The Glory (55 page)

“Tell me about the Norwegian.”

“Oh, Elsa. Must I? Okay, where shall I start?”

“Well, is she pretty?”

“Spoken like a man. I’ve seen her only once, and a cover girl she ain’t. She does have these fine blue eyes. Ice and fire,
sapphire eyes. I’ll give her that. Spiffy eyes. And she’s tall, almost as tall as Bud. Maybe that’s the attraction. Who knows?”

“How did you find out?”

“How do you think? He told me. Ever the officer and gentleman, Bradford Halliday. One evening over the martinis he just up
and let me know, all square and upright. The woman works for an old friend, a retired colonel, Jack Smith —”

“I know Smith.”

“So you do. Well, he’s now a consultant on defense contracts, and that’s how Bud got to know Elsa. Anything else?”

“What did you do when he told you?”

“Oh, I was adult and modern about it, of course. No choice really, is there? I took off a shoe, threw it at his face, and
called him a fucking son of a bitch. Well, he caught the shoe and brought it back to me. I couldn’t help saying, ‘Speaking
of sons of bitches, at least you retrieve, it’s more than Merlin does.’ And that’s about where it stands.”

“Emily, seriously —”

“Don’t, Zev,
don’t
talk seriously. It’s too serious for that, and I feel too good sitting on the same bench with you. For the moment I’m in
heaven. I ask no more. I’ve never loved Bud. He and I both know that. We’ve jog-trotted along, but now there’s this goddamn
Elsa, and to top it off
you
show up, and I realize all over again what love is. Bud’s treated me well, put me on some kind of pedestal, but I’m going
to climb down and let him have his love. Everybody should try it once, I say.”

A stiff gust across the water stirs the cherry branches, withered leaves tumble past the bench, and it seems to him that this
whole scene — Emily sitting there in a red cloth coat with a gray fur collar, the scuttering leaves, the taste of turkey,
the shock of her disclosure — all has happened before in exactly this way. Never has this sort of delusive dreamlike memory
slippage hit him so strongly. He
knows
she will next say, as she does, “All I brought to drink is a thermos of coffee. Here.” She pours coffee into the white plastic
cap and offers it to him.

He says, “You drink it.”

“Not on your life, I’ve got the shakes as it is.”

“Emily, if you want my opinion about this divorce notion —”

“Skip it.” Anger flashes across her face. “Last advice I had from you, kiddo, was to get married. I’ve taken it from there,
okay?”

“Okay, toots.”

She manages a smile, and her tone softens. “Sorry, Zev. I’m awfully unhappy. It’s not an affair, puss, it’s
love
. He loves her. And he loves the girls and adores little Einstein. Who, by the bye, has yet to say ‘Mama,’ even. So it’s one
big fat Gordian knot, calling for a sharp sword stroke —”

“Queenie, listen to me —”

“I won’t, and keep it light, lover boy, for God’s sake. It’s not something Bud’ll get out of his system. It’s what his system
is starved for. More coffee? No? Well, don’t look so down in the mouth. I’ll survive, believe me. I sure as hell will need
to see more of you, though. Say once a year, for a few days, and strictly on the up-and-up. Would that be utterly out of the
question, if for instance I go and live in Paris? Would it?”

“Nothing’s utterly out of the question. Still —”

“Stop right there.” She puts cold fingers on his mouth. “Let me have something to hang my hat on, old darling. The kids would
grow up bilingual like me, that would be nice, and there wouldn’t be an ocean between us.”

“The Med’s no fishpond, Queenie.”

“Oh, it’s a hop, by comparison. I still hear from André, you know. He won the Goncourt Prize, can you imagine? With a novel
called
The Bad Breath of the Gorgon
, which nobody understands. I’ve always loved Paris.”

“I’ve always loved you,” says Barak without thinking.

“Not so,” she says, her lips quivering, her eyes moist and brilliant as she repacks the basket. “I had to convince you, and
it took forever. In your heart I’m still the twelve-year-old minx you snubbed, for being snotty about chemistry. But God knows
I’ve always loved you. Back to the car, there’s a war on, you know.”

They embrace in the gloom of the bushes. She kisses him at first in her usual hesitant, almost girlish way, then with passion,
clinging tight to him. “My God, how I want to be held by you,” she chokes. “Will I see you again before you vanish?”

“I’ll talk to you, no matter what.”

“All right. And one day, one way or another, if I have to come to Israel to do it, I’m going to have it out with Nakhama.
I
need
your letters, Zev.”

A
mbassador Dinitz is pacing, red in the face, his pipe clenched in his teeth, puffing gray smoke like a train going uphill.
General Gur in spic-and-span uniform sits watching him with concern. “Simcha, don’t have a stroke,” he says. “It’s only a
war.”

“He’ll see me today,” says Dinitz, “
today
, or he’ll find out what a war with the Jews is like.”

“What now?” Barak asks.

With choppy angry gestures, Dinitz replies, “The Secretary of Defense did return my call, thanks no doubt to you and Scoop
Jackson. He offered to meet me tomorrow sometime. Not today, busy all day. The war news gets worse by the hour. Kissinger
assures me that Defense will increase and speed up delivery of Phantoms and all supplies, but when Motta calls the Pentagon,
they don’t know of any increase or speedup. I just rang Scoop and he’s phoning SecDef again. The runaround stops this afternoon,
by my life!”

“Motta, what bad news?” Barak asks.

The attaché heavily sighs. “Well, let’s see. Two more Iraqi armored divisions coming into Syria. Jordan sending in a brigade.
The Russians publicly urging Algeria to get into the war. By last count
seventy-three
Antonov planeloads of weapons landing in Damascus and Cairo, mainly tanks and antiair missiles. Thousands of tons more coming
by ship, a short run from the Black Sea.” Gur pauses. “Bad enough?”

Dinitz says, “So why did you leave out the three Soviet airborne divisions? They don’t count?” The telephone rings. “Dinitz
here. … Yes, yes, put him on.” Grim smile, hand over the mouthpiece.
“ ‘Hold for the Secretary of Defense.’ ”

“Russian airborne divisions?” Barak is shocked and incredulous. “Rumor, Motta? Fact? What?”

“Fact. I saved the worst for last,” Gur replies gloomily. “Our own army intelligence, and CIA confirms. They’re on highest
alert, ready to go.”

“Hello, Mr. Secretary. … Thank you, that’s good of you … Well, I wish we could be that optimistic. I’ll be glad to give you
the full picture.” A long pause. Dinitz’s glasses glitter as he turns to Barak and Gur and nods. “Six o’clock. Can’t it be
earlier, sir? … Well then, six it is. Much obliged.”

“You’re getting your meeting,” says Gur.

“Not only with him, but with every top
mamzer
over there. What will come of it I don’t know, but it’ll be a real Litvak wedding. Motta, you’ll come with me. Zev, contact
this Halliday, and see him right away.”

“What about?”

“Just tell him it’s urgent and secret.” The ambassador gets up, closes his office door, and drops his voice. “Here is what
you must convey.”

H
alliday is reading the
Washington Post
on a lobby couch in the Army & Navy Club. He stands up, a long lithe figure in brown tweed and gray flannel. “Hi.”

“Hi. I’m afraid I gave you very short notice.”

“No problem, you said urgent. Come in here, it’s quiet.”

Barak tries in vain to picture the tall blue-eyed Elsa, as he follows the aviator into a large writing room with nobody in
it. Meeting him like this is disconcerting, so soon after the picnic disclosures. This is not a man one can imagine consumed
by ardor. In a remote corner they sit down in black leather armchairs, near a loudly ticking old grandfather clock. Halliday
looks to the Israeli to begin. No offer of a drink, and no smile.

“General Halliday, you’re aware that my ambassador is meeting with your secretary, and that a diplomat can only give hints
sometimes in formal meetings.”

“Whereas you can talk plainly to me off the record. Well, fire away.” Halliday folds his long arms, stretches out his long
legs, and fixes Barak with a steady eye.

“Thank you. As things now stand, the United States is reneging on its commitments to Israel — some of long standing, some
made when the Arabs attacked my country.” Halliday takes this stiff start with a slight widening of his eyes. Barak goes on,
“Your government has yet even to admit publicly that the Arabs started the war. Israel is in grave danger because of apparent
American bad faith.”

“General Barak, Israel is in grave danger — if it is — because your people were caught flat-footed, due to overconfidence
and unwise contempt for the enemy.”

“As you were at Pearl Harbor.”

“Just so.” Halliday’s eyes go opaque, then clear. “Proceed.”

“I said ‘apparent’ bad faith, General. My government prefers to believe that, at a time of our greatest peril, your bureaucratic
wheels are unfortunately stuck. You know about the alert of three Russian airborne divisions?”

“We do. Routine Soviet practice in crises. Like replacing the tattletale merchant ships, which tail our carrier groups in
the Med, with tattletale warships. One learns to live with these political signals. That’s all they are. Translation,
‘You stay out and we’ll stay out.’
”

“General, the Russians are not staying out. Their airlift is public and massive, and an immense sealift has left port —”

Halliday holds up a hand. “Look here, Barak, you asked for a secret urgent meeting. My department knows all this.” He glances
at his watch. “What exactly can I do for you?”

“At noon tomorrow, General, Saturday the thirteenth — that’s a little less than nineteen hours from now — if the bureaucratic
wheels have not come unstuck, Israel will go public to express dismay at your government’s deserting an ally in her hour of
need. Golda Meir will probably do this herself on television.”

Long, long silence. Clock ticking, ticking, then striking the half hour with a groan and a sonorous
BONG
.

Halliday says, “Is that it? Your ambassador can get that across to the Secretary, surely.”

“Wrapped in cotton, yes. That’s it straight.”

“And what good will such dramatics do your country? It will cause the Arabs great joy, that’s for sure. What else can you
hope for?”

“We think the outcry in this country from the people, the media, and the Congress will either force swift action, or come
close to bringing down a shaken administration.”

Halliday utters an incredulous grunt of “Really!”

“Really. That’s our judgment. Foreign policy is this President’s one remaining high card. Such a firestorm would destroy that
card, and we believe he won’t let it happen. Heads will roll, and those wheels will turn.”

Another silence. Halliday purses thin lips, and cracks interlaced knuckles. “You’re talking about cranking up the Jewish lobby,
aren’t you? There are more broadly based American interests, General Barak, that take a very different view of all this.”

“Saturday at noon, General Halliday.”

“I hear you. General Barak, you’re an Israeli. I understand you, and your loyalty to the Jewish State. No problem. These people
in the Jewish lobby — are they Jews or Americans? Where’s their ultimate loyalty? If they question the good faith of my superiors,
is their good faith beyond question?”

Barak has heard this jab often enough as a military attaché, and has often riposted. “You’re quite right, there are more powerful
interests at work here, General, the oil interest for one. Its power is truly awesome. As for the so-called Jewish lobby,
it can accomplish nothing in this town, unless the American people are already for a given policy. In this case, your people
have clearly decided that Israel should get aid at once to match the Soviet aid to the Arabs. You’ve seen the polls? ABC,
Time
, and this morning’s
Washington Post?
”

Halliday takes a while to answer. He stands up, with a brisk oddly light, “Okay, got you,” and another glance at his watch.
They leave the club and part on the breezy sidewalk with no more words.

I
n the cubicle between the double security doors of the embassy, the guard speaks from behind glass on a microphone. “Sir,
General Gur wants to see you the moment you return.”

“B’seder.”

The attaché is working at a piled-up desk under a handsome photograph of Dayan in coat and tie. He hands Barak a pencilled
decode form. “What do you make of this?”

TOP SECRET URGENT PRIME MINISTER TO DINITZ GUR HARD INTELLIGENCE TWO ARMORED DIVISIONS WILL CROSS CANAL INTO SINAI SATURDAY
THIRTEENTH TELL KISSINGER.

Barak takes a moment to answer. “Could be good or bad.” “How, good?”

“If Sadat’s gotten cocky and decided to attack and finish us off, it would be a bloody business, but our position could improve.”

“Or he could be hardening up his lodgments in Sinai,” says Gur, “to prevent our crossing before a cease-fire. That would do
it, too.”

“Is Dinitz back from the Pentagon?”

“No, he went from there to the White House. Nixon’s about to announce his new Vice President. Big secret still. How did the
meeting with Halliday go?”

“Frank and open.” At this diplomatic jargon for a nasty encounter, the attaché sourly laughs.

When Dinitz returns to his office, yanking off his topcoat, Barak is there, waiting. The ambassador is very pale, and his
brow is deeply creased. “Looks like another long night, Zev. I have to talk to Golda right away.”

“Three in the morning there, Simcha.”

“I doubt she’s asleep.” Dinitz drops exhausted in his chair, buzzes the coding officer and orders the call put through on
the scrambler. “But I tell you, I nearly fell asleep on my feet at the White House. The new man is Congressman Gerald Ford,
not bad for us. What a weird business! TV cameras and lights, a big crowd, applause, Nixon all smiles, not a care in the world,
you’d think.” He lights his pipe and vigorously puffs. “Kissinger was off in a corner talking with Ambassador Dobrynin. Afterward
he told me what it was about. Very, very bad. He’ll receive a cable from Moscow tonight, accusing Israel of all sorts of crimes
and atrocities, and saying,
‘The Soviet Union cannot remain indifferent to such barbaric conduct.’
Words to that effect. The message is that either Israel accepts a cease-fire
at once
, or those airborne divisions will go.”