by Herman Wouk
“Prime Minister, Zeira’s assessment stands. ‘Very low probability.’ But Dayan asked for this meeting.”
“To share the responsibility of not mobilizing, I’m sure.” Golda’s weary voice shaded into heavy irony. “Well, he’s right. Let’s hear what our best minds have to say.” She peered at him. “Alarmed, are you?”
“Less so, Prime Minister, now that you’re back.”
“What a nice compliment.”
The morning meeting in Golda’s office of the inner cabinet and army chiefs was calm, the intelligence briefing spare, the comments matter-of-fact, the mood unworried. Nobody questioned that the Arab armies were on full war alert, massed at the borders, and capable of immediate all-out attack. Israel’s two most eminent soldiers, Dayan and Yigal Allon, now both ministers, flanked Golda. With them was the white-haired old Yisrael Galili, her stone-bottomed Labor cohort. They all took in stride the dark picture and heard without demur the ongoing assessment, “Still very low probability,” by Zeira’s head of research, a quiet-spoken general who gave the briefing since the chief of military intelligence was ill. The Prime Minister interrupted with only one edgy question, when he said, “At all events, if there’s a change on the other side to a decision for war, we’ll know seventy-two hours beforehand.”
“One moment.” She lifted a rigid finger. “Seventy-two hours? Tell me, how will we know? By some unusual preparations?”
“Prime Minister, we will know. With seventy-two hours’ warning.” He glanced at Dayan. So did Golda. Dayan gave her a nod and a subtle smile. She shrugged and asked no more.
As the meeting was ending she asked the Ramatkhal abruptly, “Dado, two questions. Do you accept this evaluation? And in any case are we ready?”
Elazar expressed dour confidence in his military intelligence chief, and in Zahal’s readiness if the unlikely happened. “The trouble is, Madame Prime Minister, a lot is expected of us,” he said wryly. “Unless we win in three days this time, we’ll catch a lot of flak.”
Thereafter Zev Barak decided to suppress his anxiety, or paranoia, or whatever it was. Who was he to be alarmed, if even Golda with her “nose” accepted composedly these dire facts? Sabras like Allon and Dayan tended to hint that a “galutnik mentality” haunted those who feared war. Was it so, and was he after all at bottom a Viennese galutnik? Had the iron of Europe’s anti-Semitism really entered his soul, or the American Jews’ way of looking over their shoulders at the goyim? Or had he simply been out of the field and behind a desk too long? No more, Zev Barak resolved. This time I will shut up.
The resolve cleared his mind, and for the next two nights he slept well. He cheered up so much that Nakhama, recently pensive and withdrawn, reflected his mood with smiles, jokes, and little affectionate ways that he thought she had forgotten. “So where will we hear Kol Nidrei?” she said over their morning coffee, very early on Yom Kippur eve. “Just the two of us, ha? Something new!” Galia was going to Tel Nof to be with Dov, Ruti was staying at a kibbutz, and Noah’s vessel would be in port on high alert, unless he went out on patrol.
“Well, we could walk to the Wall. How about that? Nice effect it had on Dov and Galia.”
Nakhama bridled, laughed, and said, “Hm! We’ll see.”
He drove to Tel Aviv that morning in his happiest frame of mind since the start of the crisis. On his desk he found a sealed despatch in a pale green military intelligence envelope, stamped URGENT. He tore it open:
ALL SOVIET DIPLOMATS LEAVING EGYPT AND SYRIA TODAY WITH FAMILIES BY AEROFLOT PLANES. MEETING AT 8:30 A.M., OFFICE OF DEFENSE MINISTER.
The date was Friday, October 5, Yom Kippur eve.
PART TWO
The Awakening
WHAT IS IT WITH THEE, O SLEEPER?
RISE AND CALL UPON THY GOD …
Jonah 1:6
18
Earthquake
Yom Kippur eve, sundown. The voice of the young black-bearded Hassidic rabbi throbs through the crowded Tel Nof assembly hall, transformed to a synagogue with a Holy Ark, Torah reading platform, and even latticework to partition off the female soldiers; “the works,” as Benny Luria has promised the rabbi. Everyone is standing for the ancient solemn melody …
Kol Nidrei, v’esorei …
Never has there been such a Yom Kippur at Tel Nof. All the pilots, instructors, ground crews, clerks, mechanics, and cooks in the male section wear the white shawls and yarmulkes furnished by the Hassidim. The base kitchens are shut down. The streets and walks are deserted. No war warning has come down from the Chief of Staff to the Air Force Command. No machine moves except the ever-rotating radar on the control tower.
Proud and pleased with what he has wrought, Benny Luria stands between his Dov and Danny in a front row. Even the Ezrakh, he is thinking, might approve of his improvised shul. And when all is said and done, this Tel Nof base, the air force, Zahal, and Israel are more about Kol Nidrei than about the Mapam socialism in which he was raised; and that is true whether Golda Meir is also hearing Kol Nidrei tonight, or smoking cigarettes and drinking tea in her Ramat Aviv home.
“Good cantor,” murmurs Danny, the yarmulke precarious on his mop of red hair, as they sit down amid a noisy scraping of chairs. He is now the tallest of the three. “I liked that, but it wasn’t Hebrew, was it, Abba?”
“Aramaic,” says his father. “Talmud language. There’s a translation in the prayer book.”
“Poor Galia, behind that fence,” says Dov.
“Your mother’s taking good care of Galia, don’t worry.”
Next morning when the telephone rings by Zev Barak’s bedside, he wakes disoriented, peering at his illuminated clock. Four-thirty? On Yom Kippur Day? Hearing Golda Meir’s voice, he thinks at first it must be a bad dream, like others he has been having. “Zev, come to Tel Aviv.” The tone is harsh, tired, level. “Be at my office by seven. Zeira just called me. The war will start at six this evening.”
His throat contracts, his spine coldly prickles. It is no dream.
Dawn streaks the sky outside the windows of the Tel Nof commander’s office. The young lieutenant with the duty watch has gone all night without food or drink and is in a foggy state. “Yom Kippur is cancelled.” Benny Luria startles him, coming in clad in a G suit.
“Cancelled, sir?”
“Cancelled. Call the cooks. Kitchens will be activated at once, full breakfasts prepared for the whole base. All gates of the base to be closed. Returning personnel may be admitted. Nobody leaves Tel Nof.”
“Yes, sir.” The duty officer cannot resist. “Is it war, General?”
Luria ignores the query. “All sections go to Aleph Alert. Meeting of squadron leaders and deputies in fifteen minutes.”
He returns to his quarters, where Irit meets him with a cup of steaming coffee. In the kitchen Dov is having coffee and cake, also in his G suit. Galia in Irit’s red bathrobe sits blinking and yawning. “I’m still fasting,” she says. “I’m not air force personnel.”
“It’s foolish,” says Irit. “Have coffee. Who knows what the day will bring?”
“Suit yourself, Galia,” says Luria.
“Benny, is it the Six-Day War again?” Irit wants to know. “We’re attacking?”
“Can’t discuss it. I have to talk to those poor Hassidim. I’ve housed them near the kitchen. They’ll go crazy when they pick up cooking smells.”
In the Prime Minister’s office, as Barak listens in silence to the sobered talk about what steps to take next, Yom Kippur does not have to be cancelled, it does not exist. Pastry, tea, coffee, cigarette smoking, business as usual; same room, same faces, same calm tones, with this difference, that catastrophe now appears to be thundering down on Israel. Zeira and Dayan are maintaining, though a shade forlornly, that it may still be a false alarm. After all, Zeira’s ultrasecret special source has only raised the probability overnight from “very low” to “eighty percent sure.” And what about the guaranteed seventy-two-hour warning? No explanation, and Dado and Golda are now assuming
the worst, war at sundown. Her words are coming back to Barak: “Do those great warriors need an old lady to nursemaid and second-guess them?” The appalling answer seems to be yes.
For Dayan and Dado are at loggerheads. The Ramatkhal wants immediate drastic moves to head off the surprise. The Defense Minister urges prudence, with minimum hue and cry. A strange debate this, between the rugged handsome Elazar in field uniform, his square face wrinkling in worry under his thick curly hair, and the world-famed balding general with the eye patch, dressed like a civilian but bearing himself like a composed super–Chief of Staff. How many reserves to mobilize? That is the question, and to cut the argument short, Golda decides: less than Dado wants, more than Dayan thinks necessary. And what about the air force, the great winner of the Six-Day War? Dado is for a preemptive strike against Syria, but Dayan opposes it. After much talk she goes with Dayan.
The hurried meeting at last ends. When Barak is left alone with her, she turns to him a face of white stone, deeply scored with tragic lines. “Nu, Mr. Alarmist? Go ahead, say, ‘I told you so.’ ”
“But I didn’t this time, Madame Prime Minister. And it’s not war yet.” She dismisses this with a hand-wave, as though brushing away a fly. He adds, “The American ambassador is waiting in the next room.”
“I know that. So, Zev? What do I say to him? Do I tell him” — she falls into Talmudic singsong — “to tell Nixon to tell the Russians to tell the Arabs that we won’t shoot first? Will that stop them? Or will it only encourage them?”
“For the Americans it’ll establish your bona fides.”
“Bona fides, shmona fides! They’ve sent me messages all week while the Arabs were massing, ‘Don’t preempt. Don’t preempt.’ Like De Gaulle before the Six-Day War, ‘Ne faites pas la guerre!’ ” As she chain-lights a cigarette the stone face melts into the concerned countenance of a grandmother. “Your children, where are they?”
“The girls are too young to serve. My son Noah commands a Saar boat.”
“Ah, the navy.” She nods. “Well, it’s a nice navy, but what can the navy accomplish? Now it’s all up to the boys at the Canal and on the Golan. They’ll have to hold and fight while we mobilize.” She rests her head in her hand. “Seventy-two hours. We were promised seventy-two hours.”
Zev Barak has a strong urge to plead for immediate total mobilization. It might still give the country some precious hours to gear up for war. Dado as army chief could demand it. Dayan as Defense Minister could recommend it. Why has the idea already been discussed and dismissed? Various reasons. Panicking the country on this holiest of days might prove needless, after all; a warlike move might trigger a still-doubtful Arab attack; and again, always, always, how will the Americans react? From the CIA as yet, there has been no warning at all. So who is Zev Barak to raise his squeaky voice? And what is wisdom now, with all Israel observing the Day of Atonement, and tank forces as numerous as Hitler’s at his peak, poised north and south to close on the oblivious little Jewish State like the jaws of a nutcracker?
Golda lifts her head and stares at him, her eyes reddened. “Yesterday, the minute I heard about the Soviet diplomats, I knew. I thought the great generals must know better. Maybe they did. Maybe they still do. Maybe it’s not going to happen. But if it does, I’ll be beating my breast till I die because I didn’t act yesterday, and go to full mobilization.” She bitterly smiles. “Some Yom Kippur, ha, Zev? I see you’re still fasting, you’ve put nothing in your mouth. Eat something. Drink something. You’ll need your strength.”
Barak pours himself a glass of water and drinks it.
“That’s the way.” She looks down at her gray dress and straightens the skirt. “Call in the American ambassador.”
In Haifa’s main synagogue, Professor Berkowitz as a trustee rates a seat by the chief rabbi near the Holy Ark, but Shayna prefers the overflow Yom Kippur service in the downstairs social hall, so that is where they are this morning. The rabbi’s son, an old beau of hers, officiates here and gives no sermon, in itself an attraction; and through gaps in the cheesecloth partition she can peek at her menfolk, Michael and Reuven, with Noah Barak, Don Kishote, and Aryeh, who all ate the last meal before the fast at her flat.
Kishote has come to Haifa after conferring with Arik Sharon at their division headquarters about the latest air photographs and intelligence maps of Egyptian dispositions. “It’s war, all right,” Sharon said. “But Gorodish has three hundred tanks in Sinai. That’s enough to hold them while we mobilize, once we get the warning. I’ll try to spend Yom Kippur at my farm. … Haifa? Why not? Go ahead. Have a light fast.” With his deceptively gentle grin, Sharon then added, “Wear a uniform and boots. Just in case.” So Kishote has come here with Aryeh, who is still desolate because his Gadna youth group was ordered off the Golan Heights, where they were visiting the outposts.
What an awesome view from Mount Hermon, Aryeh enthused to his father as they were driving to Haifa; Syrian tanks, howitzers, APCs, thousands of war machines stretching far, far out of sight, beyond the antitank ditch on the plain below. At the outpost, a narrow crowded hole in the ground, everything was thrilling: the telescopes, the guns, the military talk, the patches of snow, the army food, the crude bunks like shelves, everything! But all leaves were abruptly cancelled, and the Gadna youths sent home. No reason given. By chance he had encountered Amos Pasternak at a cross-roads, directing groups of clattering tanks here and there. Amos gave him a hasty hug, but no information. “No, no war, Aryeh. Not that I know about. We’re just here to discourage them from trying anything.” Aryeh yearns for that smelly dugout on the Hermon, and the terrific view of the Syrians. However, spending Yom Kippur with his father and Aunt Shayna is nice, too.
Next to Shayna sits Hedva, a deeply pious friend who snagged the rabbi’s son when Shayna broke up with him. Hedva now has three children and a barrel figure. Whenever Shayna peeks at the men Hedva frowns, but so what? Looking at Kishote and Aryeh does her heart good. Shayna does not envy Hedva Poupko the bewhiskered Chaim and her kids. Everyone’s life is different. She has Michael and Reuven, and in a bizarre way she has Yossi and Aryeh, too. Cooking for them all before Kol Nidrei, especially for the Nitzans senior and junior, filled her with a unique precious emotion, an obscure deep joy tinged with pain, such as her friend Hedva would never know.
But odd things are going on beyond the cheesecloth. A paratrooper in uniform is making his way through the rows of chairs and taps the shoulder of a bearded youngster, who gets up and goes out, folding his prayer shawl. Moving here and there, the soldier hands worshippers slips of paper, and one by one they leave. Kishote and Noah too drop shawls on their chairs and depart. Shayna hurries to intercept them in the lobby.
“Yossi, what is it?”
“Reserve call-up. It may not mean much. Still, I’d better get back to headquarters, Keep Aryeh with you for the holidays, will you? I’ll telephone tonight if I can.”
Behind the offhand manner Shayna can discern an abstracted brain turning over contingencies, options, plans. “Come on, Yossi.”
He smiles, life flows into his face, and the eyes twinkle behind the glasses. “Wonderful last meal, Shayna. Being with you is heaven for Aryeh. I don’t mind it, either. Is the fast bothering you?”
“Kishote, is it war?”
“Not right now. If it comes, we’ll win. Shayna, I love you. Get back behind the curtain, and” — he lapses into Yiddish — “davan gut [pray well]!”
On the chance that some plane, military or civilian, will be flying south, Noah Barak drives him to the airport. Moving automobiles all have their headlights on, signalling respect for the national fast day while driving on official duty. Reservists are hurrying this way and that in the streets in holiday clothes, some still wearing prayer shawls. At the airfield planes are being dragged by tractors from hangars. “Well, good luck in Sinai, General. An attack on Yom Kippur!” says Noah. “Makes sense from their viewpoint, I guess, the bastards.”
“Easy, Noah. So far this
is a limited mobilization. Yom Kippur’s not such a bad day for us to go to war, anyway. Empty roads, and I know where most of my reserves are, they’re either at home or in synagogue. … Hold on, that looks like my ride.” He jumps from the car and trots after a tall striding figure in slacks and a sweater. “General, are you going south?”
The former air chief, Ezer Weizman, turns. “Don Kishote! Come along. How’s Yael?”
“She’s in Los Angeles.”
“Ha! At the moment, a pretty good place to be.”
Climbing into the Piper Cub, Yossi waves at Noah, who speeds off.
The navy base, when Noah gets there, is busier than he has ever seen it: fuel and ammunition trucks rumbling about, working parties loading every vessel in sight, boat engines snarling and coughing as they warm up. He parks the car with the headlights ablaze, then remembers and goes back to snap them off. With that he snaps off all awareness of Yom Kippur.
The flotilla commander, a small dark man named Barkai, with a tough face and a disposition to match, is leaning over a chart on the desk in his map-lined office, under a majestic picture of Golda Meir. “Ah, you’re here, Barak. Good. So much for army intelligence, hah? You sail in the second group. The word is, the Arabs will launch all-out war at six tonight. By then we’ll be off Cyprus with five boats, out of Syrian radar range. We’ll penetrate Latakia harbor after dark and sink the Syrian fleet. Surprise the surprisers. Any questions? My staff and I will ride in your boat.”
Noah’s heart thumps. He does indeed have questions, for the Syrian fleet is armed with the Styx missiles which sank the Eilat. The Cherbourg boats, and the new boats constructed in Haifa, have the Gabriel missile, but its range is less than half that of the Styx: twelve miles, against twenty-eight miles. The Syrians can stand off and fire Styxes with impunity, unless the Israelis can somehow close the range and survive to fight. What about the newest countermeasures from Rafael, the armament authority, he asks, is there still time to install them?