the Olympics lasted a day or two. Then, after suitable memorial ceremonies for the murdered Jewish competitors, the Games went on as before.
Within the Israeli government an exceedingly grim mood prevailed thereafter. At a meeting of the armed forces chiefs in the Prime Minister's residence, Sam Pasternak presented the picture of possible retaliation. "It comes to this, Madame Prime Minister. If it's to be a decisive blow, then the target is Beirut. Specifically, two buildings in the heart of Beirut - the PLO headquarters building, and the apartment house where the big shots have their fancy suites. We have the intelligence and forces to do that job. It's a political decision."
Drawn and sallow from her sleepless nights during the Munich hostage crisis, Golda asked, "Do it how?" She cut short discussion of a "surgical air strike" in a very tired voice down to a cigarette croak. " 'Surgical' is a word, gentlemen. There would be civilian deaths, maybe many. The terrorists welcome headlines of death, the gorier the better. We have to consider world opinion."
From the long bitter colloquy the general decision emerged that something would have to be done, probably in Beirut, and that planning for various options should go forward. Six months later nothing had yet been done. Then the same terrorist group kidnapped two American diplomats in Sudan,
and after some inconclusive negotiations with Washington, murdered them.
"Now we go," said Moshe Dayan, and Golda approved.
Sam Pasternak asked his son that morning, when he came to say goodbye, "You'll be wearing women's clothes? Why? They'll only trip you up, if things get warm."
His extended term in the Mossad ended, Sam now had a small office in Ramat Aviv, one secretary, and at the moment no income. Offers from industry and political parties were coming his way, including an invitation to run for mayor of Tel Aviv. In this courtship time he was going slow, being not coy but careful. Committing himself would be easy. Making a wrong move which he would regret for years might be even easier. At his age the margin for recovery from wrong moves was shrinking.
"I've trained and rehearsed in a dress. No problem," Amos said. "The target's
a luxury high-rise, where ladies come and go. Some of those PLO big shots screw whores at all hours of the night. We strike at one in the morning. It makes sense."
"All right, you land on the beach. How do you get from there into Beirut?"
"Mossad guys, passing as rich European businessmen, will be waiting. They've rented cars."
"Let's say the cars aren't there."
"Then I guess we abort. They'll be there."
"Traffic in Beirut is a mess. How can you keep to a timetable? Moreover - what are you smiling at?"
"Dado called us in yesterday, and asked those same questions and plenty more. He's satisfied with the plan. So is Moshe Dayan, and he's been keeping track of our training for months. He kept postponing the raid until the American diplomats incident came along. Great instinct."
Herman Wouk - The Glory Page 23