by Herman Wouk
Once released the boy turns tractable, and Emily leads him and the dog off to a nursery, where Barak can hear her rattling in French with the nanny she has brought back from Belgium. Soon she returns to the sitting room, looking out on a garden carpeted with fallen leaves. She still wears the gray suit in which she met him at the airport. Now he embraces and kisses her, but the afterscent of skunk in his nostrils somewhat shades his Napoleonic pleasure. “That kid,” she mutters. “That perisher. He can be an angel, but oh God what a problem. Here, I’ve got martinis mixed.” She goes to a portable bar. “Oh God, Wolf, I’d think this was a dream, one of many I’ve had, if not for Chris and the skunks. All too real! How did it go with Bud?”
“Very well. Your boy still doesn’t talk?”
“Not a word. It bothers the hell out of Bud. He hasn’t got around to baby talk on schedule, so Bud worries he won’t get into the Air Force Academy. But the doctors say don’t worry, so I don’t. I know one day he’ll burst out with whole paragraphs, probably obscene.”
They sit down on a wicker couch, clink glasses, and drink. She says, looking out at the green-and-gold trees, “Early fall this year. Bud bought this place right after the war, seven acres and the house, for next to nothing. Mostly he’s left it wild. Now the developers are crowding us. The land’s worth a mint, but he chases real estate agents off the grounds like vagrants.” She sips her drink. “Okay, now straight off, what’s Nakhama’s trouble? Why on earth did you black out our correspondence? That was a blow, honey, believe me.”
He describes his wife’s changed behavior and erratic health; and how, during the high-fever phase of hepatitis, she talked incoherently and angrily about Emily. “Israeli army wives learn to be good sports, Queenie, or at least to act that way. But it was all there inside, and it came out.”
Emily finishes the drink at a gulp. “God, I’m for Nakhama myself. I feel wretched.”
“Queenie, all we do is write.”
“Oh, you — you MAN, all we do is love each other.” She cocks her head, listening. “Shoot, I have a lot to tell you about me and Bud, a hell of a lot, but I hear tires on the driveway. It has to be Bud, and he’s bringing my father. Another time.”
“Emily, I’d better check in with my embassy.”
She gestures at a small wood-panelled room. “Bud’s den. You won’t be disturbed.”
The desk is bare except for the telephone, a blotter, a clock, and a writing board with a clean yellow pad. Motta Gur’s direct line is busy. So are all the embassy numbers. So are Dinitz’s three lines. Something going on! At last he gets through to Gur. “Zev! L’Azazel, high time you called. Another tremendous development—”
Barak blurts, “Good or bad?”
“Couldn’t be worse. Half an hour ago Brezhnev proposed to Nixon, over the telephone, that the two superpowers sponsor a cease-fire resolution at once in the Security Council.”
With a very sick qualm at heart, Barak says, “Golda must reject it.”
“We all know that, but will she have the option if Nixon goes along? Kissinger called Dinitz and he called Golda.” Motta Gur sounds as exercised as Barak has ever heard him. “She was in an all-night conference on where to counterattack, our biggest decision of this war — whether to hold on the Golan and try to cross the Canal, or hold in Sinai and drive toward Damascus. Dinitz’s bombshell blew that conference wide open. The phone lines and teleprinters to Tel Aviv are burning up.”
“Motta, it’s unthinkable, a cease-fire now freezes us in a defeat.”
“Well, the next move is up to the White House. Is General Halliday there?”
Barak can hear Halliday and Cunningham talking in the living room. “He just got here.”
“Let us know anything he says that bears on this. He may not even know about it yet.”
“Will do.”
Christian Cunningham’s appearance surprises Barak. He last saw the CIA man wasted, white, and feeble in a hospital gown, recovering from a heart attack. Cunningham is himself again, erect in his customary impeccable gray suit, gray vest, gold watch chain, with the old secretive sly look behind thick glasses. Only, he is skeletally lean. His shirt and suit collars stand away from a neck of cords and bones. His handshake is dank and hard. “Hello, Barak. Your country is in bad, bad trouble. Emily, where’s my grandson?”
“I’ll fetch him. Bud, there’s lots of martini there.”
“I’ve got news, Barak,” says Halliday, pouring drinks. “We may charter some aircraft, after all. A response to the Soviet airlift, which is confirmed, though so far going only to Syria.” Halliday glances at Barak’s unsmiling face. “Not what you’re here for exactly, but it’ll speed up the shortfall items. Motta Gur is pleased, or says he is.”
“Well, it’s a start.” Not much of a start, Barak thinks, against twenty-five Antonovs.
Emily leads the boy in by the hand, shining clean, hair brushed, clothes neat. Halliday’s face lights up as Chris runs to him. “Say hello to your grandfather, son.”
The boy approaches Cunningham, babbles happy nonsense, and kisses him. The beaming CIA man takes him on his lap.
“He has to eat, father. The girls are at the table.”
“In a minute,” says her father, and Emily goes out.
“You know,” Halliday says to Barak, “that the Vice President resigned at last this afternoon? The media are all in a tizzy. You’d hardly know there’s a war in the Middle East.”
“How will that affect policy?”
“Well, the President will be preoccupied, picking a successor. I’d guess he’s out of the equation, more than ever.”
“That leaves Kissinger in charge,” says Cunningham. “Worse yet for the Jews.”
“My other news, and I don’t think the media have it yet,” says Halliday, “is that Brezhnev wants Russia and the U.S. to cosponsor an immediate cease-fire.”
“Good grief, Bud, when did that happen?” Cunningham exclaims. “It’s unthinkable. That sells the Israelis out before they can counterattack.”
Halliday asks Barak, “How will your government react?”
“Depends on the terms. We’ve craved real peace since 1948, on almost any terms.”
“Don’t talk diplomatic boilerplate,” snaps Cunningham. “You’re in a private house. The Arabs have you on the run right now, and they’ll force you back behind the 1949 lines. In those boundaries your country will wither and collapse in ten years, if another attack doesn’t finish you off sooner.”
Emily comes in. “All right, Grandpa, give up the boy genius.”
“He is one, you’ll see,” says Cunningham, putting little Chris off his lap.
“Why doesn’t he talk, then?” says Halliday.
“Well, Einstein didn’t talk until he was four.”
“That’s all malarkey,” says Emily, “people kidding themselves about their slow darlings. I bet when Einstein was born and the doctor slapped his little bloody behind, he yelled, ‘E equals me squared!’ In high German, yet.” She takes the boy’s hand. “Come eat your mush, Einstein.”
Halliday pours himself another martini, his third, and offers the large sweating pitcher to Barak, who waves it off with a murmur of thanks. “I tell you what, Barak, if you people are wise you’ll grab this cease-fire. I was thinking about your recovery on the Golan. You’ve got brave soldiers, and they’ve bought you a chance to quit with honor, if Brezhnev can deliver the Arabs. That’s what’s dubious, and you’d better hope he does. Why should they let you off? They’ve got you on the ropes.”
“You think so?”
“Do you mind my speaking freely? We’re not in the office.”
“Hair down,” says Barak. “Go on.”
Cunningham is looking from one to the other with a crafty expression.
“Just so.” Halliday drinks. “Well, the Arabs fight by the Soviet book. That’s how come you’ve recovered on the Golan. Soviet doctrine doesn’t permit initiative to exploit. Your enemies achieved surprise and had the war won i
n two days, but they stopped. Stopped, north and south, to bring up forces according to plan and await further orders. They could have finished you off, but they have no Rommels or Pattons, so they lost some time. All the same they’ve got you on this round.”
“Is that your view, or the Pentagon’s?”
Cunningham strikes in as Halliday hesitates. “That’s so much poppycock, Bud. Those Israelis can overcome prohibitive odds in the field. What they need now is time. Their greatest danger isn’t in the field but right here on the Potomac. I mean this détente President and his détente Secretary of State, with their détente openings to China and Russia.” The old CIA man all but spits out the word détente. Emily has written Barak long ago that her father’s views on the spirit of détente may cost him his CIA job. Cunningham growls on. “Watergate and Agnew are just symptoms of the fog the President’s in. If not for détente, d’you suppose Sadat would have dared to start this war? We’ve been snookered, so has Israel, and its fate now hangs on that court Jew, Kissinger. I’ve never been more alarmed.”
“Easy, Chris,” says Halliday, with a side-glance at Barak.
“By George, the jigsaw puzzle falls together, doesn’t it?” the CIA man rasps. “Those malignant scoundrels mean to nail down a decisive Soviet victory in the Middle East, with those Antonovs plus a quick cease-fire. They’re more cautious as a rule, this huge airlift is pretty adventurous, but they’re counting on the President’s weakness and Kissinger’s rubber conscience.”
Emily enters, wiping her hands. “Einstein picked up his dish and splatted corn mush all over his puss. Relativity. Relatively speaking, he’s a fiend. Dinner in fifteen minutes, gents.”
“I should have told you, Em,” says Halliday, looking at his watch, “I won’t be here. Sorry. In fact, I have to go in a minute.”
“Too bad.” A shadow flits across her face. “Lamb roast.”
Cunningham gets up. “I’ll now have a chat with my genius grandson about mass and energy, until dinner.”
Halliday holds out his hand to Barak. “Look, I admire you people. You understand that.” They shake hands. “I really hope your government goes for the cease-fire. As my history prof at the academy pointed out, Thermopylae was magnificent, but nobody survived.” He kisses Emily’s cheek, says, “Sorry about the lamb roast, dear,” and leaves.
“I know what he’s going for,” says Emily, “and it’s no goddamn lamb roast. Not that I have much right to grouse, with you here. Any booze left? Ah, yes. Lovely.”
“He’s a very able man.”
“Bradford Halliday is an exceptional man, and a good father,” says Emily, drinking, “and I won’t let the louse into my bed.”
Startled, Barak asks, “Why? If it’s none of my business, say so.”
“Indeed it is. If you hadn’t shut off my letters, I’d have written a ream —”
A telephone rings in the den. Emily answers it and calls, “Zev, a woman for General Barak.”
He jumps up. “The embassy. Thanks.” Emily closes the door behind him as he goes in.
A cultivated woman’s voice, faintly British, quite goyish, nobody in the embassy: “General Barak? Please hold for the Secretary of State.” Barak waits for a long minute.
A deep Germanic voice, the most recognizable in the world. “Hello, General, Simcha Dinitz gave me this number. I hope my call is not inconvenient.”
“Not at all, Mr. Secretary.” (This cannot be!)
“Vell, how fortunate. I vould like very much to see you, General Barak, as soon as possible.”
“I’m at your disposal right now, sir.”
“Excellent. Ve’ll send a car.”
“That’ll be fine. The address—”
“Ve have the address. The car vill leave now to pick you up.”
Barak walks into the living room and says, “Guess what? I’m going to see Kissinger.”
She opens saucer eyes. “Wow, you clannish Jews. You sure stick together, don’t you?”
Wrong bridge, thinks Barak as the limousine crosses the Potomac in purple lamp-lit twilight, if we’re going to the State Department. But they are not. The black-uniformed driver turns into the back gate of the White House, passes through with a few quick words to the sentry, and parks the car. In the entrance lobby he hands a brown paper bag to the gorgeously uniformed young Marine orderly, asking, “Has he arrived?”
“Yes, he’s in the Map Room. Follow me, General.”
The awe of the White House is on the Israeli, though in his attaché years he often walked these august halls. The orderly knocks at a door. Unmistakable voice: “Yes, come in.” Kissinger sits alone at a long polished table, tubby and rumpled in a dinner jacket, black tie askew, looking through a pile of documents. The orderly hands him the paper bag and leaves.
“Please sit down, General. Ve meet here for privacy,” Kissinger rumbles, waving at a chair. “The State Department is a goldfish bowl.” He opens the bag, peers into it, and sniffs it. “You know, Abba Eban vunce told me that General de Gaulle’s first vords to him, ven he received him before the Six-Day War, were, ‘Ne faites pas la guerre!’ But I say to you — and your Prime Minister has told me to talk to you exactly as I vould to her — Faites la guerre! Fight! Fight as hard and as fast as you can, because as things stand on the battlefield you’re in terrible trouble, and so are ve, vit the Soviet cease-fire proposal.”
He extracts and unwraps a sandwich from the bag, and sighs with pleasure over it. “Roquefort on rye. Food of the gods. My fiancée has put me on a starvation diet. But I’m about to host a banquet for the President of Zaire. Banquet food isn’t food. I had no lunch. Forgive me if I eat vile ve talk. Vot’s really happening over there, General? Who’s vinning the war?”
“I wish I could say we are, Mr. Secretary.”
The Secretary bites into the sandwich with gusto, and gives him a sharp look. “Do you vish that? But vouldn’t that undercut your mission? Mrs. Meir mentioned half-jokingly that she vould send her military secretary to ‘get an airlift,’ after I urged her not to come herself. I told her Dinitz and Gur are doing nobly. But she sends you, so — fine.” He eats, and says after a moment, “My God, what a hideous notion, for her to fly here. Not like her at all, to go into such hysterics.” The heavy German accent seems to fade away after a while, or rather Barak stops hearing it.
“Mr. Secretary, she is cool as can be. It was Moshe Dayan’s idea, and she thought better of it.”
“Thank God. You know what they were saying in the Pentagon? If Golda Meir could come here during a war, that showed the Israelis must be winning and didn’t really need any help.” With a glance through thick glasses over the sandwich, he says in an off-hand way, “You’ve been at the Pentagon today. What’s your impression?”
“That all your Arabists have been lend-leased to Defense, Mr. Secretary, and are making policy.”
“Hm! Not bad.” Kissinger glances around at the handsomely furnished room, which looks out through bushes at a floodlit brownish lawn. “You know, this is where Franklin Roosevelt conducted World War Two? The Map Room, he named it. He got the idea from the war room Churchill had aboard the Prince of Wales, at the Argentia conference. A lucky room.” After a pause while he eats, Kissinger says, “All right, on Golda’s say-so I’ll talk to you as I would to her in private. No diplomatics, nothing on the record. I’ll discuss two things, the cease-fire and the airlift.”
“Yes, Mr. Secretary.”
“Cease-fire first. The Egyptians will want you to first agree to withdraw to the pre-1967 lines. Just for starters. That you won’t do, I realize. You’ll want a return to the lines that existed right before Yom Kippur. Forget it. Over, dead, gone. In the Pentagon they say, ‘How can we make the Arabs give back to Israel their own land that they’ve recaptured?’ What lies ahead as things stand now is a cease-fire in place, a disaster for you, then a tortuous political process which will not help and may harm you. So, I say again, Faites la guerre! Change the picture on the battlefield!”
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br /> “We’re trying, Mr. Secretary.”
Kissinger nods. “The Russians won’t move for the cease-fire at the UN without us, not for a few more days. That much, détente has accomplished. It’s no small thing. But we can stall only so long.”
“How long?”
“By Saturday, General, the United States will be in a very awkward spot. If the Russians move the cease-fire and everybody else votes for it — which of course you can count on — how can we veto a unanimous resolution for peace?”
“Do the Arabs want a cease-fire, Mr. Secretary?”
“The Russians want it, that we know. As to the Arabs, we have to wait and see.” He seems about to say more, then eats, and goes on abruptly. “Now, about an airlift. I’ve pressed since day one for expediting the items you’re short of. Dinitz will confirm that. But until last night, I tell you man to man that I understood transport in Israeli aircraft was all you wanted. Now things have changed. Journalists and congressmen, of course, will start howling for an immediate colossal airlift by the United States Air Force. They think those things happen like turning on a faucet. I expect more realism from Golda Meir, and less dramatics.”
“She will be happy, sir, if she has your word that an urgent airlift is in the works with your backing.”
The Secretary gives him a long solemn look. “General, the President has told me, ‘Israel mustn’t be allowed to lose.’ That’s why the Sixth Fleet has sailed east and taken station off Crete. It’s a signal the Soviets understand. He may be very distracted, but his instinct for foreign policy is still keen. The President knows that if you’re defeated the Russians will dominate the Middle East, the Arabs will be impossible to deal with, and the world balance will tilt against the United States. I don’t know why the Pentagon doesn’t share that view, but I assure you I do.”