The Glory (29 page)

The yikhud custom required the bride and groom to absent themselves in a room, with witnesses to observe that they were sequestered
inside long enough — in theory, of course — to consummate the marriage. Meanwhile, all in a congenial tumult, the guests divided
for the wedding repast by generations; parents at one long table, sons and daughters at the other. “Where to all the devils
is Daphna?” Noah asked Dov Luria, who had arrived in uniform just as the ceremony began. It was doctrine in the Luria household
that Noah Barak remained the main hope to keep Daphna from going entirely to the dogs. Dov calmly lied that she had a cold.
He meant to track Daphna down right after this dowdy affair, to give her hell; and that Shimon Shimon too, if any funny business
was going on.

“She told me she was coming,” said Dzecki, “but I figured she would duck out. Too many girls she knows are getting married.
Weddings depress her.”

Galia Barak spoke up. “I haven’t seen Daphna Luria forever, not since I went to America. Is she still so beautiful?”

“You’re the beauty now,” said Dov. “My sister’s a crone.”

At this compliment from a Phantom pilot, Galia colored up. Shorter than his father, heavy-boned, with a flat Slavic face traceable
to shtetl genes, Dov did not need good looks to fascinate a seventeen-year-old. Dov was now aiming for flight leader, with
little spare energy for girls, but still he thought this black-eyed Galia Barak wasn’t bad at all. He had last seen her years
ago at some army gathering, a sullen plump kid with bad skin. Quite a change! And quite a family, these Baraks. Worth bearing
in mind.

Aryeh had sat himself next to Dov. He was already the taller of the two and better-looking, with abundant blond curls and
his mother’s peachy skin. “Say, Dov, what does the air force think about Sadat kicking out the Russians?”

“I know what I think. A few will leave by air in front of the cameras, and sneak back by sea. It’s a TV stunt to start another
phony peace offensive.”

“Well, I don’t agree. I say the Russians wouldn’t let Sadat plan to attack Israel, because that might drag them into nuclear
war with America. He’s getting rid of them to free his hands.” Seeking attention from the pilot, Aryeh was citing the one
reason his father had given that he clearly understood.

Noah, Dov, and Dzecki glanced at each other. Pretty good for fifteen! Over the noisy talk in the room, Don Kishote called,
“Dzecki!” and beckoned him to a corner, where he spoke low. “Didn’t I see you working on the roller bridge prototype, when
I visited the Jeptha yards?”

“Yes, sir. I’m in Amos Pasternak’s battalion.”

“And you’ve made first sergeant, eh?” He tapped the insignia on Dzecki’s uniform. “Isn’t your draft service almost over?”

“I may sign up for another year. The bridge is a challenge, sir.”

“Tell me about the bridge.”

“Well, sir, there’s not too much to tell yet. So far we’ve assembled only two sections. They say there will be eighty.”

“Do the sections roll?”

“Like a dream. Linking them up is what’s tricky. They tend to come apart.”

“What’s the problem, exactly?”

Dzecki started to talk jargon about joints and bearings, rigid and flexible elements. Kishote interrupted. “Did you go to
engineering school in the States?”

“I graduated from law school, sir. But I like machinery.”

When Shayna and her husband emerged from the bedroom the guests were in a jollier mood, having eaten and drunk. They all stood,
clapped hands and sang. Her veil discarded, Shayna looked rosy and serene. From the round low table where the small children
sat she plucked up Reuven, who wore a brace on a leg. Waving a camera, Nakhama Barak, who had been drinking a lot, pushed
her closer to the limping Berkowitz. “A picture! A picture! Everybody stand back! Smile, bride and groom! Shayna, get Reuven
to smile!”

She kissed the boy and said softly, “Well, Reuven? Aren’t you happy?”

Reuven put both hands to her cheeks and smiled. “Perfect!”
Flash
. “One more!”
Flash
.

Dzecki Barkowe thought he must be mistaken, seeing a small tear roll down Colonel Nitzan’s brown cheek. Only women cried at
weddings.

D
aphna’s visit to Shimon Shimon’s studio started tamely with talk about the Sadat news. He showed her a
mizrakh
he was making for an Orthodox Belgian diamond dealer, a colorful ceramic of sunrise over the Temple Mount to be hung on an
eastern wall; explaining like a university lecturer details of clays, glazes, and firing techniques, too fast for her to follow.
Next he handed her a lump of raw red clay from a cluttered work stand. “Make something, motek.” One of his cats, a big gray
torn, was asleep on the stand, so she set about fashioning a slumbering cat. He watched with amusement for a while, then read
Yoram Sarak’s weekly, glancing now and then at her work as she intently molded and remolded the clay. “You’re facile,” he
said, as the cat took form. “You have hands. That’s something.”

“All right, there it is,” she said at last. “A cat.”

She gave it to him, rather proud of it. He turned it here and there. “Hm. Proportions not too bad. Tail has a nice curve.
Listen, it’s not a dog or a monkey, it’s a cat. Fine.” He was setting out bread, cheese, and wine on a bare wooden table.
“Let’s have something to eat.”

As they ate and drank he talked eloquently about the art and the marketing of ceramics. Once he jumped up to take a ball of
clay and form it into a convincing turtle, giving her pointers on how to work the stuff. It was all fascinating, and when
he sat down on the bench close beside her and clinked glasses to toast a budding artist, she saw nothing wrong with that.
But on the refill he put an arm around her, and with the next glass he attempted a kiss, and Daphna was off and running.

The celebrated ceramicist came lumbering after her, exclaiming about her beauty, until he fell over another cat, a yellow-striped
beast that let out a hair-raising yowl as Shimon Shimon thudded to the floor. Daphna halted, guffawing. The ceramicist weaved
to his feet. “Laugh, will you, you little devil?” He lurched for her, and again she fled, not especially surprised or outraged,
giggling as she kept her distance, and with it her virtue, such as it was. The wine slightly dizzied her, and made it all
seem funny. But Shimon Shimon expertly closed in on her until he had her backed up to the worktable, where she seized the
first thing that came to hand, a heavy red clay figure. “Please stop this foolishness, Shimon. By your life, I’m not interested.”

“Girl, put that down,” he panted. “That’s a Moses, and I’ve sold it.”

She glanced at it; Moses, all right, Ten Commandments, horns, and all, looking furious and raising the tablets high. “I wouldn’t
care if it was Jesus, just let me alone.”

The ceramicist frowned, looking very offended. “I don’t make Jesuses, girl,” he panted. “I’ve never made a single Jesus, and
there’s money in them, too.”

“Shimon, I’m engaged. All right?”

Reverberating knocks at the metal door.

“Who is it?” Shimon yelled.

“Is my sister in there? I’m Dov Luria.”

He turned to her. “You have a brother?”

“I have two. This one’s a Phantom pilot, and strong as a lion.”

“She’s coming,” called the ceramicist, and he hissed at her, “You’ve still got my Moses, you idiot! Put it down. I’ll let
him in … Hello, there,” he panted. “Yes, she’s here.”

Daphna, her chest heaving, was fooling with a red thing on a stand littered with tools and statuary. “What’s that,” said Dov,
“a cat?”

“Not so bad for a first try, eh?”

“Is it such hard work?”

“Hard, no, why do you ask?”

“You’re winded as if you’d just run a mile.”

“Nonsense. How was the wedding?”

“Well, they got married. Noah wanted to know where the devil you were. That Dzecki was there, too.” Dov was noting the broken
bread and cheese on a small table, the bottle, and the two glasses, one empty and the other knocked over in a puddle of wine.
“Come on, I’ll drive you to your flat.”

“I can get a bus. I’m in the middle of something.”

“I gather that. Let’s go.”

Daphna put down the cat, quailing a bit under his eye. “Dov, I think I’ve got a career.”

“So do I,” said Shimon. “She has hands.”

Dov said, “Whatever happened to the ballet?”

“I’m too zaftig.”

The ceramic artist burst out in roars. They could hear him laughing as they went down the stairs.

“What’s he laughing at?” said Dov. “That guy, talk about zaftig! Did he get fresh?”

“Him? He’s as harmless as one of his cats.”

“Don’t be so sure. If he tries anything, Daphna, I’ll zaftig him and his whole studio.”

T
he Ezrakh slept all the way to Jerusalem, sitting beside Benny Luria’s driver. In the back seat, Benny worried about Daphna’s
not showing up (that girl was going to lose Noah Barak, and serve her right); about his sister Yael’s tense demeanor (that
marriage seemed to be going down the drain); about the spectacle his wife and Nakhama Barak had made of themselves, passing
a bottle of Carmel brandy back and forth and getting drunk; he knew Irit’s problems, but what was bothering Nakhama? Most
of all, he was worrying about Sadat.

The talk at the wedding had been a babble of guesswork. Benny had kept silent, for the air force intelligence was not reassuring.
Sadat’s missile wall at the Canal now included not only SAM-2s and SAM-3s, blocking the sky up to forty thousand feet, but
the dreaded mysterious new SAM-6. It was mobile, therefore a difficult target, and it could pick up aircraft that skimmed
the ground. So much was known. The sardonic word in the air force was that the SAM-6 could also make espresso and play “Hatikvah.”
It was, in any case, very bad news. Egyptians could not handle such world-class weaponry, and even if they could, the Russians
would not trust them at the firing buttons, so the expulsion had to be at least in part a fake.

When Benny’s driver stopped the car at the Ezrakh’s cellar in an old stone Jerusalem house, the aged scholar opened his eyes.

“Thank you. A mitzvah, it was,” he said, “gladdening the bride and groom, blessed be the Name.”

“Rabbi, what do you make of what the Egyptian man has done?”

With a gentle gesture of a frail white hand, the Ezrakh said, “What happens behind the high windows, I don’t understand.”

“Is it good or bad?”

The Ezrakh looked at him with heavily pouched blue eyes sunk in deep sockets. “That young man at the wedding, in an air force
uniform, was your son?”

“Yes.”

“Is he a pilot like his father?”

“Yes. My other son is only sixteen, and talking about flying school.”

Taking Benny’s hand in his dry cool paw, the Ezrakh raised it to his lips and kissed it. This made Benny Luria very uncomfortable.
“Let’s part with a word of learning,” the Ezrakh said in his feeble hoarse voice. “In Genesis, at the end of the sixth day
it says, God saw everything that he had done,
‘and behold, it was very good.’
You remember that?”

“Well, even in the moshav we learned Bible. Of course I remember it.”

The Ezrakh nodded. “Rabbi Akiva commented, ‘
Good
is life.
Very good
is death.’ He didn’t explain. You ask about what the Egyptian man has done? It will be very bad and very good.”

Like Akiva, he did not explain. He got out of the car and slowly trudged down into his dark dwelling.

In the captain’s cabin of the missile boat
Gaash,
tied up in Haifa, the second hand of the clock clicked to 5
P.M
., whereupon Noah Barak spun the combination lock of his safe and took out a coarse brown envelope, rubber-stamped in red
TOP SECRET
. Opening the sealed inner envelope, he avidly read the blurry cover page of a mimeographed op order.

CHIEF OF GENERAL STAFF

April 2, 1973
TOP SECRET

OPERATION “SPRINGTIME OF YOUTH”

Sayeret Matkhal will conduct a seaborne raid into Beirut on the night of 9/10 April 1973, in a combined action with paratroopers,
sea commandos, naval units, and air force rescue helicopters. The task group will execute the terrorists’ leaders and demolish
their headquarters, armament dumps, and weapons workshops. The task group will penetrate Beirut, carry out the mission, and
withdraw by sea before the Lebanon police and army are alerted, so as to keep political repercussions to a minimum.

Sayeret Matkhal,
General Staff Reconnaissance Force, was Amos Pasternak’s elite group. Noah flipped the next two pages listing assignments
of various units, and there it was:
Unit Amos embark in
Gaash.
Target Rue de Verdun apartment
. A list followed of the fighters and the details of their task, the killing of the terrorist chiefs.

Early that morning Amos Pasternak had already brought aboard his paratroopers and frogmen, with their clutter of weapons,
walkie-talkies, signal gear, and rubber boats. This afternoon they were all down on the wharf, listening to the Ramatkhal,
who had driven up from Tel Aviv to talk to the raiders. Noah yearned to go down to the dock and hear him, but he was too new
a missile boat captain to allow himself that freedom. By chance, he commanded the same boat he had sailed in from Cherbourg,
much upgraded in firepower and engine performance. He climbed to the bridge for a last-minute check on preparations for sea,
and saw General Elazar ascend the gangplank, then come leaping up the bridge ladder like a boy. “You’re Zev Barak’s son, eh?”
he said, returning Noah’s salute. “Your father and I are old comrades in arms. Are you prepared in all respects for this mission?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any comments?”

“I wish I could go with them into Beirut.”

Dado peered at him. “So do I, Captain, but we both must stick to our dull support jobs. I’ll have a look around your boat.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“Stay on your bridge.”