“Ha! He had to come,” says old Yisrael Galili, and it occurs to Barak that here is Golda’s true white eminence, with snowy thick hair suited to his years. “It was getting close to a vote in the Security Council, and she wouldn’t knuckle down to his terms, not until he promised to come straight here from Moscow and explain himself. He was worried enough to do as she insisted. I predicted that he would.”
Later the bigwigs are lunching at a large U-shaped table with Golda at the head, Kissinger on her right, and Dayan on her left. At the foot of the table sits Barak, convenient to the orderly who brings him a despatch as he eats a compote dessert. One glance and he hurries it to Golda. She peers at it and passes it to Kissinger. He clinks a glass with a fork. “Gentlemen, I have the pleasure to tell you,” he says, “that Egypt accepts the cease-fire terms.”
The hand-clapping is temperate. “Interesting, isn’t it, Mr. Secretary?” observes Dayan, with a shade of sarcasm. “They were pressing for the cease-fire, not us. Yet we accepted it the moment the Security Council voted it, ten hours ago, and they’ve waited until the very last minute to agree.”
Kissinger says in his slow accented rumble, “Conceivably that has been done for domestic political reasons. In any case, it’s a great relief.”
“Your time is short, Mr. Secretary,” says Golda aridly, “so let’s go on to the military briefing.”
“By all means.”
In a smaller room lined with rows of chairs, Dado describes at a blown-up army map how Adan’s division is about to cut off the Third Army at Suez, while Sharon, with smaller forces in worse terrain, is well on his way to Ismailia. It is a deliberate disclosure of top-secret battle intelligence, for Golda has ordered Dado to tell Kissinger everything.
“I thank you, General,” he says to Dado. “You must understand that I was getting none of this information — none — in Moscow, though I pleaded and pleaded for it.”
“Anyway, now you know,” says Golda. “Can’t you see what a difference a few hours would have made? In fact, would still make? And it would only strengthen your hand with the Soviets, Mr. Secretary. Against them, we’ve been fighting America’s battle in the Middle East. You and I both know that.”
“Well, anything that’s really a matter of a few hours, Madame Prime Minister, can hardly be prevented by a cease-fire. There’s always a little slippage in cease-fires, such as we encountered in Vietnam.” He smiles ingenuously at her. “And now I really should be going, or my staff will be wondering whether I’ve decided to make aliya and stay here.”
This unexpected sally about his own Jewishness brings a burst of relieving laughter from the Israelis. Dayan escorts him from the room and Golda says to the others, “ ‘Slippage’! How do you like that? ‘Slippage’!”
Galili says, “No doubt Mr. Sadat knows all about slippage too.”
“Well, if he tries it, we’ll show him slippage,” she says. “Excuse me, gentlemen, while I see our Jewish friend off.”
In a mud-splattered uniform, rifle slung on her shoulder, Galia Barak stands by a runway watching dark shadows flit roaring across the faded orange streaks of sunset; Phantoms returning to Tel Nof, releasing their drogue parachutes as they land. Among the pilots leaving their planes she recognizes Dov Luria, shorter than the others and walking with his own jaunty spring, swinging his helmet. But Dov does not notice her, absorbed as he is in thinking ahead to this last debriefing (so it seems) of the war. Are the great scary days really over? He feels exhilarated at having survived, yet strangely let down. Much later, emerging from the squadron room, he halts amazed. “Galia! How did you manage this?”
“Glad to see me?” The demure smile is somewhat marred by the mud streaks on her face.
“Why, sure, but what to all the devils happened to you? You’re red mud from head to foot.”
“Oh, a stupid lorry went splashing through a puddle on the road and got me.”
The bulky G suit makes their brief embrace awkward. As they walk to the base commander’s quarters she tells him how, on hearing that Egypt accepted the cease-fire, she wheedled a twelve-hour leave from her supply depot supervisor. She laughs, hugging his arm. “It helped to tell him that my fiancé flies a Phantom.”
“Syria still hasn’t accepted,” he says soberly, “and I’m sorry Egypt did. We’ll soon see —”
“You’re sorry? By your life, Dov, haven’t you had enough of this rotten war?”
“Hamoodah, we had them on the run. We should have smashed them so they wouldn’t try it again for twenty-five years. All this cease-fire does is throw a spanner in the works and save them. Damn Kissinger.”
“Leave it to Golda. She knows what she’s doing.”
“Ha, en brera, poor Golda. What does your father say? Have you talked to him?”
“Not in days. Even my mother hasn’t. He’s never home.”
Tea and cakes are on the table, where his parents and brother sit waiting for him. They greet Galia with warm badinage about her muddy state, and as she goes off to clean up, Danny presses Dov to describe his last strike. With the usual hand gestures and aviator jargon, Dov holds forth to the shiny-eyed redhead, now much taller than he is, while the parents exchange wry glances. “Anyway, it’s stopping,” says his mother, “and thank God for that! Now let the politicians pick up the pieces. A fine fashla they made of it.”
“It isn’t over, I bet,” says Danny.
“It’s over,” says the base commander flatly. “I have no air operations scheduled for tomorrow. It’s over, and none too soon.” Both parents arc relieved to their very souls that Dov has come through safe, though neither has said a word about it.
“We were told at the debriefing,” says Dov, “that we remain on Aleph Alert.”
“Of course,” says his father. “That’ll go on for a week, Dov, till we’re sure the truce holds. Golda’s broadcasting at eight, and we’ll learn more then, but it’s over.”
“Well, then off with this suit for a while, eh?” He jumps up to kiss Galia with unabashed ardor as she returns, freshly washed and combed. “Motek, did I mention that your coming here was a great, great idea? I love you.” The words and the kiss make her visit worthwhile. The suit smells of fuel and sweat. She adores the smell, the coarse suit, and the aviator inside it.
Coming on the air Golda Meir sounds exhausted and far from triumphant. Dr. Kissinger’s visit has been reassuring. Positive developments are occurring in the direction of peace. The government has reason to believe that Syria will soon accept the cease-fire. Lasting good is bound to come out of the enormous sacrifices and brilliant victories of this hard war. The Jewish people owe eternal gratitude to the fighters who threw back the enemy, above all to the heroes who fell. So she concludes. As the Israel Philharmonic recording of “Hatikvah” follows, throbbing and melancholy, Dov drops his head on an arm. Over the music, he says in a muffled voice, “Itzik … Eric … Heshi … it stopped too soon. Too soon.”
Galia puts an arm around him, and his father says huskily, “You did more than enough.”
That night the engaged couple are in Dov’s room, listening to a Mozart piano concerto. At least, that is what his father hears through the door when he knocks, several times. “Dov? Dov?”
A pause, then a hoarse reply. “Yes, Abba?”
“Can I talk to you?”
“Well, in a moment.” It is quite a long moment. “Sure, come in.”
Galia and Dov are fully clothed, if somewhat intertwined, and they both look amused and a bit sheepish. “Want to hear some Mozart?” says Dov. “Sit down and join us, Abba.”
“I think you’d better get some sleep, hamood. I’ll have Galia driven to the bus stop.”
Dov extricates himself and sits up straight. “What’s happening?”
“The cease-fire is being violated right and left.” Benny Luria’s face is set in his hard wartime look. “Base is back on red alert. Word from central headquarters, ‘Prepare for strikes at dawn.’”
Galia clutches Dov
’s hand hard.
“So it’s on with the suit,” he says. “Big surprise.”
After managing an uneasy doze of a few hours, Dov walks to the revetments in early twilight. “Well, Yaakov,” he says to his plane captain, with a slap on the Phantom fuselage, “Is G’mali ready to ride again?” “Camel, My Camel” is a popular Yemenite song, and Dov has long since dubbed his aircraft G’mali, My Camel.
The dark-skinned sergeant grins. “G’mali ready and eager, sir.”
As Dov settles into his ejection seat and Yaakov hooks him up, a familiar unwelcome thought recurs. Of all things, let me not have to eject over Egypt. To be transformed in an instant from a winged warrior, crossing the sky at twice the speed of sound, to a pathetic dangler on parachute cords, falling into angry probably murderous hands … Shut it out, shut it out. One more ride, maybe a few more, and back to Galia.
Ignition!
Four Phantoms howl into the upper air, where the sunrise of October 23 glints on their wings. An hour later, as the base commander waits at the runway, peering into the sky, three return from that flight. Benny Luria waits and waits. Only three.
In two days of continuing “slippage” on both sides, a superpower confrontation unmatched since the Cuban missile crisis now blows up. Amid all the recriminations only one battlefield fact is clear: the Egyptian Third Army is trapped in the Sinai desert, south of the Great Bitter Lake. Its repeated efforts to break out have failed. Some forty-five thousand battle-worn soldiers and two hundred fifty tanks are cut off from water, food, fuel, and medical supplies in the barren sandy wastes, with nothing to save them but intervention by outside forces.
Anwar Sadat’s demands for succor increase in stridency by the day, until General Secretary Brezhnev himself warns President Nixon that unless the United States will agree to joint military action to relieve the Third Army, the Soviet Union may unilaterally intervene. This kicks off a high state of alarm in Washington. Chilling CIA reports confirm that seven Russian airborne divisions are now on full alert, a Soviet flotilla is moving through the Dardanelles with detectable nuclear cargo on two of the ships, and most ominous of all, the Soviet airlift in the huge Antonov transports has ceased. Those are the planes that take airborne troops into combat.
During a long night while Richard Nixon, beset by eight separate Senate impeachment motions over Watergate, is trying to get some sleep, the crisis mounts. An emergency meeting at the White House of military and cabinet leaders, chaired by Secretary of State Kissinger, takes some tough steps: the return of B-52 bombers from Guam, the despatch of more aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean, and in Germany the Eighty-second Airborne Division called to the highest state of readiness. Most drastic of all, an urgent warning flashes to American forces worldwide of a preliminary nuclear alert, DEFCON THREE.
Toward dawn, when Soviet intelligence is bound to have picked up all these signals, President Nixon’s reply goes to Brezhnev, cautioning that unilateral action by the Soviet Union will bring “incalculable consequences” and a few hours later at a Security Council meeting Egypt withdraws the request for joint superpower action. With this the Soviet Union is off the hook, and the crisis abates. The Russian trump card of unilateral intervention, whether bluff or threat, has been called, and it has failed to relieve the Third Army.
That same morning a wild hullabaloo ensues in the United States over the short-lived nuclear alert, with angry hints in Congress and the media that the President faked the entire emergency as a distraction from Watergate. The whole world is in shock from the brief bloodcurdling doomsday moment. The Security Council is paralyzed. In a sudden reversal, the Americans find that the plight of the Third Army is now on their hands, the Russians having been foiled as rescuers, and Dr. Kissinger’s role shifts to an all-out clash with Golda Meir over a UN proposal to send a “humanitarian convoy” with nonmilitary supplies to the Third Army. Golda demands, as a quid pro quo, that Egypt not only agree to return all prisoners swiftly, but to negotiate face to face with Israel the terms of a genuine cease-fire.
At this Sadat balks, bound by the Khartoum pledge, No recognition of Israel, no peace with Israel, no negotiation with Israel. But Golda too holds firm, under heavy American pressure; face-to-face dealing, or no convoy! Near midnight Friday, October 26, Kissinger warns Ambassador Dinitz that if Israel prefers to be raped, very well, she will be forced to yield. The Security Council is meeting in about nine hours, and if by then Golda has not given in on the convoy, the United States will not oppose whatever action is voted to relieve the Third Army; possibly including sanctions against Israel as well as the landing in Egypt of Soviet troops! “You are committing suicide,” he admonishes the ambassador.
At that moment Saturday the twenty-seventh has already dawned in Cairo and Jerusalem. The sun comes up, baking the besieged, waterless, and foodless Third Army. In Washington in the dark of night, Kissinger waits. Two hours later Golda cables a reply which Kissinger himself in exasperation calls a great stall. “I HAVE NO ILLUSION BUT THAT EVERYTHING WILL BE IMPOSED ON US BY THE TWO BIG POWERS. … JUST TELL US PRECISELY WHAT WE MUST DO IN ORDER THAT EGYPT MAY ANNOUNCE A VICTORY OF HER AGGRESSION.” To this masterful vagueness, which the sleepless Kissinger receives in Washington at 2:10 A.M., he never manages to reply, because within the half-hour Sadat agrees to open direct talks with Israel.
Golda takes Dinitz’s call with this news in her small inner office. As the ambassador slowly dictates the Egyptian message relayed via Kissinger, Zev Barak, listening on an extension line, copies it down. President Sadat proposes a meeting of generals at Kilometer 101 on the road to Cairo, well inside Zahal-held territory, at three that very afternoon.
When they hang up, Prime Minister and military secretary look at each other for long seconds without words. “Note the time, Zev,” she says.
“I have, Madame Prime Minister, ten-sixteen A.M., Saturday, October 27, 1973.”
“And when is that hangman Security Council meeting scheduled to begin?”
“In New York, eight A.M. Less than five hours from now.”
“So, it’s been close. Close.” With a deep noisy sigh she leans back in her chair and stretches out thick brown-clad ankles.
“Madame Prime Minister, I didn’t think I’d live to see this day.” Zev Barak is shaken with relief, astonishment, and exaltation. “The Khartoum pledge is dead. Egypt originated it, and now Egypt has voided it. The Third Army’s situation must be desperate.”
“Well, Sadat’s evidently is.”
“Will he survive this, Madame Prime Minister?”
“Survive?” Her voice takes on a metallic timbre. “Survive? Sadat is the hero of this war. He dared.”
“And you? You’ve beaten Egypt, Syria, Russia, and Henry Kissinger, Madame Prime Minister, and you’ve won the war.”
“Don’t exaggerate.” She wearily wags a reproving finger at him. Then she telephones the Minister of Defense to set up the meeting of generals in Africa at Kilometer 101. “Moshe Dayan is surprised and impressed,” she says, hanging up. “Now listen, Zev, Kissinger isn’t an enemy. He has just been doing his job.” With a faint grin she adds, “He did get a bit annoyed with me. As for winning the war, let’s wait and see if those Egyptian generals show up at Kilometer 101, and if they do, let’s hear what they have to say.” Lighting a cigarette she inquires, squinting, “So is there any news of Benny Luria’s son?”
“Thank you for asking. Galia tells me a pilot from another flight believes he saw Dov eject as his plane went down. So now we wait for the prisoner exchange, and she’s feeling more cheerful.”
Grim folds deepen on Golda’s face. “The prisoners. That will be the real test. In Moscow the Russians promised Kissinger swift return of the prisoners as part of the cease-fire deal. But can they make Sadat deliver?”
The wind is the worst. It has sprung up about midnight at Kilometer 101, blowing sand that obscures the stars, whipping and whining through the open tent, swaying the portable lamps to make leaping
shadows, covering the tacked-down maps on the field tables with fine sand, and chilling to the bone the four sleepy Israeli generals.
“Enough,” says Sam Pasternak to Major General Aharon Yariv, a short sharp-faced former chief of military intelligence. “I’m putting on my Hermonit, and —”
“Wait!” Yariv covers the mouthpiece of the field telephone. “They’re really coming now, Sam. They’ve been held up at the Kilometer 85 outpost. … Very good,” he says into the telephone, “we’re ready for them, and waiting.”
“What a balagan,” groans a black-bearded paratroop general, who has been asleep with his head on the table. “How late are they now? Eleven hours?”
“It’s the communications,” says Yariv. “Terrible. The latest thing was, at Kilometer 85 the UN man had to telephone his superior in New York, about arranging for an Israeli patrol to escort them behind our front lines.”
“Most diplomatic,” says Pasternak, “since it might be indelicate to suggest a white flag.”
“So?” asks the paratrooper. “How long did that have to take?”
“Well, New York had to contact Washington to clear the idea with Cairo. Before calling Cairo, Washington had to speak to Jerusalem. All this took about an hour and a half. Otherwise, from Kilometer 85 those Egyptians could have driven here in ten minutes.”
“Through Zahal-held territory,” says the bald corpulent armor general, munching on a sandwich. “That UN man was prudent.”
“I’m famished,” says the paratrooper.
“Have some more turkey salami, there’s plenty,” says Yariv.
“To the devil with this wind,” says Pasternak. He pulls a small bottle from a pocket. “Who else will have brandy?”
“Easy,” says Yariv. “You’re representing Israel.”
“I didn’t ask for the great honor.” Pasternak throws coffee dregs out of a paper cup and pours it full.
He was in fact selected somewhat casually. Encountering him outside the Kirya that morning, Yariv said, “Good. You’re coming with me to Africa.”