"Kahalani, where's Pasternak?"
"Evacuated, sir." Kahalani sits cross-legged on the ground, map in his lap, trying to keep his eyes open.
"To all the devils. How bad?"
"Not sure, sir." He describes how Pasternak's crew turned him over to the medics bloody and barely conscious.
With a sad shrug, Yanosh begins the briefing by telling these battle-worn troops that they will have to launch a counterattack in a few hours. They take it with dulled disbelief, and the order goes much against Yanosh's military grain. After five days of hot and sanguinary head-to-head combat, the enemy has at last slacked off, and these troops urgently need to rest and regroup. Yet he not only has to give the order to go on fighting, but he must inspire them to carry it out.
The high politics that call for the counterattack - "change the battlefield picture, forestall a cease-fire" - would make no impact on these soldiers. Yanosh speaks straight hard words. He tells them they have broken the Syrian attack,
taken the worst the enemy can do, and sent him reeling back home. One more blow can knock Syria out of the war. Then it will probably end, and Israel will be safe again thanks to the heroes of the Golan Heights campaign. So the cry is "On to Damascus!" The exhortation works. The young men perk up and start bandying about possible names for the new push, a code word for this thrust into Syria. Suggestions ranging from comic to obscene bring laughs and groans.
A voice at the tent flap speaks up. "Call it 'Black Panther.' "
Amos Pasternak stands just inside, his face and arm bandaged, his tone buoyant. Kahalani jumps up and hugs him amid a chorus of welcome. "You escaped from Rambam, maniac?" asks Yanosh.
"No, sir. The doctor told me if I was fool enough to want to come back, he wouldn't stop me."
Amos's coup de theatre sticks, and when the Seventh Brigade crosses into the Syrian minefields behind the roller-flail tanks at eleven o'clock that morning, the signal is "Black Panther." And Amos stands in his turret leading nine tanks, all that is left of his battalion.
By the time Sam Pasternak lands at the blacked-out Ben Gurion airport his son is deep in Syria, advancing through burning abandoned tanks and vehicles under a shell-streaked sky. When Friday, October twelfth, dawns, his tanks are a third of the way to Damascus, under heavy fire from entrenched defenders; and the whole attack all along the front is slowing down, for a fresh Iraqi armored division has rolled into the battle.
The rising sun of the seventh day, October 12, shines through the trees into the garden of Dayan's Zahala villa, where he sits with Pasternak. Around them are Canaanite antiquities, some of them almost priceless, which Dayan has acquired, one way or another. A few he has restored with his own hands.
"I'm going to the north, Sam. That's where this war is being decided. I'll find out what I can about Amos."
"Why, Amos is in the hospital, Minister. It's such a bal-agan there, they couldn't tell me anything more, but-"
With his old crooked grin, Dayan says,' 'No, no. He's back
with his battalion. Yanosh himself told me. Like father like son."
"If you mean we're both crazy, b'seder. He can't be too badly injured, then. That's a relief."
"Now listen, Sam. Here's my view of crossing the Canal at this juncture. I want you to attend the meetings in my place, and speak for me."
"At your orders, Minister."
With his customary clipped authority but in a new faintly doleful tone - the downswing of Dayan's "yo-yo syndrome," as the Pit has begun to call it - he tears apart the crossing proposal. The air force is the limiting factor. It is near the red line on planes and pilots, American plane shipments are still almost nil, and the Soviet missile wall at the Canal is unbreached. So a crossing will have no air support to speak of.
Moreover, no adequate bridging equipment is on hand. Tal's rolling monster is an unknown quantity, subject to breakdowns. Pontoon rafts and rubber boats, at best too slow and vulnerable, can only trickle across a small bridgehead. Egyptian armor will snuff out such a weak effort in a shattering final catastrophe. Better a cease-fire than that! He has made these points over and over ad nauseam in several forums, and his position is on record. "Sam, you know I can't stand committee drivel. There will be long meetings all day about this thing before the cabinet votes. First in the Pit. Then with Golda's war cabinet. Finally with the full cabinet. That one I must attend as Defense Minister. For the rest, you sit in for me, b'seder? Say I'm coming, and call me if there's any crisis."
Though Pasternak doesn't like this, he only repeats, "At your orders, Minister."
But the crisis comes soon. The Ramatkhal is at a far reach of exhaustion and nerve strain, and when Pasternak tries to explain Dayan's absence in these crucial talks the result is a rare terrifying explosion of Dado wrath. Hurriedly summoned, Dayan returns from the Syrian front to the Pit, and then goes with Dado and the staff to the inner war cabinet meeting.
The red-hot but unmentioned issue of the day, Pasternak
well knows, is responsibility. Only the full cabinet can make this decision on which may turn the future of the nation. In Israel's governance the army, as the "military echelon," has to look for orders to the "political echelon." Dayan himself as Ramatkhal often ignored or bypassed this rickety scheme, which dates back to the coalition schemes of Ben Gurion. It has survived, with all the fuzzy compromises that govern Israel, because no party will risk its seats to upset the balance. Now, however, the fate of Israel hangs on how the makeshift system will work. The political echelon has so far ducked a decision on crossing the Canal, so the military echelon has been paralyzed.
In Golda's office, where the few members of the war cabinet are meeting, the talk drags on and on. Nobody seems eager for the responsibility of this move, but Dado is adamant. Enough words! He will not go to the full cabinet, the political echelon, without a clear-cut decision by this inner cabinet in hand. He is patiently describing once more to them how a proposed crossing on Saturday night will go - emphasizing the high risk, refusing to guarantee success - when an aide comes in with a despatch for the Prime Minister. She scans it and calmly hands it to Dado, asking him to read it aloud.
It is hard ultrasecret intelligence that Anwar Sadat has once for all declined a cease-fire, and has ordered his armored divisions still in Egypt to cross the Canal into Sinai on Saturday or Sunday for an all-out attack toward the mountain passes. In the smoky room an almost prayerful silence falls. For if this is true, an awesome miracle may be in the making.
These few insiders and the army staff have long been speculating how to tempt Sadat to send his armored divisions across the Canal and out from under the missile umbrella. The Israeli forces in Sinai are now dug in after a four-day lull, rested and in good fighting trim. By the rules of modern war, the strength of the defense is as four to one against the offense; so if Sadat's armor divisions do attack, they will be smashing themselves against these hardened-up defense lines, and all the while Peled's air force will also be punishing them. Thereafter an Israeli crossing of the Canal, instead of
being an almost incalculable risk, can become at last a feasible if bloody way to win the war.
Golda speaks first. "Gentlemen, it appears events have made the decision for us." She looks around with sunken old eyes in which hope and humor glitter. "The full cabinet meeting is cancelled."
Pasternak glances to the dour Dayan, who slightly shrugs as though to say, "Fine, Sadat has shouldered the responsibility."
25
Everything That Can Fly
"There you are! Quick, before the fuzz runs me in," Emily calls, throwing open her car door as Barak emerges from the Senate Office Building, into a chilly wind whirling leaves along Constitution Avenue. A policeman is glowering at her from the intersection. "I told him I was waiting for my father, the senior senator from South Dakota, and you don't fit either description." She rockets away from the curb while behind them a whistle angrily blows. "Where to, Wolf? Is lunch on?"
"Lunch, sure, but
brief, Em. Embassy first."
"Right." She jerks a thumb at a large basket on the back seat. "I packed a picnic, to hell with restaurants and waiters. Christ, what delayed you in there?"
"Henry Jackson's just a mighty busy senator. I shouldn't have asked you to pick me up -"
"No, no, this is perfect, I've snagged you at last. Did you accomplish anything?"
"Yes."
"Tell me about it. I never talk, you know that."
"Okay."
She listens with lips compressed, shooting a keen side-glance at him now and then in her father's manner. "Fascinating. How do you know him so well?"
"From my attache years. He didn't understand much about the Middle East then - still doesn't, really - and he used to ask me lots of questions. Maybe the chainnan of the Foreign Relations Committee should be more informed, but men like that are so beset, Queenie, they have to rely in the end on staff, or on people they trust."
"How did he know you weren't just feeding him propaganda?"
"Because I wasn't. Those guys do have a nose for the truth, and he's exceptionally smart." Barak pauses. "Also - though this may not be relevant - we'd run into the Jacksons socially now and then, and Nakhama really charmed him."
"Aha. Relevant as hell! Two powerful lubricants in this town, reliability and charm." She lightly touches a fist to his chin. "Reliability is much scarcer, friend, I'll tell you that."
Under the loudly flapping blue-and-white flag of the embassy, where policemen and Israeli security officers are standing guard, a few quick Hebrew words pass between Barak and the Israelis. "Emily, they'll let you park behind that TV truck for fifteen minutes. I'll be out by then."
"Here I'll be."
He finds the ambassador still on the telephone. Nobody has refused Dinitz's calls all morning as he drums up support for an airlift. Governors, senators, columnists, TV anchormen, editors, have all been coming right on the line, and in this Barak detects a grassroots surge. The American people have grasped that Israel is in great danger, if the administration hasn't yet.
"Your column is brilliant, Scotty," Dinitz is saying to the almighty James Reston of the New York Times. "Cuts right to the bone. Sure, the Soviet SAM-6s have played hell with our Phantoms. It's been a shock, I don't deny it. And we were caught off guard by the attack. All true, but... No, no, 1 make no accusations, God forbid. My country still counts on America's good faith. But in war timing is everything, and so far, I regret to tell you, the aid we've been promised isn't
forthcoming-----Thanks, Scotty, I appreciate that. General
Gur's office will furnish you all details. From you, no secrets whatever."
Dinitz hangs up with a flourish, swivelling his chair to Barak. Sleepless for days, he rides a crest of exhilaration. Not
always do the powerful take his calls, or respond with such readiness to help. "Nu, any luck with Scoop?"
"He'll call the Secretary of Defense."
"He will?" Dinitz sits erect. "Not maybe? He will?"
"He will. Gemacht [Done deal]."
"Thank God. When?"
"Right after lunch."
"Great. All I got from him was a vague promise to look into it. Zev, well done. You've earned your place in the Garden of Eden."
"How about a place on the next plane home?"
"That's more difficult. You stay here until an airlift flies. Golda's instructions."
When Barak returns to the car Emily asks, "How much time have we got?"
"Say an hour."
"An hour? A whole hour with you alone? My God, half a lifetime. We're off. Listen, do you know there's talk starting up about you in the Defense Department?"
"About me? Why? I'm nobody."
"Ho! This white-haired shadowy figure who's flown here from Israel on a mystery errand. Right out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion." She is zipping riskily through the heavy Massachusetts Avenue traffic. "Damn, I'm not about to spend our precious hour in this bloody car. Wolf, so help me, I find it hard to sleep, just knowing you're here. It's unbelievable. I'm haunted. How about your son? Have you heard anything more?"
"Well, the navy's still doing wonders, and so far he's unscathed.''
"Nakhama must be happy about that."
"Nakhama isn't happy about anything."
Conversation-stopper. They do not talk again until she parks the car by a brown deserted lawn. "Grab the basket, darling, and follow me." They make their way through tangled shrubbery to the curving deserted walk around the Tidal Basin lined with leafless Japanese cherry trees, where the shallow blue water ripples in sharp gusts of wind. "I love these poor out-of-season trees. 'Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.' Here's a good bench."
" 'Bare ruined choirs' - is that Emily Dickinson?"
"Zev, for Christ's sake, Shakespeare!" She begins unpacking the basket. "About the way true love hangs on, no matter how old and unattractive one gets. Reassuring, what? I'm going to divorce Bud." She hands him a sandwich. "That's turkey, okay? Not much mayonnaise."
"What? Say that again."
"Turkey, easy on the mayonnaise. Or would you prefer egg salad? I brought both-"
"For God's sake, Queenie, did you just say you're going to divorce your husband?"
"Bud doesn't know it yet. Neither does Chris. You're the first one I've told." He stares at her, dumbstruck, as she placidly unwraps a sandwich and takes a bite. "Well? Don't goggle at me like a fish, there's this woman, Elsa. A Norwegian. It's been going on for a while, a torrid thing. I was going to write you all about it, cry on your shoulder. Lord, when I got your last letter I thought I'd die! Old Wolf, you're my anchor in sanity, you always have been. Now more than ever. Why did you do it? What did Nakhama say? After all these years!"
"Tell me about the Norwegian."
"Oh, Elsa. Must I? Okay, where shall I start?"
"Well, is she pretty?"
"Spoken like a man. I've seen her only once, and a cover girl she ain't. She does have these fine blue eyes. Ice and fire, sapphire eyes. I'll give her that. Spiffy eyes. And she's tall, almost as tall as Bud. Maybe that's the attraction. Who knows?"
"How did you find out?"
"How do you think? He told me. Ever the officer and gentleman, Bradford Halliday. One evening over the martinis he just up and let me know, all square and upright. The woman works for an old friend, a retired colonel, Jack Smith-"
"I know Smith."
"So you do. Well, he's now a consultant on defense contracts, and that's how Bud got to know Elsa. Anything else?"
"What did you do when he told you?"
"Oh, I was adult and modern about it, of course. No choice really, is there? I took off a shoe, threw it at his face, and
called him a fucking son of a bitch. Well, he caught the shoe and brought it back to me. I couldn't help saying, 'Speaking of sons of bitches, at least you retrieve, it's more than Merlin does.' And that's about where it stands."
"Emily, seriously-"
"Don't, Zev, don't talk seriously. It's too serious for that, and I feel too good sitting on the same bench with you. For the moment I'm in heaven. I ask no more. I've never loved Bud. He and I both know that. We've jog-trotted along, but now there's this goddamn Elsa, and to top it off you show up, and I realize all over again what love is. Bud's treated me well, put me on some kind of pedestal, but I'm going to climb down and let him have his love. Everybody should try it once, I say."
A stiff gust across the water stirs the cherry branches, withered leaves tumble past the bench, and it seems to him that this whole scene - Emily sitting there in a red cloth coat with a gray fur collar, the scuttering leaves, the taste of turkey, the shock of her disclosure - all has happened before in exactly this way. Never has this sort of delusive dreamlike memory slippage hit him so strongly. He knows she will next say, as she does, "All I brought to drink is a thermos of coffee. Here." She pours coffee into the white plastic cap and offers it to him.
He says, "You drink it."
"Not on
your life, I've got the shakes as it is."
"Emily, if you want my opinion about this divorce notion-"
"Skip it." Anger flashes across her face. "Last advice I had from you, kiddo, was to get married. I've taken it from there, okay?"
"Okay, toots."
Herman Wouk - The Glory Page 43