“Amos, tell me about Toulon.”
A nuclear reactor assembly that France was committed to ship to Iraq had been blown up in a warehouse outside the seaport. The incident was causing an international stir.
“Well, Zev, you’ve heard the latest, haven’t you? The French say every key item was destroyed by precise planting of plastic explosives. An inside job of some sort.”
“Did we have anything to do with it?”
Amos’s round face wrinkled in an innocent smile. “Why, an outfit nobody’s heard of is claiming responsibility. ‘The Group of French Ecologists.’ ”
“And how much of a respite does this give us? A couple of years?”
“Dubious. The French can replace the stuff out of their own reactor reserves. Saddam Hussein will grunt, ‘Deliver, or no cut-rate oil.’ They’ll deliver.”
“A year, anyway?”
“Well, a year, yes.”
“I tell you, Amos, Camp David or no Camp David, we are in great peril. This Iraqi reactor frightens me as I haven’t been frightened since June ’48.”
“What happened then?” inquired Amos. “I was three years old.”
“We were at the end of our rope. If the Arabs had kept going for one more week, they’d have overrun us and ended the whole thing then and there, for good and all. We caught our breath during the cease-fire, made it through the war, and here we are. But two atomic bombs exploding over Tel Aviv and Haifa would spell doomsday. Poor Golda used to call me Mr. Alarmist. By my life, I only try to see things as they are.”
Amos said soberly, “Well, this Toulon business puts off the day.”
“It’s not a solution.”
“Not in the long run, no.”
Barak gestured toward the party. “Have you seen my Ruti? She came with Danny Luria.”
“No, I just got here.”
“Amos, just between the two of us, aren’t you giving Ruti a hard time?”
“I don’t mean to.”
“If you didn’t see her at all, that would be one thing. But you do.”
“I like her.”
“She more than likes you. Did she tell you that she intends to apply to the California Institute of Technology?”
“Cal Tech? Oo-ah! No.”
“Well, she’s out to live my dream that failed, and become a scientist. She’s a math and physics whiz like my brother Michael, and amazingly ambitious. If she does go to California, will that end it?”
A silence, then, “Zev, can you picture what it’s like to be in love with a woman in another country, a woman you can only see rarely, a woman with kids, a love which won’t die, which has nothing to do with casual romance, which is it? Can you picture something like that?”
“Well, I’m getting on, but I can try,” said the White Wolf. “So what?”
“I’m up for operations officer, Northern Command, and —”
“Why, that’s tremendous, Amos.”
“— and I know I’m coming to a crossroads. It’s tough.”
“Is this woman a widow?” Amos shook his head. “A divorcée?”
“No. Married. A lot older than I am. Three children.”
“Alleh myless [All the attractions],” said Barak.
It drew a sad laugh from Amos Pasternak. He stood up. “Ruti couldn’t be sweeter or prettier or smarter. Cal Tech! I bet she gets in, too. Danny Luria is lucky.”
“Not while you’re seeing Ruti, he isn’t.”
“Are you telling me to stop seeing Ruti?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Or to give up the lady?”
“That only you can decide.”
“You’re a big help,” said Amos. “I appreciate your frankness. By your leave, I’ll now go and look for Ruti.”
“With my blessing,” said her father. “It was just a quiet word.”
“Yes, I’ve got the idea.”
41
Doomsday
THE PRIME MINISTER
invites
Major General & Mrs. Barak
to the Weekly Tanakh Circle
Topic
Isaiah and Deutero-Isaiah: Contrasts in Style
At The Residence November 27, 1979
8 P.M. after Sabbath Please bring this card
Nakhama showed the card to her husband. “Oy vavoi,” she exclaimed. “It sounds stupefying. Do I have to go?”
“No, but I’d better show up.”
“Why does he ask us to a thing like that, Zev?”
“I have no idea.” A fib for security reasons. This was about the reactor. The Tanakh Circle was an unobtrusive cover for the meeting to come afterward.
The small scholarly audience listened raptly to three experts on the Book of Isaiah, while the few military men in mufti struggled against falling asleep. When the other guests left they gathered in Begin’s office, where he laid aside the yarmulke he had worn for the Bible talk. “Rabotai [Gentlemen],” he said, “this is a secret informal consultation. No minutes will be taken.”
He nodded at the chief of the Mossad, a small man in a brown knitted sweater, who might have been another Isaiah savant by the look of him. He talked about the rapid progress of the reactor outside Baghdad since the Toulon setback. France and Italy were again supplying technicians and main components. The West Germans, perhaps ashamed of doing it openly, were selling elements to Brazil for resale to Iraq. The uranium was coming from France, Brazil, and Portugal, and Iraq had demanded and was receiving the uranium in certain chemical forms that most readily yielded plutonium, the bomb stuff. Building a reactor for electric power made no sense, Iraq was awash in oil. Barak’s background in chemistry enabled him to follow all this in detail. The implied short time frame appalled him.
Sunk in his chair, the Prime Minister listened with closed eyes. When he opened them, they were glazed and bloodshot. In a weak weary voice he said he saw only a few alternatives. Israel could try harder with diplomacy to stop the Europeans from rushing Iraq into a nuclear capability. Or it could hope with its superior air force to deter Iraq when it went nuclear. On the other hand, was an attack from the air feasible, to take out the whole complex? Or was a commando raid on the pattern of Entebbe the answer? He concluded, “I’ve asked the chief of planning branch to address the commando option.”
The graying Don Kishote stood up to give his somber report, and Barak had a memory flash of the lanky immigrant boy on a mule at Latrun. A far cry! To begin with, Yossi asserted, Entebbe and Baghdad were not comparable. At Entebbe the objective had been a civilian airport, defended only by a PLO terrorist gang and some local soldiery. The Iraqi complex was a hardened military target, heavily fortified, strongly guarded, ringed with antiaircraft and ground defense forces. A commando raid in brigade strength, with heavy vehicles and main battle tanks, might have a fifty-fifty chance of wiping out the complex, with a large cost in dead, wounded, and prisoners. The chance of a surprise success with such a raid was zero.
Benny Luria spoke next about the air attack option, for he was in charge of the Etzion air base in Sinai near Eilat, whence an air strike would depart. In his full blond beard Benny looked much aged, and sad with good reason. He had been called out of retirement and given the mournful task of liquidating the base, perhaps the most advanced in the world, as part of the Camp David treaty; having been in on its construction, his job now was to demolish it so utterly that the Egyptians could never use Etzion against Israel. None of the aircraft on hand, Luria said — Skyhawks, Kfirs, Phantoms, and F-15s — were right for the job. The Phantoms could be refueled in the air, but over enemy territory that was a high-risk gamble. As for the new small superplane, the F-16, it might not be delivered in time, and anyway the Americans gave its range as much too short.
Begin nodded. “You’re eliminating the air attack option, then.”
“Well, let me say, Prime Minister, that the Americans are cautious in stating range. Equipped with special fuel tanks, the F-16s might just make it, but without testing them we can’t
know.”
“Zev Barak.” Begin turned abruptly to him. “What will the Americans do if we destroy the reactor?”
“Prime Minister, the Americans admire venturesome boldness, the cowboy myth, but if it’s a fiasco, with civilian deaths in Baghdad, we can expect bad trouble.”
“How bad?” Begin sounded a shade plaintive.
“No support in the inevitable UN condemnation. Halting of F-16 deliveries. Cutoff of all aid for years, if not for good.”
The bald head dipped slowly and tiredly, and Begin asked the rotund Sam Pasternak, markedly fattened by a happy marriage, what France would do if many French technicians were killed. “They’ll break diplomatic relations, Prime Minister, and push hard in the UN for sanctions against Israel, maybe for our expulsion.” Pasternak paused. “I don’t believe they’ll send their air force to punish us.” This arid comment elicited wry grins all around.
Various ideas were floated short of a raid, like interdicting the uranium shipments en route to Iraq. The Prime Minister appeared to be dozing, he looked more and more glassy-eyed, and, Barak thought, the rumors might be true that he was physically failing. When a clock struck eleven behind Begin’s desk, he sat up and rubbed his eyes hard. “Rabotai, we have been talking about the life or death of the Jewish State. One way or another, we will stop this thing. Please forget that we have met. Goodnight.”
The little Jewish tailor all at once sounded to Barak like David Ben Gurion, ordering the sinking of the Altalena; and this was the man who had sailed on the Altalena into Tel Aviv harbor to overthrow Ben Gurion.
On the highway from Haifa to Afula, where he was building high-rise apartments on a government subsidy, Guli Gulinkoff’s luck ran out. Careering down the wrong lane to pass a convoy of army tank transporters, Guli had to swerve so as not to pile head-on into a horse pulling a hay wagon, and this time he hit a stone wall. End of a kablan, and of the only silver Lincoln in Israel.
Numbed by grief, because she had grown genuinely fond of the brutish Guli in two wedded years, Daphna went through the mourning rites in a daze, but in a month or so her mind cleared. She might be a rich young widow, she realized; or she might owe millions of shekels she could not possibly repay. Guli had never said a word to her about his business affairs. Suspicious of the lawyers and accountants who swarmed in on her, and of Guli’s office staff too, she turned for help to Dzecki Barkowe, though his lawsuit against Guli was still pending. Dzecki had once loved her, and he knew the law and the real estate trade. Moreover he was an American, not a local shark.
Dzecki found, to his surprise and Daphna’s pleasure, that once he settled several lawsuits, including his own, Daphna was still very well off. As to whether the mysterious Guli had been a fraud or a genius, the answer was, a bit of both. Guli on principle had never paid anybody anything unless forced to. Going to law had been his delight, for it meant long years during which he collected interest on large disputed sums; not to mention that plaintiffs often wearied, or died, or like Dzecki’s parents left Israel in disgust, or that his Chinese-puzzle contracts sometimes even befogged the courts to find in his favor. In short, there were two beneficiaries of Guli’s sudden end; the hay wagon horse had its life, and Daphna had the departed kablan’s money.
Within the year Daphna, widowed at thirty, was coping with her new status in a costly private house with a garden in north Tel Aviv, a favored neighborhood of Israel’s beautiful people, and the Haifa villa was for sale. “Haifa has the Technion, the navy, and oil refineries,” Daphna said to Dzecki about her decision to move. “Without Guli to liven things up I’ll go mad here. As for the view of the harbor, I’ve had it.”
Just about all the beautiful people came to her housewarming. Her brother Danny showed up at the afternoon garden reception in uniform, and Daphna, svelte, smartly coiffed, and merry in a black cocktail frock from Paris, introduced him around proudly as an F-16 pilot until he couldn’t stand it. He broke away to a corner of the garden, where he stood glowering at the authors, artists, journalists, actors, film producers, models, and politicians drinking, talking, and looking at each other. Pretty waitresses passed shrimps and cocktail sausages, steering clear of the scowling aviator. When Don Kishote arrived in an open-necked white shirt, conspicuous among the suits and ties of the smart crowd, his was the first face familiar to Danny. He had recently seen the chief of planning branch on Etzion air base, at the briefing for an abruptly aborted strike. After a while Don Kishote approached him, drink in hand, and said quietly, “Hello, getting over the letdown?”
“Not yet, sir. We were a long time building up to it, you know.”
“And am I wrong, or are you not having much fun here?”
“You’re not wrong.”
“Why didn’t you bring Ruti Barak?”
“She couldn’t come. I asked her.”
“Would you like to go for a drive with me?”
“Anywhere.”
Kishote took Danny off through the crowded house to his army Volvo, a perquisite of his rank. “Where are we going?” asked Danny, as they started off.
“An old border kibbutz near Nablus. My son Aryeh lives there, he married a kibbutz girl.” He glanced at Danny. “That abort was a bad business, but why can’t you take it in stride? Your chance will come, and you’ll do a great thing.”
“The abort was just as well. I don’t think Israel is worth dying for.”
The car stopped at a red light, and Kishote looked hard at the aviator. “You volunteered to fly the F-16, didn’t you? You broke your neck to be selected.”
“That I don’t regret. The F-16 is a marvel, a rocket to Mars, it’s America with wings, the F-16. That Ogden air base where we trained was heaven. But after that we came home.”
“And then what?”
“And then what? Okay, here’s what. Maybe as chief of planning you should hear this.”
A tirade burst from Danny Luria. Fresh from America he had looked at Israel with new eyes, he said, seeing it, on a crazy consumer binge, with a hundred percent inflation, people living on bank overdrafts and yet buying color TVs, new cars, luxury furniture, modish clothes, in a pitiful futile mass attempt to live like Americans. Every week a new bank scandal or government bribery case made big black headlines, as did the incessant strikes by doctors, teachers, and bus drivers. Everybody who had any money was gambling on the stock market, where the prices had gone insane, while poverty was getting worse among the poor in the cities and the small towns. The popular music was all ersatz American rock-and-roll. The magazines were all about American movie stars and multimillionaires, or about squalid Israeli crimes and squabbling politicians. Was this what his brother had died for?
Danny Luria poured all this out for about an hour, as Kishote drove in silence across the country and headed down the highway twisting through the arid brown Judean ridges. “Understand me, General Nitzan, we’ll fly the mission. The air chief knows we will. But we’ll fly into a hornet’s nest of SAM-6s and AA, and some of us won’t come back. I feel no reason to give up my life, except group loyalty. You know, at the base they call our unit ‘the Chosen.’ A graveyard joke! Chosen to die, and for what? For Zionism?” He sourly laughed and broke off, stared out at the vacant stony hills, and after a while went on, “And as for my father’s buying the Ezrakh’s idea that Israel may be stage one of the messianic era, he just loses me. That Ezrakh lived and died in an Old City yeshiva dream. Kol ha’kavod, but dreaming in an F-16 cockpit can lead to trouble.”
“Granted,” said Don Kishote, the first word he had spoken in quite a while.
This break in Danny’s impassioned soliloquy made him stop and laugh more naturally. “Well, okay, that’s about it. I haven’t talked this much since I saw Ruti Barak in Pasadena. I was as high then as I’m low now.”
Kishote said, “In 1974 I left Israel for two years, feeling much as you do. I wasn’t sure I’d ever return.”
“So why did you?”
“I sometimes wonder. How was Ruti?”
/>
“Too thin. Working like a horse. She’ll come back, all right.”
“You know, Danny, the whole world imitates the Americans. You can’t get away from that.”
“Not like Israel. Last Friday night a few of us did the Tel Aviv nightclubs. What a scene! Shabbat shalom! La dolce vita, Zionist style, Jews imitating Europeans imitating Americans. In one fancy club, at three in the morning, we saw half the big Labor politicians with their ladies, busy building the just socialist society.”
Brown, muscular, in a grease-stained shirt and rolled-up shorts, Bruria was changing a bandage on Aryeh’s leg when they came into the bleak little cottage. Not my type, thought Danny; sunburned pleasant face, bright brown eyes, thin determined mouth, a future kibbutz chairwoman, or possibly a far left Knesset member. Aryeh exclaimed, sitting up in the double bed which filled the room, “Danny! Ma nishma? What a surprise! Bruria, this is my fighter-pilot cousin who missed our wedding.”
“Hi.” She gave Danny a hard handshake. “You were training then in Utah, I think.”
“How are you doing?” Kishote asked his son.
“Flesh wound. Doctor says I’ll be up and around in a week.”
“Wound?” said Danny. “What kind of wound?”
“Gunshot.”
“L’Azazel!”
“Yes, I surprised some infiltrators on my night rounds. They left a bloody trail and I may have killed one. I hope so.”
“You have that trouble here still?”
“Still,” said Bruria, “and too often.”
Kishote and Danny visited with Aryeh while Bruria bustled out and after a while bustled back in, inviting them to supper. “Our chairman wants to talk to you,” she told the pilot. “Come, Aryeh, I’ll get you ready.”
Kishote led Danny on a tortuous path through cottages and blooming fragrant trees to the brightly lit dining hall. “A stagnant little kibbutz,” he said. “Nice people, though.”
At the community tables, where the kibbutzniks were already eating, the uniformed pilot caused stares and whispers. Bruria brought Aryeh in a wheelchair. The chairman, a thickset heavily wrinkled graybeard, told Yossi over the chopped vegetables and baked carp that the army was getting slack. The highest fences, the most tangled barbed wire barriers, weren’t enough to stop infiltrators. Security meant men and guns! The Arabs were always close by with wire cutters, full of hate and looking for trouble.