Coming on the air Golda Meir sounds exhausted and far from triumphant. Dr. Kissinger's visit has been reassuring. Positive developments are occurring in the direction of peace. The government has reason to believe that Syria will soon accept the cease-fire. Lasting good is bound to come out of the enormous sacrifices and brilliant victories of this hard war. The Jewish people owe eternal gratitude to the fighters who threw back the enemy, above all to the heroes who fell. So she concludes. As the Israel Philharmonic recording of "Hatikvah" follows, throbbing and melancholy, Dov drops his head on an arm. Over the music, he says in a muffled voice, "Itzik... Eric... Heshi... it stopped too soon. Too soon."
Galia puts an arm around him, and his father says huskily, "You did more than enough."
That night the engaged couple are in Dov's room, listening to a Mozart piano concerto. At least, that is what his father hears through the door when he knocks, several times. "Dov? Dov?"
A pause, then a hoarse reply. "Yes, Abba?"
"Can I talk to you?"
"Well, in a moment." It is quite a long moment. "Sure, come in."
Galia and Dov are fully clothed, if somewhat intertwined,
and they both look amused and a bit sheepish. "Want to hear some Mozart?" says Dov. "Sit down and join us, Abba."
"I think you'd better get some sleep, hamood. I'll have Galia driven to the bus stop."
Dov extricates himself and sits up straight. "What's happening?"
"The cease-fire is being violated right and left." Benny Luria's face is set in his hard wartime look. "Base is back on red alert. Word from central headquarters, 'Prepare for strikes at dawn.' "
Galia clutches Dov's hand hard.
"So it's oh with the suit," he says. "Big surprise."
After managing an uneasy doze of a few hours, Dov walks to the revetments in early twilight. "Well, Yaakov," he says to his plane captain, with a slap on the Phantom fuselage, "Is G'mali ready to ride again?" "Camel, My Camel" is a popular Yemenite song, and Dov has long since dubbed his aircraft G'mali, My Camel.
The dark-skinned sergeant grins. "G'mali ready and eager, sir."
As Dov settles into his ejection seat and Yaakov hooks him up, a familiar unwelcome thought recurs. Of all things, let me not have to eject over Egypt. To be transformed in an instant from a winged warrior, crossing the sky at twice the speed of sound, to a pathetic dangler on parachute cords, falling into angry probably murderous hands... Shut it out, shut it out. One more ride, maybe a few more, and back to Galia.
Ignition!
Four Phantoms howl into the upper air, where the sunrise of October 23 glints on their wings. An hour later, as the base commander waits at the runway, peering into the sky, three return from that flight. Benny Luria waits and waits. Only three.
In two days of continuing "slippage" on both sides, a superpower confrontation unmatched since the Cuban missile crisis now blows up. Amid all the recriminations only one battlefield fact is clear: the Egyptian Third Army is trapped in the Sinai desert, south of the Great Bitter Lake. Its repeated efforts to break out have failed. Some forty-five thousand
battle-worn soldiers and two hundred fifty tanks are cut off from water, food, fuel, and medical supplies in the barren sandy wastes, with nothing to save them but intervention by outside forces.
Anwar Sadat's demands for succor increase in stridency by the day, until General Secretary Brezhnev himself warns President Nixon that unless the United States will agree to joint military action to relieve the Third Army, the Soviet Union may unilaterally intervene. This kicks off a high state of alarm in Washington. Chilling CIA reports confirm that seven Russian airborne divisions are now on full alert, a Soviet flotilla is moving through the Dardanelles with detectable nuclear cargo on two of the ships, and most ominous of all, the Soviet airlift in the huge Antonov transports has ceased. Those are the planes that take airborne troops into combat.
During a long night while Richard Nixon, beset by eight separate Senate impeachment motions over Watergate, is trying to get some sleep, the crisis mounts. An emergency meeting at the White House of military and cabinet leaders, chaired by Secretary of State Kissinger, takes some tough steps: the return of B-52 bombers from Guam, the despatch of more aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean, and in Germany the Eighty-second Airborne Division called to the highest state of readiness. Most drastic of all, an urgent warning flashes to American forces worldwide of a preliminary nuclear alert, DEFCON THREE.
Toward dawn, when Soviet intelligence is bound to have picked up all these signals, President Nixon's reply goes to Brezhnev, cautioning that unilateral action by the Soviet Union will bring "incalculable consequences"; and a few hours later at a Security Council meeting Egypt withdraws the request for joint superpower action. With this the Soviet Union is off the hook, and the crisis abates. The Russian trump card of unilateral intervention, whether bluff or threat, has been called, and it has failed to relieve the Third Army.
That same morning a wild hullabaloo ensues in the United States over the short-lived nuclear alert, with angry hints in Congress and the media that the President faked the entire emergency as a distraction from Watergate. The whole world is in shock from the brief bloodcurdling doomsday moment. The Security Council is paralyzed. In a sudden reversal, the
Americans find that the plight of the Third Army is now on their hands, the Russians having been foiled as rescuers, and Dr. Kissinger's role shifts to an all-out clash with Golda Meir over a UN proposal to send a "humanitarian convoy" with nonmilitary supplies to the Third Army. Golda demands, as a quid pro quo, that Egypt not only agree to return all prisoners swiftly, but to negotiate face to face with Israel the terms of a genuine cease-fire.
At this Sadat balks, bound by the Khartoum pledge, No recognition of Israel, no peace with Israel, no negotiation with Israel. But Golda too holds firm, under heavy American pressure; face-to-face dealing, or no convoy! Near midnight Friday, October 26, Kissinger warns Ambassador Dinitz that if Israel prefers to be raped, very well, she will be forced to yield. The Security Council is meeting in about nine hours, and if by then Golda has not given in on the convoy, the United States will not oppose whatever action is voted to relieve the Third Army; possibly including sanctions against Israel as well as the landing in Egypt of Soviet troops! "You are committing suicide," he admonishes the ambassador.
At that moment Saturday the twenty-seventh has already dawned in Cairo and Jerusalem. The sun comes up, baking the besieged, waterless, and foodless Third Army. In Washington in the dark of night, Kissinger waits. Two hours later Golda cables a reply which Kissinger himself in exasperation calls a great stall, "I have no illusion but that everything WILL BE IMPOSED ON US BY THE TWO BIG POWERS.... JUST TELL US PRECISELY WHAT WE MUST DO IN ORDER THAT EGYPT MAY ANNOUNCE A VICTORY OF HER AGGRESSION." To this masterful vagueness, which the sleepless Kissinger receives in Washington at 2:10 a.m., he never manages to reply, because within the half-hour Sadat agrees to open direct talks with Israel.
Golda takes Dinitz's call with this news in her small inner office. As the ambassador slowly dictates the Egyptian message relayed via Kissinger, Zev Barak, listening on an extension line, copies it down. President Sadat proposes a meeting of generals at Kilometer 101 on the road to Cairo, well inside Zahal-held territory, at three that very afternoon.
When they hang up, Prime Minister and military secretary
look at each other for long seconds without words. "Note the time, Zev," she says.
"I have, Madame Prime Minister, ten-sixteen a.m., Saturday, October 27, 1973."
"And when is that hangman Security Council meeting scheduled to begin?"
"In New York, eight a.m. Less than five hours from now."
"So, it's been close. Close." With a deep noisy sigh she leans back in her chair and stretches out thick brown-clad ankles.
"Madame Prime Minister, I didn't think I'd live to see this day." Zev Barak is shaken with relief, astonishment, and exaltation. "The Khartoum ple
dge is dead. Egypt originated it, and now Egypt has voided it. The Third Army's situation must be desperate."
"Well, Sadat's evidently is."
"Will he survive this, Madame Prime Minister?"
"Survive?" Her voice takes on a metallic timbre. "Survive? Sadat is the hero of this war. He dared."
"And you? You've beaten Egypt, Syria, Russia, and Henry Kissinger, Madame Prime Minister, and you've won the war."
' 'Don't exaggerate.'' She wearily wags a reproving finger at him. Then she telephones the Minister of Defense to set up the meeting of generals in Africa at Kilometer 101. "Moshe Day an is surprised and impressed," she says, hanging up. "Now listen, Zev, Kissinger isn't an enemy. He has just been doing his job." With a faint grin she adds, "He did get a bit annoyed with me. As for winning the war, let's wait and see if those Egyptian generals show up at Kilometer 101, and if they do, let's hear what they have to say." Lighting a cigarette she inquires, squinting, "So is there any news of Benny Luna's son?"
"Thank you for asking. Galia tells me a pilot from another flight believes he saw Dov eject as his plane went down. So now we wait for the prisoner exchange, and she's feeling more cheerful."
Grim folds deepen on Golda's face. "The prisoners. That will be the real test. In Moscow the Russians promised Kissinger swift return of the prisoners as part of the cease-fire deal. But can they make Sadat deliver?"
The wind is the worst. It has sprung up about midnight at Kilometer 101, blowing sand that obscures the stars, whipping and whining through the open tent, swaying the portable lamps to make leaping shadows, covering the tacked-down maps on the field tables with fine sand, and chilling to the bone the four sleepy Israeli generals.
"Enough," says Sam Pasternak to Major General Aharon Yariv, a short sharp-faced former chief of military intelligence. "I'm putting on my Hermonit, and-"
"Wait!" Yariv covers the mouthpiece of the field telephone. "They're really coming now, Sam. They've been held up at the Kilometer 85 outpost.... Very good," he says into the telephone, "we're ready for them, and waiting."
"What a balagan," groans a black-bearded paratroop general, who has been asleep with his head on the table. "How late are they now? Eleven hours?"
"It's the communications," says Yariv. "Terrible. The latest thing was, at Kilometer 85 the UN man had to telephone his superior in New York, about arranging for an Israeli patrol to escort them behind our front lines."
"Most diplomatic," says Pasternak, "since it might be indelicate to suggest a white flag."
"So?" asks the paratrooper. "How long did that have to take?"
"Well, New York had to contact Washington to clear the idea with Cairo. Before calling Cairo, Washington had to speak to Jerusalem. All this took about an hour and a half. Otherwise, from Kilometer 85 those Egyptians could have driven here in ten minutes."
"Through Zahal-held territory," says the bald corpulent armor general, munching on a sandwich. "That UN man was prudent."
"I'm famished," says the paratrooper.
"Have some more turkey salami, there's plenty," says Yariv.
"To the devil with this wind," says Pasternak. He pulls a small bottle from a pocket. "Who else will have brandy?"
"Easy," says Yariv. "You're representing Israel."
"I didn't ask for the great honor." Pasternak throws coffee dregs out of a paper cup and pours it full.
He was in fact selected somewhat casually. Encountering
him outside the Kirya that morning, Yariv said, "Good. You're coming with me to Africa."
"What for?"
"To negotiate with the Egyptians at Kilometer 101."
"Why me?"
"You're a major general, and you're around."
Pasternak tosses down the brandy and coughs. "Ah. That helps, but I'm still getting into my Hermonit." He goes out to the helicopter, leaning against the wind. Throwing the air force jacket inside the aircraft, he takes out and puts on a quilted jumpsuit, the kind worn on Mount Hermon by snowbound soldiers. When he returns to the tent Yariv and the others are brushing sand off the maps, to review the disputed cease-fire lines and the proposed route of the UN-Red Cross convoy.
"What do we do when those Egyptians show up?" asks the armor general. "Shake hands? Offer them folding chairs? Do we do the whole thing standing up? Are we cordial? Do we offer them turkey salami?"
The paratrooper, who is eating several slices of it on bread, begins to gobble. The armor man chimes in. "Look, we're all tired," expostulates Yariv, "and put out by waiting here so long in the wind and the cold. But we're making history, and let's be equal to the occasion."
The sense of making history does steal over Pasternak when he hears the vehicles approach and stop. The Jewish generals line themselves up on one side of the table, and in walk four erect unsmiling Egyptians in full faultless uniform with medals; a decided contrast to the Jews, three of them bareheaded in bulky air force jackets, the plump Pasternak in his jumpsuit and fur hood.
"Major General Aharon Yariv?" inquires a stiffly straight Egyptian in a deep voice.
"I am Yariv."
"I am Gamasy, my delegation's leader." The Egyptian salutes. This is the Chief of Staff of the Egyptian army.
Yariv returns the salute, and a round of salutes and introductions follows. There are no handshakes. An orderly brings chairs, the eight major generals sit down facing each other, and the parley begins as the wind whistles and the sand blows. The Egyptians unfold maps to compare with those on the
table. The talk is in English. At first it is about matching place names, but soon the Egyptian leader switches to the convoy route. That has to be settled at once.
"A concurrent topic," Yariv replies, "has to be the immediate exchange of prisoners."
"On that I have no instructions."
"I do. The convoy passes when arrangements for the prisoner exchange are confirmed. Not before."
"But that is a political, not a military, matter."
The officer facing Pasternak is shaking all over. Pasternak inquires in an undertone, "Are you ill, General?"
"General, I was sent out here without warning, except to put on full dress uniform. As the Americans say, I am freezing my balls off."
Pasternak jumps up, leaves the tent, and comes back with an air force jacket. "Wear this, General."
The Egyptian glances at his leader, who nods. He pulls it on and zips it up. Yariv says to General Gamasy, "Perhaps that's a good idea for all of you, General."
"We accept," says the leader with a sudden charming smile. When the talk resumes, there are seven officers at the table in Israeli Air Force jackets, and one in a Hermonit. The parley lasts about an hour. As the Egyptians are folding up their maps, Yariv says, "Everything we have discussed, General, is conditional on satisfactory arrangements for a prisoner exchange."
"I will bring an answer to our next meeting."
The paratrooper general speaks up. "Sir, a nephew of mine was captured in the Quay stronghold of the Bar-Lev Line. Can you get word about him? I'd be very grateful."
"I can try. Please write down his name and rank."
Pasternak says to Gamasy, "General, I'd be grateful if you could bring word about another prisoner, a Phantom pilot." He scrawls Captain Dov Luria on a chit.
The general opposite him, to whom he first offered a jacket, holds out his hand. "Let me see to that. A relative of yours?"
"Son of a close friend."
The Egyptian tucks away the chit and unzips the air force jacket. "Many thanks for this."
"Gentlemen," Yariv says, "it will be a cold ride back to Cairo. Accept the jackets with Israel's good will."
The Egyptian leader removes his jacket and folds it on the table. The others follow suit, salute, and walk out, leaving four jackets lying across the cease-fire maps.
Arik Sharon and Don Kishote are lunching in the shade of the lush green mango orchard where Sharon's command APCs have halted near Ismailia, amid an array of field tents, and scores of tanks undergoing
noisy maintenance. On the high Egyptian ramparts off to the east, large Israeli flags wave in the strong wind.
"Politics, Kishote. Politics. In the middle of a war, with boys dying, politics to the end." Sharon appears much rested, if no less angry and bellicose; unshaven and shaggy-haired, but with bright eyes and good color. The bandage is gone, leaving a red scar on his temple. He slices a thick piece of yellow cheese and lays it on fresh bread. "But that gang has not heard the last of Arik Sharon."
"Arik, you sent for me urgently?"
"Absolutely." Sharon's anger fades into a cold professional tone. "You know about the meeting at Kilometer 101? A huge convoy - a 'humanitarian' convoy" - the sarcasm is as thick as the cheese slice - "is en route from Cairo to Suez."
Herman Wouk - The Glory Page 54