Three Weeks in October

by Yaël Dayan

  We were back to present time, and it was very easy to switch from foggy London to the outskirts of Suez.

  The maps we had were not adequate. David pointed to the roads leading to the city, marking with a red-and-blue marker the two axes he wanted his men to occupy by dawn.

  He described the city as if he were a tourist guide. South of it was the sea, to the east a swamp area, and the west and northeast were only partly passable. There were several entrances to the city; the south would be attacked by another brigade from the Suez-Cairo road toward the port section—Port Ibrahim; south and west, near the refineries, would be taken care of by other forces, and we were to enter from the north. This approach was limited to the old road along the canal, which splits after its intersection with the sweet-water canal.

  One battalion would continue along the beach, the other through the main street to the center of the city.

  Intelligence information indicated a commando battalion in Port Ibrahim, defense forces—less than a brigade—in the city, and an unknown number of armed soldiers who had withdrawn into the city from surrounding camps and strongholds.

  David pointed to some air photographs. The old center was all narrow alleys and cluttered houses; the south was more modern, with wider streets and taller buildings. There were several squares, a municipality building, a hospital and an administration building. The promenade along the beach had palm trees and a colorful domed casino.

  “Our task,” David said, “is to cut across the city and join our forces in Port Ibrahim.” He was quite relaxed. Reports did not suggest strong resistance, and Egyptian prisoners confirmed the information.

  He looked at me. “Are you with us?” I nodded.

  “Daniel here is looking for someone. He may be in the modern suburb near the sweet-water canal you see in the air photo. He will have a few men with him and,” he emphasized slowly, “he will not be in anybody’s way. Make sure he enters the area when it’s clean and ours. His code for the wireless is Bird. There will be an Arabic-speaking officer with him and they’ll try to locate the address they have.

  “You can report directly to me or to my second. Don’t linger. It’s a one-try affair, and if it doesn’t work, you turn north and we meet here.”

  They talked and I listened. I remembered myself as a young, eager company commander in 1956. I had changed a great deal, no doubt, but the faith and conviction were still there. I looked at the map and could smell the dynamite and see the dust behind the tanks. I could feel my senses edge, the nervousness before a battle, the accumulation of facts unknown, absorbing and digesting them until they become part of memory. As if I’d been there already.

  Was Phoenix really there? The blond from London whose life I manipulated for a short time, an engineer turned agent in Egypt, was he really in these new blocks of apartments, on the fifth floor behind sand sacks? Trying to operate a dead wireless set, waiting with a pistol in hand? Playing chess with himself, counting time? Sprawled dead on the floor—a foreigner not to be trusted in war? We were to assemble at 0430 and be on our way by 0500. The three men assigned to me had only a vague idea of what I was after. They were far from enthusiastic.

  “Shouldn’t you get some sleep?” I asked David.

  “No, son. I’ll sleep tomorrow night. I wish I knew more about the guts of this city.”

  “Sorry to have taken so much of your time before.”

  “Better tell me the end of it. What was Ofra like? And what did you want Phoenix to do anyway?”

  “Ofra was pretty. Very delicate and fine. Long fingers, I remember, hazel eyes. A very quiet girl, she felt good in London. Naturally I had to stop their friendship long before I could use him. To my surprise she minded more than he did. She wrote him for a while, to his mother, then returned to Israel. I haven’t seen her for years.

  “Phoenix himself was phenomenal. He didn’t have a life other than the life he had given us. He severed friendships, if he had any, and his mother didn’t suspect his activities. He became a machine. His capacity to absorb information was enormous if unselective. He didn’t question tasks, but improved on methods, and though never in real danger, he didn’t ever try to avoid it, or seek comfort, or argue about money. The only thing he did without permission was to study Hebrew. In a month he was fluent in it, but swore he would never use it. He just had to understand and be able to speak it.

  “I worked with him for a year. He took a few trips to Lebanon and Egypt, one to Jordan. He did stay within the professional bounds, but the scope was widened. It was a long-term investment, and we thought he could eventually take a permanent job in an Arab country. There was no filth. No meetings with freaks in secret apartments, no big money, no deep psychology or crisis. It was a productive healthy routine, almost dull.”

  Here David interrupted, “Do you really believe a guy like this could go all the way? Under pressure?”

  “You can never predict that. He had a choice and took it, but I can’t say he had the ‘no-choice’ mentality you and I have. He played the game.”

  “For us it is no game. When I make a decision I have behind it years of emotions piled up. I am not conscious of it, but there is King David watching me and Samson, the swamps my grandfather dried and the first orange trees my father planted. When I send men to battle, I remember the 1948 war and the 1956 campaign, the terrorists in the Negev and the Gaza strip and the Nazis in Europe. I remember the rich Jews in America and the assimilated ones in France. I have my own wife and grown-up children at my back, and the schools and the factories and the airstrips and the research institutes and the pretty girls on the beach and the folk songs and the spring flowers on Mt. Carmel. Whatever bloody theory you want to give it, all the things that compose love of country.

  “He could never have all these. He had a father who died for it. A cerebral interpretation of Zionism and some knowledge of history. He was never subjected to anti-Semitism, he didn’t have his favorite wadi in the Negev or alley in Jerusalem. He had never climbed Masada to see the sunrise over the Dead Sea, he hadn’t necked with a girl, drunk with the smell of orange blossom in the spring.”

  “And yet you think he is waiting for us in an apartment ten miles from here with state secrets in his locked James Bond case.”

  “I don’t know, David. Perhaps he escaped with the first sound of gun shots, but if he didn’t and if he is there, we’d better get to him.”

  “What was he doing there, what was his assignment? He is no military expert, why wouldn’t he clear out in case of war?”

  “I left London, and Phoenix, and the whole secret scene for that matter, before 1967. By that time our man was a consultant to an Egyptian firm making purchases in Europe. He continued working for a British firm on a part-time basis. The man who took over from me, Gideon—you may have met him with Beni—worked with him for a few years and occasionally informed me of his whereabouts. The Egyptians developed powerful hoses. They figured they could penetrate the earth dikes with water if the stream were sufficiently strong. He succeeded in getting involved with the operation, pretending to believe their version claiming it was an agriculture project. Later they confided in him. His big cover was a claim for being money-minded. He was expensive and he spent it all on himself. In reports they refer to him as ‘the dumb engineer.’ It wasn’t as much the technical information we were after, as the timing they had in mind. It was essential that he stay in the canal area when tension mounted, as he would be almost the first to know when they meant business.

  “In 1970 we thought the whole thing was busted. He was sent to Israel by his British employer, to buy some irrigation equipment. He refused to decline the job, and there were many second thoughts. He claimed—and this I heard from Gideon later—that it added credibility to his dumbness and apolitical professional status. The truth was that he couldn’t resist the offer and he arrived here. He didn’t contact any of us, naturally. He stayed in a small hotel in Tel-Aviv, dined with the British commercial attaché, and made sur
e the whole trip was as short, businesslike and successful as possible. There was one flaw. He made a trip to Beer-Sheba and met with Ofra. She was teaching, maybe still is, in the Ben-Gurion University and has a small apartment in the city. He spent a couple of hours with her, an evening, and returned to Tel-Aviv, to London and later to Cairo. It was decided to ignore this trip, as there was no indication of diminishing trust in him by the Egyptian company.

  “It bothered me for a while. I didn’t think he was playing a double game, but it was unlike him to leave a loose end, an emotional one, and Ofra obviously was not out of his system.”

  “So finally he didn’t deliver, the bastard.”

  “If you mean this war, no. There were two false alarms but when the real thing happened, two and a half weeks ago, he was silent.”

  “Doesn’t it make you wonder about the futility of the whole thing? You take a man, you train him for years, you risk the lives of strangers and contacts and families. You put money and effort and intellect into it, and you end with a stillborn baby.”

  “He was useful while he worked here. Small things, but not unimportant.”

  The finale must have upset David, for he claimed he had to work on the maps and suggested I get some sleep. I took the sleeping bag outside and lay on it on my back.

  I hadn’t told David everything. I didn’t share my guilt with him. Phoenix was on my conscience more often than I’d like to admit. He hovered for a long while between me and Amalia. Every layer I shed, every step I made toward her, letting myself get involved, giving of myself, sharing with her, eventually falling in love—he was there. Not sarcastic or disapproving, but a whispering presence reminding me of what I had deprived him, shattering the monument I had built artfully to celibacy, independence and so-called freedom. Not on my wedding night, but in the moments of intimacy we built later, when our love grew and we were self-sufficient, when we didn’t need words or actions to prove it, when I blessed my good fortune—he was there. Almost naive, not reproaching, just wondering what gave me the right to tutor him into abstaining from all these joys. I told myself I had nothing to do with his choice. He was built that way; it wasn’t my duty to turn him into a sociable, caring human being. I had used what had been there anyway. When my first child was born, Phoenix reappeared in my mind. For the first time in my adult years I had tears. I cried looking at the baby. The helpless fragility, the vulnerable little body seeking warmth and protection, the tremendous unbearable responsibility affected me in a way I never believed possible. And the sudden enormous wave of love for a creature, without a name or definite shape as yet, threw me off completely. Phoenix was there, never to experience what I did, and his father was there too, ignorant of his son’s birth.

  I almost talked to Amalia about him, but didn’t. I was afraid to admit I wished he would throw the game away and stand in a maternity ward waiting room, as I had done, not daring to touch his first infant and holding back his tears. And this was precisely why I was going into Suez the next day. I hoped he was alive, and well and cool and composed. I would find him to prove us wrong. To tell him the game was over and not worth it. To tell him to get a job in Beer-Sheba and polish up his Hebrew, court Ofra on desert nights and come home. Home could never be codes and aliases and secret rendezvous and messages, not even an occasional warm handshake and the gratitude of the man in charge. We’ll bring him home and he can desalinate the Red Sea and irrigate the desert or his own garden for all I cared. Or go back to England if that’s what he wanted, or work for the Saudis if by now he has become truly money-minded. I wanted his shadow out of my life, and I did care for him enough to wish him some of the profound happiness that had befallen me.

  The horizon was pale pink through the mist. The camp woke up, lazy for a brief second and jerking into full commotion in the next. There was a feeling of a last battle in the air, the final touch to a job already done.

  Men took positions in their tanks, adjusting vests and helmets. The radio net was active and three men were saying their morning prayers next to a half-track. The sight was an unpleasant reminder of the day the war started. I clenched my fists. I wasn’t even thinking about Phoenix just then.

  David, who miraculously looked as if he had had a good night’s sleep, walked with me to one of the jeeps.

  “The driver speaks Arabic,” he said. “Oren is a doctor. When your mission is over I may ask him to join the main force, if we need him. The machine gunner can handle the radio set. Just make sure you don’t get lost, keep behind all the time, and report to me.”

  “Many thanks. I’ll see you later.”

  “I’d like to meet your Phoenix one day, don’t know why.”

  He turned to go, tranquil and confident.

  “What a fighter,” the driver said. The doctor was busy with his equipment, rearranging bandages and plastic infusion containers. We all had helmets on, and waited with the twenty-odd vehicles for the order to move so we could take our place at the end of the column.

  “Look up!” the driver exclaimed. We all did, to watch the majestic dive of eight planes. They must have bombed targets in the city, for soon we saw them turning back, circling and diving again. When they disappeared the order was given and we were on our way, soon covered with the dust of the tanks and half-tracks in front of us.

  All the physical elements were there. The sounds and the sights and the smells, yet something was missing. The men weren’t alert. There wasn’t the prebattle tension that follows high motivation. The eyes of the soldiers and commanders reflected fatigue rather than excitement, and the fatigue produced carelessness. Men stood up exposed in turrets and half-tracks. Many did not wear their helmets and a few were dozing off. The orders were quite clear—to advance only as long as the going was easy. It was no battle of Stalingrad. The war had been won and the 3rd Army surrounded. The city of Suez was important, but the attacking force was not to take too many risks. These orders were reflected in the faces of the fighters, as if it were one battle too many.

  For a couple of hours we drove south, along deserted army camps and missile sites. Occasionally a few Egyptians could be seen hiding or waving a white flag. Most of these were unarmed and bursts of fire from our side were left unanswered.

  We stopped a couple of miles outside of the city. The men were cheerful now. The enemy seemed to have simply evaporated. There was no resistance in the tremendously well-fortified area we had driven through, and soldiers spoke of “a victory parade in the main street of Suez.” From a distance the city really seemed deserted and old-timers recalled accomplishing occupation of cities like Beer-Sheba and Lydda merely by driving in full force along the main street.

  If I didn’t participate in the premature celebration, it wasn’t because of premonitions or doubts. My mission had little to do with the battle forecast. I looked at the map and it all seemed unreal. I had a vague description rather than an address, as if we were in the center of Tel-Aviv.

  “Make a left turn after the intersection with the sweet-water canal, then another left and the third house on the right, second floor,” etc.

  We had some water and a quick breakfast, and shortly before ten o’clock received orders to advance.

  We entered the built-up area. On our right were high-rise apartment buildings and an open space to the left. From among the buildings a few soldiers stared at us phlegmatically and hurried to hide. We reached the boulevard, a wide street with a railway between the lanes, and speeded up. On the half-tracks in front of us soldiers were snapping photographs and tank commanders were standing upright in turrets, while all tank decks were open with heads peeping out. There was no indication of any resistance; our jeep driver yawned and seemed utterly bored. The column moved along the two lanes on both sides of the rails, fast approaching the sweet-water canal.

  “We’ll stay on the left side,” I said, “and take the first turn left after the intersection.”

  Just before the bridge we detoured a large bomb-crater, a result of this morni
ng’s air attack and though the vehicles in front of us slowed down, we bypassed them, crossed the bridge and split from the column, turning left into a track parallel to the canal. The radio operator repeated casually, “Bird turning left.” The air raid had ruined the road we were on, and we had to hold fast to the seats as I urged the driver to hurry.

  All forgotten faculties in my system were awake now. I was watchful and tense and concentrated. We took another left turn toward the water, and stopped in front of the third house. As we stopped, we heard a barrage of tank fire from the main road we had just left. The men jumped from the jeep for shelter, but the street we were on was dormant and empty.

  The two soldiers remained near the jeep, and I asked the doctor to follow me. We advanced along the white wall, holding on to the machine guns and bending over, through a deserted garden to the entrance hall. The house was not hit directly, but the doors were off the hinges and heaps of furniture were piled up near the windows. The ground floor was empty, and we climbed the cement stairs to the top floor.

  There, too, the door was open and we stopped at the threshold. I was breathing heavily, and my excitement gave way to reality. The apartment was empty. The windows were shattered, the cupboards wide open. The iron bed had no mattress on it, and the kitchen and lavatory looked unused. There were English newspapers on the balcony, but no definite evidence as to when Phoenix had left or whether he ever had been there.

  From the balcony we could see clouds of black smoke from the intersection, and hear the consistent, growing sounds of small arms fire and artillery shelling. I was thinking fast now. There seemed to be no point in proceeding to the water plant, a mile away, as the apartment seemed to have been deserted for a long while, perhaps used recently by soldiers. The driver called us from below, slightly panicky as the sounds of a fierce battle reached him. We had to move on.

  I asked the radio man to report to David, “The bird was not in the nest.” The reply was a curse with an order to return.