The Glory (32 page)

“Abba, all I did was run a ferryboat.”

“You brought them there and back. The operation was a great gamble. The navy gave us an extra dimension of capability. Well
done. Do you have time to see your mother?”

“I will, Abba.”

“Good, good. She hasn’t been too well.”

Sam Pasternak left with Amos to drive him to the Sde Dov airfield. His ancient Peugeot twice stalled on the way, causing angry
honking from the heavy traffic, already much thickened by the rental cars of tourists who were piling into Israel for the
big military parade celebrating the Twenty-fifth Independence Day. “Time you got yourself a new machine,” said Amos, “and
a driver.”

“I can’t afford either. Yonatan wants to come and work for me.” Yonatan had been his army and Mossad driver for seventeen
years. “When somebody hires me, I’ll hire him. I’m still looking around.”

“I’d like to see you in politics.”

“What, and be a
kabtzan
[beggar] the rest of my life? I’m already having a taste of it, and I don’t like it.”

“Well, this rotten political system can’t go on, Abba. It’s a worse danger to our survival than the Arabs.”

“So everyone’s been saying since 1948, and here we are.” Pasternak abruptly changed the subject. “Now, what about that bridge
project? Are you really involved with it?”

“Well, one of my companies will be doing the towing, yes.”

“Isn’t the thing a monstrosity? A fashla? So I’ve heard.”

“Not at all. The idea is a stroke of genius. Whether it will work —”

“
What
is the idea? Why, to all the devils, a giant mobile bridge, a thousand feet long and weighing seven hundred insane tons,
that travels on rollers?”

“Those aren’t the figures. How much do you know about it?”

Maneuvering the car past a pileup of snorting busses, Pasternak almost shouted, “Not much, not my field.”

Amos described the concept, and the present state of the incomplete bridge. His father nodded as he listened, pursing his
lips in disapproval. “No wonder it’s eaten such a hole in the army budget.”

“Well, it’s a colossal job, but it may indeed win a war, if we have one.
‘Carry the war to the enemy!’
Not that I think the Arabs are really about to start anything.” He looked keenly at his father, who returned not a word.

Driving through the guarded airfield gate, Pasternak saw Yael Nitzan’s red Oldsmobile parked, and her son Aryeh nosing around
a small army transport plane, recognizable mainly by his blond curls, tall as he now was. He came loping toward Amos in the
long effortless leaps of a cheetah, as Sam Pasternak entered the terminal hut. “Amos! Ma nishma? I ran ten miles yesterday
with some Gadna guys.” Gadna was a paramilitary youth troop.

“Don’t push yourself too much. You’re still growing.”

“It was easy.” Aryeh’s eyes shone, and he laid a hand on Amos’s arm. “Oo-wah, that Beirut raid. I bet you were in it. Were
you?”

Amos’s face stiffened. “Learn not to ask childish questions.”

Aryeh said meekly, “Sorry.”

“Okay. I’m a tank battalion commander in Sinai, and whoever did that raid won’t talk about it, maybe not for years. Ten miles,
eh? With a sand pack?”

“The Gadna guys wore packs. I didn’t.”

“That was sensible.”

Sam Pasternak found the Nitzans inside the hut. “Yossi, your battalion commander’s outside with Aryeh,” Pasternak said, drawing
lukewarm coffee from an urn, “ready to return to Sinai.”

“No rush. Sharon’s not here yet.” Yossi Nitzan looked a lot older to Pasternak these days. The antic Don Kishote was metamorphosing
into a hard-driving colonel, sure to make brigadier and a front-runner for higher posts.

“Well, Sam, how are you?” said Yael. “What are you doing with yourself?”

“Collecting unemployment insurance, Yael, and looking for work.”

“Oh, you,” she laughed. “You’ll land on your feet, I bet, if you haven’t already.”

The sharpest Mossad agent, thought Pasternak, could not detect that she was faking, that in recent weeks they had been talking
long, earnestly, and often on the phone. In her fashion Yael was unbeatable.

General Sharon ambled in. “Sam, good to see you.” He took a coffee cake from the plate by the urn and wolfed it, smiling at
Yael. “Hello, darling. I’ve eaten nothing all day.” His ogre reputation made the pleasantry very engaging. Yael said her goodbyes
and walked out. On the instant Sharon’s smile changed to a glare. “Kishote, you know who they’ve picked to relieve me? Gorodish.
Gorodish
!” He turned on Pasternak. “Do you believe it? Gorodish, commanding the southern sector? Gorodish, versus the Egyptian army?
Gorodish
?”

Pasternak was in fact surprised. Shmuel “Gorodish” Gonen was a good armor officer and a Dado favorite, but junior to other
qualified generals. A clash of cliques in the army, complicated by civilian party politics, must have brought this about.
“Well, Arik, Shmuel’s a tough field commander.”

“He is that,” said Yossi. “I was his number two in the Six-Day War.”

“I know you were,” Sharon snapped. “But you’ve been observing those Egyptians across the Canal, Kishote. It’s a different
army today. Their uniforms, their maneuvers, their discipline, their
numbers
.”

Pasternak said, “Well, to be frank, I’d be happier if you were remaining in the south, Arik, at least until they stand down
from those war games. They and the Syrians.”

Sharon threw up meaty hands. “Sam, the cabal has done its job, and I’m out. A farmer I was, a farmer I’ve always wanted to
be again. If there’s a war, and to me it looks like fifty-fifty right now — I can’t tell those Arab war games from a mobilization,
myself — it’ll all be up to the brigade and battalion commanders, and to you, Don Kishote, to you.
Gorodish!
Let’s go.”

A
s Barak drove home, gloomy sentences and paragraphs were forming in his mind. Golda had asked him for a written comment on
the
BLUE/WHITE
alert.

On every side he saw preparations for the big Independence Day parade: banners, bunting, flags, placards, bleachers, grandstands.
All Jerusalem was breaking out in festive blue and white to hail the
“great march of the New Jew,”
as the exultant newspaper rhetoric went; the Jew of the straight back, the Jew who had risen like the phoenix from the fires
of Nazi Europe to go home again and reclaim the Holy Land. And this display of Israel’s armed forces, which for twenty-five
years had beaten off Arab attempts to wipe out the new Zion, would be a simple peaceful warning,
“Don’t tread on me.”
Some politicians were decrying the expense of the martial extravaganza, and some academics and editorial writers were clucking
at such arrogant un-Jewish imagery, but their spoilsport voices were few and lost.

Ever since coming home, Zev Barak had felt out of step with this exultant mood. Had he been away too long, after all? The
giant United States was in a morass of worry and self-doubt over Vietnam, a war ten thousand miles away; and miniscule Israel,
with huge enemy forces maneuvering at its very borders, was acting cock-of-the-walk. Like their idol, the Minister of Defense,
most Israelis these days seemed to be seeing things through one eye.

He found Nakhama busy in the kitchen, where there was an appetizing smell of roast lamb. She flashed her old smile, which
he had not been seeing of late. “Galia is bringing Dov Luria to dinner.”

“Oo-wah, so she’s caught herself a Phantom pilot. Not bad.”

“Well, let’s say he’s circling her. And Noah came by. So handsome! Why was he called to the Prime Minister? Can you say?”

He shook his head. As he bent to kiss her, she turned her cheek, her usual way since his homecoming. With a shrug he went
to his den, took a writing pad to the armchair, and began scrawling.

April 18, 1973

My dear Madame Prime Minister:

As your Reb Alarmist I am against the very grave decision not to go public with the Blue/White alert. General Zeira states
that the Arabs now can strike heavy blows on both borders but that the chance of their doing it is “very low.” That is his
estimate as chief of military intelligence, but he is one man, calculating
intentions
. I reply that it is irrelevant whether the enemy maneuvers are innocuous war games, or another Sadat cry of “wolf,” or a
political nudge to the superpowers. They can also be a start toward a war. The
capability
exists. That is what matters.

I know something about the Americans. Most Israelis, including you, Madame Prime Minister, can’t quite fathom what the Watergate
fuss is all about, but believe me, the Nixon presidency is disintegrating. An Arab offensive now would jeopardize the détente
with the Soviet Union, with which a desperate Nixon hopes to revitalize his wounded image. Our going public with Blue/White
would if anything galvanize him into warning the Arabs to cut out the troublemaking. That’s my estimate.

Madame Prime Minister, you will bear a ghastly historical responsibility if, knowing the threat, you fail to share the truth
with the people, and then a war ensues. Why not consider, at least, calling off the big parade? What clearer signal could
be sent to our enemies and to the superpowers that we are on guard and mean business? Tourism must take second place to security,
surely.

The Arabs will keep trying war until they are convinced that the price for land is a treaty of peace, and nothing else. They
are now in all respects ready to try war once more. Blue/White should become an alert of the nation, not just of your kitchen
cabinet. To do otherwise, given the facts at our borders, gambles with the survival of the Jewish State —

He was trying to think of a less apocalyptic way to finish when his daughter Ruti looked in. “Galia’s here with Dov. Dinner
is ready.”

“I’m coming.”

“Dov’s brought a nice present. And Mama told me to give you this.” She dropped on the desk a gray envelope with a red-white-and-blue
airmail stripe, and no return address. Emily? Had it crossed his letter, asking her to write no more? He had done this hoping
to pull Nakhama out of the dumps, for something was clearly amiss. He closed the door, ripped open the envelope, and found
two handwritten lines on a plain white sheet.

Wolf dearest,

I completely understand. Until I hear otherwise from you, mum’s the word. I love you always.

Queenie

He shredded the letter into the wastebasket and went into the dining room, where the girls and Nakhama were admiring a small
glazed statuette of a stout woman in biblical robes, dancing with a tambourine. The name scratched on the base was
MIRIAM
, but the gnarled face was clearly Golda Meir’s.

“My sister’s getting pretty good at this,” Dov said. “She’s even sold a few things. Cats. Americans buy cats. Cats and menorahs.”

“I think it’s wonderful,” said Galia, looking radiantly at the Phantom pilot, who wore faded jeans and a short-sleeved white
shirt. He kept a modest mien at dinner, praising Nakhama’s lamb and rice, eating heartily, and scarcely looking at the girl
he was visiting. He opened up only when Ruti asked if the air force would be in the parade.

“Oh, sure, we’ll do a flyover. We rehearsed it this morning, in fact.” He turned to Barak with a grin. “Just before Golda
makes her speech, sir, the Phantoms will pass over Jerusalem in a Star of David formation. It was mighty ragged today, but
we’ll get it right.”

“The people will go wild!” exclaimed Galia.

“Look here, Dov,” said Barak. “Suppose the Arabs take it into their heads, while you’re flying your Star of David over Golda,
to launch attacks at the Canal and on the Golan Heights?”

“We have a contingency plan for that,” Dov returned, with a short nod. “If they’re interested in committing suicide, we can
accommodate them.”

F
rom all over the world, in trains, planes, and ships, more than a hundred thousand tourists were converging to watch and to
cheer the great military parade in Jerusalem marking Israel’s twenty-fifth Independence Day. In Southampton the
Queen Elizabeth II,
about to sail on a gala Passover cruise to Haifa, was chockablock with happy Jews booked to celebrate the festival at sea
en route, and last-minute arrivals were hurrying up the gangways. Among them were the tanned blond lady of the Beirut raid
and her natty little husband, who as they came aboard gave their names to the first-class steward as Armand and Irene Fleg.

“I had better check in the dining salon, my dear,” said her husband, as they unpacked in a luxury suite, “to make sure all
is in order. As you know, matzo disagrees with me, binds me up like concrete.”

He had arranged for seating at the captain’s table, where he would be sure of eating British cuisine, bread included. They
were travelling by ship because he hated to fly, especially with terrorists machine-gunning airports and hijacking planes.
The rumors of a possible submarine attack on the great ship, M. Fleg shrugged off. A third-generation Parisian Jew, he was
quite indifferent to Passover rules and customs, but the
Queen Elizabeth II
had ten rabbis aboard to conduct seders and services for seven hundred passengers, and the cruise was billed as strictly
kosher, which, if serious, meant matzo instead of bread for Jewish passengers.

“Yes, dear, you —” Three thunderous blasts of the foghorn drowned her out. “Yes, you do that, my dear,” she said, her ears
ringing. “I’ll go up on deck.”

RAF fighters were snarling overhead as the great liner backed out of the berth and a brass band blared “Rule, Britannia” and
then “Hatikvah.” On the crowded promenade deck, unmindful of a gray drizzle, passengers laughed, cheered, and wept, throwing
colored streamers and confetti to the shouting well-wishers on shore. The blond lady went climbing up and up to the deserted
rainy boat deck, where she leaned on the rail to watch the shore slip away as the
Queen
speeded up, heading out to sea in thickening rain. The tumult on the promenade deck below died down, the deck trembled, and
the blond lady’s spirits lifted.