Eagle in the Sky

by Wilbur Smith

  In the morning David went to join his squadron and Debra locked the house on Malik Street.

  Each day for seventeen days David flew two, and sometimes three, sorties. In the evenings, if they were not flying night interceptions, there were lectures and training films, and after that not much desire for anything but a quick meal and then sleep.

  The Colonel, Le Dauphin, had flown one sortie with David. He was a small man with a relaxed manner and quick, shrewd eyes. He had made his judgement quickly. After that first day, David and Joe flew together, and David moved his gear into the locker across from Joe in the underground quarters that the crews on standby used.

  In those seventeen days the last links in an iron friendship were forged. David’s flair and dash balanced perfectly with Joe’s rock-solid dependability.

  David would always be the star while Joe seemed destined to be the accompanist, the straight guy who was a perfect foil, the wingman without personal ambition for glory whose talent was to put his number one into the position for the strike.

  Quickly they developed into a truly formidable team, so perfectly in accord that communication in the air was almost extra-sensory, similar to the instantaneous reaction of the bird flock or the shoal of fish.

  Joe sitting out there behind him was for David like a million dollars in insurance. His tail was secure and he could concentrate on the special task that his superior eyesight and lightning reactions were so suited to. David was the gunfighter, in a service where the gunfighter was supreme.

  The IAF had been the first to appreciate the shortcomings of the-air-to-air missile, and relied heavily on the classic type of air combat. A missile could be induced to ‘run stupid’. It was possible to make its computer think in a set pattern and then sucker it with a break in the pattern. For every three hundred missile launches in air-to-air combat, a single strike could be expected.

  However, if you had a gunfighter coming up into your six o’lock position with his finger on the trigger of twin 30-mm cannons, capable of pouring twelve thousand shells a minute into you, then your chances were considerably lighter than three hundred to one.

  Joe also had his own special talent. The forward scanning radar of the Mirage was a complicated and sophisticated body of electronics, that required firstly a high degree of manual dexterity. The mechanism was operated entirely by the left hand, and the fingers of that hand had to move like those of a concert pianist. However, more important was the ‘feel’ for the instrument, a lover’s touch to draw the optimum results from it. Joe had the ‘feel’, David did not.

  They flew training interceptions, day and night, against high-flying and low-altitude practice targets. They flew low-level training strikes, and at other times they went out high over the Mediterranean and engaged each other in plane-to-plane dogfights.

  However, Desert Flower steered them tactfully away from any actual or potential combat situation. They were watching David.

  At the end of the period, David’s service dossier passed over Major-General Mordecai’s desk. Personnel was the Brig’s special responsibility and although each officer’s dossier was reviewed by him regularly, he had asked particularly to see David’s.

  The dossier was still slim, compared to the bulky tomes of some of the old salts, and the Brig flicked quickly over his own initial recommendation and the documents of David’s acting commission. Then he stopped to read the later reports and results. He grinned wolfishly as he saw the gunnery report. He could pick them out of a crowd, he thought with satisfaction.

  At last he came to Le Dauphin’s personal appraisal:

  ‘Morgan is a pilot of exceptional ability. Recommended that acting rank be confirmed and that he be placed on fully operational basis forthwith.’

  The Brig picked up the red pen that was his own special prerogative and scrawled ‘I agree’ at the foot of the report.

  That took care of Morgan, the pilot. He could now consider Morgan, the man. His expression became bleak and severe. Debra’s sudden desire to leave home almost immediately David arrived in Jerusalem had been too much of a coincidence for a man who was trained to search for underlying motives and meanings.

  It had taken him two days and a few phone calls to learn that Debra was merely using the hostel room at the University as an accommodation address, and that her real domestic arrangements were more comfortable.

  The Brig did not approve, very definitely not. Yet he knew that it was beyond his jurisdiction. He had learned that his daughter had inherited his own iron will. Confrontations between them were cataclysmic events that shook the family to its foundations and seldom ended in satisfactory results.

  Although he spent much of his time with young people, still he found the new values hard to live with – let alone accept. He remembered the physical agony of his long and chaste engagement to Ruth with pride, like a veteran reviewing an old campaign.

  ‘Well, at the least she has the sense not to flaunt it, not to bring shame on us all. She has spared her mother that.’ The Brig closed the dossier firmly.

  Le Dauphin called David into his office and told him of his change in status. He would go on regular ‘green’ standby, which meant four nights a week on base.

  David would have to undergo his paratrooper training in unarmed combat and weapons. A downed pilot in Arab territory had a much better chance of survival if he was proficient in this type of fighting.

  David went straight from Le Dauphin’s office to the telephone in the crew-room. He caught Debra before she left the Lauterman Building for lunch.

  ‘Warm the bed, wench,’ he told her, ‘I’ll be home tomorrow night.’

  He and Joe drove up to Jerusalem in the Mercedes, and he wasn’t listening to Joe’s low rumbling voice until a thumb like an oar prodded his ribs.

  ‘Sorry, Joe, I was thinking.’

  ‘Well, stop it. Your thoughts are misting up the windows.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I was talking about the wedding – Hannah and me.’

  David realized it was only a month away now, and he expected the excitement amongst the women was heavy as static on a summer’s day before the rain. Debra’s letters had been filled with news of the arrangements.

  ‘I would be happy if you will stand up with me, and be my witness. You fly as wingman for a change, and I’ll take on the target.’

  David realized that he was being honoured by the request and he accepted with proper solemnity. Secretly he was amused. Like most young Israelis David had spoken to, both Debra and Joe claimed not to be religious. He had learned that this was a pose. All of them were very conscious of their religious heritage, and well versed in the history and practice of Judaism. They followed all the laws of living that were not oppressive, and which accorded with a modern and busy existence.

  To them ‘religious’ meant dressing in the black robes and wide-brimmed hats of the ultra-orthodox Mea Shearim, or in following a routine for daily living that was crippling in its restrictions.

  The wedding would be a traditional affair, complete with all the ceremony and the rich symbolism, complicated only by the security precautions which would have to be most rigorously enforced.

  The ceremony was to take place in the Brig’s garden, for Hannah was an orphan. Also the secluded garden and fortress-like walls about it were easier to protect.

  Amongst the guests would be many prominent figures in the government and the military.

  ‘At the last count we have five generals and eighteen colonels on the list,’ Joe told him, ‘to which add most of the cabinet, even Golda has promised to try and be there. So you see, it’s going to make a nice juicy target for our friends in Black September.’ Joe scowled, and lit two cigarettes, passing one to David. ‘If it wasn’t for Hannah, you know how women feel about weddings, I would just as soon go down to a registry office.’

  ‘You are fooling nobody,’ David grinned. ‘You are looking forward to it.’

  ‘Sure.’ Joe’s scowl clear
ed. ‘It’s going to be good to have our own place, like you and Debs. I wish Hannah had been sensible. A year of pretending.’ He shook his head. Thank God it’s nearly over.’

  He dropped Joe in the lane outside the Brig’s house in Ein Karem.

  ‘I won’t bother to invite you in,’ Joe said. ‘I guess you’ve got plans.’

  ‘Good guess,’ David smiled. ‘Will we see you and Hannah? Come to dinner tomorrow night.’

  Joe shook his head again. ‘I’m taking Hannah down to Ashkelon to visit her parents’ graves. It’s traditional before a wedding. Perhaps we’ll see you Saturday.’

  ‘Right then, I’ll try and make it. Debra will want to see you. Shalom, Joe.’

  ‘Shalom, shalom,’ said Joe and David pulled away, flicking the gears in a racing change as he put the Mercedes at the hill. Suddenly he was in a hurry.

  The terrace door stood open in welcome, and she was waiting for him. Debra was vibrant and tense with expectation, sitting in one of the new leather chairs with her legs curled under her. Her hair was freshly washed and shimmering like a starling’s wing. She was dressed in a billowing kaftan of light silk and subtle honey colours that picked out the gold in her eyes.

  She came out of the chair in a swirl of silk, and ran barefooted across the rugs to meet him.

  ‘David! David!’ she cried and he caught her up and spun on his heels, laughing with her.

  Afterwards she led him proudly about the rooms and showed him the changes and additions that had turned it into a real home during his absence. David had convinced her that cost was not fundamental and they had chosen the designs for the furniture together. These had been made and delivered by Debra’s tame Arab and she had arranged them as they had planned it. It was all in soft leather and dark wood, lustrous copper and brass, set off by the bright rugs. However, there was one article he had never seen before – a large oil painting on canvas, and Debra had hung it unframed on the freshly painted white wall facing the terrace. It was the only decoration upon the wall, and any other would have been insignificant beside it. It was a harsh dominant landscape, a desert scene which captured the soul of the wilderness; the colours were hot and fierce and seemed to pour through the room like the rays of the desert sun itself.

  Debra held his hand and watched David’s face anxiously for a reaction as he studied it.

  ‘Wow!’ he said at last.

  ‘You like it?’ She was relieved.

  ‘It’s terrific. Where did you get it?’

  ‘A gift from the artist. She’s an old friend.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘That’s right. We are driving up to Tiberias tomorrow to have lunch with her. I’ve told her all about you, and she wants to meet you.’

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘She’s one of our leading artists, and her name is Ella Kadesh, but apart from that I can’t begin to describe her. All I can do is promise you an entertaining day.’

  Debra had prepared a special dish of lamb and olives and they ate it on the terrace under the olive tree. Again the talk turned to Joe’s wedding, and in the midst of it David asked abruptly, ‘What made you decide to come with me – without marrying?’

  She replied after a moment. ‘I discovered that I loved you, and I knew that you were too impatient to play the waiting game. I knew that if I didn’t, I might lose you again.

  ‘Until recently, I didn’t realize what a big decision it was,’ he mused, and she sipped her wine without replying.

  ‘Let’s get married, Debs,’ he broke the silence.

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘That’s a splendid idea.’

  ‘Soon,’ he said. ‘Soon as possible.’

  ‘Not before Hannah. I don’t want to steal her day from her.’

  ‘Right,’ David agreed, ‘but immediately afterwards.’

  ‘Morgan, you have got yourself a date,’ she told him.

  It was a three-hour drive to Tiberias so they rose as soon as the sun came through the shutters and tiger-striped the wall above the brass bed. To save time, they shared one bath, sitting facing each other, waist-deep in suds.

  ‘Ella is the rudest person you’ll ever meet,’ Debra warned him. She looked like a little girl this morning with her hair piled on top of her head and secured with a pink ribbon. ‘The greater the impression you make on her, the ruder she will be, and you are expected to retaliate in kind. So please, David, don’t lose your temper.’

  David scooped up a dab of suds with a finger and smeared it on the tip of her nose.

  ‘I promise,’ he said.

  They drove down to Jericho, and then turned north along the valley of the Jordan, following the high barbed-wire fence of the border with its warning notice boards for the minefields, and the regular motorized patrols grinding deliberately along the winding road.

  It was hot in the valley and they drove with the windows open and Debra pulled her skirt high around her waist to cool her long brown legs.

  ‘Better not do that if you want to be in time for lunch,’ David warned her, and she smoothed them down hurriedly.

  ‘Nothing is safe with you around,’ she protested.

  They came at last out of the barren land into the fertile basin of the Kibbutzim below Galilee, and again the smell of orange blossom was so strong on the warm air that it was difficult to breathe.

  At last they saw the waters of the lake flashing amongst the date palms and Debra touched his arm.

  ‘Slow down, Davey. Ella’s place is a few miles this side of Tibetias. That’s the turn-off, up ahead.’

  It was a track that led down to the lake shore and it ended against a wall of ancient stone blocks. Five other cars were parked there already.

  ‘Ella’s having one of her lunch parties,’ Debra remarked and led him to a gate in the wall. Beyond was a small ruined castle. The tumbled walls formed weird shapes and the stone was black with age; over them grew flamboyant creepers of bougainvillaea and the tall palms clattered their fronds in the light breeze that came off the lake. Other exotic flowering shrubs grew upon the green lawns.

  Part of the ruins had been restored and renovated into a picturesque and unusual lakeside home, with a wide patio and a stone jetty against which a motor-boat was moored. Across the green waters of the lake rose the dark smooth whale-back of the Golan Heights.

  ‘It was a crusader fortress,’ Debra explained. ‘One of the guard posts for traffic across the lake and part of the series leading up to the great castle on the Horns of Hittem that the Moslems destroyed when they drove the crusaders out of the Holy Land. Ella’s grandfather purchased it during the Allenby administration, but it was a ruin until she did it up after the War of Independence.’

  The care with which the alterations had been made so as not to spoil the romantic beauty of the site was a tribute to Ella Kadesh’s artistic vision, which was completely at odds with the woman herself.

  She was enormous; not simply fat or tall, but big. Her hands and her feet were huge, her fingers clustered with rings and semi-precious stones and her toenails through the open sandals were painted a glaring crimson, as if to flaunt their size. She stood as tall as David, but the tent-like dress that billowed about her was covered with great explosive designs that enhanced her bulk until she seemed to make up two of him. She wore a wig of tiered curls, flaming red in colour and dangling gold earrings. It seemed she must have applied her eye make-up with a spade, and her rouge with a spray gun. She removed the thin black cheroot from her mouth and kissed Debra before she turned to study David. Her voice was gravelly, hoarse with cheroot smoke and brandy.

  ‘I had not expected you to be so beautiful,’ she said, and Debra quailed at the expression in David’s eyes. ‘I do not like beauty. It is so often deceptive, or inconsequential. It usually hides something deadly – like the glittering beauty of the cobra – or like the pretty wrapper of a candy bar, it contains cloying sweetness and a soft centre.’ She shook the stiffly lacquered curls of her wig, and fixed David with her shrewd l
ittle eyes. ‘No, I prefer ugliness to beauty.’

  David smiled at her with all his charms upon display. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘having met you, and seen some of your work, I can understand that.’

  She let out a cackle of raucous laughter, and clapped the cheroot back in her mouth. ‘Well now, at the very least we are not dealing with a chocolate soldier.’ She placed a huge masculine arm about David’s shoulders and led him to meet the company.

  They were a mixed dozen, all intellectuals – artists, writers, teachers, journalists – and David was content to sit beside Debra in the mild sunshine and enjoy the beer and the amusing conversation. However, Ella would not let him relax for long and when they sat down to the gargantuan alfresco meal of cold fish and poultry, she attacked him again.

  ‘Your martial airs and affectations, your pomp and finery. A plague on it I say, a pox on your patriotism, and courage – on your fearlessness and your orders of chivalry. It is all sham and pretence, an excuse for you to stink up the earth with piles of carrion.’

  ‘I wonder if you will feel the same when a platoon of Syrian infantry break in here to rape you,’ David challenged her.

  ‘My boy, I find it so difficult to get laid these days that I should pray for such a heaven-sent opportunity.’ She let out a mighty hoot of laughter and her wig slipped forward at an abandoned angle. Nothing was safe from her, and she pushed the wig back into place and streamed straight into the attack again.

  ‘Your male bombast, your selfish arrogance. To you this woman—’ and she indicated Debra with a turkey leg, ‘– to you she is merely a receptacle for your seething careless sperm. It matters not to you that she is a promise for the future, that within her. are the seeds of a great writing talent. No, to you she is a rubbing block, a convenient means to a—’

  Debra interrupted her. ‘That definitely is enough, I will not allow a public debate on my bedroom,’ and Ella turned towards her with the battle lust lighting her eyes.

  ‘Your gift is not yours to use as you wish. You hold it in trust for all mankind, and you have a duty to them. That duty is to exercise your gift, to allow it to grow and blossom and give forth fruit.’ She used the turkey leg like a judge’s gavel, banging the edge of her plate with it, to silence Debra’s protests.