by Wilbur Smith
The red-bud trees were in full bloom around the main plaza and the ornamental pool, as David crossed to the admin block and asked for her at the inquiries desk where the porter was on the point of leaving his post.
‘Miss Mordecai—’ The porter checked his list. ‘Yes. English Department. On the second floor of the Lauterman Building.’ He pointed out through the glass doors. Third building on your right. Go right on in.’
Debra was in a students’ tutorial, and while he waited for her, he found a seat on the terrace in the warmth of the sun. It was as well, for suddenly he felt a breath of uncertainty cooling his spine. For the first time since leaving Athens, he wondered if he had much cause to expect a hearty welcome from Debra Mordecai. Even at this remove in time, David had difficulty in judging his own behaviour towards her. Self-criticism was an art which David had never seriously practised; with a face and fortune such as his, it was seldom necessary. In this time of waiting he found it novel and uncomfortable to admit that it was just possible that his behaviour may have been, as Debra had told him, that of a spoiled child. He was still exploring this thought, when a burst of voices and the clatter of heels upon the flags distracted him and a group of students came out on to the terrace, hugging their books to their chests, and most of the girls glanced at him with quick speculative attention as they passed.
There was a pause then before Debra came. She carried books under her arm and a sling bag over one shoulder, and her hair was pulled back severely at the nape of her neck; she wore no make-up, but her skirt was brightly coloured in big summery whorls of orange. Her legs were bare and her feet were thrust into leather sandals. She was in deep conversation with the two students who flanked her, and she did not see David until he stood up from the parapet. Then she froze into that special stillness he had first noticed in the cantina at Zaragoza.
David was surprised to find how awkward he felt, as though his feet and hands had grown a dozen sizes. He grinned and made a shrugging, self-deprecatory gesture.
‘Hello, Debs.’ His voice sounded gruff in his own ears, and Debra stirred and made a panicky attempt to brush back the wisps of hair at her temples, but the books hampered her.
‘David—’ She started towards him, a pace before she hesitated and stopped, glancing at her students. They sensed her confusion and melted, and she swung back at him.
‘David—’ she repeated, and then her expression crumbled into utter desolation. ‘Oh God, and I haven’t even a shred of lipstick on.’
David laughed with relief and went towards her, spreading his arms, and she flew at him and it was all confusion with books and sling bag muddled, and Debra making breathless exclamations of frustration before she could divest herself of them. Then at last they embraced.
‘David,’ she murmured with both arms wound tightly around his neck. ‘You beast – what on earth took you so long? I had almost given you up.’
Debra had a motor scooter which she drove with such murderous abandon that she frightened even the Jerusalem taxi-drivers who crossed her path – men with a reputation for steel nerves and disregard for danger.
Perched on the pillion David clung to her waist and remonstrated with her gently as she overtook a solid line of traffic and then cut smartly across a stream coming in the opposite direction with her exhaust popping merrily.
‘I’m happy,’ she explained over her shoulder.
‘Fine! Then let’s live to enjoy it.’
‘Joe will be surprised to see you.’
‘If we ever get there.’
‘What’s happened to your nerve?’
‘I’ve just this minute lost it.’
She went down the twisting road into the valley of Ein Karem as though she was driving a Mirage, and called a travelogue back to him as she went.
That’s the Monastery of Mary’s Well where she met the mother of John the Baptist – according to the Christian tradition in which you are a professed expert.’
‘Hold the history,’ pleaded David. ‘There’s a bus around that bend.’
The village was timeless amongst the olive trees, dug into the slope with its churches and monasteries and high-walled gardens, an oasis of the picturesque, while the skyline above it was cluttered with the high-rise apartments of modern Jerusalem.
From the main street Debra scooted into the mouth of a narrow lane, where high walls of time-worn stone rose on each hand, and braked to a halt outside a forbidding iron gate.
‘Home,’ she said, and wheeled the scooter into the gatehouse and locked it away before letting them in through a side gate hidden in a corner of the wall.
They came out into a large garden court enclosed by the high rough plastered walls which were lime-washed to glaring white. There were olive trees growing in the court with thick twisted trunks. Vines climbed the walls and spread their boughs overhead; already there were bunches of green grapes forming upon them.
‘The Brig is a crazy keen amateur archaeologist.’ Debra indicated the Roman and Greek statues that stood amongst the olive trees, the exhibits of pottery amphorae arranged around the walls, and the ancient mosaic tiles which paved the pathway to the house. ‘It’s strictly against the law, of course, but he spends all his spare time digging around in the old sites.’
The kitchen was cavernous with an enormous open fireplace in which a modern electric stove looked out of place, but the copper pots were burnished until they glowed and the tiled floor was polished and sweet-smelling.
Debra’s mother was a tall slim woman with a quiet manner, who looked like Debra’s older sister. The family resemblance was striking and, as she greeted them, David thought with pleasure that this was how Debra would look at the same age. Debra introduced them and announced that David was a guest for dinner, a fact of which he had been unaware until that moment.
‘Please,’ he protested quickly, ‘I don’t want to intrude.’ He knew that Friday was a special night in the Jewish home.
‘You don’t intrude. We will be honoured,’ she brushed aside his protest. ‘This house is home for most of the boys in Joe’s squadron, we enjoy it.’
Debra fetched David a Goldstar beer and they were sitting on the terrace together when her father arrived. He came in through the wicket gate, stooping his tall frame under the stone lintel and taking off his uniform cap as he entered the garden.
He wore uniform casually cut, and open at the throat with cloth insignia or rank and wings at the breast pocket. He was slightly round-shouldered, probably from cramming his lanky body into the cramped cockpits of fighter aircraft, and his head was brown and bald with a monk’s fringe of hair and a fierce spiky moustache through which a gold tooth gleamed richly. His nose was big and hooked, the nose of a biblical warrior, and his eyes were dark and snapping with the same golden lights as Debra’s. He was a man of such presence that he commanded David’s instant respect. He stood to shake the General’s hand and called him ‘sir’ completely naturally.
The Brig subjected David to a rapid, raking scrutiny and reserved his judgement, showing neither pleasure nor disdain.
Later David would learn that the nickname ‘The Brig’ was a shortened version of The Brigand’, a name the British had given him before 1948 when he was smuggling warplanes and arms into Palestine for the Haganah. Everyone, even his children, called him that and only his wife used his given name, Joshua.
‘David is sharing the Sabbath meal with us tonight,’ Debra explained to him.
‘You are welcome,’ said the Brig, and turned to embrace his women with love and laughter, for he had seen neither of them since the previous Sabbath, his duties keeping him at air bases and control rooms scattered widely across the land.
When Joe arrived, he was also in uniform, the casual open-necked khaki of summer, and when he saw David he dropped his slow manner and hurried to him, laughing, and enfolded him in a bear hug, speaking over his shoulder to Debra.
‘Was I right?’
‘Joe said you would come,’ Debra explai
ned.
‘It looks like I was the only one who didn’t know,’ David protested.
There were fifteen at dinner, and the candlelight gleamed on the polished wood of the huge refectory table and the silver Sabbath goblets. The Brig said a short prayer, the satin and gold embroidered yarmulke looking slightly out of place on his wicked bald head, then he filled the wine goblets with his own hand murmuring a greeting to each of his guests. Hannah was with Joe, her copper hair glowing handsomely in the candlelight, and she greeted David with reserve. There were two of the Brig’s brothers with their wives and children and grandchildren, and the talk was loud and confusing as the children vied with their elders for a hearing and the language changed at random from Hebrew to English. The food was exotic and spicy, although the wine was too sweet for David’s taste. He was content to sit quietly beside Debra and enjoy the sense of belonging to this happy group. He was startled then when one of Debra’s cousins leaned across her to speak to him.
‘This must be very confusing for you – your first day in such an unusual country as Israel, and not understanding Hebrew, you not being Jewish—’
The words were not meant unkindly, but all conversation stopped abruptly and the Brig looked up, frowning swiftly, quick to sense an unkindness to guest at his board.
David was aware of Debra staring at him intently, as if to will words from him, and suddenly he thought how three denials finalized any issue – in the New Testament, in Mohammedan law, and perhaps in that of Moses as well. He did not want to be excluded from this household, from these people. He didn’t want to be alone again. It was good here.
He smiled at the cousin and shook his head. ‘It’s strange, yes – but not as bad as you would think. I understand Hebrew, though I don’t speak it very well. You see, I am Jewish, also.’
Beside him Debra gave a soft gasp of pleasure and exchanged quick glances with Joe.
‘Jewish?’ the Brig demanded. ‘You don’t look it,’ and David explained, and when he was through the Brig nodded. It seemed that his manner had thawed a little.
‘Not only that, but he is a flier also,’ Debra boasted, and the Brig’s moustache twitched like a living thing so that he had to soothe it with his napkin while he reappraised David carefully.
‘What experience?’ he demanded brusquely.
‘Twelve hundred hours, sir, almost a thousand on jets.’
‘Jets?’
‘Mirages.’
‘Mirages!’ The Brig’s gold tooth gleamed secretly.
‘What squadron?’
‘Cobra Squadron.’
‘Rastus Naude’s bunch?’ The Brig stared at David as he asked.
‘Do you know Rastus?’ David was startled.
‘We flew in the first Spitfires from Czechoslovakia together – back in ‘48. We used to call him Butch Ben Yok – Son of a Gentile – in those days. How is he, he must be getting on now? He was no spring chicken even then.’ ‘He’s as spry as ever, sir,’ David answered tactfully.
‘Well, if Rastus taught you to fly – you might be half good,’ the Brig conceded.
As a general rule the Israeli Air Force would not use foreign pilots, but here was a Jew with all the marks of a first-class fighter pilot. The Brig had noticed the marvellous élan and thrust which that other consummate judge of young men, Paul Morgan, had recognized also and valued so highly. Unless he had read the signs wrongly, something he seldom did, then here was a rare one. Once more he appraised the young man in the candlelight and noticed that clear and steady gaze that seemed to seek a distant horizon. It was the eye of the gunfighter, and all his pilots were gunfighters.
To train an interceptor pilot took many years and nearly a million dollars. Time and money were matters of survival in his country’s time of trial – and rules could be bent.
He picked up the wine bottle and carefully refilled David’s goblet. ‘I will place a telephone call to Rastus Naude,’ he decided silently, ‘and find out a bit more about this youngster.’
Debra watched her father as he began to question David searchingly on his reasons, or lack of them, for coming to Israel – and on his future plans.
She knew precisely how the Brig’s mind was working, for she had anticipated it. Her reasons for inviting David to dinner and for exposing him to the Brig were devious and calculated.
She switched her attention back to David, feeling the tense warm sensation in the pit of her stomach and the electric prickle of the skin upon her forearms as she looked at him.
‘Yes, you big cocky stallion,’ she thought comfortably, ‘you aren’t going to find it so easy to escape again. This time I’m playing for keeps, and I’ve got the Brig on to you also.’
She lifted her goblet to him, smiling sweetly at him over the rim.
‘You’re going to get exactly what you are after, but in trumps and with bells on,’ she threatened silently, and aloud she said, ‘Lechaim! To life!’ and David echoed the toast.
‘This time I’m not going to be put off so easily,’ he promised himself firmly as he watched the candlelight explode in tiny golden sparks in her eyes. ‘I’m going to have you, my raven-haired beauty, no matter how long it takes or what it costs.’
The telephone beside his bed woke David in the dawn, and the Brig’s voice was crisp and alert, as though he had already completed a day’s work. ‘If you have no urgent plans for today, I’m taking you to see something,’ he said.
‘Of course, sir.’ David was taken off balance.
‘I will fetch you from your hotel in forty-five minutes, that will give you time for breakfast. Please wait for me in the lobby.’
The Brig drove a small nondescript compact with civilian plates, and he drove it fast and efficiently. David was impressed with his reaction time and co-ordination – after all the Brig must be well into his fifties, and David allowed himself to contemplate such immense age with awe.
They took the main highway west towards Tel Aviv, and the Brig broke a long silence.
‘I spoke with your old CO last night. He was surprised to hear where you were. He tells me that you were offered promotion to staff rank before you left—’
‘It was a bribe,’ said David, and the Brig nodded and began to talk. David listened to him quietly while he watched with pleasure the quickly changing landscape as they came down out of the hills and turned southwards through the low rolling plains towards Beersheba and the desert.
‘I am taking you to an air force base, and I might add that I am flouting all sorts of security regulations to do so. Rastus assured me that you can fly, and I want to see if he was telling me the truth.’
David looked at him quickly.
‘We are going to fly?’ and he felt a deep and pleasurable excitement when the Brig nodded.
‘We are at war here, so you will be flying a combat sortie, and breaking just about every regulation in the book. But you’ll find we don’t go by the book very much.’
He went on quietly, explaining his own particular view of Israel, its struggle and its chances of success, and David remembered odd phrases he used.
‘– We are building a nation, and the blood we have been forced to mix into the foundations has strengthened them—’
‘– We don’t want to make this merely a sanctuary for all the beaten-up Jews of the world. We want the strong bright Jews also—’
‘– There are three million of us, and one hundred and fifty million enemies, sworn to our total annihilation—’
‘– If they lose a battle, they lose a few miles of desert, if we lose one we cease to exist—’
‘– We’ll have to give them one more beating. They won’t accept the others. They believe their ammunition was faulty in 1948, after Suez the lines were restored so they lost nothing, and in ‘67 they think they were cheated. We’ll have to beat them one more time before they’ll leave us alone—’
He talked as to a friend or an ally and David was warmed by his trust, and enlivened by the prospect of flying again
.
A plantation of eucalyptus trees grew as a heavy screen alongside the road, and the Brig slowed to a gate in the barbed wire fence and a sign that proclaimed in both languages: ‘Chaim Weissmann Agricultural Experimental Centre.’
They turned on to the side road through the plantation, and there was a secondary fence and a guard post amongst the trees.
A guard at the gate checked the Brig’s papers briefly, they clearly knew him well. Then they drove on, emerging from the plantation into neatly laid-out blocks of different cereal crops. David recognized oats, barley, wheat and maize – all of it flourishing in the warm spring sunshine. The roads between each field were surveyed long and straight and paved with concrete that had been tinted to the colour of the surrounding earth. There was something unnatural in these smooth two-mile long fairways bisecting each other at right angles, and to David they were familiar. The Brig saw his interest and nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘runways. We are digging in – not to be taken by the same tactics we used in ‘67.’
David pondered it while they drove rapidly towards a giant concrete grain silo that stood tall in the distance. In the fields scarlet tractors were at work, and overhead irrigation equipment threw graceful glittering ostrich feathers of spray into the air.
They reached the concrete silo and the Brig drove the compact through the wide doors of the barn-like building that abutted it. David was startled to see the lines of buses and automobiles parked in neat lines along the length of the barn. There was transport here for many hundreds of men – and yet he had noticed less than a score of tractor-drivers.
There were guards here again, in paratrooper uniform, and when the Brig led David to the rounded bulk of the silo, he realized suddenly that it was a dummy. A massive bomb-proof structure of solid concrete, housing all the sophisticated communications and radar equipment of a modern fighter base. It was combined control tower and plot for four full squadrons of Mirage fighters, the Brig explained briefly as they entered an elevator and sank below the earth.