By the Rivers of Babylon (38 page)

But why feel guilty? Everyone has his turn at suffering sooner or later. For him it had come much later, but when it came it was complete—disgrace, humiliation, guilt, physical suffering, futile and furtureless love, and . . . death. Death. When and how? Why not now? He looked down at the wide Euphrates and stood up. Why not just step off this ridge? But he wanted to go
home.
He wanted to take Miriam home to his father’s house and sit her down to Passover dinner and fill her with food—all the food she had missed as a child—and he wanted to explain to her that life was not really that pleasant for him during the war, either. His mother’s family had been killed. Did she know that? That’s what
he wanted—to sit Miriam down to dinner, to invent some retroactive suffering so that she would accept him as a fellow victim, and then to declare that the suffering was finished.

He wiped his eyes and face. He wondered how much of his sudden sentimentality was the alcohol, how much was Miriam Bernstein, and how much was battle fatigue. In any case, he didn’t believe he would ever again be in Haifa for Passover, and if by some miracle he were, it would not be with Miriam Bernstein.

The wind rose noticeably and picked up great quantities of sand and dust. The
Sherji
was coming in force. Hausner could hear the wind whistling through the dead aircraft. He could hear it moan as though it were taunting the suffering men and women in the shepherds’ hut. If God had a voice, it was the wind, thought Hausner, and it said anything you wanted to hear.

He turned eastward and saw it coming toward him. He could see it coming out of the hills, carrying more dust for Babylon. Under the blue-white moon, huge dust devils chased headlong down the mountains and over the foothills. Behind the twisters, clouds and sheets of dust blotted out the hills and mountains. He spun around. The Euphrates was unsettled, and he could hear its waters lapping against the banks. The dark pools on the mud flats stirred restlessly. Jackals became quiet and flocks of night birds flew east by the thousands, across the flatlands. The water lilies of the river were swamped, and the frogs became quiet as they abandoned them and found their mud holes on the banks. A herd of wild boar made grotesque sounds as they gathered on the far shore. Hausner shivered.

He looked up at the sky and wondered if the wind would throw up enough earth to blot out the full moon.

Teddy Laskov stood at the end of a long table in a long, plain room. The wind rattled the window panes and shutters. Full-length portraits of Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann hung on the wall. On another wall was a color photograph of Israel taken by the American astronaut, Wally Schirra, from an Apollo spacecraft. The conference table and the floor around it were cluttered with attaché cases. The Prime Minister sat staring at the two interlopers. The room was as quiet as anyone ever remembered it to be during a combined session of the Cabinet, the Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Committee.

The Prime Minister spoke. “Babylon?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not the pyramids along the Nile, now, General? Babylon?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Just a hunch? A feeling? A divine inspiration?”

“Sort of.” Laskov licked his lips. In lsrael it was still possible to go right to the top if you screamed and yelled at the aides and lackeys long enough. In any event, the Prime Minister’s
provisional office in Jerusalem was small enough for the man himself to have heard Laskov screaming at the portal. Laskov glanced at Talman standing next to him. The man was trying to look very dignified—very British—although it was obvious that he was uneasy and not quite certain of his right to he there. Laskov spoke again to break the silence. “Some of the electronic data that we have—radar sightings, radio transmissions, and that sort of thing—points, I think, to Iraq.”

“Really? And where did you get that information, General?”

Laskov shrugged. There was a lot of mouth-to-ear whispering in the long room. Laskov waited and looked over the heads of the assembly. The small red-tiled building had seen a lot of history. It had originally housed the Knights of the Order of the Temple. During World War II, the British used the building to intern German civilians who were suspected of Nazi espionage or sympathies. Jacob Hausner had sent his share of Germans there, but Laskov was not aware of this. After the war the building was a British military headquarters during the Mandate period. Coincidentally, Laskov had been questioned in the very next room as a suspected member of the underground Israeli Air Force. Now he was here again, and the dryness in his mouth reminded him of the kind of life he had led. Some people would call it exciting and romantic. He called it worrisome and dangerous. Why didn’t he accept his forced retirement and fade away? Let the government worry about the whereabouts of the peace mission. He might have done that if Miriam weren’t among the missing.

“All right, General,” said the Prime Minister. “We’ll come back to the question of your sources of information later.” The Prime Minister put a handkerchief into the open collar of his sport shirt and wiped his neck. He was a tall, thin man with nervous habits, one of which—tearing pieces of paper—he was engaged in at the moment. “Well, what do you propose we do with your information—or should I say, inspiration?”

Laskov spoke loudly and clearly. “I propose that we send a low-level reconnaissance craft to Babylon now—tonight. Take pictures and make visual sightings, if possible. If they’re there, we’ll try to show them our colors, fly low, give them hope. Behind the recon craft should be an airborne strike force—the F-14’s for preparatory fires and behind them C-130’s with commandos, if there’s a place where they can land, or C-130’s with airborne troops if they can’t land. Maybe troop helicopters
instead. That’s for the army to worry about. If the recon craft can confirm their presence, then the strike force goes in.”

The Prime Minister tapped a pencil on the table. “Would you object violently if I called the King of Jordan and told him I was sending an air armada over his sovereign kingdom?” There was a lot of laughter, and the Prime Minister paused with the timing of an accomplished performer. He leaned forward. “Surely you wouldn’t be too hard on me if I called the President of Iraq and told him, by the by, that I was invading his country—shooting up Babylon, for old time’s sake?”

Laskov waited for the laughter to subside. The Prime Minister had an acerbic sense of humor, but after he had his fun with Knesset members or generals, he became more attentive and was actually more open-minded than the average politician. “Mr. Prime Minister, surely a contingency plan of this sort exists. Where did we expect to find the peace mission? On Herzlya beach? And what did we intend to do when we found them?”

The Prime Minister settled back in his chair. His expression darkened. “Actually, rescue plans do exist. But Iraq is on that list of countries not friendly enough to get full cooperation from . . . and potentially unfriendly enough to declare war on us, I might add.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Prime Minister, but like all generals, I don’t understand politics.”

“Like all generals, you understand politics damn well, and you don’t want to be bothered with them. Don’t play the innocent with me, Laskov. You know the situation with Iraq. Now, the first thing I must do is place a call to Baghdad.”

Laskov nodded his head enough to acknowledge the deserved rebuke, but he wasn’t willing to concede the whole point. “Mr. Prime Minister,” he said, his voice filled with emotion, “since when have we left the safety of Israeli citizens to foreign governments?”

“When they are in foreign lands, General Laskov.”

“Uganda.”

“A different time, a different place.”

“The same old cutthroats.” He took a deep breath. “Look, sir, the West German commandos did it in Somalia. We did it in Uganda—and we can do it again in Babylon.”

The Prime Minister made a sound of exasperation. “I really must call first, if you don’t mind.” He leaned forward. “Anyway,
if they are in Babylon, we have no idea of their condition. Dead? Alive? Captive? Really, General, I’m meeting you more than halfway on this. We’ve been in session for thirty hours and we’re damned tired—and you come busting into this meeting yelling Babylon, and we give you the damned floor. Any other government would have had you thrown out on your ass—or worse.” He took a sip from a cup of coffee.

The sound of the wind filled the quiet room, and the shutters began clattering again. The Prime Minister raised his voice over the noise. “But what you say makes sense. And I believe in God and I believe that He has whispered in your ear, Teddy Laskov—although why you and not me is a great mystery. Anyway, we will call the President of Iraq at once and then
he
will send a recon craft and his air force people will call us after they’ve interpreted the data from the craft. All right?”

“No, sir. Too much wasted time.”

The Prime Minister rose. “Damn you, Laskov—get out of here before I call you back to active duty and put you on permanent latrine detail.” He turned to Talman. “Do you have anything to say before you both leave, General?”

Talman swallowed and his mustache quivered. He took a deep breath and his voice escaped with the exhale. “Well, sir, I think that we should really do the reconnaissance ourselves, you know—I mean, we are rather good at it and the Iraqis may not be as accomplished, you see, and we have no direct data link with them and these things do get fouled up and at least we can ask the American SR-71 to take a high-level photo in the meantime—they won’t go down low, but maybe they can get a clear shot and—”

The Prime Minister held up his hand. “Hold on.” He turned to the members of the Joint Chiefs who were becoming fidgety. He beckoned to them, and they crowded around the Prime Minister’s chair and spoke in whispers. The Prime Minister looked up. “Thank you, gentlemen. We’ll handle it from here. Thank you. Yes, you may leave. Please.”

Laskov walked slowly behind Talman toward the door. It felt strange—worse than strange—reflected Laskov, to be asked to leave a room when state secrets were about to be discussed. That was one of the consequences of leaving the halls of power. Your need-to-know was limited to monthly memos in the mail telling you what was being taken off the classified list. In exchange for the loss of power you got tranquillity and peace of mind. And
boredom. Laskov reached the door and turned. He didn’t know what the Joint Chiefs were whispering about, but he was somewhat eased to see that they, rather than the Cabinet, had the Prime Minister’s ear. He felt obligated to deliver a parting shot. “They are in Babylon and they are alive. I can feel it. We have no right to play it safe. Whatever you decide to do must be based on
their
welfare and the long-range welfare of this nation. Don’t make a decision based on your own immediate career goals.”

Somebody—Laskov didn’t see who—called out, “That’s easy to say when your own career is finished, General.”

Laskov turned and left.

The Prime Minister waited until Laskov and Talman were out of hearing range. “I don’t know where Laskov got his information on this, and as you just reminded me, we don’t know where Chaim Mazar got his information, either. But if Mazar is correct about our American air attaché— Richardson—then the Americans owe us one, I think.” He looked at the color photograph on the wall—a gift from the Americans. “Yes, we can ask them to make a special SR-71 flight over the Euphrates for us. Then we can see if Laskov is correct.” He took a sip of coffee. “Apparently there is an angel or some other celestial entity flying around whispering in the ears of certain people. Has anyone here received a piece of intelligence in this manner? No? Well, we are not among the chosen, then. Ten-minute break, ladies and gentlemen.”

The
Sherji
swept across Babylon, carrying tons of dust and sand with it. Trenches and foxholes that had been laboriously dug into the clay were filled to the brim in minutes. Man-traps were covered and early warning devices blown away. The pit containing the remaining stores of Molotov cocktails was covered with sand, and the aluminum reflectors and crude sunshields flew away with the wind. Many of the palm fronds on the roof of the shepherds’ hut blew off and sand began raining in on the wounded. Weapons had to be wrapped in plastic or clothing to protect their moving parts. Men and women pulled clothing around their faces like desert Bedouins and walked bent into the dustladen wind.

Only the Concorde stood upright on the hill, enduring yet another indignity with the same haughty indifference it had shown since the beginning of its ordeal. The wind screamed through its torn skin and left deposits of dirt throughout its interior.

Hausner and Burg looked in on the wounded and spoke to
the rabbi and Beth Abrams. Most of the wounded were stable, explained Rabbi Levin, but infection and other complications would kill most of them if they did not receive medical care soon.

Hausner and Burg left the hut and began walking the perimeter again. Burg shouted into Hausner’s ear. “I know the Arabs. They’ll take this wind as an omen to attack.”

Hausner shouted back. “I should think they’d take it as an omen to get the hell out of here.” He looked up at the sky. The moon was near its zenith and would begin to set soon. The dust clouds nearly obscured the moonlight. Occasionally, the dust would rise high enough to actually blot out the moon itself, and for a few seconds there would be almost complete darkness across the hilltop. It occurred to Hausner, as he looked down the east slope, that the Ashbals could be ten meters away and no one would see or hear them.

Burg pulled a T-shirt closer around his face. “Even if by some miracle someone knows where we are, a rescue is impossible under these circumstances.”

Hausner was more interested in the subject of being overrun. “Unless we put out some sort of listening posts we are going to be taken by surprise.”

“It’s suicide to send anyone down there.”

It felt odd sharing authority, thought Hausner. Not odd, actually—annoying. “All the same, Field Marshal, I’m sending at least one man—or woman—downslope. In fact, I may go myself.”