by Herman Wouk
“Well, one of my companies will be doing the towing, yes.”
“Isn’t the thing a monstrosity? A fashla? So I’ve heard.”
“Not at all. The idea is a stroke of genius. Whether it will work —”
“What is the idea? Why, to all the devils, a giant mobile bridge, a thousand feet long and weighing seven hundred insane tons, that travels on rollers?”
“Those aren’t the figures. How much do you know about it?”
Maneuvering the car past a pileup of snorting busses, Pasternak almost shouted, “Not much, not my field.”
Amos described the concept, and the present state of the incomplete bridge. His father nodded as he listened, pursing his lips in disapproval. “No wonder it’s eaten such a hole in the army budget.”
“Well, it’s a colossal job, but it may indeed win a war, if we have one. ‘Carry the war to the enemy!’ Not that I think the Arabs are really about to start anything.” He looked keenly at his father, who returned not a word.
Driving through the guarded airfield gate, Pasternak saw Yael Nitzan’s red Oldsmobile parked, and her son Aryeh nosing around a small army transport plane, recognizable mainly by his blond curls, tall as he now was. He came loping toward Amos in the long effortless leaps of a cheetah, as Sam Pasternak entered the terminal hut. “Amos! Ma nishma? I ran ten miles yesterday with some Gadna guys.” Gadna was a paramilitary youth troop.
“Don’t push yourself too much. You’re still growing.”
“It was easy.” Aryeh’s eyes shone, and he laid a hand on Amos’s arm. “Oo-wah, that Beirut raid. I bet you were in it. Were you?”
Amos’s face stiffened. “Learn not to ask childish questions.”
Aryeh said meekly, “Sorry.”
“Okay. I’m a tank battalion commander in Sinai, and whoever did that raid won’t talk about it, maybe not for years. Ten miles, eh? With a sand pack?”
“The Gadna guys wore packs. I didn’t.”
“That was sensible.”
Sam Pasternak found the Nitzans inside the hut. “Yossi, your battalion commander’s outside with Aryeh,” Pasternak said, drawing lukewarm coffee from an urn, “ready to return to Sinai.”
“No rush. Sharon’s not here yet.” Yossi Nitzan looked a lot older to Pasternak these days. The antic Don Kishote was metamorphosing into a hard-driving colonel, sure to make brigadier and a front-runner for higher posts.
“Well, Sam, how are you?” said Yael. “What are you doing with yourself?”
“Collecting unemployment insurance, Yael, and looking for work.”
“Oh, you,” she laughed. “You’ll land on your feet, I bet, if you haven’t already.”
The sharpest Mossad agent, thought Pasternak, could not detect that she was faking, that in recent weeks they had been talking long, earnestly, and often on the phone. In her fashion Yael was unbeatable.
General Sharon ambled in. “Sam, good to see you.” He took a coffee cake from the plate by the urn and wolfed it, smiling at Yael. “Hello, darling. I’ve eaten nothing all day.” His ogre reputation made the pleasantry very engaging. Yael said her goodbyes and walked out. On the instant Sharon’s smile changed to a glare. “Kishote, you know who they’ve picked to relieve me? Gorodish. Gorodish!” He turned on Pasternak. “Do you believe it? Gorodish, commanding the southern sector? Gorodish, versus the Egyptian army? Gorodish?”
Pasternak was in fact surprised. Shmuel “Gorodish” Gonen was a good armor officer and a Dado favorite, but junior to other qualified generals. A clash of cliques in the army, complicated by civilian party politics, must have brought this about. “Well, Arik, Shmuel’s a tough field commander.”
“He is that,” said Yossi. “I was his number two in the Six-Day War.”
“I know you were,” Sharon snapped. “But you’ve been observing those Egyptians across the Canal, Kishote. It’s a different army today. Their uniforms, their maneuvers, their discipline, their numbers.”
Pasternak said, “Well, to be frank, I’d be happier if you were remaining in the south, Arik, at least until they stand down from those war games. They and the Syrians.”
Sharon threw up meaty hands. “Sam, the cabal has done its job, and I’m out. A farmer I was, a farmer I’ve always wanted to be again. If there’s a war, and to me it looks like fifty-fifty right now — I can’t tell those Arab war games from a mobilization, myself — it’ll all be up to the brigade and battalion commanders, and to you, Don Kishote, to you. Gorodish! Let’s go.”
As Barak drove home, gloomy sentences and paragraphs were forming in his mind. Golda had asked him for a written comment on the BLUE/WHITE alert.
On every side he saw preparations for the big Independence Day parade: banners, bunting, flags, placards, bleachers, grandstands. All Jerusalem was breaking out in festive blue and white to hail the “great march of the New Jew,” as the exultant newspaper rhetoric went; the Jew of the straight back, the Jew who had risen like the phoenix from the fires of Nazi Europe to go home again and reclaim the Holy Land. And this display of Israel’s armed forces, which for twenty-five years had beaten off Arab attempts to wipe out the new Zion, would be a simple peaceful warning, “Don’t tread on me.” Some politicians were decrying the expense of the martial extravaganza, and some academics and editorial writers were clucking at such arrogant un-Jewish imagery, but their spoilsport voices were few and lost.
Ever since coming home, Zev Barak had felt out of step with this exultant mood. Had he been away too long, after all? The giant United States was in a morass of worry and self-doubt over Vietnam, a war ten thousand miles away; and miniscule Israel, with huge enemy forces maneuvering at its very borders, was acting cock-of-the-walk. Like their idol, the Minister of Defense, most Israelis these days seemed to be seeing things through one eye.
He found Nakhama busy in the kitchen, where there was an appetizing smell of roast lamb. She flashed her old smile, which he had not been seeing of late. “Galia is bringing Dov Luria to dinner.”
“Oo-wah, so she’s caught herself a Phantom pilot. Not bad.”
“Well, let’s say he’s circling her. And Noah came by. So handsome! Why was he called to the Prime Minister? Can you say?”
He shook his head. As he bent to kiss her, she turned her cheek, her usual way since his homecoming. With a shrug he went to his den, took a writing pad to the armchair, and began scrawling.
April 18, 1973
My dear Madame Prime Minister:
As your Reb Alarmist I am against the very grave decision not to go public with the Blue/White alert. General Zeira states that the Arabs now can strike heavy blows on both borders but that the chance of their doing it is “very low.” That is his estimate as chief of military intelligence, but he is one man, calculating intentions. I reply that it is irrelevant whether the enemy maneuvers are innocuous war games, or another Sadat cry of “wolf,” or a political nudge to the superpowers. They can also be a start toward a war. The capability exists. That is what matters.
I know something about the Americans. Most Israelis, including you, Madame Prime Minister, can’t quite fathom what the Watergate fuss is all about, but believe me, the Nixon presidency is disintegrating. An Arab offensive now would jeopardize the détente with the Soviet Union, with which a desperate Nixon hopes to revitalize his wounded image. Our going public with Blue/White would if anything galvanize him into warning the Arabs to cut out the troublemaking. That’s my estimate.
Madame Prime Minister, you will bear a ghastly historical responsibility if, knowing the threat, you fail to share the truth with the people, and then a war ensues. Why not consider, at least, calling off the big parade? What clearer signal could be sent to our enemies and to the superpowers that we are on guard and mean business? Tourism must take second place to security, surely.
The Arabs will keep trying war until they are convinced that the price for land is a treaty of peace, and nothing else. They are now in all respects ready to try war once more. Blue/White should be
come an alert of the nation, not just of your kitchen cabinet. To do otherwise, given the facts at our borders, gambles with the survival of the Jewish State —
He was trying to think of a less apocalyptic way to finish when his daughter Ruti looked in. “Galia’s here with Dov. Dinner is ready.”
“I’m coming.”
“Dov’s brought a nice present. And Mama told me to give you this.” She dropped on the desk a gray envelope with a red-white-and-blue airmail stripe, and no return address. Emily? Had it crossed his letter, asking her to write no more? He had done this hoping to pull Nakhama out of the dumps, for something was clearly amiss. He closed the door, ripped open the envelope, and found two handwritten lines on a plain white sheet.
Wolf dearest,
I completely understand. Until I hear otherwise from you, mum’s the word. I love you always.
Queenie
He shredded the letter into the wastebasket and went into the dining room, where the girls and Nakhama were admiring a small glazed statuette of a stout woman in biblical robes, dancing with a tambourine. The name scratched on the base was MIRIAM, but the gnarled face was clearly Golda Meir’s.
“My sister’s getting pretty good at this,” Dov said. “She’s even sold a few things. Cats. Americans buy cats. Cats and menorahs.”
“I think it’s wonderful,” said Galia, looking radiantly at the Phantom pilot, who wore faded jeans and a short-sleeved white shirt. He kept a modest mien at dinner, praising Nakhama’s lamb and rice, eating heartily, and scarcely looking at the girl he was visiting. He opened up only when Ruti asked if the air force would be in the parade.
“Oh, sure, we’ll do a flyover. We rehearsed it this morning, in fact.” He turned to Barak with a grin. “Just before Golda makes her speech, sir, the Phantoms will pass over Jerusalem in a Star of David formation. It was mighty ragged today, but we’ll get it right.”
“The people will go wild!” exclaimed Galia.
“Look here, Dov,” said Barak. “Suppose the Arabs take it into their heads, while you’re flying your Star of David over Golda, to launch attacks at the Canal and on the Golan Heights?”
“We have a contingency plan for that,” Dov returned, with a short nod. “If they’re interested in committing suicide, we can accommodate them.”
From all over the world, in trains, planes, and ships, more than a hundred thousand tourists were converging to watch and to cheer the great military parade in Jerusalem marking Israel’s twenty-fifth Independence Day. In Southampton the Queen Elizabeth II, about to sail on a gala Passover cruise to Haifa, was chockablock with happy Jews booked to celebrate the festival at sea en route, and last-minute arrivals were hurrying up the gangways. Among them were the tanned blond lady of the Beirut raid and her natty little husband, who as they came aboard gave their names to the first-class steward as Armand and Irene Fleg.
“I had better check in the dining salon, my dear,” said her husband, as they unpacked in a luxury suite, “to make sure all is in order. As you know, matzo disagrees with me, binds me up like concrete.”
He had arranged for seating at the captain’s table, where he would be sure of eating British cuisine, bread included. They were travelling by ship because he hated to fly, especially with terrorists machine-gunning airports and hijacking planes. The rumors of a possible submarine attack on the great ship, M. Fleg shrugged off. A third-generation Parisian Jew, he was quite indifferent to Passover rules and customs, but the Queen Elizabeth II had ten rabbis aboard to conduct seders and services for seven hundred passengers, and the cruise was billed as strictly kosher, which, if serious, meant matzo instead of bread for Jewish passengers.
“Yes, dear, you —” Three thunderous blasts of the foghorn drowned her out. “Yes, you do that, my dear,” she said, her ears ringing. “I’ll go up on deck.”
RAF fighters were snarling overhead as the great liner backed out of the berth and a brass band blared “Rule, Britannia” and then “Hatikvah.” On the crowded promenade deck, unmindful of a gray drizzle, passengers laughed, cheered, and wept, throwing colored streamers and confetti to the shouting well-wishers on shore. The blond lady went climbing up and up to the deserted rainy boat deck, where she leaned on the rail to watch the shore slip away as the Queen speeded up, heading out to sea in thickening rain. The tumult on the promenade deck below died down, the deck trembled, and the blond lady’s spirits lifted.
Israel ahead! Lovely, lively, grubby, parochial, claustrophobic Israel, no place for anyone used to elegance or even comfort; but the place where one saw those bronzed young men in field-green uniforms, and the army girls in perky black caps and beige miniskirts; quite a change from the pale timorous Jewish youngsters of her own childhood and youth in Beirut and Paris. It did one’s heart good to glimpse them now and then. Staring out at mounting waves, gray-green as Zahal uniforms, the lady idly wondered whether by chance in the big parade she would catch sight of that interesting Pasternak fils.
Irene Fleg’s recruitment for the Beirut raid had been a bizarre series of chances that in retrospect made her wonder at herself, and to thank God that she had emerged safe. To this day her husband knew nothing about it, and almost it seemed like a dream. That young Pasternak, at first in his preposterous female disguise, and next morning as a brawny round-faced soldier in a green army sweater and woolen cap, was a dream figure, and he was haunting her here on the weather deck of the Queen Elizabeth II. The rain on her face and the gusty sea wind were conducive to romantic thoughts. It was a good while before she reluctantly went below.
At the captain’s table that night, as the Queen majestically rolled in a storm, the stout gray-haired captain steered the talk away from Middle East politics to the far-off Vietnam war, the latest movies, and the snowballing scandals of Watergate. While a jocund Hebraic tumult of Passover songs and chants resounded from three enormous horseshoe-shaped seder tables, he maintained a tolerant Christian beam, and over the dessert wine he disclosed half-humorously to his table guests, mainly journalists and broadcasters, that there were fifty security agents aboard. “That is, British agents whom we know about. Perhaps the Israelis have booked on a few as well, and if so more power to them. They’re very capable.” His eyes twinkled. “I’ve even been told that one of the rabbis is a Mossad man. That would be a most effective disguise.” Chuckles from the guests. “At any rate, we can all sleep soundly on this voyage. Weather permitting — and we’ll soon be through this bit of weather — I will myself.”
Barak’s forebodings continued to plague him at the parade rehearsal which Golda sent him to observe. As the masses of machines went clanking and snorting through flag-lined streets of East Jerusalem, all shut up and silent but for swarthy Arab urchins running about, and old men glowering from doorways, it more and more seemed to him a costly thunderous mistake, as well as an invitation for an onslaught at the borders. Of the BLUE/WHITE alert, the jocund Israeli public was utterly unaware.
But the real parade on Independence Day, as it rolled before the reviewing stand, at last broke through the thick crust of his detached pessimism. The bands marching past played the great songs of the old days — “Shoshanna,” “Finjan,” “Sycamore Garden,” “Eretz Eretz” — and despite himself his spine thrilled. As the orderly hordes of war machines growled through the cheering sidewalk crowds, where children on their fathers’ shoulders were waving thousands of little blue-and-white paper flags, the machines themselves were incongruously festooned with flowers, as though to say, We look and sound terrifying but we mean peace. Primitive 1948 weapons and captured Soviet machines headed each section. Ahead of the huge self-propelled cannon pottered the ludicrous little Davidka and Napoleonchik; ahead of the Centurion and Sherman battalions and the giant T-55s, a few toylike Hotchkiss and Cromwell tanks; ahead of the armored personnel carriers, the crude “sandwiches,” the steel-plated old busses that had run the blockade of Jerusalem. He remembered riding up that perilous road through shellfire in those creeping groaning sandwiche
s; he remembered wondering, as he drove out to Latrun, whether Ben Gurion’s “state” would last a month.
The female soldiers marching like men, the navy in dazzling white, the red-beret paratroopers with rigid backs and faultless ranks and files — the cumulative power of these stirring shows was too much even for Mr. Alarmist. Through the cracks in his skepticism gushed old old feelings and memories, a freshet of Zionist enthusiasm, of youthful joy in the birth of the Jewish State, in fighting for it, in winning the Independence War, in being a New Jew, free of the terrors of Europe. Cheers and applause louder than ever rose from the thronged Israelis as the air force planes appeared in the distance. The Phantoms came roaring overhead, a vast perfect six-pointed star in the clear blue Jerusalem heavens. Golda Meir, sitting in the row in front of him, between President Shazar and Moshe Dayan, turned around and caught Zev Barak’s eye.
“Nu, Mr. Alarmist?” he heard her say over the Phantom roar, and he was able to laugh with her at himself. He had been wrong, General Zeira right. Whether there had never been a real danger, or whether Dado’s vigorous quiet preparations had discouraged Sadat — speed-up of road-building and fortification construction, establishment of vast emergency stores and ammunition dumps near the fronts, and forward positioning of masses of tanks — the borders were quiet. No whisper of danger dimmed the glory of the big parade.
Michael and Shayna Berkowitz came with Dzecki’s parents from Haifa for the parade, so they all dined afterward with the Baraks, and Nakhama served cold dishes of vegetables and fish on paper plates. Michael was pale and thinner, and Shayna seemed low. They had been trying in vain, Barak knew, to have a child. When Shayna asked Barak in an aside how Don Kishote was doing in the Sinai, and he said Yossi was an ever-rising army star, she briefly glowed as Galia had at her Phantom pilot, and he felt very sorry for her.
Dzecki’s father said that the parade had been an eye-opener. At last he understood why Dzecki had made aliya. He balanced this concession with pungent stories of the troubles he was encountering in his Haifa real estate deals with slippery sellers, lying contractors, obfuscating lawyers and immovable Haifa pakkidim (bureaucrats). “All the same,” he said, “Dzecki and I have acquired some great properties, and we’ve found a real friend in a Mr. Gulinkoff, a reliable wealthy individual, and a very disinterested adviser. We’re going to show these people the American way to make money. Dzecki’s Hebrew is my ace in the hole. Nothing gets past him on paper or in a meeting.”