From all over the world, in trains, planes, and ships, more than a hundred thousand tourists were converging to watch and to cheer the great military parade.in Jerusalem marking Israel's twenty-fifth Independence Day. In Southampton the Queen Elizabeth 2, about to sail on a gala Passover cruise to Haifa, was chockablock with happy Jews booked to celebrate the festival at sea en route, and last-minute arrivals were hurrying up the gangways. Among them were the tanned blond lady of the Beirut raid and her natty little husband, who as they came aboard gave their names to the first-class steward as Armand and Irene Fleg.
"I had better check in the dining salon, my dear," said her husband, as they unpacked in a luxury suite, "to make sure
all is in order. As you know, matzo disagrees with me, binds me up like concrete."
He had arranged for seating at the captain's table, where he would be sure of eating British cuisine, bread included. They were travelling by ship because he hated to fly, especially with terrorists machine-gunning airports and hijacking planes. The rumors of a possible submarine attack on the great ship, M. Fleg shrugged off. A third-generation Parisian Jew, he was quite indifferent to Passover rules and customs, but the Queen Elizabeth 2 had ten rabbis aboard to conduct seders and services for seven hundred passengers, and the cruise was billed as strictly kosher, which, if serious, meant matzo instead of bread for Jewish passengers.
"Yes, dear, you-" Three thunderous blasts of the foghorn drowned her out. "Yes, you do that, my dear," she said, her ears ringing. "I'll go up on deck."
RAF fighters were snarling overhead as the great liner backed out of the berth and a brass band blared "Rule, Britannia" and then "Hatikvah." On the crowded promenade deck, unmindful of a gray drizzle, passengers laughed, cheered, and wept, throwing colored streamers and confetti to the shouting well-wishers on shore. The blond lady went climbing up and up to the deserted rainy boat deck, where she leaned on the rail to watch the shore slip away as the Queen speeded up, heading out to sea in thickening rain. The tumult on the promenade deck below died down, the deck trembled, and the blond lady's spirits lifted.
Israel ahead! Lovely, lively, grubby, parochial, claustrophobic Israel, no place for anyone used to elegance or even comfort; but the place where one saw those bronzed young men in field-green uniforms, and the army girls in perky black caps and beige miniskirts; quite a change from the pale timorous Jewish youngsters of her own childhood and youth in Beirut and Paris. It did one's heart good to glimpse them now and then. Staring out at mounting waves, gray-green as Zahal uniforms, the lady idly wondered whether by chance in the big parade she would catch sight of that interesting Pasternak fils.
Irene Fleg's recruitment for the Beirut raid had been a bizarre series of chances that in retrospect made her wonder at herself, and to thank God that she had emerged safe. To
this day her husband knew nothing about it, and almost it seemed like a dream. That young Pasternak, at first in his preposterous female disguise, and next morning as a brawny round-faced soldier in a green army sweater and woolen cap, was a dream figure, and he was haunting her here on the weather deck of the Queen Elizabeth 2. The rain on her face and the gusty sea wind were conducive to romantic thoughts. It was a good while before she reluctantly went below.
At the captain's table that night, as the Queen majestically rolled in a storm, the stout gray-haired captain steered the talk away from Middle East politics to the far-off Vietnam war, the latest movies, and the snowballing scandals of Watergate. While a jocund Hebraic tumult of Passover songs and chants resounded from three enormous horseshoe-shaped seder tables, he maintained a tolerant Christian beam, and over the dessert wine he disclosed half-humorously to his table guests, mainly journalists and broadcasters, that there were fifty security agents aboard. "That is, British agents whom we know about. Perhaps the Israelis have booked on a few as well, and if so more power to them. They're very capable." His eyes twinkled. "I've even been told that one of the rabbis is a Mossad man. That would be a most effective disguise." Chuckles from the guests. "At any rate, we can all sleep soundly on this voyage. Weather permitting - and we'll soon be through this bit of weather - I will myself."
Barak's forebodings continued to plague him at the parade rehearsal which Golda sent him to observe. As the masses of machines went clanking and snorting through flag-lined streets of East Jerusalem, all shut up and silent but for swarthy Arab urchins running about, and old men glowering from doorways, it more and more seemed to him a costly thunderous mistake, as well as an invitation for an onslaught at the borders. Of the blue/white alert, the jocund Israeli public was utterly unaware.
But the real parade on Independence Day, as it rolled before the reviewing stand, at last broke through the thick crust of his detached pessimism. The bands marching past played the great songs of the old days - "Shoshanna," "Finjan," "Sycamore Garden," "Eretz Eretz" - and despite himself his spine thrilled. As the orderly hordes of war machines
growled through the cheering sidewalk crowds, where children on their fathers' shoulders were waving thousands of little blue-and-white paper flags, the machines themselves were incongruously festooned with flowers, as though to say, We look and sound terrifying but we mean peace. Primitive 1948 weapons and captured Soviet machines headed each section. Ahead of the huge self-propelled cannon pottered the ludicrous little Davidka and Napoleonchik; ahead of the Centurion and Sherman battalions and the giant T-55s, a few toylike Hotchkiss and Cromwell tanks; ahead of the armored personnel carriers, the crude "sandwiches," the steel-plated old busses that had run the blockade of Jerusalem. He remembered riding up that perilous road through shellfire in those creeping groaning sandwiches; he remembered wondering, as he drove out to Latrun, whether Ben Gurion's "state" would last a month.
The female soldiers marching like men, the navy in dazzling white, the red-beret paratroopers with rigid backs and faultless ranks and files - the cumulative power of these stirring shows was too much even for Mr. Alarmist. Through the cracks in his skepticism gushed old old feelings and memories, a freshet of Zionist enthusiasm, of youthful joy in the birth of the Jewish State, in fighting for it, in winning the Independence War, in being a New Jew, free of the terrors of Europe. Cheers and applause louder than ever rose from the thronged Israelis as the air force planes appeared in the distance. The Phantoms came roaring overhead, a vast perfect six-pointed star in the clear blue Jerusalem heavens. Golda Meir, sitting in the row in front of him, between President Shazar and Moshe Dayan, turned around and caught Zev Barak's eye.
"Nu, Mr. Alarmist?" he heard her say over the Phantom roar, and he was able to laugh with her at himself. He had been wrong, General Zeira right. Whether there had never been a real danger, or whether Dado's vigorous quiet preparations had discouraged Sadat - speed-up of road-building and fortification construction, establishment of vast emergency stores and ammunition dumps near the fronts, and forward positioning of masses of tanks - the borders were quiet. No whisper of danger dimmed the glory of the big parade.
Michael and Shayna Berkowitz came with Dzecki's parents from Haifa for the parade, so they all dined afterward with the Baraks, and Nakhama served cold dishes of vegetables and fish on paper plates. Michael was pale and thinner, and Shayna seemed low. They had been trying in vain, Barak knew, to have a child. When Shayna asked Barak in an aside how Don Kishote was doing in the Sinai, and he said Yossi was an ever-rising army star, she briefly glowed as Galia had at her Phantom pilot, and he felt very sorry for her.
Dzecki's father said that the parade had been an eye-opener. At last he understood why Dzecki had made aliya. He balanced this concession with pungent stories of the troubles he was encountering in his Haifa real estate deals with slippery sellers, lying contractors, obfuscating lawyers and immovable Haifa pakkidim (bureaucrats). "All the same," he said, "Dzecki and I have acquired some great properties, and we've found a real friend in a Mr. Gulinkoff, a reliable wealthy individual, and a very disinterested adviser. We're going to show these people th
e American way to make money. Dzecki's Hebrew is my ace in the hole. Nothing gets past him on paper or in a meeting."
Mrs. Barkowe said, "It's a pity he had to miss that wonderful parade."
"Somebody has to stand guard in Sinai," said Shayna. "I admire your son."
"He didn't have to reenlist," complained Mrs. Barkowe. "I tried to press him about that, but he only mumbled nonsense about some stupid bridge. I'll never agree with my husband. Jack's crazy. He wouldn't be missed if he'd go home, and then we all could."
Irene and Armand Fleg watched the parade in a small section of the main grandstand reserved for the Alliance Israelite Universelle. Glancing around during Golda's sonorous speech after the Phantom flypast, she caught sight of General Pasternak in a top row. When the ceremonies ended and the government leaders left, people came pouring out of the stand, behind the mounted policemen who brought up the rear of the parade; and Irene Fleg managed to meet Pasternak as he came down the tiers, escorting a dark-haired woman who had the sheen of an actress or model.
"Why, hello, General Pasternak. A memorable parade, eh?"
Astonished and nonplussed, then recognizing her from the brief brush on the missile boat, he grunted a hello.
"How is your son?"
"Quite all right."
She said hurriedly, "Do you have a card?"
Wordlessly he took one from his wallet. She appeared next day at his shabby little office, and when the secretary asked her business, she just gave her the card. Pasternak rose at his desk, and gestured her to a chair. "What can I do for you?" He had no idea who she was, but at a glance he got the picture: married, from the ring; decidedly well-off, from the clothes; clever and bold, from her direct approach, and the way she looked him in the eye and remained standing. A volunteer just for that one job, he was sure.
"Thank you. You must be extremely busy." She pulled a sealed envelope from a chic suede purse. "Your son is a brave young man, and he was kind to me. This is a letter of thanks. Will you oblige me by giving it to him? No reply needed."
He took the letter, and she offered him a bony little hand. "Merci, monsieur. I'll trouble you no further." With that she left. He scrutinized the square blue monogrammed envelope, then pulled out a desk drawer. He kept a file labelled Soon, and he dropped the blond lady's letter into that file.
16
The Concepzia
"There it comes!"
A general shout of the Prime Minister's entourage greeted the sight of the roller bridge, looking like nothing so much as a gigantic mutant out of the horror films, a black millipede hundreds of feet long crawling on the white Sinai sands. It hove in view humping itself over a high dune, slithered down, and headed toward the viewing stand where Golda Meir, an age-spotted hand shading her eyes from the blazing sun, watched with incredulity. It dwarfed the tanks that towed it, and absolutely looked to be on the move by itself, a flexible living steel nightmare.
"Jewish heads," exclaimed Golda in Yiddish to Dado and Dayan. "Yiddishe kep!"
The wooden platform stood on an embankment overlooking a huge ditch for practicing crossings, a mock-up of the Suez Canal which Dado had ordered dug in the desert below a dam near Refidim. The flooded trench in the rubbly landscape conformed strictly to the Canal as a water obstacle, in width, depth, and slope of the banks. If this rolling monster could really bridge it without mishap, and a waiting column of Centurion tanks could then cross to the other side, not only would the tactics of a war with Egypt be affected, but the army budget, too.
For May, June, and July had gone by, and the threat at the borders had faded away. The Arabs had marched up the hill and marched down again. They had not dared. General Zeira had triumphed. In the inner command circles the blue/white alert, never made public, was being called off. Time magazine quoted Moshe Dayan as stating, "There will be no major war in the Middle East for ten years." A wave of defense cost-cutting was on, of retrenchment, of plans to cut down the regular army and even the term of reserve duty, so the building of more such bridges was much in question. For the participants in the test, and for the bridge's inventors, there was the tension of an opening night in the theater. After much rehearsal, would everything go right? Or would one of a hundred possible hitches make a fatal fashla under the eyes of the big decision makers?
Clanking and squealing past the stand, the giant millipede plunged into the water with a towering muddy splash. It seemed to be going straight down, down, down! Fiasco already? But no, the hollow rollers performed as planned, the bridge heaved to the surface and, with one tank riding it, eerily swam straight across. As it struck the far side this tank rolled to the front, pushed over a flexible ramp curled like a scorpion's tail, and climbed up the sandy slope into "Egypt." Some onlookers applauded. All this time not one soldier had been visible in the exercise, only the machines.
Next the long column of tanks, their motors running and warmed up, headed for the bridge in an enormous noise, raising plumes of dust mingled with dirty exhaust. One by one they nosed down the embankment and groaned out on the steel surface, and the onlookers saw a sight certainly not before observed on earth. Under the weight of each tank, sixty tons or more, the bridge sagged deeply. Between the tanks, however, the very buoyant rollers popped upward. Soon the tanks filled the bridge a few yards apart, forcing it into the strangest shape, a series of curves that travelled along between the tanks like the wavy lines on an oscilloscope. It seemed impossible that this weirdly wiggly bridge would not come apart, one way or another, under such peculiar stresses. Tank after tank after tank, the column streamed across the preposterous contraption and mounted to the far side. When all had passed over, the bridge
straightened itself out, floating with a gentle up-and-down motion.
Golda turned to Moshe Dayan. "Unbelievable. Wonderful." The inventors, Generals Laskov and Tal, breathed easier and beamed. The tank column that had crossed the bridge began heading back westward to the Canal. The soldiers of the bridge demonstration lined up for a cooked meal at a field kitchen, while jeeps brought the VIP observer party to a luncheon tent nearby.
At the command truck under a canvas awning, where Yossi Nitzan was barking orders and assistants were making colored scrawls on transparencies over maps, Barak jumped from the jeep, strode to him and grasped his hand. "Kol ha'kavod, Don Kishote. Kol ha'kavod."
Army insiders kept score on front-running officers like Yossi Nitzan, and Barak knew that this morning he had scored high. Such an unwieldy ballet of complicated machines and experimental tactics, performed under the eyes of the biggest of big brass, did not come off without superb planning, command, and control. Not bad for a refugee lad from Cyprus who had showed up twenty-five years ago at Latrun on a mule, at the height of a battle going very badly, and had plunged into the thick of it like a lunatic; in fact, like Don Kishote.
Yossi's hard businesslike look relaxed in a puckish grin. "Hi! How did they like it?"
"Outstanding success."
"Great. I've been fired."
"What!"
"Talk about it later."
In the breezy tent Golda put Gorodish, the new Southern Commander, on her right hand; a bullet-headed thickset general, radiating pleasure in the exalted company and the morning's success. Dayan sat on her left with Dado. The others took folding chairs at random at the long plank table, and all fell to. "Madame Prime Minister, this is Colonel Nitzan," said Barak, entering the tent with Yossi, "the commander of the exercise."
"Ah. Well done, Colonel. I know they call you Don Kishote," said Golda,' 'but if you're crazy, I need more crazy officers like you."
"Kishote is crazy only during full moon," said Dado. "Or when a girl goes by."
"A fine officer," said Gorodish stiffly. "I'm sorry to be losing him."
Amos Pasternak came in with Dzecki Barkowe, for Golda had asked to meet soldiers from the bridge project. Both were so sweaty and dust-covered that it was hard to tell the major from the sergeant. "And who are these?" inquired Golda. She peered
at Amos and smiled. "Hmm, I seem to have met this one recently."
Barak said, "Major Pasternak, commanding Armor Battalion Seventy-seven. A company of his tanks moves the bridge."
"Amos, how do you manage not to pull it apart," Dayan put in, "with ten tanks hauling at it this way and that?"
"They're all on one wireless network, Minister, and they move only on signal."
"And this young fellow?" Dado asked. Dzecki was standing at rigid attention.
"A sergeant on the bridge, General," Amos said.
Golda asked, "Did you have problems, Sergeant?"
"Nothing we couldn't handle, Prime Minister," said Dzecki.
Her heavy eyebrows shot up at the accent. "By my life, an American. Like me."
"Member of my family," said Barak. "Long Island branch."
"I'm from Milwaukee, myself," she said to Dzecki, holding out her hand to him. He showed her his own, black with grease, and she laughed. Soldiers were bringing in platters of schnitzel and steak. Golda invited Kishote to join them for lunch.
Herman Wouk - The Glory Page 26