She manages a smile, and her tone softens. "Sorry, Zev. I'm awfully unhappy. It's not an affair, puss, it's love. He loves her. And he loves the girls and adores little Einstein. Who, by the bye, has yet to say 'Mama,' even. So it's one big fat Gordian knot, calling for a sharp sword stroke-"
"Queenie, listen to me-"
"I won't, and keep it light, lover boy, for God's sake. It's not something Bud'll get out of his system. It's what his
system is starved for. More coffee? No? Well, don't look so down in the mouth. I'll survive, believe me. I sure as hell will need to see more of you, though. Say once a year, for a few days, and strictly on the up-and-up. Would that be utterly out of the question, if for instance I go and live in Paris? Would it?"
"Nothing's utterly out of the question. Still-"
"Stop right there." She puts cold fingers on his mouth. "Let me have something to hang my hat on, old darling. The kids would grow up bilingual like me, that would be nice, and there wouldn't be an ocean between us."
"The Med's no fishpond, Queenie."
"Oh, it's a hop, by comparison. I still hear from Andr6, you know. He won the Goncourt Prize, can you imagine? With a novel called The Bad Breath of the Gorgon, which nobody understands. I've always loved Paris."
"I've always loved you," says Barak without thinking.
"Not so," she says, her lips quivering, her eyes moist and brilliant as she repacks the basket. "I had to convince you, and it took forever. In your heart I'm still the twelve-year-old minx you snubbed, for being snotty about chemistry. But God knows I've always loved you. Back to the car, there's a war on, you know."
They embrace in the gloom of the bushes. She kisses him at first in her usual hesitant, almost girlish way, then with passion, clinging tight to him. "My God, how I want to be held by you," she chokes. "Will I see you again before you vanish?"
"I'll talk to you, no matter what."
"All right. And one day, one way or another, if I have to come to Israel to do it, I'm going to have it out with Na-khama. I need your letters, Zev."
Ambassador Dinitz is pacing, red in the face, his pipe clenched in his teeth, puffing gray smoke like a train going uphill. General Gur in spic-and-span uniform sits watching him with concern. "Simcha, don't have a stroke," he says. "It's only a war."
"He'll see me today," says Dinitz, "today, or he'll find out what a war with the Jews is like."
"What now?" Barak asks.
With choppy angry gestures, Dinitz replies, "The Secretary of Defense did return my call, thanks no doubt to you and Scoop Jackson. He offered to meet me tomorrow sometime. Not today, busy all day. The war news gets worse by the hour. Kissinger assures me that Defense will increase and speed up delivery of Phantoms and all supplies, but when Motta calls the Pentagon, they don't know of any increase or speedup. I just rang Scoop and he's phoning SecDef again. The runaround stops this afternoon, by my life!"
"Motta, what bad news?" Barak asks.
The attache heavily sighs. "Well, let's see. Two more Iraqi armored divisions coming into Syria. Jordan sending in a brigade. The Russians publicly urging Algeria to get into the war. By last count seventy-three Antonov planeloads of weapons landing in Damascus and Cairo, mainly tanks and antiair missiles. Thousands of tons more coming by ship, a short run from the Black Sea." Gur pauses. "Bad enough?"
Dinitz says, "So why did you leave out the three Soviet airborne divisions? They don't count?" The telephone rings. "Dinitz here.... Yes, yes, put him on." Grim smile, hand over the mouthpiece. " 'Hold, for the Secretary of Defense.' "
"Russian airborne divisions?" Barak is shocked and incredulous. "Rumor, Motta? Fact? What?"
"Fact. I saved the worst for last," Gur replies gloomily. "Our own army intelligence, and CIA confirms. They're on highest alert, ready to go."
"Hello, Mr. Secretary.... Thank you, that's good of you... Well, I wish we could be that optimistic. I'll be glad to give you the full picture." A long pause. Dinitz's glasses glitter as he turns to Barak and Gur and nods. "Six o'clock. Can't it be earlier, sir?... Well then, six it is. Much obliged."
"You're getting your meeting," says Gur.
"Not only with him, but with every top mamzer over there. What will come of it I don't know, but it'll be a real Litvak wedding. Motta, you'll come with me. Zev, contact this Hal-liday, and see him right away."
"What about?"
"Just tell him it's urgent and secret." The ambassador gets
up, closes his office door, and drops his voice. "Here is what you must convey."
Halliday is reading the Washington Post on a lobby couch in the Army & Navy Club. He stands up, a long lithe figure in brown tweed and gray flannel. "Hi."
"Hi. I'm afraid I gave you very short notice."
"No problem, you said urgent. Come in here, it's quiet."
Barak tries in vain to picture the tall blue-eyed Elsa, as he follows the aviator into a large writing room with nobody in it. Meeting him like this is disconcerting, so soon after the picnic disclosures. This is not a man one can imagine consumed by ardor. In a remote corner they sit down in black leather armchairs, near a loudly ticking old grandfather clock. Halliday looks to the Israeli to begin. No offer of a drink, and no smile.
"General Halliday, you're aware that my ambassador is meeting with your secretary, and that a diplomat can only give hints sometimes in formal meetings."
"Whereas you can talk plainly to me off the record. Well, fire away." Halliday folds his long arms, stretches out his long legs, and fixes Barak with a steady eye.
"Thank you. As things now stand, the United States is reneging on its commitments to Israel - some of long standing, some made when the Arabs attacked my country." Halliday takes this stiff start with a slight widening of his eyes. Barak goes on, "Your government has yet even to admit publicly that the Arabs started the war. Israel is in grave danger because of apparent American bad faith."
"General Barak, Israel is in grave danger - if it is - because your people were caught flat-footed, due to overcon-fidence and unwise contempt for the enemy."
"As you were at Pearl Harbor."
"Just so." Halliday's eyes go opaque, then clear. "Proceed."
"I said 'apparent' bad faith, General. My government prefers to believe that, at a time of our greatest peril, your bureaucratic wheels are unfortunately stuck. You know about the alert of three Russian airborne divisions?"
"We do. Routine Soviet practice in crises. Like replacing the tattletale merchant ships, which tail our carrier groups in
the Med, with tattletale warships. One learns to live with these political signals. That's all they are. Translation, 'You stay out and we'll stay out.' "
"General, the Russians are not staying out. Their airlift is public and massive, and an immense sealift has left port -"
Halliday holds up a hand. "Look here, Barak, you asked for a secret urgent meeting. My department knows all this." He glances at his watch. "What exactly can I do for you?"
"At noon tomorrow, General, Saturday the thirteenth - that's a little less than nineteen hours from now - if the bureaucratic wheels have not come unstuck, Israel will go public to express dismay at your government's deserting an ally in her hour of need. Golda Meir will probably do this herself on television."
Long, long silence. Clock ticking, ticking, then striking the half hour with a groan and a sonorous bong.
Halliday says, "Is that it? Your ambassador can get that across to the Secretary, surely."
"Wrapped in cotton, yes. That's it straight."
"And what good will such dramatics do your country? It will cause the Arabs great joy, that's for sure. What else can you hope for?"
"We think the outcry in this country from the people, the media, and the Congress will either force swift action, or come close to bringing down a shaken administration."
Halliday utters an incredulous grunt of "Really!"
"Really. That's our judgment. Foreign policy is this President's one remaining high ca
rd. Such a firestorm would destroy that card, and we believe he won't let it happen. Heads will roll, and those wheels will turn."
Another silence. Halliday purses thin lips, and cracks interlaced knuckles. "You're talking about cranking up the Jewish lobby, aren't you? There are more broadly based American interests, General Barak, that take a very different view of all this."
"Saturday at noon, General Halliday."
"I hear you. General Barak, you're an Israeli. I understand you, and your loyalty to the Jewish State. No problem. These people in the Jewish lobby - are they Jews or Americans? Where's their ultimate loyalty? If they question the good faith of my superiors, is their good faith beyond question?"
Barak has heard this jab often enough as a military attache, and has often riposted. "You're quite right, there are more powerful interests at work here, General, the oil interest for one. Its power is truly awesome. As for the so-called Jewish lobby, it can accomplish nothing in this town, unless the American people are already for a given policy. In this case, your people have clearly decided that Israel should get aid at once to match the Soviet aid to the Arabs. You've seen the polls? ABC, Time, and this morning's Washington Post?"
Halliday takes a while to answer. He stands up, with a brisk oddly light, "Okay, got you," and another glance at his watch. They leave the club and part on the breezy sidewalk with no more words..
In the cubicle between the double security doors of the embassy, the guard speaks from behind glass on a microphone. "Sir, General Gur wants to see you the moment you return."
"B'seder."
The attache is working at a piled-up desk under a handsome photograph of Dayan in coat and tie. He hands Barak a pencilled decode form. "What do you make of this?"
TOP SECRET URGENT PRIME MINISTER TO DINITZ GUR HARD INTELLIGENCE TWO ARMORED DIVISIONS WILL CROSS CANAL INTO SINAI SATURDAY THIRTEENTH TELL KISSINGER.
Barak takes a moment to answer. "Could be good or bad."
"How, good?"
"If Sadat's gotten cocky and decided to attack and finish us off, it would be a bloody business, but our position could improve."
"Or he could be hardening up his lodgments in Sinai," says Gur, "to prevent our crossing before a cease-fire. That would do it, too."
"Is Dinitz back from the Pentagon?"
"No, he went from there to the White House. Nixon's about to announce his new Vice President. Big secret still. How did the meeting with Halliday go?"
"Frank and open." At this diplomatic jargon for a nasty encounter, the attache sourly laughs.
When Dinitz returns to his office, yanking off his topcoat, Barak is there, waiting. The ambassador is very pale, and his brow is deeply creased. "Looks like another long night, Zev. I have to talk to Golda right away."
"Three in the morning there, Simcha."
"I doubt she's asleep." Dinitz drops exhausted in his chair, buzzes the coding officer and orders the call put through on the scrambler. ' 'But I tell you, I nearly fell asleep on my feet at the White House. The new man is Congressman Gerald Ford, not bad for us. What a weird business! TV cameras and lights, a big crowd, applause, Nixon all smiles, not a care in the world, you'd think." He lights his pipe and vigorously puffs. "Kissinger was off in a corner talking with Ambassador Dobrynin. Afterward he told me what it was about. Very, very bad. He'll receive a cable from Moscow tonight, accusing Israel of all sorts of crimes and atrocities, and saying, 'The Soviet Union cannot remain indifferent to such barbaric conduct.' Words to that effect. The message is that either Israel accepts a cease-fire at once, or those airborne divisions will go."
Quelling his own pulse of alarm, Barak says calmly, "But the Arabs haven't yet accepted."
"I'm telling you what Dobrynin's threat is."
Desk voice box: "Mr. Ambassador, your call's going through."
At almost the same moment the telephone rings. "Yes?...
By all means, put him on___Zev, it's Reston of the Times.
Take that scrambler call and tell Golda about Dobrynin. I'll be along."
Golda sounds wide awake and reasonably cheerful. "Oh, it's you, Zev. Nu? Something good for the Jews?"
"Simcha will be right with you, Madame Prime Minister. He's talking to the New York Times."
"Fine. That's more important. Me he can talk to anytime."
Barak is baldly describing the Dobrynin threat and the way it was conveyed at the White House, when Dinitz comes in and takes the scrambler phone. "Sorry, Madame Prime Minister - What? Yes, Kissinger thinks it's serious. Deadly se- rious." Long pause. "No, the Pentagon meeting was terrible. Flat denial of broken promises or slowdown. They'll speed up Phantom delivery to two planes every three days." An-
other pause. Dinitz rolls his eyes at Barak. "Golda, I told them we need forty at once. Impossible. Out of the question. Meantime I'm meeting Kissinger in an hour and I must have
instructions-----Yes... Yes... Yes, I understand." He
turns to Barak. "Write this down, Zev, word for word. 'If the Secretary thinks it wise to proceed with negotiations -for a cease-fire cosponsored by the Soviet Union and the United States-Israel will interpose no objection.' "
From the scrap of paper on which Barak has scrawled, Dinitz slowly reads the words back to her. "Very well, Madame Prime Minister.... Yes, I understand.... Of course, no matter what time, I'll call you." He hangs up and regards Barak with heavy sad eyes. "By my life, that's a rotten message for me to bring to the American Secretary of State."
"Why? Listen, Simcha, it's a smart shifty message," Barak says forcibly. "Now Kissinger can parley and stall, and she knows he wants to stall until the battlefield picture changes. As long as there's talk of a cease-fire, those airborne divisions won't go, will they?"
"Probably not." The ambassador brightens. "As usual, she may be two steps ahead of all of us. Henry Kissinger included."
It is in fact a long night. Barak's head has hardly hit the pillow in his hotel room, so it seems, when the telephone rings. The sun is blazing through a dirty window. What now? Has the stall worked? Or are those Soviet troops landing? He grabs the telephone.
"Morning, Bradford Halliday here. Are you a jogger?"
"What? Ah, why?"
"I run a few miles before work. Maybe you could join me, and we could talk. Things are happening."
Barak blinks at his watch. Half past eight. "General, I'll walk as far as you like. Running, no."
"Good enough. At the corner of M and Thirty-third there's a parking lot. Meet me there at nine."
Merlin comes bounding out of the car ahead of the general, and makes friendly leaps and licks at Barak's face. Halliday, in a fuzzy purple running suit, says, "Merlin, stop." The dog desists, and trots at his heel down to the towpath, where fallen leaves carpet the packed black earth with random color, and
float all over the muddy canal. Broad and blue, the Potomac glitters through the barren trees of the embankment.
"Good place to run, except for the traffic fumes," says Halliday, striding off at a fast pace. "You people have won your little game, you know."
"Eh? How's that?"
"You haven't heard? You will, soon enough." His long steps are hard to keep up with. He looks straight ahead as he speaks. "I don't know how much will be made public, just yet. What I tell you now is secret, for your ambassador only. You Israelis have gotten a very distorted picture of this entire airlift business."
"I'm all ears, General."
"Very well. Early this morning Dr. Kissinger told the President that Defense has located three C-5As which could fly at once on an airlift, if that is his desire. Those are our giant transports, you know, matching the Antonovs. The President told him, and this is a pretty direct quote, 'Hell, the Arabs will hate us as much for three planes as for three hundred. Put everything in the air that can fly.' " Halliday glances at Barak. " 'Everything in the air that can fly.' How about that from President Nixon, whom the Jews have never supported?"
"To be honest, I'm stunned."
"Okay. Now let me speak frankly about Dr. Kissinger, meaning no slur on a co-religionist of yours. The President has been up to his chin in hot water trying to survive, and your war has been low on his agenda. He's been leaving that policy to Dr. Kissinger, probably figuring you'd smash the Arabs in a few days. I guess Dr. Kissinger thought so, too. Our department's directive from Kissinger was crystal-clear." Halliday's voice slows to a deliberate quoting pace. " 'No need to rush materiel to Israel and anger the Arabs. This war is our opportunity to break the political stalemate. Our aim is to play honest broker. Decisions about filling the Israelis' supply demands are left to the Defense Department's judgment of their actual needs.' Then on Tuesday, four days into the war, Mrs. Meir hits the panic button, wanting to fly here and talk to the President. Mind you, the night before we were assured by your attache, General Gur, that Israel would be ending the whole thing any day."
Herman Wouk - The Glory Page 44