Herman Wouk - The Glory

by The Glory(Lit)

  "A great honor, Prime Minister, but the cooks know I eat with the men."

  She nodded and smiled. "Smart."

  Barak said, "Yossi, I want Dzecki to show me around the bridge afterward."

  "Why not?"

  "It looks better from a distance, sir," Dzecki said, "and climbing down on it will be slippery."

  "Okay," said Barak.

  After the exciting show the mood at the table was jovial. The desert air had made everyone hungry for a field luncheon, and the VIP fare was lavish, Kishote had seen to that. "Tell me something, Mr. Defense Minister, will you?" Golda said to Dayan. "That was a fine show, but if we're not going to have a war for ten years, why do we need more of these bridges now?"

  She was taking a rare bantering tone with Moshe Dayan, for her usual dry courtesy masked deep political discord. Dayan had once bolted the Labor Party with the Rafi splinter, and Golda never forgot anything.

  "I said a major war, Madame Prime Minister," Dayan coolly replied to this needle about the Time interview cap-tioned "Waiting in the Wings," which had strongly implied that Dayan aimed to succeed Golda. "I spoke of a general conception. I wasn't prophesying. Reporters oversimplify, as you know."

  "Oy vay, do I know! Well, so what is your conception?" She spoke the Hebrew word concepzia with faint irony.

  "My chief of military intelligence should be here," said Dayan. "It's his estimate, which I fully accept, and he has it at his fingertips."

  "He isn't here," said Golda.

  Dayan nodded and took up the challenge. Neither Egypt nor Syria would start a major war alone, he said. Intelligence had established this. Syria was the weaker power, so everything depended on when Egypt would feel ready to start a war. After the air pounding by Phantoms that they had endured in 1970, this was out of the question, until they had acquired airplanes and missiles that could strike deep enough into Israel to deter or neutralize the air force. That was now basic Egyptian doctrine, and they could not achieve it before 1975 at the earliest.

  "That's two years away," Golda observed. "You said ten years."

  "We won't be standing still meantime, Madame Prime Minister. Our qualitative edge will keep increasing. Incidents can occur, possibly serious incidents. Not a major war. It's a complex analysis, but that's it in a nutshell."

  Golda nodded and looked around, causing a lull in the

  clatter of cutlery. "I call on my Reb Alarmist," she said, "to oppose the estimate of the chief of military intelligence, as the Minister puts it in a nutshell."

  All eyes shifted to Barak, with some smiles. He shrugged, and spoke slowly. "General Zeira's judgment was proven spectacularly correct in blue/white. I don't presume to challenge it. I'm sure his concepzia is based on hard intelligence, and draws its conclusions with hard logic. My concern is that the enemy's logic may not work quite like ours."

  Golda turned to Dayan, who smiled pleasantly at Barak. "Well said, Zev. But fear is human, and the logic of fear is much the same for Arab and infidel."

  Chuckles around the table. "Very good," Golda said. "Anyhow, I'll settle for 1975, then we'll see."

  "And returning to your question, Madame Prime Minister," said Dayan, "we can use more such bridges, because 1975 will come around before we know it, and ten years will also pass."

  "Those are reliable predictions," replied Golda drily.

  When command cars took the VIPs off to the Beersheba airport, Barak remained behind. What struck him most, as he inched down the greasy steel sections of the bridge toward the muddy water, was the gargantuan size of the thing. If he had not seen it scuttling over the sands, he would not have imagined it was movable. Mechanics and engineers swarmed on it, hammering, tinkering, dragging hoses and heavy equipment here and there. Guiding him through the mess, Dzecki said, "Plenty went wrong this morning, sir, but God was good, and we made it."

  "Indeed you did. The Prime Minister was dumbfounded. So was I. Why, this monster is as flexible as a snake."

  "Not really. A snake can wiggle this way and that," Dzecki illustrated with gestures, "and go around corners. The bridge is flexible only up and down. It will need a straight road to the Canal."

  "And if there's no road?"

  "There is one, and they're building others."

  "Dzecki, you're a long way from Great Neck."

  Showing white teeth in a grease-blackened face, Dzecki said, "I'm where I belong, sir."

  Don Kishote appeared on the embankment, waving. "The helicopter's in sight, Zev," he shouted, "to take us to the Bar-Lev Line."

  Barak inquired as they walked out to the landing place, "What's all this about your being fired, Yossi?"

  "Well, Gorodish wants his own deputy, not a Sharon man, so I'm out," said Kishote. "Arik got thrown a bone, command of a reserve armor division. He wants me as his deputy."

  "Careful, Yossi. Arik's retired and jumping into the October election. The division will be entirely on your back."

  "I look forward to that."

  "Can I give you advice?"

  "You're my army father."

  "When Golda discusses appointments, she always asks, 'Is he one of ours?' That's what has finished Sharon. If you play along with Sharon's game you're finished too."

  "I don't play anybody's game. And if that's the criterion for army advancement- 'Is he one of ours?' - too bad." The helicopter was slanting down to them. "Here we go. What can I show you in the Bar-Lev Line, and why?"

  "When Golda visits it the press and the brass are there. She can't really find out anything. Arguments about it keep buzzing around her like bees. Is it an effective deterrent? Should it be held in war, or abandoned?" He glanced at Kishote. "You've had to think a lot about that."

  "I have. The Prime Minister is wise to send you on a surprise inspection."

  The helicopter took the Mitla Pass westward. When it began its descent to the glittering blue Canal, Barak touched Kishote's shoulder, pointed forward, and bawled into his headset phone, "When to all the devils did the Egyptians build those ramparts? They're higher than ours!"

  Kishote's voice gargled in the headphones. "They started it long ago. So we went higher. Then they went higher. Both sides are up to about sixty feet now. They never stop, though."

  The helicopter jolted to a dusty landing. Across the Canal a fortified tower like a truncated pyramid rose above the Egyptians' sand wall, and the two prodigious earthworks stretched far out of sight to the north. "Where exactly are

  we?" Barak asked, as they both got out, faced downwind, and pissed on the sand.

  "Deversoir. A likely crossing point, for them or for us."

  "Why?"

  Kishote gestured southward at a broad shimmer of water. "Great Bitter Lake protects one flank."

  Emerging from a sandbagged concrete entrance under layers of rock and iron, a lieutenant was buttoning his uniform. "Not expecting visitors, Colonel Nitzan," he said, saluting.

  "That's the idea," said Kishote.

  Most of the soldiers in the bunker were in undershirts or stripped to the waist. One shaggy bearded soldier was giving another a haircut. The outpost was spacious and well lit as Zahal burrows went, only steamy-hot, not like the cramped chilly observation bunkers on the Golan. There was the usual underground smell of earth, sweat, cigarette smoke, and cooking. Tunnels led off the main bunker to pillboxes where half-dressed soldiers on duty lolled at their guns, some wearing slippers instead of boots; reading, smoking, talking, or listening to rock-and-roll music. An air of dreary boredom reigned, and Barak thought, Why not? For three whole years this front had not been under fire, not since the War of Attrition ended, and the worrisome Egyptian maneuvers always subsided without incident.

  "These maozim are pretty much alike," said Kishote when they left, "but this one is special, and I'll show you why." He brought Barak out to the back of the rampart, where the packed sand sloped away at an angle that tanks could climb. But here the slope had been excavated, except for a thin bit on the Canal side, to make space for an enor
mous red-brick-paved yard. "Here's where a crossing will probably happen if war comes," said Kishote. "Bulldozers will knock out what's left of the rampart in minutes, a bridge will be rammed through, and attack forces will head across the Canal. Did you manage to read the dovecote plan on the way?"

  "Some of it," said Barak. "I'd like to see another one or two maozim, Yossi. They're how far apart?"

  "Seven miles, more or less."

  "Seven-mile gaps? Then in what sense is it a line at all?"

  "Well, there are observation posts and tank emplacements in between. You'll see them. It's a thinly manned line, sure.

  Mobile armor brigades and the air force are supposed to crush any assault force, once across and detected."

  "Then what you've got here is an early-warning system."

  "Yes, also what the deep newspaper brains call 'a political presence on the Canal.' "

  They were walking back to the helicopter. "But what can the air force do at the Canal," persisted Barak, "with all those SAM batteries lined up right behind that rampart wall?"

  Yossi gave a sad headshake. "Look, when they sneaked those SAMs up to the Canal, Arik screamed for weeks for orders to cross and destroy them. Golda and Dayan said no. The air force has updated its countermissile doctrine and equipment, and its number-one priority in case of war is 'Knock out the missile screen,' as they knocked out the airfields in '67."

  After hops to two more outposts the helicopter landed back at the Beersheba airport, where Kishote's driver was waiting with an army car to run them to Tel Aviv. As they rode Kishote began cracking and consuming sunflower seeds at a great rate, dropping handfuls of shells out of the window. From Beersheba to Tel Aviv, he said, was a three-sack drive.

  "All right, Yossi," said Barak, accepting a sack from him, but eating few, "give me your own judgment on the Bar-Lev Line."

  Kishote finished a handful of seeds before replying. "I'm a fighting man with a reputation for being crazy, which even the Prime Minister knows about. You really want my crazy opinion? Nobody planned the Bar-Lev Line. It grew like a weed in the sand."

  Barak blinked. "How do you mean?"

  "Why, I mean that when Nasser broke the truce, sank the Eilat, and started shooting at our Canal patrols, the engineers had to dig fortified holes for the boys to hide in like rats. Then the thinkers started thinking about those holes, and in a way they worked out something. Strongpoints seven miles apart don't give observational cross-coverage or mutual supporting fire, but with the smaller outposts you do have an early warning system of sorts. At least it makes some sense of the holes. The thing took form while Bar-Lev was Ramatkhal and by the time Dado relieved him it was a fait accompli, the Bar-Lev Line."

  "Good or bad?"

  "According to our national defense doctrine, all wrong. 'Movement and fire!' 'Carry the battle to the enemy!' Our boys are sitting down in those maozim, fifteen or twenty to a hole, year in and year out like a lot of Frenchmen. Did you see their appearance? Their manner, even when two senior officers came in?" The car was winding up a hilly road offering vistas of the Dead Sea with its white salt flats and the red-gray mountains of Moab. Kishote scattered a handful of shells through the window. "Still, it's there now. It's an obstacle, a deterrent. The enemy will have to plan to breach the line, and by the Soviet book they'll assign to it tremendous effort and much time. Time we'll need to mobilize the reserves. If the Arabs ever dare to go, that time will be precious."

  "Will they go? What's your estimate?"

  Yossi crumpled an empty bag, threw it out, and ate seeds from a fresh bag. "First you ask me to think, now you want me to prophesy? No, thank you."

  "Don't clown with me, Kishote."

  With a glance at his swarthy young driver, Yossi abruptly shifted to English. "Look, Zev, when Dayan tells a Time reporter we'll have no major war for ten years, what can make him so sure? 'Qualitative gap"? Ha! Will Sadat dare an attack, fearing that we can bomb him back to the Stone Age? Who knows? If I were Sadat, I'd pick my time and go, and figure to lose and still come out ahead politically, once the superpowers intervened. But then, I'm crazy."

  Barak's laugh was melancholy. "You're not far off from Dado's analysis, and he's not crazy."

  "Really? He's a great leader, so I'm complimented." Kishote reverted to Hebrew. "I'm on my way to say goodbye to my wife."

  "Oh? Where's Yael off to now?"

  "Back to Los Angeles, where else? And she's taking our little girl."

  "Yossi, are you getting a divorce?"

  "In those rabbinic courts?" Kishote hoisted his shoulders. "That's a big nuisance, and neither of us wants to marry somebody else, so why bother?"

  "I'm sorry about this. Yael's a great woman."

  "Zev, there's nothing I don't know about Yael. The lack of feeling is mutual. I thought she might stay on in the flat for Aryeh's sake, make a home for him until he finishes school. But he's almost a soldier now, he'll be okay, and so will I. She made a lot of money in California, and Lee has been after her to come back. Him and that Iraqi moneybags, Sheva Leavis." A pause. Kishote stopped cracking seeds, staring out of the window at the Dead Sea far below. "She may also figure that by taking up with Sharon, as you say, my career is finished. In any case, she's going."

  "Yossi, lately you haven't given her much reason to stay."

  "Oh, I am what I am. I'll say this for her, she does feel a

  bit guilty. When she broke it to me, she brought up that Time

  article. It's not desertion anymore to leave Israel, and what

  Day an said proves it."

  A white Mercedes was weaving and slipping through downtown Tel Aviv in the worst of the early evening traffic. "It rides like a cloud," Yael said to Pasternak, "and Yonatan is a hero at the wheel. He hasn't changed."

  The driver turned to smile at her, showing stained broken teeth. Long, long ago she herself had recruited him for Pasternak during the Sinai campaign, a skinny Tunisian corporal of nineteen with perfect teeth. But the years had been hard on Yonatan; he was stout and getting bald, and had seven children to support. So he was joyous at being back at his life-work, driving Sam Pasternak.

  "Excuse me, Giveret," he said, "but you're as beautiful as always. It's you who haven't changed."

  "If I weren't leaving," Yael said to Pasternak, "I would steal Yonatan."

  "Only you could do it, Giveret," said the driver, "except I love this car too much."

  "I don't, but it's the company car for the chief executive," Pasternak said. "It's too rich for my blood."

  "Oh, you'll get used to it." Her white hand patted Pasternak's brown hairy paw. "Real fast, too, Sam."

  What had not changed was Shimshon's. Once Yonatan had driven them there through the dark crooked Jaffa streets for a certain memorable dinner. When Pasternak had asked her now where she wanted to eat, she had shot back, "Where

  else? Shimshon's." They passed through the crowded street-level eatery - bright lights, tile floor, Formica tables, popular prices - and descended to the costly gloomy nook of ornamented dark wood booths for American tourists and highflying Israelis. "No appetizers," she said as they sat down, "and right away, red wine. Not Avdat. Vegetable soup, and of course kevess b'tanur."

  "You know what you want," said Pasternak.

  "I usually do, though I can't always get it."

  A waiter in Yemenite costume - nevertheless a real Yemenite - took their orders. The wine came at once. "Well, I invited myself to dinner," she said, raising her glass, "and you're sweet to put up with me, Sam. L'hayim."

  "L'hayim. It's a pleasure, but your leaving is a shock."

  "Not to Kishote." Head archly aslant, she said, "A last chance for some frank talk, old sweetheart, before we part?"

  "Why not? Let me say I'm with Yonatan. You look marvellous, and you don't change."

  "Charming of you, dear, but it's partly the dim lights, and partly the memories, hey? Why do you suppose I suggested Shimshon's? I was in uniform then, that's a change right there, and twenty,
that's another change, what? Ah, well." She drank with the old mannerism. Yael did not just lift wine to her lips, she brought up the glass with a zestful little flourish; and she was smiling at him in the old alluring way. Eva had a far prettier mouth, she still picked up money doing head shots in candy and toothpaste ads, but Yael's full mouth, when it stretched in a smile, had a tangy unexpected sweetness, as though a leopard were showing a house cat's affection.

  "Enough about that," said Pasternak. "I avoid looking in mirrors these days. How are your kids?"

  "The baby's an angel. I'm taking her. As for Aryeh, he's a young lion, and he hero-worships your Amos, with good reason. He lives in our flat and goes to school nearby. Quite self-sufficient. Please give me more wine... Thanks. About Aryeh, now." A long leisurely sip. That seductive mouth twisted in a sly grin. "Let me take you back a few years, old dear. All right? Suez crisis, Ben Gurion and Dayan in Paris. Kishote's brother Lee has a suite in the H6tel George Cinq, and Kishote comes out of the bedroom wearing a towel-"