great range, a honey." He was at the sideboard, pouring. "Bourbon, Barak?"
"I'd better not."
"Well, cheers. Say, let me ask you something about the Yom Kippur War. It's been on my mind for years. Weren't you caught by surprise because you figured the Arabs would never attack, since you had atom bombs?"
Barak's response was swift and chill. "There's been no confirmation whatever at any time that my country has unconventional weapons."
"Look, even the Egyptians talked to us about it. Your 'basement bomb,' they called it."
"General Halliday, any Israeli leader who'd rely on such weapons - if we had them - to keep us out of war would be an imbecile. A first use of a nuclear weapon since Hiroshima would be the end of Israel."
"Mm." Halliday nodded and drank. "I've been hooted down at the Pentagon, but I say Sadat started the war counting on your not using them, for the exact reason you just gave. He felt his time was running out, he figured the whole region would go nuclear sooner or later, and mutual deterrence would freeze the status quo. He attacked to get back the Sinai at any cost, even defeat. And this treaty, whatever it costs him with the other Arabs, will do it. He broke their front, and he got beat, and still his attack is paying off."
Not unimpressed, Barak said, "Maybe. Much as I've thought about the war, that angle hadn't occurred to me. It's interesting."
"I'm pleased that you think so."
On the staircase they heard the flopping of galoshes. Flappity-flap, the agent strode in followed by Emily. "Splendidly proportioned rooms, excellent possibilities. May we have a look at the grounds now?"
"Sure thing, and I'll just have a snort of this Jack," said Emily, pouring, "if I'm to go traipsing up to my hips in snow. Down the hatch, men!" Emily tossed off the whiskey, winked, and went out.
Halliday took more bourbon. His attitude was strange today, Barak thought. He looked much older, dried-up and grizzled, and he seemed to be reaching out for contact. "You
know, you Israelis have a better promotion system than ours. You retire young," he said. "You can start a new life from scratch, almost. By the time we get out, with what inflation does to retirement pay, we generals can find ourselves selling pencils. Generals like me, anyway, who have sold good real estate and bought bad stocks. I've been offered a base command at Yokota, a great chance to make business contacts, but I may have to turn it down on account of my son Chris. I don't want him spending years in Japan at his age. Not in Paris, either. His friends and his school are here. It's a dilemma."
"Why don't you ask Emily to come back here while you're over in Japan, General, and make a home for Chris?"
Halliday blinked and pondered. "She wouldn't consider it. She likes Paris. So do the girls."
"Are you sure? My wife and I have seen her in Paris. She misses Chris terribly, that I can tell you."
"By God," said Halliday, drinking, "if only she would."
"But could you give up your son for years? Wouldn't you miss him?"
"Like all hell. But I have to see him through college, don't I? And the girls, too. I have to think about money."
A cold gust blew in through the front door, and they heard stamping. "It's a superior property," said Mr. Thompson, as he flapped in, cringing and trailing snow. "River views nowadays are diamonds. I will recommend it to my client, Mrs. Halliday, and I'll telephone you. General Halliday, did you promise me a ride back to town?"
"Right. Barak, so long," said Halliday. "I've never forgotten that helo tour and those battlefields."
"Come again," said Barak, as the airman was leaving. "See us at peace."
Emily said as the door closed, "Looks like a sale, but one never knows. Come out on the terrace. No fireflies, but it's beautiful."
As they trudged down the snow-piled stairs, the setting sun through bare trees was painting the snow pink. Barak recounted his talk with Halliday, and his suggestion about Chris. Emily halted in her tracks and glared at him. "Just like that, I'm to move to Washington, hey? Always quick with bright ideas that keep us farther apart, aren't you?"
"Come on! You cried "on my shoulder for hours in Paris about how you missed your boy. This way you can have him again for years."
"Oh, yes? And then give him back to Bud and that blue-eyed stick insect, Elsa? Break my heart all over again? Fat chance."
"Queenie, in four years he'll be a roaring teenager, and you'll be relieved to hand him over to his father."
She did not answer, staring out at the reddening river. Taking his cold hand, she brushed it with warm lips. "Well, it's a nutty notion. Would our once-a-year deal still be on if I came back here?"
"Yes."
"Though it's four times as far as Paris?"
"I'd do it."
"How about Nakhama?"
"I said I'd do it, Queenie."
Heaving a big sigh, she looked at her watch. "Chilly out here, at that. When does the car leave town for Camp David?"
"Half-past six."
"Let me give you that document."
In the library, which was all draped with dust covers, he flipped the yellowed pages. "Strange that he kept this so long."
"Chris never threw anything away. I'll be digging out for another month. Look, Wolf, you said you're here only three more days. Will we see each other again?"
"I'm at Dayan's. disposal. Keep in touch, I'll try."
"Great. Anyplace but this house."
A note from Dayan lay under the door of Barak's cabin: See me when you get back. He went straight to the large cottage, treading carefully the icy narrow moonlit path through the snow. Dayan sat on a couch in his Camp David windbreaker, a tray of sandwiches on the table before him. He was not wearing his eye patch.
Never before had Zev Barak seen Dayan in this startling aspect. That small black patch, he perceived with shock, was nothing less than Moshe Dayan's persona. The dead socket was frightening, the countenance strange, the man himself transformed from the famous flamboyant hero, whatever his
failures and blemishes, to a pale worn pitiable old handicapped person. And yet Barak also sensed that Dayan was, perhaps without intent, paying him a rare compliment. He knew that Sam Pasternak had often seen him so. Dayan was at last accepting Barak as someone with whom he could be himself.
Dayan caught Barak's glance at the patch lying on a side table. "For what there is to see in this lousy world, Zev, one eye is enough. Have a sandwich. The team's in the dining hall, but I'm not up to table talk."
"Thank you, sir."
"L'Azazel, Vance was playing dumb today. Perhaps he was ordered to. On Article Six, for hours and hours he backed Khalil to the hilt." This was the Egyptian Foreign Minister. "Nothing went right. They were even fudging on the oil arrangement. We've slipped back six months, Zev. I see only one thing to do. Call Begin and tell him to summon me home." He looked to Barak. This stare of one live bloodshot eye and one dead socket was terribly distracting and dismaying.
Barak forced a level tone. "How is the rest of the team
doing?"
"Oh, drafting settled points, hundred percent. We have geniuses for fine-tuning legal concepts and language. But the impasses go to the top. Khalil says that's him, he has plenary authority. Vance speaks for Carter. I'm just a negotiator. It isn't working. Especially since I think Khalil really wants to torpedo the treaty."
"Moshe, there are three more days. You're being leaned on because your position's weak. Stick it out. Get all the progress you can on the drafting, and let Carter send for
Begin." Abruptly Dayan picked up the eye patch and put it on. "I
need some air."
The moon was bright on the snow. They could barely walk abreast on the path. "Good air," said Dayan. "Like on the Hermon." They passed through the cottages and were climbing a hill before he spoke again. "Golda's death has hit me hard." Crunch of feet on snow, long silence. "I respected her, but we never saw eye to eye. Unlike Golda I was born
among the Arabs. I've lived with them. I've fought t
hem, but I understand them. They were there in the land for centuries upon centuries, minding their own business. And then, along come these Jews pouring in from Europe, waving something called the Balfour Declaration and the Bible, and they say, 'Gentlemen, this land is ours, God gave it to us, be good enough to pack up and leave quietly.' Unbelievable chutzpah."
"Not so, Moshe, it was they who swore to drive us out, and tried, and keep trying, or we'd have been living together in peace long ago."
"Look, I said just that today to Vance. He asked, 'Why can't you Jews accept coexistence with the Arabs?'. I replied, 'Cy, that's exactly what we've always wanted and still want.' But, I told him, for them to blow up the busses, and for us to collect and bury the bodies, that's not what we call coexistence."
"Well said."
"Oh, that was plain Golda-style arguing. For Golda it was always so simple and clear! She came to Palestine from Russia and America, already twenty-three and married. All she knew was doctrinaire Zionism. For us or against us? Capitalist or socialist? Labor or Rafi? Jews or Arabs? Black or white?"
Dayan was puffing hard, though the hill was not steep. The path had ended, and they were plunging their legs deep in snow. He stopped, looked around, and gasped, "Very pretty landscape." Behind.them, the lights in the cabins and cottages gleamed through the trees, and a plume of smoke rose from the main lodge. "Well, forward, then. The top isn't far." His breath smoked in regular puffs and he did not speak until they came to the crest. "So, here we are. Nice little climb. Clears the lungs and the mind, no? Let's go back." But he stood where he was and went on. "I expected too much of the Jews. That was the mistake of my life. I thought they could hold the lines we won in the Six-Day War. I was wrong, and I bear that burden. Labor calls me a traitor for joining Begin, and for him I'm just a discardable outsider. I did it because, once he won the election, my nose told me peace with Egypt was possible. I was right about that, and it
will happen. We must, and we will, have this treaty, but this second Camp David is a misbegotten sterile business. You're right, Zev. It'll soon be over. I won't tell Begin to call me home." He started down the tracks they had made in the snow, and did not speak again until they were passing the cottages. "Zev, isn't this where you stay?"
"Yes, it is."
"Good night." Dayan strode off into the dark.
At the sitting room table, a plump young man with an intensely earnest look, wearing the unlikely combination of a Camp David windbreaker and a yarmulke, was murmuring over a small Talmud volume. He looked up smiling. "Hi. Did I hear Dayan out there?"
' 'Yes. We took a walk. He's low.''
"Tough job," said the young man, a lawyer named Eliakim. "Responsibility without authority."
"Right. Especially since the Egyptian comes as a plenipotentiary."
"Khalil, a plenipotentiary?" Eliakim grimaced, closing the book on his forefinger. "Yes, to make demands that he knows the Americans will support, and to accept our concessions. Not to concede anything, Dayan's been summoned here for that. He's not well, but he's holding the line. What willpower! He was tremendous back in September, too, with Begin and Sadat."
"You were here?"
"Oh, yes, straight through the thirteen days. They got the Nobel Peace Prize for it, but believe me, the architect of the Accords was Dayan."
Barak got into bed with Christian Cunningham's document, but the faded typing blurred and slid before his drooping eyes. Turning to the last pages, he came on a heading: "Conclusion: How It Will All End." Now he recalled the CIA man telling him, as they drove through Rock Creek Park long ago, about this memorandum to Admiral Redman. He put it aside, too tired to concentrate; and as he was dozing off, he half remembered that the lawyer Eliakim had some special tie to Dayan that made his praise of the Minister highly suspect.
It was barely light outside when he woke. Shuffling to the
coffee machine in the other room, he found Eliakim pacing in phylacteries and a prayer shawl.
"Good morning. Am I interrupting?"
"I've prayed."
Barak drank coffee and asked, "Say, didn't you help prepare Dayan's defense for the Agranat Commission? Do you believe the outcome was just?"
Eliakim began removing the phylacteries and winding up the leather straps on them. "The outcome? The outcome was that Dado died a beloved national hero, while Dayan lives under a cloud of blame that never lifts." Folding his prayer shawl, Eliakim gave him a keen look. "You disagree with that outcome?"
Neat, thought Barak, and his opinion of Eliakim went up. "Tell me about Dayan's role in the Accords."
"He was the bad Israeli. Sadat had a warm feeling for Begin, sincere, or brilliantly acted. He called him 'My great friend Menachem.' But he and Dayan rarely met, and when they did the encounter was frosty. Sadat knew who his true opponent was."
"Surely, Eliakim, it was Begin."
"It was Dayan. On the day we packed to go home, it felt like a funeral, a total fiasco, over the issue of East Jerusalem. Carter called in Dayan - Dayan, not Begin - for a battle royal. When Dayan held firm, Carter finessed the East Jerusalem issue and got Sadat to go along. Moshe knows when to hold and when to give. All those thirteen days, on every sticking point, he kept finding substance and language that Sadat could live with, and that Begin could hope to have the Knesset pass. He fashioned the main breakthroughs."
"Then maybe he deserved the Nobel Prize."
"Not so. The burden was on Begin. He had to get the Accords through the Knesset, and that was as difficult a feat as Sadat's coming to Jerusalem. He did it. Ever since, Sadat's been doing his damnedest to back away from the terms that have got him in trouble with the Arabs. This second Camp David is his last attempt to fuzz the aspect of a separate peace. Pharaoh kept changing the deal with Moses, you remember. Backed away and backed away to the last."
"But there'll be no smiting of the firstborn," said Barak, "to make Sadat stick to his deal." "No. This time there is only Moshe."
When Barak returned to his cottage that evening, the telephone was ringing. "Wolf! At last! I've called and called and called-"
"It's been a heavy day, Queenie. Maybe tomorrow we -"
"Listen. Let me talk. There's been a massive earthquake in the Halliday region today, Zev. It's on, it's on, and I'm in heaven. I haven't been this happy in years, and as for Bud -"
"Hold it. What's on, Emily?"
"The switch is on, that's what. I've agreed to come home, Bud will go to Japan, and I'm getting Chris back. I've spent the afternoon with the boy, and he talked, Zev, my God how he talked. He's been pining away for me, and as for that Elsa, he can't stand her. The ultimate stepmother. Zev, I'd never have done it, if not for you!"
"Nonsense, you two would have worked it out, sooner or later."
"Never, I say, never. What, me? Accommodate that sono-fabitching Bud after he threw me over for that animated Scandinavian coatrack? You brokered the deal, and I adore you for it. Now listen, can we meet tonight?"
"Em, things are boiling over here. However, tomorrow night-"
"No go. I'm leaving on Air France at two. I called Foxdale, and if I can shoot the girls in there before March first, they'll be okay, they won't lose a semester. So I'm popping over to Paris to wrap things up, help them pack, turn the key to my flat, and make a lightning return. You're sure we can't meet tonight, my dearest? I long to hug you, you've turned my mourning to dancing."
"I can't do it, Emily. I just can't."
"Damn, then is this one more telephone goodbye? Wella-day! That you came at all is marvellous, it's a miracle, my life is ablaze. I kiss your eyes. Darling, about the Growlery, I gave the headmistress holy hell, but she explained that nobody was using it, termites had got into it, and the school needed tennis courts. So there you are. What does it matter, if love lasts?"
"We'll go up there together, Emily, next time I'm here," said Barak, "and I'm coming, I promise you. And in a far corner of a far court we'll dig a hole and bury a little bronze plaque. And on the plaque
will be engraved, 'Ils ont aimes.' "
"Oh, God, White Wolf, you wretch, you've made the tears start. Goodbye."
Click.
1 he darkened El Al plane was halfway back to Israel and Dayan was fast asleep when Barak took Christian Cunningham's memorandum from his despatch case. The first paragraph hooked him and he read on to the end.
Christmas Day, 1956
THE SACRED REGION
Christians and Jews alike hate to face one stark truth: that the Mosque of Omar has stood on Mount Zion for thirteen hundred years. That is longer than the First and Second Jewish Temples combined stood there - about a thousand years - plus the Crusader occupancy, a mere ninety years. To a believing Christian like myself, the long Moslem reign in Zion must be serving some occult purpose of Our Lord. Now the saved remnant of the Jews, a brand snatched from the burning, has returned to Jerusalem, halted by the Moslems just a few hundred yards short of the Temple Mount. If the Jews succeed in retaking that Mount, mankind will surely have come to a turning point of sacred history. That is of no concern to the Central Intelligence Agency, but it will be a turning point of global political trends as well, and that is our whole business.
Herman Wouk - The Glory Page 70